Christmas presence & light

The REAL gift of the holiday season

It’s Christmas DAY! Today’s post is more of a personal reflection about Christmas. It’s turned into another long one so you may want to sit down and curl up.

I’ll tell you a bit about my own experiences and shine a bit of light on one of the deeper meanings of this holiday season, which I’ll admit can seem harder to find than a parking spot at the mall the week before Christmas. I’ll finish off with a true story that if you have not heard before will warm you up with the power of possibility when we follow our hearts.

Recently one of our sons made a comment about how uncool he thinks it is that parents lie to their kids about Santa. A part of me can see where he’s coming from. It could be seen as a betrayal, and another part of me can’t imagine my own childhood holidays without that most exciting magic. The nervous visits to the mall to meet “Him”, trying so hard to be good.

One thing is for sure, he didn’t always feel that way. He was so excited leading up the big day that he’d have trouble sleeping and often he’d have some kind of cold sore. One Christmas Eve he was found peeking out into the living room hoping to “see” the man in red. Like so many of us, the illusion seemed so real. Maybe that’s why he feels disappointed today, he’s lost the magical feeling of the season.

When our sons were around five and seven I was driving them home from school one day in December with two of their friends. One of the friends had older siblings and I overheard him confidently declaring to our boys: “Santa’s your parents”. There was a long pause. My heart sank and I figured that was it. The magic was about to end and then I clearly heard one of our boys insist…“There is NOOOOO WAY our parents would leave us home alone and travel around the whole world to deliver presents to other kids”. I loved that moment. It was perfect.

Developmental psychologists have claimed that a developed belief system in the physical reality of Santa and then the eventual myth-busting is a part of healthy child development. Magical thinking enhances our creative divergent thinking (problem-solving) and illusory beliefs can even help us develop the counterfactual reasoning skills needed for human innovation.

After the age of seven, most of the magic is replaced with logic and rational thought. But the good news is that once we’ve tasted the magic, it’s never entirely extinguished. I suspect that’s why the Harry Potter series was the best-selling book of all time. We are wired for wonder. Einstein claimed that “imagination is more important than knowledge” and it seems as though our curiosity and intellectual exploration depend on it.

Have you ever watched the 1997 Seinfeld episode “Festivus for the Rest of Us”? It’s hard to believe that it’s now an official anti-holiday. Every December 23rd people release their inner “Bah Humbug” in an all-inclusive secular alternative to Christmas consumerism. It was invented by series writer Dan O’Keefe’s father in the 1960s and the tradition begins with airing grievances and in the episode the character Frank Costanza’s now famous lines: “I got a lot of problems with you people! Now you’re gonna hear about it!”. Just thinking about it makes me smile.

That feels more like my own family. We didn’t really have any religious traditions or even go to any kind of Christmas service. Christmas for us was mostly about visiting family, friends, parties, sleigh rides, tree decorating, fondu, and for my brother and me Santa and presents, and we loved it.

My mother’s background is Ukrainian Orthodox, I remember loving the few times we attended Ukranian celebrations in our community around the holidays. Candies were hidden in hay under buffet tables…what’s not to like? She was a prairie girl on a homestead with a large family and she worked hard and still does even though she’s retired. She’s an incredible organizer and I’m pretty sure that my brother and I were playing every sport under the sun before we were 12 largely because of her. She also learned right along with us despite never having the opportunities in her own childhood. Not only did she learn to ski, she became a Nancy Green ski coach… she not only learned to ride and got her own horse Misty Blue, she competed in horse shows right along with us and became the District Commisioner of the Pony Club. She was always there for us. She even ran my first marathon with me in New York City, she’s still active and an incredible person.

I also attended a French Catholic school in my primary years and that’s a story for another day, but the school was in the city about 30 minutes from our farm and I could be bused there and learn to speak another language. The familiar nativity story left an indelible impression on me. My mom has always been game to go to a holiday service, but in reality we rarely did.

I did spend a bit of time in Sunday school in a local community church basement growing up, and I remember liking it, but it’s all a bit of a blur. Ironically after about a 20-year hiatus and not stepping foot in any kind of church, I found myself back in a church basement attending a 12-step meeting on Bloor street in Toronto trying my best to sort myself out, forgive and make peace with my past. On some level, churches of differing denominations have been a loving force for good in my life and so has Christmas. I can remember my friends’ father who was both a surgeon and a devout Christian at the time answering my questions with a twinkle in his eye and handing me a book by C.S. Lewis. That was probably the beginning of my life long intruigue with seeking Truth, the question of God and making sense of things.

