Sean Reagan

Many years ago, while teaching Brokeback Mountain, I was approached by a student who professed that her religious beliefs obligated her to not read a text and to not participate in discussions that normalized what she – as a devout practicing Christian – considered “sinful behavior.”

I appreciated her raising the issue with me and we talked a long time about it. Her bottom line was that I was basically forcing her to disobey – by actively questioning the judgment of – her God. She wanted me to exempt her from the reading and class discussions and from the assigned paper relating to Brokeback Mountain.

At one point in our discussion I suggested that any God worth godhood could not possibly be threatened by questions from a devout follower who was sincerely only trying to understand the teachings that underlay the divine judgments.

She answered that following God meant not asking those questions. It wasn’t a question of faith but of obedience. God decreed; humans obeyed.

For many reasons I have thought often of that discussion over the years, two of which are presently germane.

First, that conversation made utterly clear to me the degree to which “God” tends to enter our thinking in the form of bias. In order to think about God, you have to actively not think about other things, or only think about them in certain ways. The young woman was intelligent and insightful and yet, on this issue, her intelligence and relative precision of thought literally evaporated. I didn’t see obedience; I saw passivity.

Of course I understood that this happened to people, but I had never observed it so clearly. I had never been called to be in dialogue with it so personally. The upshot was, I realized that being smart was no defense against ignorance, which was terrifying because “being smart” is pretty much the only arrow in my quiver.

We do not know what we do not know and, critically, we do not know what we forgot and forgot we forgot. The memory hole is real. Bias is real.

I began to wonder where in my life I sounded like this young woman. Where did passivity enter? Magical thinking? Unquestioned bias? And how would I know?

It was easy to answer those questions in a casual wordy way – in an intellectual or academic way, which comes easily enough to me – but to actually undertake an investigation that would actually change my thinking and living . . .

That was not so easy.

The second reason that conversation lingered – and lingers – was because the suggestion I made to the young woman (that God was that which by definition demanded inquiry) had ramifications for my own thinking. I often reflect on Exodus, largely because it figures so prominently in Bob Dylan’s excellent song I and I.

I and I
in creation
where one’s nature
neither honors nor forgives

I and I
one said to the other
no man sees my face and lives

Here’s the relevant passage from Exodus 33:20.

“But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”

[Note there are Rastafarian overtones here as well – “I and I” referring to the conjoinment of self and super-self. I think Dylan’s treatment is primarily Christian, however.]

There are a lot of readings of those lines; in general, my preferred reading is that you can’t actually see God, so it’s folly to even try. And “see” can be extrapolated here – you can’t know God in the sensual way you can know your dog or your friend or a beach or the concept of equality. It just doesn’t work that way; it’s not of the body or of the world. So don’t even bother.

But why did the writer(s) of Exodus frame their directive in such bleak and unconditional terms? Why assign a penalty of death to an activity that has zero chance of success in the first place?

It’s important to remember that the bible was written by men who were educated, acculturated and politicized – and, generally, they were writing for one another. Most of the population couldn’t read and the idea that they someday would read would have been laughed at. The Bible is an anthology that like all anthologies reflects the politics of its editors; the text we read was never the only text or the best text, it was the favored text of those who had the power to force their favor on others. This doesn’t mean there’s no value in the text; it simply means we need to read critically and carefully, aware of the naturally inherent bias.

I suspect the warning was being issued by someone who a) saw God’s face, b) lived and c) decided that what he saw was somehow too great a threat and the only way to minimize the threat and the potential harm was to warn folks on pain of death from trying to look for God.

I mean, whoever wrote those words really really really wanted people to stop a little shy of actually seeing God. They knew you wouldn’t die if you saw God’ face, because they hadn’t died upon seeing God’s face, but something had happened to them upon seeing God’s face, and whatever happened justified the priestly class bringing death into it, the ultimate penalty to persuade the uneducated and unwashed to look the other way.

What was the “something” that happened?

What if, when you finally see the face of God, you realize that there is no God as such? No distant father calling the shots, no first cause setting the universe in motion, no infinite and omniscient mystery-being . . .

What if you discovered that “God” as such was simply the light in which all living occurred, and was given equally to all beings, and didn’t require initiation or penance or tithing or anything?

