I love the Christmas season. The cool weather, the beautiful lights and decorations, the excitement and anticipation of Christmas day, giving and receiving gifts. Showing those we care for how much we love them in tangible ways. Christmas is more than all of this. It is a time of reflection, a time of expanding and opening up our understanding of what we are truly celebrating.
It is more than the birth of a child. It is the birth of our own awakening to the Christ within. For this is the greatest gift that the child, Jesus, gave to us, experiencing and knowing God as Love. Love is our eternal essence as expressions of that Divine Love. It is our Divine Power of unity and harmony and transformation. It is who we are.
In a year full of so much that seemed the complete opposite of Love, how do we step into being the Love that Jesus so fully expressed? How do we love our “enemies” and forgive the “trespassers”? Through understanding first that Divine Love is not an emotion. “Love is not an emotion that begins in us and ends in the positive response of another. Love is a divine energy that begins in God and has no end.” Eric Butterworth, Unity Minister.
It takes a willingness to let that love flow through us and allow it to transform us first. I am reminded of that song “It only takes a spark to get a fire going and soon all those around will warm up to its glowing. That’s how it is with God’s Love, once you’ve experienced it, you’ll want to pass it on…” When we allow that love, God, to flow through us and as us, we begin to change, to grow, to transform. It is a process, one in which we will stumble at times, and that’s OK, for Love will lift us up. That is how the world will change, through us choosing to be Love to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to all people.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” John 13:34
Love, Light & Sparkles,
Rev. Carol Moncada
Interim Minister