If you want, light the 4th candle on the Advent wreath. 

From the Bible:  

 

Today is the winter solstice.  In Maine, it often means, "It's just beginning ... the worst is yet to come!" However, it  also means that each day has a little more light until spring, and we celebrate the light coming back into our part of the world.

Christmas is all about welcoming the inner light. It’s a reminder to open our hearts more every day to the Divine Light.

It’s not always easy to remember that in the midst of a Christmas season that is often hectic and stressful. It  can also be a time that brings to mind sad or unhappy Christmases of the past.

Christmas Day, 1995, was the worst Christmas of my life. And it was the one that brought me a great gift.  I  spent that Christmas morning in the hospital with my Dad dying. He had taken ill suddenly two days before Christmas and could not live more than another day or so.  He complained of not having enough pain medication, so we went out to tell the nurse. As we walked back into the room, he took his last breath.

I spent the rest of Christmas Day with my brother planning the funeral. I sat up alone late that night looking at the tree.
I was very angry at God for letting my father die on Christmas Day. To me, Christmas was a time to celebrate a birth. Now, Christmas Day would always be the anniversary of Dad’s death.

I remembered that  my seminar professor, the Rev. George Dole once said that every death is an opportunity for a new birth.  This is especially true when one's final parent has died.  It is a time to discover new parts of ourselves that are born.

With Dad’s death, there was a part of me that was being born. A me on the earth with no parents. Now I was no longer the generation of children with parents. I was the generation of the parents; of the adults. I  used to complain a lot about the ways my family celebrated Christmas. But now, I had nothing to complain about – I could make Christmas whatever I wanted it to be. I could accept that I am fully in charge of my life and my decisions.

Every Christmas since then has been not a reminder of Dad’s death, but rather a celebration of part of myself being born. I’m not sure what it is that was birthed. But it had something to do with realizing that I didn’t need to keep honoring Christmas the way my parents had, or the way my society did. It could be a time for rebirthing of my own inner light.

Swedenborg tells us that the birth of Christ was about Light coming into the world:

Now, because God came down, and because he is the design … there was no other way for him to become an actual human being than to be conceived, to be carried in the womb, to be born, to be brought up, and to acquire more and more knowledge so as to become intelligent and wise.

The story of Mary and Joseph finding a place to stay in a stable is the story of each of us finding the place in our hearts where the Divine dwells. The story of Mary giving birth to a child who was conceived by both a human and the Divine is the story of each of us finding the place inside where we are one with the Divine.  The story of the baby born two thousand years ago is the story of our inner rebirth in Spirit. The essence of the birth of Jesus is not that he came to teach something or to do something. He came to BE something. He came BE peace and love. The whole point of an “incarnation” was recognizing that every life is birthing the Christ. Birthing Christ is not about what we accomplish; it’s about who we are and how we live.

Christ WAS the light, just as we all are called to BE the light of the world.

Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that we need to BE the Peace we want to see in the world. He wrote:
Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don’t have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to leave our city or even our neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child. Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy.
… We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment. [p. 7-8, Peace in Every Step.]

The mystical story of Christmas is about how the baby God is born in every heart. It’s about our willingness to find a place for the child to be birthed. It is about our willingness to let that Divine Light shine forth in every moment. It is about each step being another step towards peace in ourselves and in the world.

What is being born in you this season? What are you being called to birth? How can the days ahead be a time for you to honor this birth?


 

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