What if what dies is the idea that there is or ever could be a gap between you and God, you and love, you and absolute joy? What if what dies is the notion that the Kingdom is remote in time and space and thus can actually be enacted here and now?

That would be a big existential threat, both to a human being who had organized their whole life around God-as-separate-causal-being, and to a priest class whose raison d’etre depended on others accepting that the priests know something and have access to something that most people don’t.

One can understand their insecurity of the priests and still set aside the doctrinal nonsense they espoused that God is other than a present love, and the Kingdom other than a present reality presently unobserved.

That is, read Brokeback Mountain (Really! Read it – it is one of the most precise, effective and moving pieces of fiction ever written in English) and question seriously and critically those who claim to act as brokers of God and Love and the Kingdom and question God.

Doing so promotes two questions, which are actually related, and cannot be answered by anyone except our own self (though obviously dialogue and communion with others helps a lot).

1. What do you not know? How will you find out? Who will help?

and

2. Are you ready at last to see the face of God?

I think an obvious argument with respect to my recent post about certainty and right / wrong thinking is captured in the spirit of comments to this old post about getting along and this one about helpful spiritual junctures: if somebody says to me, “hey I think the Holocaust was great,” am I going to respond: “well, that’s fine!”

No, I am not. And it is not my intention to rationalize or otherwise facilitate anybody else’s doing that either.

So I understand the concern and think it bears consideration. I am always in a state of learning; for me there is no other way.

Underlying my argument about resisting certainty and conclusion – especially in the form of arguing for “right” and “wrong” – is the belief that we have the structure of communal beings who are given to cooperation, coordination and communication. In its fullness, this structure brings forth love, the way two banks bring forth a river.

This structure – and the cooperation, coordination and communication it entails – is a) ongoing and b) realized locally. It is a process that we experience in a subjective way. It is a feature of our living

For example, when I was in middle and high school in the late 1970s and early 80s a common slur among young men was to suggest another young man was gay. This happened a lot. I did not understand its application as problematic at that time. Unfortunately, from time to time I participated in it.

I deeply regret that participation, both for the pain it caused folks who were gay or bisexual or questioning their sexual identity, and for the contribution it made to justifying the ongoing use of that unkindness. It was wrong and hurtful.

At some point in my late teens, I realized that this behavior was cruel and irrational and I stopped doing it. As time passed, I began to try and contribute to the bringing forth of a world where nobody did it.

Today, I make inclusivity and dialogue around gender and sexuality and desire a fundament of my teaching and living. I do this imperfectly of course but it is much closer to love than when I was a young man in high school.

I understand that experience as a learning process which happened to Sean wherein a big block to the free, open and inclusive expression of love was undone. I know that a similar process happened to others. That sort of undoing is always a cause for happiness.

I live now in the understanding that we don’t always see those blocks in our living and so we have to go slowly and patiently. As they say, more will be revealed. I was not a bad person when I was sixteen, but I did say and do stupid hurtful things. I did not need to be erased from the Book of Life for that behavior, but I did need to change that behavior, especially in the realm of language.

It seems to me that love obligates me to recognize that I may be saying and doing stupid things now as well . . . I don’t like that but it’s obviously a possibility. What do I gain by ignorance?

The point is, when I meet folks who are racist or homophobic or misogynist – and I do meet them (they are neighbors, family members, students and so forth) – I see them much the way I see high school Sean. Not as a fundamentally bad person but rather as someone in whom the free, open and inclusive expression of love is blocked (for any number of reasons). I feel compassionate; I feel called to be in dialogue with them.

But being in dialogue means saying clearly and explicitly that I do not agree with their position. Saying so is an implicit statement that I am not casting them out in the darkness. I am not erasing them from the Book of Life. I am simply trying to make the case for a gentle, sustainable, open and inclusive expression of love.

This feels consonant with my (ongoing subjective) experience of love – being cooperative, coordinative, communicative, and so forth.

If we do not know what we are doing is hurtful or cruel, then we are not acting with malice. We are behaving unlovingly but our culpability and responsibility are of a different order. Change is still called for, but it has to come via some channel other than gentle confrontation. It’s more in the nature of education.

When we learn that what we are doing is hurtful and cruel, then we are obligated to alter our behavior so that it becomes kinder and more inclusive. If we insist on hurting others, knowing that we are hurting them, then we are working actively against love.

