Openness... I remember reading a book, Beginning to pray by Archbishop Anthony Bloom, a long time ago. One image has stayed with me, "curled about the centre of your own emptiness".
I cannot remember what he was talking about, but the image of a wood shaving to describe a self-centred person has never left me. A wood shaving can look attractive, especially when it has freshly fallen from the plane or the pencil sharpener, but it is brittle, hollow and of relatively little usefulness. As Christmas approaches, I recommend that we pause briefly to ask, "What is at the centre of my life? What forms the core of my being? The answers may disconcert, and unless it is God and the things of God, then we risk being like the wood shaving.
St. Augustine described being in sin as "being turned inward on onself", the image is of a foetus, a bolum in our folklore. Christmas is about birth, new life, generosity and hope.
CATCH THE SPIRIT!
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