Christmas for me is not about remembering the birth of Jesus but about recognising the Christos within.
I used to be a keen Christian. I even became a Methodist local preacher. I began to realise I needed another spiritual home when a minister said after one of my sermons, “You know you never mentioned God or Jesus once in that sermon”.
I thought I didn’t need to. I spoke from the vantage point of the Christ within. After completing a Master’s Degree at the University of Creation Spirituality, where I encountered Buddhism and Sufism, the die was cast.
My problem with western Christianity was it sees human beings as morally corrupted, where I saw our separation from God as more ontological - it’s our very being which is the issue and the remedy is not forgiveness but transformation (or transfiguration as the Orthodox Church might put it).
I now see myself as a post-Christian in the process of remembering my original Christos blueprint - the blueprint Jesus of Nazareth demonstrated so eloquently.
I hope you enjoy this brief address and this poem:
Who Was The Midwife?
Who was the midwife that first Christmas Day?
Was it Joseph, the carpenter, hands gnarled and worn,
Who delivered the babe That first Christmas morn?
Who was the midwife that first Christmas Day?
Did a shepherd used to delivering lambs
Emerge with the boy
In swaddling bands?
Who was the midwife that First Christmas Day?
Did a wise man kneeling down in the earth
Bring forth the gift
Of that heavenly birth?
Who is the midwife who brings him today
Who welcomes to life the mystical child
That lives in your heart
So pure yet so wild?
I am the midwife this Christmas Day
I open my soul
To find the Christ light
And share with the world
My joy and delight
Happy Christmas everyone.
Dennis Richards
