This is the day our God and King became our Brother, our Father, our guiding Spirit. Love is about being together. Christmas is the day we celebrate the joining of God and humanity in Jesus the Messiah.
So that we may know Him better, and more, He became one of us. Unlike any other creature, we do not merely exist; we must choose whether or not to become who we are intended to be. Jesus shows us how to be human.
And, like all humans, our King and Savior came to us as a child.
"Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it." --Mark 10:14-15.
Thanks for sharing. How do I think about this? While Jesus was probably a real person, as the Savior he is a creature of the myth-world. He exists in the Dreamtime (to use the Australian term for it) which is not a separate time in the normal sense but is the universal place that underlies the operation of the normal, experienced human world. Like the laws of physics exist in the Dreamtime, but it's not just physics there, it's metaphysics too.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I say this is because I want to suggest that this is not just some historical event that happened once and never will happen in the present, or that never happened for the hundreds of thousands of years earlier while humans lived on Earth. The event we're talking about is a universal one, taking place outside of human, historical time, and it underlies the incarnation of every moment out of what we so casually call "God".
Though at the same time it is this particular example, this actual historical time. It's like the Mountains and Waters Sutra, a speech given by the Zen monk Dogen. You think he's talking about "mountains" as this symbol for abstract concept, and then suddenly he's back to talking about actual mountains, and then wait - is he talking about mountains as symbols again? Isn't it great when religions embrace paradox and the tension between the myth-world and that of mundane reality? :) It's so boring when people collapse into simple-minded dogma or atheism. ;)
The world is as sharp as a knife. You got to stay on the edge, or you'll fall right off. ;)
To some degree, I think we agree.
ReplyDeleteGod is eternal, which means He exists outside of time. Time is a dimension of space, of matter, so what is not matter is not bound by time. Jesus is a paradox in many ways, including that He is both eternal and truly human.
Humans are beings of both matter and soul. We believe that the spirit may leave the body, but a person cannot be whole without the body. Both the physical and spiritual elements of our being are essential to who we are. God says He loved us even before we were born, which raises questions about our own beginnings. But, in any case, we are infinite beings. While an eternal being is beyond time, an infinite being is within time but will not perish.
Another relevant paradox is the Trinity. We say that God is love. Love is a relationship between multiple beings. It means togetherness. So only a being that is multiple beings can be love. God doesn't try to love. Our love reflects His very being... and, to a lesser extent, ours, since we were created in God's image.
Yes, I can agree with that. I'm still figuring all this stuff out, anyway. Anyway, games... :)
ReplyDelete