DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?
By Shana Smith
December 24, 2017
Yesterday, as we
were driving around town doing errands, we decided to play the “Christmas Songs
All Day” radio station. With familiarity
and excitement, my kids and I sang along to “Rudolph,” “Frosty,” and “Here
Comes Santa Claus,” with the occasional backseat burst of “I’m so excited for
Christmas!” peppered in between.
Christmastime has always been exciting, and it’s one of the rare regular
events that stir up childlike happiness in me pretty much on schedule. Somehow through the years, even after I
learned about the reality of the Santa Claus story, even after I realized that uncountable
number of people for whom Christmas is a lonely, hungry time of year, even
after I witnessed the audacity of rampant consumerism shadowing the deeper possibilities
of Christmas, even after I discovered that Christmas has a “reason for the
season” that we didn’t participate in, even as I honored my Jewish roots with
Chanukah and Passover, and even after I formally became a yogi and Zen Buddhist….
I could not ever find any reason not to go whole-hog for Christmas. Having kids only magnified this phenomenon,
this “Christmas just because it’s Christmas and we love it” continues, and
because most of the country celebrates right along with us with familiar songs
and amazing lights and all of the iconic traditions we know so well, we have a
blast.
There are enough
secular trademarks about Christmas that have made it easy to celebrate without
being religious. And even religious
things have been easily explained to my kids: “Christmas for many people is a
celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, so it is based in Christianity. America
has many Christians, so it’s a really big holiday here. For us though, Christmas
is simply about the one thing everyone shares: Love. It’s a time to celebrate the connection
between all people, to be grateful for all we have, to be with family and
friends, and to help others in need.” It’s
been my simple, go-to explanation and a
great way for me to do what I’ve always done in matters of faith,
religion, and people’s diverse beliefs: bring it all back to the universal
connector of Love and helping others. And my kids have always gone along with that—we
distribute food and gather donations, we make gifts for friends and family, we
buy stuff, we cook a lot of food, we play
the familiar music, we watch the classic movies. We also make a few
modifications: We say “Happy Holidays” to remember to include all faiths and
beliefs and to remind us that we have our own Reason for the Season. We only eat vegetarian foods. And while we recognize that others observe
Christmas for religious reasons, we have never talked much about Jesus Christ.
In fact, I was never able to even say “Jesus Christ” or any other deity’s name
from any other faith without worrying that I was going down a rocky road. From my religion-less upbringing and vantage
point, it always seemed that only sin, guilt, judgement, prejudice and war arose
from religiosity. I declared at an early
age that my devotion was to Mother Nature, Love and Service, and to this holy
trilogy only.
But Christmas is
also known for its miracles, and just as I was settling in to our normal raucous
Christmas song-singing reverie driving around town, it came in the form of a
song and a question somewhere between the mall and the library.
“Do You Hear What I Hear?” came on, and I sang. I Sang so deeply, and so filled with Love,
that my eyes welled up and my kids became quiet. When it was over, only silence seemed appropriate,
so we turned off the radio and drove in silence for a minute or two. And then,
my eight year old son asked the question that rocked my world: “Mom, if we’re
not Christians, and we don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus, why do you love that
song so much? And why is it so beautiful?”
Not
Christians. I don’t know that we’ve ever
explicitly voiced that we’re not Christians.
I do know we’ve said that we are Buddhists and yogis and half-Jews. But suddenly these convenient and
self-identifying labels all seemed so very shallow. Of course we are Christians. And Jews. And
Buddhists. And Muslims. And Hindus. And
Pagans. And…enter any faith here. And of
course we are none of these mere names, which suddenly sounds so “us” and “them,”
so divisive. How can I claim just one, or
even two? What about all of the other
spiritual traditions we don’t even know about in all of the reaches of this
beautiful and diverse world? Of course, I’ve always resolutely claimed this fact
with my declaration of Love as our religion, but suddenly I felt it at my core,
in the meat of my very cells.
“Do You
Hear What I Hear?” Yes. We hear the
cries of the world, together. We answer that cry each moment of each day. A song, a song High
above the trees, with a voice as big as the sea. We extend our arms to relieve suffering, to
shower every moment with our attention and kindness. Jesus, Buddha, Allah, you,
me—our hearts together.
“Do You
See What I See?” Yes. I see the light in you, and honor it. I see the past, present and future in every
shining miracle of experiencing every moment.
We REALLY see each other, no matter our form or rank. The wind sees the little lamb, who sees the
shepherd boy, who sees the mighty king. We
are one. You are my brother; you are my sister. You are a star, a star, dancing
in the night, with a tail as big as a kite.
“Do You Know What I Know?” Yes. At our very core we all know we are the same boundless,
formless, miracle. A child, a child shivers
in the cold; let us bring him silver and gold.
Each moment is a birth, vulnerable and yet full of potential for
endless riches. When we awake to this,
we want to shower this world with the richness of our awareness, our Love, our metaphorical
silver and gold, so that all beings may always know that they are full and
perfect in every moment. By being simply being alive, and to be able to be fully
present in our experiences--no matter what they are--we have been given the
greatest of all gifts. We have tapped
into the source of endless riches.
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.
Both Zen and Yoga put great value on
intentions. By setting the earnest
intention for peace and wholeness for this whole World, and by cultivating our
awareness, compassion, and intention in every moment through whatever practice
we choose such as meditation or prayer, there will be goodness and light from a
perspective that is much bigger than subjective definitions of “good” and “bad,”
much deeper than preferences and wants and desires. Or, as the great Zen Patriarch
Master Unmon declared: “Every day is a good day.”
When my curious son asked more
questions about Jesus Christ, I could only respond: “He is worth
celebrating. We celebrate Buddha’s birthday
too, and we celebrate yours, and all for the same reason.”
I am no theologian. It
would take months of research and writing to be able to write an essay with quantitative
examples of what this song and my son’s question sparked deep within, bringing me
closer to that universal source that I always called “Mother Nature, Love, and
Service.” After all, Interfaith groups and the great masters have been recognizing
our deepest connections all along, and I could write a grand essay with many
words referencing all of them.
But what are words and essays and labels, anyway, but pointers
to an awareness so vast that words don’t even belong? Why are there thousand-page texts in every
tradition for that which cannot be explained by words? And haven’t words and labels trapped us into
divisive thinking, so that we don’t know what to say during the holidays for
fear of offending others or betraying our word-addled chosen belief systems?
Gently, I can let go of all of this noise of the mind trying to
figure it all out. Gradually, I can feel okay saying “Merry Christmas” if the occasion
calls for it. Authentically, I can hear a song about the birth of Jesus
for the first time and be moved to tears without judgement. And at last, I have
finally figured out why Christmas is so important to me.
Could it be that, after all these thousands of
years, that we have all been saying and feeling the same thing, but the words and
labels muddled our human egos and just got in the way? There is no point to be made, nothing to figure out, but the
very miraculous fact of this very life itself. To this ever-potentiating sacred
gift of life, to both its myriad forms and expressions and its one infinitely beating
and boundless heart: I bow in deepest gratitude.
And to you and yours: Merry Christmas!
