Spirit
of Giving
“To see
Jesus as the endpoint of our evolving puts him in a cosmic panorama.
The star of the magi points not only to the manger in which a special
child lies, but also to the birth of our own endpoint and
fulfillment...Christmas has this spirit of evolved humanity,
symbolized in the gifts we give each other and the general atmosphere
of kindness and well-being. In this sense, the good cheer of
Christmas is not superficial but is meant to be a taste of what we
could have all the time, if only we evolved further.”
Thomas
Moore (The Soul of Christmas, p.57)
In a gathering of friends
last night, the conversation turned to Christmas and shopping for
gifts. My friend, Ellen, recounted a conversation with an
acquaintance from the Netherlands, who told her that in his culture they were all done
with gift-giving by December 5. He said that they
separated the birth of Jesus from the gift-giving of Santa Claus. In
the USA, it seems that these two events have melted together, and
that one, the Santa part, has become more important. In
fact, I went to an exhibit at the Birmingham Museum of Art last
weekend called, “Embodying Faith: Imagining Jesus Through the
Ages.” In the collection were traditional Renaissance oil paintings
of mother and child, paintings of Jesus as a white man with blonde
hair, and folk-art paintings of Jesus as a black man. At the
door, on the way out, there was a big painting of Santa Claus! It was
a bit jarring.
I like to think of Jesus
as the archetypal, fully-evolved human being. He did his best to
teach what he knew of godly love, and he put all the attributes of that
love into practice. He taught by telling stories about good people
and how they treated one another; how they were generous, forgiving
and kind. How they shared what they had, and how they raised one
another “from the dead” with their love. I wonder how many times
you have been raised from the dead by the kindness of others? My list
would be long. Most of us are still in the infancy of our evolution.
I am, for sure. We haven't yet connected the dots between kindness,
generosity and survival. We haven't realized that there are ways to
solve problems that don't involve powering-over each other. We don't
yet understand that we are here to experience divinity in the form of
human love—and to extend that love to others. Jesus did. The rest
of us have a long way to go.
Christmas is a season of
hope—with the solstice falling just before, when the earth shifts
on it's axis, and the light slowly returns to the northern
hemisphere. We get caught up in the collective energy of shopping and
gift-buying, and sometimes we lose our generous spirit in the snarled
traffic and irritable crowds. But it must be said that we are willing
to sacrifice time, energy and our own peace of mind to find just the
right gifts for the people we love. In the words of Thomas Moore,
“The true meaning of Christmas is not some abstract theological
belief; it's simply the spirit of giving and joy in communal life.”
In the Spirit,
Jane
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