Tag Archives: spiritual

Join the Magi – Embrace the Sublime

Often the Christmas story is left unfinished. We usually stop right after the three Wise Men offer their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the newborn Child. The part we tend to skip over is the Slaughter of the Innocents. This massacre of all boys two years and younger in and around Bethlehem is a horrific part of the story that doesn’t easily fit into the joy of Christmas.

The story goes like this: Following a rising star in the hopes of paying homage to the Child, the Wise Men from the East first stop to pay their respects to King Herod in Jerusalem. They ask if he knows where the infant king is. When King Herod hears about the Child, he is perturbed by the prospect of a competitor king, as are the chief priests and scribes. Herod asks the priests if they have any idea where the Child is to be born. They cite from the prophecies that the birthplace is Bethlehem. Herod then privately summons the Wise Men and sends them onto Bethlehem, telling them to “Go and find out all about the Child, and when you have found him, let me know, so that I too may go and pay him homage.”

After finding the Child and offering their gifts, the Wise Men are warned by an angel in their dreams not to return to King Herod, but to return home by another road. When Herod learns of their surreptitious departure, he is furious and decrees that all male infants must be indiscriminately killed, hoping that the Child will be among them. Meanwhile, an angel appears to Joseph in his sleep, telling him to leave immediately with Mary and Jesus to Egypt. The three become refugees and are spared from the experience of the slaughter.

The Slaughter of the Innocents is crucial to our understanding of the entire Christmas message. Once a vulnerable child full of Light and Love is born, a powerful leader feels threatened and wants him murdered. His evil desire extends not only to the child, but to many innocent children. What might this story reveal to us today?

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Playing Christmas

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The children are running around like crazy while mothers sort through white robes and gold-tinsel halos to dress the choir of angels. Ayfer, the director of the Christmas play, is showing Mary how to knee, stand up and walk backwards without tripping over her blue veil. Somebody has decided to give the boys who are playing the shepherds each a long stick as shepherds’ hooks. This is a bad idea. Four boys waiting around to be scared by an angel plus four long sticks only mean trouble. They are twirling and jabbing and thrusting the sticks at each other. I go over and tell them (in basic and bad German) that the sticks are not toys. They calm down for about two minutes and then jump up again.

We are rehearsing for the second annual Weihnachtstheater performed by the Sunday school children of St. Jesaja Syrian Orthodox Church in Gronau, Germany. Ayfer, who is a tiny yet formidable presence, lassoed me into helping with the Sunday school about two years ago. My goal was to support the mothers, marginalized within their own community, who try to offer the children a respite from the two-hour Sunday mass every week.

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A Christmas Story of Big Love

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I want to write about Love. Big Love. Where do I start? And how can I possibly describe an experience that great visionaries throughout the centuries have attempted to capture in words, art, mystic prayers or song? Plato to Dante, Mozart to the Beatles, Rumi to Julian of Norwich, Bronze-age sculptors to Cezanne – they have all attempted to distill the spiritual essence of Love into matter.

Listen. Here is the Christian Christmas Story: The Higher Self and Transpersonal Will descended upon a young woman. She was frightened but, nevertheless, chose to accept this synthesis of Love and Will, nurture it, and give it birth. She gave birth to this Immense Love called God, embodied as a tiny, vulnerable child born in an abandoned cave. Choirs of angels sang for Joy!

We may wonder today where is this Big Love? How might we give birth to it? A question I often hear is: How can God let innocent children die and cause so much suffering all over the world? I believe that this question needs rewording. How can we let innocent children die, and how can we cause so much suffering in the world? The Big Love is there, everywhere, all around us, ready to fill us, waiting to overwhelm us. And yet, as we readily, hungrily grasp for it, we only too often transform this Love into something less desirable but just as powerful.

Like the Child born in Bethlehem, we too are born full of Immense Love. This love can never be at fault and is always joyful. But later, the choices of what or how we love can lead us and others towards suffering. For example, take a mother’s love for her child. Assagioli describes how initially, the mother joyfully is devoted to the protection and care of her infant. Mothers of small children must use their good will for self-denial in order to direct their energies towards their young ones. But once the child becomes older and independent, this devotion and sacrifice by the mother can turn into attachment and possessiveness.

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