The Human Side Of The Holidays

December 3, 2000
Venice

Years ago I read that when jazz musician Benny Goodman was talking with a woman at a party, someone dropped a champagne glass. At the sound of the shattering glass, the woman asked, “What was that?”

Goodman answered, “C Sharp.” We humans are like that – we respond according to our interests. To some the sound would have been startling, creating anxieties about a stained rug or someone drinking too much wine. Others might be amused at the awkward accident happening to somebody else. To Benny Goodman, the sound meant C Sharp.

Today is the first Sunday of the Christian Advent season, when Christian believers begin their preparation to celebrate the virgin birth of their Savior, Jesus, in a manger in Bethlehem. From different points of view, the Christmas holidays also bring out differing reactions and unlike interpretations. Unitarian Universalists many times have mixed feelings about Christmas. Some hear “C sharp”; some hear breaking glass. But the person who denies the power of feeling at Christmas season has never listened either to his fellow-liberals or acknowledged his own emotions.

We try to accommodate in various ways, sometimes sensitively, sometimes rationalizing, sometimes naively. An old friend remarked that Unitarian Universalists never mention Christmas without also referring to Hanukkah. I suppose we do that for several reasons: to recognize the wideness of the cultural patterns we celebrate in December; to included the liberation celebration of Hanukkah, which has been a part of the heritage of many of our families; to create an atmosphere for the cultural universality of December rituals – concerts, charitable giving, both personal and commercialized, and swinging parties.

There is no single origin of our mid-Winter celebrations. One flowing spring is seldom the only source of a mighty river. Other brooks and streams feed into it. We need remember the many sources of Winter celebration – not only Christmas and Hanukkah, but also many others, including in recent years, Kwanzaa.

India may be at least one of the sources of Western culture. The roots of Western cultural origins may have beginnings in the Indus Valley, as well as the Tigris-Euphrates basin and Egypt. There are other sources, including the Roman, Teutonic, and Scandinavian.

Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, the people of India were devoted to the god, Vishnu. Even today, Vishnu may have more followers than any other Hindu god. Originally, he was a Sun god. As the Brahmanic religion developed, Vishnu became the principal god to whom sacrifice was made. In the Hindu trinity, he is the second member who assumes human form. There are differences between Hindu and Christian mythology. Vishnu was incarnated many times, sometimes as animal, sometimes as man. We should note that what we call the “messianic tradition” was a continuing hope in Hinduism. One day, Vishnu would reappear, he would cleanse the earth from sin, remove the shadows and bring about the reign of justice and truth.

Some of us have roots in the Scandinavian peninsula. The traditions of the Norsemen tell the stories of the great celebrations on the occasion of the Winter Solstice. The feast was known as Jul and honored the divine birth of Freyer.

Zoroaster, who lived six or seven centuries before Jesus, was the founder of the religion that bears his name, Zoroastrianism. This prophet of Persian religion taught that there was a struggle constantly between good and evil. Mythology and legend accumulated after his time on earth. Followers declared that Zoroaster was born of a virgin, was visited by adoring Magi; in infancy[, he] was saved from a powerful enemy. In other myths, the life of Zoroaster paralleled the Gospel stories about Jesus.

About the birth of Buddha, there also grew a miraculous mythology, although he had taught ethics and rejected the gods. Years after his death, he was transformed into what in life he had rejected, a god. Parallels with the Christian stories are found also in the mythology that accumulated around Confucius, who lived about the same period as Buddha, about the sixth century, B.C.E.

Many cultures, many historic periods, many religions have contributed to our Christmas. If that’s all there was to it – a package of myth and legend, tied with the ribbons of strange customs and superstitious rites of numerous early religions, held before us in order to encourage the spending of money, not to speak of exhausting us physically, we could recommend that Christmas be ignored. If the complex patterns of ancient Christmas myth and legend were all there was to it, we could protest that promoting the celebration of Christmas strengthened belief in the unreasonable and unwholesome doctrine of inherited sin. Furthermore, we could protest with justification that adoration and praise of a virgin mother placed an unnecessary and inhuman stigma on natural love between man and woman and the children born to them.

But that’s not all there is to it. There may be considerable dilution of feeling in placing other customs in conscious juxtaposition with Christmas and Hanukkah, because we may not be able to have our cake and eat it too, as far as the deepest and most poignant sentiments of Christmas are concerned.

When we turn to the universality of the Winter feast, when we ring the changes on the likenesses of Christian, Buddhist, Persian, Chinese, and Scandinavian myths, there may be a real question as to whether we just want an excuse for a party, or feel a reluctance to be too different, whereas for the convinced Christian believer, Christmas is Christ’s Mass, and the Mass celebrates the unique and once-and-for-all supernatural atoning sacrifice of God in Christ for all humankind. But I know no Unitarian Universalists who celebrate Christmas for that theological reason.

We like the carols with lovely melodies, with wistful words, whose theology we ignore. An old friend in a church I served many years ago used to say around the Christmas season, “What we won’t say, we sing.” We tend to convey by our attitudes that inasmuch as many faiths have saviors, we will taste them all, like a wine-tasting party.

Do we celebrate because the old pre-Christian tides of anciently imbedded feelings surface when the Winter Solstice arrives? Or, in spite of our rejection of Christian theology, are we still sufficiently conditioned by the Christian centuries to want to celebrate Christ’s birth – and then explain it away to rid ourselves of any intellectual discomfort we might feel? The Christian Christmas stories and music are deeply moving even to an agnostic or atheist.

When one gets right down to cases, there is no more reason to celebrate the Winter Solstice than the theological Christ’s Mass. The early pre-scientific peoples believed the change from darkness to increasing light was the gift of the gods, who were unpredictable in their bounty. We have learned that the changing seasons and measurable variations of day and night are astronomically precise, predictable as planet Earth moves in its rotating, plotted orbit around our sun-star. There is perhaps even less reason for annual re-creation of the feasts of Anglo-Saxons, Teutons, and Scandinavians than there is for our Christmas worship, even though the pagan wassailing, tree worship, and slightly scandalous parties seem in truth to bring a more enthusiastic response in our day than the incarnation theology.

We do not wrestle seriously with these considerations because feelings prevail, hardly less so among self-classified rationalists and agnostics than with anybody else. Feelings will prevail because we will respond to the aroma and sight of evergreen and candle, the excitement of being busy for others, the sounds of Adeste Fideles and Handel’s MESSIAH, the abundance of sentiment, the image of Jul log (not in FL?) and the warmth of human affection.

On Ash Wednesday, the ashes used in most Roman Catholic churches, traditionally, are secured by burning the palms used the previous year on Palm Sunday. In a few countries, Scandinavian, I believe, the ashes, the visible sign of repentance, were the ashes of the Jul log burned the previous Christmas. Were these penitential customs an awareness that the Christmas dreams of peace and goodwill were not realized because of what we humans are and the ways we think and behave?

But in this season, can there not be moments when new content may replace both the superstitions of pre-history and theologies we can no longer believe? Yes! I believe so.

We celebrate the wonder of life in its lovely realization – the wanted, new baby in the manger of the poor. The story of the baby Jesus stirs us deeply because his is a universal story of parents who experience the shattering, mysterious compound of love, danger, fear, and hope, blended with the fact of pain, the surprise of human sacrifice, and the wonder of human growth.

We celebrate the creation of new human life. Do you remember Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem, “Nightmare for Future Reference”? It was written at the height of the Cold War, but we are still under threat with at least 7 or 8 nations possessing nuclear weapons, and who knows how many have biological death weapons in their secret laboratories? Benet’s poem goes:

“That was the second year of the Third World War
The one between us and Them....”

The poet goes on with laconic but sobering words in the framework of a father speaking to his son:

“The lab chief was no longer permitted guinea pigs for experiments and the statistical curve of the birth rate was in a steep and terrifying slide:

I didn’t ask them,
Not even your mother – she was strange those days –
But, two weeks later, I was back in the lines
And somebody sent me a paper –
Encouragement for the troops and all of that –
All about the fall of Their birth rate on Their side.
I guess you know, now. There was still a day when we fought
And the next day, the women knew. I don’t know how they knew,
But they smashed every government in the world
Like a heap of broken china within two days:
And we’d stopped firing by then. And we looked at each other –
Well, I’ve told you now. They tell you now at eighteen.
There’s no use to tell before.
Do you understand?
That’s why we have the Ritual of the Earth,
The Day of Sorrow, the other ceremonies.
Oh, yes, at first people hated the animals
Because they still bred, but we’ve gotten over that.
You can call it a virus, of course, if you like the word,
But we haven’t been able to find it. Not yet. No
It isn’t as if it had happened all at once.
There were a few children born in the last six months
Before the end of the war, so there’s still some hope,
But they’re almost grown. That’s the trouble
They’re almost grown.
Well, we had a long run. That’s something. At first they thought
There might be a nation somewhere – a savage tribe.
But we were all in it, even the Eskimos.
And we keep the toys in the stores and coloring books,
And people marry and plan and the rest of it,
But you see, there aren’t any children. They aren’t being born.”

Some psychologists interpret the image of a child in a dream as indicating the beginning of new life in a patient. New Life! We know that to define human beginnings as the fertilization of ovum by sperm is to describe, not explain. The emergence of living form, the growth of limb, mind, emotion – all these are/wonderful for diagnostic words. Everyone who has ever held a young baby knows that.

At this season, carol, candle, creche, and evergreen remind us with gladness that children are still being born. What theologically is called the “incarnation” is an all-human occasion for renewing the feeling of glad mystery that life forces are still with us, “the light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world.” No particularized theology may monopolize that full joy and deep wonder.

