This will be the last Note of 2025. If you are reading this, you already deserve a medal, and knowing that I have like 4 readers, there is a 75% change you will get either gold, silver or bronze. Pretty good odds I’d say.
When I think about Christmas, I do not picture perfect families in matching pajamas watching Home Alone 3.
For me, Christmas is about something more internal.
Family. Love. Community. Friend. Helping others.
Earlier this year, I began mentoring David, a young man from Kenya. David comes from a small village in rural Kenya. He is the second of four boys, raised in a humble family with real financial struggles.
He is studying for his Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture and is the first in his family to attend university. I still remember the way he said that sentence the first time. It carried both pride and weight.
David feels a deep sense of purpose in inspiring others and serving as a role model in his community. He wants to create positive change and empower others through education. he wants to be an example for those in his village who were not as fortunate as he has been to study.
Every semester, David sets up a GoFundMe to raise funds for his studies. He has to do this again and again, which already tells you a lot about his resilience. We have weekly calls, and I help him as a mentor to define his goals, sharpen his leadership skills, and find better ways to share his story so he can reach people with his campaign.
I share this story because the joy I get from supporting him is one of the best feelings I know. It is a joy that feels very close to what I understand as the Christmas spirit. It has nothing to do with gifts under a tree and everything to do with feeling connected to another human being on the other side of the world.
If you want to support David, contact me.
This year, while I was helping him, something else was also happening. I began reconnecting not only with faith but with the story of Jesus.
I grew up with the figure of Jesus somewhat present, but more like in the landscape. Like many people, I associated him more with institutions, rules, and long homilies than with anything alive and close.
The more I sat with it, the more I felt that Jesus is, at his core, about love.
He was born and raised Jewish. He did not come to build a religion. He came to teach us about connecting with ourselves and those around us.
And still, here we are, more than two thousand years later, arguing about him on the internet.
There is a fun historical detail I love: there are more written historical accounts of Jesus than of Julius Caesar. Think about that for a moment. More written traces of a poor carpenter’s son who spent his time with fishermen and outcasts than of the guy who ruled the Roman Empire in a toga.
Jesus may be the most amazing person who walked the face of this earth. Any guy who says “Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek” has got to be a figure of unparalleled generosity and insight and madness … A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes and the homeless. It is an inhuman generosity.
Jesus chose to stand with the people everyone else tried to avoid. He did not look to dine with the Cesar or build wealth by having a camel farm. His life was a declaration: this is where love goes. To the margins. To the forgotten corners. To the people we step around on the way to buy gifts.
In my own clumsy way, I am now seeing him less as a figure inside churches and more as someone pointing at the truth. Pointing at something beyond all this. Infinite consciousness. A presence that holds everything together even when our lives feel like they are falling apart.
And above all, pointing at love.
That is what it is all about.
When I see David, logging into our calls four hours away from his home, juggling classes, family responsibilities, financial stress, and still talking about how he wants to help children in his village believe they can study too, I am reminded of how lucky I am with my life, how important it is to give back and my mission to become a better human, a flawed human lucky enough to know about Jesus and a desire to be more like him.
As I close this Note, I want to wish each and every one of you (my four or so readers) a Christmas that is less about what you receive and more about what you lovingly give.
A happy, community oriented, family focused, and love filled Christmas.
May we keep working to make this small planet of ours, during this short life of ours, a place of hope for future generations.
Until next year.
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