Advent Day 15: December 16th
The Heaven Before Us

I have a favorite walking path in Louisiana that leads through a towering arbor of oaks. When I enter its richness, I am in another time and space. Street noises diminish. My breaths lengthen. It's a secret wood. A small oasis. A place of stillness that causes my thinking to shift from the automatic, analytical process to a flow and fullness from deep within. And if you were to ask me, in the center of that path, what I really think the Christ child came to reveal, I would say, "Just what I'm experiencing right now. This. This recognition of spirit in life, far removed from a deity defined by the mind, or by adherence to a set of beliefs.

Cynthia Bourgeault describes it by saying that Jesus came to give us a totally different operating system. Over and over again he repeats that the kingdom of heaven is here. But it's not an earthly kingdom. And it's not a heaven in a different location. This. Here. Now. A way of seeing. He wanted to catapult us into a different way of relating to life and the spirit in life. He wanted to awaken something within us that would set us free. He called it forth, inviting us to look out from the perspective of vine and branches, not subject and object. He invited us to the place where we no longer see others apart from ourselves, a place where the only thing that can possibly benefit me is what benefits the world. A place where I understand that harming you harms me. A place where my identity does not come from my separateness, but from the awareness that separation is an illusion. There is only one spirit in its infinite expressions.

But we have taken the story in a different direction and made that direction our truth. We emphasize celebrations of the birth, remembrances of the journey. A blessed virgin. The stable. Shepherds in the field. Christmas trees. Gifts. Exchanging cards. Vacations. We risk avoiding the message by endlessly repeating our customs until we've missed the shift in consciousness that would take us from logic and memory to the deeper truth: The day of God is at hand. Here. This. Right now. The spirit within will show you. You don't have to wait for another heaven -- just see the one in front of you.


by Paula D'Arcy, Redbird Foundation
from the book: Daybreaks