Welcome to Off the Page. I'm Stephen Copeland. For many, Christmas time no longer brings
with it the sense of bliss or excitement we may have experienced as children. It can come
with a heaviness, darkness, or an overwhelming sense of busyness that numbs us to the magic
of the season. I know for me the last several Christmases have come with a sting, and I
often find myself mentally and emotionally checking out during the holidays. I try to
open my heart again and again, but it's hard sometimes and I retreat into the dark. There's
no better person to help inspire listeners to find joy and sacredness in the holiday
season than today's guest, Dr. Thomas Moore. You may recognize his name not only from church
history—no, not that Thomas Moore—but also from his number one New York Times bestseller,
Care for the Soul. He has written thirty other books about bringing soul to personal life
and culture, including the book we discussed today, The Soul of Christmas, which was published
in 2016 by Franciscan Media. In his youth, Thomas was a Catholic monk and studied music
composition. He has a Ph.D. in religious studies from Syracuse University and was a university
professor for a number of years. He is also a psychotherapist, influenced mainly by Carl
Young and James Hillman. In his work, he brings together spirituality, mythology, depth psychology,
and the arts, emphasizing the importance of images and imagination. What I love about
his book, The Soul of Christmas, is that it hits on two levels—the personal, as he helps
readers to reacquaint themselves with the magic of Christmas, but also the universal,
as he invites both Christians and non-Christians alike to contemplate the mystical dimensions
of Christmas—even the aspects of the season that we may not think of as spiritual or have
written off as childish or naive. This conversation was playful and mystical, much of it unfolds
in the realm of symbol and myth. We talk about Christmas trees, Santa Claus, angels, and,
yes, Jesus in the Incarnation. I'm not sure if Thomas calls himself a Christian these
days, but I think you'll find that his ability to speak the universal language of the soul
is its own invitation to authentic spiritual experience, no matter one's faith or religion.
He is traditional in some ways, non-traditional in others, but if you're open to it, I think
his draw to symbol and myth can help inspire the spiritual imagination and ultimately rediscover
God in new ways this time of year. I hope this episode helps you to open your heart to
the magic of the season, just as his book has done for me in this conversation as well.
You can order The Soul of Christmas in the Franciscan Media Store or wherever you purchase
your books. It's a great, thoughtful Christmas gift, and if it's not looking like you'll
receive it in time where you live, maybe you can share this episode with your loved one
and tell them their book is on the way. So, without further ado, here is Thomas Moore,
but first, a message from our sponsor. Earning a Master of Theological Studies with
the Franciscan Theology lens is now possible anywhere in the world. The Master's program
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So I highly recommend it. To learn more, you can visit theologicalstudies.sandiego.edu.
Again, that's theologicalstudies.sandiego.edu. Thomas Moore, thank you for joining us on
the Off the Page Podcast. Thank you. It's really a great pleasure to be with you today.
So you've written more than a dozen books since the release of your New York Times bestseller
Care for the Soul, but this is the only book you've written based around a specific holiday
or season. So why did you write this book, and where did it come from within your own
soul? Well, I have... It's really hard to know where to start. In my studies, in my
education, especially my PhD work at Syracuse University in religious studies, I studied
the role of myth. I studied the interpretation, sort of psychological reading of fairy tales.
I've been interested in looking at rather popular images. I'm very interested in looking
at the deeper aspects of many films. So all of it, any kind of imagery is really important.
It's my work. It's what I do. And so I've always loved Christmas. And I'm a musician.
For years, I was preparing music for Christmas holidays. In fact, I made a recording of Christmas
music a dozen years ago that I think is terrific, and we did a PBS special with it. So I've
been interested in making Christmas more intelligent and known to people. There's much more going
on at Christmas than people understand or realize. And it's not enough just to have
these articles that come out at Christmas time saying the Christmas tree is the cosmic
tree. You have to go further than that. So that's what I decided to do with this book.
The Franciscan media asked me to write something for them, just in general, to write something.
And I thought this would be a great time, great opportunity for me to write about Christmas.
I was a Christian monk. I was a Catholic monk for 13 years. And I have a very strong background
there in Christian theology. In fact, in my own work, I consider myself a theologian,
and kind of a modern one, a non-aligned one. And so it was an opportunity for me to gather
all my powers, all the things that I can do with my background and my interest and my
love of Christmas and make something of it.
Yeah, you talked about kind of the realm of symbol. And you mentioned myth, fairy tales.
You dive into a couple of those symbols in your book. Would you like to begin with the
Christmas tree? I love the way you broke that down cosmically. And I think that people would
find that interesting.
Well, the tree itself is such an important part of life. Trees, I think, are, they're
staying, like right now when I talk to you, there are, I don't know, probably at least
a couple thousand trees around me. And they stand there in front of you. And you have
to have a relationship to them. And I think anything like that that is so common in your
experience, I guess people who grow up in a desert wouldn't have that experience, but
I do. And so the tree is going to become mythic. Most things in life, most things that have
any value to them, they shift over time from being ordinary and factual to mythic. That
means they have another layer of meaning that they haven't had before. Your own house can
become a myth. You know, if you're with it long enough and if you love it, it begins
to, you begin to tell stories about it and the things that take place in it. It has its
mythic side. I grew up in a, I spent a lot of time in my youth in a farmhouse in upstate
New York with barns and various houses and there was no plumbing in the house. It's quite
a nice experience. And now that house has become a myth. And my family often comes with
me and we visit that old house. It's just a ruin now. But even as a ruin, it seems even
more sacred, which is almost the same as saying mythic.
