“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – –Howard Thurman
I have always found a hint of sadness when it comes to Christmas. Even sitting here writing this blog, I can feel it within me, as if it exposes a longing yet fulfilled. I don’t know if anyone else experiences it, but I have found it nearly most years. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great being around the kids on Christmas and the days leading up to it. There is an excitement quite easy to tap into. It’s contagious!
There is, though, this sadness which accompanies such wonder and awe.
There is a sense of profound connection and yet separation, all at the same time.
There is a sense of anticipation and yet fear, seemingly bound together in a moment of time.
I don’t think we’ve experienced it quite like we have in 2020. It’s hard to avoid the complexity of a human life as we continue the unanticipated drama of a global pandemic, touching all corners of the earth. After a time of full gestation, it finally made it to Antarctica this week; one more notch in the belt for a rather unpredictable year.
However, maybe it’s a good reminder to us all we cannot outrun hurt and struggle. Many believe themselves to be invincible and above the absurdity of a sickened human family, creating alternate realities for themselves in order to avoid pain. How do you convince someone they need a doctor when they don’t even want to believe they are sick? It’s not an easy undertaking. Yet, it’s the reality in which we have dealt ourselves and one in need of transformation and redemption, even if it believes and doubts otherwise.
I believe, now more than ever, we “need a little Christmas; right this very minute”. Christianity has all but put all of its eggs in its Easter basket. One day we may find ourselves grateful Easter was essentially “cancelled” earlier this year and now we stand on the threshold of an incarnational moment, even given a clear reminder of the first through the alignment of the heavens this week leading up to Christmas as planets waltzed together in the darkened, night skies.
Isn’t it, after all, an incarnational moment we need more than anything? The drama and saga of Easter is a natural conclusion to a story which begins with greater scandal, a God becoming flesh, acknowledging our value and worth. Christianity has allowed itself to become overly dogmatic and corporate to the point it feels as if it’s been cut off from the body, from the very people which encompasses it. It’s become “cut off” from its own incarnational moment of a God becoming flesh. In other words, the head has decapitated itself from the body.
Some would argue, it always has been.
It alone feeds the sadness and longing of a people, like shepherds who “quake at the sight”, for a God who’s “law is love and His Gospel is Peace”. As much as there may be a place for dogma, theory, and creed, it can become a “stumbling stone” to an encounter and mystical moment with the God enfleshed. It feeds the head, not a body of people who are hurting, a pandemic of anxiety constantly breathing down the neck as if the world sits atop us.
God speaks. Dwells among us. We choose to reject it, and often in the name of religion.
My guess is God always is saddened by the events of our time. No, not simply a pandemic plaguing the people, but the injustice, poverty, abuse of power, war and violence enfleshed more than love and peace. Christmas, in all its wonder, manages to put all of it into perspective and pull us to the center of our humanity. It is, undoubtably, our humanity we most wrestle with in this world. It’s not only the humanity of the other; it’s our own we wrestle with and try to make sense of on a daily basis.
It is, in most humble of fashion, all we really have.
This God who becomes flesh continues to desire to be embodied in and through us. It is, the divine, our true self, soul, the Christ, no matter how you define it, a God who desires us to become fully human and recognize it is as lifelong journey. This birthing and becoming is not a nine-month gestation, but one spanning from our first breath to our own natural conclusion. We fight it, resist it, but ultimately, we’re invited to fall into it and embrace it for what it is, in all its wonder and sadness, fear and love, connection and separation. It’s who we are in our fullness and when you “fall, on your knees” in humility, you once again unite the heavens and earth and Christmas becomes the present moment, once again incarnated in the world.
When we finally become grounded in our own humanity, so much more takes care of itself. It allows us to see the value in all of humanity and no longer a held belief to “decrease the surplus population”, disposing of anyone who doesn’t contribute or produce in an economic way. We begin to recognize the poverty of our own lives and the need for very little, an intentionality which leads to life and the fullness of this life. Christmas didn’t just happen; it happens. Some two centuries later, the courageous one who steps fully into their humanity continues to cause scandal, not conforming to the ways of the world, but rather, come into their own.
There truly is a sadness, mixed in with the wonder and awe of the moment. It’s a sadness when we face reality as it is, a world easily distracted from the real, caught up in the head, cut off from the body, a world in need of hope.
No, not a sense of optimism, but hope, coursing through the veins of our humanity, reminding us of what matters most. As long as we find ourselves breathing, in a time when it can be quite difficult for many, we are being birthed and becoming the longing which pulls us into Christmas.
It’s not only about a child, but rather you and me. The child simply points the way to what can be if we surrender ourselves to a life well lived and to love being born, when the “soul felt its worth” and a “weary world rejoices”!
Merry Christmas!
The Hero's Descent 