Our community is full of holiday spirit! Last week, we gathered to share a meal, prepared by Evangeline, Director of Care, for our holiday party. Matt, our new Formations Manager, led the party by beginning with a reflection on how to find hope this holiday season. Read his reflection and take aways from the holiday party:
Our Christmas party began with a brief reflection on hope. If you’re like me, it has been a struggle to find hope this year. Maybe for you that struggle is because of discouragement of a personal, political, or geo-political nature. However life finds you this time of year, I invite you to identify the sources of hope in your own life and to press into that hope this new year. As a Christian, I have found hope in connecting with the Christian story of God becoming human, celebrated by Christians this holiday season. I resonate deeply with a God who chooses not to avoid the messiness and pain of being human but enters into it in order to inaugurate a new way of being human, one marked by the hope of an open, peacemaking community who witness against the human tendency towards violence and tribalistic exclusion. I shared with my community this icon by Chicago native Kelly Latimore, which depicts Jesus turning a sword intended for death into a farming tool intended to cultivate life and vitality. I hope the image helps you connect with stories, images, or traditions that energize your hopes for a future in which people choose life over death.Appropriately, our community transitioned from this reflection into a time of laughter and joy as we lived out hope by connecting in conversations over delicious risotto (prepared by our very own Evangeline Smith) and played Christmas games. In one game, members of our community sang funny Christmas songs in the styles of Hip-hop, Country, and Heavy Metal. Memories were made that invigorated our connection with each other and which I hope can become a source of community hope this new year.
May your holiday season be marked by radical hope in the face of whatever struggles or oppositions you may be facing.
With love from L’Arche Chicago,Matt Prechter