Yeah, I think it was, not to cut you off, but I think I read, maybe it was Richard Rohr
one time. He said that we think of myth as something that's not true, but in the way
he and a lot of mystics use it, it means something that's truer than true. Is that correct? You
know, there's a sacred layer beneath this, you know, contained within this house, contained
within whatever it is, there's stories, there's soul, yeah. Yeah, all of those things apply.
So any of those words could be used interchangeably in a way. So what happens is that you experience
that thing at another level. It has a much more meaning and it even takes on a certain
reverence. You may feel reverence for it. As we do the house in the country that I spent
all those years in, it's now a holy place in a way. Not in any religious sense, you
know, typical religious sense, but in the sense that in our family, it's holy. It wouldn't
be that for people in another family probably, but for us it is. And so it has another level,
it has risen to another level. A tree can do that. So a tree is just a tree, but if
you have a special tree, I'll give you another example. My mother, my dear mother who died
15 years ago, she had a tree in her yard. It's called the Rose of Sharon. I always mix
that up, Rose of Sharon. And so when I have moved to different houses over the years in
my life, I have planted a Rose of Sharon tree. We have one next to our house right now. That
tree is not an ordinary tree. That tree is my mother's tree. It's like her, it's an
image for her. The Christmas tree is closer to that. It's a tree that has been elevated
in meaning and reverence. Because it's been associated, for example, the Bible associates
that tree with a tree in the garden of Eden. Well, that tree is a very special tree. The
story of Eden, which I would call a mythology, and I don't mean to say it's not real, I
mean that it is very real. That tree of Eden helps us see that all trees have a certain
holiness to them. And so when it comes to Christmas time, we associate Christmas with
a tree. It's not in this original story, but it has been associated with Christmas. And
it's brought into the house, which is unusual. You don't usually bring a tree into your house.
So that shows how unusual and special this tree is. And then we put lights on it because,
as we might see in our conversation, Christmas is really a celebration of light. So we put
lights on the tree. Originally people put actual candles on the tree. It's hard to imagine.
They go up in flames so fast. But we put lights and bulbs on the tree. We make it special.
We show that this tree is not a literal tree. Literal trees don't have lights and little
decorations on them. We have transformed the tree into something meaningful to us, deeply
meaningful. We bring that tree into our house. We keep it in our house for a little season,
a short season. And we have gifts under the tree, which shows we might be able to talk
about gifts later, how important they are to Christmas. And so we bring that tree there
and we have sanctified it. We have seen the sanctity of the tree and we bring it into
our world. And it helps give us the glow of Christmas by having that tree in our homes.
Yeah. As you're talking, I'm reminded of at least one of my favorite scenes in Christmas
films is in Charlie Brown Christmas, a favorite of my dad's, where he picks out this humble
tree and he kind of gets shamed for it. But in the end, in his moment of rejection, he
goes and picks this tree up again and he carries it with him. And then his friends come back
to him and they decorate it for him. And it's to me, I mean, talk about symbol. There's
so much metaphor there. But it really captured, to me, it really captures something about
Christmas. You know, like we're going to dare pick up this thing. Perhaps it's something
broken in our story or an element of pain around this time of year. And we're going
to pick it up, carry it with us. And in community, we're going to gather around it and decorate
it and make it beautiful and redeem it in a sense, but also not turn our back on the
fact that this is a humble tree.
Well, that's the other side of it too. The tree is nature coming in. And so Christmas
is in some ways a celebration of nature in many ways, actually.
Yeah. And then in Christian theology, of course, you're going to have a lot of fun with this,
with the manger perhaps coming from wood or the cross. I mean, there can be so much myth,
depth behind spiritual significance contained within this tree. Franciscan theology too,
Bonaventure's Tree of Life. I mean, there's just so much here. And I love that one of
my favorite things about your book, Thomas, is that it invites you to see the depth of
things.
Yes. The fact that everything is multi-layered. It may have a practical purpose, but at the
same time, it can have a mystical purpose.
Yes. And what do you mean by that word mystic? You know, when people listening, whenever
they hear a word like myth or mystic, you know, or magic, magic is a word that you use
in your book as well. I personally love those words, but for some it's, ooh, that's a little
too scary for me.
I just mean escaping from the limitations of the philosophy that we live under, which
is science. Science is wonderful, what it's done for us, but it has also given us a very
limited worldview. We can only live a portion of human life if we live what science tells
us the way the world is. It's wonderful what they give us, but it's far too limited. So
to be a mystic is to reach beyond that kind of a limited world. And I think what happens
is that people feel, they use the word illuminated, which is a nice word. Illumination is a big
word and for me, especially Christian mystics, they talk about a stage of illumination in
their mystical life. It means that they have, not that they are enlightened mentally, but
they are transformed into beings more of light rather than of ordinary substance. That now
we are people who can live at another level and can appreciate that even in this world
that is so factual and so material, we can also live. We can be in a way that is beyond
that, transcendent, and that quality is different. And it's an important thing. If all of us
could do that, I think we'd have such a sensitivity that we'd be able to get along better.
Yeah, I think you write in your book that you hope that our next age is one of imagination.
