This is a community talk I gave at Christmastime in 2011, when I was teaching in the Pathwork Transformation Program at Sevenoaks. (Sevenoaks Retreat Center in Virginia is no longer a Pathwork Center.)
I spent Thanksgiving with my brother Pete. Some of you know my brother Pete; he was a PEP [Pathwork Experience Program] student here a couple years ago. We were visiting with some friends of mine—there were several different families that had gotten together—and we started talking about, “What do you do for Thanksgiving? What do you do for Christmas? How do you spend these holidays?”
And Pete and I started sharing a story about one of the traditions we had grown up with. So we grew up in Northern Wisconsin, and every year we’d go to visit the cousins and relatives on my dad’s side of the family. That side of the family was Norwegian.
My grandparent’s grandparents, I believe, were the ones that came over, so they were full-blooded Norwegians. What we used to say was that these were people that left Norway, travelled halfway around the world, and didn’t stop until they found a place as cold and miserable as the one they had left.*
So we would get together at a fairly large family gathering, and everyone would bring a dish to pass, to share. And whoever’s house it was that year to hold the Christmas gathering, it was their job to make the fish.
There is a fish in Norway called lutefisk. Here is what I knew growing up, the story I was told. It takes a long time to prepare this fish. You soak and soak it, because you have to soak the lye out of it to be able to eat it. The lye is the way to preserve the fish.
I looked up lutefisk in Wikipedia and it literally means “lye fish.” Part of the reason for the lye was that you could leave it out in the cold, and nothing was going to eat it. The preserving of it in the lye gives it a really gelatinous quality. It’s starts out like cod fish and be the time it’s done, it’s a translucent jellyish fish.
So you would arrive at Aunt Betty’s house and walk in, and you’d be hit with a smell, a most God-awful smell, of the most strong-smelling fish you could imagine.
Pete and I were sharing about this. And as I was thinking about this, I thought, you know, I don’t think it was ever really about the fish. I think it was about what that fish was pointing to.
What it was pointing to was the hardiness of these people. The Norwegian people are a hardy people.
And I think that’s why this tradition continues. You could go back today, and they will have a lutefisk feed, and my dad will be there, just scarfing that stuff up.
While I didn’t really grow up eating lutefisk, I grew up eating it once a year. And there is a part of me that feels my pride in my heritage. That I participated in that tradition.
I think we all have these kinds of traditions that come from our cultures, or from our religions, or from our spiritual paths, and we have a great affection and pride for these traditions.
And I think it’s really about what they are pointing to. That is the value and richness of these traditions.
I think it’s also true that when we share them with each other, we can bump up against the ones that makes us feel uncomfortable.
So tonight I’m going to share a little bit about what the Guide’s words were about Christmas. And about what the tradition of Christmas is pointing to.
I know that for a lot of people in this room, Christmas is probably a warm holiday. That you may have warm associations with, and that you celebrate today.
I suspect there are people who just didn’t grow up with Christmas. That maybe just don’t know that holiday. And also, there may be people here who may have a difficult time with embracing Christmas. With embracing Jesus Christ and the message of Christmas. So I just acknowledge that.
Let’s all just breathe deep into our bellies and listen to the words the Guide shared with us, in his Christmas Message lecture, about Christmas and what this tradition points to. In the words of a program I am familiar with, which is AA, I invite you to take what you like and leave the rest.
Celebrating birth
The first question is: what is this Christmas tradition pointing to? When we peal back all these wrappings and trimmings and decorations and music and lights and food, the Guide says that what it is pointing to is birth.
From Pathwork lecture #239: “The birth of Christ celebrates and symbolizes birth. Not only birth of an entity, of a human being, but birth of new expressions. Of new ways of expressing God in life. Birth of new levels of consciousness.”
So we start to see that there is both and outer birth, the birth of this baby or this man names Jesus. And then there is also an inner birth, that can be more personal for each one of us.
In #239, the Guide goes on to say, “At one time in your history, birth had to be celebrated and symbolized by the appearance of a human being. At that time in history, human consciousness was still very much on an outer level. Everything had to be outward.
“Now, there was a man of such purity that the Christ could manifest in a totality seldom, if ever, experienced to that degree on the plane of matter.
“It is a misunderstanding, however, to assume that the new coming of Christ will take form in the same manner. The Christ lives within everyone and within everything that breathes and has consciousness.
“The Christ has been given birth by your work, my beloved friends. At each step of your path where you find a misconception, a negativity, a block, a destructiveness, a problem, an ignorance, you find a direct obstruction to the Christ within.”
