Christmas Morn Reflections: The Cosmic Christ comes into the world in the way of weakness, vulnerability, and need and a mission of radical grace and love for healing the world of power, oppression, and violence and lifting up the oppressed
“God entered into our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. On a wintry night in an obscure cave, the infant Jesus was a humble, naked, helpless God who allowed us to get close to him….The Bethlehem mystery will ever be a scandal to aspiring disciples who seek a triumphant Savior and a prosperity Gospel.” – Brennan Manning, Shipwrecked at the Stable
poem: and now it is Christmas ‘time’
time slows
and deepens
at Christmas
from 40 days
of waiting
expectantly
come
shine down
on those
who dwell in darkness
under
the shadow
of death
that they
may be transformed
with eyes to see
the beauty
and ears to hear
the good news
of Heaven and Earth as One
Amen
Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
December 21, 2021
Author’s note: Today marks the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. It is also the 24th. day of Advent. It is the day the antiphon O Oriens is sung. The Nativity of the Universal, Cosmic Christ is later this week followed by the Epiphany. Light upon Light! Many religions and spiritual traditions celebrate the Light at this time of bleak mid-Winter. O Orien lyrics appear in stanza two.
YouTube music video: Queens’ College Choir, Cambridge, Queens’ Chapel Players, Silas Wollston, Album And Comes The Day: Carols and Antiphons for Advent
Advent reflections: When Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, meet during their pregnancies, they rejoice in the ending of Empire and its oppression of the lowly under which they live at that time with the Roman occupation of Judea
Mary sings a revolutionary song to Elizabeth, known as the Magnificat:
The Magnificat: Luke 1:46-55 NRSV lyrics:
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Mary’s song “the most passionate, the wildest, one might say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.” Bonhoeffer, who would be hung 12 years later for resisting Nazism, added: “This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary … This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of … Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world … ”
Sister Elizabeth Johnson says “The Magnificat is a revolutionary song of salvation whose political, economic, and social dimensions cannot be blunted. People in need in every society hear a blessing in this canticle. The battered woman, the single parent without resources, those without food on the table or without even a table, the homeless family, the young abandoned to their own devices, the old who are discarded: all are encompassed in the hope Mary proclaims.”
it is in our inability
to sit with and receive
the mystery of human’s
greatest gift of Cosmic Christ,
come down to us
filling our hearts with Love
to be shared mutually
with others, which is our
greatest human downfall
failing to see and denying their
crucial transformative processes,
clinging to the old ways
of seeing the world as something
to be calculated and exploited
for our personal, selfish gain
dear one’s awaken,
prepare,
participate
art: ‘Dalit Madonna’ by Jyoti Saha
Author’s note: My reflection is
inspired by the writings of the
German Lutheran Pastor,
theologian, and martyr Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, who was hung by the
Nazi’s for his resistance and religious
beliefs after spending two years in Nazi
prisons and concentration camps. I offer
these reflections from the perspective
of spiritual experience universal to all
creation and humanity whatever one’s
religion, faith, beliefs, or traditions.
Herein lies our hope for the Oneing
of heaven and earth in true belonging
in authentic communities of radical grace
and radical love. Advent blessings!
poem: this Advent season of waiting,
watching, witnessing, awakening
all Creation groans:
humanity expectant,
pregnant with the anticipation
of waiting and preparing
Earth and Heaven are changed:
the star in the East,
the road made straight in the desert,
the low places made level
the world of human society changed:
the great leveling, scattering the proud,
bringing the high, low, and filling the hungry,
sending the rich away empty
the incarnation of
Universal Cosmic Christ consciousness:
came down to us, comes now,
and will come again
vigilant, waiting, watching,
this knowing deep in our bones,
in every cell, in every breathe,
our Advent witnessing and awakening
Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
December 9, 2021
photo by author
Author’s note: The poem draws on
Matthew’s story of the Magi, Luke’s
Canticle of Mary, and Isiah’s prophecy
of John the Baptist from the Bible. It is
written from the perspective of spiritual
experience universal to all creation and
humanity whatever your religion, faith,
beliefs, or traditions.
poem: a paean for senescence
our growing older
is not a linearity starting here, ending there,
not a timeline from beginning to end,
not a simple chronological
counting of the years
to be sure there
are circles, loops, and spirals,
bardos, gaps, and liminal spaces,
and ones functional/dysfunctional
life experiences
and of course
in our aging
one is vulnerable
to life’s foibles and frailties
which we must suffer
thus in our senescence
we prepare,
countering bitterness with beauty,
hopelessness with creative imagination,
infirmity with wholeness
embodying a faith that sustains us
for those unseen things yet to come
in our Cosmic journey home
in the truth of the Universal Oneing
of consciousness human and divine
being gentle with those things
unsettled in our heart and soul
knowing our cries, laments, and joys
are heard, and there is place of radical grace
and love that perennially longs for us
Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
November 11, 2021
‘Spiral of Life’ art image by Susan Bruck
