What did the mystic say to the hot dog seller?

Make me one with everything

Perhaps being at one with all things is the heart of the Christmas mystery

For the past 10 years rituals have become increasingly important to me and my family. We celebrate several throughout the year and are always seeking to create new ones, helping us to be grounded in the cycle of life. Below I have described some of the advent rituals that we do.

Each evening we do the following:
1. We light the advent candles
2. We say an Advent liturgy together, the third week is written below and the response includes actions

God our life and our breath.
We witness your coming
In the humility of service,
The poor and marginalized,
The new born child,
In the heart of each person we meet,
And in the beauty of all creation.

We watch, wait and witness the mystery of your conception in us,
(The response)
We are waiting
We are watching
We are witnessing

3. We read a chapter from the Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
4. Advent Calendar – One of us receives a present from the advent calendar and reads out the meditation for the day. (10 years ago I created two big stars with 24 hooks on in which we hang small gifts and a meditation)

Other rituals used throughout the season include:
Winter Solstice – We mark this event with friends. We celebrate the start of a new solar year with fire, lanterns, yule log, eating, drinking and singing around the Christmas tree
Love Lists – An idea I picked up last year from Richard Louv in ‘The web of life’. This is a simple idea where we write love lists for each other which is a list of 5-10 things that we love and have appreciated about the other during the last year. We read them out to each other on Christmas Eve.

Does Jesus believe in your god, my god or our god?
Which version of God does he believe in or follow?
He didn’t seem to believe in the god of the Pharisees
He didn’t believe in the god of the Old Testament
He doesn’t believe in a patriarchal god or a dualistic god
He didn’t believe in a top-down god
He didn’t believe in a god out there
He didn’t believe in a distant or separate god
Would he believe in the God that many people worship today?

He appeared not to be interested in the finer aspects of the law
But moved people from an exterior code of conduct
To an internal consciousness and responsibility
He dumped dogma
He moved us from the be-liefs to the be-attitudes
He didn’t promote a god who is set apart
But a god who can be with me, in me, part of me
Be at-one with me

Many speak of the spiritual exploration as a journey – where the destination is unimportant, but the journey to the destination fosters growth. I often think this is the same as when we look forward to something like a holiday (Christmas springs to mind) – the build up, the planning and the anticipation can be more fulfilling then the actual encounter.

T.S Elliot thinks so…

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

Are we on a road to nowhere or are we now here?

I have a confession – I don’t believe in the Jesus that I once believed in. Over the years I have rid myself of many values and beliefs or ‘Be-lies.’ Belief systems and principles do nothing to change us. Often they have been fabricated from a text whipped out of context, culture and common sense.

Here are some of the belies I have dumped or trying to dump

1. Be humble, be meek, be nice (meaning be passive and obedient)
2. Do nothing on the Sabbath apart from go to church (church becomes so busy)
3. Work hard all the time for God (Don’t play or enjoy yourself – people to be saved!)
4. People who go to church are better then those who don’t (creating self-righteousness)
5. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect (don’t make a mistake / remain guilty!)
6. Be under authority – (Always answer to a parent and remain a child!)
7. Don’t get angry (Not in an aggressive way, or in public – at home is OK!)
8. Be a good witness (God is watching you and will judge you for your faults)
9. Jesus always answers prayer (take your pick, now, not yet, future – he knows best)
10. Deny yourself and take up your cross – (worm theology – you are nothing!)
11. God will always protect you (But what will he protect me from?)
12. Dualism – (the original sin in my view – be separate!)
13. Keep repenting of all your dreadful sins (you are bad and don’t forget it!)
14. Children are resilient – don’t spare the rod!! (Treat them how you like)
15. Original sin (You are bad to the core and until you realize that, you are lost)
16. God is male (Creating patriarchy and male centered theology)
17. The Bible is infallible (Creating Bible believing Christians – or the parts they like!)

I have had to kill those beliefs, but they don’t die easily, they cling on deeply

But re- member many of us once believed…
• The world was flat
• Women are not equal to men (Some still do!)
• Divorce was a sin
• Children are born in sin and need the devil beaten out of them
• Christians shouldn’t shop on a Sunday
• Good Christians shouldn’t drink alcohol
• The King James Version of the Bible is the one and only correct version of scripture.

Holding onto certain beliefs creates a stuck ness, which stops us moving and hinders creativity, feeling and passion. Static belief creates machines, systems, institutions, clones, but not humans.