And so it's not turning our back on postmodernism or science, but it is, if I'm understanding
you correctly, it is giving magic a shot. You wrote, Christmas is about giving utopia
a chance. I love that line. Am I tracking there?
Totally, totally, completely. And all these things relate to each other because utopia,
which means kind of the word itself means no place, but that means an other place, another
place besides this world we live in. And that would be a world that we can imagine as being
one of that is peaceful, where people can get along, where we can each be creative in
our own way and not fear extinction from all of the other people around us. That kind of
a world, utopian, is very similar to the mystic talking about being illuminated. It's another
level of existence that's real and can coexist with a factual one and a scientific one, but
it's different. That's all, it's just different. And it gives us something that is very important
for human beings to be nourished on the experience we have when we have a mystical life. So I
think that Christmas can lead us in that right direction. If we can have one day of the year
where it's Christmas and we understand that giving gifts is a way of being economical,
we can have an economy among human beings by gift giving, then we could also have every
day of the year have some of those sort of unreal values.
Yeah, you mentioned gifts just now and earlier as well. I know that's a symbol that you play
with as well in your book. Do you want to go a little bit deeper into that?
Well just what I was saying that I think what happens at Christmas is we are celebrating
the arrival of a new way of life represented in the infant. And when Jesus grows up, he
teaches that new way of life. And it's a radical teaching because he suggests that we live
by agape, which is a kind of love that is selfless. And that, you know, we just don't
have a world that is based on that. Our world is based here in the United States, it's largely
based on laws, which is fine. We need laws, but we need something else. We need utopia
as well. We need a world in which people can really love each other and have values that
are not so realistic and not so limited and so basic. We need a more extravagant way of
looking at life. And we can live that way. We can each live that way to some extent,
but it'd be nice if we all could. And I think Christmas is about the birth of that kind
of vision for life. So that's what we are aiming for. And so when we talk about magic
and mysticism, we are talking about the way to live in this world that is not limited
by the old ways of having to be mechanical and only scientific and egotistical.
Is abundance perhaps a good word there that in a time like Christmas, it's leaning into
this economy of abundance rather than practicality maybe?
Oh, yes. The gifts we give don't have to be practical. And the gift giving is not too
practical either because when you give a gift, you can, you know, people do turn Christmas
gift giving into something that is not ideal. They become worried about what they're going
to give to people and they think sometimes that the more they spend on a gift, the better
it is. Things like that. That's not really true in a gift giving culture. We want to
be with other people and love them from the heart. And the gifts we give show that we
can live together out of love and free giving rather than out of some kind of commercial
financial exchange that is really, you know, it doesn't come from the heart. It comes
from trying to make everything even, make sure everyone is getting their peace with
the action. And that's not the same. It's giving is offering of itself from the heart
and the gift represents that. So I'm not saying that we are all Christians necessarily or
people are it who are attracted to the Jesus way have to be so idealistic. They don't have
to be. But I think they have to bring that into their life if they really want to do
it. They have to bring some of Christmas into their daily life. And part of that would be
giving gifts. That means that you're not going to always be cutthroat in your financial exchanges,
but that you can be open hearted much of the time. And I think that just the way it goes,
I feel that there are so many instances I get into where people would say, well, you
are you're being taken advantage of. You could make more money if you did this or did that.
And I think to myself, that's certainly true. But you know, I really believe in this Jesus
way. I really do. I'm not officially a Christian, but I believe in it. I really trust it. So
if it comes to that, I will say I remember Christmas. Christmas, we give gifts and you
don't get anything in return. Okay, this time I'm going to give something to somebody. I'm
not going to get paid for it. But that's Christmas again. Christmas every day.
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, when we use words like, hey, be more idealistic or, you know,
utopia is a word that we've used in this conversation. You know, I mean, I can't help but think Christmas,
a lot of times it's not always a joy for everyone. You know, it can bring up grief and loneliness
or stress. And how can we kind of honor these aspects of the human experience during the
holiday season, while also, you know, as I mentioned earlier, give utopia a chance and
lean into this economy of abundance and idealism?
Well, you have to understand the debate. This is basic. That life is full of joy and full
of pain. That's just the way it is. And at Christmas, it's interesting that we approach
Christmas through the darkest night of the year. So this is another important connection
with Christmas is that it takes place at the solstice. And that's when the sun is least
present to us. And you know, the sun is not just there to give us a physical warmth. The
sun can make you feel alive and happy. A friend of mine just told me the other day, if he
gets up in the morning and the sun is shining, he's ready to go. And if the sun isn't shining,
he wants to stay in bed. He doesn't want to get into life. So we have to remember that.
Light comes in the darkness. We're celebrating the birth of light at Christmas and all that
image of the manger with an infant. And you don't have to take that historically. You
can take it as, again, another aspect of the myth of Christmas is that light itself is
being born. And we see in many paintings of the Nativity, there's light coming from the
child or light coming from the little barn they're in. That light is meaningful. You
know, that light means something because that is a celebration of light. Light coming after
the whole year has grown so dark that there's hardly any light left. At least that's what
some of us feel. I live in New Hampshire. I really feel it. There's not much light left
in December. And you can feel it. You just wish that we had longer days. Well, that's
part of it. So we are close to our pain, close to the darkness that is part of light. But
that's why the light, the coming of light is so valuable and important. It's something
we want to celebrate at Christmas.
Yeah. And that reminds me of the prologue of John's gospel. This light has come in the
darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. I mean, that is such a mystical passage
in scripture and you quote it twice in your book.
