The true meaning of Christmas (cookies)

As soon as I gave the cookie away, I regretted it. “I don’t need money, but please give food,” read the man’s sign, conveniently matching the lack of cash and presence of a wrapped baked good in my pocket. I handed it off and took a moment of self-congratulation at my benevolence. It was soon replaced with an obsession that grew with each step away from that cookie.  Where could I get another one? What kind of grocery store carried that kind of cookie and would be open late on Christmas Eve? And the most embarrassing thought: Maybe he’d give it back?

the one that got away

Twenty-four hours earlier I hadn’t even known that soft spice cookies with chunks of crystallized ginger existed. But it had been handed to me, free, for answering the coffee shop trivia about what all snowflakes have structurally in common (six sides). It hung out in my pocket for a day, waiting for a moment when low blood sugar coincided with deciding I’d earned the reward. Without noticing, I’d developed a vivid conviction about how satisfying that cookie would be.

My friends and I had just finished dinner and a movie, in the vein of rewriting Christmas traditions for adulthood, when I spotted the man with the refreshing sign.  Logically, it made sense to give the thing away – my stomach was full with meal and movie popcorn; it would be hours before I should let myself eat again. I could practically feel myself getting fat. And here was a man who may have swallowed nothing recently, other than his pride. Objectively, giving the cookie away was the right thing to do.

But it all came so fast. Walking briskly, talking with my friends, there were only seconds to act before the man with the humble sign would be in the past, a point of Christmas regret. I hadn’t time to say my goodbyes, to accept full responsibility for what it meant to part with the cookie. Yet it was gone. My brain reminded me it was owed a jolt of sugar. My salivary glands scoffed at the insufficiently gingery selections on the menus I passed on the way back to my car.

An opportunity to practice acceptance of the loss inherent in life, I reminded myself. If I can get over this cookie, then maybe I’ll be ready for dating. Didn’t I hear that sacrifice and loss come with a relationship? Grandiose aspirations. At the next late-night grocery, I was buying some Tate’s White Chocolate Macadamias, closest thing I could find to the one that got away.

O heart, be thou not fickle. How does such a brief encounter make such a lasting impression? Was this love, or something more of a base, animal nature? During the movie, my hand kept returning to the cookie in my pocket, seeking that reassurance she was still there, that there might be the possibility of a more intimate encounter later that night. I did have a thing growing up for sampling the cookies put out for Santa. Perhaps my panic echoed Christmas traditions long dead?

Or was my cookie-love more related to the strangely dystopian advertising jingle playing when I’d entered the AMC theater – “If you’re feeling scared, go get a snack / If you’re feeling bored, have a snack….” It was Christmas, a time not without its heartstring puppetry. Many a lover in the past helped me both avoid and relive the disappointment of the holidays. Had I simply switched out partner for pastry, like so many obese Americans before me?

How long do we wait at dark buildings
 before realizing no one will show up?

The Tate’s rode next to me to church, unopened, as a testament to my virtue and restraint. I have to admit I was relieved to find the church dark as I arrived half an hour early. It’s been years since I had a regular church home, and this would be a new experiment, one that had called to me from the online newspaper listings of Christmas Eve services. Rather than feel pulled to go in early and socialize, the dark building gave me time to do what I most felt like – to start writing down the thoughts revolving around the cookie affair. In a strange twist, the only blank paper in my car was the disposable cup from that café where the cookie was obtained, and the first paragraphs of this essay literally circle around it.

Google, the overeager gift-giver

Ten-thirty came and went with the church still dark, and I checked the church service listing on my phone again. The top date on the page indeed said December 24, 2014. Then I noticed a second date below –from 1997.  Like an off-base gift from someone you didn’t get anything for, the published Christmas service listing I’d followed had been an ancient archive unearthed by an overeager Google. I was tracing a Christmas route that would have worked 17 years ago, but was clearly not appropriate tonight. Did I even want to be in church, with the confusion of a familiar story rehashed by strangers? A foggy mixture of duty and opportunity had guided my Christmas intuition back when I was 21, and it had shown up again in persisting toward a church service when what I most wanted at the moment was to write. It’s so easy, when searching for something in the present, to trip over the past.

