Do You Hear What I Hear?

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!