A Christmas message from the gods and goddesses high atop ‘ol Sugarloaf…

Judaism asks us to welcome the stranger.  Buddhism informs us of detachment.  Christianity tells us to believe in light and love.  All seem lofty and high but they are not.  It is simple and children have been telling us all along how to do it – Pretend!  Children make up games to welcome with eager expectation what is not visible.  They revel with excitement and expectation.  We indulge their imaginations with Santa and presents under the tree because we know and love how it lights up their spirits.  And so, we as adults need to remember to pretend and welcome with great delight beauty, truth and grace.  Gravity produces weight, heaviness and age.  Passivity is the spirits response to gravity.  Judgements, negativity, depression, withdrawal are identification of the spirit with the frailties of the body and the heaviness of gravity.  Passivity is attachment to death, decay and age.  It is the spirit welcoming it’s own darkness.  But the spirit is intrinsically free and detached.  We can welcome truth and beauty.  We can pretend there is light even if we do not see or feel it.  We can hope against all hope.  Our spirits can soar with eagles.  Blessed are the poor in spirit for they can choose an otherworldly light.  The spirit can not only be detached from gravity – it can envision beauty and flight.  It can revel in height.  It can suck in the beauties of vistas that are not apparent and pretend.  The funny thing is when one’s spirit pretends there is lightness and beauty with great delight and eager expectations as children awaiting Santa one finds that at some point it is no longer necessary to pretend.  The stranger has arrived, Santa has come and one fly’s in heavenly realms with the incredible lightness of being full of beauty, truth and love.  We are detached from everything and free to choose to move in and out of our high places.  In this way our spirit chooses a new kind of youth, a youth that never ages or deserts us, a lover that has become us and in so doing releases us from gravity, the endless cycle of death and rebirth, we become the saviors of our universe and move on to cloud hidden heights!  I wish you all the best!

Mark