Love Came as a Child

For them that walk in starkness,
a lucid dream appears;
for them, a retreat from darkness
draws on the horizon and cheers.

Yea, there was a second and a third,
but when was spoke the first word,
that indeed was a concept: Love.
(Sung, as if from somewhere above.)

Then, held safe from all harms
as might lie in the wild,
from Labor to a mother’s arms,
Love came as a child.

Love, appearing as light,
thus cast darkness away
into new realms of night,
visible as shades of grey.

Abundant, how abundant,
and full, oh, so verily sooth:
Love, to all life incumbent,
our charge, our care, our truth.

What the shepherds saw,
what, to worship, sages sought:
loving care should be the flaw
to defy any, all, prizes bought.

The metaphor of the cattle stall,
is both the sermon and reminder:
A peaceable kingdom is here for all,
but only when we are in deed kinder. 

Love, as a child, came down—
Incarnate Love, we cannot shirk;
Life, Love’s cradle and crown
is, in every generation, our work.

© 2018 Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Dear Ones, 

My wish for you, now and always, is that Love be your most abundantly shared and greatest flaw. Imagine the epitaph: “Their one flaw was that they loved too deeply, too much…” May your days be filled with everything that can be shared with love and laughter; even hardship is soon overcome where Love is lively and at work. Many hands move the work forward, onward and upward. Blessings to all!

Slumber Song - A Christmas Reflection

Sleep, my baby, sleep
Beneath the stars of night;
Slumber sweet and slumber deep,
dream ‘neath their beauteous light.

Refrain:

Are ye born to be a pauper;
Are ye born to be a king?
Ye’re born to teach us, proper,
How to love and give and sing.

Shepherds, they rejoice;
the beasts in their stalls
—even angels send a voice
throughout the heavenly halls!

Refrain

Joseph stands by me
—now, we dare not sleep;
Having been blest to raise thee,
the Lord’s own son shall we keep.

Refrain

Innocent from sin,
and, too, all other harms,
all we, who watch over him,
long to hold him in our arms.

Refrain

Sleep, my baby, sleep
Beneath the stars of night;
Slumber sweet and slumber deep,
sheltered by their glowing light.

Refrain

© by Elisabeth T. Eliassen,
October 5, 2016; Set to music by
Angela Kraft Cross for the
San Francisco Renaissance Voices,
Katherine McKee, Director

I woke up from a dream with the refrain in my head, and that is how this carol text came about.

I have been an ardent student of biblical and other sacred texts for over thirty years and a musician for much of my life. While I cannot say that I am a scholar in these matters, I know that a few things that most people who practice Christianity don’t know or realize.

First of all, Christmas is an entirely manufactured holiday. Jesus had a birthday, of course, but it was most likely in the springtime of the year. Somewhere around the year 200 C.E., Clement of Alexandria is likely the first person to have recorded his guesses about the birth date of Jesus—none of which occur anywhere near the winter solstice. The commemorative mass could have been placed in the winter for several reasons; one of many theories is that overlaying a preexisting pagan holiday with the birth of Jesus might have been done as an means to make pagans be less suspicious of Christianity, or even entice them to join the faith. It isn’t until the 4^th century C.E. that the birth of Jesus can be found listed in a Roman almanac—the date affixed at during this time is either December 25^th in the Roman Church or January 6^th (Epiphany Day) in the Eastern Church. 

Secondly, carols are not hymns. There is a great deal more complexity to the explanation than what I have time to write about here, but, essentially, hymns are derived from chants of the psalms and other portions of scripture, and an occasional “inspired” text, first by the church Fathers, later by others, also known as a “spiritual song.” Carols are festive, religiously themed songs that can be sung in or out of church. The word “carol” is derived from the French carole, the word for a circle dance that was accompanied reed pipes and other instruments, but also by singing. While hymns are more liturgical in nature and always appropriate for the praise of God in church, carols are the festive music of the people during any holiday season celebration, be it Advent, Christmas, Easter, or some other festive season, not necessarily to be done in church.

Thirdly, only two of the canonical gospels (those that “made the cut” into the sanctioned liturgical library we call “the Bible”) record anything like the familiar Christmas story, and these two very different (sometimes contradictory) accounts are conflated into one single story. The earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, doesn’t record anything about the birth of Jesus. The latest of the four gospels, the Gospel of John, reflects abstractly and poetically on the presence of the Messiah as the Word before all worlds. The middle two gospels, Matthew and Luke, are where we get our bits of the birth story, and then our minds take all the bits and put them together into The Traditional Holiday Pageant Play.

So, for me, if we really need to have a credible “reason for the season,” it has to be all about the child. This story is not at all about the radical rabbi who was crucified. This is about the mother whose child came a bit early to seem legitimate; about the family who couldn’t find shelter when the mother went into labor; really, most of all, about the baby who appeared in the midst of chaos. There is chaos, as well as hope and expectation, surrounding the birth of each child. Who knows if this child will survive to adulthood, or what sort of future lies ahead. Will this child attain royalty, or will this child live a life of poverty? Only time will tell the tale. This is the story of unknown potential, like the fallow winter awaiting springtime growth.

