The Harried Mystic

In these lines by Christina G. Rossetti, 1830-1894, later put to the now very familiar music of Gustav T. Holst, and one of my favorite hymns of the Season, the paradoxical character of the Incarnation is evocatively captured:

In the bleak Midwinter, frosty winds made moan.
Earth stood cold as iron, water like a stone.
Snow had fallen snow on snow, snow on snow.
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

I have traveled this week in Wisconsin on business. Yesterday and today, the wind picked up in Milwaukee dramatically after the region saw its first major 14 + inch snowstorm. The temperature also plunged into the single digits.

The two-block walk from my hotel to the office was like a trek across the arctic tundra. It was even hard to breath, and the walk seemed like it took forever. This all started me thinking about this much-loved traditional Christmas carol.

Building on my last post ( Practice #116), I find myself reflecting on the polarities of:

• the deep cold- warm Light:  of the Christos, and the burning hearth,
• the gray-toned days- full color spectrum: adorning homes, buildings, and Christmas trees.

The festival of lights also comes to mind along with the lighting of the menorah. The cold and the dark make the light and the colors all the more bold, prominent, welcome, and gratifying.

Our lives are paradox. We pursue our bliss, seek peace and prosperity and, most especially, yearn for intimacy, comradeship, and purpose. Yet, throughout our journey, doubts, events that undermine confidence, strains in relationships, missteps, and random events that engender struggle occur.

The Manger scene places the birth of the Prince of Peace in very humble circumstances. It foreshadowed the cold cruelty of rejection by ignorance, politics, and fear. His times featured brutality with Roman oppression, and tensions among the Jewish sects and leadership groups.

Into these trying circumstances, the Light nonetheless shown brightly. Tradition’s placement of the holiday in winter is historically incorrect, but spiritually coherent. Through the polar tensions, the Beloved calls us to exercise our imaginal and transcendent faculties to restore balance and harmony.

We face the cold, and radiate our own warmth into it. Though, like the times of Christ, forces at work in our time tears at the fabric of peace. Though the threats to humanity are many (terrorism, genocide, ecocide, failed states, and economic struggle), we diligently keep our vigil:

• Are we bearers of Light or do we impede it?

• Do we receive the cold as a call to infuse our time and our space with warmth, or does the chill consume us?

• Do we commemorate the infant in the manger as a quaint myth no longer relevant, or as factually true, or as a psychic container for our own salvific unfolding?

Our souls must find the point at which things are neither too one way, nor too that, but “just right” as we navigate the real. The dark days incite us to light a torch to pierce through it. The cold days compel us to light a fire. The graying of the world prompts our festive decorating. All of these external movements signify the potential for inner conversion on the path that collapses polar opposites.

“What can I give him, poor as I am?” There is no better time for us to celebrate the Light of the World than when the light fades; to celebrate Divine Love than when enmity, strife, and evil scar the world. We must accept what’s real as it truly is AND avoid becoming cynical, resigned, despondent, fatalistic and hopeless. We must never let go of our dreams and efforts on behalf of redemption.

The Season invites us to contemplate our own practical marriage of intelligent compassion ( the Mahayana path) and crystal clear vision ( the Vajrayana path, the “diamond vehicle”). This is our life’s opus and in each step we take, we hear a faint echo of our true identity. We hold earlier and permanent citizenship in the celestial city beyond nation, space, time, and circumstances.

© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.