Dear old and new friends,
    
     As we enter into this new week of a new year the journalist Mignon McLaughlin reminds us, “The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.” Regardless if you are trying to live differently in this new year or are simply going on with life as you did in old 2015, check your backpack. Not only children going to school or hikers wear a backpack, each one of us does. We carry and are affected by our past experiences and past thinking. Does that mean we are supposed to examine our thoughts about life back in 2000 or 1960?

     Further back than that even, for we carry on our backs attitudes, thinking and fears that go back to when we dwelled in caves. The Ice Age began 2.6 million years ago when glaciers and ice sheets covered for a prolonged time northern parts of the world. Seeking shelter from the bitter cold and icy winds, it is believed former tent dwelling hunters inhabited caves for protection. If you live where bitter biting cold, snow and ice are common this time of year in North America, you can identify with your most ancient ancestors seeking the warmth of a fire in the shelter a cave. Scholars believe we today are still hardwired with some of the attitudes and thinking of those prehistoric times!

     This brief review of history is directly related to our daily needs and those of the poor. While the Salvation Army bell ringers aren’t collecting for the poor now, the daily needs of the unfortunate are just as real, if not more so than at Christmas. Compassion is a 365-day attitude of the heart, not just at the holidays. However, after all the many requests for our generosity in the days before and at Christmas, we can easily suffer from what psychologists call “psychic numbering.” This causes us to see but not feel, and to justify our lack of compassion by saying, “I gave at the holidays.”

     Take the case of a small child in dirty clothes and face who stops you on the street and begs you for help. Moved by compassion you reach for your billfold. Then another identically poor dirty child appears begging for help. Suddenly your loving compassion suffers a serious puncture, if not a major leak. Because of what’s hidden in your backpack it doesn’t take ten other children for us to react negatively…only one more! It seems we are prehistorically psychologically wired to help only one person at a time! Also studies show we are less inclined to donate to large scale relief for some major disaster because of cave day thinking such as “My gift is only drop in the bucket.”

     For a really fresh “new” year, lighten your load and enliven your life by disposing of as much as possible of your back pack. Keep your mind up to date with the times as you jettison cave dwellers’ fears and discard childhood worries in a personal evolution of your mental habits.

Dear old and new friends,
 
     Christmas celebrates the birth of one with many titles: Prince of Peace, God-Hero, Wonder-Counselor, Father-Forever, Son of God…and the most meaningful, “Jesus, the Erotic Lover.” The old religious hierarchy was flabbergasted when God decided to exit heaven and take on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and all earthy things. Christmas was so scandalous—God with sexuality and human needs and hungers—that religion attempted to deny the reality by burying it under piles of laws, complicated theologies and a public worship that actually proclaimed the exact opposite. It wasn’t until the fourth century that the Christian Church celebrated the Feast of the Nativity—Christ’s birth, Christmas—and then only with opposition.

     What made an unwrapped Christmas so shocking was that it was a feast of God in the human flesh of an illiterate Jewish village craftsman who wasn’t some new prophet, but rather the living, breathing All Holy One, the Supreme Spiritual Being dwelling in a human body’s fragile flesh. Was this amazing feat the result of God being convinced of the old saying, “Humans can’t love what they cannot put their arms around”? If so, the Almighty One became huggable!

     To understand the title of “Jesus, the Erotic Lover” recall that “God is love” and that Jesus was the en-fleshment of that Divine Mystery. He didn’t become some disembodied ethereal love, but rather an earthy and deeply sensual person with all the needs, desires, feelings, conflicts and cravings we experience. Theologian Teilhard de Chardin used fire to illustrate love; that intensely scorching blaze that enflames sexual intimacy with such attraction, as well as bliss. Along with other recent scholars, Teilhard believes sexuality is the creative core of a spirituality and theology for a God of Divine Eros, and not the old detached, aloof Deity.
    
     This unwrapping of Christmas invites us to look at our bodies with different eyes and to see them as one with the Body of Christ, both an earthly and cosmic body cherished by God. The Irish theologian Diarmuid O’Murchu says, “God loves bodies.” He also insightfully says “God likes you” (pause to let that last statement soak into your soul) since for we as Christians it is possible to love people whom we don’t like.