We celebrate another universal feeling. Church historian Hans Lietzmann helped put this in historical and cultural perspective (A HISTORY OF THE EARLY CHURCH (Vol II, p. 166 – 168). The Roman poet Virgil (79 B.C.E. – 14 B.C.E.) had predicted a time when a savior, coming to the world as a divine child, would erase sin and usher in a golden age. Many Romans thought that Caesar Augustus was that divine incarnation. For centuries to follow, all Caesars were deified. The Age of Augustus was extolled as one which brought better fortune and lessening misery as the Pax Romana brought universal peace. Temples of Peace, dedicated to Rome and Augustus, were built in city after city. Wrote Lietzmann, “A community of feeling passed over the boundaries of the provinces and the differences of race, and created the vitally necessary ideology of the Roman Empire.” So it is today – there is a community of feeling which is all too brief. There are World War I legends of soldiers climbing from the trenches and meeting as friends in Christmas battlefield truce. Personnel executives have told me how difficult it is to discharge persons at Christmas. We are more generous, not only with family, but also to worthy causes and needy persons. Christmas is an incarnation briefly of the dreams of all peoples of the world as it might be, when there would be peace on earth and goodwill to all. We do not need the psychologist to tell us that the babe in the manger or the crib room of the hospital is a sign of hope, for on him/her we project our deepest yearnings, the purer dreams of a human society where the symbols of religion will represent the reality of peace and the full recognition everywhere of the dignity of every person. Dr. Edmund Sinnot (THE BRIDGE OF LIFE) wrote, “Man’s objective now is not to make superior individuals reproduce themselves more efficiently, but to make individuals superior. Greatness will not be the result of evolution, but of aspiration.” (p. 124)

Consider four lines from W. H. Auden’s poem, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”,

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.”

Because humankind has a dream, still persuade us to rejoice. There will come a time, in a couple of weeks, when the long night ebbs and more light shines on the babes of the world. When that illumination moves silently, transforming shadow to light, then something in our bones, our blood, our cultural heritage cries out that no matter how dismal the prospect for human redemption, no matter how formidable the portents of disaster, in spite of the blows with which we have been struck, there is a spirit of creation abroad in the world which calls us to protect the innocent, to warm our homes with light and love; and reverently embrace the cosmic mystery, which, I believe, underlies all the matter, energy, and value structures of this universe, this planet, our home.

Centuries before the Christian era began, long before the liberation struggles of the Maccabeans formed the Hanukkah celebration, the Greek dramatist Euripides had words for this occasion in the concluding prayer chorus of IPHIGENIA IN TAURUS, (p. 89):

“O great in our dull world of clay,
And great in heaven’s undying gleam,
Pallas, thy bidding we obey:
And bless thee, for mine ears have heard
The joy and wonder of a word
Beyond my dream, beyond my dream.”

That is the aspiration for the human side of the holidays – we hear the joy and wonder of a word and a world beyond our dreams, because the fulfillment of hopes depends upon the quality of our aspirations and upon our persistence in making real what has been ideal.

[Editor's Note: This sermon appeared at the end of the final (2004) bundle of musings, but was dated as being from the year 2000.]

Joy To The World! – Not So Fast

January 1, 1993

The lovely songs, stories and memories have warmed our hearts and lifted our spirits (unless one is jobless, hungry, or homeless). But at this halfway point of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I wonder why amid all the joy, there is so little grief expressed for the innocent babies who were slaughtered (MATTHEW 2/13 ff):

“... an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod....

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.’”

Along with the overdose of lilting, rejoicing, and carols, why has there been no sorrowful dirge, poem of grief, passionate rage against Herod? Why has this genocide been so little noted? I have leafed through books of Nativity poems and adoring homage paid to the Virgin and her son of divine conception. Why no lamentations about those Jewish babies in Bethlehem who were stabbed and gutted by Herod’s police? The Roman Catholic church does have an Innocents Day, December 28, remembering the children slaughtered by Herod, celebrating a “Mass of the Holy Innocents.” I am frequently critical of aspects of Roman Catholicism, but I give it a plus for remembering the children.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her protest against the exploitation of children in mine and mill during the 19th century Industrial Revolution, “The Cry of the Children,” concludes her poem with these lines:

“But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath.”

Immediately, some will respond that the Nativity stories were not historical events. For example, the the Apostle Paul, whose writings are the earliest of New Testament scripture, knew nothing of these birth stories. The accounts were late additions when the early Christian church was taking form and exerting influence. Whether called myth, legend or fable, such birth stories were a characteristic of many religions. In religious origins, Jesus was not the first or last “savior” to be born of a virgin, divinely impregnated, or to miraculously escape the murderous plots of a tyrant or enemy. Such nativity wonder-tales seem to be a necessary credential to be a founder of a religion. (Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Horus, Tammuz, Mithra, Zoroaster, Quetzacoatl) .

But, “so what?” you might respond. Christmas is a lovely and necessary fantasy in a grim and cruel world. Why not a suspension of belief when we are lifted from our prosaic lives to sing, share, re-tell the Nativity stories, make children excited and happy, feast and frolic; and bless our human venture with hopes and prayers for peace and good-will – celebrate what is not true but ought to be?

O.K., no argument. BUT, if one considers the whole story as written by the author of “Matthew,” which differs from Luke, then one can speculate about disturbing questions. Why did not the Angel warn other Jewish parents in Bethlehem of Herod’s plan to slaughter their infants? Before they fled, could not have Joseph and Mary warned neighbors, “Get out of town; the Gestapo will be knocking on doors.” Did the Christian plan of salvation require that all those Jewish kids be killed? If one celebrates the Christian Nativity as if it were true, do not ignore or dismiss the cruel murders of innocent infants. Herod was probably capable of such an outrage, but there is no contemporary record of it. Furthermore that story does cohere with Luke’s account. In Luke’s gospel, Joseph and Mary never leave Bethlehem and Nazareth.

Amid the odor of sanctity, I sense a whiff of anti-Semitism. Unless you consider that statement too outrageous to read on, consider the following:

Bible scholars do not place the date of “Matthew” earlier than 75 A.D., some as late as 100 A.D. (Morton Enslin) . From the time of Paul the Apostle, there had been a struggle between Paul and the Jerusalem followers of Jesus based in that city. The Jerusalem group believed Jesus to be the Messiah to the Jews. Paul and his group, increasingly “Gentile,” held that Jesus represented a new dispensation – the Gospel superseded the Law and the Torah and prophets (Old Testament), and had been replaced by the New Covenant (New Testament). Under the latter, Jewish ritual and law were no longer necessities.

This power struggle was more intense and hostile than commonly understood. When more of the Dead Sea Scrolls are translated, greater light will be thrown on this controversy. There are those who believe the translations have been deliberately delayed because they may provide much information and raise formidable questions about Christian beginnings. (For a full account, read THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS DECEPTION, by Baigent and Leigh).

Some scholars believe that “Matthew” wrote his gospel at Antioch. In the book of Acts we read, “They were first called Christians at Antioch.” In “Matthew’s” Nativity account, there is a religious/political “spin” on his quotation from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah harshly condemned Judah and Israel for forsaking the Law, Covenant, and Commandments. He proclaimed that such faithlessness was the cause of the cruel trials, as Judah/Israel became the battleground between Egypt and Syria at war with each other. “Matthew” quotes Jeremiah (31/15):

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.”

But he does not continue his scriptural quote because Jeremiah went on to offer hope – not in a “New Covenant”, but in a return to the Law, Covenant, and Commandments. In “Matthew’s” gospel we find a most disastrous verse, which in the context of the times is highly unlikely to have occurred: When Pilate proclaims he is innocent of (Jesus’) blood, “and all the people answered, ‘let his blood be on us and our children.’”

Not only did “Matthew” ignore Jeremiah’s hope, but offers that very questionable verse, which appears ONLY in “Matthew”. That verse has been an igniting cause of savage persecutions of Jewish people, pogroms, vicious prejudice, segregation, and the Holocaust.

In any power struggle, usual elements are: who has power, who wants to grab it, no limitations on ways to to seize it or keep it; when useful, withhold or falsify relevant facts. There is no need to expand on tricks, dirty or clever, when there are bitter conflicts in religion or politics. Lord Acton, in ESSAYS ON FREEDOM AND POWER, covered that organizational disease brilliantly. Modern political contests are confirmations of his thesis, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Perhaps you are now casting me as the voice of Boris Karloff in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” or as an unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge. Bah Humbug? Not so. I believe the holidays most people call Christmas are necessary to our well-being and a needed respite from Winter gloom, cares, anxieties, and woe. The Puritans prohibited celebrating Christmas, even fining people who were caught observing the holiday because the Puritans insisted it was a “Pagan” celebration.

They were correct in that label, but wrong in forbidding the observances. Long before the Christian nativity myths, peoples celebrated the days clustering around the Winter Solstice with feast and frolic: Roman Saturnalia, the Druids, Norse, Teutons revered the mistletoe, the sacred tree (ever-green), and Yule log. Torches were lighted to welcome and encourage the return of light.

In the 4th Century A.D., and not before then, Christians established December 25 as the birthday of Jesus, coinciding with the birth date of Mithra, “the invincible Sun.” The motive might have been to identify Jesus as “the Son”, or to attempt clean up the wild-partying of the Saturnalia, or to give Christians a doctrinal reason to join the celebrations. Perhaps it was as simple as, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. That identity was a bit like altering a date on a passport for expedient reasons.

This consolidating of cultic practices still goes on. I found it fascinating that in St. Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II had erected a large, decorated Christmas tree next to the Creche. Could the rigidly dogmatic Pope unaware that he was attaching Nature Worship to the Nativity “miracles?” Some thoughtful Jewish people are dismayed that Hanukkah is considered by some as “Jewish Christmas.” Perhaps it is, in the cultural leveling, or erosion, that seems to be going on. A report in the newspaper included an interchange between two women. The first, because Christmas had no role or sanction in her religion, was reluctant to participate in any of the usual activities. “Come on,” said her friend, “Christmas is not a religious holiday at all.”

The truth or falsity of that judgment I leave to you-all. However interpreted, it is a glad and thoughtful time. The wheeling of the season to bring more light; the joy of remembering those we love and being remembered by them; the music – jolly, solemn, affectionate, deeply appealing (whatever the words); charities and human helping highlighted – yes, we need this Mid-winter festival.

