Flash Stories & Poetry Day 33: Reflection "The True Meaning of Christmas, Part II"

 

Hey, everyone.

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... 

 

That's it for today. If you want to use the wheel I made, you should be able to access it here. And if you have the time, please check out my books for sale on Amazon which you can find through my author page. The link is below. Also, I reworked my Patreon page, so why not give it a look and consider becoming my patron. I would appreciate it.

Keep writing, my friends.

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God & Bigfoot: Why Don't People Believe In Both?

Hey, everyone.

Before I begin with this week's topic, I wanted to let you all know that the re-writes for my book Tales of Horror: Macabre Monsters of Michigan are done, and the new version is uploaded. And, good news, I didn't increase the prices like I threatened to do. I did some research, and I thought better of the whole thing. But, I did update the copyright info. That alone makes Tales of Horror: Macabre Monsters of Michigan a worthy purchase.

Anyway, onto tonight's topic, I would like to vent a little about something that bothers me about the whole paranormal community. I know I said I was going to do something about ghosties this week, but I completely forgot what it was. So, instead I'm going to focus on...

That's right. How come people don't believe in both God and Bigfoot? It's drive me nuts to be honest. Therefore, I'm going to vent about people who believe in God, but not ghosts or cryptids, and vice versa, people who believe in the paranormal, but not God. This is something that really burns my ass besides a fire about three feet tall. So, let's talk about it.

I have a friend who's a Christian--I'm a practicing Christian myself--but, she doesn't believe in cryptids and the paranormal. I've talked about her before, but once when she and I were talking about the Mothman, she said something to the effect of it not being real, to which I responded that over a hundred witnesses over a period of 13 months would disagree with her. She then said that they should all get their heads checked--I didn't speak to her for a year.

But, there was another time when we were texting back and forth. Somehow, Bigfoot came into the conversation. I think she said something to the effect of not believing in Bigfoot, at which point I said something like, "You believe in Jesus, but not Sasquatch?" She said she was surprised to hear me compare Jesus to Sasquatch, but the comparison doesn't seem all that surprising to me. Think about it: how many people alive today have seen Jesus? Even if you count visions, and not drug or psychosis induced visions, the number is still pretty slim. Now, if you ask how many people have seen Bigfoot, the number gets quite a bit more substantial.

If we extended our search wider, say physical evidence, I'd say we have about as much evidence for the existence of Bigfoot as we do Jesus. And if we think of the Bible as being equivalent to footage or pictures, the effect of both the Bible and the footage is about as believable and controversial as each other. Some may argue that Jesus has a lot more believers, but remember, Jesus was big long before Sasquatch was a thing. Give Bigfoot some time, and maybe he'd be just as big.

"Bigfoot is not bigger than Jesus."
John Lennon
(True quote that.)

And, you have to ask yourself: what's more believable: an extent, upright walking creature, stomping around the world's badlands, scaring the hell out of hikers, or a carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago, called himself the Son of God, died for our sins, resurrected, and then ascended to Heaven? I think Bigfoot takes that round. But in my mind, the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Even in the case of Bigfoot being an extent version of Gigantopithecus, why should that cause anyone to disbelieve that Jesus wasn't the son of God?

Another thing that often irritates me is people who claim that if word got out about aliens being real, all the world's religions and governments would be up to their noses in sh*t, and my question is why? If aliens exist as true ET's, then maybe they already know about Jesus, or maybe they're just the next great challenge for missionaries. And just because flying saucers buzz through our atmosphere doesn't mean your taxes aren't due. And especially when dealing with the American IRS; do you think they're going to care you saw Gray? No. The country has expenses. Pay up! Even if Trump walked on stage tomorrow, and said, "My fellow Americans, aliens are real. And, we have one here with us today. Come on up here, Gary!" do you know what I'd do? I'd go, "Someone had better pick up that phone... because I f*cking called it!" And then, I'd go back to work.

Another thing to think about is how do you think Jesus worked all those miracles? How did he turn the water into wine? How did he raise Lazarus from the dead? How did he multiply the fishes and loaves? How did he walk on water? Some will say it's because he's the son of God. But do you know what that means? That means God is paranormal phenomenon! And if God's paranormal, why can't other paranormal phenomenon exist? If Jesus can rise from the dead, why can't Dogman and Bigfoot walk the earth? If Moses could split the Red Sea, why can't aliens be real? Because your pastor told you one existed and the other didn't? Come on, now; is that any basis of reasoning?

It's just amazing to me what sort of limits people put on their beliefs or even their perceptions of the world. It's either all science, or all religion, or all magic. (I'm not endorsing practices of magic.) There's no middle ground where everything could exist. Skeptics are one thing, but people who can see the unbelievable one way and can't see it another way, it's just kind of frustrating. I think all the phenomenon could be linked, unfortunately, I'm not a field researcher, so I don't know a lot of what other people know.

Generally, I don't tell people to keep an open mind because there are some things you should definitely close your mind to, but for the people who are out there, for the people who are getting to the bottom of the phenomenon whether it's God, Dogman, ghosts, or aliens, keep an open mind and maybe you'll uncover something truly mind blowing.

Sorry about the rant. I'll try to keep it together better next week. And, I'm sorry this is two days late. I've had a couple issues occur in my life recently. If you're the praying sort, send a few Hail Mary's this way. I'd greatly appreciate it.

Keep writing, my friends.

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