Blooming flowers in winter in front of my childhood home.
Dear fellow pilgrim,
“Are you happy to go home?,” people asked me when we packed up for our sabbatical year in Germany. There wasn’t an easy answer really. Is it easy to revisit the places of your childhood? I know that many of you struggle, as do I. But it is a necessary journey that for many of us comes with baggage we rather would avoid.
So today, on this 9th Day of our journey, when we left my parents’ home with the sight of an early blossoming, I decided it is time to take on the bittersweet journey of coming home.
After all, the Christmas story is a story of traveling, of long journeys, and of coming home. “So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth to Bethlehem, with Mary, who was expecting a child” (“Da machte sich auch auf Josef aus Gallilea mit Maria, seinem angetrauten Weibe, die war schwanger…”).
Have you ever been frustrated by biblical authors who use half a sentence for a journey of a life time? How in the world did Joseph get a very pregnant Maria on a donkey? Where did they get the donkey? Who wants to travel when nine month pregnant anyway? And on a donkey?
And then, without a car or google search they arrived in a town which was the home of their ancestors but not really theirs. Or was there family to welcome them perhaps? Like with a warm meal may be? Was it maybe an uncle who gave them the place in the stable? His place might well have been as crowded as my family home on past Christmases, and the stable was at least a safe and warm and more private place in a busy town!
“I am not going anywhere, I am staying home,” our three year old announced when we packed up again after a short visit in our monastic Berlin home. She had seen enough homes over the Christmas week, and she finally wanted to just stay put, where her toys and her bed were and where she had a sense of home. It almost broke our hearts. How the little ones preach to us in simple ways. A whole book of meditations could be found in this heartfelt declaration.
Finding a home in the wilderness, at the other end of the world, or even and especially with the people closest to us, are the kinds of searches that our life’s journey is made from. We struggle, we enjoy, we retreat, and we struggle again.
Every shadow place will show up on such a journey and it is no wonder that the holy family ended up in a stable. That is the place where light needs to break in. That is the dwelling place of the Divine. We must venture paths untrodden, endure dark nights, stay in stables, get lost and search for the way back. These dark passages in our journey are where the holy awaits us. That is the sum of what I can comprehend about Christmas, dear friend.
Coming home to ourselves is probably the most difficult journey and thus often avoided. GG Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist (and pastor’s son!) says: the goal of each individuation, each becoming-human is God's birth in one self. Therefore the Christmas story moves us because it touches these deep images or "archetypes" we carry in our soul. The Divine wants to come home, home in its home, where it belongs, home in us!
Realizing our self this way is what reminds us that we are made in the image of God, that the sublime wants to take shelter in us; wants to dwell even in our unkempt and chaotic stable, among relatives and strangers, nothing perfect, often not even pretty. Always again, the divine birth is happening, against the odds, in us.
Jung is careful to state that understanding the Christmas narrative this way does not take away any of its mystery. In fact, it rather creates "the psychological preconditions" that allow the story of redemption to be meaningful to us. This Divine incarnation only touches us if it makes sense to, or within, our inmost being. Only then can redemption take place. Only then does the Divine child become the force who reconciles what seems irreconcilable within us and among us. The Divine child comes home, is born in us, and we discover that coming home can happen at the most unexpected places. And flowers bloom in winter.
We were greeted today by early bloomers in our monastery garden in the city of Berlin.
So here is my hope for you today:
May you find
on your Christmas journey
and
in the midst of the unfolding of the new year,
some comfort in the thought
that you are God's beloved child
that the Divine wants to dwell in you,
always again,
no matter how shabby your stable.
And may Christmas -God with us - find you where you are.
Amen.
This post is part of our 12 Days of Christmas Series 2022/23: “Taking Courage”, a Contemplative Journey towards the heart of Christmas. To share your thoughts with us comment below or write us here. For personal guidance visit our PathFinder.
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