Years ago, a university teacher said, “Christmas is a window through which we see a world that could be.” Can the “could be” ever become the “is”? Joy to the WHOLE world! And for all persons of the many diverse faith communities, a time to hope and work for a time when all of us understand each other more wisely and affectionately.

A Carol Without Christmas?

December 30, 1989
Musings 1990

Over the years, several movie and TV versions of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” have been produced. Every Christmas season one can rely on “A Christmas Carol” being shown on several occasions. Most of us have read the story at least three or more times.
In his own time, Dickens himself read the “Carol” to audiences. We read that he changed the story from time to time. The text was plagiarized or pirated by various publishers in Europe and America and varying versions were published.

But one can wonder why “A Christmas Carol” is so popular with Christians because there isn’t very much “Christian” about it. There is no mention of the Christian scheme of salvation where God incarnated “Himself” as the baby Jesus who would grow, preach, teach, heal, and finally die on the cross to save all humans from the consequences of Adam’s (and Eve’s?) “sin.”

In “A Christmas Carol”, I did not observe anyone going to church services. There was no creche visible. Neither Santa Claus nor Father Christmas put in an appearance. There was no Christmas tree. True, Scrooge is awakened in the morning by church bells ringing. But that is all that is “churchy”.

Scrooge experienced a belated recognition of human need. He sent a large turkey (in some versions, a fat goose) to the Cratchit home. He surprises his housekeeper with silver coins. He gives Bob Cratchit a raise in pay. Implied is his financing medical aid for Tiny Tim so that the lad does not die – but grows strong and tall. Scrooge overcomes his “loner” mentality and visits his nephew and wife. There is great jollity in that home. Dancing, eating and warm friendship abound. But he brings no Christmas gifts and there are none in sight in the happy home of the young couple.

“A Christmas Carol” is not Christian theology. Scrooge could have been a Moslem, Jew, Hindu, or atheist, and still have turned away from lonely miserliness to happier generosity, becoming more appreciative of the Cratchit family and the nephew’s family and friends.

The only prayer is Tiny Tim’s, “God bless us everyone.”

But outside of that theistic prayer, the whole story of Scrooge could be that of an agnostic secular Humanist who found liberation from his self-imposed chains by using his treasure and talents to improving the human condition, where he was and where he could. Do you know of better ways?

The Queen Of Heaven And The Son Of Man

December 15, 1985
Lakeland

December 22, 1985
Port Charlotte

In this season of carols and candles, the stories of Jesus’ birth, Handel’s MESSIAH, holiday celebrations, and gifts, the subject is chosen in order to increase understanding of religions, not only as mental frameworks for theology, but also as vehicles for emotions we feel, even when the rational mind may question and rebel. The Virgin Mary is the Queen of Heaven; Jesus is the Son of Man.

First, Mary, the mother of Jesus. As theology and dogma acquired complexities in the early centuries of the Christian movement, she was given many titles: “Blessed Virgin Mary,” “Mother of God,” “Our Lady,” “Queen of Heaven.” If one accepted the theological assumption that the “sin” of Adam and Eve tainted all human descendants beyond their own power to redeem, and that death became inevitable because of that “sin,” there is an inner logic to Mary’s various promotions to divine eminence.

If all humans were tainted with “sin,” no one born of a human mother and father could be the savior. Obviously, then, Jesus had to be born free from that flaw that all others inherited from Adam and Eve. So, the story goes, that Mary, a virgin, although married to Joseph, was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit. However, there was a problem. Mary was human. Therefore, she, too, had to have inherited original sin. That logical difficulty was overcome by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which pronounced that by the special grace of God, Mary was kept free from all stain of original sin from the moment of her conception. This theological development took centuries to become official. There was much learned dispute in the Middle Ages. In 1476, the December 8th Feast of the Immaculate Conception was established. Finally, Pope Pius IX, in 1854, pronounced the dogma as The Immaculate Conception of Mary. (I have wondered if it occurred to the theologians that if Mary was the first to be free or original sin, she, not Jesus, could have been the Redeemer, and been crucified to save us. But then, theology and dogma were the province of men, and such would not have occurred to them. A woman as Messiah – not to be thought of!)

Another logical step became theologically necessary if Mary was conceived immaculately, free from original sin. She could not die, because death came into the world [when] Adam and Eve sinned. So there had to be the doctrine of The Assumption. “Mary was taken up into Heaven, body and soul.” So pronounced Pope Pius XII in 1950. It was an ancient doctrine (although never mentioned in the Bible), but did not become official dogma until thirty-five years ago. Mary was crowned Queen of Heaven after her assumption.

This salvation scheme is [logical] if the premise of original sin is accepted. But I do not accept the premise for many reasons that would take much time to elaborate.

But today, I’d like to mention that the idea of a Queen of Heaven is ages older than the time of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.

In the Hebrew scripture of Jeremiah (7-17 ff) we read that the prophet became angry at the people of Jerusalem, “The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven.” A biblical scholar says that the cakes were probably in the form of a star – Christmas cookies, you might say, 600 years before the birth of Jesus.

The Queen of Heaven in Jeremiah is a female deity older than history. She is Isis or Ishtar from the religious myths of the ancient Egyptians, who was given many other names as cultures affected one another. Ishtar, or Isis, Queen of Heaven, was goddess of the Crescent Moon. She was also Mistress of the Seas, and as Venus, goddess of love and fertility. One of the ancient myths has Isis overcoming the power of a great evil serpent. Here there may be a cultural connection with the evil snake who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Interesting, too, that a few years before the time of Jesus, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, pregnant by Marc Antony, claimed she was the reincarnation of Isis and that she was bearing the divine royal child. Cleopatra never claimed virginity, however. That would have been too much even for her most loyal or most naïve subjects.

If one leaps ahead of those times 1500 years to Queen Elizabeth I of England, there will be found paintings of her with the royal crown surrounded by stars – another virgin queen, not only of England, but of Heaven (not specifically stated, but the implication is clear).

Mary, the mother of Jesus, Queen of Heaven in the old story of salvation, has many parallels. Does this cultural, mythological commonality tell us anything about Christmas? We will see after we look at Mary’s child, the Son of Man.

What mattered most to those who put together the gospels not less than thirty-five years after the death of Jesus was that Jesus was the divine Messiah hoped for, prayed for, and anticipated in the Jewish scriptures.

But did Jesus believe he was the Messiah? That question has been debated for hundreds of years, and no provable position has emerged. Jesus called himself the “Son of Man.” But he was the only one who used the name in the New Testament, with one exception (Acts 7/56). The term “Son of Man” was used frequently in the Jewish sacred scriptures we call the Old Testament. The contexts in which the “Son of Man,” as used, indicates a human being – a man. The Son of Man designated not a messiah, not a divine savior, but a man. [The term] “Son of Man” will be found in Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and most frequently in Ezekiel. Except for one passage in the strange, apocalyptic book of Daniel, “Son of Man” means a human person, born as we all are – born of a human father and a human mother. Jesus, with his thorough knowledge of his heritage, could not have been ignorant of that. But it was how he described [himself].

Little wonder that the later founders of the early Christian ritual and doctrine did not use the term Jesus used to describe himself, “Son of Man.” Such a human term, describing human origins, would strike a contradictory note in the creeds of later dogmatists who constructed the elaborate theology – a theology that seems far removed from the itinerant, radical, compassionate Jesus, the Son of Man, ... seemed not at all concerned about “original sin,” but was passionately moved by the cares, troubles, needs of persons he encountered in his own time and place.

Consider this too: the mythological base of the Advent and birth stories which have been such a precious part of western civilization are just that – myths. Any basis of historical fact is as shaky as proving there is a real person, Santa Claus, after the kids have discovered the wrapped presents in the closet shelf 10 days before Christmas.

If the general Christian public had been present at my foregoing remarks, and perhaps some of you, the opinion would prevail that that I’m the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” that I have “Santa Claustrophobia,” or that I am a “Noel Coward.” So be it!

But the illustrations of the Queen of Heaven and the Son of Man demonstrate the power that myths have over our lives. Myth is more than an old story discredited by modern scholarship, the modern mind, or modern science. The myths of the mid-winter solstice have power and have had that power for millenia. Christmas was celebrated long before Christian times: the Roman Saturnalia, the Scandinavian Yule, the mistletoe of the Druids, the sacred tree of the Teutonic tribes – all bear witness to the awe, joy, and celebrations at the return of the Sun, the increasing light, and the promise that the fields will once again bear crops.

It is commonplace that all these ancient myths stir a response in us at levels deeper than our conscious minds. We all feel the deep tides, deny them as we may. Cultural myths are like individual dreams, in that realities surface that our logical minds cannot fully express or tolerate. The eminent scholar of myth, Joseph Campbell, writes, “Myth is an imaginative elaboration of fundamental problems and tensions in the form of speaking symbolically to the whole human condition.”

Carl Jung and his followers were persuaded of the theory of a collective unconscious which constantly pushes archetypes from the depths of the psyche to the surface of the mind. The Great Earth Mother, the Sky Father, the Wise Old Man, and many other archetypes (the Queen of Heaven, the Sacred Child, the Savior) are in the subconscious of us all – such is the explanation of Jungians.

I don’t know enough to speak with any assurance on such psychoanalysis. It could as well be that we have similar dreams rising from the individual depths as much as a collective unconscious. The myths and dreams of gods, goddesses, heavens, hells, demons, are a consequence of inner psychic forces. Our individual dreams are not rational. Dream images are frightening, puzzling, erotic, teasing, bizarre.

Dreams have always been powerful in any culture. Shamans, medicine men, priests, witches, storytellers, and psychoanalysts use dreams to interpret events, fears, and hangups in our individual and social lives.