It is important to resist – nonviolently but firmly – those who actively oppose love. Ideally, this resistance begets dialogue. Dialogue is how we teach others – who could be our own self – what love is.

Thus, I consider the Holocaust a vast failure of love and freedom to love, and feel called to work in my own being and in the collective in which my being expresses to try to mitigate against such failures.

Lovingkindness does not mean ignoring or condoning unloving acts and unkind acts and violent acts. Love is always corrective – both in and through us and, by extension, in and through others. Teachers abound, often disguised so as not to appear as formal teachers.

Heinz von Foerster once said that A is better off when B is better off. I think this is a fair description of how to approach love in world of others who do not always agree with us about what love is or how to bring love forth.

Does our behavior – which includes our languaging – promote the welfare of A and B? Or is it more focused on one (us) to the exclusion of the other?

These are good questions, and we are never not helped by asking them over and over, and allowing ourselves to be surprised and disappointed and then inspired by the answers.

I want to think out loud a little about certainty – how and why it arises in thinking, what function it serves, what it produces and so forth. Ultimately, I think certainty is basically a mirage, albeit a harmless one (so long as one is clear it’s a mirage).

Say that I want to be certain that the world exists or that it doesn’t exist: I have no preference for either outcome, as my existence as such does not actually change much given the one or the other. But I would like to know.

In this “want to be certain” there is an unquestioned assumption, namely, a certainty that being certain is valuable in its own right. Why would I want to be certain about the ontological status of the world if I was not certain that such certainty was valuable?

So the question becomes, what underlies that second-level certainty? What is its source? What assumptions, if any, function as its ground? For it is non-specific and generalized and underlies the whole operation of wanting to be certain about everything, from the world’s existence to the best way to bake apples to what to read before bed.

[Note that wanting to be certain in this sense is not different from wanting to be right, especially given that one is not invested in a particular outcome. It can be X or Y or . . ., but it must at least by X or Y or . . .]

Arguably, this “certainty about certainty” arises from uncontested – because uninvestigated – convictions about what is real or true. For example, take my question to you: “I am not sure there is a world, what do you think?”

Underlying that question is a conviction that I am not alone but in the presence of someone – or something, anyway (a “you”) – with which or with whom dialogue is viable. There is a corresponding conviction that this dialogue can be comprised of words that do not themselves require explanation or justification. Particularly, there is an assumption that when I say “world,” you know to what I refer. There is a reason I pose the question to you and not, say, to a child or a cow or the bathroom mirror.

These assumptions are a kind of sustaining structure for the inquiry. They make the inquiry possible; without it, the inquiry doesn’t happen. Indeed, the assumptions are themselves a nontrivial aspect of the world that sustains the question “is there a world?”

And yet, by and large, these assumptions tend not to be the subject of our inquiry. It is as if in asking the question we elide the possibility of fully answering it.

And yet.

Here we are giving attention – are raising to awareness – the sustaining structure of those a priori assumptions. Right here in this essay we are doing it. Thus, it must be that we can interrogate them. We are doing that right now, aren’t we? It’s just a question of focus, of directing our attention accordingly.

And therein lies the conundrum. I give attention to the underlying certainty that certainty about X is valuable. But this underlying certainty – by virtue of its being an object of my attention – becomes certainty about X’ where X’ = certainty about X. If I give attention to X’ as the new level or layer to be investigated it becomes X” where X” = [[certainty about X’] certainty about X]. If I give attention to X” it becomes X”’ . . .

On and on it goes. I cannot ever reach the ground floor. The foundation – the fundament – is lost to me. Certainty in this formulation really is turtles all the way down.

On the one hand, that is clear and its clarity is frustrating (because of its bottomlessness). But on the other hand, not being able to reach the floor (or foundation or fundament or bottommost turtle) is not an impediment to being itself, nor to the sharing that is so integral to being. Clearly it’s not – here we are, being and sharing!

It is important, I think, to see this. Our ability to talk to each other, bake bread for each other, make love with each other, go on walks together, help our neighbors with chores when they travel and so forth is not contingent on establishing a metaphysical foundation.

A metaphysical foundation may or may not exist. Looking for it is fun and interesting, in its way, but certainty with respect to it is hardly a precondition for living or loving.

In other words, certainty, as such, is not a requirement for the operation of love.

