I have a few precious moments of serenity as the boys have run down to the neighborhood park for a football game, and my sweet husband has retired to the haven of our bed for a much needed nap. It is Christmas, again, and we were up late last night wrapping presents and making magic for our loved ones. I am tired, too, but got more sleep than Peter, and truly, I have to enjoy these quiet moments when they are given to me.
I enjoy Christmas for some of the feelings it brings…The decorating of the house for the pure purpose of enjoyment and sparkle and light…….The anticipation of seeing my children’s faces when they wake up Christmas morning….the fun of making gift baskets, imagining the healing I put into the cookies settling into the tummies of those that enjoy them… and the hunt for gifts I actually buy, looking for the perfect thing. I like the feeling that comes when people smile at me and say “merry Christmas”, and I smile back and wish them a happy Christmas, too. There is a feeling of something larger connecting us all, a feeling of something brotherly or sisterly, of goodwill. It is the feeling of love that I am riding this time of year.
I have the not so nice feelings, too….the trance state that I feel attempting to overtake me Christmas Eve like a dark undertow, a tide threatening to take me out to sea where I lose all sense of bearing and the way back to shore. The not so nice memories of the drunken holiday wildness I experienced as a child, when there was no adult who was totally safe and responsible. The feeling on Christmas that there is something I am supposed to be doing, something I am supposed to be, and yet I am not, so there is a vague sense of missing the mark. Worrying about the people who do not have a family or loved one to be with on this day when the expectations can be so crushing to our fragile hearts. And the grim dissatisfaction I get when I am reminded of the “reason for the season”, a story about a Divine Child, a story that has been bastardized and manipulated in order to wield power over the minds of those weaker than me.
Cynical, oh yes, absolutely. You see, I was having direct experiences of God when I was 2 and 3 years old, and so when I was sent to a Christian preschool at age 4 and my teacher preached hellfire and brimstone and judgment, painting a picture of God as a mean and nasty all-seeing fellow in the sky, I was in a serious quandary. “What she is saying does not match my experience. Do I believe the adult who is supposed to be taking care of me, and upon whose sense of responsibility my safety depends, or do I stick to my inner experience of the All That Is as an unconditionally loving force that has nothing but good to offer to me?” I chose to believe myself and my own experience, but to be somewhat quiet about it.
I would have liked to know Jesus. My belief about him was that he was an enlightened man, much like the Buddha. I believe when he said to love your brother he meant to love everyone, no matter what their beliefs were, no matter what religion they ascribed to, what sexual orientation they had, how they behaved in the world. I believe he got it that one does not have to be “worthy” to receive the unconditional love that this universe provides. That whole worthiness thing is something I think humans made up. How can we be “worthy of unconditional love”, it’s unconditional! I believe Jesus really understood at a visceral level that we are all One, just like my indigenous ancestors also knew in their walking life. With every breath, we are affecting the One, with every thought and every action, we are pulling the strings of the web, and all will be touched in some way by what we choose. I think I would have liked Jesus very much.
So when I hear the Christian ethic that feels so far removed from what I feel to be true about the man called Jesus, and I feel judged because I do not ascribe to those beliefs, it is hard for me to reconcile the anger I feel within towards those people that made Christianity what it is today, and my deep and earnest longing to feel my connection with ALL people, with ALL parts of creation because I feel my Oneness with All That Is. Sometimes I will be quiet, turn my eyes away and smile, and other times I will change the subject, all because I am a good Indian and too polite to argue. But then I get to discourse uninterrupted when I write about my feelings. It’s tough for a southern girl who wants to be a good, loyal Daughter of the Divine to find her own way to Jesus, through all the obstacles placed before me since I was little…the judgment and rhetoric invented by people, not by Love. But find my way to him I will….like everything else in my life, I will define and cultivate my own relationship with Jesus in the way that feels right to me.
I honor the Solstice because it is a celestial event, not manmade like Christmas is. It is well documented that Santa was a commercial invention, so I need not discuss it here. Even the birth of Jesus has been determined to be in the spring rather than December 25th, another convenient feathering into a pagan holiday in order to bring more pagans to the fold when Christianity was young and needing to convert followers. For me, Solstice is the “reason for the season”, in that it is a turning of the season and a shift in our orbit, changing our relationship to the light of the sun, a symbol itself of Life. Yes, we do some of the Christmas rituals, and I think that it is largely in part due to the collective trance that I was raised in and now choose to continue to participate in to some degree. But Solstice is the Holy Night for me, and the beginning of this truly magical season of remembering my connection to others, and showing them that I love them with generosity and open arms.
I do take Christmas to be an opportunity to remember the Divine Child Within, and spend some time honoring that innocent, sparkling, all knowing One that resides within each of us. This is a beautiful way to connect with the story of Jesus, at any time of year.
I am continuing to define what this time of year is for me…to choose more and more consciously each year what I will participate in, what I will pass on to my children, how I will assist to create an unconditionally loving world. Perhaps there will come a time that I do no “Christmas” at all, but only Solstice. I don’t know. All of these intellectual constructs and words aside, the guiding star for me is how I feel….what feels in integrity, and what feels like being out to lunch, a mere moving through the trance? What I LOVE about this time of year is the feeling of magic and connection and internal-ness that comes with the onset of winter. I treasure this turn of the wheel of life, and honor its coming, just as I will honor its going. Perhaps if I focus on those feelings, my walk in the world will get clearer more light-filled at this time of year.