For example how do we come to grips with human sacrifice? Always there have been those who paid a great price for the benefit of others. Knowledge came into the world because of Adam and Eve, the old myth tells us. They paid a price of pain, labor, and death. The Christ myth is of a suffering savior who died for all. The Prometheus myth tells how that savior suffers perpetual torment because he stole fire from the gods. There were unwilling victims of Aztec myth who were slaughtered to ensure that the Sun would rise each day. Why should one suffer for others? [CJW note: But it has always been part of the human condition.] That’s a mystery as old as both the conscious and depths of human awareness. Philosopher Ernst Cassirer once noted, “The world of myth is a dramatic world – a world of actions, of forces, of conflicting powers.”

Thus, my concern is not that myths are pervasive and powerful in all cultures. To deny that would be like denying the law of gravity – the apple would still fall from the tree. My objection is when myth is treated as fact – or facts on which to build dogmas and doctrines, unchanging rituals, and intolerance of different interpretations.

One thing more: theologies do not fully realize the deep impulses generated by the tides of nature, seasons, and the human condition.

The noted Robert Ingersoll once wrote, “I do not consider it a very important question whether Christ was the Son of God or not. If he never existed, we are under the same obligation to do what we believe is right, and believing he was the Son of God or disbelieving it is of no earthly importance. If we are ever judged at all, it will be by our actions, and not by our beliefs. If Christ was good enough to die for me, he certainly will not be bad enough to damn me for honestly failing to believe in his divinity.”

Dickens’ “A CHRISTMAS CAROL” is a developing myth. The constant dramatizing of this lovely story has become part of our folk-lore, even though it is fiction not much more than a century old. It strikes me whenever I read or see it how little Christian dogma or theology is essential to the story. The main themes are how a man, through his frightened dreams, is able to look at himself, where he has been, what he values, and what roads he can choose henceforth [to] walk. The other theme is compassion – compassion to others. Both these strands – who we are, what we must do – are continuing discoveries of human existence. The myths of all peoples, particularly the religious myths, grapple with these mysteries. The products of the struggle are fear, joy, awe, and hope, expressed in old stories, music which evokes both glee and tears, dramas which are metaphors for our human condition, and [which move us to] share our lives and our gifts.

Advent – A Humanist Adventure

December 16, 1984
Lakeland

Port Charlotte

When I speak of Advent as a humanist adventure, such a description could be labeled a contradiction in terms. After all, Advent is a particular period in the Christian calendar, the period of four Sundays before Christmas, the birth of Jesus, Lord and Savior to almost two thousand years of Christian believers; a Lord and Savior miraculously born, who redeems a condemned humanity from original sin by his atoning death on the cross and resurrection from death. In such specific, theological dogmas, Advent is not a humanist adventure, but a supernatural deliverance. Conceded.

However, my thoughts today seek the story behind the story – the human hopes, fears, expectations, celebrations, joy and mystery that are older than the Christian story, more universal the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and touch us with both the glories and miseries that have been part of the human adventure from times more ancient than written history.

Perhaps it is a cliché to remind ourselves that the reality is that Christmas celebrations are a blend of many customs, brought not only from the legends, music, poetry and theology of Christianity, but also from the evergreens of the German forests, the pagan celebrations of Rome, and other sources. Clichés may not be new, sparkling insights, but they are frequently repetitions of truth and folk wisdom. The winter solstice has always been a drama of the human adventure, a time of celebration of nature’s reliable cycles, a time to recall the trials and joys of human liberation, a time to confront justice unfulfilled, a time to meditate on the idea of the holy family and what makes it holy, a time to re-assert hope over fear.

The winter solstice had for centuries been the source of celebration. In our calendar, about December 22 marks the turn when the sun bestows the annual gift of days of more light after months of days of increasing darkness. To us, with more knowledge of astronomy, the solstice is routine in the cycles of the seasons. But to the ancients, particularly those who lived in the lands of cold, dark winter – the Britons, Celts, Germanic tribes, Scandinavians, the winter solstice was the authentic visible reality for the renewal of life, light, after darkness – the fore-runner of the time of new planing of crops in fertile, unfrozen fields.

In our times, we renew as symbols the worshipful acts of the old pagans – the Christmas tree – the evergreen which resisted the autumn death of leaves of foliage; the mistletoe, worshiped by the Druids as a sacred plant which healed illness, to be cut only with a golden sickle; the candles were preceded by torches held by celebrants as the light returned – all these are symbols, but symbols which touch feelings inherited from ancient times. We are moved by those old emotions more than our “modern” minds readily admit. In all the controversies about display of the crèche on public land at this time of year, it is curious to me that in our time there seems to be no objection to the pagan Christmas trees, mistletoe, yule log, even though these are unmistakably inheritances from the “old religion,” the pagan religions. Perhaps such age-old signs and symbols are woven more deeply into our deep human fibers than the later religions.

Commonplace and unquestioned by scholars is the conclusion that Jesus was not born on December 25. That was the celebration of the birth of Mithras, the invincible Sun. For a long time, the historians tell us that the new Christian movement did not make much of the birthday of Jesus, and different dates were suggested by Christian leaders.

In the 5th century, because the religion of Mithraism was making missionary inroads on Christian believers, December 25 was set as the birthday of Jesus, not only to pre-empt Mithras, but to Christianize the Roman Saturnalia.

The Roman Saturnalia celebrating the winter solstice was a wild celebration. They partied! Schools closed, there was feasting, drinking, riotous behavior. I don’t know to what extent drunken chariot drivers were a problem, but the Roman equivalent of today’s Christmas office parties scandalized the early Christians. On the last day of Saturnalia, the pagans exchanged gifts. So the Christians make attempts to moderate the excesses by transforming the Saturnalia into Christ’s birthday. [CJW note: Modern proverb: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. But many Saturnalia practices linger until this very day... absorbed...]

These were all part of the human adventure celebrating the increasing light, joyful that the sun was faithful to its cosmic course.

Nor is it irrelevant that Hanukkah is celebrated in this same solstice season. In December (25 Kislev), the Jewish festival of lights commemorates the Maccabean victory over the Syrians, and the re-dedication of the Temple in 165 BCE. Lighting the Hanukkah candles, the religious ritual is also called the “Feast of Lights.” Hanukkah is specific in that the occasion is a ritual of human liberation. Not only just the return of light, but also the need and value of human freedom is celebrated.

In the Christmas celebrations and rituals there is not always full awareness that the event claims justice for the whole human family. In the gospel named Luke, Mary, when the baby quickened in her womb, is credited with enumerating the lovely poem known as the Magnificat, [which] begins,

“My soul doth magnify the Lord.”

Then recall the middle lines,

“He hath showed strength with his arm;
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination
of their hearts
He hath put down the mighty from their
seats,
And exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich he has sent empty away....”

This poem has been called the gospel of the poor; it is cited by some who advocate liberation theology. This is one source of the belief that God has a bias toward the poor and disinherited. It is one of the citations that has always invoked many interpretations as to its application in the human adventure, among human persons.

The point is that there developed in this Jewish-Christian tradition the association of the renewal of life with justice for persons; food for the hungry and the lifting of the human spirit. True, it contradicts a saying of adult Jesus that “the poor you have with you always.” But without much doubt, there is more intense awareness of human need in this season of solstice, the old religion, Hanukkah, Christmas. Thus this is the time of year when we gather in the “Guest at Your Table” boxes, the Salvation Army volunteers ring bells over their kettles to get funds for the homeless and needy; many agencies serving human needs sell holiday cards with proceeds to assist a human cause. Our consciousness is raised, our conscience is sensitized in this season of Advent – the human adventure. William Blake, with the poet’s comprehensive grasp, had the words:

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine
And Peace, the human dress
Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress
Prays to the human form divine
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

One more thought – in the Christian symbolism and imagery, the Holy Family is an object of adoration. The father, the mother, the child. I suppose that is the image of the ideal family. But in our time and for the predictable future, that lovely image of the Holy Family does not match the social realities of our time. [CJW note: Consider the starvation death in Ethiopia – the blinded child, dead children | 2000.] What sense of holiness attaches to these families? [CJW note: Washington Spectator 10/15/84]

A less horrifying but still a formidable reality is the American family. Today almost 60% of American mothers of children under 6 work outside the home. 8½ million American families are now solely supported by women breadwinners. Women are 42% of the labor force. About 6 million children aged 6 to 13 are latch-key kids, going home from school to empty houses. In New York City alone, there are more than 550,000 children in single-parent households, most of which are headed by women.

If the family is holy, what about the latch-key children, the pre-schoolers, the infants in single-parent households? The times they are a-changing. There are some efforts by some social agencies, some community groups, some churches, some corporations, to provide full child-care while the parent must be at work. But the efforts fall short of the need.

Sweden is among [those leading] the world in tackling these problems. In Sweden, 80% of mothers of children under 6 work, and that country maintains a state-supported system of child-care from 6-month-old babes to after-school programs for 10-year-olds.

Parents receive compensation for a total of 12 months’ leave of work, nine months at 90% of pay.

Today, the debate is no longer over the need for government-sponsored [child-care; it] has been replaced by the discussion of how to improve the care.

Such recognition of the needs of parents by Sweden and its citizens would not be popular here, for in Sweden there is a much higher income tax, and higher taxes are not welcomed here. There are those who say that the Swedes are not a very religious people because only a small percent are church-goers, regular or even occasional (10%). But it is a fair question, “Do they consider the family more holy than we do?” In the human adventure, one does, individually and nationally, choose priorities among values. Such priorities tell something about a people, do they not?

If the human or humanist adventure is to carry the ancient spirit of Hanukkah, of the Magnificat, then such realities as the needs of the family in our society must be addressed.

How realistic are we? Do we recognize the perils of our age? Are we prepared for the issues of our time, in our time?

