A Fitting Holiday

These “Holiday” times are rich with religious and cultural metaphors – birth and new beginnings, festivals of lights, celebrations of the earth and sky, but what does it all mean? Our present is an “in between” time.

We are caught with one foot in the pre-modern world of religious story and myth. It is a world of cosmological metaphysics, laced with magic and childish wishful thinking. In that world of supernatural revelations and ritual we are given hope and meaning. Yet our other foot is firmly planted and direction set in a post-modern world. There we are free from the baggage of superstitions, but also alone. Our freedom has come at a price. Our cosmology is now an expanding universe of infinite galaxies and dark matter. And our human time and place in this scale of things is so infinitely recent and small.

So in this schizophrenic age we can begin to create new metaphors that speak the truth. Perhaps if we acknowledge our fragility in this universe and leave behind the religious dogmas and metaphysics that separate us, we can find ways to bond with others. Ironically, it is perhaps only by moving beyond religion that we can find the peace that religions always sought, but never realized. Our salvation is in our humanity, not in religion.

So let Christians celebrate the prince-of-peace within each of us and Jews find the light within our humanity and the rest of us express the joy of giving. That would be a fitting Holiday.

Cheers,

Merle