And so the journey ends. So the Advent season – always an abstraction, always a projection – ends. The long night ends and a new day begins. The manger was always a symbol. Shall we be born again in our shared heart? Can we even begin to understand what that means? Do we need to?
In the church of my childhood, when Advent ends, the time of Christmas begins, which lasts until January 12, when “ordinary time” begins.
So we are in Christmas Time now. The sign has changed; our attention is called differently. It’s a feeling – do you feel it?
In Christmas Time, I will not make altars unto sadness and grief nor give assent to the works of injustice and fear. I will remember that God is not a God of guilt and retribution but of love and mercy, peace and joy. I will love God, Whose happiness in my happiness, and Whose will for creation I share.
And I will share. And share and share.
And, probably, I will fail. Sometimes I will fail. Some sorrow will catch me unaware; some memory of some difficult loss will come and I won’t have the heart to drive it away. It’s okay. We cannot be forsaken. Another secret to salvation, as hidden as the others, is that it’s not actually possible to make a mistake. There are no errors.
It takes a lot of faith to use reason in service of love. It takes a kind of wisdom one only finds in the collective. You have to want to let go of blame entirely.
The Advent writing was helpful. Mary’s presence was a surprise and a blessing – it took me to a new place in the story. It opened up new possibilities in the form of my life. Christmas is not the goal, it’s the effect. The important part was always Mary’s. Jesus isn’t special but holy. That distinction – between specialness and holiness – is the only one that still seems to matter.
I mentioned the broken furnace. By mid-day on the 23rd the house was in the low forties. We couldn’t get anybody to come fix it. We were frustrated and scared. So I prayed. I went upstairs, got on my knees and prayed. My prayer was: Jesus, help me figure out how to not make this worse and, if there are steps I can take to be helpful that I’m not seeing, could you help me see them? Please and thank you.
I sat quietly (shivering) to see if any answers or tips or intuitions came but nothing did.
So I went back downstairs cold and uncertain to find C sitting on a radiator with a puzzled look on her face. “The furnace just went on,” she said. And indeed it had.
Interpret that as you will.
In Christmas Time we are allowed to remember who the Adult is; we are allowed to remember the Child. We are allowed to receive God’s Gift (which, for me, was remembering that innocence is recollected in relationship). We are allowed to play and be happy together; we are MEANT to play and be happy. Together is what matters, everything else sugars out.
So for a little while, I’m taking off the Hat of the Seeker and putting on the Hat of the Celebrant. Setting aside the traveler’s lantern and turning on the householder’s mirror ball. It’s Christmas Time. Jesus is here, God is alive and together we are Christ. Alleluia alleluia alleluia.
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I was preparing to go into the kitchen a few moments ago to bake sourdough bread for our family brunch and something said not yet. So I checked my inbox one final time and saw your email. It felt like the “coda” on my Christmas morning contemplation. The gift of your Advent writing has felt like the comforting hand and listening ear of a good friend this December. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Merry Christmas to you and yours, Sean. (And of course the furnace came back on :). )
Love,
Cheryl
Happy Christmas Cheryl! Thanks for the kind words – and for being here more generally. I appreciate how calmly you navigate all this stuff.
Sourdough! I’m jealous. If we were neighbors I’d find a reason to visit 🙂
Enjoy the day – talk soon –
Sean
Thank you, Sean. What a gift your writing has been. During this season in my life, my children are far from home, and my parents are gone. It’s comforting to reaffirm that I can never be apart from them. I am joined in a holy relationship with them – with everyone. What a wonderful thing! Does anything else matter? Well, maybe just the Pillsbury crescent rolls we bake every Christmas morning (and the furnace, even in Florida). God bless you and your family, Sean.
Thanks for being here, Susan. I’m really grateful. The closeness of holy relationship – the way it transcends time and space – is so precious. It’s the gift. But yeah – the crescent rolls are precious too. Have a Happy Christmas, Susan, and blessings on your family as well. Thank you again for sharing this path with me.