Jesus didn’t ask us to believe in him he asked us to follow him. Followers are always on the move internally and externally – I’m not even sure if Jesus would believe in Jesus anymore!

If we want to do what Jesus wants – perhaps we need to ditch the old beliefs and start moving and following.

Mary and Joseph were on the road to somewhere
They had a physical destination –
But did they have any plans for the future?
Would they keep safe on the trip?
Would the donkey manage the journey?
Where would they stay when they arrived?
Would the child survive the birth?
Would Mary survive the birth?
Would Joseph survive the birth?
What next?
Where next?
Who knows?

During her nine months of pregnancy – Mary must have pondered and wondered about so many things. She may have had many doubts and anxieties about her baby and how the whole thing happened – Why her? Tensions may have arisen between her and Joseph and others in the community where she lived. If she had doubts, we can only imagine what others may have thought.

Perhaps she had to endure teasing and bullying from friends and others in her neighborhood. ‘Who does she think she is, does she think she is better then us? Having the son of God – is she mad? Visited by an angel – great story to cover up having sex before marriage! She should have been more careful. Her parents should throw her out – the shame of it’

The religious, priests and institutions and those in power may have found the whole thing tasteless, disgusting, and at worst blasphemy, deserving punishment.

“Who does this poor girl think she is? Visited by God, we are his mouthpiece not this little slut, she’s nothing but a whore! Let’s hope she loses the child. We can’t let her usurp our power.”

God waits on human history and suffers while she waits – Meister Eckhart

In true agnostic language – I don’t know, and to me it doesn’t matter.
What matters to me is matter.
Tradition, cycle and rhthyms and a sense of belonging

I love Christmas, I love the memories it conjures up, I love the traditions, I love the carols, mince pies, family gatherings, giving and receiving presents and I love the season. I love the romance of it, the feelings it provokes the coziness, the tree, candles and log fires, the snow, the wait, the excitement, the games and the joy. The magic!!

Every year we have the same rituals, the same cycle and also invent new family rituals, building memories and traditions that remind us and re-member us as a human, a family and community.

I am also aware that for many, Christmas is an awful time. It recalls and re-members difficult memories and painful situations, family arguments and separations and they hate the whole season and festivities. So in a different way, Christmas matters, it earth’s difficult feelings and memories.

How ever we perceive Christmas, believing in the virgin birth doesn’t matter!

Or does it?

‘I know the truth’ or ‘I know God’

Even scarier to an agnostic is a group who say ‘We know the truth’ / ‘We know God’

To say I know God, reduces god to a god made in our image.
People who claim to know the truth want to wrap Jesus up in swaddling clothes or keep him pinned to a cross. It’s safer!

To claim you know the truth immediately prevents you from knowing any further truth.

Meister Eckhart says…
‘If thou lovest God as God, as spirit, as Person or as image that must all go. Love him as he is: a not-God, a non-spirit, a not-Person, a not-image.’ In short, whatever you say God is, you must also say God is not, and if you don’t you risk nothing less than idolatry’

‘I pray God to rid me of god’

‘The highest and loftiest thing that one can let go of is to let go of God for the sake of God’

‘God’s exit is her entrance’

And Mark Vernon says..
The strongest Bible-believing Christians are probably the ones building the great idols of our day

We know almost nothing about the childhood, adolescent and young adult years of Jesus. The Bible just leaves a blank, a gap, leaving us agnostically challenged. So since we don’t know, we can only wonder and guess at what happened. My guess is that his childhood was full of nurturing, tenderness, joy, empathy, patience, attention, and love. What we learn in childhood we act out in adulthood.

So what did he learn – my guess is the following

1. Don’t be afraid of men in authority / challenge them
2. Respect all people, women, children and men
3. Questioning is good –Question the accepted truth/ the dogma of the day/ patriarchy / injustice / bullies / self.
4. Big people don’t have all the answers / they are not always right
5. Life is about more than what we see
6. Be who your are / love self / have faith in self
7. Age doesn’t guarantee wisdom
8. What you see and what you hear is not always the truth
9. Treat others the way you want to be treated
10. Be tender, be loving, be kind, be thankful, be forgiving
11. Be empathic/ think of the other
12. Be fully integrated and emotionally intelligent.
13. Our lives are not just for ourselves.
14. Be authentic – be real / be direct
15. Be fair and speak out about injustice

Clearly Jesus held the child and childhood in high regard and linked this as the key to entering the kingdom of heaven.