They say that Christmas Day may not be the “real day” that Jesus was born. Some wonder if he ever lived at all. Many more are so repulsed by what has been done in his name that they ignore the Christmas story altogether.
Despite all that, Christmas is a time when I celebrate a beautiful man who was born into the world like all the rest of us and affirmed our nobility as human beings. To me, he was all that a man is supposed to be. Kind, loving, courageous, visionary, and so much more.
He encouraged those with him to be the same and to do likewise. His words of encouragement come ringing through the centuries to us now.
There are so many bad examples of manhood today. And there is such an inhibition among men to express the creative power that is in them. Understandably, there is, for so many women, a loss of faith in the nobility of men, and with that a loss of faith in humanity itself. So I cherish the character that comes shining through Jesus’ teachings and the story of his life. It is an inspiration for men and women alike.
There is so much that others have said about him. And there are so many beliefs about him that obscure the simplicity of someone as wonderful as he was. That simplicity was that he was supremely himself, and he refused to compromise himself in the face of the world as it was.
Like many down through the ages, Jesus seeded the field of human consciousness with awakening. In the archetypal story of his birth, the Holy Ghost visited Mary and she conceived the child to be. That is symbolic of what Jesus, himself, did. He visited the field of human consciousness. His words, his love, his life, seeded that field with the potentiality of what we, as humankind, are becoming.
As far as we know, Jesus had no children. Yet we, humankind, are pregnant with his child. That child is the higher expression of ourselves that we are becoming. It is the sun that we are becoming. It is the Living Christ, known through human beings—the birth of the child of God. One God, one child, with many faces.
In this day, humanity is in labor, delivering that child. The labor is proving to be hard and long. There is little room for it in the inn—the world as it is. Making it all the more difficult, we hardly know we are pregnant. But we are. And now, we are giving birth.
I believe that this is the deeper meaning of the Christmas story and the reason why it moves us at levels we can hardly understand. It is our story.
As I celebrate Christmas, I celebrate Mother Mary, and I celebrate the man, Jesus. I adore the qualities of character he brought to the world. I celebrate the seeds of awakening that he sowed. I also celebrate and adore the emergence of what has grown from those seeds as I see it in friends, near and far. And I pray for the safe delivery of the child in a world that hardly knows the child is being born.