The sensitive writer Annie Dillard, in her story, “An Expedition to the Pole” tells how the early explorers were ignorant of the troubles they would encounter. “The Franklin expedition of 1845, for instance, took no special equipment for Arctic conditions. Instead they took the trappings of Victorian civilization: an organ, china, silver service, glassware and dress uniforms. Years later their skeletons still clutching such objects could be found scattered across the Arctic Sea.” (Christian Century, 11/14/84)

Are we as a people facing today’s realities any more wisely? Or with better preparation?

Lastly, “Peace on Earth, good will among men” was the angel’s song. Lilting carols and traditional words remind us of that every Advent, every Christmas Eve, every Christmas Day.

So far, through all the ages, it has been the angel’s song, but not the full strong chorus of the men and wonder of the earth. Peace on earth will never come as long as the choir is composed of angels, rather than men and women of this earth.

Yet the season is one of hope over fear. Hope that we will someday act as the angels sing; that we will work for the Hanukkah of the feast of lights for freedom today, that we will value the family as holy in our time and in the need dimension of our time, and that peace will prevail in spite of the threats more perilous by far than the tyrannies of Herod.

This is Advent – a time for the human venture and human reach. Theologically many Christians hope and pray for the second Advent when Christ will come again and all problems are solved, all tears washed away.

Some of the Jewish community still look for the Messiah. But I suggest to you those hopes for supernatural salvation do not speak to the realities and needs of our time. Rather, in conclusion, I suggest a Rabbinic proverb, and its meaning needs no elaboration:

If you always assume
the one sitting next to you
is the Messiah
waiting for some simple human kindness –

You will soon come to weigh your words
and watch your hands.

And if he chooses
not to reveal himself
in your time

It will not matter.

The Art of Following Stars

December 24, 1967
Plainfield

The Art of Following Stars

There are many ways to acquire wisdom. On this December 24th, why not permit your imagination to respond to the possibility that what makes wise men wise may be the art of following stars? Matthew’s gospel describes the legendary visit of the Wise Men from the East. The factual basis for this legend can be discussed in a minute. But deserving of much more time than alloted today is the rich suggestiveness of the story as a source of wisdom for living.

Books of astrological predictions abound. Astrological forecasts are regular features in many newspapers. there are still many people who believe, or have a teasing intuition, that the heavens not only declare the “glory of God” but also chart or influence our individual destinies. Astrology is one of the most ancient belief-strands. The legend of the wise men who brought gifts to the baby Jesus may have gathered around several traditions of ancient folk-lore. First, Matthew’s gospel emphasizes the Christian belief that Jesus was the Messiah whose coming had been long awaited by the Jews. There is a specific reference to an old scriptural prophecy from Numbers, (24/17), where it was predicted that,

“a star shall come forth out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall arise out of Israel.”

There is a story in Roman history which records the visit of three Eastern magicians to the emperor Nero, to bring him gifts and to salute his sovereignty. This visit to Nero may have been an influence on Christian traditions, because the birth stories about Jesus in the gospel of Matthew were not a part of the gospel until long after the time of Nero. Furthermore, the birth legends of both Matthew and Luke were probably not attached to these gospels until much later than the other parts, possibly as late as 115.

Astrological calculations represented a powerful influence in the old Persona religion of Zoroastrianism, a religion at least six hundred years old at the beginnings of the Christian era. In addition to the Jews, there were many other Near-Eastern and Asian peoples longing passionately for a Messiah who would free the oppressed people from foreign tyranny. There could have been many journeys by Persian astrologers following directions derived from interpreting the rhythm of the night skies.

There is no way of substantiating whether the legends about Jesus’ birth have some literal truth or not. Moreover there can be little expectation that we will have more substantial historical authority for any facts about the Wise Men. But there is an abundant help for our human situation in the imaginative resources of the wonder-full old story. Christmas is an appropriate occasion for the free play of imagination.

Those three men were wise not because of special knowledge derived from their astrological charts, but rather from a correct perception of what was good and what was bad in human events. They came from the East seeking a king they might worship. To locate a king, see the old king, so they sought out Herod. This was natural enough. The ancient and accepted ways prescribe that royalty mixes with royalty; that royalty descends from royalty, with succession of being established by direct blood lines, usually.

But the kind the Wise Men were seeking was not known to Herod. Herod’s crown rested uneasily on his head, for he knew the rebellious temper of oppressed people who would unite in revolt when the Messiah should come. When Herod summoned his advisers, they told him where the centers of insurrection might be. Herod’s secret service knew the Hebrew scriptures, not so much for inspiration but as the documents of subversion. So they quoted the prophet, Micah (5/2) to Herod:

“And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah,
Art by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from thee shall come a ruler
Who will govern my people Israel.”

Seemingly, Herod did not want to spring the trap prematurely. Bringing the Wise Men again into his presence in order to direct them to Bethlehem, he said, “When you have found him bring me word that I too may come and worship him.”

With this advice and request, the Wise Men left behind the royal court. They made their way to Bethlehem where the star came to rest over the place where the child was. Greatly rejoicing, the astrologers brought their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and prostrated themselves in worship before mother and child. Then, “being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”

To take another way is an expression of the art of following stars. The Wise Men had been disciplined by an encounter with evil and they had been inspired by an experience of creative good. One learns to sort out the good from that which is evil, or less good, by a readiness to seek new directions; a willingness to re-interpret meanings when reason, or sometimes, intuition, suggests such need.

The Wise Men also were not deceived by Herod’s crafty attempt to use them as tools in the betrayal of the baby. What the old legend refers to as “being warned in a dream” may be that – a warning contained in a dream. It also may be a poetic way of reporting conferences. Insights and revised plans based on shared opinions. Perhaps they had agreed to keep open minds on what they might discover in Bethlehem.

They must have been wise enough to recognize Herod’s motives. The Wise Men did not yield up the objective of their journey. They followed the brightness of their star in the heavens and ignored the dazzle of Herod’s power. The Wise Men brought their gifts to the child; then they went home another way. Modern analytic psychology might find that the image of a child in a dream indicates the beginning of a new life taking form in the self. Wise Men found a new life and went back another way.

What do you do when confronted with the enthronement of wrong? The Wise Men have taught that one can go over, around, or even through an obstacle and still not lose sight of the goal for long.

If you have ever seen the desert, you know that footprints which could be guides, swiftly disappear, covered by shifting sands. The Wise Men had to develop the art of following stars, because there were no footpaths in the desert. But then too, there were no wheel ruts either.

The deserts of difficult choice do not provide easy paths, and ruts should be avoided. It is an art of human experience to become aware that one need not be stymied hopelessly behind a barrier, even when the obstacle is entrenched power. One can climb, side-step, or dig a tunnel. Just as a sailing vessel must tack, approaching a destination obliquely when certain winds prevail, so we need flexibility in charting directions, wherever one’s Bethlehem may be.

Perhaps most important to the art of following stars, when the Wise Men encountered evil in their human experience, they changed directions, but did not sacrifice the goal. There are times when the toll highways are not the best way to the destination. There are occasions when even the very learned, or the very obstinate, or the very angry, should dream of other answers because the old ways may not be the best ways anymore.

The taking of another way was not only the result of being warned and disciplined by evil, but also was the result of being inspired by the experience of the good. With the jewels of their crescents sparkling like the flame they worshiped, the splendidly-robed Magi brought their gifts – where? To the tent of a wealthy caravan merchant? To the throne of Caesar? To the court of Herod the Syrian king? To a learned astrologer? No, to none of these.

They brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to a pungent stable in a cave where a young mother shared her gladness in her new son.

Joseph and Mary’s son in Bethlehem, the Bernadone’s boy infant in Assisi, Thomas Lincoln’s biblically named baby in the Kentucky wilderness – how many of us would have guessed the potential? Yet we perceive in our more responsive and imaginative moments that there is something in the fresh presence of wanted babies in the world that makes better people of most of us, at least for awhile. Sometimes it is the experience of parents; sometimes it is the daring and charming possibilities that we feel are potential for the human family. Theodosia Garrison in some lines from her poem, “The Star,” poetically suggested the universal appeal of new life on earth:

“Some only dreamed who followed it,
Some, knowing, bore rare gifts and bright,
And some, poor souls and lack of wits,
But followed where they saw the light;
Yet all were led (by Jesu’s grace)
By the same star to the same place.

“There are many roads to love
as paths above the world may stray.
Some dip below, some wind above,
Yet one star shows to each his way;
And dreamer, king, and lack of wit
(By Jesu’s grace) may follow it.”

Now if the Wise Men’s experience could not also be ours in some sense, all this would be trivial chatter. But we too encounter the good and the bad in our travel toward our goal-stars. Like the Magi, we will be affected by the evil we encounter. Like they, we can be transformed by the good we meet in all varieties of human experience.

The Wise Men saw skies teeming with stars, even as on clear evenings still, the blue-black canopy of night is jeweled with uncounted millions of sparkling gems. According to the old story, the Wise Men plotted their course guided by a star which led them to Bethlehem. They chose the star that would lead them to the place they wanted to go.

This is our continuing opportunity too. Which star is the one to follow? To move from poetry to practicality, which of many goals are you going to choose? Life can frustrate us rather thoroughly unless we are skillful enough in the art of following stars to pick the one that illuminates the way to our best fulfillments.

But to make the Wise Men’s choice, we must admit to our minds and hearts enough warm light to illuminate the cold, dark places of our pride. The Wise Men had to leave a monarch’s glittering palace to find authentic royalty in a rude stable – emergency housing for a peasant family.

Carl Sandburg told a story of Lincoln which illustrates that the achievement of goals may require the dispensing with a certain amount of personal vanity. When Lincoln was an officer in the Blackhawk War, he “was a beginner and once couldn’t think of an order that would get the two platoons endwise, two by two, for passing through a gate. So he commanded, ‘This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of this gate.’” (THE PRAIRIE YEARS, p. 62)

This not only was an example of a clever mind, but also in a military setting it was honestly humble – and an omen of the creative leadership that Lincoln would one day bring to the nation. He knew the art of following stars – the courage to take another way, even though he might lose face in the opinion of an expert drillmaster.

