When we sing and hear this season the familiar strain, isn’t it really about letting go and forgiving the world from what it seems to be?  Joy and peace indeed can come, can be experienced, when we become awake and aware to the realization of who we truly are, the Eternal Children of God, One in Spirit with All, temporarily passing through this world of sorrow and death.   It is always with deep sorrow to hear of death and loss during these days of bright lights and aspiring hopes.  We wonder how can a world of peace and life ever come to this world we know?  Yet there is another world, a world of Spirit, of Transcendence, which but leaves lingering shadows upon the one we have known for so long.

Thus a gentle Savior is indeed born into a world of darkness, and speaks of another world of light and eternity, beyond time and space, beyond the mortal sights of this world.  The Savior is our awakening to that Call of a deeper, a more gentle and Eternal Spirit, that allows the darkness fade and light appear as bright stars over our lives.  This season some friends sent me a tee shirt gift with these words:

“The sign of Christmas is a Star

A Light in Darkness.

See it not outside yourself

but shining in

the Heaven within.”

“Our Father, who art in Heaven,” as the 18th Century Teresa of Avila said, does not mean a God some place in the sky and wherever, but it means in our Soul, our Heart, in the place of timelessness.  Only here, only with this awareness can lasting Joy come to the world.  Only here, with forgiveness of ourselves for thinking the Kingdom was a nation, a church, a set of beliefs, a world, can it have meaning.  Only here can we begin to look on others with an eye toward Oneness that goes beyond bodies, beyond hormones, beyond gifts which last but days to the dimension where there is no male or female, slave or free, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, Christian or Muslim.  To me, Jesus represents this awareness, this teaching.  He lived it, was damned for it, and ultimately died for it in his bodily form, but lives on forever with us as Spirit, as Teacher, as One.

This Christmas, amid all the darkness of despair, death, and sadness, let Joy come to this world, through our awakening to Life, letting go the past, and living with forgiveness in the Eternal Now.

Thus, a Blessed and Merry Christmas to you all, with a deep anticipation of a fulfilling and joyful year.