<\/p>\n
Today’s post is from\u00a0Patrick Cabello Hansel, co-pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Minneapolis, MN.<\/em><\/p>\n The first Baby Jesus at our church is now 11 years old.\u00a0 He\u2019s the goalie on our soccer team, which finished runner-up this year.\u00a0 The year he was baby Jesus, his mom and dad were Maria y Jos\u00e9 (Mary and Joseph), and his six-year-old sister was an angel.\u00a0 The now not-so-little boy was born here and holds the rights of U.S. citizenship. The rest of his family members are immigrants, who have not always found the welcome they came looking for.<\/p>\n La Posada is a traditional Mexican and Central American Christmas procession, in which the congregation walks with Mar\u00eda and Jos\u00e9 looking for Posada, or shelter for the baby Jesus.\u00a0 People walk from house to house singing Christmas carols, often carrying candles.\u00a0 Jos\u00e9 sings a song at each house they stop at.\u00a0 The English version goes something like this:<\/p>\n Lodging, I beg you, in the name of heaven.<\/p>\n My beloved wife is weary, she can\u2019t walk anymore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We line up the houses ahead of time, and the people who meet us at the door are coached to be mean innkeepers.\u00a0 They sing back to the congregation something like this:<\/p>\n We don\u2019t take people like you, you\u2019re too poor.<\/p>\n Leave us alone, go away!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So the pilgrims continue walking. Depending on the weather, we visit a few more houses, then end up back at the church, where this time, the pilgrims are welcomed in. We sing carols in candlelight, then onto the fiesta: food, music, pi\u00f1ata.<\/p>\n No matter the cold, there is joy in walking outside in a winter night. There is mystery, there is danger, there is hope that someone will welcome us.<\/p>\n Today, there are more refugees in the world than any time since World War II, and immigrants are demonized across our land.\u00a0 What if each of those families was Mary and Joseph?\u00a0 What if each of those children was the Holy Child, the one bringing peace? What if each of us was the shelter, the posada?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s post is from\u00a0Patrick Cabello Hansel, co-pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Minneapolis, MN. The first Baby Jesus at our church is now 11 years old.\u00a0 He\u2019s the goalie on our soccer team, which finished runner-up this year.\u00a0 The year he was baby Jesus, his mom and dad were Maria y Jos\u00e9 (Mary and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n