The wisdom of taking another way is one of the enduring experiences that can come to us as the light lengthens, as human hospitality warms us, as the love of children who are loved casts a magic glow on the human scene. The wisdom of the ancients was glorified by the light of a child’s face. This was as it should be ever, for the living creations of love and labor are both the means and ends of a life that is worthwhile.

The Spreading Light

December 19, 1965
Plainfield

also: Lakeland 1978, Port Charlotte 1978

The Spreading Light

As the human family moves in slow procession from superstition to science, from magic to understanding, and from the miraculous to the natural, the Christmas-Hanukkah message suggests differing levels of perception. Even as the spreading light of knowledge has given us wider vision of privilege and responsibility, so also may deepening comprehension of the poignant joy of the winter festival season increases our awareness of the ties that bind persons to each other and to the magnificent universe in which we live and of which we are a part.

Early, pre-literate people celebrated when they were released from fear of total darkness. The lessening light of Autumn and early Winter stirred the pangs of fear. When the sun lengthened its daily visit at the Winter solstice, men and women feasted, sang and danced. The world was not dying! Clothed in enduring green, the fir and spruce had resisted the colorful death of other foliage, thus the fragrant evergreens became living symbols of hope.

The strange gods of frost and fire were not entirely unpredictable and whimsical, but seemed to be dependable. Even the early folk began to sense that the world-process was orderly. The celebrations became regular as season after season repeated the sustaining rhythms of bud, blossom, fruit, harvest, sleep – and then bud again. Even as the late December days diffused longer periods of daytime, so the light of confidence in nature began to illuminate the darker fears of humankind. The stirrings of faith began to overgrow the tremblings of fear, even as the mistletoe festooned the oak tree.

After many centuries it came to pass that the Judeo-Christian era in our culture marked the spread of more light. In Jewish homes there is now being observed the “festival of lights” - Hanukkah. In this part of our tradition the spreading light celebrates religious freedom. When Judah Maccabeus and his brothers led a revolution against their Syrian and Roman overlords, they recaptured Jerusalem only to find that there was only enough oil to feed the lamp for a day. When the Temple was purified, the legend goes, enough oil was miraculously provided for eight days. And so the worship continued as a ceremony of light, but more vitally, it was a celebration of freedom.

Although the early Christians were children of their times and were prone to believe in magic and witchcraft, nevertheless, particularly in the writings of Paul, there is an increasing affirmation of the reliability of the God in whom they believed. This was an emphasis that light was needed in a different shadowed area of the self.

The spreading light of faith in an orderly Universe stimulated a growth of confidence that the power that underlies our Universe (name it God or what you will) is somehow tied in with the best of human experience. There is a basic liberating belief implicit in the facade of fantastic fervor which still pounds and chatters at us from authoritarian churches, pleading Pentecostals and irrepressible evangelicals. It is this: the human family is worth redeeming; the condition of men and women is not hopeless! Unitarians and Universalists resonate to that foundation of faith.

The religious primitives celebrated the Winter solstice because the gods once more saved them from darkness and death.

Then Judas Maccabeus and his followers transformed that tradition of light to an annual celebration of the anniversary of religious freedom. Then the Christian extended human hopes to much of the Greek, Roman, and North African world with the Gospel which affirmed that the Supreme Being was neither whimsical nor a-moral – God was a Power having moral relations with humanity. Even more daring, the early Christians proclaimed that God incarnated himself as a little baby to redeem mankind – and many in the ancient world responded to that dramatic and winsome theology. Little wonder that our roots in early Christian doctrine and culture lead us to respond warmly to the poetry, carols and beautiful legends and myths of Christmas. We respond even when we give neither obedience nor literal belief to the doctrines illustrated by art, music, and scripture.

Is the Christian faith the limit to which the light can spread. Many would so avow. But some of us believe that the light must spread wider and deeper still.

The early peoples joyously responded to the favors of gods who preserved or destroyed at their fancy.

The Maccabeeans demonstrated that the light of the world is cast by the lamp of freedom.

The Christian Gospel sings grateful praises to God for his redeeming power in the incarnation.

But there is a more splendid, a more daring and more audacious dream! Not only are all persons worth redeeming, but also men and women are the agents of redemption. Our faith [surmise] proclaims that it is within human power to extend the light of love and justice into the shadowed parts of our individual selves and that the same light can make social realities of the astounding ideal, “peace on earth, good will to men.” Aristotle wrote (NICOMACHEAN ETHICS), “It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of our subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.” John Dewey may have intended much the same point when he wrote, “ideas are effective not as bare ideas, but as they have imaginative content and emotional appeal.”

From Ferguson, SIGNS AND SYMBOLS IN CHRISTIAN ART: “Language of sign and symbol is the outward and visible form through which is revealed the inward and visible reality that moves and directs the soul....”

The matchless beauty of the story of the holy family is a part of the spreading light. But all families are holy. Furthermore, all wanted babies are precious gifts of life, who as they grow in wisdom and stature may become redeemers. The culture-bearing carols, stories and myths embody these traits with artistic and emotional expression, giving power and lift to our lives at this season of high holiday.

Talking effectively about the deeper meanings of Christmas is nearly impossible. Brahms once said that with all his talent he could not achieve the beauty of a German folk-dance melody which every child was able to sing.

From [primitive superstition], to freedom’s light, to gospel, to one human family. This I believe is the spreading light, to goal of the light-hearted. All the glory of song and story are hints of deep humanitarian meaning. Wise men and shepherds, innkeepers, a careworn father, a weary woman, great with child – all these meet in matchless story to remind us of the superiority of a society in which all persons are equal. The festive celebrations impinge upon us, and we should be stirred by that awareness [that, if we all ate at one table, no one would be allowed to grow hungry.]

The experiences of Christmas and Hanukkah carry the impact that life is sacred; that the humblest and the proudest have equal need to belong to each other; that carol, candle and crèche open us a window through which we can see what life should be. “Peace on earth, good-will to men [and women].” But can the poetry of peace be transformed to the reality of peace? That’s the bind. Did you see the item in Friday’s paper that reported that a large firm placed a Christmas window display, “peace on earth” at Madison and 57th Street? The display featured quotations on peace from Dag Hammarskjold, Adlai Stevenson, Pope Paul VI.

The designer who received the brunt of the complaints explained, “some people interpreted the presentation as some sort of demonstration about Vietnam. So the window display was revised to eliminate such quotations as “war is the negation of peace and humanity,” and Pope Paul’s call, “War never again” was “amplified and identified.”

Is this our time? We respond to ancient wonder stories about angels singing about peace 2000 years ago, but when the meaning of peace is grappled with today, people either back away or seek to quiet things down by lambasting those who speak peace.

Can we go beyond ancient words and lilting carols? There is an old legend from Eastern Europe which may fit the reality. “A pious Russian went to a holy man and asked him to find out from God if there was going to be a war. The holy man said he would try. When he had prayed, he said that God had given him the answer: ’There will be no war, but the struggle for peace will be so furious that not one stone will be left standing on another.’” (CHRISTIAN CENTURY)

Is this not our tragic dilemma in Vietnam?

There are many, like I, who will continue to urge unrelenting efforts for peaceful negotiation and who still believe that a halt in the bombing, a cessation of escalation may provide the impetus for such confrontation across the table rather than confrontation in rice fields and villages with innocent men, women and children caught in the deadly crossfire, fire and explosion.

Albert Schweitzer (PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION) wrote, “I would be a humble pioneer of the (new) Renaissance and throw the belief in a new humanity like a torch, into our dark age.”

May our deepest Christmas concern be that light will spread, like a torch hurled into darkness, so that “peace on earth, good will to all people,” will not be only matchless poetry, but some day, political and social reality.

Spiritual Values Permeating Christmas

December, 1954
Bridgeport

Christian, in Pilgrim’s Progress, anxious to know the way, consulted Evangelist. “Do you see yonder wicket gate?” asked Evangelist.

Christian strained his eyes to look but was forced to reply, “No, I see nothing.”

“Do you see yonder shining light?” Christian answered, “Yes, I think I do.”

“Then,” said Evangelist, “keep the light in your eye and go directly up thereto – so shalt thou see the gate.”

Most religious liberals understand the cultural universality of the Christmas story; its kinship to and blending of the folk-strains of many religions and tribal memories.

Most religious liberals do not believe that Jesus was God. They believe that a man, Joseph, was Jesus’ father legally, spiritually and biologically.

Despite our rejection of the belief that God came to earth in some special way in the baby Jesus, we can experience and share values of thrilling emotional intensity and demanding ethical drive in the Christmas story.

In his poem, “Nightmare for Future Reference,” Stephen Vincent Benet touches us with ultimate horror when, as a result of the third world war with its smashed cities and pulverized people, the birth rate drops to zero, there are no more babies. “They aren’t being born.”

The candles of Christmas can be festival lights of gladness when we recognize the wonder of life’s beginnings. The story of the baby Jesus batters our hearts. His story is the story of all babies. The soft skin, flower hands, all the ineffable beauty of cradle innocence, make us aware of wonders and creative mystery beyond the power of words to express . Our emotions are painfully sensitive to glorious hopes and shadowy fears.

Then, too, whatever else God may or may not be, he must be at least incarnate in the spirit of love. Babies are born in stables, caves, ranch-houses, and mansions. The universal message of Christmas is that everyone shares in the mystery and power of life and love. In the warmth of Christmas happiness we discover anew that the human family is one. In the sobbing happiness born of creche, balsam scent, carols, candles, and children’s laughter we affirm again that “peace on earth, goodwill to men” is not sentimental nonsense, but the goal of all peoples; and we affirm that we can compress all our worthwhile dreams in a baby’s cradle and illumine them in his smile.

Rev. Carl J. Westman
First Universalist Church
Bridgeport, Connecticut

The Everlasting Light

December 23, 1951
Gloucester

The earth has grown old with its burden of care

But at Christmas it always is young,

The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair,

And its soul full of music breaks forth on the air,

When the song of the Angels is sung.