On the other hand, my Dad who’s pretty quiet about these things could best be described as an atheist or “Darwinian” and his ancestry came from a Scottish and English lineage. We’ve never even spoken about the possibility of a higher power in our home, but he definitely gets antsy at any kind of formal church service and looks forward for the “god talk” to end. I get it. I recently found a book in a box to donate after a spring clean called “Why God Doesn’t Exist” and that probably sums it up best. To me, his reverence for life just comes in a different disguise. He lights up like a Christmas tree watching the nature channel and has a deep respect for the earth and let’s just say if you were ever going to be lost in the woods, he’s the person you want to be with. He’s amazing. He built our home, our farm, jumps for my horses, and even our first TV and he was also the inspired source for my love and appreciation for nature. He is so incredibly generous and handy. His garage shop is well, you have to see it to believe it and inside he’s always working on something to be helpful to friends and our neighbors. My favorite times are spent inside working along side him and during covid, it was cutting boards.

My in-laws are also pretty open minded and amazing. They are two of the kindest, most generous and fair people on the planet. They seem to have a kind of inbred integrity about always doing what’s right more than what is easy. If one of us has a Christmas gift that costs more than the other, they will pay the difference in cash…THAT kind of fair. It’s incredible. They’ve been so supportive and grounding and I like to tease my husband Scott that I always liked him in University, but meeting his parents sealed the deal for me. I’m not entirely sure of their religious upbrining, there was definitely some Christian influences there, but they have an English and Dutch background and we love spending Christmas with them. Scott’s mother’s cooking is something that can’t be described with words and has to be experienced. One of our boys wrote a funny comment in their card this year something along the lines of paying special tribute to both “ baby Jesus and Moosie’s cookies”, so that kind of says it all.

For many of us, regardless of our religion or the name of our traditional celebrations, this time of year seems to be largely about getting a tree as a family (pic above), visiting family, special holiday traditions, and a time to dust off the family china and silverware. The menorahs, the trimmings, sending cards, and even the controversial toy elf who first appeared in 2005 on our shelves are helping us blow off steam with his antics. There are 1 day of gifts for some of us and 8 days of gifts for others, the holiday movies, the carols, and the twinkling lights.

Some traditions can be random but they are all meaningful to us. I have two girlfriends that I met at University that were my frosh leaders that make an annual run to Swiss Chalet for their festive special. They’ve been celebrating “Merry Swissmas” for 39 years now. It literally feels like Christmas to me in early December when I see that Facebook post.

To be honest, I love it all.

I know it’s old school, but I still even send snail-mail cards and I love getting them. Hearing from old friends and keeping in touch with distant family and friends far away or from a lifetime ago is fun for me. I don’t feel obligated, it helps to remind me how far we’ve all come. Seeing our friend’s kids grow taller than them is incredible. I like the idea of them finding our greeting tucked in between flyers and bills to be paid so others feel seen and remembered even after all of these years. We may eventually move things online someday, but I can’t seem to help myself for now. With each card, I send love and I remember them. I feel grateful to have crossed their path and it may be the only exchange we have all year.

This season is also about the WONDER-full moments. After a few missed years during covid, to finally have the chance to watch our children or grandchildren stand on a stage and sing or act their hearts out at their schools and churches. It seems that this year more than any in my own community, Christmas concerts are the hottest ticket in town. That feeling of smiling and waiting patiently while our nervous children scan the crowd of strangers frantically looking for our familiar faces and then visibly relaxing once they do. Oh and there’s always the one that stands out. They clearly look like they have insisted on their own outfit and stand out from the crowd because they are giving their all. Is it just me, or don’t we all love watching that child?

But while it can be the highest of highs, it can also be the lowest of lows.

For many of us, it’s a time of great challenge and sadness. Some of us don’t have a family to celebrate with. We are grieving loved ones that have passed on. Many of us cannot even afford the price of food or gas to visit family let alone gifts to wrap or a tree to put them under. It can be an awkward time for estranged families, with painful memories, and feelings of hopelessness.

