Holy Night: Christmas Meditation
Shalom! Shlama! God is. The One Breath lives. I have returned to the beginning. The many delusions of my self-obsessive quest for purpose and meaning have crumbled in the dryness of my meditations. Original peace, she who exists beyond opposites, beyond measure of success or failure, good or bad, big or small, rich or poor, dead or alive, dark or light, right or wrong, in whom is all potentiality and possibility, has announced herself in the open plains of my heart-blessed consciousness. Barefoot, she walks in the mountains of my soul, and her voice is like soft rain on the parched earth, and pretty flowers grow:
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the One Breath to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Promised One has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. Isaiah 52.8, 9
My heart sings, and I make joyful noise with harp and lyre, flute and trumpet…
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it. Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord
Psalm 98.7-9
So far have I travelled, so long have I sought, and yet it is only when I stopped because I just could not go on, that the messenger came through. I’d clung so tightly to the threads of my dreams, I’d “fought the law and the law won”, screamed, “Justice!” into the wind and the wind beat against my face, even done it “my way” and found it just doesn’t work. Finally, I stared into the abyss and called out your Name. “Let go,” you said, and I began to fall… “Return to the beginning,” spoke a voice so sweet and so true…
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
John 1.1-5
Dabar d’Alaha. Word of God. In the beginning, I Am whom I Am. I was lost and I am found. I was empty and I am overflowing. The abyss does not consume or devour us. It is nothing but the construct of our own fears, weakness of faith and lack of love. When we resist, we give definition to the illusion. We are so afraid of the fall that we barely dare to stand. We thought the fall was inherited and there was nothing for it but to sacrifice the animal in us to buy a notion of worthiness and so gain approval, wealth and power. But Love is Love. Love never gives up and now the Christ, Word of God, Love Love’s self, has come to take us home. I stand at the beginning. Shalom! Shlama! God is.
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 