Tis the Season

I’m in a particularly reflective mood this evening.  I did my soul work today.  I worshipped at church this morning.  I love the carols, the lights, the trappings of Christmas.  But there is also a place inside me that resists those things.  I resist for the very same reason I sometimes resist love.  I’ve been to love and it can sometimes be a painful place.  When I go to the center of my heart, my eternal home, it’s a beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking experience.

I rehearsed with the readers for the Christmas cantata after church.  I love the proclamations of Christmas, “Be not afraid.  For unto you is born this day a Savior which is Christ the Lord.”  As we rehearsed the lines, I made a mental note of just how rote these amazing messages sound to my ears.  “And they found him wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”  Astounding messages of hope and yet they fell flat to the earth upon hitting my eardrums.

As I write this, I listen to Amy Grant singing on the radio, “I need a silent night–a holy night–to hear an angel voice through the chaos and the noise.”

That’s what I’ve been looking for all day.  This business of living from my heart is a very delicate matter.  How do I hear the words of the Christmas story with my heart and not just my head?  How do I translate “the most wonderful time of the year” into something I can experience in a deeply personal way?

This Christmas must be, for me, a journey back to my eternal home–my heart.  I feel an opening–an expansion as I sit in stillness tonight.  I am not expecting this Christmas to be like any other.  Perhaps for the first time in my life, I understand that this thing called Christmas must be borne from within.  I don’t need to rush.  I just need to perceive the heart of God.  “Come to us–abide with us–Emmanuel.”  God with us.  God with us.

Today was a very difficult day.  Old thinking patterns–addictive, destructive tendencies–manifested.  And I asked God why.  The answer is coming now.  I am terrified of living from my heart.  It’s much easier to retreat into old patterns of self-obsession, fear and isolation.  But in this Christmas season, I realize it’s not just about Jesus coming to Earth 2000 years ago.  Christmas is about Christ being born in me.  In me.  And in you.

But in spite of my doubts and fears, I have lived from my heart today.  I met up with three friends in recovery.  I told them what it was like.  “It’s like there are energies, longings–some healthy and some destructive–whirling around me.  They call to me.  It’s hard to explain.  I want to run.  I want to hide.  I want to cover myself with layers of protective armor–to protect my heart.  I want to not feel vulnerable.  But I do… I feel so vulnerable.”

Speaking of vulnerable.  A baby born in a manger, surrounded my animals and feces, disease, the elements.  A woman–a simple woman–being told she will give birth to the Son of God.  It all just seems like too much.  There’s too much to take in.  Can my heart expand wide enough to take it in?

“Go tell it on the mountain.  Jesus Christ the Lord is born.”  Really?  Were my heart to expand to fully take that in, it might explode.

So for this Christmas season, my prayer is that I live more fully from my heart.  This can be difficult to do when I have become such a master of guarding it.  But this business of always living from my head is not very fulfilling.  It doesn’t feed me.  It doesn’t fill me up.

But just in the way a baby was born to become the Son of God so can these tiny seedlings of hope be born inside me.  Make it so Lord, make it so.