This morning, when I get up, swallow me in silence. This morning in the darkness, long before the sun, swath me in silence. Let it be the silence before the first word was spoken, the silence of the womb. I wrote the silenceo f the tomb and then erased it. I erased the stream of consciousness that perhaps knew better than it new. This morning, at this moment there is none of that oldjumpiness, none of that edginess. Redeem me from madness. Take me to the very place of the beginning. There is so much to be done and so much that is broken. Right now I have the strength to fix it. There is so much nearly unredeemable. In this darkness i have the magic to redeem it all. Let me be your fool, because I cannot bear to be anybody else's.

The word you have is "grace". The word you have is love. In these few moments and hour or so before the sun begins to gather the strength to come up, you have the words of healing and union where peace is made in the places we though there could be none. Opposites draw together in the sign of the cross, the crossed hands of Jacob's blessing, the crossed limbs of Jacob and angel, of the crossroads of our encampments, of Moses meeting Aaron. For a brief moment you invite me to not be disturbed where you are not disturbed and to be untroubled so long as you are untroubled. That is the moment I cast all of my prayers into it. It is like some strange chasm and in that place all things can be seen, all things can be done, all things can happen.

Do you have a word for me? Do you have the ky of power that unlocks me and changes these things, that lifts me from despair and the round of the tiredlegs, the tired feet, the trudge through snow, the neighbors thatnever get better. Is there something in you that I an come o, that puts power in the hands of the sons of men o that we can move? I need the tiem of the Christ to be here. I need to do mroe than simply complain. I need to begin to wait in expectation, and mroe than expectation, I need what I expect to finally come here. I need to not be helpless. I need the fire that makes me relentless.

Is there a key to place in my hands that will make me able to change things, able to move things, able to end up where I never imagined?

YULE

Tonight is Yule. I was afraid I missed it. Tonight we will put out the Child who is, as far as I am concerned, Christ. And we should put out the evergreen too, and leave candles burning all night. We should light the menorahs and play the Christmas Yuletide music. What I need to do is embrace living in two worlds, keeping my foot in both worlds. As sure as I know that I resist and have little tolerance for Christianity, or even for te story of Jesus that surrounds it, I must admit that I believe in Christmas. I honor the Christ Child. I believe in this Christ Child. I am devoted to the Messianic Era. I am devoted to Yule, and the Child of Light, to the union of Heaven and Earth and peace on this earth and good will to men. I am not concerned with the facts, but with that which moves my heart.

Looking for a home is not a crime. Looking for the ultimate answer almost is. Looking for one box to crowd all of my things in is something I am learning I cannot do. Talking to friend yesterday about the holidays, I learned a valuable lesson. Haley asked a friend, Do you celebrate Christmas or Chanakuh and the girl, born of a mixed marriage said, serenely, "Yes." My life is equally mixed. Hardly a Jew for Jesus or anything like that, I find it impossible to not be melted by the heat of Christmas. Though I don't wish to live like a Christian most of the year or sympathize with much of the religion of my childhood, at time of the year I am put in touch with how much I adore the Child at the Manger. If there is a Messiah, he is a Christ, and this is the only one I know of. In the space where small minds do not attempt to put together things they cannot understand, in the space where the soul learns to accept, is religion. Religion is the response to the waking world.




In the ancient world religion was personal and people knew how to create it, the worst thing about the west and monotheism is the triumph of corporate faith, religion from a box, where someone gives a set of stories and assumptions and says "this is religion. This is what you must accept. Do not deviate" It creates division where division never was and makes the soul dull.

Christmas Past, Jewish Future

One of the features of religion is how it lives in the past. We are people with a story and religion is a story. Of course, story and history are the same, they are about where we have been. We measure where we are according to where we were, who we are to what we have been.

Bu what of the future? For faith is also prophetic, and a good part of all stories is the ability to be prophetic, to reach beyond the present moment. In my past life, Christmas was one of those past stories, a story I could scarcely make sense of. This is not the same as not believing, I simply could not understand what it meant to me. I really stopped being concerned with messiahs awhile ago, my standard joke being that I had one for thirty years and didn't really need another one. Messianic Jews, and I mean all Jews who speak of the coming of a messiah, not simply Jesus Jews, I found rather unnecessary.




Now ir is Advent, now in the sacred space of carols playing I realize that to be a messianic Jews is nothing more than being a Jew who looks for a future era, one who believes that, in the end, there will be an age to come when wrong is made right and judgment restored. It is to believe that God will, eventually, indeed intercede and in no small way to change the whole world. As a factual event I'll admit Christmas makes very little sense to me, and not because it is unbelievable. God must be unbelieable. He must be magical. No, Christmas has been, as an historical event and the basis of faith not sensible because it rest outside of tme, because it promises that by its happening all is made well when all certainly is not, because it has little or nothing to do with the rest of the life of Jesus, for many more reasons than its simply being unbelieable.

But it is real, and I do believe in its promises, and I think it did happen and is happening and what is more will happen and like all good Jews I stand to say it is not fulfilled and keep this season of Advent in expectation that one day, it will be.

Just because this world has made division where no division should have been, does that mean I have to divide myself? Whenever we fee lthese cramps and conflcits, these strange thigns in ourselves, it is because we are corssing borders. And of course, these borders are not natural. The Rio Grande is only a river. It is nations and stales an culctures and colors that make it a border. Refusing to live by these rules wewill cross borders, acknowledging the true land inside of ourselves we begin to heal that land and our skins. We pray that some people can follow. But in the end this is a deeply personal religon. It isn't like mass religions that msaavie numbers o people can join. It's not liek that. We can't say, this made me happy and iy'll make all of you happy too. We hvet to do it for ourselves, to heal the our of ourselves.




Last night I let te music overcome me and left logical behind. Logic is something few people really have or understand. It is a flattering term they used for thier limits and perjudices. It's not logical, its not logical. Itonly means, I don't udnerstand ,and I don't really want to. I listen to Christmas hymns in the spirit room feeling wholly Jewish and wholly at one with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. I don't feel like a Jew for Jesus or a sympathetic Christian to Judaism. It's moved to far for either of those things. I am definitely on the path of Derekh Ash Yeshurin, I am defintiely incorparatign all. As I look back to Asherah and Astarte and incorpaorate the mother, so I look toward Jesus and incorporate the son. Like I said, this faith isn't for everybody. Lord... I have always placed my trust in you!

After the joy of Chanukah, the tiem of dedication, it is important to remember what God desires amd what religion is for. The powerful urge to treasure mythg over truth and shut out anything which expands our understanding of our ancient stories fills religion. So does the desire to find, at the cost of making oursleves smaller than we really are, "our people", "our crowd" and essentially ignoring everybody else. In this type of religion, where we tradefairy tales for truths and reality for oversimplicity, we please ourselves, prove to those without faith that most faith is wishful thinking, and draw no nearer to holiness than we were before.




Coming to the end of Genesis, we are filled with stories of those who were challenged and stretched. What God came to show was something which existed beyond reason. It existed in dreams by a stone, on mountains of sacrifice, in barren wombs and in hrazy deserts. We want all of the comforts of religion, but none of the stretching, and it is not crime to want. But to expect, to limit the Divine and say, no, stay in this place where you prove that I am right and others are wrong, this is the real blasphemy.