Yule Thoughts

 The Yule King: Michael Kerbow

On the longest night of the year I listened to a horrible lessons and carols. I surrounded my self in other stories I hadn’t heard and gired myself with light and food. They say we are going into the time of darkness, though for months now every night was dimmer and every night was darker, you have to pull the weights off your back. They say winter is on its way and hardship may come but they don’t know the hardship has happened. You make merry to chase this winter away, but you sing to remember you’re still here. Remember every day the white snow falls is every day the day grows longer, remember the you that you were and look at the you you are, remember how impossible resurrection seemed and then look at the scars all on your hands and see printed in your palms something like rejoicing.

 

In Hinduism and Sikhism as well as some forms of Buddhism and Jainism, the festival of Devali sweeps across India. Southeast Asia does what we have forgotten we did as well in the west. The festival exists before the religion explains it. The coming of the new religions alters it, often adds to it so that the festival is not exactly the same for all celebrating it. But it is the same festival and we are all celebrating it together and in this world we live in, the one time of year which has inherited this is the season called Christmastide or Yuletide. I saw a group of heathens who had done a Yuletide gathering which looked very fun but nothing like Christmas, and this is great for them, but for my Yule and Christmas are basically one. There is honoring of the Yule Ones, or the Jolnir, but this is also the first night the Christ as the Child on the Back of the Stag is brought out, the beginning of moving from waiting to contemplation, the first midnight service, the first sunrise one.

            Last night, in the mellow midnight darkness, as the frankincense burned we sang: What Child is this? And that is the question I am confronted with. What child is this? What is this celebration? What is happening to me? To us?” The first answer and the quickest one is that he is Himself, a mystery to be lived in and not a thing to be solved. The Child is whom he shows himself to be and we must sit before him awhile. He is difficult to contemplate so we rush past him.

            The Child is useless to us. The child shows up outside of the Bible, and inherited icon. The theological explanation moves us from contemplating the Child to his growing up and being crucified and rising, being a grown up and therefore useful God. We want to use the Child. I want to use the Child. How long can you adore a child? Frankly, I’ve never had much use for babies. What do I do with one even if it’s God? What does it mean? What does it mean when Christ comes into this world? What in the world are the lessons a baby, no matter how divine, can teach?

            Krishna at least walks and talks and is blue and does precocious things. The little lord Jesus? We must take his lordship on faith. He is no fake baby. The Child is a Child. We need not answer the questions just yet, but it is worth taking a stab at them eventually. We need not come to the right conclusion or conclusions. To be open is enough.

 

On Yule the world ends and the world begins again. The new world we wake up in has all the residue of the new one. If we remember from the old stories this is how it always was. God created the world from chaos, Noah and his children stepped out onto a world ravaged by the Flood. This year there is the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, a shining star, something worth taking as a sign. We are solemn in prayer, merry in celebration. Both things are necessary. The new world ought to be celebrated. Without celebration there is no energy to create the new world. The newness is the Child. The world is new because of the Child. The Child is the very blessed Presence that seemed beyond us, quietly in our midst. Later, in the Gospel of Mark when Jesus heals a paralytic, we will thank God for putting such power in the hands of men, but right now we are amazed that God has put himself in the midst of us. The earth, called the dirt, called lowly, has met with the dew and they have both brought for the Just One. That the Child is Son of God and Son of Man, is a great mystery, a joy. We do wrong when skip past that moment to the Crucifixion and the Passion, We do wrong when we skip them. We miss the meaning of both when we ignore one and do not live with the other.

            The idea that Jesus died for us, the strange idea of substitution sacrifice which is the invention of later Christians more than of the Gospel, is a shame to God and to us. The idea that Jesus was walking to his death, knowing that was the result of doing what he must do, taking the stand he was required to, is wonderful, meaningful, bears truth and seems to be the point of the Gospel of Mark. But even this is eclipsed by Christmas, We are not saved by his hanging nor are we saved by our doing and following. We are saved, heaven and earth are made one, the angels are seen to sing, by this being born in the flesh. The other things are what we do as a result of this miracle, not something meant to bring it on.