Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve already. Time seems to pass with more ease the older I get (I'm saying this like I'm 85). Just one Christmas ago, I was preparing to spend four months doing research abroad in Fiji. And last Christmas was good, albeit exhausting. This Christmas seems to be a lot calmer, which personally, I'm loving. I think holidays are a time to relax and rejoice, not go freakin' insane. I will also never understand the buy-presents-on-Christmas-Eve dynamic. You know what winds up happening? You wind up spending money on useless bath gels or lotion for women and equally useless cuff links or ugly sweaters for men. Really, why waste your money on things that people will probably not even use? I think it's a much nicer gesture just to give someone a thoughtful card. Personally, I can't think of anything better than a handmade gift; I savor these gifts because they really do come from the heart, and I try to give them out as often as possible. I don't quite understand the last minute gift thing...but then again, I don't quite understand how Christmas became a medium for consumerism, either.

So what, then,is Christmas? It's a religious holiday more than anything else. On that note, I'd say this has been the single biggest change for me in the past 4 years: religion. I was an every-Sunday, alter server, church choir girl for most of my living years. But somewhere around the time when I went to college, I lost the connection...It felt like I forgot how to communicate with God. I know that religion and the G-word are scary topics for people, but it's crucial to talk about the things we don't understand...and even more, the things that require us to have faith.

I've questioned my own personal faith a lot in the past 3 or so years, and I think it's necessary to do that. Someone once said to me, "If you are looking for God, you've already found It." I think there is some truth to this, but only to an extent. It's like you need to believe in something in order to see it, but just because you see it doesn't mean you understand it. I am still trying to work out the kinks of my faith, but what I know for sure is that I firmly believe in something greater than me- something guiding me through life, encouraging me to make the right choices, be as good a person as I can be, and discouraging me from doing stupid things (which I may inevitably do anyway, but I generally learn from my mistakes).

Religion is a complicated issue, and the older I get the more I realize that the two big arguments against religion are the following:

1. There are so many religions in the world, so how do you know which one is "right"?

My personal response to this is that most popular religions- Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, for instance- all share similarities. I believe that people have different ways of understanding the same thing, and all religions are worth learning because they are each beautiful in their own way. It's like listening to music. You may not like every genre, but someone in the world absolutely loves it and all of the different kinds of music in the world have a way of making people feel connected, understood, peaceful, emotional. We do not have to believe in the specifics of every religion, but I think it's important to understand them. If you only know one religion, than you know no religion. At the end of the day we are all just people, looking for some meaning to our personal existence, trying to put all of the pieces together. For this reason alone- the desire to understand life- I find all major religions so incredibly beautiful and worthy of study and recognition.


The second reason people give for not believing in anything at all is this:

2. "Religion is all speculation. I believe only in the things that have been proven to be fact."

A lot of people say that it's hard for them to believe in God because It cannot be seen. But personally, I see faith and religion and God everywhere I look. It amazes me that I come so close to death about 100 times a day...crossing the street, getting in a car, turning on the stove, wearing high heels out to the bars when it's snowing (dumb and dangerous on so many levels, but if you know me, you know my love for heels). And yet, something in me- in most of us- wills us to keep on living for what is actually an insanely long time. Even though people tend to focus on the few things that go wrong, about 90% of life goes pretty right. In fact, it goes so right so often that we begin to take all the things that work out for us for granted (for example, just think of all those near death instances). The evidence of the existence of something higher, watching and guiding us all through the best and worst of this life is all around us. Truly, all we have to do is open our beautiful eyes a little wider to see all of the expressions of faith and love around us.


This little blog entry obviously doesn't even begin to describe/explain religion, but I think it's a topic worth spending a significant time thinking about. I can't wait to wake up tomorrow and see God in the beauty and joy of the day, my family, that delicious Christmas meal, and O.K. fine, the presents too (I'm crossing my fingers for more heels).


To everyone reading this, I hope this season finds you with love, joy, and faith in the things that you cannot see...but are always there.


Love Life,

Melissa