Dec. 23, 2020: The Divine Child

Downtown Springfield, KY in snow, on the left, our erstwhile Airbnb, a “failure” of sorts, but a big lesson!

Today, Willow came to visit and we found a bag of Playmobil toys that were in with our holiday stuff. Some years ago, it was a Nativity scene. I made an effort to explain the Christmas story to Willow, but since she attended a Jewish preschool and her mom is atheist, she got Jesus mixed up with Moses and talked about how he was floating in the river and the King tried to kill him. I looked but could not find any baby Jesus nor anything that resembled Mary. There were lots of animals and even a Santa Claus.

Looking everywhere for Jesus is sort of the liberal Christian story. Finally, we realize that whatever we needed to learn from the Christmas myth and the parables of Jesus are already within us. In fact, not only are they not outside of us, we will never find them, anywhere, not in things, not in people, not in places. The Divine Child lives within us as Truth, as innocence, as hope.

That’s why Sophia Lyon Fahs, a UU educator who became a Minister in her mid-seventies (she lived to be 101), said, “Every night a child is born is a holy night.”

I know not every UU finds prayer helpful. Those of us who pray don’t appeal to a personal God who is listening to our petitions. But praying is a way to distill our deepest longings, to focus our grief, to turn over control of life, and let things unfold as they will. It is a way of honoring our divine child and our interiority, much like listening to our dreams, and tapping into archetypal themes. In that regard, the Christ child story is very much a part of the collective wisdom.

The value of the Christmas story is that we can always believe that something good will happen, something is always being born, humans will continue to persevere and humanity will prevail

I look forward to seeing you on Christmas Eve…. and beyond! With Love, Cynthia

And here’s the picture from today’s Advent calendar!