How much of a Christmas answers the needs of today, rather than reverberating the echoes of the past? If we keep traditions alive, do they make room for the present, for realities and people with us now? Or do traditions rigidly aim to please those long dead – who perhaps never loved us as much as rituals seemed to promise? I saw this year that in less than 24 hours I can invest a piece of cooked dough in my pocket with all the fantasy and expectation I used to lay on imperfect loved ones. I dreamt about partaking, but avoided taking a bite. Like cookie, like family – on some level I knew it never could satisfy me completely, but that doesn’t make it any easier letting go.

I hope that cookie helped, and the man got more of what he needed this Christmas. How much similar unresolved internal conflict keeps us from sharing with the many homeless people who obviously have more pressing problems? If it weren’t for a man with a unique sign, I might still be holding onto my chewy symbol of the past. If we pattern our holidays based on 17-year-old information, sometimes they lead us to dark, abandoned places. There can be a freedom in letting go of traditions – and sometimes, a cookie is just a cookie. (I enjoyed half the Tate’s while writing this).

Christmases past have been stressful affairs about finding the “right” gifts for others, banking on a certain recognition for my efforts, and demanding enough of a haul to satisfy my own entitlement. Christmases recently have been more creative affairs, delving into what I might have authentically of myself to give – curated music mixes, pieces of writing like this. Like beggars asking for money, many people out there may be looking for the same kind of reducible Christmas experience. But if we don’t look up from the reverberating past, we may miss that something simpler and unexpected can bring more joy.

It may be the very thing you've been carrying in your pocket all along.

Braveheart as Healing from emotional incest

England is the incestuous Mother. She can't stand her son Scotland to break away or find independence; she needs him. So she infiltrates the core of any love Scotland is about to embark on as an adult, inserting herself into the relationship so no real bond can be found between Scotland and its wives. Prima Nocte allows no real integration, no real growing up - the Mother will always be part of every relationship, part of what Scotland sees and remembers when they look at their wives. True love for the emotional incest victim is often murdered by the Mother's overpowering presence, which at first we are paralyzed to resist, even as we stand by passively while the murder takes place.

William Wallace represents the will, awakened by a direct and aware confrontation with the injury that has been perpetrated and accepted, unconsciously, for ages; the will to change is finally activated when a cherished love falls victim to the injustice we have tolerated and even participated in. Wallace becomes the true drive to separate, expressed as anger or rage even, directed appropriately toward its proper source in the incestuous parent. The nobles are the injured, non-adult self that prefers to crawl back into bed with Mom, rather than face the challenges of growing up as an adult, standing on their own as a unified Scotland, and incurring the Mother's wrath. Compromises like these are so easy for the emotional incest victim, for the Mother lives on in every relationship, every fantasy, every facet of our minds that wants not to face fully how injured and backwards we are. These parts of ourselves will compulsively sacrifice our will/betray William at any chance of crawling back into bed with Mother / the woman who we fantasize will take care of us.

Even when we think we have integrated, and are finally breaking away from Mother as an integrated whole, we find later that some part of us has subconsciously betrayed this intention through a bargain with the world to reestablish the old, incestuous relationship Mother initiated. The confusion this engenders within the emotional incest victim is captured on the face of William Wallace when he unmasks the Bruce, who made a deal to kill him for favor with England, and who personally struggles through the movie with his own enmeshment with a manipulative, selfish, domineering parent.


Wallace's relationship with the princess shows us that what seems impossible for the emotional incest victim is attainable - to experience love without having to sacrifice our true self in exchange for it. Any true love found must be approached with caution - shown by how on-guard and suspicious Wallace is every time he approaches her camp - as it will seem always at first to bear the needy and manipulative agenda of the controlling Mother. Through direct testing, however, we can uncover which potential loves share and support the quest for autonomy from our parents as a prerequisite to love.


