I always feel like I haven't done the reading to claim many identifications or titles that feel right. But in this season where darkness is never far away, and we huddle together with our small lights against the cold (at least in the northern half of the world), I feel that "Christian mystic" best describes where I'm at spiritually. The literalist interpretations of first-century Judaea conjured by servants of empire and addicts to human trafficking don't feel right. I'm not ready, though, to hand-wave away Jesus as merely part of a syncretic story, bound as that story as we tell it may be to that of the winter solstice as honored in the oldest ways or to triumphant child god stories younger than the seasons but older than Christianity.
I am reckoning with the incomprehensible otherness of God. I will not and do not desire to contain it in my limited understanding, but I can commune and connect to it, for moments, in glimpses. I can let the old wonder and awe from the days when we were never sure that the next spring was promised inform how I hold the legend of a child born to move us along toward a day when "every sad thing is going to come untrue", as Tolkien said. I can let the celebrations of nature and the season ground me in my body and the world around me, even as I look to engage with things ethereal.
I can recognize the oneness of the ethereal and the tangible and neither let the many valuable lessons of the Enlightenment nor ancient Gnostic wisdom separate us from what Morrison reminded us of through wise woman Baby Suggs. "In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass." Many strains of Christianity teach us to hate our flesh. It constantly seeks to betray us, to ground us in this world and separate us from God. It constantly forces us to choose.
It seems to me that this choice is a construction. I am not well versed enough in theology to argue about which church fathers or sects agree with me, so while I welcome education, this will probably not be the site of a particularly interesting or useful apologetic debate. But I see an unhealthy disconnection from the flesh being asked of today's believer. I don't know what constitutes a "healthy" connection, but the rampant abuse and secret sin we see among many congregations are a result of the denial of this flesh without a sufficient alternative that aligns with how humans actually work.
We have no way to honor our flesh. The flesh is evil, we are told. Yet everything we experience in this world starts through our flesh, our senses. We don’t carry trauma in our mind alone, in some higher-dimensional database. We carry it in our bodies, and it shapes how we move through the world for years. Religions have always had processes to connect to the divine, but vague pointers to prayer and a relationship with a deity do not resolve this trauma automatically, nor does it reconcile the holes being filled by behavior that harms oneself or others.
We as Christians worship a triune God, who manifested in this plane as a baby in this season to grow and live a human life and in so doing provide a path to reconnect humanity to its origin in divinity. We gather under trees that once represented our connection to this plane of flesh that are gaily decorated to convince the Sun to return during the dark solstice period. We give gifts the same way our forebears did, for different reasons. Some of us eat and drink and make merry, because humans have always looked for a good excuse for feasting. We tell our separated minds that we are entirely enraptured with the idea of Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus as the long-promised Savior. But our bodies give us away and demand rest, and feasting, and connection with loved ones.
I’ll spare you the ways that I’m personally waiting for change to come; that’s an old Advent story that others have covered better than me. I am here, in the dark, contemplating, viewing the wondrous lights and experiencing the need for others, for rest, for a good time, and the desire for possibly just a little excess. It feels in this moment of my sojourn with Jesus that I am not with the baby Jesus, already crowned in a secret place, but I am instead with the Jesus that performed the miracle at Cana. The Jesus of Cana did not withhold the miracle out of fear that people would drink to excess or have too much fun or take their eyes off of God. He recognized the human need for connection, for celebration and a joy that they experienced in the body, and so the essential but flavorless water became delicious wine, meant for no other purpose but enjoyment.
In my contemplation, Jesus doesn’t encourage me to ridiculous behavior, to a worship of my flesh. But he hands me a cup, acknowledging with a knowing smile all that it is to be in a human body, and encourages me to enjoy.
Cheers to you, and Merry Christmas.
Corregan - thank you for sharing this thought provoking message! I hope you had a Merry Christmas and took the ‘merry’ part to heart. 😊