Do you ever wonder how spiderman feels? He has these awesome powers but can't share it with anyone and his social life is a disaster because super villains keep popping up and threatening those he loves. I sometimes feel like that, except I don't have awesome super powers to make the awkward silence a little more interesting. I hate it when people ask, 'how are you?' I have to lie and smile and say, 'great!' because they can't handle the truth. Worse, you feel like you're trapped in one of those stories where the villagers think their mysterious benefactor is actually the villain, while the true villain sits back and laughs maliciously at his handiwork while plotting their destruction. It isn't even some horrid mistake from my past; I had no choice in the matter at all. How many times have I heard people delivered from drugs and violence and sexual transgressions 'boasting' of their freedom and redemption far and wide but I can say nothing without angering the villagers thereabouts.
As a child of abuse, I never had a happy Christmas but I've always been drawn to the Christmas hymns and loved the season anyway, and in finally starting to learn the guitar and piano, I now understand why. They are full of minor chords. One of my virtual instructors said a major chord sounds bright and happy whereas a minor chord sounds sad. But it isn't sad, it is deep and mysterious, yes tinged with sorrow, but hinting at something beneath it, something greater, something wonderful, beyond the comprehension of men. The shadow of the cross looms over the manger as the Fall mars creation, but beyond them both is something incomprehensible, something deep and mysterious and holy, well worth our most reverent awe and fear. Something deep in a world gone shallow.
There was another man with a secret; He was God. They called Him a drunk, a bastard, a lunatic, a heretic, a foreigner, and thought Him possessed. And now with the Christmas season looming and the annual scandal about to break forth of whether Santa is PC or a nativity display is unconstitutional while the mall speakers ball out 'Santa Baby' and inane songs about snow and chestnuts, we need not be surprised, it is just the latest generation of those who think Him mad. But they are right to fear it, it is dangerous, this secret, the old songs whisper it, their haunting, mysterious chords echo within our souls, 'deep crying out to deep,' as it were.
When my own soul aches, when my own secret seems too much to bear, I can turn to One who has a secret of His own, for which the world reviled Him, but which brought forth something so wondrous the world cannot comprehend. I'll take comfort in the old songs, the banned songs, the dangerous songs…'nail, spear to pierce Him through, the cross be borne for me, for you, hail, hail, the Word made Flesh, the babe the son, of Mary!'
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