Keeping the Dream

Silent Night

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Regardless your religious background, the story of the baby born in the dead of winter in humble surroundings is a story that touches the heart. I think it moves so many people because the images are archetypal, telling a story that speaks not only to a particular religious belief but to the human experience.

To me, this story represents the birth of hope in humankind, in that authentic, organic place within the human heart. It represents our inner being, that “sacred-place-within” that cannot be touched, defiled or soiled by violence or trauma.

Every person carries within them their own Bethlehem, their own Silent Night. And within every person is a guiding star and the inner wisdom to follow it, to embark on the journey to our own salvation and redemption.

I just want to say that I am proud of you - no matter how sure your steps or how hesitant, I am proud of you as you walk your journey of healing.

In my own journey, I have grown to develop a deep respect for those of us on this healing path, for I have become more and more aware of how many people seek to avoid such work, to what extent they are willing to go and what damage they are willing to inflict to avoid it.

But not you.

You want something else for yourself. You could quit; there are times, days, weeks, months, years when your heart is heavy with depression and almost paralyzed, when the pain is excruciating and you live your life as if every moment were a shallow labored breath of a dying person. You could give in.

But not you, even though it would be so easy to just quit, to give in to the dynamics that pull on you, the seductions to rationalize and justify, to join the long line of people passing the legacy of pain from one generation to another. Many people would rather quit before they even begin, and many do.

But not you. You could distract yourself with busy work or tell yourself you’re perfectly fine or use your wound as an excuse for your behavior or even entitlement to leave a line of fallen victims in your wake, like so many do.

But not you…and even if you have done these things, as I have in varying degrees, in this moment, you are born anew, because you are contemplating something else. That’s why you are reading these words.

For you are on a journey, traveling across foreign lands, to places you’ve never been, following signs like a star in the sky, checking maps but more than likely making them as you go along, charting a course for others to follow if they choose, because you’re like that…because you choose to be like that.

And I am so proud of you. When you look upon a manger scene, when you look up in the sky, when you see the blues and reds and greens of Christmas lights; anything that touches your heart with beauty, please, know this - that beauty that touches you is you; you are the innocence, the wonder; that part of you that you have for so long been seemingly lost to - I believe the Divine is already a part of us waiting for us to “come and worship”. We could not be alive if this were not so. And even though we may feel as “outcasts” with no room in the world among others seemingly more advantaged than us, there is something wondrously holy within us that is holy still and always will be.

This Winter Solstice, this Christmas time, this season when so many different faiths are celebrating and worshiping in their own way…this time of year when believers and nonbelievers, of whatever belief system there is, stop for even a moment to consider something greater than what they already know - I stop with them and with you and give thanks with all my heart for the gift of love you are to this world.

For this is our story - no matter the road we have had to walk or the things thrust upon us on this journey, this is our story - this birth of a newborn babe in a humble place filling the heavens with wonder and rejoicing, as we come to realize that the sacred is not lost, but here all along, born anew within us.

Blessings to you,
Demian,
~DreamSinger