Love,
Sean
I’ve enjoyed these Advent and now Christmas posts a great deal. I’ve been visiting family in Tennessee for the past eight days and have been sick with the flu and bronchitis since I got here. Not exactly the holiday visit I or they envisioned. But a great opportunity for rest and reflection. It’s also made me very aware of a certain weariness with abstracts, with my own navel gazing and pondering of concepts. I’ve been sick. What I wanted was orange juice and hot tea and soup and family here with me offering love and empathy. Somewhat similar to your prayer about the broken furnace, I also prayed the night before Christmas Eve, expressing to Jesus that I would be so grateful if I could feel at least well enough to really enjoy the Christmas Eve dinner my sister was preparing and the time remaining with my family before I fly back to Utah in a few days. I slept better that night than I have in over a week and the next day, for the first time in many days, could actually taste the food she’d prepared and felt well enough to engage with my family and open gifts together and to feel present for those joys.
Answered prayer? What else could I possibly call it? I’ve felt oddly comforted by the posts referencing Mary. I wasn’t raised Catholic but she’s always seemed somehow both enigmatic and accessible. Even more so since my own mother passed several years ago. Her part seems every bit as real and present during this season as her Son’s. It seems appropriate in some way during this season known for its comfort and joy, that a Holy Mother captures my attention and devotion, not as an idol but as a presence, with me in my perceived sickness, a warmth, a gentle and healing expression of the Love that is becoming all that really seems to matter much to me these days.
I am rambling when all I really want to say is how grateful I am for this season’s comfort and joy. And that your heat is back on, Sean. Merry Christmas.
Thank you, Dan. It’s funny how sickness can be a real vehicle for learning – it reminds me to exclude nothing and just be humble. As you will, God! Which is often muttered bitterly but still. I really do think viz. God it’s the thought that counts.
The Mary piece was significant for me as well. I didn’t see it coming and felt really lifted by it, as when a big wave gently elevates us swimming. The current was vast and cosmic.
It’s really important for me to be aware of those moments – when the writing opens up interior space that is shared with the culture. It brings me instantly to an intensity of relationship in which there are all kinds of lessons awaiting the student I am still learning to become.
I appreciate you framing her presence the way you did – I am not sure yet what language works for me in this space! I am feeling my way slowly.
Thanks for being here, Dan. Safe travels back to Utah.
~ Sean
Hi Sean, there’s definitely nothing quite like illness to bring us back to the very basics in terms of our perceived needs. I liked your comment about the musings on Mary reflecting something that felt “vast and cosmic”.
I have been compelled, drawn to, inspired and comforted by the construct of a Holy Mother for quite some time. There’s a part of my soul that seems to reach for Her and languaging that place in me with the construct of a Divine Feminine just answers that space in a way nothing else seems to. Sometimes I imagine Holy Spirit as Sophia or Wisdom, but I can think of no more direct or compelling symbol of a Holy Mother than Mary, even though I do not for one second see her as more than a symbol, whatever the historical truth of her may be.
I don’t know if that makes me a half-assed Course student, but in the end I always default to what my heart shows me because that, not my mind, is where I believe the Holy Spirit dwells in me.
Even though I play one in my dream, I may never make it as a Teacher because I question so much. But I do my very best to be a willing servant. And Son and Brother.
Blessings to you and thanks for the wishes for safe travel.
Dan
It’s hard to get historical about Mary or other figures of that age, including Jesus. There are a lot of practical impediments and even more space for confirmation bias and other flavors of ego to swoop in and distort the research and results.
On the other hand, that early Christian communities felt compelled in numerous settings to establish Mary as Jesus’s mother – as well as identify a basic outline of his ideas about family (a discipleship of equals not subject to patriarchal power – makes her a potent symbol, maybe even a living one.
That is my objective generally – not to reach the truth in some objective, third-party approved way – but to reach the parts of me where the symbol comes alive, with its own intelligence and agency, pulling me into relationship with it and through it, with something divine.
In any case, I think creating more space for feminine energy and imagery and sensibility feels just and right to me, and opens up a lot of possibility for healing that otherwise goes mostly unnoticed.
~ Sean
Hmm, so the furnace came back on.
I like to imagine the prayerful collective unconscious of your readers, wishing you and your family well, gave that furnace a benevolent kick to wake up. 😉
Mary Christmas, Sean
I am open to the prayerful unconscious! What I mostly found interesting in that whole sequence was that it was not precisely an answer to my prayer.
And yet.
Merry Christmas to you as well, Susan, and all your loves. Thanks for being here. I am entering student mode again; it’s been a while.
Sean