Christmas -- Science or Hype?
December 25, 2003
What a faith-lighted thought is this! that mortals can lay off the "old man," until man is found to be the image of the infinite good that we name God, and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.
Christmas as we now celebrate it was hatched by Prince Albert and Charles Dickens — so it's getting a little tired. Members wanted fresh inspiration from its underlying symbolism. We felt acutely the social mania that has replaced spiritual fervor and undertook individually a quest for new meaning.
The readings steered away from Christmas pageantry towards present God-man-universe reality. Discussions between members during the week emphasized self-realization: honoring and bringing out the Christ in individual thought and demonstration.
Two members, for instance, talking of old, familiar problems ("they'd become our hobbies") decided to press on to "root causes, materially speaking" — and then even further to "Christ consciousness or God with us" as the one and only cause. Present day problems based in childhood deficiencies — or whatever — dissolved before the effulgence of God's power and presence. "Now, that's a Christmas worth celebrating!"
At the meeting a member startled us with this: "You know, in a way, the hype is the Science. All the madness and rushing, the buying, giving, eating, drinking and so on are a needed Dionysian intrusion into an otherwise oppressively Apollonian religious and political scene." Apparently the point here is that eruptions of irrational behavior act to offset and balance some of the legalistic and logical drives in our society. ("Well then, Bush in the White House is Christmas every day.")
Our chairperson got us back on track by pointing out that a full appreciation of matter's dualistic nature is a step in Science. "But let's be sure we take the next step — moving the imagery to a scientific, non-dualistic, conclusion."
"Huh?"
"Well, look: Roman Satunalia, Prince Albert, Charles Dickens, credit card debt and nauseous surfeits of food — what could it all add up to but matter's sad shot at patterning the divine. We're students of Christian Science — so where do we throw our weight? Into matter or the divine idea it counterfeits?"
Mary Baker Eddy's 1909 Christmas greeting to her household came up for discussion. She wishes them a "feast of Soul and a famine of sense." ( see the full quote from Miscellany, pg. 263:3-11 in our readings.) To summarize: Soul is that synonym for God indicating His bodily presence and sensation. Man is God's body sensing Himself as the universe. That's the Science of Christmas, replacing dualistic beliefs masquerading as the senses.
We devoted plenty of time to individual demonstrations.
1) One member had a cold that seemed to linger well into the holidays. He needed to deepen his work in Science and called a practitioner for help. It quickly became apparent he was still suffering from grief related to the passing of both parents and several friends during Christmas time over he years. As he prayed he got a better grasp on man's ongoing ever presence as God's idea. The cold, which mimicked weeping, faded with the grief.
2) Another member was grateful for increased understanding of what constitutes his health, wealth and happiness. "They're based on a moment by moment appreciation of God's activity in and as my life and the life of all."
3) Another member was grateful for breakthroughs in his study of Christian Science which have led to demonstrations of loving interactions in intimate relationships and advances in his professional life.
4) One member suddenly remembered a long-buried, humiliating incident from his high school days. A boy he was attracted to—perhaps in a homophobic fit or just homo-panic — spat a wad of phlegm on his arm. Our member felt anger, nausea, fear and yes, eroticism — none of which he could possibly own or give evidence of at the time. He just smilingly cleaned up and went on as though nothing had happened. "That was not Christian Science denial, but human will." This week he started releasing the pain and finding the Oneness with Science. Here's what he's studying: "The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged" (Retrospection And Introspection, by Mary Baker Eddy, pg. 22:1), and "Every material belief hints the existence of spiritual reality; and if mortals are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that material belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand." (Miscellaneous Writings, pg. 60:28)
5) Another member felt it was failure of Christian Science that he needed a tooth extraction and replacement. This was his first such outcome from his work in Science on his teeth. Others reassured him that the harmonious extraction and quick preparation and insertion of a bridge, including the necessary money to pay the bill was a fine Christian Science demonstration.
6) Another member was able quietly and prayerfully to restrain himself from any need to intervene with human advice-giving in response to the news that an old friend is HIV positive. This was difficult indeed because of his friend's DL or "down low" stance — i.e., being in the closet while parading a heterosexual lifestyle.
7) Another member found an enthusiastic interlocutor with whom to explore his transgender feelings. He is greatly drawn in this direction, allowing the male and female of God's creating to emerge.
8) Another member's car broke down on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He was able to get it unto the shoulder and knew instantly "everything is just as it should be." He looked up and there was a call box. Within minutes help arrived; his car was towed to a garage where a new water pump was inserted and he was on his way.
Several members asked questions or commented on this healing. "What do you mean, everything is just as it should be? Aren't you going along with error?" "No, I'm just reassuring myself humanly while I also seek the absolute Truth." "Maybe he's also saying a problem gives Love an opportunity to show it meets every human need." "Any problem is a reflection of where we're at humanly — what we need to grow out of. And it's also the uniting reality of what duality thinks it has wrought."
Our next meeting falls on New Year's Day. Savoring possible topics like Resolutions, Time and Renewal we finally landed on Dealing With Change.
Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls ideas material. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall to the level of a human or material belief, called mortal man. But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind is All and reproduces all—as Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the product.
The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality—much error—in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun.
Searching for the origin of man, who is the reflection of God, is like inquiring into the origin of God, the self-existent and eternal.
The divine image, idea, or Christ was, is, and ever will be inseparable from the divine Principle, God. Jesus referred to this unity of his spiritual identity thus: "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I and my Father are one;" "My Father is greater than I." The one Spirit includes all identities.
Is man's spiritual sonship a personal gift to man, or is it the reality of his being, in divine Science? Man's knowledge of this grand verity gives him power to demonstrate his divine Principle, which in turn is requisite in order to understand his sonship, or unity with God, good.
Mortals will lose their sense of mortality—disease, sickness, sin, and death—in the proportion that they gain the sense of man's spiritual preexistence as God's child; as the offspring of good, and not of God's opposite,—evil, or a fallen man.
We must learn that God is infinitely more than a person, or finite form, can contain; that God is a divine Whole, and All, an all-pervading intelligence and Love, a divine, infinite Principle; and that Christianity is a divine Science. This newly awakened consciousness is wholly spiritual; it emanates from Soul instead of body, and is the new birth begun in Christian Science.
To the senses, Jesus was the son of man: in Science, man is the son of God. The material senses could not cognize the Christ, or Son of God: it was Jesus' approximation to this state of being that made him the Christ-Jesus, the Godlike, the anointed.
Observed by material sense, Christmas commemorates the birth of a human, material, mortal babe—a babe born in a manger amidst the flocks and herds of a Jewish village.
This homely origin of the babe Jesus falls far short of my sense of the eternal Christ, Truth, never born and never dying. I celebrate Christmas with my soul, my spiritual sense, and so commemorate the entrance into human understanding of the Christ conceived of Spirit, of God and not of a woman—as the birth of Truth, the dawn of divine Love breaking upon the gloom of matter and evil with the glory of infinite being.
Human doctrines or hypotheses or vague human philosophy afford little divine effulgence, deific presence or power. Christmas to me is the reminder of God's great gift,—His spiritual idea, man and the universe,—a gift which so transcends mortal, material, sensual giving that the merriment, mad ambition, rivalry, and ritual of our common Christmas seem a human mockery in mimicry of the real worship in commemoration of Christ's coming.
I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility, benevolence, charity, letting good will towards man, eloquent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception of Truth's appearing.
The splendor of this nativity of Christ reveals infinite meanings and gives manifold blessings. Material gifts and pastimes tend to obliterate the spiritual idea in consciousness, leaving one alone and without His glory.