In the end, the betrayal that succeeds is not a trap fallen for that is laid by an outsider (mother or lover), but by the unintegrated parts of ourselves which have adopted the agenda of being dominated. The weaker nobles, who have acclimated to living in bed with Mother, lay a trap when the two stronger parts of Scotland - Wallace and Bruce - are ready to unite. The forceful, uncompromising leader Wallace - who is also suspicious and guarded from real relationship must die, as eventually the emotional incest victim must go through a wrenching death of the incomplete identities he has taken on in order for the whole self to survive. The hallmark of this death truly approached will come as overwhelming resistance, from every facet of ourselves, urging us to abandon our principles and take the easy way out, swearing allegiance finally and forever to the Mother. The death must be walked to, however, and certain things we held dear abandoned, in order for the final unification of a new, whole self to emerge.

For Scotland, as for us, Wallace's singular, uncompomising adherence to the vision of and shape of freedom is essential to keep from falling into traps laid by an enveloping Mother, which may show up in even the slightest dynamics of relationship. In the end, however, Wallace's beacon of change cannot facilitate the internal healing Scotland or the emotional incest victim needs to stand as an integrated whole, once the possibility of freedom has been tasted. As a final step, after following an uncompromising Will through the first stages of battle, we must develop our Bruce, the broken part of ourselves that lives with an emotional connection to the wound opened by the tyrannical parent, which can chooose to embrace Wallace's force while remaining sensitive to the parts of ourselves that will continue to feel the pull back toward Mother's bed. This final integration allows Scotland, and the victim, to move forward tenderly, carrying all parts of ourselves forward in a healed, whole, and finally independent self.

MLK, climate change, and responsibility

I have been listening to the speeches of MLK and his relatives today, especially Yolanda King, his eldest daughter, who made the connection for us of finding inner peace to MLKs philosophy of nonviolence.

And it seems to me that something has shifted, between the 60s and today, in that MLK had a clearly identifiable evil that he could articulate and orient against; that of white oppression, expressed so many different ways.

I have sensed that the fight on climate change resonates with principles of MLK's philosophy; namely that the way to approach change is through proactive action guided by principles (http://www.itscool.us/) - rather than backbiting/blame vs denial, which seems to be the prevailing approach.

In his first Massey lecture (http://www.prx.org/series/31037-martin-luther-king-jr-massey-lectures) King contrasted the effectiveness of the nonviolent approach - where the oppressors are exposed in their evil for violent reactions to nonviolent measures - with the strategy of riots which had erupted in the North, which gave fuel to pre-existing prejudices and arguments against integration. However, King did allow that non-violent protest had not been working as well in the North, where the racism, though present, was not as overt - so the oppressors could not as easily be taunted into exposing themselves.

How does this compare with the fight on climate change? Today we do not have a clear enemy. Society has quickly evolved (having learned from King?) to the place of more effectively hiding our evils. Multi-national corporations' oppression and rape of the Earth, while present and deplorable, is not the bulk of the problem. The subtext of every public plea to reduce energy use is the implication that we are all part of the problem; we are all to blame. There is no way to tweak one part of the system (along the lines of our traditionally linear, judicial model) and contain carbon; rational analysis by policymakers continues to conclude, rightly, that every penalty levied or offset offered will simply be paid for or passed along the supply chain, in order to preserve the right to continue polluting, or maintaining a standard of living within the "American way of life" without alteration. (Vanity fair featured a spread this week on a Vegas hotel that was LEED certified, proving "the simple notion that luxury and responsibility are not mutually exclusive" - http://www.vegasnews.com/16177/star-studded-event-marks-grand-opening-of-first-citycenter-hotel-–-vdara-hotel-spa.html ).

The downfall of all offset programs is that they must be comprehensive - encompassing the full carbon cycle, through the whole of the planet - to not be outsourced. The reason the simple solution of a worldwide, per-citizen offset system has not been introduced is that the implications are too radical. To do so would effectively address the economic imbalance between the first and third worlds - and this is something we would like to avoid thinking about for as long as possible.