(If I was either a seer or a theologian, I’d to say that this child will grow to be both a king and a pauper. But I'm not, and this is talking out of season.)

The best of parents will tell you that bringing children into the world and nurturing them is one of the toughest and extended lessons of humility and grace that a person can undergo. “Choice” is not a word that pops up frequently in the parental vocabulary—often, you do what you must, with what you have to hand. Sometimes the lessons that get delivered are sketchy or cranky.

No matter what religion or holiday you celebrate, inherent in all should be a simple truth: All babies are proof of the Divine Miracle of Life. All babies are born innocent; it is up to parents and community to teach and encourage, to facilitate the very best for every growing child. This is a lesson all cultures must recognize and act upon. I mention it because so many children worldwide are in grave need, right now.

But at this moment, in this story, Mary’s attention, and the attention of all who happen to be there, is on the sleeping child, illuminated by the glow of starlight.

This is meant to be a quiet celebration. It's not about angels or saviors or martyrs or gifts. It's not about loud singing and dancing or lavish meals. This story is all about a baby.

Let the baby sleep.

There’s time enough for all the rest.

Have a Hollow, Jello Christmas, along with Pavlov’s dogs?

As we approach the final shopping weekend before Christmas, I thought I would jot a few lines about the holiday.

First of all, it is thought of as being a Christian Holy Day, but it really isn’t. It is thought to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus, but it’s not. The winter holidays are pagan. Church Father’s (somewhere in the early 4^th Century CE) thought it would be a good thing for Early Church PR to have some sort of Feast Day to balance out the Church year with Easter, and what better way to be welcoming to pagans (you plan to convert) than to syncretize a new holiday onto their own winter festivals?! So, if you wondered about the pine and fir trees, the yule log, and all that… it has nothing to do with Jerusalem, Nazareth or Egypt… it has to do with Saturnalia, Festivus, Yule and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. Because of the magic of Wikipedia, you can look up all these festivals and find out what they are about, but basically it is about the season of winter and the winter solstice. It is a true fact that New Zealand holds its Yule festival in July… (Think about it.)

So, to all those cry that the spirit of the season has been usurped, and that we must put "Christ back into Christmas," I have to reply, we can't--Christ was never in it!

The traditional giving of gifts is always misconstrued to be the “Gifts from the Magi”, gold, frankincense and myrrh. But, folks, the truth of the matter is that the gift giving tradition comes directly from the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. It was all about conspicuous consumption, drunken debauchery and eating to excess. Even Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) had to retreat to a suite of rooms in his manor, in order that the noise from the festivities might not interrupt his studies. Toys were given to children, and gag gifts exchanged between adults. [You know those ugly Christmas sweaters we all love to hate? Well, the togas at that time had to be either really tacky or were doffed completely, during these Empire mandated celebrations.] The gifts, if you want to know, are about the agricultural god Saturn, who was the embodiment of prosperity. You exchange signs of prosperity with others so that you will be blessed with prosperity—that’s the general idea. There were sacrifices, also… I won’t get into gory details; this is a family blog. All you need to know is that Alexander the Great found a way to eliminate that element from the holiday picture.

We are, therefore, acting in a truly Roman Empire sort of way when we deal with Christmas, which makes the holiday not very Christian, at all (because it isn’t). Add to that the fact that we have all been trained to be good little consumers, and you have a complete mash-up of priorities: giving to the poor means getting for ourselves. We must decorate and cook and wrap and give and get and buy and buy and buy and and and and… and by and by get stuck in traffic jams, everywhere, with grumpy people who fume and yell and text and commit acts of road rage against fellow drivers. How celebratory is that?

Sigh.

In the face of all this craziness, I and my colleagues have been commuting (though certainly not rushing at great speed) on these holiday-frenzied roads and public transit systems in order to offer the simplest, but perhaps the most profoundly intimate gift that can be given or received: sound. Into the sanctuary of churches, concert and social halls, living rooms and other spaces, set aside from the noise and the rushing and the personalities, musicians gather with scores, voices and instruments to soothe the savage breast (of strangers or family and friends) with healing vibrations. In the past few weeks, there have been many concerts, small and large; there are more to come. Give the gift of music to someone you know, with concert tickets or CDs purchased from local groups. There is a lot of great music happening where you are--don't miss it!

Is your ChristeSaturnalimas seeming shallow, hollow, empty of feeling or too full of hassle? Get away from all of that. Hie thee to a concert, now! Settle into a seat. Close your eyes. Let the music help release your spirit, to make it soar. In appropriate concert situations, public dance might figure in. Join in and let your body go; that is singing, too. Listen to beautiful music via electronic media, or go to the shore to hear the waves and the birds. Trust me, you will feel much better for it.

And have yourself as much of a merry something-or-other and as happy a New Year as you can stand.