A Christmas thought

Well I have something finally to say about this Christmas. It is not original. I am only just beginnign to appreciate it. Here it is:

Baby Jesus born in a manger.

Please refrain from all warm fuzzy feelings, because actually this was a very profound and daring act and social commentary. Plus, it was a virgin birth. Like they believed that.

Mary: I'm going to have a baby. But don't worry, I am still a virgin.
Other: hm. Likely story, Mary.

Try telling that to the majority of the people over here and they may condescend to allow you to hang out with them still. But you will loose serious social identity.

This is one thing, the virgin birth. But what about the manger? It is just on my mind because I have been thinking how ambition destroys a lot. Not that it is inherently destructive.

I mean this. Love does not take greatness. And love is the meaning of life, its sustenance and drive to being. If loves pushes towards a hidden end goal it has become conditional and has lost its ability to transform into being what it is itself. It does not need to be dressed up, but is in essence more beautiful than any form could bring to it. So manger or palace, (but it was a manger) love existed, walked, and gave light.

For me, Otterburne, Scotland or Africa. (even the US too) They are all the same. Forms that will hold, but the substance is the main thing. Marriage even. What is perfection but the pushing towards? I think Black and White are turning shades of colors when I remember the simplicity of love. Baby in a manger, it's not that complicated.

Only one home

Thou goest thine, and I go mine--
            Many ways we wend;
            Many days, and many ways,
            Ending in one end. 

            Many a wrong, and its curing song;
            Many a road, and many an inn;
            Room to roam, but only one home
            For all the world to win.

Today Kim and I said good bye to a good friend. It was a moment when one feels more than normal the profound reality behind life cycles of life, death and rebirth. The end of one journey giving birth automatically to a new one. Life and death. And now, more than ever, I begin to see how we touch heaven and hell in life here. To not let go in death is to forbid the rebirth. How much we allow our being open to reality here is how weighty the reality of being to come will be. "I-thou". In the speaking and being present to life we open our soul into being.

I was just thinking of sleeping beauty the Disney film. I always loved the part when the goblins could not destroy the prince because every evil they sent was turned by the fairies into beauty. This is the gospel. We think that we want "justice", we think we would be satisfied with evil destroyed and repaid. But actually, we don't know, we've never been taught, never seen, never had the words, never perceived another reality. Until we had The Word. Who did not come with Eye for eye, but with uncompromising love. He came and taking the non being of darkness did not recoil from it, but entered full into it and in entering transformed.

This has everything to do with Nicole leaving because we touch life, death and rebirth in our interaction. Heaven and hell are not limited to abstracted bible verses and felt boards but are the stuff of daily interaction. Opening the self to the hellos and good byes is opening the soul to God. The good bye of today is just as much on the journey to redemption as all this earth is going towards. To never part is to never reunite, and to prolong life and deny death is to never allow for its new form.
That is why Kinkade's paintings are heathen. They do not allow any dissonance to be transformed. It excludes Christ, because it wont take the risk to admit the need.


I think that I am beginning to see how ingenious the gospel is. We are not satisfied with eye for eye. We are not convinced with evil to be annihilated into nothingness, because we are evil. Rather, with George MacDonald, we long that evil be annihilated through its transformation into good. So that in all this darkness of death, the death that we live in this life, when finally redeemed we will perceive, I believe, the greater beauty because of the dissonance.