The Dancing Flower

As I write this my happy flower is waving it's arms - leaves - up and down and it's head - the bloom - is waving back and forth.  The happy flower was a birthday gift.  It is a bright pink plastic flower sitting in an orange pot and when placed where the light of the sun is able to provide enough warmth, it begins to 'dance.'

Happy flower not only amuses me and brings a smile to my face, it is also a reminder to me of what I believe to be one of the great truths of living: when we place ourselves so that the warmth of the Light is able to penetrate into our Being - we are happy.  Like all great truths of living however it is up to each of us to discover how to place our Being so we might experience the warmth of Light.

We have just experienced the great feast or celebration of Christmas which from a mythological viewpoint is  an outgrowth of the pagan feast of Lights where the lengthening of the light of each day now began {with the Winter Solstice}and the earth would again absorb the warmth of light and therefore produce what was needed to sustain life.  The Christian celebration of Christmas joined to this ancient belief the newer idea that the birth of Jesus was the 'coming' of the Light: the personalization of God's goodness and love, in human form.  The birth of Jesus is the beginning of what Christians refer to as The New Testament or a new way of living.

Within the bible are two distinct ways of living: fear or love.  The Old Testament is a collection of books telling stories of people trying to discover not only who or what God was, but who or what they were in relationship with God.  Stories in the Old Testament show us - human beings - almost, but not quite understanding the experience of relating with God.  As a people within these stories we establish rules, break rules and try new rules. When the 'rules' don't work, the stories show us establishing 'laws' carefully laying out right and wrong: good and bad and ultimately describe a God who is generally disappointed and frequently angry with our human attempts at living. Relating to someone, whether the someone is a human or a god, that is disappointed and angry with us always leads to living out of fear.

Fear tightens our 'being' into a tightly bound experience of 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' and so, it's really, really difficult to experience happiness while living from fear.  And, if in fact, we humans are designed to be the creative carriers of God's love and goodness, then living in fear is a lousy way of living because creativity just doesn't happen when we are bound by fear.

I always picture God {yes, I know I can't really picture God because God is not a singular entity, but being human, it's my nature to try for an image and so I'll just use these very inadequate human words} as sitting up in the heavens, sighing deeply and saying:"they just don't get it.  I thought by putting my love into the DNA of their being, they would understand that it is love that is the energy for living."  And then, I picture this God sighing ever more deeply, "I'm not sure what to do.  I've sent fire and flood - prophets and manna - and they just don't get it."


"I know what to do!  I'll send someone just like themselves - human in every way there is but I'll add one more bit of creation: this person will remember.  They will remember being created to love.  Not simply feel love, this person will remember how to live out of my love so they are living love."


And so, it seems to me anyway, the world was given a new way of living: Jesus came to show us how to live like my happy flower that waves and dances by absorbing the warmth of the Light. But being quite human, we have also been given the option of using our choices for living to discover the Light and to discover the particular and unique ways each one of us absorbs and then responds to the warmth of the Light. One of my favorite sayings is God made people because God loves stories and so it seems that God gave us lots and lots of stories not only to keep God entertained, but because people seem to learn best from stories.

Chapter two of the Christmas story is just one such story of discovering and responding to light and this is the story of the Three Wise Men or the Story of the Three Kings who followed a star: the Epiphany story of the journey of  responding to the Light and therefore being able to bring their gifts to the newly born child. Without hearing, that is stopping and absorbing the story, this particular chapter of the Christmas story, it is very easy to forget that Christmas is about your and my living today. The Epiphany journey is the next step of living a story of birthing God's love into our world today.

The Epiphany story - from my point of view anyway - is also the story of becoming a happy flower - a Being who absorbs the warmth of Light and lives dancing from the gifts evoked by the warmth of this Light. I hope you join me as I share the story of following a star.