Wishing you and yours the wonder of the celebration of light kindled in the darkness A Social Worker’s thoughts for Christmas Night--the dawn from on high will break upon us…. As you celebrate or ignore or despise or dismiss Christmas (maybe it’s not your religious celebration), let me ask each of you to allow me to place my words upon your heart. Christmas happens at night, in the dark. How do we receive the dark night of Christmas? Before the Christmas dawn breaks upon us with its gift of tender compassionate mercies, dark Christmas night confronts our Ego reveling to us how stranded, frightened, alone, as a child abandoned in the middle of the dark night, we are. Christmas first ask us to confront our aloneness in the dark---alone as creatures, separate from God, suspicious myth makers bereft of the comfort of our own myths. In our human darkness Christmas offers us a star, in the dark night of the soul there is always one constant morning star. The Christmas morning star is apprehended through our fragile, fallible perceptions. We see it as inconsistent twinkling, mythic God filtered through the vales of human consciousness. And yet, in this fearful, tremulous night the bright morning star is not simply God’s revelation, but God’s challenging invitation….in Christmas starlight, in the middle of the holy night, chilled in the fear of aloneness, frozen before the awe of a dispassionate anonymous universe, prettified trembling before our own powerlessness, we are called to do more than see or confess that we are alone, that we are afraid, that we are overwhelmed with too many truth’s…. …we are called to receive a gift. To receive a gift is the hardest of all human endeavors, to receive is to trust, as you are, to open, as you are, not simply to let go, this might not ever happen, but to open as your are now so you can be added too, now. This is the deeper mystery of receiving, of gift giving and gift getting. Christmas adds to us as we are now, that is the Christmas gift….we are added to and made more now--Grace always comes to us before we change…we exchange gifts without requiring change, and we are made different, we give freely and accept as freely, and then, maybe, we are changed. ….and so in the dark Christmas night we are invited, not to change as much as to open up, to receive, before proofs of resurrected eternal life promised or comforts of crucified forgiveness absolve. We are invited to go beyond our minds and our hearts, and receive as we are just now, IN our brokenness, BEFORE letting go, WITHOUT changing, receive into our very Self, into our soul---that center of our Being where we know we are not the center of life--receive God as gift. And what is God’s gift? That we are invited by God into God—Christmas is the gift of union— Christmas is a union, a gift given outright---God offers, we receive, and then we, in receiving, offer to God who receives us….this is the union found in the free exchange of gifts. This is the mystery of Christmas, the gift giving of Christmas, as we give, we receive, and as we receive, we give….we are invited to this unity, not because we deserve it, but because we possess the potential to also invite. Christmas is the partnership of God and person as potential, the gift of invitation. Christmas offers us the surrendering, trusting, mysterious invitation to be with God and others as we are. Christmas night waits to hear us say, “Let it be done unto me according to Gods will, for I am God’s creation, therefore let God create in me so I can also create in others.” The Glory of God in the highest is us as the lowest, as creatures with potential, creators who can receive God’s gift of Self as my Self and create via invitation. This is Christmas peace—peace on earth is our good will towards our Self and others. Christmas is not a miracle; it is a work, the work of Word fabricated incarnate, fashioned into union of God and person, invitation to Self to rein in Ego, the gift received and shared as free gift—love the other as you love yourself. Christmas is not a noun, it is a Verb. The Christmas angles sing, not to God, but to us, their joy is not about God’s gift, their rejoicing rest in our acceptance, our reception of God as gift---our recognition that we are gift to God and others as we are. This is the Christmas message to all humankind, the unity of Creation and creature invited to union as they are, separate, distinct, irreconcilable, yet united as lovers. Christmas is the marriage feast of heaven and earth performed not simply in, but as nature, made known in the innocence of birth, before consciousness obscures, symbolized in the mythos of the prophetic child, Jesus. As you celebrate or ignore or despise or dismiss Christmas, let me ask each of you to place this image inside your Self: We are, simultaneously, the father, and the mother, and the child of God. There is One God. No divisive trinity present here with humans standing in prostrated dissociation, no, for at Christmas we discover that trinity is the singularity of quantity: the unity of God and person, the union of nature and soul—the four alone as One… not displaced in heaven, or disposed of in the religious constructions of persons, but active in absurdity wrapped in a diaper, incongruity resting in straw, the impossible bedded down between the animals in a stable—the Creator experienced as a child among creatures. How can we describe this incompatible unity? God is One because we are the vessel for God. God is One because we are the myth itself. God is One because we are the journey to God. We are Bethlehem. We are the place of the Nativity. We are the crib God chooses to lay in defenseless trust, in human need and nurturing hope--- God is One because God suckles upon us. We are as much God’s parents as we are God’s children—together God and we are One. The feast of Christmas tells us God is ready to be cared for by me and you as we are. We are the soft and sometimes stinging straws, straw made from our love as much as from out dissociations and projections, into which the child prophet Jesus rest on Christmas night. The babe in the manger looks up at us nestled in human fecundity and fragility. Christmas asks us to accept our Oneness with God and Self and Other. Christmas shows us that we are the place to which the stranger and the familiar, the noble and the common, where Wisdom itself will journey into, and marvel at, and kneel humbly before, and bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh…for unto us a child is born, and his name is wonderful, counselor, prince of peace, the almighty God, the everlasting …At Christmas God and person become One and God and we are One together. Christmas dawns in the night. This is no silent night this Christmas night. There is no stillness in Christmas; there is much comings and goings. There is no silent adoration in Christmas, there is dynamic love. Christmas is not the traditional tableau we made it to be to protect us from Truth, no, Christmas is movement, multiple journeys into Self out of Ego, a voyage of discovery, not of who I am in the world, but how I am placed in the world. Christmas is about place, my place in the world as Self. The Nativity is a matter of place more than being…We are invited to make room for God, not in the palace of our Egos bedecked with glittering illusions, but in the humble, often shunned, forgotten place of nowhere called our Self. In the center of our being God enters, person opens, God dwells and person embraces— Christmas is the paradoxical place: God felt as human’s flesh, person sensed as God’s Being---therein lies the Christmas mystery---in its dwelling place more paradox than metaphor. May you open and receive, may God enter in and be with you this Christmas night so when that ever constant morning star leading you through the dark Christmas night is eclipsed by the brilliant dawn breaking upon you from on high, you might receive, and in receiving give, the most human of all gifts, tender compassionate mercies. Amen.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 13:17:59 +0000
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