Words.

At yesterday’s Awakening, we reflected on the disconnects that those of us in the so-called first-world have when we hear the song of Mary (the Magnificat), particularly the part about the way God “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich away empty.” If we hear this with first world ears, it’s not exactly a comforting message. Indeed, it challenges the very fabric of our social structures and radically calls into question the way our lives are ordered. Perhaps it’s not surprising that during the 1980s the government of Guatemala banned Mary’s song from being sung, for it was simply too subversive. I’m reminded of the caveat that privileged folk like to add to the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven…but not yet!”

Anyhow, I simply asked participants at the Awakening how we might seriously engage the implications of Mary’s song for our lives today, and how such implications might thereby help us celebrate Christmas in — for lack of a better way of putting it — less cheapened ways. Several of the responses were quite helpful, and one participant wrestling with all of this sent the following to me in an email that I’d like to share:

It is also in the Gospel of Luke (Chap 14) that the Banquet Parable is recorded.
In this parable, and in my opinion, in 95% of Jesus’ other parables and statements,
He attempts to detail the existence and significance of the Kingdom of God.

His consistent themes on this subject appear to be:

1) The Kingdom of God is here. It’s already here. It’s never not been here.
It occupies the same space-time that we occupy in ‘our’ world.
We just struggle with seeing it.

2) The Kingdom is like a banquet, abundant with God’s Love, Grace, and Charity.
It is available for each of us to receive and to redistribute to others – all others.
This sharing – with any and all, and with no preconceptions of a hierarchy
amongst us, predicated by pride, possessions, or power –
Is the very Essence of the Kingdom.

3) Like those invited to the banquet – but who chose not to attend because they were too occupied with their recent acquisitions (and thus the banquet was attended by the poor and destitute) – we too risk letting our possessions, our pride, and our perceived power stand in the way and block us from the brilliant, illuminating life in the Kingdom.

4) Our right to and our need to interface with the Kingdom stems from the divine identity that was given to each of us by our Creator. The Good that is our inner core is likened to God in that it was created in His image. As we remove more and more obstacles & strengthen our connection back to the Kingdom, loving others & helping the poor will come as naturally to us as breathing comes to our bodies.

To attempt to answer our question, that Phil brought to light:
How do we reconcile ‘Blessed are the poor’ with ‘Hey, my family needs food, clothing, shelter, & transportation; and in a manner that maintains reasonable respect from others’?
I have had the following thought experiments.

Can we look at each possession that we have and categorize each component into: necessity for survival, opportunity to help others, or simply maintaining pride & status?

Can we look at our emotional attachment to each possession, try to quarantine and then purge those not in sync Jesus’ teachings and His yearning for our spiritual growth?

Can we act upon our ideas and conclusions from the first two queries in a manner that maintains our health and safety, always knowing that explanations of those actions represent opportunities to Enlighten others?

Can we believe that each step toward the Light will make us appreciate and have desire for the next step, even though it may seem more difficult to make than the last?

The more we attempt to understand the radical message of Jesus, and not simply use him as a badge of self-righteousness and/or a ticket to heaven, the more introspection we can have for who we are, what we are, & why we are here.

Isaiah reported that God told him (paraphrasing)
“Quit sacrificing goats and other animals. Quit spilling blood in my name. That is not how you worship me. Here is how you worship me: Go out and give comfort to the widowed and give sustenance to those who have lost their fathers.”
Helping others, especially those who have been left behind in the world, appears not only to be a good thing to be doing, but is THE WAY TO WORSHIP GOD.
It has metaphysical properties.
As if God is saying: “I Am Love! Your role in this whole thing is to spread Me around.”

So if our thoughts are directed toward divine understanding more than they are directed toward consumption, possession, and favorable comparison to the Jones, we can propel ourselves in the right direction, wean ourselves from the trappings of the physical world we find ourselves in, & strengthen our inner core & our connection to God’s Kingdom.

God already has infinite Love in the Spiritual realm of His Kingdom.
God knows that the physical world into which He put us has with it physical demands and physical needs. We shouldn’t necessarily deny those needs. We should prevent them from blocking us from doing what He intended us to do when He put us here:
Turn back to Him and the Kingdom, draw the Love from that realm into our world, and let it be “on Earth as it is in Heaven”.

Colbert returns this week in his own way to help us honor the baby Jesus…