It is coming, old earth, it is coming tonight,

On the snowflakes with cover thy sod,

The feet of the Christ child fall gently and white,

And the voice of the Christ child tells you with delight

That mankind are the children of God.

On the sad and the lonely, the wretched and poor,

That voice of the Christ child shall fall;

And to every blind wanderer opens the door

Of a hope which he dared not to dream of before,

With a sunshine of welcome for all.

The feet of the humblest may walk in the field

Where the feet of the holiest have trod,

This, this is the marvel of mortals revealed,

When the silvery trumpets of Christmas have pealed

That mankind are the children of God.

The purpose of our service today is not to broadcast knowledge about Christmas, but rather to acknowledge that Christmas is essentially something we feel in the deepest well of our emotions. It has been said that Christmas is the time of year when we get rid of the feelings of guilt which have been created throughout the year by our dominant attitude or selfishness. It has been said, also with some truth, that Christmas is but the continuing pagan festival of Winter Solstice and that the religious elements associated with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth are but superficial touches added to a very primitive structure. It has been said also, with more poetry than literal truth that Christmas is the day when “God broke into history”. Countless other little theories have been conceived and broadcast. Yet none of these theories ever speaks clearly enough or profoundly enough to explain why it is we are so deeply moved to joy, hope, and a spirit of neighborliness and charity to others at this time of year we call Christmas.

Our Christmas would not have the same content of feeling if it had not been for our religious forefathers, the Hebrews and their belief that someday mankind would be redeemed by the hand of God in the form of a Savior who would vanquish the forces of evil. The early Hebrew scriptures are laced with prophecies of such a hope. The prophet Isaiah, who lived many centuries before the birth of Jesus, expressed for all time the hope that man's destiny is not one to be dominated forever by selfish desires, low ambitions, thoughtless as well as deliberate acts of cruelty and inhumanity to others.

XL/3: “The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

XL/5 The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

LX 1,3,5: Arise, shine! For thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee; and nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praises of the Lord.”

LII;7 “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God Reigneth.”

The legendary history of the birth stories of Jesus were tailored to fit these ancient hopes. Yet no such legends could have been creatd, we could not feel the glow within us which reminds us of Christmas that “mankind are the children of God,” if there had not been a person such as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth not only grew in wisdom and stature, but he lived in consecration to a way of life which he believed in above all else. He saw, as perhaps none of us see, that unless the spirit of love and brotherhood dominates the earth, all our science and all our industry will be but fuses which will sooner or later be set off at some zero hour and destroy man's dreams for milleniums to come. He believed enough in a way of life that declared “love is the answer” to die for it, even as he had lived.

The light of Christmas shines into our clouded hearts to remind us that this feeling of love is unconquerable even by death. The everlasting light of Christmas stirs us with the inward knowledge that ways of hate, retaliation and disregard for even the least of these our brethren will surely bring us to a pit of degradation in which it will be unclean to live and stupid to hope. We hope that there will come a time when “Peace on earth, good will toward men” will not only be the song of angels but will be the song and practice of mankind everywhere.

The hope of Israel and the life of Jesus are not the only contributions that have made our Christmas. Each century has contributed in its own language of poetry, devotion, and music in the attempt to express the depth of feeling which stirs us so joyfully and yet so tragically each year when Christmas comes into our view.

Our Christmas message this year is one that will be expressed in song and poem. Our responsive reading was that incredibly beautiful poem that appears in the early part of the gospel according to Luke. This was a contribution of the latter part of the first or the early part of the second century after the birth of Jesus. From the ages of faith, the 13th to 15th centuries has some of the music that is to be sung. From our own century, the 20th, has come the theme for our worship. We cannot understand our theme without feeling something of the majesty of the man who inspired our theme.

Phillips Brooks was a world-famous preacher and Episcopal Bishop. He loved the Episcopal church and it would be unthinkable to disassociate him in any way from his beloved faith. Yet, Phillips Brooks was a Universalist too. No one who could write the lines of the poem which I read at the beginning could feel other than someday, somehow, men were going to recognize their basic unity as children of one great God, brothers in an illimitable universe:

“The feet of the humble may walk in the field

Where the feet of the holiest have trod,

This, this is the marvel of mortals revealed,

When the silvery trumpets of Christmas have pealed,

That mankind are the children of God.”

It has been well said that there are three memorials to the memory of Phillips Brooks: Many of us have known these memorials. First there is Trinity Church standing in splendor in Copley Square in Boston. Erected during the time when Phillips Brooks was rector, it is an ever-present symbol of the broad character of his ministry and his contribution to the life of Boston. (P) Standing beside the Church is the second memorial to this giant among American religious leaders. It is the heroic statue of the Bishop molded in the preacher's stance. Beside the statue of Brooks there is another statue, an image of Jesus, symbol of the way that the life of Jesus dominated the life of Brooks.

Probably each of you has recalled knowingly or unknowingly the third memorial to Phillips Brooks many times during the past days.

When Phillips Brooks was thirty years old he spent a year traveling in Europe and the Near East. During Christmas week in 1865 in a letter home (LYRIC RELIGION Smith P. 298) Brooks wrote “after an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on the Eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it, in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been. As we passed, the shepherds were still 'keeping their watch over their flocks,' or 'leading them home to fold.'”

Phillips Brooks must have been deeply moved as the thought about the birth of Jesus when he toured the hills of Bethlehem that Christmas night in 1865. Perhaps the emotion he felt was one of the main influences in fixing within him the determination to live for others in the spirit of Jesus. Perhaps that night helped fix his purpose so that years later in a service memorializing his death, Rabbi Gustav Gottlieb could say, “He was not bishop of his church only, but he was my bishop also by divine calling and consecration.” And Lyman Abbott, himself a famous religious leader could say: “We have been wondering, Is there any God? And we have been reaching out in nature to find evidence of him. And suddenly there appears before us the divine shining in one great illuminated nature, one that is full of God; and while we were looking in his eyes and he was looking into ours, then did God come again; then did we realize that God is; then did we feel that God speaks to the heart of man through the heart of man.”

There were many other influences on the life of Phillips Brooks in addition to those hours in Bethlehem. But we do know that two years after his journey to the country of Jesus' birth, Phillips Brooks wrote the carol that is now the beloved possession of men everywhere: “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

Inspired by this carol of our time, which demonstrates that even after more than 1900 years of the Christian Era men can still respond from their inward being by the memory of the birth of a baby, we preach you a sermon in song:

The Birth of Jesus

(from a sermon by John Wycliff, 14th century)

Joseph went with Mary, that was his wife, into “Bedlehem”. They broughten an oxe and an asse with them, as men say, for this reason – Mary was great with child. Therefore she rode upon an asse; the oxe they brought for to sell, for Jews haten begging.

And Bedlehem was filled of men before they camen to the town; and so they hadden no harbor, but dwelten in a common stable, and these two beesties with them, till time came to use them.

And it fell while they were there, our lady bore her child, the which was her firste child, for him she bor and no other. And she wrapt Christe with clothis and putte him in the cratike, for she had no better place to put him in all the house.

And so, as men singen and trowen, Christ lai before an oxe and an asse. And the breath of these two beesties kept him hoot in this cold tyme.

And so men say that Christ was born at the myddil of this night, for the myddil person in the trinite loved myddil in many things.

Directional Signals and the Christmas Spirit

December 16, 1951
Gloucester

For two or three weeks motorists have been under the pressure of law to signal for turns and stops. This requirement to indicate directional signals is not particularly new, but now there are teeth in the law. Accessory dealers have been busy installing mechanical equipment so that some drivers do not have to lower the window, signal, and then close the window again. Meanwhile he must not forget to make the turn in the direction that he has indicated.

If the hand signals are made accurately and sincerely, other drivers and pedestrians will know where the driver is going and adjust their own conduct accordingly. But people do not always behave according to either law or our expectations. Someone was telling me that on TV this week there was a scene wherein a lady was in an accident. The driver of the other car protested that she had given an improper hand signal. When asked what signal she made, she raised her hand straight up (like this) and gestured thus. She indignantly said immediately that she wasn't signaling, she was merely shaking her bracelets farther down her wrist. Morey Amsterdam (quoted in The Boston Globe) says that when a woman driver sticks out her arms, you can be sure of one thing: her window is open.

Confused and awkward drivers are men as well as women. The day before yesterday when riding with a friend, a car coming in the opposite direction started to make a left turn across the path of the car in which we were riding. My companion, who was driving, immediately slowed down in ample time to avoid any crash. However, a person in the front seat of the other car (not the driver) stuck his arm straight up in the air as high as the roof of the car as he could reach and gestured thus. It could have been interpreted to mean that we were to fly over the top of the other car. While it was a funeral coach in which we were riding, most certainly the machine was not equipped with wings.

What have directional signals to do with the Christmas spirit? If properly performed, directional signals in the motoring world are signs that help avoid trouble, assist people in going their separate ways without violently crashing into another whose way may be different, but it's his way and he can take it if he likes and obeys the rules.

The Christmas spirit sounds forth in rather hollow and unconvincing tones, at times, when we consider that the world is in turmoil, at war in some sections and a vast fog of suspicion enveloping nearly every land. The reason is that some people are going right, some people are going left, and others are taking roads a certain distance to the right or part-way left, and they are crashing into each other with an impact that threatens to wipe out entire nations – even civilization itself.

I'm told that the terms “right” and “left” when used to indicate a persons economic and political beliefs originated in Paris where at one time those who advocated revolution lived on the left bank of the Seine, while those who were opposed to change, who thought the old way best, lived on the right bank of the Seine.

Since that time in theology, literature – all areas of knowledge actually – but most common in national and international politics and economics, the “right” has come to mean those people, whether individuals, groups, or both, who usually have a reverence for the past amounting almost to worship, who will not approve any radical breaks with existing customs or the existing order, who are opposed to revolution – and who have an aversion to any change in the accustomed way of doing things.

