Embracing Holiness

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, 

when the kingdom of God  should come, 

he answered them and said, 

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. 

Neither shall they say, Lo here or, lo there! 

for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17:20-21 

'If your leaders say, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the 

birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' 

then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within 

you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be 

known,and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. 

But if you do not know yourselves, 

then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."  

Gospel of Thomas

"We just need one more thing," he said, announcing a last minute run to the store.  Everything necessary for a weekend celebration had already been purchased.  The pumpkin and apple pies were baked.  The house was scrubbed, laundry done, beds made. Everything was in order for our company. Then he remembered something and we needed to run out for just one more thing.  The spell of joy had been cast, the anticipation was knit into the very air in preparation for the great day of thanks with a large family and some dear friends.  But, now, we had to go out in the rain, the cold, the dark for one more thing.  

I begged not to go, but finally relented, at their insistence.

"We just have to run into Wal-Mart for something," he said.

"Batteries," I hoped, feeling that anything else wasn't worth the effort.  Lately, I'd surrendered almost completely to all these little unforseen, unexpected things because I've found the divine speaks through them.  So, I threw on my oversized fisherman's sweater and hopped into the back seat of the car.  My daughter, who was still an amateur behind the wheel, needed additional driving guidance from her father. So, I was exiled to the backseat where I would be less stricken by the inevitable near death experiences of her close encounters with the strange kind on the road. 

The bright lights of the mega shopping complex were blinding as I stepped in out of the dark rainy night.  Strangely, there were few shoppers there, but the store sales and management staff were engaged in a kind of frenzied ritual, pulling large pallets, tightly wrapped in plastic, bursting with toys and other Christmas shopping "stuff."  They were drunk with the excitement, almost how one would imagine Santa's elves might be delighting at loading the sleigh.

It wasn't so much the orgy of materialism that was about to erupt the next night, on the eve of Black Friday, midnight of our national day of thanks, it was the surreal strangeness of it all that sruck me.  Then, I realized how disgusted I was by it all.  I knew that any  minute they were going to start to play the Christmas hymns, Silent Night, etc. over the loud speakers to "get shoppers in the mood." 

This isn't about Wal-Mart or any other mega shopping complex, rather it is about us.  We have missed the mark, we are charging like sheep into the wrong pasture, one of a pack of wolves in sheep's clothing and not heeding the direction of our beloved Great Shepherd. 

We know we've defamed these two holidays with our gluttony and materialism. In fact why don't we all be honest and admit it that we are feeding the Antichrist when we pretend to celebrate the birth of the Sacred Child who urged us to surrender our love of riches as we search for (and find) the kingdom of God through the narrow gate? And, that's especially the case when we shop in greed, seeking the best bargains to over consume.  You don't need me to tell you that any kind of materialism is swimming upstream from the HOLY, especially when half the world's population is in poverty.

However, that's not even the point really.  It's not so much about what we are doing as much as about what we're not doing.  The point is we really would rather be searching for that kingdom within, that is also all around us.  But, how? Where is it?  What is it? And, without understanding, we return to our old madness. 

The words of these two explicit gospels point to a spiritual kingdom, which brings us into communion with the holy, where we are transformed into beings of light and love.  These are ancient words that are meaningless unless we translate them into ideas which we can comprehend.  The "kingdom" to which the child will lead us is both an altered state as much as it is another dimension.  That child also taught us that we need to give up our addictions - all of them - including those things that bind us and those things we bind to us.

The sad news is that as much as we'd like to enter it, our attachments to stuff, blocks our passage through the narrow gate. We just can't seem to get over our materialism addiction because we're hooked by the media, the traditions, our culture and even our own lack of confidence in ourselves to step outside that foolish fold.  

Throughout the Gospels and all Orthodox, Gnostic and other mystical writings we are challenged to see things differently, to renew our vision, to lift the veils by which this world blinds us, to be "born again" so we will have "eyes to see" that deeper, radiantly authentic "other" dimension which reveals another world, a "kingdom" of light, and love which we all seek and search for among the dark things of this life. 

Worship is not in the rehearsed and well worn act of chanting or praying five or a hundred times a day. Rather it is entering into that kingdom within - which is also spread out among us - that exists for us all to see on another dimension, perhaps a fifth dimension or a 27th dimension, but it is clearly not here in our heavily materialistic third dimension. For those who are able to live in the kingdom, they are those who are "in the world, but not of it."

So, how do we even begin to shift dimensional gears?  Yes, the first may be in thanksgiving, but it may also mean detaching from the materialism around us.  We've become gluttonous and we have to stop.  Just stop.  Don't feed the Wal-Mart machine or cut down our evergreen forests.  That is not how we enter the narrow gate.  Even Santa couldn't get through it. Maybe America needs to do a 12-Step approach to ending her addictions.  The first step is to ask for help, and my guess is heaven is happy to help.

That's a beginning.  Then, we will feel within us a sense of gratefulness, of thankfulness, for what we don't have.  Yes.  We will be thankful that we aren't rich, that we don't have enough to eat, that we are poor,  BECAUSE then we can be filled by the holy when there is an empty vessel into which it can flow.  Then, we will be blessed with what is real and everlasting, which is an inexplicable joy that scents everything around us and within us with the fragrance of heaven.  


While there's more, so much more about the parabolic journey to that gem of great price within us, buried deeply and waiting quietly in the midst of the dark soil of our lives and being, changing our direction and wanting to find it, wanting to enter the kingdom, wanting to leave all this insanity behind - that's at least a good beginning, an important first step, on the heels of which Advent now follows.