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A Pale Blue Dot

“Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

These are words spoken by astrophysicist Carl Sagan in early 1990 – when for the first time in our history human beings were able to look at a picture of Earth taken from the boundaries of the Solar system. From that perspective – from the perspective of Voyager space probe, which at the time when the picture was taken was just passing Pluto, some 3.7 billion miles away from here – the Earth seems like a tiny blue-whitish dot.

Sagan’s words are testimony of a true spiritual-religious experience of a modern human being – a genuine materialist, who nevertheless was able to perceive something magnificent, something precious, something divine in this grey speck of cosmic dust.

And it is perhaps only out of such grandiose cosmic perspective, away from Earth – away from Ourselves that we can begin to grasp the true dimension, the true meaning of Christmas.

Christ – the Creative Word of God – the Logos, the archetype of the entire creation, through whom everything that is came into being, has chosen the Earthly Body in which he would dwell – here among us; saints and sinners, heroes and cowards, kings and peasants, creators and destroyers – on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

So that we can become who we truly are.

So that we can be free from ourselves.

 

 

Editor’s Note: For reflections on the Christmas season as it is celebrated in the Christian Community, please go here. If you are looking for a children’s story for this time of year, you can find one here.

 

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The Way to Bethlehem

How many ways lead to Bethlehem?

There is the one taken by Joseph and pregnant Mary, from Nazareth – the path known from the Gospel of Luke.

There is the one that led the Three Wise Men from the East, who followed the star of the New Born King – the path known from the Gospel of Matthew.

There is, however, another one; the path inscribed in the relics of the genesis of cosmos and Man; the path, which led the Creative Spirit of God – the Logos – through the eons of the becoming of the world.

 It leads through the Mineral Kingdom – through stones, crystals, shells and bones – The Skeleton of the created world.

 It leads through the Kingdom of Living Plants – through roots, leafs, flowers, fruits and seeds – The Breath of creation.

 It leads through the Animal Kingdom – our instincts and desires – spread out around us, incarnated in animal forms and species – The Anima, the soul of the created world.

It leads through the Kingdom of Man – this damaged Crown of Creation, so painfully aware of its downfall, stretched between the darkness of earthly necessities and the blinding light of heavenly ideals.

The cosmic Path – The path of becoming – finds its fulfillment in the birth of Christ, in Bethlehem. There a child was born, who was destined to become a temple in which the Creative Word of God could incarnate and become one of us. In which God became Human.

Advent is the time of the year when we all are on the way to Bethlehem. We are traveling through the landscapes of four Sundays, gradually building the consciousness that may allow us to experience the Mystery of Christmas and to grasp the fact that He who entered the stream of time on the First Christmas is forever connected with the cycles of life of Earth.

That every year His gentle light – this same light which shone in the eyes of the child born in Bethlehem – is born in the darkness of Earth, deep within the Being of Man.

May we follow this journey wakefully – together, as the community of Christians – The People of the Way, and prepare a space for the birth of His gentle light in our midst, despite the constant pressure of the growing darkness.

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Love, the Rose, is on the Way

At Advent the earth is bare; yet the furrows of earth can rejoice, so says the carol, “People look East,” because a seed, a rose seed, has already been planted in them. The furrows of earth are encouraged to offer their strength to nourish the seed, to ground it, so that it may take root, and eventually grow and blossom into a rose.

Our hearts can be like the fields in winter – seeming barren, furrowed open with suffering. Yet the suffering heart already contains in it the seed of growth. We simply need to tend it in patient endurance. The rose of love, of compassion, grows out of our heart’s winter.

That is because Christ, Love’s Rose, has already placed himself as a seed into the earth, and into the ground of our hearts. We need only offer him our enduring strength, and in time he will blossom in our hearts.

Roses of course come with thorns. Before Christ fully blossoms into manhood, the thorns of Herod’s fear and envy will cause the death of innocent children and the rending of parents’ hearts. The furrowed fields of suffering are watered with tears.

The bare furrows of Advent, the stirring seed of Christmas, the thorns of Epiphany, each is a step along the way toward the full blossoming of the Rose of Love at Easter, once in history, eternally within the earth and ever again in our hearts.

 

To read more about how Advent is celebrated in the Christian Community, click here. For a story that you can share with your children around this time, click here.

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