Well, that's a remarkable mystical passage in the gospel. So I think what that opening
is saying to us is that in the beginning, to begin with, was the Logos. That's what
the gospel says. The Logos is a word that I don't translate. I have translated all the
gospels. I published a translation of the gospels. And in my translation of that, I
can't remember it exactly and don't have it with me, but it is that to begin was the Logos.
Sometimes they say the beginning was the word. That's how they translate Logos. It does mean
word, but it means something much deeper. It means the way things are. It means this
is the way things, this is how things work. This is how life is, Logos. That's what this
is. We have our word logic from it, but it's much more than logic. So I keep the word Logos,
the Greek word, because it's a mystical word.
The beginning was the Logos. That means that in the beginning, this world had meaning.
It had Logos to it. It had Logos. And the Logos was divine. And when we talk about God
and divine divinity, we are talking about, hardly about this source of a meaningful world
we live in. It's not chaos. And that's amazing. A lot of religions begin their stories of
origin by saying that the world is not chaotic. That's so important. There's order here. And
we are part of that order. So part of our job is to find the Logos in ourselves as human
beings. What does it mean to be a human being? How do they work? And also, our own selves
individually. I'm Tom. How does Tom work? What is Tom's Logos? That's the question.
That's I think, and my translation is, and the darkness doesn't darken. The darkness
that is here doesn't extinguish us. We can live in darkness because we do have some source
of light. But that doesn't mean that we can't live in the dark because the dark doesn't
have to undo us. And at Christmas time, we realize that. We go through this advent of
darkness. The day is getting shorter and shorter where you wonder if there's any sun left.
And then suddenly it all turns around. Solstice. The solstice means, the word means that the
sun stands still. And so the sun stands still, then it turns and starts growing. So that's
a wonderful time to celebrate Christmas.
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned in this darkness, we are particularly close to our pain. And
yet, as we just talked about, the light is still there. You've got a background in psychotherapy.
And I'm wondering, what kind of therapeutic direction might you give to someone who perhaps
struggles to find the beauty or magic of Christmas because of the holidays association with pain,
trauma or loss? This darkness that we're talking about, anything in your therapy background
that you think might be helpful for listeners?
Absolutely. All of therapy, that's the way I understand it, has to be not trying to create
a life that is all light, where everything works out. No, you can't do that. Therapy
is to try to embrace the things, the sad things that happen, the mistakes that are made and
embrace those and acknowledge them. And maybe even understand in many cases, if not all,
how they play a role in your unfolding. Just as the more positive and the happier things
do. We don't have to choose one thing against the other. That has been part of religious
understanding for centuries, that there's good and there's evil in there and a fight
with each other. You don't have to look at it that way. And I think that's what I'm trying
to say about Christmas. You celebrate the solstice. What I really appreciate, and I've
lived in Ireland quite a bit in my life. And one of the things that I've done many times
in Ireland is go to Newgrange, which is a prehistoric. Well, I don't know if prehistoric
is the word. It's 5,000 years old temple, sort of. And you can go and visit it now.
People go on the solstice there and they can go and you have to crawl inside. You really
have to get down on your knees to get in it. And you feel these very smooth but incredibly
powerful boulders that form this little entryway. It's just like a little triangular entry.
You crawl through it and you feel it rubbing against your shoulders. I'm claustrophobic
myself, but somehow it doesn't bother me. And I go through this little entryway and
then you go through a little lower place and finally end up in a chamber inside this thing,
which is a wonderful thing to be in this chamber in the earth. And it looks like it's set
up as a little temple, a little chapel. I mean, it's not made this way. This comes,
it's natural, natural stone and everything. But as you're there, if you're there on the
21st of the month of December, most years it's that date, and you see the sunrise when
the solstice has the sun return, the sun at this temple is built in such a way that the
sunlight comes into the temple only on that day. And that's the celebration of the sun
coming in now. That's pretty impressive. And you are mystical-minded, you're even psychologically
minded in a deep way. You'll say, oh, this is my life. My life is always in darkness,
but there are always opportunities for this life, for the sun to show itself and to come
in and enter into my space and to give me light. So that Christmas is celebrated one
day of the year as the solstice is, but it can actually be part of our life all the time.
So the sun is always rising and always setting. It's always dark and it's always light.
Yeah, which gets back to the Paschal mystery and at least in the Catholic tradition, the
notion of the Eucharist and communion, that it is the celebration of dying and rising
simultaneously. And it's a pattern for our own lives as well.
One of my favorite things about your book is, well, one of them is that on a personal
level it helps to form within my own soul an openness to the magic of the Christmas
season. But then on a bigger level, I also love that this book brilliantly universalizes
us. We tend to think of Christmas as a kind of Christian holiday and it certainly is and
has that background. But why would you say that Christmas and its spiritual significance
is for everyone, non-Christians alike? Well, we just talked about how a little bit,
I didn't get into it too much, but how Christmas is rooted in the experience of solstice. That's
for everybody. Solstice is something that everybody on the planet experience. And even
if you don't think about it too much, I think if you stand there and notice on the day of
the solstice that the light is the shortest and now the sun's going to start getting
brighter, that has an effect on your emotions and on maybe your plans for your life. And
so I think it's true. The solstice will be true of everybody. The solstice is a very
big foundation even for the Christian Christmas. So it's there. That's one thing. The other
thing is that if you think of, I think it's a mistake. I'm speaking as a theologian now.
