Putney Friends Meeting

I stumbled on to this poem by Howard Thurman on Christmas eve. Thurman was a mystical, prophetic preacher active in the civil rights movement who studied with Rufus Jones and joined the Wider Quaker Fellowship in the 1960s. I found this Christmas poem of his in the book Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights and thought it worth sharing. Many of his books have been published by Friends United Press.

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.