Friends,
I’ve been thinking about the conjunction of Jupiter and
Saturn on the 21st. Perhaps it’s fitting the media hyped it and dubbed it the
Christmas star. One might be forgiven for misaligning expectations and reality.
You had to know what it was, where to look and add magnification to really
appreciate it. Otherwise, to the uninitiated it looked like two medium-sized
stars right next to each other. A big let-down. But, if you knew where to look
and what it was you saw, maybe, just maybe, you’d be in awe -even without a
medium-powered telescope. Kind of like Christmas itself. The birth of a poor
boy in a shed at a backwater town of a distant colony of the Roman Empire, so
long ago. A refugee of dubious paternity born away from home, on a
government-imposed journey whose actual birthday was lost to time. How
incongruent these humble beginnings seem when you watch frenzied shopping for
unnecessary gifts shared at banquets filled with excessive eating. Colorful
lights, tinsel, ornaments, wrapping paper and songs about snow on continuous
shuffle since Halloween. In a way, I’m kind of glad the pandemic has tempered
some of the excesses of the season so we can focus on the simple things. Maybe
we can look past the hype to the underlying event. The choir of angels singing,
if you look closely you can see their halos, or as I like to call them, donuts.
Happy Friday!
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