Indeed, the fact that we are already experiencing being and are already drawn to loving as an effective expression of being can sometimes feel like all the knowing we actually need to be happy and fully realized. It is not those who are starving and perennially food-insecure who worry about where the bread that feeds them was made (was the flour organic, were the workers organized and well-paid, et cetera). That analysis enters only when we are sated and unworried about future satiation.

The suggestion then is to realize that our inquiry into certainty – into the longing to be certain or right about this or that aspect of living (e.g., is there a world, or is there a self, or what is the other) – can only arise because the fundamentals (of world, self and other, say) are already in place.

Or, to put it another way, we only become spiritual seekers because we are spiritually found. We know what we’re looking for; that’s why we’re looking for it.

In order to feel a loss or absence or emptiness, we have to have known fullness or wholeness. The one specifies the other. We cannot miss what we do not know exists. If we are on a spiritual path like A Course in Miracles, we are only on it because we know where it’s going and how it goes.

We could compare it to visiting an amusement park. We know what’s going to happen on the roller coaster but that doesn’t mean we don’t still want to ride it. It doesn’t mean we aren’t going to be thrilled and chilled and all of that while riding it.

Or this. Say that we go looking for our eyes. We will never find them. We may see a reflection of them in a mirror. Someone may take a picture of them and so we may see an image of them. But we will never “see” our eyes. And yet the whole premise of this apparently fruitless impossible-to-satisfy search *is our eyes. Looking – not our eyes – is the answer.

In that example, when we stop looking for an object and instead accept a process, then we’re home. The problem lay in how we framed the search. When we reframe it, the whole inquiry dissolves on the spot.

Wanting to be certain arises because we are already certain. Lack and non-lack arise together. But these conditions do not cancel one another out; one is not categorically superior to the other. Rather, they mutually specify one another. They do not contradict but rather affirm one another. Choosing between them – making one “right” and the other “wrong,” say – is an illusion because they not separable, any more than a half mile is separable from a mile.

But this does reflect a shift in our thinking (about our thinking). We have a preference for – we give primacy to – a mode of thinking that insists on X or Y, or X vs. Y and so forth. The suggestion here is that this frame is both unavoidable (and so nothing to worry about) and contingent on other frames (namely, that discerning or distinguishing has value in its own right). The supposed quandary is “solved” by realizing that it doesn’t need to be solved at all. It’s not a zero sum game like Monopoly. It’s more like a bunch of Legos with which we can build anything we like, tear down and build again or build differently. It’s play for play’s sake, not play for the sake of winning by defeating our brother or sister. And we know this because the love that underlies our living – which is the sine qua non of our living – goes on without regard for our particular grasp of the metaphysics. Moms were hugging babies long before Plato showed up and they’re still doing it post-Wittgenstein, post-Darwin and post-Derrida. When A Course in Miracles is forgotten – and it will be, in time – people will still be happy and joyous and free when they devote themselves to one another in love. We already know what to do; pretending we don’t is part of the (non-zero sum) game.

When the quest for certainty – or sources or fundaments or answers or truth or reality – relaxes, then a natural pragmatism and coherence appears, which is that we are already being in love, and that this love is sufficient unto itself. We are all winning; of this I am certain.

Is it possible that the search of the Self or the World or the Lord is confused at the outset? That its very premise is suspect, inevitably contaminating whatever apparently proceeds or emerges from it?

Say that I resolve to search for an Xlkerd. I pledge not to rest until I encounter an Xlkerd. My whole life shall be devoted to realizing Xlkerd. But since there is no Xlkerd, my searching and pledges and devotion are all in vain. They might be fun or interesting, and might turn up some fascinating stuff along the way, but . . . not an Xlkerd.

In that case, would it be better to direct my attention and energy and devotion to something real? Like justice? Or the end of food insecurity? World peace?

Or this. Say that I decide to sip some apple cider and heft my glass of lemon tea, bringing it to my lips. Absent some undiscovered supernatural alchemy, I’m going to drink lemon tea, not apple cider. The decision to sip cider when only tea is available cannot possibly turn tea into cider.

In that case, would it be better to accept the reality of tea’s presence? And cider’s absence? And just get on with the sipping?

In other words, what I am getting at is inquiring into the assumptions that underlie our so-called quests and spiritual seeking and so forth. If we’re going to slay dragons and there are no dragons . . . Or if we’re going to rescue princesses but all the princesses have rescued themselves . . .