Restoring Christ
I was raised Lutheran. So I was raised Christian, and I was familiar then with Jesus Christ. So it was a real eye-opener a few years ago when I realized that it wasn’t Jesus Christ, like Jesus was his first name and Christ was his last name.
That if Jesus was a man who had more Christ in him than most of us…and in that, I begin to find a personal connection…that Oh, that Christ could be in me.
In this final quote, the Guide gives a suggestion for how we could hold the image of the Christmas tree and the lights on the Christmas tree, as being symbolic of our own process of lighting our whole tree, our tree of life, every time we do this work.
From Pathwork lecture #219: “At this particular time, when the birth of Christ consciousness is celebrated, we shall talk about the event as it begins to take place. Of course, my dearest friends, you do know that this does not happen at once. It happens gradually, again and again. It occurs and is lost, recurs, and so on.
“Perhaps you can see the tree that you light as a symbol of many, many candles that have to be lit and be aflame within you, to bring the total consciousness to its eternal glow on the outer level of your manifest existence.
“Each recognition, each insight, each honest admission, each shedding of a partial mask, each breaking through of a defense, each step of courage and honesty where you take responsibility for your negativity, is a lighting of yet another candle.
“You bring light into your soul by bringing truth into your dark.”
You are this light
I invite you to close your eyes and, if it feels right for you, to imagine your body is surrounded by lights. Perhaps they look like little tea lights floating in the air all around you.
There are lights floating in front of you. And there are lights floating behind you. There are lights floating to the left of you, and there are lights floating to the right of you. There are lights underneath you, and there are lights above you.
Each of these lights has been lit by the work that you have done.
Imagine these lights slowly begin to be drawn into the center of the center of your heart. Coming together, forming one brilliant, amazing and wonderous light.
You are this light and this light is you. You are of this light and this light is of you.
It’s possible you may notice that there are still corners that are dark, like a little bulb that is out on the Christmas tree. Just lights waiting to be re-lit.
Open your inner ears and hear what is coming from these light and these dark places.
[Music: Come Darkness, Come Light by Mary Chapin Carpenter.]
– Jill Loree
*Wisdom originally shared by Garrison Keillor.
Jill Loree
This is a community talk I gave at Christmastime in 2011, when I was teaching in the Pathwork Transformation Program at Sevenoaks. (Sevenoaks Retreat Center in Virginia is no longer a Pathwork Center.)
I spent Thanksgiving with my brother Pete. Some of you know my brother Pete; he was a PEP [Pathwork Experience Program] student here a couple years ago. We were visiting with some friends of mine—there were several different families that had gotten together—and we started talking about, “What do you do for Thanksgiving? What do you do for Christmas? How do you spend these holidays?”
And Pete and I started sharing a story about one of the traditions we had grown up with. So we grew up in Northern Wisconsin, and every year we’d go to visit the cousins and relatives on my dad’s side of the family. That side of the family was Norwegian.
My grandparent’s grandparents, I believe, were the ones that came over, so they were full-blooded Norwegians. What we used to say was that these were people that left Norway, travelled halfway around the world, and didn’t stop until they found a place as cold and miserable as the one they had left.*
So we would get together at a fairly large family gathering, and everyone would bring a dish to pass, to share. And whoever’s house it was that year to hold the Christmas gathering, it was their job to make the fish.
There is a fish in Norway called lutefisk. Here is what I knew growing up, the story I was told. It takes a long time to prepare this fish. You soak and soak it, because you have to soak the lye out of it to be able to eat it. The lye is the way to preserve the fish.
I looked up lutefisk in Wikipedia and it literally means “lye fish.” Part of the reason for the lye was that you could leave it out in the cold, and nothing was going to eat it. The preserving of it in the lye gives it a really gelatinous quality. It’s starts out like cod fish and be the time it’s done, it’s a translucent jellyish fish.
So you would arrive at Aunt Betty’s house and walk in, and you’d be hit with a smell, a most God-awful smell, of the most strong-smelling fish you could imagine.
Pete and I were sharing about this. And as I was thinking about this, I thought, you know, I don’t think it was ever really about the fish. I think it was about what that fish was pointing to.
What it was pointing to was the hardiness of these people. The Norwegian people are a hardy people.
And I think that’s why this tradition continues. You could go back today, and they will have a lutefisk feed, and my dad will be there, just scarfing that stuff up.