     This Christmas Celebration calls us to embrace eroticism which once we rejected as a deadly sinful temptation, but that now with our understanding of the incarnation we should incorporate into our spiritual-inner lives. The anti-sexuality of Christianity of the last several hundred years has led to a repression of sensual creative energies that we now need to abandon as theologically antique and unhealthy.

     So, don’t be afraid to unwrap Christmas--to like yourself and your body—as does God.

Dear old and new friends, 

     Once upon a time Thanksgiving was to celebrate the end of a good harvest and that barns and fruit cellars were full, insuring there would be enough to eat through the coming winter. Today’s Thanksgiving signals not the end but the beginning of the harvest season for merchants whose customers will spend roughly 70% of the American gross domestic product on Christmas gifts. These gift sales are critical since they determine merchants’ annual profit and that of our national economy. The nation’s treasury and merchants pray that, in spite of terrorist threat, the old adage “Shoppers keep shopping” will be true this year.

     Yet we and our children already have all if not more than we need; so why buy more? And why does the celebration of Christmas or Hanukkah require giving gifts of things we don’t really need? Wait…did you hear it? That tiny voice saying, “Now Hays, don’t turn into a Scrooge and ruin our coming merry holidays.” I won’t! Yet I wish to help us explore why we do what we do and to offer some other options. We give gifts now because the ancient Romans found the winter weeks to be dark and dreary, so they celebrated Saturnalia on December 17th in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. During December’s cold, long and dark nights, this feast lifted their spirits by drinking and partying to excess. The Romans also exchanged token gifts and candles, and gifts of fruit and nuts.

     The coming of Christianity didn’t convert the climate of dark cold weather, but in the 4th century Christians converted the sinful pagan feast of Saturnalia into the light festival of the birth of Jesus, and kept the old Roman custom of giving gifts. Giving gifts at Christmas time then is a beautiful nearly four thousand year and older tradition well worth keeping. Also, our spirits are lifted with a lights festival in winter’s darkness by illuminating our town and houses with endless strings of festive-colored lights. I have a friend who puts up “inside” his home strings of countless colored Christmas lights. He turns off all other lights and loves to sit meditatively in their glittering grandeur as if at the center of a galaxy. Now there’s a wonderful tradition; turn off the other lights in your home and spend quality time lost in childlike wonder in the magical presence of your lighted Christmas tree.

     For a spouse or family member, instead going to a store for a gift, go around your home and find an old souvenir from some memorable vacation with them. Wrap it in Christmas paper and put it under the tree, and when the person opens it reminisce with them about the good times of that trip. Or recycle a cherished gift by symbolically wrapping it in holiday paper and giving it back (temporally) to the person(s) who had thoughtfully given it to you, telling them how all these years it has been such a keepsake. God help the merchants this year to survive, and even make a profit…but let us not add to the glut of our too-much-of-everything consumerism.

     Finally, while shopping is like a sedative and consumerism the opiate of the masses, we often buy gifts we can’t afford for people who have too much already. It is estimated that one-third of our holiday buying still remains unpaid for two months after Christmas! We also buy stuff people don’t need or even like, as it is estimated 18% of holiday presents (worth a staggering $12 billion) are never worn or used.

     John D. Rockefeller, Sr., the multimillionaire (in today’s dollars a multi-billionaire), learned he was to be gifted in the early 1900’s by his children with an electric car to enable him to easily ride around his vast estate. His response? “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather have money."

Dear old and new friends,

     Today’s Christmas is domesticated and tamed…but the first one was wild, lacking kindly toy-making elves and flying reindeer. It was also frightening as Bethlehem’s silent night was shattered with loud agonizing cries of pain, the same ones heard at every birth! No heavenly chorus of singing angels soothed that birthing anguish we celebrate on this Christmas—so don’t expect them at yours!

     Birthing? What are you talking about? It’s impossible; I’m too old to be born again. Besides once is enough! Yet vast are the spiritual depths for our Christmas meditation in the First Letter of John, 4:7-8: “Everyone who loves is born of God…for God is love.”

