Christmas & becoming
Ordinary & extra ordinary dimensions
Yes Christmas is the greatest becoming, a becoming that has a lot of effects in the history of cosmos, and a becoming inviting us to our own becomings. It’s also important to determine the ordinary and extra-ordinary (special or unique) dimension of that becoming.
The birth of a child is an ordinary event; but the one who became flesh was someone really special. How each one sees ordinary and extra ordinary in a becoming might be different, but it is important to see those two dimensions. Why?
Probably because every event of becoming in life is not just a cause and effect like in science; same cause producing same effects always. Every life becoming is unique.
What are the other becomings during the Christmas season?
In the gospel, we have a man and woman becoming a father and a mother. Though this is a normal reality in the human life, the case is slightly more complicated, as their becoming father and mother involved supernatural help too. Saying yes to God’s will is to become something new, mostly by natural means and in a few cases, by super natural means.
Can you trace the ordinary and extra ordinary here?
There is also an invitation in Christmas to worship the child — and to become like a child. An invitation, Jesus have given quite a few times in his public life. The famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — considered very strongly anti-Christian by many — used to distinguish between camel, lion and child; he invites humans to become like a child (not to be camel or even a lion — I am not getting into detailed explanations here). I always think that if Christians were child-like as Jesus said, Nietzsche wouldn’t have any of those words against Christianity.
Is there an ordinary and extraordinary in this invitation too?
Another important difference between child and adult is that child do play; adult have games. Some might wonder the difference between play and games. A child play doesn’t always have the fixed rules; rules can evolve during the playing. But most of the adult games (be it outdoor games or indoor ones), the rules are fixed. Yes, there is a freedom and liberty in the child, which we loose as we grow up. Occasionally we become too rigid; even difficult for the word of God to penetrate. Some of our ideas are so fixed that dialogue is impossible. Think of an extreme right wing person and left wing person; many a times, they fail to dialogue too. The same is true between many good Christians too; we all know the right. It’s good to remember a child often.
Becoming like a child; becoming more in tune with the word of God; Seeing the ordinary and extra ordinary.
Though I distinguish between ordinary and extra ordinary, I do think both are in human realms, and God’s presence is there in both of them.
I do emphasize on both as one sidedness can be quite dangerous. If we believe that everything that happens is ordinary, we may not appreciate it much and we may even have a very scientific view (same cause leading to same effect; but life events are not in that category). Even if you consider everything as extraordinary, the danger can be that we may not be much rooted to the flesh and blood, but instead flying in some other worlds.
