A few days ago I stopped by 40 Prescott to drop something off, and found a package waiting for me there. It turned out to be a Christmas gift from an Episcopal Service Corps colleague— a beautiful wood ornament depicting a dumpster on fire, with “2020” emblazoned across the bottom. It now has a prominent place on my quarantine Christmas tree.
As we round the corner into the holiday season, I’ve heard many people express a renewed frustration with our current distanced reality. I feel it, too. Tonight I happened to hear “In the Bleak Midwinter” and instantly thought of caroling around the 40P piano with alumni at our annual Christmas party. Our last Emmaus Team meeting brought back memories of Yankee gift swaps with previous Emmaus fellows, rendered impossible within the Zoom screen this year.
Yet the Christmas story isn’t fundamentally about holiday traditions, as much as we love them. Christmas is about God breaking into a time of immense oppression and suffering with something new. About impossible things becoming possible. About small beginnings changing the world. There is so, so much to lament right now, in a world that can indeed feel like a dumpster on fire. At the same time, in so many places the seeds of new things have been planted: renewed demands for racial justice, greater creativity in how we connect and serve online, a deeper grounding in what really matters. The Christ Child is being born right now, even at the end of 2020, offering us the promise of change.
There are also seeds of new possibility in this season at Life Together. On December 14 we welcomed a new Associate Director of Training and Recruitment, Jocelyn Collen, to our team. Jocelyn brings a variety of rich experiences in ministry, including serving with FrancisCorps, a Catholic young adult service corps program, and working as a campus minister at Fairfield University in Connecticut. I am so excited for the new energy and perspectives she will bring to the challenges facing Life Together. In January, our Emmaus fellows will make their long-awaited move to their new home in Dorchester. I am also eager in 2021 to take the learning that has come out of this pandemic season and use it to reach more young adults with the tools of prayerful and prophetic leadership in the coming years.
In these final days of Advent, as we all wait to see what the Holy Spirit is up to in this season, we also have the broader Life Together community for encouragement, for accountability, for help on those days where it is hard to look for new life. Thank you for being part of this community, and for accompanying our fellows in so many ways. From all of us at Life Together, have a Christmas full of unexpected joys, and a very happy New Year!