I think it's a big mistake that we have thought that Jesus created a religion and a religious
institution. You don't get that in the gospel. It's just not there. People read back into
it that because that's what they've experienced, but it's not there. But he is suggesting that
his kingdom is like the kingdom he talks about that he's announcing his kingdom is going
to be different. It's not going to be based on laws. It's going to be based on love. He
couldn't be clearer about that. And so it's a different kind of realm in which you live.
A different realm. And it doesn't make any difference what your religion is. I mean,
that has nothing to do with it as far as I can see. Nothing whatsoever to do with it.
But it has everything to do with how you are as a human being. Because we have emphasized
the most belonging and all the history and rituals of religion that it has really severely
limited the gospel teaching. And it's not that the institution couldn't embody and
help spread the word of this teaching, but it doesn't. It tends to emphasize belonging
and observance of rules, which are exactly contrary to the gospel teaching. So I'd rather
be a person who follows the gospel than someone who's a member of the religion. And when
it comes to Christmas, if you want to be a member of the religion primarily and follow
the rules, please say, okay. I know when I grew up, there were two kinds of people in
the world, Catholics and non-Catholics. What I was always taught, that's a weird way of
being in the world. And I mean, what about the Buddhists and the Daoists and the Jews
and the Muslims? You know, what about that? Do we just discount all these brilliant ways
of imagining human life and guiding human life? That's a, I think all these are big
mistakes. So if you can get past them at all, even just a little bit, you will see that
the teachings of Christmas are not for believers and belongers, people who sign up for this
religion. They are for every human being. That's what it's about. Every human being
has to deal with negativity in life and discover light over and over again. That's what Christmas
is. Every human being could discover that there's a way of being in this world, but
you're not going to be counting all your money all the time, but discovering ways to give
gifts.
Yeah. And in your emphasis there on humanity, I can't help but think, obviously, going back
to the prologue of John's gospel, you know, at the beginning was the word and the word
was God and the word becomes flesh. And there, whether you're, like you said, whether you're
a Christian or not, whether you believe that to be literally true or not, my argument would
be that there is something really beneficial psychologically and soulfully about daring
to believe the reality that God can become human, that the divine incarnates in our physical
reality. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Well, that's what Christmas is too, theologically in a Christian way. It's about the incarnation.
It's about the fact that the divinity can take on flesh, can be part of life, can be
on earth. So let's imagine that there are two tiers to this world. One is infinite and
divine, transcendent, and the other is just basic human life. I think what the Christmas
is teaching is that that divinity and their transcendence can be expressed and lived in
human lives. They can come together. And what we're seeing in the figure of Jesus, for those
who can imagine it that way, are interested in his story as their way of life and as describing
how things are, the logos of them. Then you can say that part of that is that what Jesus
describes in his way of life and in his teaching is a way to be both transcendent and earthy
at the same time. Two sides of him are very interesting. I like to give talks on Jesus
and food because he was so interested in food. But he brings them together at the Last Supper.
He makes them magical and mystical. Food, bread and wine now becomes mystical. So the
transcendent and the ordinary come together again.
Yeah. Can you go a little bit deeper into that phrase for me? I love that. It's beautiful.
The transcendent and the earthy, the transcendent and the ordinary. What does that look like
in our everyday life?
It means that very simply, it's a lot simpler than it sounds. I think what it means is that
any of us as human beings can just try to get along in life the best we can according
to our common standards. But at other times we can actually transcend. We can go past
that ordinary human way of doing things and adopt values that are much bigger, that are
higher in a way than that. I think a lot of people that we have seen, we've known people
in our history who give so much to us because they give us a higher viewpoint. I think the
best example for Americans is Martin Luther King. He just wanted to be a theologian teaching
at a university and he got a call from Birmingham to go down there and help the people who were
trying to do something about justice. He had a choice to make. He and his wife both wanted
to be university professors. That's what they were headed for. But he took the call and
he went down, I mean the phone call, and he went down to Birmingham and he became Martin
Luther King, I think a transcendent person. When we say Martin Luther King today, we don't
mean this man who wanted to get a job at a university. We don't think of him that way.
He's this man who embodied in everything he did. He embodied the transcendent values,
divine values of justice, of equality, these things that human beings don't get by themselves.
These are overarching, high values that the religions teach as high values, but we don't
take that too seriously. And Martin Luther King did. There are other people who have
done, obviously, who have done something similar. They went out and given themselves. I think
ordinary people can do that too. We all can find that transcendent thing within us where
we go beyond ourselves. That's like Christmas happening again. The divine has become incarnated
in this child. And here we are. Now we are an infant in doing this. We are an infant.
But we are going to grow into someone maybe who can really bring that divine transcendent
vision to the world around us. We can all do that.
Yeah. How did Christmas help form your own soul?
Well, I think the way it began, for me, my memories of early Christmas are with my mother
and father in our very little house in Detroit where we had very little money. I remember
one year I was given a bicycle, beautiful bicycle, red bicycle for Christmas, and I
just loved it. And I discovered a few years later that it was my uncle's bike that they
had repainted, my dad painted to make it new for me. And they were doing that sort of thing
a lot and trying to give me a special experience of Christmas. So to me, Christmas was like
time set apart. It was a special day. You get up at Christmas and it was a special day.
