Part of the goal of the two Christmas Stories in the New Testament is to ground Jesus’ lineage back to Moses (in Matthew) and Adam (in Luke). Hence the name the Son of Man. If Jesus can be traced back to the first Hebrew prophet and the first human, he must be “special.” But here’s the deal. We are all descended from the first human, and further back from that, the first sign of life, and further back from that, the first building blocks of life. This story makes Jesus so distinctly human: born to a woman in a barn surrounded by earthy, dirty animals and shepherds. This is also the political nature of the story, for what son of God would be born in such lowly circumstances? Evidently, the one we are trying to know…the one who is not so different from us.

After last Sunday’s lesson, someone sent me an interpretation of Ave Maria, and my two favorite lines are:

“Ave, O you who carried Him Who Carries All! Ave, O Space of the Spaceless God!”

Spaceless God is non dual - neither here nor there but also everywhere. This is the capacity of the energy shared between us, the capacity of love - to be beyond, between, and around us. Everywhere all at once. We are all everywhere all at once.

Go and be love this season. Be the light in the dark night. This is how we will change the world.