Let us explore the first image. A light shining, but shining in the darkness. When I was a kid (a hundred years ago!) in the 1950's, during the Christmas season my parents used to hustle my sisters and me into the back seat of the car at night and we would drive from our city neighborhood out into the suburbs to see the lights on the houses. There were scenes of Santa Clauses and elves and reindeer and crib scenes. The lights were glorious and wild. They sort of overcame you. We would drive down the streets and say, "Look at that one! Look at that one!"

Well, once after doing that, we came back to where we lived and I got out of the car and looked at our two-flat. It was completely dark. My grandparents lived on the first floor and they went to bed at nine – something I am a little more envious of now. On the second floor was our apartment. It was completely black, too, but the tree lights were on and they were gently shining in the darkness, and it dawned on me: Christmas isn't about light. It's about light in the darkness. Later when I grew up, I would read St. John and he would say, "The light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it." There is a defiance to the light. It lives in the darkness but the darkness cannot overcome it.

Let us look at the second image. It is an evergreen tree but it is surrounded by trees without leaves. It is reminiscent of a story in the Cherokee tradition called Why Some Trees are Ever Green. The story starts out: In the beginning the Great Mystery gathers all the plants and animals together, and the Great Mystery wants to give a gift to all the plants and the animals, but the Great Mystery does not know what gift to give to which plants and which trees. So he gathers them altogether and says to the trees and the plants, "Try to stay up all night for seven nights." Well the first night the young plants and trees, even if they wanted to, could not fall asleep. They were so excited. On the second night some dozed off. On the third night, in order to keep awake, the plants and trees began talking to one another. On the fourth, fifth and sixth nights, though, many fell asleep, until finally the Great Mystery arrived on the seventh night. The only plants and the only trees that were awake were the spruce, the fir, the holly and the laurel. The Great Mystery said, "What great endurance you have. Because you have stayed awake, I will give you the gift of being ever green, so that even in the seeming dead of winter, when all the other trees have lost their leaves, your brother and sister creatures can look into your leaves and know that life is protected."

So it is down to this day. In the seeming dead of winter when all the other trees lose their leaves, the evergreens stay green and stay awake. The evergreens are defiant. They defy the defoliage of winter. They live and they give us a sense of life.

Let us explore the third image, the traditional one of Christmas. It is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. It is an image of love. The child wrapped in swaddling clothes means that the child is loved. The child is not abandoned, but wrapped and taken care of. The child is laid in a manger, a feeding trough, which means that this beloved child is meant to be food for the world and to give his life to all people, and although this is a symbol of love, it is also happens in a place where there is no room for them at the inn. It also happens in a place where there is no hospitality, where they are not welcomed, where there is rejection. So you have a sense of belovedness, but there is a defiance to the belovedness. It's the belovedness in a land that lacks hospitality.

So these three images: the light shines but it defies the darkness as it shines; the bush is green, but it defies the loss of leaves in winters; the child is beloved but it defies a sense of rejection and inhospitality. I thought with these images on the cover of a Christmas card, people would understand the sentiment, "Have a Defiant Christmas." But I suppose we really don't want a card like that. We want a card that is all light or all greenness or all love, but I do not think it is always the condition we are in when we celebrate Christmas.

There is much darkness, barrenness and inhospitality in the lives we lead, and we have to, at Christmas time, defy those. The question is, how do we celebrate in a world that is not perfect? What might some of the things we have to defy be? Perhaps our health is not good or the heath of the people we love and care for. Perhaps we wait for test results over the holidays. Perhaps our finances are not where they should be. We need more money. Who does not at this season? Perhaps some of our relationships are difficult and in need of repair. Perhaps our job is not secure. Will we wait till there is all light, till there is all greenness, until there is only love in order to celebrate? Or can we defy that and can we celebrate in the midst of darkness and barrenness and lack of hospitality? If we do, where will it be coming from when we do it?

It seems to me the Christian tradition is powerfully consistent on this. It says that the soul is deeply united to God and if we can make ourselves conscious of this soul in us, it will be a place where we can stand to defy all the things that try to tear us down and destroy us when the circumstances of our lives that are not completely where we want them to be. The problem is we are often not in touch with this deep, interconnectedness to the Divine Source.

