Peace and Goodwill, True or Bluff?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

I used to love playing 'True or Bluff' with friends, although I could never quite shake off  a sense of its being a game I have engaged in all my life that is no game at all but part and parcel of mind-body-spirit's tenuous grasp of what, indeed, is true or bluff... no less often with myself than with others in all walks of life, at various levels of consciousness and conscience.

On the subject of Christmas, a clergyman once told my Sunday School class that “Religious festivals are all about bringing peoples of the world together in the sight of God.”  to which a voice piped up, loud and clear, “He must be get very disappointed by what he sees then...”

Everyone laughed... whether at the child’s precocity or the look of sheer perplexity on the face of the clergymen, who was clearly at a loss for words, I wonder even now. 70 years on. He quickly recovered his composure and proceeded to tell the Christmas Story. I would have been about ten years-old at the time, and found myself wishing even then that he has responded to my young peer’s comment. It was a watershed moment for me as I began to address my inner self increasingly more closely as to just what it was about religion – not just Sunday School – with which I was less than comfortable.

A few years later I would confide in my Religious Education teacher at Secondary school that I found difficulty in relating a growing sense of spirituality in nature rather than religion. He explained that, as God created nature, it was all part of the same scenario, although he also said that human beings have complex needs and no religion has a monopoly on spirituality. I had a problem, even then, with a personified God and those words would eventually lead me to Pantheism.

As I have said before on the blog, I have every respect for a person’s Belief or non-Belief, but, each to our own, and Pantheism works for me in so far as it sees God as nature rather than its creator..

PEACE AND GOODWILL... TRUE OR BLUFF?

Christmas is that time of year
when we are all meant to put on a show
of good cheer, often a bluff,
but convincing enough to keep family
and friends from suspecting
we are more fragile than we seem,
at breaking point even,
but the Christmas show needs must go on,
if only for the children

On that first Christmas, long ago
the Christ child was born, and must be so
because the Bible tells us so;
myth, fairy tale, what’s the truth of it?
Ask the preacher or trust
in gut feelings and mind-body-spirit
feeding us a sense of peace
as we’d dearly l have comfort, console us
for all we see in tea leaves

Singing carls around the tree,
thankful to be in much loved company,
lending us a sense
of a common humanity sure to find
its way one day, coming
together to fight a common enemy,
no matter our religion
or differences in whatever kinder life forces,
we make our life choices

Christmas, over, a new year
around the next corner, time to reflect
on knowns and unknowns
likely to lead or mislead us, such
is the way of all flesh,
sun, moon and stars taking turns
to let us enter into
a spirituality akin to that we enjoy, embrace
one and all, at Christmas

Yet another Covid Christmas,
a human tragedy that it takes a pandemic
to create a sense of unity,
world against a common enemy;
yet, old habits die hard,
never easy to admit we were wrong
to judge or assume,
better, surely, to give and take the gift of Peace
at all-embracing festivities?

“United we stand, divided we fall,” Earth Mother
might well have us remind each other...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2021