There are so many beautiful candlelit services in communities around the world. I sometimes like to go by myself since my family is not really interested and I respect that, but the carols and the feeling of love and joy in the service and the story of the birth of Jesus hold so much symbolism and I find it moving and beautiful.

So why should we even care? Is this holiday even for us at all if like my own family we don’t know much about Jesus or even believe in God?

What is the deeper meaning?

It’s easy to miss.

There is of course the nativity story, but there’s another much more subtle meaning that is often missed that applies to all of us this very Christmas and every day.

Richard Rohr often says that “advent is always”. It’s a daily spiritual practice. A presence that can be found in the depth of our being that once we’ve connected will guide us to serve a greater good and our highest purpose.

It can only be found in silence, and stillness when there is space for it in our lives.

I’ve always loved Simone Weil’s take on things and the name of her book “Gravity and Grace”. This idea of our ability to live well on earth is as Jesus claimed also being aware that we’re not of it. Or as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously said, “we’re not human beings having a spiritual experience, we’re spirits having a human experience”.

Being in touch with both the vertical dimension of our being or “grace” AND the horizontal axis of gravity, matter, and our experience on earth at this moment. Like the Greek notions of Kairos and Chronos. From my own personal experience, being in touch with both gravity and grace seems elemental for a well-lived life. If you’re imagining those lines, it’s probably not lost on you that those intersecting axes make a cross. When we are leaning too much on one access or another we suffer. In particular, when we are overly identified with matters and the content of our minds and only what is seen and perceived with our senses. More on this another day!

The hidden meaning of Christmas for me starts with Mary saying YES.

And before you think of course she would say yes it’s “God” asking, let’s just take a quick peek at other biblical stories where others have been called.

Like, say, Jonah. For those of you that are not familiar with his story…he was given his purpose and he booked. He ran away in the opposite direction and was swallowed by the proverbial whale where he spent 3 days in darkness. The metaphor is that when we ignore or resist our purpose we get swallowed by darkness, sucked into a dampness that never dries and we silently struggle feeling overwhelmed and consumed by the strong seas of our own making.

Then there are a host of others like Jacob. Even Joseph had his qualms and resisted at first too, but Mary was different. Despite any fear she held and uncertainty she clearly said YES from the get-go. She was ready to serve. In the gospel of Luke the passage that references it describes Mary declaring: “here I am, the servant of the Lord let it be with me according to your word”.

Mary’s “YES” is showing us something more symbolic about our lives today.

We’re so busy, life is hectic and the brass band is playing in our minds and it’s hard for us to hear ourselves or each other let alone the “still small voice” of God and our intuition about what feels right for us at any moment.

I recently read this moving description in one of the Center for Action and Contemplation’s daily readings about Public theologian Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) who found inspiration in Mary’s courageous “yes” to God:

Perhaps it is because I am neck-deep in a season of motherhood and caretaking that I am more aware than ever of the startling and profound reality that I am a Christian not because of anything I’ve done but because a teenage girl living in occupied Palestine at one of the most dangerous moments in history said yes—yes to God, yes to a wholehearted call she could not possibly understand, yes to vulnerability in the face of societal judgment . . . yes to a vision for herself and her little boy of a mission that would bring down rulers and lift up the humble, that would turn away the rich and fill the hungry with good things, that would scatter the proud and gather the lowly [see Luke 1:51–53], yes to a life that came with no guarantee of her safety or her son’s.

This biblical story is pointing us to our own willingness to answer a greater call on our lives.

To stop running and be still.

Mary’s story is a demonstration of how to be less worried about our own preparedness and plans and more aware of God’s.

In mysticism, to be a virgin simply means to be re-acquainted with our innocence. Our essential nature. We were born in the image and likeness of our creator.

Can we let go of the things we’ve decided and named or claimed for ourselves in our lives other than our innocence?

I think we just misunderstand when we experience a lack and don’t trust that our needs will be met the way a bird does. Or a baby. Or even a dog. Fear and our cultural concepts of competition and lack are pointing us in the opposite direction of that kind of abundance found in nature.

So how do we allow ourselves to see or experience this for ourselves?

Many of us have been so thoroughly convinced that we can’t change. I know because I was one of them.

