Part 165 (1/2)
When the Writer or the Preacher or one who chances to be both considers a Christmas sermon, a Christmas story, what is the idea that comes uppermost?
Love, of course. Not s.e.x-love: that's for every day. Not Mother-love: that's always and always. Not any of the minor brands of admiring devotion, grat.i.tude, sympathy, friends.h.i.+p, attraction of any sort. No.
When we say ”Love” at Christmas time we mean Love, the Spirit of Life.
About once a year we give thought to it. About once a year we seek to express it; and, pitiful and limited though that expression be, its forms are right.
These main forms of Christmas expressions are two-fold: the Spirit of Joy, of Celebration, of High Festival--the highest of all; and the Spirit of Giving. These are found wherever Christmas is kept, and make it, as it should be, the glory of the year. In joy and in giving we are most absolutely in line with the mainspring of the Universe: unmeasured happiness--happiness that cannot be quenched--cannot be kept to ourselves. What must run over and pour forth on other people: that is real Love, Christmas Love--and that, of course, finds physical expression in gay festivities and showering gifts.
Light, color, music--all that is sweet and gay and comforting; games, dances and performances that show the happy heart; and always the overflow--giving, giving, giving. That is the Spirit of Life.
It is the children's festival because children are more in line with the Life Spirit than weazened old folk: the child has the pa.s.sionate thirst for joy which marks his high parentage.
Whatever else is true about the Central Power of the Universe, this is true: it _is_ power. And it pours forth in Radiant Energy. All ”inanimate nature,” so called, expresses this Power, each form after its kind; and all animate nature, crowned with consciousness, not only expresses it, but _feels_ it,--which is called ”Living.”
We human beings are the highest, finest, subtlest instrument on this planet to receive and to transmit these waves of pouring Power. When we feel it most we call it Happiness. In two ways it reaches our consciousness, as it comes in and as it goes out, via the sensory and motor nerves. The joy of receiving power is great: ”stimulus” we call it. It comes to us along the avenues of sense and thrills us with increased well being. But this kind of pleasure is sadly limited by those sense nerves of ours. We are but a little tea-cup: we cannot hold much. The Music of the Spheres might pour round us; the light of a thousand suns, the sweetness of piled banks of flowers, and all honey and sugar and rich food: every sense can be fed to its little limit only--and there the Happiness stops.
We can only feel so much--coming in. But there seems to be no limit to the joy we feel when Power goes out through us. It seems so self-evident, so needless, to say ”It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Why _of course_ it is: any child even knows that.
True, a child, having a fresh, unsated sensorium, can receive with more vivid pleasure than an adult--for a while. But it is easily over-tired, easily over-fed with sensation, easily bored and weary with receiving.
Not with giving! Every child delights to let out the Power which is in him--in her; delights to make and delights to give. Therefore, to children is this their festival: the busy weeks of happiness in making gifts, the swelling, glowing pride of giving them!
It's all right as far as it goes, but why, when such a thing is such transcendent splendid blessedness, why only once a year? Why should this beautiful experience in which we not only remember the birth of the man who taught the world most of love but even try to practise what He preached--why should it be limited to a mere memorial of His birthday, plastered over the remnants of ancient festivals of the return of the Sun G.o.d--the Goodness of the Earth Mother?
If Christmas is good, why not more of it? Then we smile, wryly, and say, ”Why, of course, we couldn't. The rest of life isn't like that--and we have to live, you see.”
Ah, that is where we are wrong--utterly wrong. The rest of life _is_ like that. That is _life_--Loving and Giving.
”Tut! Tut!” says the Practical Man. ”That's emotional nonsense. That's womanish.” Two-thirds right, my practical friend. It is not nonsense, but it is ”emotional” and it is ”womanish.”
Emotion is _consciousness under pressure._ When we feel Power, we call it emotion. Emotions vary: some are helpful and some hateful, according to the nature of the instrument; but not to be emotional at all is not to be alive. Those who spend their lives lit by a blaze of emotion, warmed by a deep, slow-burning fire of emotion, pouring forth that emotion in great works--we call Geniuses. Genius is simply more Power.
As to being womanish: that word is no longer a term of reproach or belittlement. To be womanish is to be human, and we may now turn round and pitifully dismiss much old world folly and pa.s.sion as merely ”mannish.” To be womanish--and practical--let us repeat, Life _is_ Loving and Giving. When we realize this, intelligently and completely, we shall have a ”continuous performance” of Christmases and a higher level of happiness the year round, varied by greater heights. At present the natural flood of Life Force, pouring through us in unbounded creative energy, resulting in the myriad forms of human achievement and manufacture, is sadly thwarted in its output by lingering remains of our old period.
For a long time we lived by getting: to hunt, to catch, to kill, to eat was all we knew: no loving or giving there save as the mother fulfilled the law. But since our Humaness began, since all our thousand powers and talents grew for mutual service, since we learned to do things for each other--to make things for each other, to give things to each other--then grew in us that rising tide of Power which lives out in expression.
In spite of our old world perverseness, that Power pours on. Though we scorn the gifts of those who make the comforts of life for us, though we despise their service and so cruelly use them as to greatly thwart their love--still we are fed and housed and clothed and carried by the love and service of our kind, the daily, hourly gifts of those who work.
”They are not gifts,” cries the Practical Man. ”They are paid for--every bit of 'em.” Yes, Brother. And how paid for? Paid how much? What scant reward, what meagre living, what miserable houses, what stinted food, what limited education, and what poisoned pleasures do we pay to those who make every necessity, comfort, convenience and luxury for us!
Pay indeed! If a man ”saves your life” once, and you give him twenty cents an hour for his exertions in your behalf--have you paid him? By the life-long labor of the human race--all those dead workers who built up the structure of our present world, all those living workers who keep the wheels revolving now--by these labors we live, all of us, all the time.
Pay? Pay for daily--hourly--maintenance, protection, food, shelter, safety, comfort? Pay for being kept alive?
Life is giving--Loving and Giving. You can't pay for it. You don't pay for it. But this you do: you hinder it, by your paying. This pitiful trickle of measurement, this ticking and pricing and holding back the world's flood of outpouring energy by our wretched turnstiles--this is what keeps us poor!
We need to let loose the Power that is in us. We need to Love more and Give more--a plain truth, Jesus taught some centuries ago, largely in vain. We have but to let out the love that is in us: there is no limit to its flood.