Christmas, forever wrapped in the meaning of "Revelation," is a time many try to align their lives anew.

It begins with a quiet feeling of hope - of perhaps being in the dark, looking out the proverbial window, and then finally seeing some light about any troubling elements that seem part of life.

We also have a harsher incivility and greater air of unease in the nation now. So what are the some of the more forebearing qualities that are "the gift of tears," as the Puritans once famously termed such a renewing of the spirit?

Faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It brings us into right relation to our being. As it grows, faith can broaden from blessings to belief, and then into a way of living. It lets us surpass the ordinary challenges of life, and enables us to hear and know that which we may not normally see. Faith is one of life's most abundant assets.

Gratitude, emerging from faith, magnifies our sense of good. By becoming alive through gratitude to everything around us, we widen our circle of care for others, defuse greed and selfishness, check those occasional doses of ingratitude that warp human prerogative, and much more. Gratitude, crediting its presence to a higher source, often lifts us above a sense of crisis, of suffering, of wrong - and also intuitively adds more good to life.

Humility then grounds our gratitude and starts to move us toward an enlarged ethic. Humility, offering a more rooted view of life than the self, slowly unburdens us. In becoming less burdened, we are greatly strengthened. Humility keeps us from coalescing around prejudices. It also fortifies and lines our disposition. As it does so, a more spacious "math" of the spirit inhabits us.

Integrity then takes hold. Like humility, integrity becomes ours by degrees. Much as a few threads turn into a string, and a string braids to a rope, integrity weaves a cord of life for us. From unburdening, and overcoming, we discover better where we would aim and walk in life. Integrity produces an honesty that makes us whole - it lets our nature assume a firmness of purpose and meaning. Integrity helps us withstand fraying from within, and adversity beyond.

Joy, so prevalent at Christmas, doesn't just happen. But integrity gives us more of it. A deep calm, it bests the clouds we face. We learn from Scripture, for example, of the end of insufficiencies like the son who consumed his substance in riotous living, or the one who lost his sense of peace from envy. Joy rounds the sharp corners of life. It smoothes our ups and downs. Not elusive, always there, joy is not ours to manufacture, But having it is a lifeline to peace.

Kindness, like nothing else, ripples throughout the world at Christmas. "No matter how small," Mark Twain once said, kindness "is never wasted…" He adds, "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." A poem defines kindness as "a little idiom" to the mother-tongue, "the pendant leaves to the mighty, far-reaching bough," "the foam that garlands the waves, part of the great heart of the sea."

Love, finally, one of two transcendent principles of the universe, puts us at one with our neighbor. Love centers on forgiveness - but, first, our own. It really isn't possible to hold another in the wrong and declare it is not in us. Trying to enjoy the reward of righteousness we have not lived is like looking Christmas - but not yet to our selves. From love, we soon see an expectancy which dissolves strains that feed the appetite for strife.

We gain energy when we concentrate on the right things, and we lose it when we don't. The Public Square offers these seven renewing qualities as seasonal guideposts. They are forms of personal measure for us.

But nourishing our best attributes will also put the issues of the day in a better context. They can make our country and world better and stronger. Finally, they can help soften today's sharper and divisive tone, and heal the temper of the times.