Stephen Roney's Blog, page 171
December 23, 2021
Christmas Ball Blues
The Tree of Night
What’s with the Christmas tree? Why do we bring a pine or spruce tree into our homes for Christmas?
The conventional answer is that it represents the night sky over Bethlehem, when Jesus was born.
This works very well. Those round ornaments we conventionally hang in the branches: these are the planets. The Christmas lights are the stars. The silver garland is the Milky Way.
Trees are sacred almost everywhere, because they represent the night sky—the cosmic order.
However, the star on top of the tree is not really the Star of Bethlehem. The Star of Bethlehem moved. “The star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was.” Understand the tree as the spinning night sky, and the star on top is at the very point where it does not move. It is the North Star, and the trunk of the tree is the North Pole. It represents God the Father, around whom all creation revolves.
Christmas is at least in large part a celebration of the Winter Solstice, and of the turning of the year. Not that this means it is at root a “pagan” festival—there is nothing non-Christian or pagan about a reference to nature. Nature, after all, is God’s creation, and is an important way in which he speaks to us.
Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
The turning of each year is a divine parable of salvation history. Jesus’s birth is the birth of the light, corresponding to the Winter Solstice. “I am the way, the truth and the light.”
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 22, 2021
A Christmas Letter
Jesus's Blood
This piece premiered in London in December 1971, and I think of it as a Christmas, or Advent, song.
Dickens' Dublin
A Daughter's Gratitude
Some years ago, my daughter drew a card for her Mom on Mother’s Day. It was brilliantly done, and I shared it on Facebook. She has immense artistic talent.
But it drew two disturbed comments from female friends. Posted publicly, apparently with no thought that my daughter would see them. One wrote “Uh-oh. There’s something wrong here.” The other accused my wife of abusing her.
For she had written on the card, “thank you for not aborting me.”
I explained to the friend who saw this as proof of child abuse that, so long as abortion was legal, it was simply a fact that every Canadian woman made a conscious decision whether to abort a child or not. Our daughter, being an intelligent child, surely just realized this.
“But,” my friend countered, “she should have been reassured that she was loved, and would never have been aborted.”
But abortion happens before the mother meets the child, and knows anything of their personality. If her life was spared, it was only by either her mother’s good morals or by her good luck.
In the Philippines, where abortion is illegal, nobody was troubled by the card.
My friend concluded by declaring me “delusional,” unfriending me, and never speaking to me since.
I think the experience shows that Canadian women often have a guilty conscience over abortion. And that the human tendency, when made aware of a wrong or injustice, is most often not to right the wrong, but to object to its being mentioned in polite company.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 21, 2021
Mon Pays, C'est l'Hiver
Il Est Ne
Chanson de Noel
A Child Is Born
Theologically, Easter is more important than Christmas. In the cycle of the year, it would also seem that at Easter we have more to celebrate—the return of Spring. Yet Christmas holds a special magic.
I think because it is about the birth of a child—ultimately of all children. In the mystery of consciousness, the entire universe is born again whenever a child is born: it is born in his or her eyes. Each child, at his birth, redeems the universe.
In the Puranas, we read that one day the friends of the infant Krishna alerted his mother that the baby had eaten mud. Yasoda ordered him to open his mouth. When he did:
She saw all of outer space in all directions, mountains, islands, oceans, seas, planets, air, fire, moon and stars. Along with the moon and the stars she also saw the elements, water, sky, the extensive ethereal realm along with the ego and the products of the senses and the controller of the senses, all the demigods, the objects of the senses like sound, smell, taste, touch, and the three qualities of material nature.
And she saw within his mouth all living entities, eternal time, material nature, spiritual nature, activity, consciousness and different forms of the whole creation. Yasoda could find within the mouth of her child everything necessary for cosmic manifestation. She finally saw, within his mouth, herself taking Krishna on her lap and having him suckle at her breast.
Merry Christmas.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