Chris Fields suggests that it can be helpful – indeed, even necessary to our happiness (which includes our ability to share happiness with one another) – to retire some of our inquiries, especially the ones that are null because of the a priori assumptions underlying them.

That is, if you’re searching for a Xlkerd, give it up. Your assumption that Xlkerds exist when they do not is poisoning the project from the start.

If what we’re doing is incoherent, then we should give it up in favor of an action that is coherent.

I use “coherent” in this case to mean aligning our experience of experience with our best understanding of what it means to bring forth love.

Fields is responding to an essay that makes the case for mind’s ontological primacy over body; mind precedes the physical. Before there is a world that is unjust, say, there is this subjective experience of something which we will subsequently name “just” or “unjust.” Field takes the position that the underlying question – establishing a hierarchy of subjective and objective, first-person and third-person, mind and body is . . . dubious. And thus unhelpful.

Perhaps . . . it is this quest for an authoritative answer that should be rejected. Perhaps self and world do not make sense, at least not in combination (Dietrich & Fields 2015). A dialetheic world – one in which some contradictions are true as well as false (Priest 1994) – permits limited and pragmatic theories, but disallows any universal and fundamental ontology.

I gave some attention to dialethia here. In this post, I am extending Fields’ “perhaps” to specifically include spiritual searches for Selves or Gods or Kingdoms of Gods and all of that. If we expect authoritative answers to those quests and those authoritative answers do not exist, then our searching is going to make us unhappy and even possibly insane. It certainly can’t help us in our ongoing attempts to cooperate and collaborate with one another. Why attempt the impossible? Isn’t it obvious that doesn’t help anybody?

However, a reasonable response to this point is: how do we know it’s impossible unless we try? That is, you can’t disprove the existence of a self (or a god or a kingdom or even an Xlkerd) until you look for one and fail to find it. Search away!

Or maybe you could say, “well, sure. Some folks say there is no self (or god or kingdom) but I still want to find out for myself.” To each their own!

Or you could even say, “who cares if there’s no self (or god or kingdom) – the search might still be fun and interesting. After all what else are we supposed to do?”

I have made – and still do make from time to time – all of those arguments at one time or another, to varying degrees. They are not unpersuasive in their way. But it seems one does reach a juncture where the focus shifts to what helps, where “helps” means “facilitates understanding of how to bring forth love in a consistent sustainable way.”

To that end, it is sometimes useful to accept the experience, strength and wisdom of folks like Fields. If a doctor says I need an MRI, I don’t go to med school before consenting. Their expertise suffices.

In a similar way, I roast pork and chicken before serving it because homo sapiens learned a long time ago that consuming raw meat can be dangerous to the point of fatal. I am not going to die – or put someone else at risk of dying – just to prove the point all over again.

What I am saying is that given a functional wheel, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel. We want to use the wheel in order to be happy which invariably means helping others be happy too.

So if a smart and thoughtful guy like Fields wonders aloud, “say, maybe this quest for ultimate or final or authoritative answers is misguided,” then maybe it’s okay to set the quest aside. At a minimum, what happens if we do that? What paths appear to close? What paths appear to open?

If you, like me, are partial to the quasi-Christian/Freudian/Platonic tenor of A Course in Miracles, and if you, like me, decide that reading it and studying it is the functional equivalent of waiting up all night for Santa Claus to come cheerfully tumbling down the chimney. . . what happens?

That is, what does our living look like if we accept that all spiritual quests are misguided and bound to fruitlessness and on that basis let our own – up to and including ACIM – go?

I want to briefly sketch an answer to that question.

When I shuck A Course in Miracles, there is an experience of loss. This “loss” is a mental gap – a hole in my thinking reflected in my experience of living in the world. So I ask myself: what is the nature of this gap or emptiness for which A Course in Miracles appeared and functioned as a useful tool or filler?

My answer is that the gap is my experience of my life and the world as unfair, unjust and corrupt and this terrifies me to the point where I can’t face it – it is utterly elided or occluded. This is not a long-term sustainable approach to living peacefully and lovingly! So A Course in Miracles (and other spiritual paths and traditions and practices) act as a corrective assuring me that my fears are not justified, which then nudges me in the direction of being proactive in terms of happiness, kindness, gentleness, et cetera. It is a sort of jump start on making the world a better place for you and me. Instead of cowering I can face my fears in a creative way. It’s about healing, in that sense.