Conversely the “left” is not only willing that changes be made but is eager that thing be done differently than in the past, does not approve a custom or law merely because it is old, sometimes willing to permit violence if that violence will result in some change that the left wing groups think will bring about a certain desirable result. Both right and left have innumerable shadings along the spectrum – and they squabble among themselves as well as with their opposites.

The difficulty that is bound to arise when we are able to escape from our particular bias for the left or right as, the case may be, is that great ideas and movements elude any permanent classification of “right” or “left” or “conservative” or “radical”.

For example, 178 years ago today, on December 16, 1773, one of the incidents that precipitated the revolt of the American Colonies against the British Empire occurred in our ancient, honored and conservative neighboring city of Boston.

The King of England had proclaimed a new tax on the colonies for all glass, paper, paints, and tea. This import tax was exerted for three general purposes: in the first place, to support the soldiers who had been placed in the American colonies to see that the King's will and the king's laws were enforced; next, to pay the governors of the colonies, the judges and other officers – thus making them dependent not on the people but on the king's tax; and the third reason was to give large sums of money to certain influential citizens to persuade them to give public support to the King.

The colonies, particularly Massachusetts Bay which was a steaming cauldron of radical movements, immediately raised such an uproar that the sound and fury reached the ears of those in power in the Mother Country. Merchants banded together and pledged mutually not to import any paper, glass, paint or tea. Samuel Adams, sometimes called “The Father of the American Revolution,” proclaimed that he and others would “eat nothing, drink nothing, wear nothing” that was imported from England until all the duties on goods should be removed.

Parliament then conceded that a mistake had been made and removed all taxes except one of a few cents on a pound of tea to insure the maintenance of the right of the British Government to tax the colonies. The price of tea was pegged at so low a price that Americans could purchase tea from English ships, tax and all, cheaper than they could smuggle it from other countries. But the American colonists said they would not take it as a gift if there was a tax on it. In Boston citizens refused to unload a cargo of tea. Under port rules, at the end of 20 days if the cargo was not unloaded, custom house officials, who were British civil servants, would unload the tea.

On the 19th day the rebellious colonists held a mass meeting in Old South Church. The debate raged all day long and into the evening. Then Sam Adams spoke up, “This meeting can do nothing more than to save the country.” That was a signal for action, and colonists disguised as Indians gave a loud war-whoop, rushed to T-wharf, went on board the vessels and dumped $100,000 worth of tea into the harbor.

So 178 years ago today, less than 40 miles from here, one of the most important of the chain of events occurred that led to Lexington, Concord, Independence Hall, Yorktown, and the Constitution.

In view of what has happened, would you, if you had the power, change that incident – or prevent it from happening? These energetic citizens certainly were not the conservatives of their day. They were far left – that is, they were revolutionists. They overthrew the government by “force and violence.” Yet these men are honored by us. We praise their deeds and thank God for the liberty they won and which we prize – or so we say.

Perhaps you suspect, as I do, that there is something basically wrong, or at least inaccurate, about these arbitrary classifications of “right” and “left” or “tory” and “liberal”.

Another illustration: F.D.R. Is now and will continue to be one of the most controversial figures of our century. He described himself as “being a little left of center.” To the conservative he was considerably more than a little left of center. To the radical, Roosevelt seemed to be a middle-of-the roader at best, and at worse, one who saved all that was old and all that was bad by a few concessions to a desperate citizenry which prevented revolution.

The soldiers of the right and the soldiers of the left are still shooting at each other in Korea and other parts of Asia. In the rest of the world, Acheson scolds Vishinsky; Vishinsky laughs his (now notorious) guffaw at the right – The Western world accuses the Soviet world of innumerable crimes against human rights and human decency and the claims are valid. I believe the slave labor camps do exist, that many Communist governments stay in power because of the strength + coercion of the Red Army, that many, although probably not all of the charges made against Stalin and Soviets are very brutal realities in our 20th century world.

The Soviet world accuses the United States of depriving racial minorities of rights, of abusing them and refusing them the right to vote and compete equally for jobs and education. They say that prejudice as it exists in the United States is a vital cause in creating undemocratic racial tensions and crimes against persons and groups. Those things are true aren't they? We are accused of many more things.

The right accuses the left; the left accuses the right; unlike our automobile drivers, even though they have indicated at least vaguely in which direction they are going, they clash nevertheless.

In a most ghastly parable, fenders are smashed, bumpers are hocked together and blood is running in the streets.

Suspicion and hate are rising to an almost incredible pitch on both sides. We are at the point where even a relatively small and insignificant incident can spread the war that is raging in Korea around the world.

Did you see two stories which were placed together in a recent issue of the NY Times under the caption “Reasons Why”. Even though ludicrous, they are strangely pertinent to the way fear and suspicion may overturn the world: “A railroad worker in Superior, Wisconsin, explained in court that he had attacked three bunkmates with an iron poker because he suspected they were plotting an attack on him by snoring in Morse code.” “Charged with knocking down a policeman, a Detroit man pleaded: “I saw a big bee land on his neck above the collar. I didn't want him to get stung, so I hit the bee as hard as I could.”

If we on the “right”, and I hope in the right, have a valid claim to be the representatives of the ideal of freedom offering to help a world largely in chains, then we must recognize and accept that our freedom does not mean freedom from responsibility. If we make the mistake of thinking that “free enterprise” means freedom for a few and control for a great many, then we may find ourselves left, literally and in quotes as well.

There is no attraction into falling into what I think is the deadening fatalism of that part of the left wing which implicitly accepts Marxism and Stalinism. Capitalism will probably not endure forever as the predominant economic system – but there is no certainty that Marxism or any form of it is assuredly going to replace it. Incidentally, I, for one, hope that the cooperative movement will receive a closer examination from those who are concerned with personal, national, and international finance.

I have said something about directional signals, about “right” and “left”, but not much about the Christmas spirit, have I.

To a certain extent, I believe that the tensions that exist between the right and left react on each other to solve the problems of history. The German philosopher Hegel used the famous analogy of the skater to make this point clear. The skater swings his left leg to the left, then quickly strides with his right to the right as a result of these alternative left and right movements the skater progresses down the centre of the ice. The disagreements, the pendulum-like swings and changes of public opinion and political leadership do bring forward progress. Were it not for the right and left movements, the skater would soon glide to a stop by staying on dead center.

But it is not enough to go right and left. For example, one cannot describe or understand the vast oceans merely in terms of square miles of surface area or the topography of shore lines. One must know something about depths, channels, shoals, and tides in order to have any appreciation of, or ability to survive the “sea around us.”

Right and left are not enough – there must be another dimension. That is why the Christmas Spirit is related to life's directional signals and movements. We must concern ourselves not only with right and left but also with right and wrong. When we repeat, “Peace on earth, good will to men,” we can not single out conservatives, or radicals. All are included.

It may well be that the critical problem of our day is the Machiavellian methods by which Soviet Government and its satellites are trying to bring about the domination of the world. Furthermore that this menace and threat must be dealt with skillfully, diplomatically, economically, and militarily. But also communism is a disease caused by misery. Over the long run it is not alone the power of democratic argument that will be tested – but the power of democratic ideals and ideas of government to produce conditions of freedom, health, warmth, and knowledge. Didn't Lincoln say once, “no nation can survive half-slave and half-free”? -- neither can a world.

The Christmas spirit is one of kindness – feebly glimmering in an unkind world. Albert Schweitzer, from deep within his place of service in Africa, challenges us with these words, “all the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind, but we are so foolishly indifferent that we are never in earnest in the matter of kindness. We want to topple a great load over, and yet will not avail ourselves of a lever which would multiply our power a hundredfold.”

The Christmas Spirit is one of revolution too – the inner revolution of good-will and understanding – no matter how greatly we may have been injured – no matter how easily our hurt could be the spark for a conflagration of retaliation.

In 1936 when Hitler's re-armament program was moving into high gear, when Goering had pledged the German people to give up butter for guns, when the Nazi overlords had seduced the entire German people with the foul myth of Aryan and Germanic racial superiority, the late and famous author Franz Werfel, author of 40 Days of Musa Dagh and the Song of Bernadette, was booed off a platform in East Prussia when he pleaded with a group of inflamed students that their choice was not left or right – but above or below.

He wasn't trying to lure them with a promise of some far-off heaven. He was pointing out that there is a moral choice involved in either a right or left wing decision. He was saying that there are values that must be recognized in any system. These values concern freedom in all the areas we dream of, concern human dignity and decency and the right of a people to judge the truth – the additional dimensions.

The story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria is one of those rare jewels of religious insight that we occasionally come upon in the gospel of John. The gospel of John is one that is largely theological rather than biographical or ethical. Its announced purpose is to promote an idea of Jesus as the pre-existent God. But here in the fourth chapter there are some profound implications for universal religion.

The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other – distrusted each other – even as nations do today. The Jews, from the time they campaigned against the pagan gods of the Canaanites, had insisted that God could be worshipped only in the temple at Jerusalem. The woman refers to this when she says, “our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say (referring to the Hebrew doctrine) that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

But Jesus goes beyond the right and left of worship practices of that part of the Near East. He didn't defend Jerusalem or attack the Samaritan custom, he said, “the hour cometh and is now when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a spirit: and they that worship him in spirit and in truth.”

So if we are to make, someday, a reality out of the daring dream of “peace on earth and goodwill to men”, we must go beyond a mistaken compulsion making a choice between Jerusalem and Samaria or staking all on the “right” or the “left.” We must believe profoundly enough in the reality of the Christmas Spirit that wherever the directional signals of right or left may take us, we will achieve, maintain, and preserve as individuals, and as parliaments of man, the basic dignities which must become the property of all peoples or we most surely will all crash together: freedom from fear through goodwill and cooperation, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and of speech and the freedom to introduce our children to all that is best and noble in human history so that through wise and understanding moral ideals they may survive the conflict of ideologies of “right” and “left” which is now brutalizing our world.