"I wear the chain I forged in life, replied the Ghost. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to YOU Ebenezer Scrooge?" ~ Jacob Marley from Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol"
Christmas is upon us. Except for last minute details most everything is set. Decorations are hung. Presents are purchased and wrapped. People are beginning to travel and gather already. What a season! How blessed we are to have so much abundance even when we suffer hardshhip. People are good this time of year aren't they? We give more generously. How can we carry this spirit into our everyday lives?
Christmas is an opportunity for redemption. Jacob Marley delivers a sober message to Scrooge. He asks his old friend and partner to look squarely at his life...to take a moral inventory as it were. It is terrifying to look at the "ponderous" chain that each of us carries. We are called by a power greater than ourselves to examine our wounds, explore our mistakes and wrongdoings and to assess the part that we have played in life so far. We are asked to look into the future and run out the tape based upon our current course. This is the only way that we can heal. This is the means by which we can become useful to the world and to the people around us. We will be transformed.
Dickens "A Christmas Carol" ends with words that we never hear on movie versions. It says this; "His own heart laughed and that was good enough for him. He lived upon The Total Abstinence Principle ever afterwards." The story goes on with the familiar promise to each of us when we follow the call of redemption and recovery; "and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possesssed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!"
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