Naturally I then ask: is there another way to accomplish this? One that is perhaps simpler and even easier? One that is less abstract? Less supernatural? Less spiritually indulgent perhaps?

And the answer to that is yes. Yes it is possible to be happy and at peace, and to share that happiness and peacefulness with all beings, thus making the world a more just and equitable and less conflicted space. And it is not hard or obscure or mysterious.

The way is simply to attend to the way that the inclination to cooperate and collaborate – to coordinate our doings through communication with other beings who could be our own self – naturally arises within us without effort or intention. Noticing it might require active deployment of attention; and application might be similarly effortful.

But we don’t have to invent love. We don’t have to persuade anyone to buy into our belief system. We simply have to see the way love arises naturally, in all of us, as a natural condition of what we are. Love is our fundament.

I am suggesting – on reading and reflecting on Fields’ thinking – that spiritual seeking and its ideology, however apparently numinous – functions as a distraction to the love it actually aims to bring forth. Our intentions are pure but misguided because of our confusion. We’re pouring water on the lamp, dousing the flame we need to find the kettle where the water actually belongs. And this can be corrected but – the suggestion goes – not if we insist on interpreting correction in literal terms of Jesus and Buddha and spirit and so forth

Someone will point out that I am basically indulging semantics here. Sean says “love” but another person will say “Jesus” or “bodhisattva” or “Divine Source” and they all mean the same thing.

I hear that. It is a nontrivial – and not unpersuasive – argument.

And yet.

The language we use matters. I began this essay by writing about a hypothetical search for Xlkerds. Technically speaking, “Xlkerd” is a sign but to what does it point? How would we reach consensus on its meaning? If there are no Xlkerds, then we’re going to be frustrated (or extremely imaginative, likely in a way that excludes others from playing with us).

I’d ask a similar question about “Jesus.” It’s a sign, sure, but to what does it point? An iterinant Jewish Cynic who lived two thousand years ago? The founder of Christianity? A symbol of love and peace? How would we reach consensus on its meaning? It’s hard to find consensus internally about “Jesus,” let alone bringing the whole social order and collective into it.

But in both instances, what counts is reaching consensus, right?

I am asking what way of living broadens our ability to build consensus? Maximizes our capacity for cooperation? Renders our communications inclusive and unconditional, to the maximal extend possible?

And I am suggesting the answer is: this very life we are right now living. The very loving that we right now know precisely how to offer. The being that we don’t need to learn about but only share because, in a very essential and natural way, it is sharing itself.

It’s not that I’m right about this. Or wrong, for that matter. Right and wrong are not the point. The point really, is whether what I write here resonates with you reading here. Because that resonance is not from me to you; it is not a temporary linear connection of separate entities.

Rather, it is a shared resonance – a unified sip of that which cannot be fragmented or divided or compartmentalized or apportioned. That resonance is not “Sean’s” or [insert-your-name-here]’s. It’s not even “ours” (because that would bring about “theirs”). It just is and (would you agree with me) it is enough.

I am being quite literal here! I am actively suggesting that our “spirituality” as such is not “one way of approaching the human condition in the interests of happiness and justice and so forth” but actually confounds our ability to be happy and help others be happy, in sustainable and natural ways.

I am suggesting that we are given the sea and rather than swim stubbornly dig into the sandy beach in the vain hope of reaching some other sea. And I am further suggesting that even if that happened – even if we found that sea – then we’d invent a reason to forego it and start looking for a new one.

Spiritual seeking has become a way of avoiding responsibility for bringing for the very peace, joy, love and harmony that spiritual seeking purports to have as its goal.

There is another way.

I wrote this a few weeks before Christmas and then forgot about it, but while going back through my notes the other day found it again, and liked it. So it’s out of sync with our shared calendar, but you know. Better late – or early, perhaps – than never.

***

It is a cliche to say that every day is a holy day, and yet more and more I find myself easing into a sort of quiet insistence that this must be so. Every day is holy, every stranger a guest who could be our own self. The work – at which we are not great but can be better – is to bring forth love according to our structure and the shared world those structures bring forth.