     To unravel this mystical puzzle, let’s begin by reviewing our loves. First, we learned how to love as infants by being loved by our parents, then this love evolved into a wider love of members of our immediate family and relatives. Outside our family, our first real love perhaps was a sexual, erotic one that began a new relationship with another that was intended to evolve into the beautifully, supportive love of companionship. Of falling in love, the former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Once you get over falling in love, you can really begin to love.” Yes, after those high octane mind-blowing experiences you must learn to love with such great strength so as to withstand infidelity of all types, along with your physical aging and that of your lover, so your love can evolve into a greater, divine love.

     God is all of these kinds of human loves, yet God’s love is different. That author of John’s first letter said, “God is love,” yet left unspoken what that loves is! Divine love is radically different in that it is not attracted by physical beauty or charm and loves effortlessly the disfigured and ugly. God’s love is free. It can’t be purchased or manipulated, and it never requires any thanks, not even the natural response of being loved in returned.

     To love as does God requires a dedication to the evolution of all of our previous ways of loving, and so naturally must include the birthing pains of evolution. Your spirit will scream out in pain when this new loving calls you to lift a soiled, stinking, perhaps diseased person out of the gutter. Inwardly your soul will wail in agony as you continue to love one who returned your years of loving kindness with hostility and stony silence. Your spirit will howl with a birthing burst of anguished pain when you respond with loving kindness to those who dislike you, who speak lies and spread malicious gossip about you.

     Love like this day after day and you will be born of God, just as Jesus, born of Mary, was born of God to become Living Mystical Love among us. When you love as God does, all of Heaven rejoices and sends out the joyous announcements of your new birth!

Dear old and new friends,

     I was shocked by a recent survey revealing that a third of Catholics did not believe in a personal God! Searching for an explanation, I wondered how worship or prayer might shape our relationship with God. For example, what type of God is created addressing our prayers to “Lord,” a title once restricted to the Roman Emperor? And how does Catholic worship which is the Roman Rite Mass—the Eucharist—influence an idea of God? It now is in English, but other than for some adjustments is the same solemn Roman ritual from the reforms following the 1563 Council of Trent…71 years after Columbus came to the New World! Catholics urgently need a new 21st Century “Living” Eucharist reflective of a personal God, our evolving ecumenical unity and our world in an ever-expanding universe seen in the awesome photographs of the Hubble space telescope.

     In anticipating Christmas, we commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ whose teachings reinforced the Great Commandment, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.” Do our present spirituality and prayers reflect our striving for or experiencing a totality of loving of God? Christian scriptures use several words for worship/prayer. The most frequent of these, used some 66 times, is the Greek proskyneo. This Greek term means an act of submission or adoration, and surprisingly the very intimate, “I come toward to kiss”…and, logically, to be kissed! Imagine the impact on your spirituality if you began your prayers with such an intimate request!

     We are born with an innate desire for intimacy with others—and God! Yet we also dread closeness to the Divine Mystery. So we fill up our worship with endless words, songs and music, and in our personal devotions by the use of predictable rote prayers that shield us from vulnerable intimacy. As our mothers kissed the hurt away from a childhood bruised knee, so let the Holy Loved One kiss away our fears of intimacy. Let your love grow by addressing God as, “My Beloved” or “Dearly Beloved.” Then eagerly put flesh on your affectionate words by loving acts of kindness to strangers and friends. The best prayer for these Anticipation Days is just to sit, close your eyes to the season’s whirling hurrying and be in silence with your Beloved. Lovers hunger to be alone together; so still your anxious heart as is prescribed in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and confess that I am God.” 

     Upon opening your eyes “confess” that everywhere you look and everything you see is your Divine Beloved! The old God of the starry heavens above no longer exists! Your dearly beloved Creator has poured, and is pouring, the Divine in abundance into all earthly creation, into the hundreds of billions of star-crammed galaxies in our ever-expanding universe and in all other possible universes in space.


                                       “Venite adoremus”—come, let us adore!

Dear old and new friends, 

     It’s Thanksgiving, and merchants in a hurry for the beginning of the lucrative holiday season are flooding television and newspapers with advertisements for Christmas gifts. This holiday impatience is contagious. Countless are infected and can’t wait for the Thanksgiving dinner to end so to race off to join crowds of shoppers in city streets and businesses already decked out for Christmastide, while everywhere one hears the music of ancient carols. These all conspire to make it difficult to realize we’re celebrating Thanksgiving.