We have faith but not so much in the I AM. More with I AM NOT. It can feel so real to us that we’re separate, on our own, we’re different or broken. If the experts say we’ll never fully heal from our trauma, our anxiety, our mental illness, or even our OCD, or addiction but we can manage it for the rest of our lives…then who are we to think otherwise? We innocently don’t believe that we ever will. Or maybe we wonder in our darkness if we’ll never feel joy ever again or come out of this fog we’ve found ourselves in. Or that maybe these things are just biological, ancestral, environmental, and can be managed with drugs, but a miracle?

Not likely.

The real problem seems to be that we have more blind faith in our disorders than in the unnamable power that created us. We’re so full of our own ideas and attached to our egoic illusory fears and a denial of the divine that there is no space for grace or a deeper understanding of our true nature.

We’ve lost connection to that magic, that wonder. We’ve lost a felt sense that anything is possible, the one we had in us before age 7.

Have we really come to our senses or have we maybe lost them?

Are we willing to hand our neurosis over to this higher power? Freud defined neurosis as a “separation from self”. We can lose ourselves in the darkness like Jonah did when we try to go alone. When we think we have a better way. But we can’t see clearly when we’re in the trees of life, in the trenches, or the belly of the whale, and that our best thinking has gotten us there. If we can’t solve our problems on the level of thought that created them, where does that leave us? Looking to others to tell us the answers that may make us feel better in the moment, but never seem to help us in the long run?

So we suffer and sometimes we want off this ride. It doesn’t matter how “blessed” we seem, what we have or who loves us.

But what if Christmas has something genuinely helpful to offer all of us?

I suppose it’s no coincidence that light in the form of a star is what is guiding them through the darkness the day Jesus was born. A massive self-luminous celestial body of gas that shines by radiation. Atoms of light squeezed together. Pressed in a fusion with gravity and interstellar gases.

There is a line in the gospel of John that says: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” or “set you free” depending on the biblical translation. So many of us think that refers to the importance of us being truthful or believing in God. It’s been translated from Greek, and into other languages, but it’s fascinating to revisit the meanings in Jesus’s personal language of the day. Aramaic.

The word for TRUTH in Aramaic means “a light or clarity coming from the heart that leads one in the right direction for the moment”. People who traveled nomadically and seasonally at the time described a kind of inner guidance or intuition that they used to find their way. I imagine not unlike the birds we see that fly south. They know where they need to be. It’s in their nature to be guided. If we are all interbeings, connected by an ecosystm and a part of nature, then would it not be a possible that it’s inside each of us as well and we just don’t realize it?

The Aramaic word “know” means “to grasp or hold something in one hand so you can use it”. And the Aramaic word for “free” means “to burn or leave things behind that no one needs”. (source: Neil Douglas-Klotz’s book“Revelation of the Aramaic Jesus”). So that statement can also be seen as an inner light like that star in Bethlehem being shown to lead us, to help us tangibly grasp a purpose more ultimate and useful, and to allow the surface things like our fears or illusions that don’t serve us to fall away.

Of course, Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly on this idea of light. Judaism has a festival of lights. Buddhism. Hinduism. Light seems universal. Enlightenment means understanding. To shine a light on things is a way for us to see in the darkness.

Even according to today’s physicists everything is a play of light. Physical matter is literally made of light. The absence of light is impossible. There is even light in the darkest places like black holes where we now know that photons do exist.

We’ve known of this for a long time and it’s even in our art history. There are halos depicted in paintings dating back to early roman art and can be found in every tradition, indicated with a crown of light rays or a circle or disc to indicate holiness. In other words, those of us that seems to be closest to understanding our true nature or essence is quite literally encircled with a crown of light visible to our naked eye. This HOLYday maybe we will have a chance to exprience the possibility of our own innate wellbeing.

Some people I’ve met that really get this seem to radiate. Like we seem to all do when we’re in love. Excited. Enthusiastic which comes from the word entheos meaning inpsired (in spirit) and full of “God”.

There is definitely no halo on my head in case you’re wondering and I don’t consider myself enlightened by any means. Just ask my family. But seen or unseen, we know with science that we are bioluminescent beings. The light is in all of us. We’re made of it. We’re not here to be a light, we actually already ARE light.

Many saints and sages from every corner of the earth and in particular in the far East have reported seeing this physical light around others.