While I didn’t really grow up eating lutefisk, I grew up eating it once a year. And there is a part of me that feels my pride in my heritage. That I participated in that tradition.
I think we all have these kinds of traditions that come from our cultures, or from our religions, or from our spiritual paths, and we have a great affection and pride for these traditions.
And I think it’s really about what they are pointing to. That is the value and richness of these traditions.
I think it’s also true that when we share them with each other, we can bump up against the ones that makes us feel uncomfortable.
So tonight I’m going to share a little bit about what the Guide’s words were about Christmas. And about what the tradition of Christmas is pointing to.
I know that for a lot of people in this room, Christmas is probably a warm holiday. That you may have warm associations with, and that you celebrate today.
I suspect there are people who just didn’t grow up with Christmas. That maybe just don’t know that holiday. And also, there may be people here who may have a difficult time with embracing Christmas. With embracing Jesus Christ and the message of Christmas. So I just acknowledge that.
Let’s all just breathe deep into our bellies and listen to the words the Guide shared with us, in his Christmas Message lecture, about Christmas and what this tradition points to. In the words of a program I am familiar with, which is AA, I invite you to take what you like and leave the rest.
Celebrating birth
The first question is: what is this Christmas tradition pointing to? When we peal back all these wrappings and trimmings and decorations and music and lights and food, the Guide says that what it is pointing to is birth.
From Pathwork lecture #239: “The birth of Christ celebrates and symbolizes birth. Not only birth of an entity, of a human being, but birth of new expressions. Of new ways of expressing God in life. Birth of new levels of consciousness.”
So we start to see that there is both and outer birth, the birth of this baby or this man names Jesus. And then there is also an inner birth, that can be more personal for each one of us.
In #239, the Guide goes on to say, “At one time in your history, birth had to be celebrated and symbolized by the appearance of a human being. At that time in history, human consciousness was still very much on an outer level. Everything had to be outward.
“Now, there was a man of such purity that the Christ could manifest in a totality seldom, if ever, experienced to that degree on the plane of matter.
“It is a misunderstanding, however, to assume that the new coming of Christ will take form in the same manner. The Christ lives within everyone and within everything that breathes and has consciousness.
“The Christ has been given birth by your work, my beloved friends. At each step of your path where you find a misconception, a negativity, a block, a destructiveness, a problem, an ignorance, you find a direct obstruction to the Christ within.”
Restoring Christ
I was raised Lutheran. So I was raised Christian, and I was familiar then with Jesus Christ. So it was a real eye-opener a few years ago when I realized that it wasn’t Jesus Christ, like Jesus was his first name and Christ was his last name.
That if Jesus was a man who had more Christ in him than most of us…and in that, I begin to find a personal connection…that Oh, that Christ could be in me.
In this final quote, the Guide gives a suggestion for how we could hold the image of the Christmas tree and the lights on the Christmas tree, as being symbolic of our own process of lighting our whole tree, our tree of life, every time we do this work.
From Pathwork lecture #219: “At this particular time, when the birth of Christ consciousness is celebrated, we shall talk about the event as it begins to take place. Of course, my dearest friends, you do know that this does not happen at once. It happens gradually, again and again. It occurs and is lost, recurs, and so on.
“Perhaps you can see the tree that you light as a symbol of many, many candles that have to be lit and be aflame within you, to bring the total consciousness to its eternal glow on the outer level of your manifest existence.
“Each recognition, each insight, each honest admission, each shedding of a partial mask, each breaking through of a defense, each step of courage and honesty where you take responsibility for your negativity, is a lighting of yet another candle.
“You bring light into your soul by bringing truth into your dark.”
You are this light
I invite you to close your eyes and, if it feels right for you, to imagine your body is surrounded by lights. Perhaps they look like little tea lights floating in the air all around you.
There are lights floating in front of you. And there are lights floating behind you. There are lights floating to the left of you, and there are lights floating to the right of you. There are lights underneath you, and there are lights above you.
Each of these lights has been lit by the work that you have done.
Imagine these lights slowly begin to be drawn into the center of the center of your heart. Coming together, forming one brilliant, amazing and wonderous light.
You are this light and this light is you. You are of this light and this light is of you.
It’s possible you may notice that there are still corners that are dark, like a little bulb that is out on the Christmas tree. Just lights waiting to be re-lit.
Open your inner ears and hear what is coming from these light and these dark places.
[Music: Come Darkness, Come Light by Mary Chapin Carpenter.]
– Jill Loree
*Wisdom originally shared by Garrison Keillor.
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