     Paradoxically, I propose adding yet another holiday to Thanksgiving—Valentine’s Day! By blending Thanksgiving’s turkeys with snowy Christmas trees and toy-making elves along with giant red hearts, pink cupids and bouquets of red roses of the Feast of Lovers we can add to our gratitude. That’s ridiculous, you say…it will only distract people! Really? More than competitive TV football games or hectic Christmas shopping now divert us from visiting and enjoying our family on this ancient feast of autumn gratitude?

     We Americans already easily forget we are so gifted; don’t let a premature Christmas eclipse or thrilling football games sidetrack us from being truly thankful! Be aware of that Grand Canyon of disparity in wealth between us and the impoverished, unemployed and homeless, and our need to alleviate their suffering by giving thanks in tangible acts.

     To the many dishes on Thanksgiving tables that are from treasured old recipes I add:            
                                                       Recipe for
                                        A Holy Feast of Giving Thanks

     1.) Begin by recalling the Haystack reflection of two weeks ago about the African American Father Divine and his conception of tangibilitating…giving in concrete, tangible ways.

     2.) Write a short list of those things for which you are most grateful. Keep it short so you are able to express your gratitude not simply in words but in tangible ways.

     Remember, we've added Valentine’s Day to our Thanksgiving. Love is divine; a gift you          can’t buy, trade, barter for or win. Love is a free gift that is ever-evolving.

     3.) Now return to your gratitude list. At the top might be those who taught you how to love by their loving of you—your parents. Next, teachers and mentors whose love helped shape you. Now place with them the person who presently loves you most, and whom is your greatest love. Then on Thanksgiving express your appreciation and gratitude for her or him in a tangible way by giving them a lover’s gift of affectionate gratefulness. It can be simple or elegant. Regardless, it will be a treasure because it is filled with love.

                                                 Happy Thanksgiving!

                                                      
                                                        ~ Act One ~

It was Christmas Eve in Candle City. In a bleak back room a red, half‑spent candle burned in an old whiskey glass, the bottom half of which was filled with old cigarette butts, an empty matchbook and a couple of champagne corks. The candle’s name was Mary M, and her flame danced brightly as tiny streams of wax trickled down her sides, which were draped with a string of cheap glass beads.

        Mary M was a barmaid in the Boiler Room Bar located in the lower north end of town. On this Christmas Eve — as a heavy snowfall covered the city, and families and friends gathered around their Christmas trees — the Boiler Room Bar was all but empty.

        One lone customer sat at the bar talking to the bored bartender, who was leaning back against the sink with his arms folded. At a small table in the back of the bar, Mary M sat with her arm around a young sailor, his head resting on her shoulder. The sailor was homesick and melancholy — it was Christmas Eve, and he was far from home.

        Mary M sang softly to him, “I’ll be home for Christmas, just you wait...” when suddenly the front door flew open. Into the bar blew a white whirlwind of snow. In the center of the swirl stood three tall white candles carrying bags filled with gift boxes.

        “Excuse us, please,” said the tallest of the three candles, each of whose wicks was still perfectly wrapped in wax. “We’ve got some gifts for the poor people. Would you direct us to the City Shelter for the Homeless?”

        Mary M stood up and, wearing her best smile, walked over to greet the three strangers. “Merry Christmas, and welcome to the Boiler Room Bar. Care for a drink?”

        “No, thank you, Miss. It’s late, and we have to get back for Midnight Mass. Could you kindly direct us to the Shelter for the Homeless?”

    "Sure, that’s easy,” replied Mary M. “Straight down this street, three blocks, on your left. It’s inside that old warehouse by the train tracks. But maybe you can stop here on your way back. We all can have a little Christmas cheer together. Don’t forget now.”

    The three tall candles thanked her and left the bar. As they walked down the street, one said, “Whew! She was something else! I bet before the night’s over she’ll roll that drunk sailor for all he’s got.”

        “Did you notice?” said the second candle. “She’s got the disease! She’s already wasting away! Why don’t those kind of people take care of themselves?”

