So, I'm still feeling down and out over my problems. I was originally going to write a second part to the whole true meaning of Christmas, but I can't for the life of me remember what I was going to write. It sounds like a horrible shame, but the thought I had was barely there to begin with so it's no wonder it only took me two days to lose it. But, if the wheel gives me reflection again, I'll try to reclaim it.
Wheel of Genres, turn, turn, turn! Tell me the genre I will discern!
Today's genre is... Reflection.
Huh. Well, then. So, I just reread my last reflection to see if it would kindle anything... it might have. Let's see.
Thirty minutes on the clock: 30:00. And... go.
So, I did write something originally, but it wasn't any good. So, I just did some elementary research and restarted my time. According to what I found, the simple answer to the true meaning of Christmas is that God gave Himself to us out of His great love. But, the part that intrigues is the part about how God made Himself manifest into a living body and was born. God, the Word Eternal, as Great and as Mighty and as Terrible as He is and can be, humbled Himself to our level for the sake of our salvation.
This is an interesting thought because how many of us would humble ourselves in such a way? How many of us would become dogs to save them? Well, probably a bunch of us. A lot of people would do whatever they needed to if it meant saving their beloved pet. So, what about insects then? Perhaps that's a better comparison. When you compare the greatness of a human, everything we are and everything we can do, are we not like gods to insects? And would not compressing ourselves down into their form with their puny minds be a humble act? It definitely would be for one as arrogant as me.
Is this the true meaning of Christmas then? To humble ourselves before God? Jesus did lead by example; the Son became one of us to show us the Way. Seems like it; even the Catechism of the Catholic Church, at paragraph 526, says "To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little."
There's a passage after that that is quoted from the Liturgy of the Hours. The part that interests me is "We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity." God shared his divinity by sharing in our humanity. Humanity and divinity. Sharing. The dual nature of Christ, both fully man and fully God. Is this the true meaning of Christmas? The sharing of our humanity and God's sharing of his divinity? By getting into and sharing the Christmas spirit, we are sharing both human and divine behaviors? After all, we can't say we're sharing our divine nature since we aren't divine, we aren't gods, but if God shares his divinity with us, does that not make us divine to some small extent? After all, Jesus told us to forsake this world for his work, to pick up our cross and follow him. Can the word "divine" be applied to all beings in Heaven? Can "divine" be used in reference to the work that we carry out and the spirit we carry during Christmas? I don't know. I feel like I might be committing sacrilege here.
But, to share the divine and the human, that seems to be the reason of the season. Find God's divine meaning in ourselves and then sharing that with everyone else. It reminds me of a song called "The Mundane And The Magic." It's by a melodic death metal band called Dark Tranquillity (< and no, that is not a typo). There's a lyric in the song that goes "If I could merge the mundane and the magic / we'd forge a new unknown." ...I think that might be it.
***
Well, I would say stop the clock, but what with trying this over and then already stopping it before I even made the last few lines, it really has no meaning. Well, I don't know if what I wrote is sacrilegious and completely crazy, but I do feel like I touched the ethereal barrier and that I may have come closer to solving what this whole religion business is all about. It is something that has cross my mind before; the purpose of religion, the meaning of religion, and what it's supposed to mean. All too often, people say a religion should do "this" because that's just the way of the world, but that's not the point of religion. Do you remember what Jesus said to Peter when he told them he was going to be crucified and Peter said he wouldn't allow it? Jesus said, "Get behind me, Satan! You're thinking as man does, not as God does for the ways of man are not the ways of God." Yeah, keep that in mind next time you go criticize Christianity. Anyway...
Keep writing, my friends.
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