What does Christmas mean to you?

I have been asking myself this question for the last few days. This year, in light of the economic turmoil, Christmas has been interesting. I really started to feel sort of well, sick, as I would look at all the materialism surrounding myself and the ones I love this year. I also felt more and more hope as I asked myself what Christmas really means to me.

I won't go into my entire spiritual journey here. I started as an agnostic, became a raving atheist, and now find myself a reverent, sort of new age Christian. I know people like labels, but I can't really find a convenient one to describe what I believe to be true.

I began a spiritual journey when I realized there was more to life than a personality. I have always felt a strong connection with my soul, and feel like it is the guiding force in my life, but there was a time I didn't believe in souls. The kind of Religion I was exposed to as a child represented a kind of non-thinking obedience I simply could not stomach. The idea of "God" as a male power that wielded punishment over man and especially WOMAN just did not sit well with me. Never mind the adults (mostly catholic catechism teachers) who would act like I was the devil incarnate if I asked them how they could be sure God, as they explained him, existed.

How arrogant, how faithless I was. "OK", I would say,"Please define faith for me." At that point they would give me a frustrated look that was halfway between outright contempt and hatred. I decided I was on my own in deciding these matters.

Eventually, I realized the limits of my own personality and ego through, well, good old fashioned messing up my life enough that I knew there had to be a better way......and there was. I feel I have, through years of inner searching in a sort of eastern style, finally found my Self. I can't always stay connected to my soul (often I am not), but I found it through a process of deep personal emotional work and surrendering to what I like to call the, "Life Force". I believe this "Life Force" is God, but not the pedantic God so many of our religions describe.

So where does Christmas fit in? Well......along my journey I began reading many spiritual texts, including to much of my friends surprise, the ........Bible. I became fascinated with the Gnostic's. They believed that to find God you had to search within. I was surprised to find how interested in Jesus I was. Not just from a spiritual perspective, but also from an archaeological one. What was true about Jesus and what was made up by the men who lived after him?

I could quote a bunch of sources here, but that would be more appropriate for a book, not a blog. What I basically found was that Jesus was an amazingly loving, intelligent, fascinating man. He was not meek, but audacious. He was not closed, but open. He was not lacking, but abundant. He was not a savior, but a teacher. This is my own interpretation.

So if Christmas represents the birth of a man who many believe to have been the Son of God, which to me means he embodied the "Life Force" in the purest form, then I have to celebrate that. How wonderful! What an example to all of us.

I would like to leave you with two things Jesus talked about to consider:

"The meek shall inherit the Earth"

What is the Earth, when compared to the Kingdom of Heaven? Do you really want to be meek?
Is the Earth, as Jesus saw it, really all that valuable?

I know this quote is inaccurate but it is something like; " For He who has little, even that which he has shall be taken from Him. For Him who has plenty, even more shall be given."

Could that actually mean that people who live in a state of gratitude will feel abundant, and those who see themselves as lacking will lose everything?

"Judge Not, Lest Ye be Judged" - So true. When we fail to forgive (correct our perception of others) we are ultimately condemning ourselves.

So tonight I celebrate the ideas of Jesus as I see them. Arrogant....maybe. But who really knows. I choose to see him as a man who brought peace, forgiveness, and Godliness to Earth. These qualities still exist in each of us....and I am thankful for it.