        After a pause, the third candle added, “There, but for the grace of God, go I!” Walking in silence, the three candles, carrying their bags of gifts, disappeared into the darkness of the night.

                                                         ~ Act Two ~

        Sometime later, the three white candles, without their bags of gifts, came walking back up the street. The snow swirled in great white clouds around a neon light flashing BAR‑BAR‑BAR. Beneath it stood Mary M, looking up at the falling snow with the wide‑eyed wonder of a child who was delighting in the white winter ballet for the first time. When she saw the three approaching, she called out happily, “Hey, did you three find the place OK?”

        “Yes, thank you,” answered the tallest of the three candles, “your directions were excellent. Well, have a very Merry....”

        “That was neat of you three, I mean bringing gifts down here to the poor on Christmas Eve. I’d tip my hat to you,” giggled Mary M, “if I wore one. We don’t see beautiful candles like you down here very often. You’re so tall and straight, so perfectly white.”

        “Thank you, Miss,” said one of them. “You see, we’re church candles. We’re made of pure, guaranteed‑natural beeswax. See, it’s stamped right here on us. Church law requires that, you know! Nothing less than 51% pure beeswax for us church candles.”

        “And,” added another, “we’re not just ordinary church candles; we’re also blessed candles!”

        “Really!” said Mary M in wonderment. “I guess I should have known by just looking at you. How lucky you are, I mean to be blessed by the church, and to be so pure: 51% natural beeswax!”

        “Yes, and also, Miss,” said the third candle, “besides being blessed, the three of us have a mission in life!”

        “A mission!” said Mary M in amazement. “You mean you’ve got some higher purpose for being alive? Gosh, you three are really fortunate. Most of us just live day to day, trying to make ends meet. Hey, how about that drink I offered you. Don’t worry, it’s on me tonight; after all, this is Christmas Eve.”

        “Thank you, Miss, but we’ve got to keep moving or we’ll miss Midnight Mass. Merry Christmas and God bless you.” The three tall candles turned to leave, casting sly side-glances at one another.

        “Hey, wait a minute,” said Mary M, “I forgot to ask. What is your mission in life?”

        The three proudly answered in one voice, “We’ve been called to be ‘the Light of the World’!”

        “Yeah?” Mary M replied, “but you ain’t even aflame! Look, your wicks are still wrapped in wax! Regardless of how much pure beeswax you’ve got in you, or if you’ve been blessed by the church, how are you gonna’ be the Light of the World if you’re not afire? You three had better pray! Yeah, pray for a miracle — a Christmas miracle. You’re gonna’ need one if you’re going to be the Light of the World.” She waved good-bye to the three. Then, shaking her head, Mary M turned and went back into the bar to give a little love to the young homesick sailor.

                                                            ~ Act Three ~

        As the three tall white candles hurried down the street toward their BMW, one said, “What did she say?”

        “She said, ‘We’d better pray for a miracle,’” replied the second candle.

        “What kind of miracle?” asked the first candle.

        “I’m not sure. Did you notice, though, that there was something really different about that red candle?” the second candle wondered.

        “Who could have missed it!” said the third candle. “She was on fire! But you know as well as I what that means: She’s got the disease that wastes you away! It’s only a matter of time before...before she’s gone.”

        “I know that,” said the second candle, “but did you see the way she lit up that dingy bar? And what she did to this dark street — even with all this snow falling, she outshone that neon light. Maybe she meant that we should pray to be set on fire so that our light really can shine?”

    “We’ll shine in heaven — when God calls us home!” retorted the first candle.

    “Yeah, I know that,” the second candle answered. “But, what if...what if we’re supposed to shine now? I think we ought to pray.”

        As the three candles stood in silence, the snow stopped falling and the clouds parted to reveal a star‑crowded sky. The three prayed aloud, “O God, set us on fire, tonight, here, now!” Then the three white candles bent their heads in silent prayer. In the process, however, they failed to see the shooting star. It was huge. It blazed across the night sky like a giant Fourth of July sparkler.

        Some who saw the star that night said it was a Chinese satellite reentering the atmosphere. Others claimed it was a UFO. Whatever it was, it fell directly onto the street a block down from the Boiler Room Bar in a gigantic explosion of silent light — causing the wicks of the three tall white candles to burst into flames!

