The Pastor’s Pen
W. H. Auden begins his Christmas Oratorio with a line that feels almost too honest for church. “Well, so that is that.” Christmas has come and gone. The tree comes down. Leftovers linger. We return to routines we had briefly escaped. The glow fades faster than we expected.
Auden refuses to let us pretend otherwise. He names how we overestimate ourselves – our
patience, our generosity, our ability to love everyone around the table. He tells the truth about how easily we admire the Christ Child as a “possibility,” only to send him away once real life resumes.
And yet, Auden does not call this failure the end of faith. Instead, he names this stretch of days – the time after Christmas, before Lent – as “the Time Being.” The ordinary time. The time of bills and dishes and alarm clocks. The time when faith is no longer carried by carols or candlelight, but practiced quietly, stubbornly, sometimes without much feeling at all.
Auden suggests that this may be the hardest part of belief – not the mountaintop moments, but the long obedience of returning to the kitchen table and the morning commute, remembering that once, everything became a You and nothing an It. And trusting that God is still present here, even now.
The happy morning is over. The harder days will come. But for the time being, Christ has been born into the ordinary – and that means the ordinary still matters. The Time Being is not wasted time. It is time to be redeemed.
(Christmas Oratorio by W. H. Auden)
See you Sunday.
Blessings,
Pastor Greg
pastorgreg@lawrencevillepresbyterian.org
Auden refuses to let us pretend otherwise. He names how we overestimate ourselves – our
patience, our generosity, our ability to love everyone around the table. He tells the truth about how easily we admire the Christ Child as a “possibility,” only to send him away once real life resumes.
And yet, Auden does not call this failure the end of faith. Instead, he names this stretch of days – the time after Christmas, before Lent – as “the Time Being.” The ordinary time. The time of bills and dishes and alarm clocks. The time when faith is no longer carried by carols or candlelight, but practiced quietly, stubbornly, sometimes without much feeling at all.
Auden suggests that this may be the hardest part of belief – not the mountaintop moments, but the long obedience of returning to the kitchen table and the morning commute, remembering that once, everything became a You and nothing an It. And trusting that God is still present here, even now.
The happy morning is over. The harder days will come. But for the time being, Christ has been born into the ordinary – and that means the ordinary still matters. The Time Being is not wasted time. It is time to be redeemed.
(Christmas Oratorio by W. H. Auden)
See you Sunday.
Blessings,
Pastor Greg
pastorgreg@lawrencevillepresbyterian.org
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