Skip to main content

Merry Christmas

 


Christmas  Love 2020


Love. We're all here, at this perceived threshold of Eden, learning about love. 


Love’s Beginning: 

Initially we fall in love with a projected self-image of perfection and the projected self-image of perfection in the other. But that's not really love, that's Narcissus adoring his reflection on the lake's surface. Real love continually expands to include the messy, awkward, unpredictable, unresolved, lived experience of individuation within systems of disrupted belonging. 


Love’s Ripening:  

Our cultural preoccupation with the earliest stage of love is a kind of disconnection. It's visible in our branded self image on Instagram and how we are encouraged to shut down emotionally. It's visible in our schools and prison systems, in our corporate capitalism and politics, in how we treat those in need and how we deify beauty and youth. And unfortunately this superficiality of love can be most visible during the holiday season, where, not surprisingly, gifts wrapped in commercial trappings form the bulk of our holiday cheer. But here, during the darkest time of the year, the miracle of light and the symbolic birth of Christ is celebrated and all too often people/we offer gifts to everyone except the Christ. (Here I am not talking about Christ as a person but Christ as the light of life living consciously.) 


A gift offered to Christ is a hand extended in welcome, kindness in action, compassion, a spacious loving embrace that keeps on expanding its radiance beyond appearances.  Love forces us to grow.


That's love in maturation.


Love’s Fruit:

As humans we have an opportunity to develop through the stages of love. Real maturity is not a byproduct of physical growth but courageous unfolding. We, as a people, are a bit stunted in our development, still grasping for a picture perfect kind of love, dysfunctional and superficial, limited and limiting. 


But the holiday season offers a captivating image of a light birthed in a manger of forgetfulness, bright enough to inspire the world to love. I am heartened by the Christ metaphor across the seasons.  It reminds me that growing and maturing will require each of us to give birth to the Christ (the light of life loving/living consciously) knowing that love may travel from manger to cross to cave to light and back again. I believe it’s our calling to mature in love, to flex our capacity to see the light within ourselves, others, trees, Trump and the whole grand kerfuffle.  


In so doing we offer our gift of love, adoration and welcome to LIFE as life. 


Christmas:

So yes we exchange gifts, but if we look and feel just beneath the surface, we are likely to see a great deal of LOVE. Why? Because giving is the fracture through which the light shines through. Open the cupboard and share what you have. Whether it results in a Maccabean miracle of light, wise men traveling atop camels bearing frankincense and myrrh, a stranger's smile, a handmade gift from a loved one or a baby swaddled in a manger.  Just give.


Everything is whispering, "I see your beauty. It is fearsome to be a human and to love through this messy, vulnerable, mysterious experience of life. You are not alone. I am with you and I will be with you unto the end, hand-in-hand we mature as love."


Merry Christmas to you, to all that is messy and unresolved, unknown and vulnerable.  May your season by bright.



All Love,

Angelina

Comments

Post a Comment

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
4 comments
Read more

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
7 comments
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more