Do You Hear What I Hear?

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Said the night wind to the little lamb
Do you see what I see?
Way up in the sky little lamb
Do you see what I see?
A star, a star
Dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite
With a tail as big as a kite
“Do You Hear What I Hear”
Music by Gloria Shayne Baker, lyrics by Noël Regney

You read this on Christmas Eve, and for me, this is the big push: the feasting, the gift opening, the celebrating. When my kids were little, Santa would leave one big present under the tree on Christmas morning, but by family tradition, tomorrow will be about cooking and leisure. Tonight, on the eve of the event itself, the secular portion of Christmas will play out once again. In Jude tradition, the sacred portion of Christmas — the expectation of Divine love enfolding us, deep gratitude to Spirit for the birth of transcendent possibility and the palpable presence of Higher Angels — happens every day. That’s been my practice and goal for decades. It may also be why I’m sappy about this particular season, when everyone shares a bit of that expectation.

After a year like the one we’ve endured, a quiet moment of reflection — preferably with my feet up — is just what the doctor ordered. But life continues to be fast-tracked, so I’m hoping to find that quiet moment in the next few days. You too? Perhaps you’ve developed a tolerance for the hectic, as have I, even for that hint of winged chaos that perches on the sharp edge of hysteria. I remember those halcyon days when five or six situational fire drills and quasi-emergencies a day — day after day, week after week — would have been unthinkable, even impossible; now, it’s just Tuesday, or Wednesday or whatever. Humans have an amazing capacity to adapt. It’s all grist for the evolutionary mill and another day in paradise.

Politics, even the current sideshow, can apparently no longer startle me. I suppose that’s how it works after you’ve tasted the little cake marked “Eat Me” and played croquette with the Red Queen; at least that’s how it feels. I think Sarah Palin’s candidacy was the last time my mouth flew open in real shock, and that was ages ago. Oh, the headlines are still titillating. I was kind of surprised that little Kim took a powder, not so surprised that Boehner couldn’t control his “patriots” so that the entire nation was forced to watch the Tea Party’s mental midgets take the GOP down in a stranglehold.

Ron Paul, one-trick-pony Libertarian candidate who is always complaining that he can’t get press coverage, walked out on a CNN interview rather than defend his racist newsletters, and Pappy Bush, once again faced with a roster of idjits, came out for Romney as the only reasonable candidate in 2012. Nothing shocking there. That the press is reporting a credible defense for Brad Manning, that’s newsworthy. That the GOP’s attempt at suicide helps the lefties — that’s good news, too.

The shocks are behind us, I think, at least for those who dwell in reality-friendly consciousness. No matter what the Establishment is doing at any given moment, we have a different way of looking at the world. The political parties both limp along, hamstrung by each other and owned by their corporate overlords. The only thing surprising is that we thought major leaps could be accomplished in so broken a system without the cascading examples of failure we’ve come to expect.

In the confinement of the political bubble, Obama still hasn’t got enough audacity to keep us hopeful and has apparently passed that baton to Gingrich, who, despite flagging popularity, seems to have enough audacity for everyone. Some of it is leaking over into his helmet-haired third wife who is waiting to be “unleashed.” No one should be surprised that Callista — twenty years Newt’s junior and author of a children’s book about Ellis, a patriotic elephant that loves American history — wants to step up her participation on the stump. Rather than indulge my inner Mean Girl, I shall bite my tongue now; it’s the Christmas thing to do.

What is evident is that most of us have developed an ear for truthiness as well as an appreciation for truth. After all these years of practice, the majority of us finally have a sensitive political bullshit-o-meter. That’s what it takes to get one: practice. And while politics is the obvious in-yer-face topic in which we got conversant, mostly because it became impossible to ignore, the next important — vastly important — skill we must all learn is how to tell the sacred from the profane. We think we know, especially if you ask the churches, but we don’t.

We have no idea what sacred really is or we wouldn’t be cutting school lunches and food stamps, or throwing families out of their homes when new statistics tell us that fully half of us are at or below poverty level, or fighting about the frakking and tar sands when the environment is already so fragile, or machine-gunning wolves from helicopters. If we really understood the sacred, the best buy at Best Buy wouldn’t be the sum total of our Christmas joy in 2011, and the race to own the newest technology wouldn’t even make Santa’s list.

If we could sort out what is holy about this season, the obligatory office party wouldn’t come with last-minute purchases wrapped by secret Santas, but with envelopes from Heifer International supplying a destitute family with the tools to make a living. We would adopt a polar bear or other struggling species from the World Wildlife Fund or help the Natural Resources Defense Council revive a tropical rainforest, given in the name of the recipient. If we had our hearts open, rather than buy another gee-gaw for the stocking at the mantle or thing-a-ma-bob to go under the tree, we would feed hungry children and assist any of millions of refugee brothers and sisters, world-wide.

If we had our our wits about us, we would know that these, and similar giving opportunities, are more appropriate this year than ever. So is contributing to the food bank or volunteering at the local shelter or senior center. Non-christian Mahatma Gandhi had the Christmas attitude when he told us, “May the work of your hands be a sign of gratitude and reverence to the human condition.” This, from the same man who reminded us that he really liked our Christ but not our Christians.

Me? I’m with the Mahatma. Too many Christians defy the Christ consciousness that asks us to step into our individual holiness, our individuated higher consciousness, as a profound gift to our selves and our planet. The actualization of compassion and non-judgment, of kindness and fellowship, is what we so badly need here and around the world. The end of religious competition, not the “victory” of one over the other, is what we hunger for in our desire for unity and brotherhood. And only our forgiveness of our brothers and sisters will soften our hearts to acceptance of them as a part of the whole of us all. When we allow God/dess to be that big, to gather us all together as the beloved community irrespective of our belief system, then we will have made the leap that consciousness is demanding of us.

Joseph Campbell gave us a worthy projection of our future:

Our world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which God’s love is reserved for members of the in- group: That is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse is not about a fiery Armageddon and salvation of a chosen few, but about the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end.

We must continue to work to put ignorance and complacency behind us. That is the Christmas story in action, more potent than the one we hear in church or the one that is packaged and sold to those who want to be saved from themselves. One perfect child is born every time a new baby enters this world, one perfect child who might be the next to embody the Christ consciousness that changes its world and ours. Perhaps that perfect One is all of us, making new and loving decisions. Perhaps the Christ consciousness is born anew each time we do the loving, honorable thing for each other, when we behave as the Prince of Peace in our own world and extend that gentle energy out to touch the whole of us.

Here’s a Christmas gift, from me to you: a YouTube of Marianne Williamson speaking about the beloved community and our ethical stewardship of democracy, at an Occupy event in Berkeley. It will resonate, it will encourage you and reveal the holiness of our activism and intention. Make time for it in the next few days. Find an hour to relax, put your feet up and listen.

Here at Planet Waves we made it our intention, long ago, to prove to you that the political is personal. That is done. Next, it is the wish of my heart that you know that both the political and personal are divine, as are every thought in your head and every word uttered to create our collective reality. Really knowing that will make all the difference in the months ahead.

Said the king to the people everywhere
Listen to what I say
Pray for peace people everywhere
Listen to what I say

The child, the child
Sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light
He will bring us goodness and light

May your holiday traditions bring you — bring all of us, together — every blessing of goodness and light.