Ever since I turned 50 a couple of years ago my meditations and prayers and what I’m being shown in my own mind’s eye as far as lights and imagery is not something I could even begin to describe with words. I think as more of us do, and it becomes normalized we’ll better understand what we’re being shown. I get the sense that the more I’m willing and open and just obseve, the more I’m shown. At first I would panic and the images would quickly dissapear or be covered up and it’s all so facinating.

I also don’t for a moment think it has to be seen to be experienced. We also all know what it feels like when we go through life challenges and it feels like our light is being dimmed or we lose our sparkle. It feels like a burden and our fears and a darkness seem to settle over us. Love is there somewhere we’re told, but we can’t see it, or feel it it’s covered with veils or clouds and it’s easy to stop believing it’s even there.

So what does this all have to do with Christmas?

The symbolic lights everywhere we look at this time of year are symbolic of the light inside of us of us quietly showing us the way. We are an embodiment of that light when we are fully present and trust the innate intelligence that we’ve inherited.

It’s there and real even though we can’t see it with our naked eyes.

It’s like the reverent yoga greeting that we all know and love. Namaste. The light in me sees or acknowledges the light in you. We don’t need to be Hindu or even say the words to embody this teaching. It’s universal.

This light is in everything. It’s also what is denied when we deny the existance of the divine or light in others and in ourselves.

To be this light Christ described and lived. He literally says in the bible that he is the light and then he turned and told his disciples that THEY were also the light of God. Christos, the Christ light. As Richard Rohr likes to remind us, Christ was not Jesus’ last name. It’s a consciousness, a way of being that he was sharing that is available to all of us despite what we believe to be true theologically.

It seems like the power of possibility for Humanity is ours when we are willing to see something more, to connect to this vertical dimension inside of us and have the humility to listen and to be guided despite whether or not we feel ready to say YES despite our own rational mind’s resistance.

Someone wise once told me when I was struggling not to let my intellect get in the way of my faith. That there is a power that will help guide us to solve our global issues once we embrace the fact that maybe we don’t have all the answers. And with intellectual humility we wait. Maybe we walk and we just listen for the guidance that always comes in the right time and way.

In fact, much of our best science has been transmitted this way.

Mendeleev, the chemist who created the famous periodic table of 118 elements that we all memorized in high school admits that it came to him in a dream. After a long day at work, he wearily dozed off on a weary February evening and was shown. He woke up and wrote down everything he saw in his dream. Of course, he was a brilliant chemist and studied the elements individually, but he was clear that it did not come from his keen intellect or willful effort. He was guided by something that showed him how to group the elements. The properties of the chemical elements exhibit an approximate periodic dependence on their atomic numbers. It wasn’t something he thought himself into creation in his lab. He acknowledged in so many words, that he was the tap, not the water.

TS Elliot called it “idea incubation”. Einstein was also a fan. To solve a problem they would clarify it and leave it. Physically walk away and wait for the answer to come to them. To develop. To incubate. In the same way, we sometimes find our lost keys or remember someone’s name. We let it go. Newton had inspired ideas of taking breaks in nature and even Buddha reportedly had an awakening or became enlightened under the now-famous Boddhi tree. The moment we stop trying so hard to intellectualize and solve our problems ourselves or to think our way out we get inspired ideas.

We plant the seed that we are ready to serve and then we are guided.

Like Mary.

I always loved the story of how poet Louisa May Alcott would be in the cotton fields and could feel inspiration moving towards her like a breeze and she would run as fast as her legs could carry her into the house to grab a pen and write down the poem before she lost it and it went on to settle on someone else as ideas often do. Is it just me or are you constantly amazed when you don’t act on an idea, but someone on the other side of the world does? It’s a metaphysical or spiritual law, that all of our minds are joined.

All of us are called.

Like me with this substack. It eventually became something I coudn’t NOT do. The truth is that I’ve been getting indications that I should write about this kind of thing for 20 or 30 years. I didn’t feel ready before and that’s ok. This is just about preparing ourselves to become willing when we’re ready, it’s not a race and I don’t think less of Jonah, or Joseph for their resistance…it’s just that we suffer when we don’t. I’ll share more about my own journey another day, but if I can help anyone save some time and pain by reading see things differently then that will be the greatest success of my life.

I was going to end things here today, but this story came to me and I’d like to close this post today with a memorable true Christmas story during World War I.

