Every year, at Christmas time, I reflect on this passage from Charles Dickens.
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem consent to open their hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
This no longer feels true, sadly.
Despite every human being, without exception, holding a unique place among God’s creation, as He says, “I breathed into him of My Spirit,” all that is visible to us now are our differences.
Are our hearts sealed? Faced with overwhelming violence and suffering, what will it take to rediscover our Oneness? For how long will we continue to make a graveyard of the globe?