Dec 28, 2004, 12.00am IST
Christopher Mendonca.
Christmas is a season of connectedness — of human beings with God and with one another. The expression of our connectedness, however, sometimes tends to get ritualistic. Parties, celebrations and family dinners often allow us to structure our time, leaving us feeling good as long as we are in company. But we get lonely once the ritual is over. One way of escape from this loneliness is to discover that our connectedness results not so much from what we do together but from realising what we are. The celebration of Christmas is basically about who we are.
We are not only specks of cosmic dust, linked by a biological, mineral and chemical consciousness. Our human condition is also characterised by relationships, the bonds that we forge with one another in many ways. We are spiritual beings, too, and we need to remain aware of this fact. Unfortunately, we often make our relationships convenience-driven, constantly manipulating both mind and body to keep up appearances. Life is seen as being able to function effectively. So when the body and mind begin to become dysfunctional we are gripped with anxiety, tension and anguish; we are not at peace. We sense we are losing control and desperately try to regain it, often with little success.
If, in spite of the fellowship we experience, we are lonely, we are not in communion. In loneliness we try to escape from our uniqueness and try to merge our personal identity with the crowd. But one can be lonely even in a crowd. A community of individuals is hardly a community at all; it's a place where egos are jostling for advantage, competing for much the same goods held together by a reluctantly accepted set of rules to limit the damage. Educated into complete conformity and reduced to homogeneity of opinions and habits, virtue is identified with uncontroversial ordinariness and a nervous cultural sameness.
If we are willing to go beyond our individuality and accept the solitude of the human condition, we can experience a communion with fellow pilgrims journeying within to discover the Supreme inside of us. Christmas tells us that God is with us. But it also shows us that finding him is possible only if we are willing to go beyond images, words and thoughts, giving up trying to fashion a god according to our image and likeness, and behold him instead as the God who is at the centre of our being.
This is the secret of the shepherds and the three wise men. They were willing to go beyond the outward form to the substance of things. So when a care-giver connects with someone whose body is wasting away beyond recognition, and a mother can still recognise the face of her son beyond his disfigured and contorted body, when we are able to see in an AIDS victim basic human dignity that has remained untarnished, when we can connect with the poor and marginalised for no other reason than the discovery that we are bonded together by our participation in the life that comes as God's gift, then we know that we have found the Saviour. This is the God who dwells in us and whose coming we celebrate at Christmas.
Silent Night is a popular Christmas carol. It speaks of the Silence that is so characteristic of God's presence. Listen to the silent music of another's heart until you find a rhythm or pattern that emerges, and then gradually begin to make from within you a sound that matches the melody and rhythm of what you hear. Then you will experience a communion, a oneness of being that binds you together. It will be your best loved Christmas carol.
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