Illuminating the dark nights of Advent

I share this beautiful Christmas song with you - you who are already a most radiant glowing soul - with a whispered prayer that as you embrace this season of light in expectation of the birth of Christ within your own earthbound soul, you will feel the gentle child-like touch of our Lord.  This is my favorite Christmas song as it lights the way for me and all of us throughout Advent and all other days of our lives. 

Dream Child (A Christmas Dream)

In the night
Was the dark
In the dark
Was the dream
In the dream
Was the Child

And myself

There unseen

In the book was the word
In the word there was truth
In the truth there was age
In the age there was youth

And I said to the Child
Do your hands they still bleed
After all of this time
Do you think there's still need
But the Child only smiled

And said not a word
And the snow it came down
As if it hadn't heard

And all that night the snow came down
To heal the scars our lives had found
And the dreams that lay broken

And there upon a bridge of dreams
Across the night we walked unseen
With no words ever spoken

And then on through that night
We did walk for a while
And our steps turned to blocks
And the blocks turned to miles

Then we followed a path
For as far as we could
Till we found ourselves there
In an evergreen woods

There were thousands of candles
Upon every tree
It was beautiful
But there was one mystery
For with all of those candles
You must understand
That the only one lit
Was now in that Child's hand

And there upon that Christmas scene
The candle wax of melted dreams
And the years they had taken

And as the snow did gently fall
He one by one relit them all
Till each dream was awakened

And there to that light
That young Child showed to me
All the things that he dreamt
All the things that might be
How for everything given
That something was gained
Strike one match in the dark
And all the world's not the same

And then I asked that Child
Why this night has a star
And he said, "So we'd know
That we could see that far"
And these candles are wed
To that distant star's light
And it all came to be
Upon that long winter's night
That long winter's night
That long winter's night
That long winter's night

And when I awoke, well the Child he was gone
But somewhere in my mind
I believe he lives on
And somewhere in my life
Between here and the end
On a long winter's night
I will dream him again

To listen to this song:  http://www.rhapsody.com/trans-siberian-orchestra/the-christmas-attic--id15802956

[Music & Lyrics: Paul O'Neill, Jon Oliva]

From The Christmas Attic CD by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Above image: Christ Child, c. 1920, post card

God inhabits the praises of the people

Just for the record, Thanksgiving is not a Christian holiday.  It is a day set aside to thank God for our very lives and is neither national nor religious, but human.

The authentic history of that first Thanksgiving seems upheld more by legend than American history, but it seems that initial act of gratefulness to God for the goodness and generosity of the native peoples at a precarious time in our history was a wise way to face, endure and even embrace hardship.  Today, our continued national observance of thanking God for our lives, our well being and the goodness and generosity of others is the most effective (and wisest) way to boost our nation once again during perilous times.

On the surface of this beautiful holiday, the heart felt  desire to thank God for our lives and what prosperity we do have - albeit meager for the 1600 homeless people on the streets of Portland tonight - is a wise way to again empower our nation with an enduring and real power, rather than materialistic.  I firmly believe the foundation of any great person or nation is in the awareness that our lives and livelihood are gifts from God - not of our own making, nor the work of our hands - but given to us from a generous and all loving God. It is gift, period.

A spirit of thankfulness to God is the hallmark of faith in God and in that faith is the spirit to live another day, submit another resume, love again.  It is in the art of praising, in that very real intention to thank the great invisible One who responds to our praise and worship and thankfulness, with an even greater outpouring of His Spirit and His power, which is the source of our strength and vision for our individual lives and our national life together.

As we reach for enlightenment, personal power and a liberated spirituality, and realize our total dependence on God by thanking God first, allowing our hearts, minds and spirits to genuinely praise God, we will open the inner God faucet of God's great power and love.  

The more filled we are with God's very Spirit, the greater our desire to enter into praise and thankfulness.  We will soon realize that all our joy and love comes in that very substance of spirit, and then we will also realize that nothing on this earth - no job, no lover, no house - nothing - can separate us from that love.  Perhaps sometimes we suffer losses and feel sad or forsaken, but those times only serve to show us that we have mistakenly placed value on those things.  We have slipped.  When we realize that, and withdraw our value, we again can enter into praise to God for teaching us this most important spiritual lesson, and again, get on our knees and thank God.  

When we can honestly say that whether we have - everything or nothing - whether we have a home or live on the street, whether we will have family and a dinner tomorrow, regardless of anything that's going on around us, we can and will serve God with a joyful spirit of love and thanks, then we will be ready for the great love affair with life. When we are empowered with God's spirit, through our own praises and thankfulness, we can endure anything with a wisdom and strength beyond our former understanding. 

Today and tomorrow and forever, 

Thank you God for this precious 

gift of life and for all of us, 

even for our challenges 

as well as our blessings, 

for to you they are the same, 

and given out of your great 

wisdom and goodness.  

Amen

Looking for God in all the wrong places

Photo of the Sea of Galilee today as a storm approaches.

While the world weeps today, we could be singing in joy tomorrow.  

Humanity is rushing like a vast river over the falls, crashing on the rocks below.  Swept along, we bob around looking for that tree limb on which to grasp, to hold us, and lift us up out of the cresting waters.  But, there is no tree limb, there is nothing to grasp.  It seems everywhere we look, everything we listen to, every news cast, ever new age idea, every self help gimmick is like a loose limb that we reach for only to find that it too is unsecured leaving us to flounder again and again.  

