on the Pilgrimage

The Bethlehem Candle: Love I was pondering on the birth of Christ this last week. Somewhere, I came across a blog article on what the world was like at that time. Things were very volatile. The leader was absolute and you did not question him. He was known to be 'the Son of God'. There are more similarities between the Absolute and Christ, and when you peel back the layers of the story, what you find is something quite subversive and attacks the establishment of the time. What I find fascinating is that this message, this radical missive that Christ brought that turned everything upside down, and ... eventually got him killed for it ... is quite unbelievable. I mean, think about it ... I don't think Jesus came to create another religion. He came ... in the humblest, lowly of ways ... a baby. A dependent, crying, vulnerable infant. And who is the first to learn of this birth? Shepherds - the dregs of society. And then a year or so later ... astrologers. Mystics. Oh, there...

Emmanual, Come.  Advent - a word that means 'coming'. In the historic church year, it referred to the four weeks before Christmas, the four weeks of preparation and expectation before Christmas. The four Sundays prior to Christmas. That was Advent.  But the world seems to have moved past this - Advent has become a box of chocolates, with 24 little boxes to pop open. This time of the year has become synonymous with consumerism. Gifts and decorations, bigger and more glitz. And yet, we are becoming more and more broken. Drug overdoses, addictions plentiful, suicides, sky-high divorces (of marriages that maybe should not have happened to begin with), people seeking connection but so lost in the world, thinking their smartphones are going to work a miracle, and instead, they contribute to our addictions. People don't need God anymore because they've created their own. And we can see how that's working for them. So, if I were to put on my imagination hat, how could I spe...