My favorite Christmas photo that I’ve taken.

Merry Christmas.

As my community prepares to celebrate Christmas together, this article on North Korea’s spiritual climate has come to mind several times. What drives it home:

Still, there are those who celebrate Christmas behind the barbed wire, unaccompanied by pageantry or feast. I try to picture them, prisoners in their own country, reading about the Nativity aloud in a climate of repression and fear. Their narratives of suffering seem out of sync with the quiet scene as we imagine it…

In the bleakness of North Korea, where even Christmas trees at the border are deemed a threat, the urgent need for God incarnate, God with us, is made achingly real.

This is my friend Jeff’s secret santa gift to a friend - a tandem bicycle. Before we gave it to her we took a picture on it to forever commemorate its awesomeness.

Christmas tree, 2009.

Christmas tree, 1956.

While I didn’t send out any Christmas cards of my own, I did shoot this amazing one for a friend. 

My community went caroling today - and I found these particular lines (and gestures) a little bizarre.

(Creep hands)

My secret santa gave me this wonderful, bedazzled tie for Christmas this year. Tons of snapshots from our Christmas party were uploaded to my community’s Tumblr. I love it.