It's not just our politicians and our corporations. It is, first and foremost, an evil embedded in our consciousness, as born by citizen of the developed world. Jesus had plenty to say about it, but the implications are so deep that nary a preacher wants to draw the obvious connection: our way of life is unsustainable, and it is simple sinfulness that keeps us from clearly addressing this obvious fact. Unsustainable, not just ecologically, but firstly spiritually. To dig to the roots of American concepts of "progress," what constitutes a healthy economy, and what kind of technological advances we should have the right to look forward too, would force us to call out the hypocrisy of manifest destiny, the deep distortion of the gospel and evil on which this entire nation was founded. Remember the religious fundamentalist mass murderer from Utah who claimed "God told me to do it"? That is our founding fathers, and the prevailing consciousness of the developed world.

While the rape of extermination of great native populations may seem far removed in history, we perpetuate the same mass denial today in our rape and extermination of the planet's healthy ecology. This same consciousness, which allows us to perpetuate rape and aggression while continuing to think we are basically good people, manifests in our relationships and treatment of each other, as I have recently learned the hard way. The simple act of looking at ourselves, to truly see and admit our sinfulness, is so difficult today that we must pay a fortune in therapy simply to access it.

MLK faced a simple, clear enemy. The oppression in the South failed to manipulate its audiences as well as the North. But the the civil war was fought largely for style points. The continuing, systemic racism in our country - discovered in the North by MLK after winning his battles in the South - shows that no one has ever been that interested in changing the status quo. We want our power and our ability to feel good about ourselves. So what to do? Change? No - simply get better at manipulating.

This seems to have been the course our country has followed since the Viet Nam era. It explains a fundamental problem that I have been noticing more and more in myself and in most people I talk to - a basic inability to take responsibility. Our deficit in responsibility fuels the therapy industry - most of which has us simply chasing our tales, but never getting called out for our part in causing the problem - and it is the basic evil that is at root of our inability to deal with climate change. We will continue to generate Green "spin" and talk a good game without taking action, until we can finally admit we're all fuckers who don't give a shit what happens to the Earth. That at least would be a good starting point, because we'd have some honest ground to stand on, rather than living in a self-imposed hype that increasingly has nothing to do with reality.

In the south, MLK had a clear enemy. In the north, that enemy was harder to see. Today, we are all going crazy and feeling under attack, because we have no idea where the problems are coming from. It's hard to look at ourselves when the enemy is within us.

The only way to take down this enemy is to take responsibility.

Is it the 'homo' or the 'sexuality'?

The problem I have with public issues of sexuality:

I recoil from liberal discourse on the topic

but am not conventionally conservative

I feel uncomfortable with the focus on gay rights

but not because I am against them

and I am anti-abortion

but don't feel it is my place to step in to protect unborn babies

but is rather to mourn, and perhaps to speak from my heart, where God gives me opportunity

But moreover, I am angered by the assumption

that I must "have" a position on these topics

These particularly political issues

are raised against a backdrop of non-controversial,

commonplace obscenity

in every commercial, movie and television plot;

there is a dominant discourse in which sexuality occupies center stage

in the sphere of human relations

while I feel that it should rather be something respected, treated as sacred,

and respectfully hidden from view.

Our kids should be well-protected from their parents' sexuality

and friends and neighbors should not be exposed to sexually-suggestive behavior of couples

Rather, we should be able to relate in human ways, from places of our heart

And sexuality should be expressed, celebrated, privately - so it does not need to be repressed

But simply kept in the bounds God designed it to be

We are an oversexed culture

We have no bearing about how to solve the problems of gay rights and abortion

But perhaps we can see that these "problems" are created when sexuality itself leaves the bedroom

And parades on the street

The trend toward everybody's sexuality

Being everybody's business

Creates the problems we cannot solve

The liberal emphasis on liberating sexuality

is one ingredient to the problem;

The conservative audacity to violate what God relegated to the privacy of couples, and committed communities at best,

is the other, reactionary at best.

Both are to blame, and neither is right

More modesty is needed all around,

built on humility

of our own confusion, flawedness, and brokenness

Adam and Eve's problem, recorded in the bible

should be suggestive enough

that we all are going to be confused around sex

None of us has the place to parade sex around,

Neither our personal sexuality, nor our positions on it.

