Skip to main content

A little holiday perspective

Driving to work last week I saw two signs in a nearby yard.  The first read, "Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to GOD except through HIM."  
The next sign situated in the same yard along the walkway, read, "NO TRESPASSING. KEEP OUT."
Of course, after I laughed aloud at the ironic signage, I was struck by what it unwittingly revealed. All too often religions espouse a monopoly on what is "right" or just and cling to it with closed fists, minds and hearts.  In one yard, two signs provided a perfect metaphor for how the story of Christmas, with it's little family looking for a place to rest and deliver a child, is all to often overlooked.  
There is no room at the Inn. 
"NO TRESPASSING. KEEP OUT!"  
How often do our beliefs, ideologies and misplaced moralities ward off travelers who are merely looking for refuge or safe harbor?  How often do we think ourselves in possession of the truth and find our minds and hearts hardened toward an open embrace?  This year has challenged many of us, politically, socially and personally.  We have watched our collective shadow parade across the social screen with all the pomp and circumstance of a bad reality television show (is there another kind?).  We have retrenched and barricaded ourselves behind values, platitudes and ideals, while climate change, environmental degradation, racism, misogyny, prejudice and greed run amuck.  All of this brought to mind Carl Sagan's words following the Voyager expedition forty years ago to photograph the planets of our outer solar system.  At the very end of the expedition, just as NASA had decided to turn off the cameras to conserve energy, Sagan convinced the powers that be to turn the cameras around and photograph the Earth from that great distance.  The resulting grainy image revealed a small, pale blue dot in a ray of solar light.
 Of this blue dot, Sagan wrote:
"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. 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.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
With this in mind perhaps we will reconsider our sharp adherence to beliefs, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Non-dual, Agnostic, Atheist, Republican, Democratic and the list goes on.  Let's reconsider this KEEP OUT! I'M RIGHT,YOU'RE WRONG model of self preservation.  Conceivably, we could open our hearts and minds and make room in the inn for a new vision of humanity.  One that welcomes and stewards the living things and preserves this miraculous pale blue dot, spinning through the vastness of space. Our common home.  

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Kwaanza, Shab e Yalda, Solstice or whatever your family celebrates, with the deepest meaning and spirit of the season.  

Comments

Jennifer said…
As always, well said my dear. You've hit the nail on the head! In the words of Baha'u'llah, "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." I think you will like this quote from the Baha'i sacred writings: http://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/gleanings-writings-bahaullah/#f=f7-718
Angelina Lloyd said…
Oh thank you sis! Beautiful quote.

Popular posts from this blog

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the

Inosculation

I learned a new word today!  Imagine my joy to discover "inosculation", to taste the word for the first time, rolling it around the soft interior of my mouth before speaking it aloud with a shiver of delight.   I am a lover of trees, not metaphorically but literally.  I linger beneath their branches. I tear up beside their solid beauty and revel in the rough, steady touch of bark beneath a wide sky.  I love learning anything new about my beloveds and today I discovered inosculation , which literally means to unite intimately. Sometimes trees grow so close to each other that they rub up against one another.  The friction of bark on bark wears away at the hard outer layers, revealing a tender, vulnerable, embryonic layer of life.  If they stay in contact through the friction they will join together, uniting into a third thing....  a tree union.  In such cases the trees share their life force with one another.  I can think of no more perfect metaphor for beloved companions.   Th

a story recently shared by a friend

 Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others, including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that island would sink, so all constructed boats and left. Except for Love. Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to hold out until the last possible moment. When the island had almost sunk, Love decided to ask for help. Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, "Richness, can you take me with you?" Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you." Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel. "Vanity, please help me!" "I can't help you, Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat," Vanity answered. Sadness was close by so Love asked, "Sadness, let me go with you." "Oh . . . Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself