Finding the key inside. Wrapping up the Christmas season

Helped by CG Jung, S Kierkegaard and Rumi.

Photo: A Furchert, out on a paddle on a wintery day.

I am not a very churchy person. And so I usually start contemplating Christmas when our neighbors have long disposed of their Christmas tree. What shall we do with that old tale of Divine birth? I still wonder even after the three kings have left the scene on epiphany (did you know that they actually needed 2 years for their journey??). Is there more to Christmas than the short lived appearance of a happy birthday party?

Did you know that the old church calendar actually considers Christmas time all the way to Feb 2?

So plenty of time to contemplate the deeper meaning of what has been all to often reduced to badly staged children’s peagants or unpleasant family gatherings. And to ask:

What has the story of Divine birth to do with my own spiritual (or not so spiritual) journey?

The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) once told a tale of a man rowing out on a lake in the quiet of dusk. The shallow lake lay silent beyond the circles where the oars broke the surface of the water, trickling little droplets of murky water back into the boat. It was then that an oar hit a dark object on the shallow floor of the lake. When the man lifted it out of the water he found himself looking at a little treasure chest. He brushed the water and mud off and tried for some time to open it. When the lid finally gave way he found the key inside.

The Sufi teacher Rumi (1207–1273) tells a similar story about his own journey. Often he felt he was eagerly knocking at a door — still it would not open. Only later did he find he was knocking at the door from inside.

Both images remind us that part of the human journey is a journey inside, to the murky waters of our own beings where the treasure lies.

Already as a child I felt a bit reluctant around the holy family and somehow managed to avoid being part of the children’s Christmas staging. I was rather drawn to the other narration of Divine birth you can also find in the bible, written in a more poetic language:

“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God (…)
And the Word became flesh
and dwelled among us. ”

— John 1,1

Those somewhat cryptic but also deeply philosophical lines always captured my imagination. Here the story of Divine birth wasn’t already pictured as what became the traditional image of the holy family. Instead, it comes in poetry, each verse in need of unpacking by the reader.

This poem speaks about a “word” quite different from our literal understanding. It is the word of all beginnings, a creational act so to say. And some how this godly word of all beginnings enters the human body just like a fresh breath of air, eager to dwell among us.

I find this “Christmas story” so much more appealing as it opens us up to its poetry, to a process which is not confined to a season but embodied in the mystery of life itself. It invites us to a journey inward, a journey of the heart, to the heart, where the Divine word dwells.

Interesting enough it was the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung (1875–1961) who did not want us to give up on the Christmas nativity scene just yet. He helps to unwrap a bit of its traditional glitter and read it from the inside out, as a powerful metaphor of our human journey itself.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961)  one of the leading thinkers and depth psychologists of his era contributed substantially with his Analytical Psychology to an improved understanding of human psychology and mental disorders. He was born in 1875 as a Lutheran pastor’s son in Switzerland. While working as a psychiatrist , he became one of Freud’s most respected students until the relationship ended over differences in theoretical understanding. This led Jung to develop his Analytical Psychology, which goes far beyond the realms of psychology and psychiatry in their meaning for our times. (for photo rights and more info go to Zurich Institute)

Jung says: the goal of each individuation, each becoming-human is God’s birth in one self.

Therefore the Christmas story moves us because it touches these deep images or “archetypes” we carry in our soul. For Jung, the pastor’s son, the trinity of the holy family also reveals the creation forces in our very beings: spirit, soul and body. This way, the characters of the Christmas story can be read as crucial parts of our own being, something which should not be reduced to a season but rather understood as a journey towards the deeper self, when we have put all the glitter away.

So let me try to translate these Jungian thoughts into my own words:

Mary, the soulful

Mary symbolizes our tender side, our empathy and compassion, our creativity and trust of God’s goodness. Mary embodies the part of the soul from which our feelings and wisdom spring.

For Jung the soul is somewhat like the embodied spirit, bound to matter but still with “wings of an eagle”. Some of you might be reminded to the medieval scholar Hildegard of Bingen (whom Jung has read, too) and her comforting words to the lamenting soul: Do not forget, my daughter, that your father in heaven has given your soul wings with which you can fly above all obstacles. (see my post on Hildegard)

So who is Mary in us? Mary, the soulful, follows her call. She stands for the motherly or mothering aspects of our soul. (Simplistic archetypes trigger some gender issues here, but they are meant rather to do the opposite, with one person embodying aspects from all three archtypes. Thus the Mary archetype is good news for men, you can and you should integrate and celebrate your mothering aspects.) Mary is the brave one who beliefs in the promise, against all the odds, she makes room for the sacred which starts to grow in her. She not only welcomes but carries the Divine spark until its birth. Following our calling isn’t an easy thing. We often have to defy our own doubts, or the well meant advice of others, even common sense. We have to choose the road less traveled, in order to bring to life what lies within us.

© A. Furchert

Joseph, the mindful

Then there is Joseph, the mindful, who stands for the fathering part of our soul life. His task is to support Mary on her way, not only to stand by her but to father and care for the new life Mary is carrying under her heart. Joseph symbolizes the ability we each have to structure, to foster and facilitate, to believe, and to support what ever wisdom is trying to birth.

Together, Mary and Joseph are like the feminine and masculine part of our soul or as I prefer, our fatherly and motherly aspects; Jung names these with Greek: anima and animus. Thinking about Mary and Joseph in us also reveals what is hurt or less developed in our own life. Some might have lacked motherly care, some might have longed all their life for more fatherly support. But here is the invitation: despite the odds, despite the lack or the disappointment we might have experienced in our own life, we can find Mary and Joseph anew in us, and rebuild them into what they ought to be.

The Divine Child, God with us

For Jung, The Divine child symbolizes the “world-soul slumbering in matter.” Birthing the holy is the awakening of the deeper self, realizing the “Imago Dei,” growing closer into the image of God. Such a living concept of the self understands the self spiritually, as our spiritual ability to reconcile opposites, as the Divine child narrative does itself: light and dark, masculine and feminine, soul and body, intellect and intuition, knowledge and faith, awakening and slumber, spirit and flesh, holy and profane.

The stable, just where we are

Realizing our self this way is what reminds us that we are made in the multiple images of God, no matter our religious affiliation or spiritual practice, that the sublime wants to take shelter in us; wants to dwell even in our unkempt and windy stable, nothing perfect, often not even pretty. Always again, the divine birth is happening, against the odds, in us.

Jung is careful to state that understanding the Christmas narrative this way does not take away any of its mystery. In fact, it rather creates “the psychological preconditions” that allow the story of redemption to be meaningful to us. This Divine incarnation only touches us if it makes sense to our inmost being. Only then can redemption take place. Only then can the Divine child become the force who reconciles what seems unreconcilable also in us.

And don’t we all have broken pieces longing for reconciliation?

So here is my wish for you:

May you find courage
to become caring like Joseph
and wise like Mary.

May you find courage
to be the stable.
And to be the womb.
To birth new life.
And to become whole.

Dear reader, thank you for bearing with me :-) I am just starting out on medium. So let me know if you would like to read more of this simply by following. For now you can find more of my writings and retreats on our website www.cloisterseminars.org.

And feel free to let me know how this story connects with your own by commenting below or by starting a private conversation. I love to hear from you.