CHRISTMAS IS UNIVERSAL

 The Essence of God is birthing.  (Meister Eckhart)

   In a very real sense, Christmas has been with us for 13.8 billion years.

   The Christ part of Christmas dawned when God birthed forth the tiny energy dot that flared into the entire visible universe.  At that sacred moment, God entered into the newborn universe, making it the loving union between Divinity and all creation--the union that is called Christ, or the Christ Reality.    

   Every star, planet and galaxy is a visible expression of God's loving, self-giving union with creation--of the universal Christ Reality.  "The heavens declare the glory of God!" (Psalm 19:1)  God, our lovingly creative, birthing Parent, is the Foundation of all that exists. 

   Here on earth, God is the Foundation of our life and our faith.  We humans, along with every bit of soil, the air we breathe, all water, plants, fish and animals--all are wondrous expressions of God's loving union with creation, and of the now global Christ Reality. All the earth is worthy of our greatest care and respect.  

   From the dawn of human life, people have been conscious of the Divine among them and within them.  Their consciousness dawned slowly and evolved little by little, helped immensely by God's revelation of him/herself and of the Way we humans should live, love and believe.  When we had evolved enough to satisfy God, when time as we count it here on earth had reached the right moment, God's overflowing love birthed forth Jesus.

   When Jesus was born, the universal Christ Reality was already 13.8 billion years old.  He took into himself the fullness of the universal Christ Reality, from its beginning 13.8 billion years ago, to the present time, and forward to the end of the universe in unfathomable time.

   So Christmas marks two birthdays:  the birthday of the universe and universal Christ Reality, and the birthday of Jesus.  In Jesus, the Christ, both birthdays are lovingly united into one, creative, healing, and world-transforming union.

   Just as God, our Parent, is the Foundation of our life and faith, Jesus, our brother, is the center of our life and faith.  With and in Jesus we stand in the center and look backward through all time, and forward from the present moment into the future.  And with the clarity of God's love and our faith, we see the Way/way, the Truth/truth and the Life/life for ourselves and the world.

   Christmas is a new breakthrough of Divinity into the world, a new union of Divinity and creation in the person of Jesus, a union that calls and empowers us anew to live and strive toward global union and wholeness in love.  The Way will lead us to the Cross and to our Easter resurrection, and to a quantum leap of Spirit at Pentecost.  

   

   At Earth's Christmas, the whole universe rejoices, and all Earth sings its joyful gratitude and praise to God for the wondrous gift of our human-Divine brother, God, Emmanuel, now with us in our own form, living in our terms and situations, showing us with glorious light the way to be human, to fulfill our call and empowerment to move the world forward, step by step toward the wholeness in love that is the prelude to the full wholeness and love we will live with Jesus in eternity.

A blessed and joyful Christmas to all