http://shop.moravianbookshop.com/browse.cfm/2,30.html

The Moravian Star

When I was growing up, in Indianapolis, Indiana, we had one of the parchment stars in the front window of our home every Advent and Christmas. When I grew up I had the star for a few years, then it got pretty ratty, being paper and having been assembled and disassembled umpty-billion times, so I discarded it and got another one, this one plastic that once put together didn't come apart. It lasted 2 years and then a mean person ran over it with his car.

this year I found these, which I didn't think were available any more....ha ha! So as soon as I get the roll of film developed that's in my camera (no I don't have a digital camera except the one that's in my phone) I will post a photo so you can see how pretty it is.

I am firmly entenched in my belief that in Catholicism under the Pope I have found the True Faith, but this is one tradition from my Protestant childhood that I am proud to share with my children. To me the Star of Bethlehem is like the desire for closeness with God that glows and burns in our hearts from the day of our Baptism....we follow or not, as we are creatures with free will, but still the star is there, gently shining and beckoning, its promise ever faithful, a tender foreshadowing of the Voice we all hear in our deepest heart if we will only become still enough to hear: "Come and See."

What do people see when they see you and me? Wouldn't it be nice to know? What do we want people to see? Love, Joy (I almost got unloosed and listed the fruit of the Holy Spirit there, which I guess would have been perfectly apropos)?

BTW the Moravians were founded on a bunch of heresies, the first of which being that the Pope is not the head of the Church on earth. They separated from Rome in 1457 (years before Luther's vandalism of the Wittenberg door), and are theologically cousins to the Methodists.