Parents, humbled by their own struggles, and helped by God,

should introduce children to what they need to know, when the time is right

Couples should further explore sexuality together

Only when already committed to each other for life

And seek guidance from elders, and other committed couples,

Once sex has been put in its proper place:

Not the central issue, not an issue on its own,

but one mysterious dimension of human relationship and existence

of which our proper and most healthy priorities and boundaries

have already lovingly been described by God

God's way of treating each other, regarding each other,

Checking ourselves and living in obedience to Him

Must be the first and far more important emphasis,

and aspect of life to be explored and practiced

long before anything about sex is discussed or explored

This is the only way out of the mess

This is the only hope for surviving the confusion

Our particular brokenness must be discovered, confessed, allowed to convict,

and shared in living relationship with God

and then we will be shown what to do with the rest

Afterthought:

Churches should boldly address impropriety, or the desacralization of sex

But only in the context of their charge of shepherding their flocks,

Not as a weapon to wield in general, irresponsibly, doing the same damage

as the impersonal, generalized liberal portrayal of sex.

context and consciousness

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Much has been made of context in literary theory and academia over the last 30 years. Starting within cultural anthropology, anthropologists found that undecipherable behaviors in foreign cultures could often be understood by discovering the context within which the foreign actors understood their own actions. The concept has found its way through liberal academia and religious studies to bear traces of influence within more conservative religious circles, where "author intent," often inferred from cultural context, helps illuminate the words of Jesus and the epistle writers.

In none of these arenas, however, has the flexibility, variability, and significance of mental context been explored that fully, it seems, in terms of consciousness and our power of choice about how each human being chooses contexts which bear on his or her interpretations, decisions, and understanding.

1.0 while aspects of real context are given and fixed at a given time (ie where I live, how much money I have, what my friends and family thought or did growing up, what are the social topics and economic conditions of today), our mental context is chosen and very much within our ability to influence.

1.0.1 for example, the friends I have are an aspect of my real context, based both on factors outside my control (the pool of available friends) and factors in my control (how much effort I have put into pursuing friendships)

1.0.2 the presence of friends in my life has no bearing on whether I live my life in the mental context of "what other people think."

1.1 I may or may not be in a romantic relationship, but whether I am has little necessarily to do with whether I live my life in the context of a relationship.

1.1.1 for example, a person may have committed to a relationship, yet to refuse to consider that person when choosing who to associate with, look at, or how to spend his or her time.

1.1.2 at the same time, although I may not be in a relationship, my mind may waver between accepting the context of singlehood, or fantasizing about being in a relationship with a certain person. In the latter case, that person becomes part of the mental context in which I live my life - although I may have no actual contact with her.

1.1.3 the decision to marry, and "forsake all others," is a commitment to make your spouse not just a part of your physical context, but also your mental context - in which you will make all future decisions.

1.2 the degree to which I live in reality can be measured by how much my mental context incorporates my real context; ie people I interact with regularly, the circumstances limiting my life, the emotional burdens I experience, the ongoing challenges of dealing with my family, for example, etc.

1.2.1 to the degree that my mental context excludes aspects of my real context, I live in fantasy. It is possible, with certain entrenched mental contexts, to live in fantasy and avoid reality for an entire lifetime.

1.2.2 relationships based on reality must deal with the real context of what the other person brings and expresses, rather than mental contexts of fantasy about what I hope the other person to become, or what I imagine for the future.

2.0 spirituality always deals in context. In other words, it asks us to live our lives within the primary mental context of God. (or a set of spiritual laws, or an energy force, etc)

2.0.1 religions offer their mental contexts as superior alternatives to other mental contexts we can choose. Ie, Put on the new creation, Choose the way of Christ over the ways of the world, Live with fear of God.

2.0.2 religions - as they deal with what is not seen or tangible - often propose a hierarchy in which their mental contexts re-contextualize, rather than replace, other mental contexts. ie, you don't have to stop using money, having certain people in your life, or being a sexual creature -- but your decisions made and valuation within other mental contexts must now be made within the overarching mental context of God.