Now maybe people could say, reduce it and say, oh, the kids like to get gifts. Well,
yeah, but getting a gift is a deep, deep experience for a person. Very important for children
to get a gift at any time, especially at Christmas. So I feel that I learned Christmas through
my family. They took it seriously. My mother and father were very devout Catholics. We
would go to church and that was a special thing because the lights were always bright
at the Christmas church, Christmas mass. But the family got together and people exchanged
simple gifts, nothing much, and celebrated the cheerfulness of Christmas. So all of that,
I think those are real values of Christmas. When people say, what's the real meaning of
Christmas? It's having a good dinner, exchanging gifts, having a tree in your house. That's
what it is. It's nothing theological. It's simple, but it's profound at the same time.
Yeah, I have a two and a half year old at home and a six month old. My wife and I, we've
enjoyed, particularly with our two and a half year old because of his awareness now. It's
very interesting that you kind of, the aspects of your heart that perhaps maybe became cynical
or jaded along the way that all of a sudden seeing things through the eyes of your little
ones, it opens you up in a way to the magic that they're experiencing.
Yes, totally, completely. I think of our children when they were small, they would get up about
four AM to go ahead and get their gifts for Christmas. My wife and I would think, oh no,
it's Christmas day. We have to get up very early because they can't stand it. They have
to go down, be part of the Christmas celebration. It's wonderful that children are so drawn
to it and can appreciate it. Not everybody, I understand, so many children are deprived
of that. And that's the sad part. We have to, I think, be good to push Christmas a little
more. And I think it's a great thing, by the way, going back to another theme of yours,
that people who are not Christians can adopt Christmas and make it their own because it
doesn't belong to Christianity. Christianity is one dimension of it if you want to have
that. But even Christianity is much deeper if you go into it, like we're trying to get
there today to the deeper level. So the deeper you go into it, the less it's limited to card
carrying Christians and more to everybody to experience that. And it's a sad thing when
children don't, so many children are raised in poverty and ignorance where they can't
have that experience. But those of us lucky enough to have it and parents like you being
able to continue and give it to their children, it's a wonderful thing. If you understand
that you're giving them, don't think of it as something materialistic, giving children
things. No, those things are representative of a gift-giving way of life. They are learning
how to give gifts. And if you can help them with that, gift-giving as the season goes,
when Christmas comes along, that would really help them a lot.
Yeah, yeah. A lot of what you've been talking about the last five, seven minutes is it's
really revolved around this notion of experience, encounter, as the word Pope Francis would
use is one thing to have a bunch of theology in your head and regurgitate it. It's quite
another thing to like last night, my son and I, he made cookies with my wife all day and
then we delivered cookies to our neighbor and he said, Merry Christmas, Alan. You know,
that's more theology.
Yeah, totally. It's a lived theology. You don't want to make theology into something
totally rationalistic, you know, and mental. It's not that. Especially, yes, theology is
about a way of life. And I think by seeing these images and symbols of Christmas, it
takes you deeper into it so that you're not at that level of belief and rules or expectations
or trying to be good or anything like that. You are just being a human being and discovering
that giving gifts and being open and having some cheer in your life and giving that to
your neighbors, that is what it's all about. That's what it's all about. It's not what
you believe in, in some sort of theological way. That is, that's where things have gone
and the word is, it hasn't, that hasn't made a peaceful world. We could make a peaceful
world if we took Christmas more, more deeply.
Yeah, I know you've gone into that a little bit, but could you go a little bit deeper
into that notion that if we took Christmas, if we approach Christmas in a deeper sense,
we could bring more peace into the world?
Well, how, I don't know how to, how we can actually get to that point. You know, you
know, people like me, we try to, we try to let people know there's another way of thinking
about it. But we get, like I get reactions, I get negative responses to my saying things
like this. I won't, well, I won't go into it. I don't want to go into that too much.
But I think if we were to just understand Christmas a little more deeply, just a few
of these ideas we're discussing today, not the whole ball of wax, the whole thing, because
that's asking too much. But if people understand just the simple idea that first of all, they
understood about solstice and light. They could go out and just look at the night sky
and see that's part of your Christmas experience. It's dark. And think about the darkness in
your own life and other Christmases. You know, your story is not, is not about death, dealing
with death at Christmas time. It's very common. There are a lot of deaths at Christmas, where
people do remember people who were not here, who were here last Christmas. Death is part
of it. And bringing that into it and having a deeper reflection on life and understanding
that the world is much more meaningful than you think. And that the sky, the nature we
live in is part of the meaning of our life. And that's why we bring the tree into our
house. We're bringing nature into our homes to get over that separation between us and
the natural world. And that's part of a, that's all of that comes together to make Christmas.
There's one thing I'm afraid we might miss it. And you might want to bring it up, but
I'll bring it up now. Is we haven't talked about Santa Claus. And I love-
Yeah, please. That'd be great. Yeah.
That'll be.
Yeah.
I love Santa Claus. First of all, the name Santa means holy. So if we want to call him
Santa, which I like a lot, that would mean the Holy One. That's a good way to look at
him, the Holy One. Not some funny little figure from Walt Disney. Although Disney's not too
bad at times. But Santa is a holy figure. And imagine what he represents. He is so much
like other holy figures. He is found at the North Pole, which is like saying he's in another
realm. He's not, he's not of this realm. He's of another realm that we need. He's
from that transcendent realm at the North Pole. It's a great image for him. He goes
across the sky. That's where the divine is found. That's where, you know, that's where
the angels appear. That's another, it's where the shaman visits when he goes into a trance.