This story is about following an impulse and an unofficial ceasefire along the Western Front of the First World War that took place on Christmas in 1914, only 5 months after the war began. In the week leading up to Christmas French, German and British soldiers had been moving in a “race” toward the Sea to gain a strategic advantage. They were fighting mostly in often in open fields nomadically, but eventually, they came to an impasse, a place where they were forced to stop and stay. They hunkered down and dug deep trenches and that is where this Christmas Eve story took place.

There are many different accounts and movies made over the years, but what everyone agrees with is that on this particular day, the proximity of the trenches made it possible for them to hear one another. It was cold, the mud was deep and at this point, thousands of soldiers on both sides had lost their lives.

It was Christmas eve and the Germans in an effort to commemorate the occasion and make life bearable in the inhospitable trenches placed candles on small evergreen trees in the trenches and began to sing carols. (Fun sidenote: Did you know that is where Christmas trees originated? Germany in 1576 with Protestant Christians and Lutherans. The Moravians added candles. So now when we all lug evergreen conifers into our homes and top them with stars or angels we know why. I guess we also don’t need to be actuaries to figure out why we try not to lose it in front of our kids every year trying to untangle strings of electric lights;)

At first, they sang Silent Night in German.

Then the improbable happened. The soldiers in the British army could hear them and took a turn signing their own English version in return. And the French eventually chimed in.

Something shifted on the battlefield. It was suddenly quiet and peaceful without the deafening sound of artillery.

This evolved to the two sides shouting Christmas greetings to each other which eventually led to one or two brave men lifting their heads above the parapet and when they heard or felt an internal impulse they responded. They felt compelled to rise up out of the trenches one at a time and slowly towards the enemy line across No Man’s Land trying to squash their fear but with peace in their minds and hearts.

Unarmed, fearing snipers or a trap it seemed like a huge risk but eventually seeing that no shots were taken, others followed from both sides. There was an unspoken cease-fire and enemy lines met face-to-face on the bloody and muddy battlefield scattered with the bodies of their fallen soldiers.

I think it’s important to note that this was not officially sanctioned by officers from above, but it was an impromptu action inspired and taken by the soldiers themselves at the moment. Hands were shaken, and a few broken English sentences and words were exchanged along with gifts of cigarettes, alcohol, chocolate or food rations, buttons, hats, and cigars.

The recently killed soldiers were given a burial party and joint services were held. Wooden crosses were made to mark the graves of the very soldiers that killed them.

Some historical accounts reported there was an English football brought out and an impromptu game was played on the field.

How on earth?

Just hours earlier they were killing one another and now, they are lighting each other’s cigarettes?

Soldiers writing letters home afterward described that there was still some fear, but suddenly no hate on that field. It seemed to fall away for a few suspended moments in time. In fact, they even shared the common grief of war, the futility, and the loss and pain in broken English. They shared pictures of their missed loved ones back home and after some banter and even laughter, it wasn’t long before many reported wondering why they were even in this war, to begin with. They wondered out loud why couldn’t they just have peace and all go home. It felt like a lucid moment that seemed saner to them in the bigger scheme of things and they got the sense that war and killing one another was insane. They were even moved to tears and one soldier wrote: “in all my life I shall never forget the sight”.

In the days to come, they would be ordered to pick up their guns and fight. To see themselves as separate, to become the “other”, the enemy again, but today they listened to their own deeper knowing and acted on that instead of what they were being commanded to do. A shared experience of a spiritual celebration of the birth of Jesus who embodied this peace. The one who was both fully human and fully divine, never taking a side, just patiently trying to point us to a better way than war to solve our problems. Who taught us that God does not judge, but we do. And yet, we can still disagree without having to annihilate each other. To take in the bigger picture, and transcended our differences using our own innate higher intelligence that he assures us is also IN us.

What happened on that Field that day is what I know is possible for our greater global community.

And to answer that call or pull we feel like Mary did. Despite what that could mean for our own safety or personal comfort. Even if this means collectively having to let go of the profitable business of war. Or re-imagining our economy and our world in more sustainable ways.

What can stop us? Only us.

This world is a reflection of our own imaginations.

This is not magical thinking, but it is tapping into that part of us that believed in Santa Clause. That believed in miracles. Anything is possible with this higher mind available that we can all tap into when we ask to be shown.