2.0.3 religions can be fantasy-based, to the degree that they ask us to abandon certain mental contexts, rather than simply subordinating them within the overarching mental context of God. Such requests reveal a lack of faith on the part of the 'believer,' and in the more extreme form of demands or rules, signify a cult.

2.1 Christianity's proposal within religions is that we shift our mental context from a set of laws or principles (even those which we may attribute to God) to living our lives in the context of an actual relationship with God.

2.1.1 prayer is an act of reconnecting to the mental context of relationship with God.

2.1.2 "praying without ceasing" can be understood as walking constantly within the mental context of relationship with God.

2.1.3 "making every thought captive to Christ" can be understood as recontextualizing every thought that arises within the context of relationship with Christ.

2.1.4 sola scriptura, as I understand it, seeks to emphasize the primacy of the context of God by enforcing the bible as the only mental context within which our decisions and perspective can be formed.

2.1.4.1 to the degree that it denies that God may pursue real relationship with us outside the context of the bible, sola scriptura is heretical.

2.2 meditation can be approached as a prolonged examination of one's shifting mental contexts.

3.0 addictions can be characterized in part by an inability to allow certain aspects of one's real context to enter his or her mental context

3.0.1 the substance, person, or habit that is the object of the addiction serves as the object on which to center one's mental context, so as to avoid other, undesired mental contexts

3.1 Trauma, abuse, or chaos experienced early in life can effect a domination of one's mental context, to the extent that one's ability to shift mental contexts may become impaired

3.1.1 The predictable character of this impairment is an inability to incorporate oneself into one's mental context.

3.1.1.1 Inability to take care of oneself or take responsibility for one's life as an adult are two results of the inability to incorporate oneself into one's mental context

3.1.1.2 Preoccupation with what others think and constant comparison to others are two workarounds people will use to ascertain their worth, when they cannot incorporate themselves into their own mental contexts (see 1.0.2)

3.1.2 The inability to incorporate oneself - by definition an aspect of real context - into one's mental context, must result in living in fantasy

3.1.2.1 It is also likely to result in addictive tendencies

3.1.3 Practice at incorporating the real contexts of one's life into our mental contexts is required to heal and grow past the effects of trauma, abuse, or chaos experienced early in life, and can be used to address addiction issues as well.

4.0 Mental contexts necessarily affect our energy.

4.0.1 What appears in our mental context can receive energy; what is outside of our mental context can receive no energy.

4.0.1.1 for example, Jesus' reminder 'Where your treasure is, there also your heart will be,' can be understood in terms of mental contexts. How we orient ourselves and what we answer to when making decisions gives our energy to those things, and reflects which mental contexts we give priority. Paying close attention to the mental contexts we adopt can reveal what we consider our treasure.

4.1.1 centering a mental context around a certain person orients our energy toward them and affects a connection, even without direct communication (see 1.1.2)

4.1.2 'praying without ceasing,' through affirming God as a stable part of our mental context, affects an energy connection facilitating the Holy Spirit to work in our lives - both miraculously, and as a guide present in our decision making within other, subordinate mental contexts. (see 2.1.2)

4.1.2.1 the kind of faith which can "move mountains" signifies a profound shift in mental context, beyond allowing God to bear on our pre-existing mental contexts, to the putting on of a God-centered mental context for which we have zero evidence or referents.

4.1.3 in the case of addictive tendencies, where we have an inability to incorporate certain aspects of our real context into our mental contexts, sending energy to these avoided mental contexts is not within our simple willpower. Our energy becomes bound within certain mental contexts we have evolved to avoid the unpleasant real contexts we are avoiding (see 3.0.1)

4.1.4 Mind-body practices, such as yoga, tai-chi, intense exercise, etc, temporarily center our mental context around the body, sapping energy from other mental contexts.

4.1.4.1 This can affect a sort of "reset," thus allowing the possibility of giving energy to alternative mental contexts.

4.1.4.2 Thus exercise - when done with consciousness of the body - can be an important tool in the process of overcoming addiction, obsession, and other chronic unhealthy mental context issues.

..more maybe to come..

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