These are tempestuous times - especially for those in third world nations who have no food, no clean water, at the mercy of corrupt governments that rob food supplies donated by foreign nations in exchange for weapons. We are all like lambs watching and waiting for our own demise.  

But, this blog post is about hope as is this entire blog. So where is the hope? As I wrote the above paragraphs, my heart sank, weighed down by the harsh reality of our times.  What fragile hope is there really for us?  Has God abandoned us, forsaken us, left us to our own undoing?

All religions have promised us a savior, a powerful warrior who would save us in times of trouble. 

Of the heavy Hebrew scriptures, Habakkuk is among the sternest.  It is a prophesy of warning to the Hebrew people that their ways have led them away from God, leaving them unprotected and vulnerable to the Babylonians, a "ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own.  They are a feared and dreaded people, they are a law to themselves...."   

As as global family, we look at the current decline in nations, most recently Ireland has looked to the European Union for a bail out, following Greece who was precariously rescued last year, we wonder, "where is God in this tidal wave waiting on the horizon?"

Throughout our rapacious history, when we faced certain destruction, we looked to God as a merciful and compassionate father to dole out rescue and prosperity at our request.  We looked to the "heavens" for rescue.  We pleaded and begged, as children, to a stern father.  Sometimes, actually most times, we met our deserved outcome.  Have we been looking for God in all the wrong places?  

As naive children, we sought God outside ourselves, cringing powerlessly in fear of punishment, often stealing power from each other because we were blind to its presence deep within us. Is that how God created us? 

When I look carefully at the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, it seems that it is not how God is. I think today, as we teeter on a possible brink of destruction, we need to revise our worldview of God in order to find God and access God's infinite resource of power and vision and life that was mysteriously buried within us at our creation, waiting for the time when we would wisely seek God where God can be found - waiting patiently and lovingly for us to look within our own hearts, navigate our own phantasmal depths to find God.

Change begins with a firm commitment to and redirection of focus, away from a punitive father-figure to a loving, all powerful creator who is imbued within us, alive within our own being, as bone of His bone, blood of His blood and spirit of His spirit.

In my last blog, I suggested the "temple" is a metaphor, a parabolic image of the interior soul of man.  God's temple is within us, as Jesus said the kingdom of God is within us (Luke).  "Did the ancient Jews know this?"  I wondered.

In Habakkuk, wedged between Habakkuk's lamentation and God's response are some key words that jumped out at me, again reminding me that we have been looking for God's coast guard while on the tempestuous seas of these stormy times, rather than finding within us the power - yes, THE POWER - to lift up and out of the enormously strong magnetic gravitational pull of these godless materialistic times that are drawing us away from our own power, away from God within.

"Woe to him who says to wood, "Come to life" or to lifeless stone, "Wake up!"  Can it give guidance?  It is covered with gold and silver, there is no breath in it.  

But the Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him."  

(Habakkuk 2:19-20)

After reading this scripture, suddenly (and interestingly) the image of Jesus asleep in the back of the boat awakened in my heart.  Just as the wood, silver and gold, the boat cannot save. The boat, the ancient symbol for the church, cannot save us.  The church cannot save us any more than all the material wealth, the fortress of your house, the security of your job.  Nothing and no institution or government can save us. Only the Power of Christ, God within us, can save us.  Only God, who waits within your heart, which is God's holy temple, can silence the storms around you, around us.  (Mark 4: 35-41)

I have seen people threatened with dire circumstances, extreme poverty, stage 4 cancers, at risk of losing their homes and their lives, find an awesome inner strength and with that strength, come through their challenges.  In that moment of absolute desperation and need, they have turned to God within them and found the strength to tap into a power beyond anything this world can offer to support and sustain them.  Even in the face of certain death, as they surrender to God within, and accept whatever may befall them, even praise and sing hymns of great praise and love to God, all that threatened them shrinks away - the earth does grow silent before the Great God of creation who moves upon their inner spiritual seas, and calms the storm.  With the storm now calmed, life can and often does return.

And, just one more thought.  As we've so often heard said, united, we stand, divided we fall are words that will take us the distance, through the finish line, into the winning lineup forever.  Familiar words that Abraham Lincoln spoke to the nation at the outbreak of the Civil War, and words spoken by Jesus intended with a much deeper, mystical meaning.

If one person realizes that the strength and power of heaven is within his grasp, as close as his own heart, he is saved and yet the whole world may perish.  But, if whole communities, even nations, entire church, temple, mosque and ashram communities realize that the power of heaven is within them and cast away their love of stuff and external power, their fear of each other in order to reach courageously within their inner temples with praise, wonder, love and adoration of God, together we may be able to damn the raging river that threatens our world today. 

As Judaism's Yom Kippur and Islam's Eid el-Adha wane, and Christmas approaches, we have a beautiful opportunity - as a global community - to open our hearts to each other with the full intention of honoring God who reigns in the temple of the other.  It is in stepping out of our own hermitage, risking everything, to love another that we draw on the power of God within our own temple.  In that reach, God is extended, and the storm is calmed, little by little, until the peace of God pervades and suffuses our world, uniting us, healing us together.

There is nothing outside you that can save you.  Only the power and love of God within His holy temple, within your own human heart, can save you and us - all of us.