Yet I do hack down a tree, drag it into the living room, lug ornaments and lights from the attic and then sit happily by with Chrisoula while the kids decorate it. Every ornament has a story. The one that looks like our old dog Jake; the hand-carved Saint Nicholas Chrisoula bought me before we were married because I was drawn to its stern – almost religious – gaze; the fading glass balls that hung on my grandmother’s tree three quarters of a century ago.

In this way, decorating is also a narrative and performance. For it is in stories that we remember ourselves and in story-telling that we give ourselves away to one another. This much has always been sacred.

This year, when the kids finished decorating, Fionnghuala placed a nativity scene beneath the lowest boughs. I try to avoid overt religious gestures in public spaces, but this one made me happy. The birth story in Luke’s Gospel is one of my favorite stories of all time; growing up, my father read it to us every Christmas Eve. Whenever I hear it, or read it, it is Dad’s voice that I hear.

Of course, the actual historical birth of Jesus is lost to us. Nobody takes notes when a peasant is born; they only take notes for kings. Luke’s gospel reframes Jesus’ origins in a manner more fitting to the evangelist’s vision of Jesus as both fulfilling an ancient prophecy and begetting a new world. In Luke’s telling, Jesus is born a king who eschews the trappings of traditional royalty. His kingdom, as such, is not of this world. It signifies a new order, one that inverts old power structures of family, state and economy in order to introduce a radical equality and inclusiveness that is love.

Luke always leaves me a little breathless.

Still, as Nietzsche pointed out, “there was only one Christian and he died on the cross.” And Albert Schweitzer, no slouch in the selfless love department, noted that “what has been presented as Christianity during these nineteen centuries is only a beginning, full of mistakes, not full blown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus.”

In other words, there were some good ideas floating around that manger that have yet to receive a fair hearing and application. Perhaps they never will. Our species is nothing if not predictable.

What, then, am I doing with this tree? This nativity scene? This ancient story echoing in my brain in my late father’s voice?

Well, I am not especially interested in Kings – worldly or otherwise. And as for births in stables (not to mention deaths on crucifixes), I’m a firm believer that Caesar has a vested interested in making sure they don’t happen. People shouldn’t be tortured and executed and births should not be marginalized but made safe and welcome. As Heinz von Foerster says, “A is better off when B is better off.” This is simple common sense, isn’t it? Do we really need a supernatural explanation?

Later in Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus has been executed by the Roman government, two of his disciples meet – and fail to recognize – Jesus while on the road to Emmaus. Not until they insist he break bread with them rather than face the road at night alone do they recognize their late teacher.

This is a not nonfiction! It is a story, and a good one. Pure fiction to delight our heart and tantalize our mind. Stripped of 1:1 correspondence with history, the story becomes a reflection of an idea almost certainly embodied by Jesus and certainly dear to his earliest followers: i.e., we meet Christ in the other when we make the other welcome. Rather than condemn the stranger to the road, we give them a bed. Rather than consign the hungry to more hunger, the lost to more wandering, the poor to births in stables, the lonely to more angst, the imprisoned to crosses and gas chambers, we . . . welcome them, as our own self. When they are better off, we are better off. It’s not Christian; it’s human. It’s not even just human; it’s love.

In this way, Jesus is born and dies and is born again and executed again over and over in our midst. He is as near to us as our children and as far as the margins where the refugees and the destitute make clear our grave failure to love in the ordinary way that is given us to love.

Thus, our Christmas trees are nothing if they don’t turn us in the direction of the lost and forsaken. Our nativity scenes are a mockery if they don’t jettison us to the edges of society where the old story of the forgotten lost and poor reenacts itself over and over.

If Christmas comes once a year – if holiness is constrained to special occasions – then the whole point of remembering this strangely paradoxical King named Jesus is moot. His anti-Kingdom – in which love replaces hate, inclusivity undoes tribalism, and cooperation and coordination dissolve conflict – goes on unrecognized. I don’t know if it’s possible to bring this radical love forth; you don’t either. But really, at this juncture, what do we have to lose by trying? And how else can we try but together?

Thus, I turn to the tree and the nativity and the gospel narrative in order to remind myself that as yet I am not Christian, but that something in me stubbornly insists that the fundamental transformation remains possible. It has nothing to do with Christmas; it has everything to do with love.