You Can't Repeat It Too Often - Howard Thurman's The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among all,

To make music in the heart.

I'd emphasize different things on different days, it's too big an agenda to take on, we're not all Dorothy Day or some other living saint.   

Right now, as things are turning ever darker, I'd encourage everyone to try to make music in the heart, we're going to need that.  I'm seeing more reminders that the Christmas season lasts till February 2nd.  I'd include MLK's Birthday in that, not the official day that's been cheapened in the way that all American holidays get cheapened and co-opted.   Since so many of his most valuable words are still under embargo, not by white supremacists as during his lifetime but by his own family, maybe emphasizing the words of others in that movement here and around the world can make that music, instead.   It's the tragedy of MLK that the false image of him erected in the absence of his real words is a tool of Republican-fascists.

I'm reading Masha Gessen, right now.  Prophesy in our time.  And I'm on about my fourth reading of Jeremiah, prophesy for all time.