Christmas is its Eve

There is a ghost from Hell, one of the overnight bus riders in C S Lewis’ The Great Divorce, whose sole interest in heaven is taking pictures, photographing everything. I don’t have the book, chapter and page open this Christmas morning, and I forget details, but she (female ghost as I recall) didn’t wish to stay on in Heaven because all the beauty was already and always there for posterity, for eternity, and photographs were wanted nor needed; and because everything was always so magnificently perfect that there was no need to capture fleeting moments, indeed no fleeting moments to capture, all was eternal.

Tell a truth, this comes to mind every sunrise and every sunset and every gathering storm and every clearing sky and rainbow as I stand outside on our 7H porch waiting for the perfect instant, cognizant of perfection in every passing and present moment, and I can’t stand out here forever. 

Returned to mind at our 4:30 Χριστός in Xmas Eve celebration last evening as I snapped the first angels coming up the aisle then thought of that ghostly bus rider in Heaven and put my iPhone away knowing that every instant with these children in our church would surpass every instant before and after this Christmas and every Christmas Past and Christmas yet to come: I withdrew to just be there in the heavenly perfection of love that these beautiful children are, opening with Will singing, and toddlers through teens, angels, readers, donkeys, singing, shepherds, kings, a BVM in Blue, sheep, Star of Bethlehem climbing a ladder and waving his points. Camera cannot capture Heaven, because Heaven is not an instant of holding a moonbeam or a child, or even a memory or a hope, but life ongoing filled with children who are themselves, each and every one, God’s love for us.


201612241639 and moving along. Hundreds of people were there. I gave up after one photograph, but it’s still dancing in my head like visions of sugarplums. 

DThos+ in +Time+