Advent Notes: Christ All the Way Down

In Advent, suddenly, I can see again. Certain lights, currents of grace. Certain ways forward.

I see you in the distance, coming back from the well, ready to disclose yet again (for those with ears to hear) the prerogative of love, the fullness of salvation. How grateful I am to no longer travel alone!

In Advent I kneel happily – freely and joyfully – before the one who never asked a body to kneel before them ever. Early winter breezes turn the hemlock trees to music. Hemlocks turn the wind to song? Even the lost, even the confused, are not forsaken. Even the ones who are doing it to themselves.

The suggestion is that Christ is not a state we get or possess. It is a state that we create by offering it to those who need it. This is neither mysterious nor a secret. It’s not even a practice, really. It takes no effort at all to be exactly the way God created you.

Personal accomplishment, spiritual or otherwise, is beside the point. We have to change, yes. Be born again, yes. Enlightened, awakened, washed with the blood of the Lamb, whatever. The words we use to describe the change don’t actually matter. Language is downstream of the desire to commune at all, which only arises in relationships whose holiness does not depend on the personal. We do not do this alone. True change – shifts from fear to love, from sacrifice to gift – requires another with whom to remember God and God’s Love for all Creation.

Sometimes I share parts of my story with you. As you know, there are some bleak periods. There are dark places. But always, no matter how grim or ugly things got, somebody was there saying, there’s another way, I’ll help you find it, here’s my hand.

The ones who say that are Christ. The ones who say that are apostles, heirs of Jesus who lived and died in the name of peace. They are creations of love and bringers of a healing light. Call them what you will (language is downstream of the desire to commune at all), their offer is no joke.

You can say yes or no to those folks. You can take their hand or turn away. I said no a lot before I was ruined enough to mumble yes.

But here’s the thing. When we get to yes – when we allow ourselves to be helped, when we open to even the tinest hint of healing – then we are healed. We remember what we are in truth.

It takes no time at all to be exactly the way God created you.

Healing is an insight that becomes a lived understanding. To be healed is to understand that nothing needs to be done – no corrections or plans, no amendments or confessions. It takes no time at all for Creation to be precisely the way that God created it. And you will forget this, yes. I do, all the time. But also, you will remember it. You will remember what you have to offer your brothers and sisters. There is another way, I will show it to you, here is my hand.

You teach me how to be Christ so that I can teach you how to be Christ. It is Christ remembering Christ all the way down. There is nothing else.

In Advent, with you and for you, I begin again. I remember.

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