Musings

Room for Christmas

My wife, Roberta Maran, and I live in a 620-square-foot house.  We love it.  In order to move in here, we had to sell or give away most of our possessions.  We hardly remember those former belongings.  We’ve enjoyed the lightness of living with less.

But then there is Christmas!  It’s a special challenge for us to prepare for it, since we have an enormous family and very little space to create handmade gifts, wrap packages and prepare holiday treats.  I’ve been struggling to get from one end of the house to the other without stepping on the projects in progress or on the paper, boxes, and completed gifts.

But this temporary clutter is a good metaphor for the spiritual question of Christmas.  Do we really have room in our lives for the limitless love that is known, among other names, as the Christ?

This question found its way into our house in the form of an empty box.  It was cleverly wrapped in paper from a Whole Foods grocery bag, with ribbon made from ripped strips of cloth.  It was made by our friend Molly DeVries, owner of Ambatalia Fabrics in Mill Valley.  Roberta was entranced as she was handed the box.  She said to Molly, “Your emptiness!  Thank you!”  Roberta was inspired to wrap empty boxes and name them with tags that indicated the precious but intangible gifts inside.

When I got home that day, she excitedly introduced me to the concept.  So we began making and wrapping empty boxes, and coming up with lines to put on the tags.  Our friend Leigh Markell came over and helped us.  Roberta made the gift cards in the style of her grandmother Cecilia, who used to glue a scrap of burlap onto the front of each one and adorn it with sisal cord and wooden beads in a unique pattern. That first week Roberta sold many of the boxes after worship at Sausalito Presbyterian, to raise funds for our church’s Action Against Hunger project that provides emergency food aid to people in famine-stricken areas of the world.

Here is a list of our tags, describing some of the priceless, pound-less gifts we can give and receive this season:

“This box contains:”

* Spare time
* The afterglow of 500 smiles
* A positive attitude
* Whatever you can imagine
* A ball of infinitesimally thin string which, if unrolled, will reach from you to the moon
* The egos of Jesus and Buddha
* All the nothing you ever wanted
* The laughter of 50 good jokes
* A scoop of wind from the top of Mt. Tamalpais
* A sigh of relief
* A groan of ecstasy
* A continuous round of applause for your accomplishments
* A secret memory
* A hint of your destiny
* The feeling Mother Teresa had when she served a destitute dying person in India
* An abandoned opinion 
* A bright idea
* An argument extinguisher – open in a relationship emergency and breathe the contents deeply
* A unique experience
* 200 UAU’s (universal adoration units)
* A “Wow, baby! You’re good!”
* It’s the little things….
* The knowledge that separation is only an illusion
* My emptiness which I give you, making room for you in my soul
* The memory of a baby’s touch
* A beginner’s mind
* Your creative spirit
* A hint of last night
* A new beginning
* The lightness you need to rise up to heavenly places
* A blend of: 25% kindness, 25% patience, 25% forgiveness, 20% hope, 5% brilliance – open in an emergency and breathe the contents deeply
* More oxygen and less CO2 – open after fulfilling your commitment to help end global warming
* Nothing that matters
* The silence between notes that makes music beautiful
* The sound of Buddha’s meditations
* The sound of Jesus resurrecting
* The weight of Jesus’ anger against his enemies
* What is left when I strip away all my illusions about who I am
* The essence of Rumi’s spiritual friend, Shams of Tabriz
* Enough oxygen to inflame your most precious passion
* The true meaning of Bob Dylan’s song lyrics
* The air from the horn of the big yellow taxi in Joni Mitchell’s song
* Nothing you can’t live without

May the emptiness of these boxes remind us to make space in our lives for the birth of the One who comes at Christmas, and at every other time when people share unconditional compassion with each other.

The Mysteries of Advent:

A Eucharistic Meditation


The mystery of the annunciation - her powerful sensation of the effect that the child growing within her would have on the world.

 
 

The mystery of the incarnation – her awareness that in the unseen dimension, there was celebration of the promise of peace that had come into the world in the form of her new baby.

   

The mystery of the separation – her faith in the process of spiritual maturation that her son underwent in adolescence, as he left his parents to pursue his destiny.

 
 

The mystery of the maturation – her trust in the fulfillment of her son’s mission in the world.

   

The mystery of the crucifixion – the spark of hope that remained in her through the horror of his death.

 
 

The mystery of the resurrection – her experience of the eternal nature of her son’s life and of her own.

   

The scripture says that “Mary kept all these things in her heart”. (Luke 2)

 

The mystery of Advent – a time of preparation, when we nurture the secret hope of harmony and kindness in a world rent by struggle and conflict.

 

The mystery of a secret hope that is not seen, but if we hope for it, we wait for it with patience, waiting and hoping for the transformation of the world through our compassionate intentions and actions.

 

May we keep all these things in our hearts as we bring our bodies and souls together in the sharing of the bread and the wine that Jesus offered to his disciples, and to everyone, regardless of background, belief, or non-belief. This meal is both a symbol and the reality to which the symbol points. Because by sharing it in spirit and in the flesh, we become what Jesus invoked in his last supper with his disciples. We manifest the kingdom of heaven on earth, a community of boundless love. Take and eat, take and drink, so that these mysteries may be completed within and among us.

 

(This last line is a paraphrase of the words of institution of the mass of the Eccesia Gnostica Mysteriorum in Palo Alto, whose bishop, Rosamonde Miller, has been an inspiration to me for the last 20 years.)
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PS: Check out these remarkable speeches from the past week:

 

Barack Obama's speech about religion and politics:
http://www.barackobama.com/media/call_to_renewal/

Jim Wallis' recent national radio address on faith and social justice:
http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics/2006/12/jim-wallis-we-need-greater-moral.html

Blown Away

The Christmas season begins with some news that reduces my potential shopping list by at least one item: a violent, apocalyptic video game for teenagers that is just coming on the market.  LEFT BEHIND: ETERNAL FORCES is the game version of the hugely successful "Left Behind" novels that sold over 50 million copies.  Like the books, the video game envisions death and torment for all who fail to become fundamentalist Christians.  Imagine kids glued to their gaming screens, blowing away people who don't accept Jesus as the only Lord and Savior!  Lots of video games are problematic, but this one is worse because it connects violence with religious chauvinism.  The people behind this game are eagerly awaiting the very events that are depicted in it.  It's a powerful tool for brainwashing children into hastening the destruction of the world.  What does such a game, released during the Christmas season, have to do with the birth of the Prince of Peace?

    (If you are interested in taking action to oppose the release of this nightmarish product, take a look at the website of The Center for Progressive Christianity:
    http://tcpc.org/news/item.cfm?news_id=56 )

I just received a book called LEFT AHEAD: The Beginning Times, which light-heartedly turns the LEFT BEHIND novels on their heads.  (If you'd like a look at it, I have a copy to lend in my office.)  The preface includes this quote from "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's  Court", in which Mark Twain writes in the voice of "The Boss":

"I could have given my own sect the preference and made everybody a Presbyterian without any trouble, but that would have been to affront a law of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions and features, and a man is only his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and besides I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty, and paralysis to human thought."

More than ever, we need to teach our kids that spiritual diversity is a gift from God.  Let's teach them that Jesus is indeed coming back this Christmas, as a little baby full of hope and promise for people of all religious persuasions.  Let's teach them that indeed there will be a rapture: Mary's embrace of the newborn Christ, and our embrace with each other.