Christmas 12/25/1967

Life without a center is a blob.

May be a blue blob.

Or a yellow blob.

Or a green blob.

But blob it is without a center. Anarchy it is without a center. We become the victims of life instead of the fashioners. Will of the wisps, who are blown here and there, and here, by the wind of events.

Common human tendency, is to center life around self. And many there be who go to the grave, only to discover that hell, is a lifetime of staring at yourself.

There was a time when man, in his ancient state, centered life around his family. The largest circle of which he was aware. A matter of survival.

A later time and man came to know other families. And life then became centered around the community. The largest grouping of humans of which man then was aware.

And it has been only fairly recently, that man has centered his life around his nation, as the most significant community among communities.

But our awareness today has been broadened to a point of almost psychic shock. Today we have to reckon with the immensities of the universe. The vast population of Earth, so interconnected, that were one suffers now all suffer, where one joys, all joy.

If we center life today around family - we find we can't

If we center life today around community - we find we can't

If we center life today around nation - we find we can't

The Christmas event, and the whole life which has grown from it, comes to pass among us as a people, as peoples who are experiencing in a thousand ways, the fact that the center cannot hold. The Christmas event offers to man once again, the possibility of orienting his life, and his world's life, around it's true center.

Recall what we heard some moments ago about this One born, some 1968 years ago.

“Then through the Son, God made the whole universe, and to the Son he has ordained that all creation shall ultimately belong!”

The Center

“By the event of this birth the true significance of all other births is defined”…( today is our birthday too, anniversary of our new birth, our new life through God's gift of the man Jesus).

“ By the existence of this child the proper value of all other existences is given, for of every other creature it can be said that it has extrinsic importance but of this Child it is the case that He is in no sense a symbol”.

“By Him is dispelled the darkness wherein the fallen will cannot distinguish between temptation and sin, for in Him we become fully conscious of Necessity as our freedom to be tempted, and of Freedom as our necessity to have faith. And by Him is illuminated the time in which we execute those choices through which our freedom is realized or prevented, for the course of History is predictable in the degree to which all men love themselves, and spontaneous in the degree to which each man loves God and through Him his neighbor”.

“Because in Him the Flesh is united to the word without magical transformation, imagination is redeemed from promiscuous fornication with her own images…. for disaster is not the impact of a curse upon a few great families, but issues continually from the hubris of every tainted will. Every invalid is Roland defending the narrow pass against hopeless odds, every stenographer Brunhilde refusing to renounce her lover's ring which came into existence through the renunciation of love”.

“Nor is the Ridiculous a species any longer of the Ugly; for since of themselves all men are without merit, all are ironically assisted to their comic bewilderment by the Grace of God. Every Cabinet Minister is the woodcutter's simple-minded son to whom the fishes and the crows are always whispering the whereabouts of the Dancing Water or the Singing Branch, every heiress the washerwoman's butter-fingered daughter on whose pillow the fairy keeps laying the herb that could cure the Prince’s mysterious illness”.

“Nor is there any situation which is essentially more or less interesting than another. Every tea-table is a battlefield littered with old catastrophes and haunted by the vague ghosts of vast issues, every martyrdom an occasion for flip cracks and sententious oratory”.

“For the Truth is indeed One, without which is no salvation, but the possibilities of real knowledge are as many as are the creatures in the very real and most exciting universe that God creates with and for His love, and it is not Nature which is one public illusion, but we who have each of our many private Illusions about Nature”.

“He is the Way.

Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;

You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures”.

“He is the Truth.

Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;

You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years”.

“He is the Life.

Love Him in the World of the Flesh;

And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy”.