Each Christmas season, a friend from Kalamazoo writes me a letter that almost always raises my spirit. Frank lives up to his name and, beyond this, he also exhibits a certain quirkiness of character which stirs my ongoing interest in his writing. Faith remains important to him as it does to me.

Read what he says this year: “Christmas is still my favorite of all the church feasts. It’s so bare, so humble; it gives me hope each year at a time of year when I am sometimes unhopeful.

“What a joy to have a Savior whose birth was anything but a big deal, and who would delight in the kinds of people who did not count for much, which makes me proud to have some of the local street people for friends, as well as humbled to know that I have never really been poor in my life. Desperate sometimes, but never poor.

“I think Toni and I have both found aging and retirement to be a challenge. She’s better at it than I am, but I’m learning. It’s the school of hard knocks. My lady keeps me going more than any one else, that and the lesson of Christmas, always.

“The little things are the ones that count, the ordinary friendships and the ordinary meals, the ordinary aches and pains, and the ordinary joys, like seeing grandchildren and washing dishes. Christmas reminds me of them.”

In sharing my friend Frank’s reflections with you, I hope to inspire you with hope and joy. These two states of mind belong especially to this season. If you yourself find old age difficult, or if someone in your family does, this might be a time when you can lift up your heart.

Toni, Frank’s wife who keeps him going, recently had a double mastectomy. This has not stopped her from buoying up him and working for the community. She provides spiritual direction for those who seek it, and helps various service agencies.

Appropriately enough, Frank connects Christmas with poverty. He mentions being in touch with street people. But you don’t have to be living on the street to be poor. In the United States now, because of the lagging economy, all sorts of people have been unemployed long enough to rank as poor.

Americans in this fix are hurting, with not a few of them forced even to abandon the homes they have lived in for many years.

What troubles me this Christmas season in particular is the proposal in Washington that would ensure a widening of the gap between rich and poor. If this federal deal- making goes through, Americans whose income exceeds 250,000 dollars a year will see their taxes stay low. The Bush tax cuts, due to expire at the end of this calendar year, will be kept in force.

Congressional Republicans have acted like Scrooge before he was visited by the Christmas ghosts. Just as the Dickens character did not care about the poor, so do they embrace ways of ensuring bigger and bigger resources for the rich.

It cannot be good for our society to tolerate, much less abet, the growing gap. This disparity threatens the equality that is supposed to mark this nation. Leaders in both parties should be alarmed at the growing disparity between income classes.

 Republican leaders claim that they give top priority to cutting the deficit. At the same time, they will do almost anything to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the richest among us. Their position is neither rational nor healthy.

My morale would sink even lower were it not for billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They have assembled a group of 65 fellow billionaires or multi- millionaires who have pledged to give away one half of their fortunes. This marvelous giving, at whatever time of year it is carried out, impresses me as a fine expression of the Christmas spirit.

Even after the pain that some of us have suffered this Christmas of 2010, we still have before us the challenge of reaching out to others. Howard Thurman, who was Martin Luther King’s teacher and mentor at Boston University, beautifully expressed this ideal:

 “When the song of angels is stilled, / When the star in the sky is gone, / When the kings and 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 the brothers, to make music in the heart.”

These are the tasks awaiting those of us who celebrate Christmas. If it calls us to value the ordinary things of life, as my friend Frank suggests, it can also be a time for going beyond oneself and entering into the lives of others in need.