It's a, it's in a transcendent realm. That's where Santa lives or works. That's his realm.
He has a, he has a conduit to ordinary life. Just as we bring a Christmas tree into a house,
he can come down the chimney. So the chimney is like this connection between heaven and
earth. And he comes down the chimney. And we, one tradition is that we give Santa some
food when he arrives. We give him something because we are welcoming him into this realm.
That spirit of gift giving, he's got a sleigh full of gifts. That spirit of gift giving,
which is there in the divine realm, now can be in each family, in an each person coming
through the chimney, reaching us, you know, having a way of getting to us. And he is,
he has his own mantra. You know, a lot of religions have mantras where they have things
that they, little phrases that they say sometimes in their favorite languages, but little short
phrases. I don't know, Lord have mercy, they say some places. Little mantras, his is, ho
ho, that's his mantra. Ho ho ho, that's his special sacred little chant. And he has bells
ring as a common too, or when the angels appear or when the holy is present. That other realm
has a bell ring. He has these little things that jingle. All these things are related
to Santa. He's dressed in his own priestly garb, you might say, in his red and white
uniform. And we recognize him from that. And he is carried by the, he is propelled by reindeer.
So he has this animal connection, which is so important in the religions generally to
have an animal, part of life. So I think that Santa, and he gives gifts, that Santa embodies
all these values of Christmas. And he should not be denigrated or put down. It's very important
Santa, the holy, showing us what it means to be in the Christmas spirit. And he's saying,
ho ho ho, that's like saying, this is what you should be doing, just as the Buddha might
have a different gesture or phrase that's going to show you how to live. Santa tells
us how to live with this good spirit. Yeah. And here's another religion parallel. Curious
what you think about this. But I mean, Santa in a lot of ways has, has unfortunately been
transformed into something that promotes legalism. You know, like you only get gifts if you do
this, if you're good or bad, you know, and I mean, in, but the Santa you're describing,
again, we're in the realm of symbol again, but the Santa you're describing, it's magical,
you know, there are sacred elements to it. There's a story behind it. There's an origin
behind it. And to me, I mean, unfortunately, that's what religion has become is it's, you
know, this angry, usually masculine figure up in the sky who is, you know, cosmically
shaking his finger at you. And really, I mean, let's bring magic back, you know, like let's
bring grace and love and compassion and even some things that may be hard to believe like
God becoming a human baby. You know, that's very hard to believe, but what if we dared
to believe it? You know what I'm saying? Like there's, there's always this tendency in any
religious thought to kind of lean more toward the logical and lean more toward the formula
or do this, this and this to make so and so happy where we're missing out on the sacred
in the depth and immensity of that. If we go that direction. Yeah, we've taken the Santa
out of Santa Claus. Yes. Yeah. The holy. Yeah. So yeah, that's right. Absolutely. We, in
order to live this way, which is more mystical, I think to really live Christmas, you need
to enter a certain level of mysticism. Doesn't mean anything huge, just a little bit, you
know, just a little inch in that direction. But if you can do that, your life would be
transformed because human beings are only fulfilled when they are both body, soul and
spirit. When they have that spirit, meaning that divine transcendent realm is really in
your life. That means that you, you live by some values that are, that are, don't seem,
don't seem wise from a purely earthly point of view, but from a transcendent point of
view make a lot of sense. So we have to reach that point where we can live in all three
realms of the body, the soul and the spirit. Yeah. I know we're coming up on the hour.
Do you have anything else that you'd like to talk about or anything that I left out?
It's really a beautiful book and I encourage our listeners to get it. I mean, it's, it
really helps to create that posture of openness in the heart to what this season can be. So
anything else you'd like to dive into? Just show you the book. This is the soul of Christmas.
It's a very short book, 140 pages. I say that because I've been writing short books lately
and people tell me, I really like this new book of yours. It's short. People like short
books. So I would say there are many other things that we did not discuss that are in
here that, you know, we could, not many, but some things we didn't discuss. And I would
say one thing that we didn't talk about that I love, one of my favorite subjects is angels
related to Christmas. According to the gospel as well as it's in the gospel. A lot of these
things are not in the gospel, but the angels are. Angel, the word means a message or messenger,
either one, messenger or message. And the angel is really, in the Christian view context,
the angel is the go between, between the transcendent realm and the earthly realm. So when it gets
between, that's why the angels have wings, because they can fly between the lower earthly
realm, metaphorically speaking, can fly between the earthly realm and the transcendent realm.
In all religions and most religions, you see that there are ways to connect the transcendent
and the earthly. And very often the figures that do that are imaged as winged figures.
They have wings. So an angel is a winged messenger, essentially, a go between. The corresponding
figure in Greek religion, for example, would be Hermes, the god Hermes, where he has wings
and his shoes. Those help him go between the earthly realm and the realm of the gods. It's
very common. But we don't believe in angels. I do. Most people don't. I believe angels
are very real. Now, I don't mean that they are real in the sense that a cloud in the
sky is real. I don't mean physically, tangibly there. But I mean real in the sense that I
feel that there are moments when the angel makes itself known in my life. In protection,
for example, I remember once driving my car. I was in Hartford, Connecticut. I didn't see
a stop sign. Very wide street must have had five or six lanes. And the stop sign was way,
way over on the side of the street. And I just went straight on thinking that the street
just kept going. And a cement truck came at me. And I was sure it was over for me because
I knew I couldn't stop in time. I just, my foot just instinctively slammed into the brain.
