What is Christmas?

What is Christmas?

Is it the getting and giving of gifts?

Is it having fun and food with friends and family?

Is it an excuse to tolerate snow?

Is it about the decorations?

Is this really a time of peace and love?

Are we really celebrating the birth of a baby who was born over 2000 years ago and probably not on Dec. 25?

If Christmas is a time of holiday bliss, then why do a lot of the songs that we cherish are songs that deal with hardships, loss, and separations?

Is it possible that the greatest, attribute of Christmas is that no matter what hardships, losses, or separations that you are now enduring, there is a hope and love that can sustain you through these things?

Vertical and Horizontal

It seems to me that people these days are either into vertical or horizontal, but very seldom both.  I believe that this makes for a sad situation.  People who are only into vertical, are only fooling themselves into believing that they have something when they really do not have it.  Horizontal people find themselves in empty and shallow lives and are constantly looking for an escape or for a quick fix to  the emptiness that they feel inside.

It is the few who are really both vertical and horizontal, who have the best of both worlds.  I have found that the horizontal finds its meaning from vertical and vertical finds its expression through horizontal.

For you see it is not vertical or horizontal.  It is either both or nothing.