The deeper immediate call is for us to get still and quiet enough to hear. It helps me to think of it like the sound of a soft flute always playing in the background, but it’s usually drowned out by the brass band trumpeting in our minds but we’ll hear it as soon as we get still enough for long enough.

It seems insane what we can do in one moment of fear as men and women, we all have the capacity to kill, to hate. We experience this duality and we suffer for it. Let’s just consider putting down our weapons, our opposing belief systems, and our hustle and bustle this holiday season, even just for today, and rest in this ultimate power.

Jesus demonstrated this bigger picture worldview as his own life was being extinguished… “forgive them, Father, they know not what they do”. To our egos, we can’t make sense of that statement. It seems astonishing, but he lived his life to teach us that in fact, that is the “normal” way to be.

Not even extraordinary. It’s our true nature when we live at a higher level of consciousness. We’re not able to harm another from this place. It’s easy to forgive anything, because we see the bigger picture connecting in this light it’s like we are living at a higher vibration. Same us, same note…just a higher octave.

I remember reading in the newspaper that more soldiers died in the war in Afghanistan by suicide than were lost in combat. One thing seems clear to me…we’re not here to kill one another.

This isn’t just about a literal war. It’s the tension in our relationships and the battles we are fighting in our own minds.

We’re here to forgive one another. Especially ourselves.

To allow our deeper divine nature beneath our masks to be revealed to us. Our personality, what we wear, what we have, our incomes, where we live, and our skin color. Our sex. Our masks have become so tight that we have begun to believe we ARE them.

As Marianne Williamson likes to say “the problems of the world were not made by God, they were made by us”. As we all know from history, the war continued, and as difficult as it was for those soldiers to pick up their guns and aim them at one another again, even though they had no taste for it now, new battalions reinforced the lines that hadn’t been there to experience the cease-fire first had and before long it was business as usual.

It reminded me of the true story of Desmond Doss in “Hacksaw Ridge”. He was a soldier who didn’t fire a single shot in WWII and was ridiculed because of his faith by his peers, he even had to go to court to have permission to not carry a weapon on the battlefield. His strong faith guided him to serve and not to take a human life. He saved 75 lives of those same peers on the now famous ridge and became the first conscientious objector awarded the medal of honor.

We complicate this, but I think we all know that if we all did that and had more reverence for all of life, there would be no war. Or Climate change. We wouldn’t be able to harm anyone including ourselves. We are “pining in our sin and error” but we won’t allow our minds to be changed. For our souls to feel their worth.

One of my favorite carols is “Oh Holy Night”.

O holy night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary soul rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

Fall on your knees
Oh hear the angel voices
Oh night divine

Whether we know it or not, there is a deeper Divine principle at play in our lives.

Our innate health, sanity, and peace exist here and now. We can’t be forced to see it or be shown how to understand this intellectually, but we can experience it like those soldiers did.

Let’s celebrate the birth of Jesus, but what if THIS Christmas is the MOST important one? Not the one from two thousand years ago or even in 1914. What if, despite ourselves and our current belief systems we could see a deeper meaning to THIS holiday season we are experiencing now?

In fact, some of you may be reading this in an airport stuck from a canceled flight with the storm we’re experiencing in North America. Some of my own family and friends are stranded at this very moment as I right and disappointed that their holiday plans may not happen as they had planned. Or maybe they will. But no matter what happens, let’s all take a deep breath and a minute to look at our tree toppers in a new light. Remember that the light, like the star of Bethlehem, is present now in our hearts. We are made of that light.

The deeper lesson that this holiday is pointing us to is something so close and brilliant that we may be missing it entirely. Something more ultimate than what we do, what we give or get, who we’re with, or where we go for Christmas. We can follow this inner light to experience and realize an inner shift.

To be fully human AND divine.

Let’s not worry about planning 2023 right now. Let’s all surrender to what is and ask to be shown the best best way for us to serve from where we are now.

Let’s give ourselves a break and make ourselves available so we can be ready to hear and say YES as Mary did.

Or like the soldiers did when in the spirit of Christmas, despite fearing for their lives, they took the chance and rose out of the trenches to love their neighbors as themselves.

For a moment it happened… and it can happen again.

Peace on earth.

Goodwill to all.

Merry Christmas.

With love,

Rev Nona

ps. Just a friendly reminder to hang your ornaments a bit higher than mouth level :)