And shocking to me, I didn't hit the truck. I was certain the truck was right there. I
think that's, to me, that's a pretty good image of an angel. For me, I can take that's
real. The sense that I have been saved from disaster by something that I can't explain
or control. I don't mean out there. I don't mean some actual energy there. I mean, this
was the experience in my life of being saved from being really smashed. And I think that's
a good way of talking about angels. Do you see what I'm saying? There's no angel. There's
no figure there. There's no being there. What the experience shows that life has this quality
of protection something.
And it leads you to gratitude and reverence.
It does. And I don't have to use the word angel, but I think it's a good one because
it's traditional for what angels do. And see, see what I'm saying. It's very hard to describe
this. I'm not putting that into any kind of being out there that stepped in. I'm just
saying that this is life. It's a quality of life that you get protected sometimes.
Yeah. And it's a transcendent quality of life. That is very, that is very real. Whether you
believe in literal angels or not, that's not the thing. It's, do you believe that life
as it is has a transcendent realm to it? And angels open that up for us. Or a belief in
the incarnation or Santa Claus or the spiritual depth of your Christmas tree that's shining
bright in your living room. All these things are portals too. There's something deeper
going on here in my life. Do I really believe that or have I just been on autopilot?
Yeah. For example, should you just at times of the solstice, like this week coming up,
should we just listen to the weather report and find out from the meteorologist what is
happening? Or can we go to the religions and discover, oh, they can guide us into understanding
that this is something meaningful to us. There's logos there. That's why it looked at the beginning
in John. To begin, there is the logos. And that's what it means it's meaningful. This
world is meaningful. Don't, let's not live in a mechanical world that doesn't have meaning.
So we can't go from meaning to the meteorologist. Maybe in the future they will do that, but
they don't do it today. They just give us the facts. And that's not enough to live in.
Human beings are not just facts. We are people with emotions and imagination and understanding.
We have to have all those things addressed in any experience we have. So I think that's
true of the, like you were just saying, you can choose. Are you going to live? I think,
see, I would put it religiously or not. To me, it's religious to be open to the mistruths
around us. And I don't care if you're a member of a church or not, you may not be religious
if you're a member of a church. Possibly. But do you have a religious sense? Do you
realize that some things are sacred? That tree is sacred. Can you agree to that? That
tree that you're bringing into your house has a sacredness to it? I would say if you
can, you're a religious person.
Yeah, absolutely. And going back to Logos, like you said earlier, the word that's often
used interchangeably is word. I love that notion too, because if the word dwells within
physical reality itself, I mean, all of a sudden, and I have to give credit to one of
my mentors, Father Dan Riley, worked on a book with him called Franciscan Lexio, where
he broke the word open. We usually think of reading the word as just reading scripture
or reading words on a page. However, the word in and around us and through us, we're invited
to read that. We're invited to read the sacred dimensions of the Christmas tree. We're invited
to read the sacred dimensions of that moment you described when the cement truck is coming
at you and you miraculously survive. To read the sacred in that and perhaps be stirred
to wonder or all or gratitude or whatever it may be. I mean, there's levels here. There's
a spiritual dimension to things that we may typically just overlook.
That's right. Absolutely. It wore all the way.
Well, you've got me all worked up now. So I better let you read this passage and free
you from the podcast. But yeah, you have a beautiful section, Thomas, subsection in your
chapter about Mary, I believe, and it's called a mystical Christmas. And I was wondering
if you could read the first four paragraphs of that and send us out into our holiday season.
Yeah, thank you for inviting that. Christmas offers an opportunity to get in touch with
your own mystical side. We are all potential mystics. Just stand still in the presence
of a beautiful sunset and your mysticism will be activated. An essential ingredient is wonder
and the capacity to become absorbed, to lose yourself for a moment in wonder or contemplation.
Read on the nativity scene in your town or neighborhood. Have one in your home, whatever
your spiritual preferences are. Don't take it lightly. Nothing could be more important
than finding ways to incorporate in your person and your life the moment when the spiritual
realm fully intersects with your ordinary life. You may feel there is no room for you
in the end of religion or community or tradition. That's an appropriate feeling for this time.
Find your own state, your humble place in the world. Let the revelation happen. Listen
for the angels announcing the good news that another life has been redeemed and transformed.
At Christmastime, we can all discover the Christos in us and the Virgin Mary as well,
the maternal, feminine, mystical figure who can say yes to life. Imitating Mary, you say,
let it be. Let me be the vessel. I don't know what it's all about, but if it furthers life,
I am willing. I want to be the means by which human life advances.
Thank you, Thomas. I appreciate you coming on off the page and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you, and I hope you have a wonderful time with your children.
Once again, that was Thomas More. Thomas's book, The Soul of Christmas, is available
in the Franciscan Media Store at shop.franciscanmedia.org or wherever you order your books. A huge
thanks to our sponsor, the Franciscan School of Theology, and to Thomas More for joining
us on off the page. Thank you, as always, to you for tuning in and supporting this podcast,
and I invite you to please consider leaving a review or sharing it with your friends or
family. This is Stephen Copeland signing off. Merry Christmas from all of us at Franciscan
Media. Peace and all good.