I was trying to get this across once to a group of people, this deep connectedness which is the source of defiance of adverse circumstances. I was telling them that Meister Eckhart, a theologian, once said that each person has a vintage wine cellar but they seldom drink from it. We have to find the wine cellar in order to drink from it. Afterwards a man came up to me and said, "I think I know what you were talking about. Let me tell you my story. I was a school teacher and at Christmas the kids always brought me gifts. They brought them in different types of boxes but after a while I was pretty savvy about what the gifts were. There would be a thin handkerchief box. I knew it was a handkerchief box and so instead of opening it, I usually just put it in the closet and then when I needed a handkerchief, I went and got it and opened it up. Well, one time I needed a handkerchief and I went and opened up a thin handkerchief box but there was no handkerchief inside. Inside instead was an antique pocket watch. I had an antique pocket watch all this time but I didn't know it because it was wrapped in a handkerchief box."

St Paul says, "We carry the treasure in earthen vessels." We carry an antique pocket watch in a handkerchief box. We find the beloved child in ourselves. We find the light in ourselves. We find the greenness in ourselves and it defies the adverse circumstances of our lives.

I do not know if I will ever send that Christmas card out. Knowing me, I will probably put it off but if I do not, I can always reach for an older Christmas card that has the same thought, one that was written in 1513 by Fra Giovanni. He said, "I salute you and there is nothing I can give which you have not, but there is much while I cannot give it, you may take it. No heaven can come to us unless we find it in our hearts today. So take heaven. No joy can come to us, unless it comes to us in this present moment. Take joy. No peace can come to us, unless we find it right now. Take peace." And so at Christmas time, I greet you with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

John Shea: Right.

Talbot: How did all that come to you? How did you imagine all of that imagery in the context of defiance?

Shea: I came across a quote from Gilbert Chesterton. He said that a faith that defies the world should have a feast that defies the weather, meaning Christmas in winter time. And I thought to myself, "Defiance. Could Christmas be about defiance?" People would often talk about, well, it should be about hope. Christmas is about hope. But then as soon as you say Christmas is about hope, and you look at your own life or the larger world and all the things that beset us, you wonder. Do you just look and do an estimate of situations and say, "Well, I can have a little hope but not a lot of hope?" Or does hope come from a different dimension of us? So I began to ponder the Christmas story as a story of hope because it could defy the negative circumstances that afflict us individually and socially, too, and it proclaimed hope that way. So I took the path of hope to be a path of defiance of negative circumstances.

Talbot: I am mindful of the two parallel tracks that we are all confronted with at Christmas time, actually beginning right after Thanksgiving, and coming to a frantic halt after Christmas. The commercial track, materialism, self-interest and all that sort of thing. And yet there is the religious track, the religious observance of the miracle of the manger.

Shea: Right.

Talbot: How can we stay on the right track on our way home to Bethlehem?

Shea: Christmas is like a pressure cooker for the spiritual life because it increases our rush and our busyness. At the same time, we're called to stay centered in the deeper truth of Christmas. A lot of times people try to take time out. The clue in the Scriptures is that in Luke's Gospel: it is that Mary is a ponderer. She ponders events. And so sometimes it's good to just ponder the events of your life. Ponder the people you're with and begin to appreciate them at a deeper level. Ponder what is happening. Take time to reflect and go deeper even if it's only when your driving in the car and you're waiting in line at the grocery store. But it is a question of perception, a question of seeing deeply into the truth of the season, that it is a season where there is a greenness in us, a light in us, a belovedness in us that we want to take time to appreciate and touch on.

Talbot: That allows us to stand and ponder, as you say. To stand in wonder and in awe....

Shea: Truly.

Talbot: ...of the baby in the manger.

Shea: Right!

Talbot: And all that meaning for us. Talk more about the sense of ultimacy. John, you developed so well the notion of our connectedness with God, but hard to get sometimes.

Shea: Right. Spiritual teachers often taught that the human person is many dimensions. We have a physical dimension. We have a psychological dimension. We have a social dimension. And there is a deep spiritual dimension that connects us to the divine source. Often times our awareness is where we are touched into the physical or we're touched into the psychological or social. Through prayer and celebration and church services, we try to touch into that deeper ultimate spiritual dimension and that becomes an anchor that gives us a place to stand in order to deal with some of the disruptions that happen in the rest of the dimensions. I think at Christmas time there is often a blues that sets into many people. They think of all the people they used to celebrate Christmas with and they lost and how to stay focused in love when the other dimensions can be disruptive.

Talbot: And does that help us keep focused, as you say in your book, Starlight, Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long, on sustaining the gift of Christmas throughout the year?

Shea: It does. Some people think that it's easier to sustain the gift of Christmas not during the Christmas season—because the Christmas season is so rushed—but to sustain the gift is to keep in touch with the deeper spiritual center of who you are.