there’s joseph & mary (bottom right), baby jesus, the snow flake & candy cane’s, of course and that puzzling square atop the cross. when i asked him about it he said “it’s that sign they put above Jesus when he was on the cross, like in my bible.”

you know the one. it said, this is Jesus, king of the Jews.

i came across this quote last year from Bono about this Jesus, this king of the Jews. he was sitting in St. Patrick’s in Dublin on Christmas Eve, stuck in a seat behind a pillar sturggling to stay awake. and it hits him, as if he’s hearing the Christmas story for the first time -

“The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw…a child… I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry … Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.”

From Bono: in conversation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 124-5. (HT: JD)

I hope your Christmas brings you all the wonder and poetry that the Christ child, the one born into our impoverished world to take away every iniquity and injustice, was meant to bring. Merry Christmas.

since June, I’ve been working with some really incredible people on a project that i’m very proud to be a part of. i’ve blogged about it several times, but haven’t had the liberty of actually disclosing it’s official name. but, seeing as the billboards are up and the television spots are airing, it is a secret no more. take a few minutes and check out iamsecond.com.

brian welch, formerly of Korn