If you are a “spiritual” blogger, you have to write a Christmas post, right? If life has reached a critical stage, then there must be an event, right? If the pressure gets too high in the nuclear reactor cooling system, then “it’s gonna blow!” (Cue the dramatic music and images of a frantic control room trying to turn the correct dial in the right order to avoid disaster).
I have a couple of high pressure fuel lines on my diesel truck. Diesel trucks need high pressure fuel to operate. They don’t have spark plugs to ignite the fuel but use tremendous pressure to compress the fuel/air mixture until it combusts. The fuel must be “atomized” so that the mixture is just right for combustion. So, high pressure fuel, first compressed by hydraulics, then atomized with air, then compressed to create an explosion (not really an explosion but a rapid combustion).
I had a leak in one of these fuel lines. The fuel line had been rubbing against a steel mounting bracket until it wore through the aluminum wall of the fuel line. When aluminum rubs against steel, steel wins. The material is worn down over time until the wall is so thin the high pressure fuel pokes a hole through the remaining, thin, nearly transparent material. At least diesel fuel has a very high flash point meaning it doesn’t easily ignite. If you have a gas leak, that is a different story. You will have a fire for sure.
I seem to be on an automotive theme, but be patient, we are almost there.
When I was a kid and spent a summer with my uncle, he picked us up at my grandparents to drive to his house. Before we left the house he said he had to change a tire. I expected he was going to put a spare tire on for a bad tire. Instead he rotated a front tire to the rear and a rear tire to the front. I’ve always been a curious person so of course I asked why. He said he wasn’t sure if the tire that was now on the back would make the trip. He showed me the metal wires poking out of the tread. I learned what a radial tire was that day by inspection. I guess the spare was not much better so my uncle was trying to get as much out of both tires as he could. He had a limited budget in those days. Sure enough the tire blew about an hour into the drive. It was really loud and the car swerved a bit but he managed to stop the car and changed the blown tire for the spare. I then understood why he wanted the “bad” tire on the back. If it would have been on the front and it blew like it did, we might have had a pretty serious accident.
OK, leaving automotive land for a moment. Have you ever blown up a balloon until it popped? Of course you have. It is a right of passage for a kid. You may not have noticed it when you did it because the fear of the impending explosion in your face diverted your attention from observing the qualities of a nearly bursting balloon. But if you watched someone else do it from a safe distance, you will notice the balloon is almost “see through” just prior to eruption. Just before the pressure on the inside overcomes the pressure vessel, the pressure vessel becomes very transparent. Then the event happens and everyone’s attention is on the event and not the balloon itself.
Life is like a Diesel engine and a bald tire and kid’s balloon…
And then there was Jesus, a child was born.
Life had created a scenario which was conducive to a ruptured fuel line or a blown tire or a nearly popped balloon. Life erodes away the walls of the fuel lines and the radial re-tread. It stretches the balloon until you can almost see through the rubber. Jesus was that leak or that blown tire event or that nearly completely transparent form. The divine consciousness that is all that there is manifested as a form with almost no shell. At times the shell wasn’t even visible like the transfiguration. At times the shell had all sorts of leaks like when people were healed. At times it was a like a blown tire that gets everyone’s attention like a birth and a gruesome death.
That same consciousness is what we really are. We are the Christ consciousness but we most often don’t know it. The dreamer is having a dream and the characters of the dream think they are all that there is. In reality the characters are wearing masks, the rubber is too thick, the walls of the fuel line haven’t been worn through and the balloon hasn’t been stretched enough. For Jesus the time was right. Life had performed its function. The boundaries between the illusion and divine reality were eroded away. No wonder people came to see a birth. No wonder his life made such an impact. No wonder we still talk about his brutal death and his completely transparent nature.
A child is born and this child was the light. Unlike most of us who are a prism for the light, the light passed through the form of Jesus in such a way it was not altered. It was the pure light. No wonder people saw the signs of such an event. No wonder even the physical realm was altered by such pure light. No wonder we celebrate a child is born…
Yay God!
Lance
alancetotheheart 