We did it. We shopped, cooked, pressed through traffic, went to a service, socialized; we Christmassed. Now it is boxing day in a land without boxing day. It's just the day after Christmas and a week before New Year. Anicca (impermanence) is a teaching easily accessed on a day like this, and yes, it can lead to oppressive clouds of dukkha.
In Christian work there are missions and their are ministries. Ministries are open ended, ongoing service efforts. Missions are objective defined, an accomplishment to strive for. The Christmas holiday time functions like a mission, but life is more of a ministry. Today I want to find a mission to pursue, if for nothing else to elevate faith in something better than the present existing safely, even if it's harbor is beyond the next hill. I don't want to be forced to feel that the mix of good and bad around me is more or less all there is. I need to believe that the limitations of the good of the day and the impositions of the troubles of the day are what is temporary, and that a future reckoning will show a boon of goodness.
Pulling back to the broadest view, one of eschatological completion and grandeur, delivers that idea, but it is so difficult to access with feeling in tow. Shorter cycles of deliverance through exodus and entrance in to abundance through conquering and holding are needed. I need a mission, even if that mission is to get to where ministry ebbs and flows in unashamed contentment.