                                        The End

Dear old and new friends,

    As Christmas approaches, family or friends living afar often telephone to visit and extend holiday greetings. Alexander Bell’s invention of the telephone was more than a technological marvel, it was a miracle of holy communion that unites across the miles people with one another.

    This week before Christmas imagine that your telephone rings and when you answer it a voice says, “This is the Whitehouse. Please stay on the line for President Obama.”  Imagine your amazement or how your mind would conjure up questions to ask him. As you waited, imagine your eagerness to tell friends and family about this once-in-a-lifetime phone call?

    Or say your telephone rings and an Italian-accented voice said, “This is Rome with a call from the Vatican. Please stay on the line; Pope Francis would like to visit with you.” After overcoming your original shock you think, “Why me? I’m no cardinal or bishop, but I had heard the pope does call ordinary people.” Then that Italian accented voice comes back on the line, “Grazie for holding. Please continue to do so since His Holiness is eager to speak with you, and will be with you shortly.” As you wait, wouldn’t you begin to think of questions you wanted to ask or perhaps request him to pray for your sick cousin? Or say that you receive a telephone call from the Dali Lama…or perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury…or even Billy Graham, how would you respond?

    Now reflect on an even more astonishing possibility. Your phone rings, and when you answer you hear a serene angelic voice say, “This is Heaven calling. Please stay on the line for a telephone call….” Naturally you would dismiss it as some crazy prank until you recalled seeing an advertisement for the bestselling author Mitch Albom’s newest book, The First Phone Call from Heaven. And in that advertisement what caught your eye in large type was, “What if the end is not the end?”

    Take your time now to pause in reading this reflection to seriously consider from whom among your deceased family or friends you would like to visit? While involved in contemplating this suddenly you realize that the caller might not be a deceased family member, but God! Instantly calculating the exceedingly incredible consequences if that was who was about to speak with you, would you continue to hold or would you push the “off” button to end the call?

Dear old and new friends,                

    Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra in southwest Turkey, while immigrating to America found that his golden shimmering halo and ornate episcopal vestments had been stolen, but in their place was a Nordic red and white fur-trimmed suit of clothes. The early Dutch settlers pronounced his name, “Sinterklaas,” easily mispronounced as “Santa Claus.” In these December weeks the jolly, smiling white-bearded face of this saintly giver of gifts seems to be everywhere.

    Small children profess an infallible, dogmatic belief in him. Adults are Santa atheists! These “closet atheists” don’t outwardly deny his existence…especially to their own children. Unlike some atheists, Santa infidels don’t write books about his non-existence or the ridiculousness of his circling the globe in a single night to gift children. A scholar (whose name I’ve forgotten) once replied when asked if he believed in the existence of God, “No, I do not believe God exists—and I miss him!” Sinter Klaas atheists say the same, for faith in him includes the magical, whimsical fantasy, daydreams, make-believe and active presence among us of elves, fairies, leprechauns and message-delivering angels.

    Compared to a child’s world, Santa atheists live in a shrunken merry-less world congested with dreary practicalities and endless problems. Their world suffers a drought of wild imagination, hilarity, joyous surprises and eagerly animated anticipation. If this sounds like where you live, and you desire to live in a happier place, here’s a suggestion: Go to a department store and the throne of Santa Claus, then go up to him and ask to be converted as a one of his believers!

    Be prepared, he’ll ask you to enter his convert course by engaging daily in that legendary childhood practice of pretending. Belief in him means make-believing you are him, not by dressing up in his red outfit but by imitating his merry jolliness in life’s difficulties, be they as unpleasant as descending dirty, sooty chimneys. Emanate his anonymous gift giving and experience his joyousness in secret gifting. Paradoxically, imitate him as an atheist, a nonbeliever that your gifts must be acknowledged by obligatory “thank you” notes.

    As a believer/disciple you will acquire St. Santa’s miraculous eyes capable of recognizing those who are hungry for gifts, both rich and poor, along with his great passion to feed that hunger. Pretend spring, summer, autumn and winter, and I assure you not only Santa Claus and his elves but the entire enchanted world of a child will be yours…yes, for by pretending you become a child again and a saint!