Christmas Story I
Today is December the 17th, and we approach Christmas. I think about the Christmas story a lot this time of year. I was raised an evangelical Christian believer in the South, so the text of the Bible is in my DNA. I was marinated in the words of the Bible for the first 30 years of my life. There is no denying the thought forms of the world of late antiquity, a world long vanished, as well as the thought forms of Puritan-literalist-veneration for the text of the Bible –were and are formative for me. Such was my launch pad into an adult world of education and of professional endeavor.
A given background is not a matter of choice. It’s a card drawn from the deck. You play the card that you are dealt. It’s the same for everyone. I recognize ideas that have become bedrock in my adult life–ideas presented in Sunday school, originating from the stories found in the four Gospels. Upon reflection these seem more substantial than a collection of concepts. They are fundamental convictions about the nature of reality, a metaphysic of human nature, and of the mystery of Nature from which we all come and to which we shall return.
So, at Christmas time I attempt a homecoming. I assess anew the Christmas story in particular, and evaluate the existential links that remain within my psyche to all of that.
The project for this year will involve reading the Gospel of John. This might seem strange since an account of Jesus birth in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph, wise men and shepherds is not found in John’s Gospel. John handles things differently. Jesus is introduced not as a dependent, lovable newborn, but as the embodiment of the very initiating Word that brought everything, absolutely everything, into existence. I mean to say, the materials constituting this laptop, the table before which I sit and upon which I rest my coffee cup, my iphone, the Starbucks within which I comfortably write, the continent where I was born and have lived most of my life, this planet, the galaxy which spins like a enormous wheel among countless other galaxies…..etc. Of course you see my point. There could be no more expansive introduction offered for anyone –than John offers for Jesus. The story sizzles and crackles with energy.
I selected my father’s new testament for my review of John’s Gospel. The date in the front flyleaf is December 25, 1978.
If Dad were alive, I hope that part of him would feel approval for his philosopher-businessman-son.
I intend to write more about my personal engagement with the Christmas story in the next few days.
