Something Holy this Way Comes with Warm Breast on Bright Wings
By: Marilyn Flower
Tags: Christmas, Pregnancy, Advent, Spirituality, Love

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.~Gerald Manley Hopkins in God’s Grandeur

On the third Sunday in December at our church, we sing Mary Did You Know?

It’s a beautiful song from the Christian tradition. In our New Thought circles, the last line of the chorus is changed. The original version says:

Mary, did you know that your baby boy

Would one day rule the nations?

Did you know that your baby boy

Is heaven’s perfect Lamb?

We sing, Did you know that your baby boy is the great I AM? (As does the amazing group Pentatonix in the video below.)

This refers to Moses’ encounter with God in the burning bush. When asked his name, God replied, I AM THAT I AM. I hold the metaphysical notion that in this Adventful time, this mysterious divinity is not just born in or as Jesus, or Buddha or Krisha, but in all of us.

This season would be nothing without Mary being willing to give birth to that which is Great within her. She became a symbol of the Divine Feminine and its many attributes. These include willingness, acceptance, creative incubation, maternal love, and giver of life.

This week’s Advent theme is love.

Love is a crucial ingredient in the trust and willingness it takes to carve out space (inner womb) in our selves and our busy lives to receive the Divine. And not only receive it but give birth to its nature as ourselves.

Again, this is paradoxical because our nature already is Divine. But we also talk about giving birth to the Christ Consciousness which grows within us and longs to be re-born regularly, least we not forget what we are.

Sort of a both/and. Yes, we are becoming what we already are. Even more of what we already are. In case the world has been too much with us — can I get an amen? — or we have simply gotten busy and forgotten.

What do I mean by Christ Consciousness? Paramahansa Yogananda explains it far better than I can. So I’ll let him:

It is the universal consciousness, oneness with God, manifested by Jesus, Krishna, and other avatars. Great saints and yogis know it as the state of samadhi meditation wherein their consciousness has become identified with the divine intelligence in every particle of creation; they feel the entire universe as their own body.

Getting Past Commercialism

The trappings of Christmas show up on time, if not obscenely early, every year. We can roll our eyes and dread the commercialism.

And we can use these images, songs, invitations, etc. to remind ourselves to settle into the quiet and the stillness. Carve out some time to be with ourselves, go deeper into our meditative practices, hang out with the Holy.

Take advantage of any breaks offered. Contemplate what it means to be pregnant with God, Spirit, the Divine Presence, or ____ — insert your preferred name for the great I AM.

Surrender And Allow

Yesterday, my email inbox brought me a reading as part of Lux Divina — an Advent reflection process created by Spirituality & Practice. Forgive the Christian languaging as needed; apply your own metaphysical metaphors and enjoy:

The journey inward requires surrender to this mystery in our lives, and this means letting go of our control buttons. It means dying to the untethered selves that occupy us daily; it means embracing the sufferings of our lives, from the little sufferings to the big ones, it means allowing God’s grace to heal us, hold us and empower us for life. It means entering into darkness, the unknowns of our lives, and learning to trust the darkness, for the tenderness of divine love is already there. It means [being] willing to sacrifice all that we have for all that we can become in the power of God’s love; and finally it means to let God’s love heal us of the opposing tensions within us.

~Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD., “A Reply to Richard Rohr on the Cosmic Christ,” October 16, 2017, Omega Center blog

Sister Delio refers to it as all that we can become. I resonate with the pregnancy/giving birth metaphors. The question can be asked either way: What qualities of God are you bringing forth into the word. Or what are you giving birth to?

Either way, let’s bless what poet Gerald Manley Hopkins in God’s Grandeur calls the bent World with more peace, love, joy, and harmony. If we can but be those changes we wish to see, they will ripple out beyond us and go where most needed.

Whether it’s seeds that sprout or a babe in swaddling clothes, the world so needs more of what we each bring. So friends, bring it on! Namaste!