(Written 20.December.2011)
Pt. 2 (continued from “Christmas Traditions I Can Do Without”)
When I was living out my bachelorhood in a small apartment, there was a time when my bathroom sink stopped draining. I—of course, was far too busy to do anything about this so I created my own remedy; I found a way around this dilemma out of my control. I used the shower for water—as to wet my toothbrush and such, and I’d spit in the toilet.
Thereby, I didn’t need to use the sink. I had crafted a way to completely avoid it’s necessity.
Around the time of 7th grade, my world was forcibly shamed into a similar predicament. (*In case you haven’t been privy to that story, you can see me speak on it here) In fact, it occurred around the same time as the Christmas season (which, is actually also the time of my own celebration of Birth—December 8th).
I was forced into making my world work for me. And it left an extreme distaste for Christmas—much less my birthday.
It tainted the celebration of the season.
I went from a life of innocence to a life profane. And I began to strive to make the profane, sacred. To create for myself, a self worthy of Heaven. Not in God’s eyes, but in mine.
I feared my failures, I feared my missteps, I feared that I was just shy of nice too often to make the cut.
I crafted a well enough working means to live. But it was still a shower and toilet substitute for a working bathroom sink.
The past two years I’ve been privy to an abundance of discovery of not merely who God isn’t, but who God is.
God isn’t Santa.
He doesn’t watch your every move to make sure you’re not naughty.
God doesn’t delight in sending people to Hell.
He has not preassigned, consigned, predestined some for an eternity of being eaten by Krampus. Though he has woven Krampus and Hell into His story, and many—if not all, will feel it’s sting. But not for eternity.
God isn’t in danger of being made profane.
The curtain that separated the Holy of Holy’s was not to protect God from us. Nor is in war for his creation with Krampus, where a victor for the world (in its entirety) has yet to be decided, Krampus is not God’s equivalent.
God is Sacred.
The profane cannot enter the presence of the sacred, but the sacred is free and able to enter in to the profane. When Christ was born, he was birthed in to a manger—the sacred was clothed in profanity, but did not become profane. When Christ died, the curtain of the Holy of Holy’s was torn, and the sacred flooded in to a world profane.
God is Love.
He created out of Love, He redeems out of Love, He woos out of Love, He finishes His story out of Love, He tells His story to us and through us out of Love. If God is Love, then everything He does, even allowing some to feel death and Hell’s sting, to even Hate (Esau I have Hated) is out of Love.
He allows himself to be birthed, later allowing his birth to be associated with the winter solstice; years upon years before I was born, before I felt what profanity creates, so that I can be shown a clear example of what is Sacred being birthed in the midst of the profane, in order to make what is profane, sacred.
Christmas is naught to me but that action.
God—creator of everything,
Jesus—the image of the invisible God,
born in a state of vulnerability–not merely on the earth–in level with it, but even lower, below it, in a cave, in a manger;
a riddle of Heaven–in an instant, trading its position above the Earth, with that of its alleged antithesis; taking a position under the Earth,
turning the Earth upside down, and beginning a revolution, nay, the revolution.
The revolution that shows me that nothing I can do—and nothing that can be done to me, can ever outweigh Him and His sacredness.
The sacred is not in danger of becoming profane; it is the profane that is in constant danger of becoming sanctified.
And His Love for me outweighs any depth of Hell I may encounter—by choice or forced upon me, in this present life or for all time.
Love consumes Krampus, the profane WILL be sanctified.
Fear of either is then cast aside, and a heart and life of love, of sanctified profanity is free to be and celebrate with memories of it all: of profanity, of innocence, and of sacrality, every December, and all year around.
Leaving La Mancha 