(Epigraph): ‘I tried to comprehend the truth that all we have ever known, all our species has ever been, all the history we’ve ever written and all the sacred stories we’ve ever told, have taken place on one infinitesimal speck of dust circling a grain of sand in a galaxy and a universe with more grains than are contained on all the beaches and all the deserts of all the world.’

It was Christmas Eve, and it was cold. It had been ten below zero in the brilliant sunshine of the short day, with sundogs bracketing a cold and distant orb. It was now thirty below, out on the groaning, cracking Mississippi ice near our cabin, under the timeless, watchful gaze of Orion. Snowshoeing along that winding white road in the starlight, I followed mink tracks near the shore. And I listened to the silence. I wondered about those burning stars above, the constellations, the same sky pictures that a certain Teacher and his followers had gazed at twenty centuries earlier. The same ones that local shepherds, according to the old tradition, had seen on the night he was born.

I thought about that long-ago night. About the account of a strange and different star somehow brighter than all the rest. About the stories and legends and lessons I had heard since before I was old enough to listen. About all that we know, or think we know, and all that we wonder at yet today.

We know that approximately 2022 years ago an infant was born (skeptics who doubt that he ever really existed advance a weak case, with more faith in skepticism itself than in evidence) likely in a cave-like space under a simple stone dwelling, to an unwed, teen-aged mother, delivered into poverty in a troubled corner of the world. About 33 years later he died, put to death by the powerful, the clergy and politicians of his day.

Some said the infant was holy, others said the man became holy through prayer and selflessness, through the overcoming of temptation, through exquisite empathy and concern for his fellow human beings.

Some have said he performed miracles and feats of magic. Others have said that the real magic, the truest miracle, was the inexplicable way he touched and elevated the souls of those with whom he came in contact—as if their eyes and ears and hearts were opened. Even the mere telling of his story, long after his death, can still have this effect.

Although the story is widely known, it is almost certain that the man at the heart of it has been grossly misunderstood through the centuries by billions who have quoted his name. That name was Yeshu, or Yeshua—known to most today as Jesus.

People have killed in his name. People have fought wars in his name. People have bought and sold uncounted trillions of dollars worth of merchandise in his name. People have bought and sold slaves, and defended the practice, in his name. People have burned crosses in his name. People have been burned at the stake in his name. Genocide has been conducted in his name. People have destroyed Creation in his name. People have hated in his name. And they still do.

People have also taken vows of poverty in his name. People have devoted their lives to the sick and the weak and the poor in his name. People have fought against slavery and exploitation and every form of injustice in his name. People have become brave and merciful and generous, to the point of giving their own lives, in his name. People have found hope and meaning, beauty, love, and salvation, in his name; have fought for the beauty of Creation in his name. And they still do.

What seems clear from these stupendous contradictions is that the mere claiming and reciting of the story and the name leads to no preordained values or attitudes, acts of goodness or compassion. Rather it is those open eyes, ears, and hearts that are key in trying to truly understand the story and its meaning. It is the story of a person whose very essence came to be understood as goodness, as truth, as courage and mercy and compassion—to the extent that many who saw him and came to know him had the feeling that they were witnessing the very nature of God Himself. They were seeing—and believing—that there was a goodness at the heart of the universe, a light in the heart of darkness, that could ultimately triumph over evil, over suffering, even over death.

The need for those open eyes and hearts was often referenced in the Teacher’s own stories. Stories like the Good Samaritan, the Adulteress, the Mote in the Eye, each illustrated that every listener must first and always look inward and take into account his or her own mind and heart, own weaknesses and flaws. For only in doing so can we determine whether our actions, words and lives themselves are truly reflective of the revered name so often invoked—or, as is all too often the case, simply demonstrate our own selfishness and pettiness, our all-too-comfortable customs, fears, and prejudices. This is and always has been the case. And it is a difficult thing—to attain such a piercing inward view. But that is the space that the Teacher, this Holy One whose birth so many celebrate, always claimed and said He inhabited—the space of the innermost heart and soul, the “Kingdom of Heaven within.”

And so we retell the old story, and try to imagine a time and a world so very different from our own. And yet the same. Christmas is and has always been a time to reflect—upon our inner worlds, and the greater world we share—now bound together more tightly and seamlessly than ever before. It is a world—as the Teacher taught—in which there is no “them.” There is only “us.” It seems that the deep, dark dead of winter is a good time, as it has been every winter for 2000 years, to examine that “kingdom within” in each of us; to ponder the mystery of a humble birth and a single life lived long ago, and of the one great Life we all share. It is a good time to see if we are truly honoring the old, familiar story, and the extraordinary person at the heart of it.

That night on the river, I thought about these things, wondered and pondered as I have all my life. My mind drifted back to the church pews where I sat for so many Sundays as a child, listening to the choirs my father directed, the reverberation of the timeless hymns, the grand chords my mother played on the pipe organ. To the sermon the minister had chosen for the week. Those sermons, the details of them, were now lost to memory, but the feelings and insights were, I knew, still embedded in my subconscious. I walked on, pondering, listening to the “shush, shush” of the snowshoes on snow-covered ice, following a wandering mink track on the edge of a starlit road of white, which seemed to reflect the Great White Road of the Milky Way high above. I tried to remember, to imagine, that even though that faintly glittering swath of stars seemed impossibly far away, it was actually our own galaxy, our own particular home in the universe. I tried to comprehend the truth that all we have ever known, all our species has ever been, all the history we’ve ever written and all the sacred stories we’ve ever told, have taken place on one infinitesimal speck of dust circling one grain of sand in one galaxy in a 13 billion-year-old universe with more grains than are contained on all the beaches and all the deserts of all the world.

Was it possible, I wondered, for any earthly story, any event, no matter how important, to have a significance, a truth and a meaning relevant in some way to the trackless infinity of such a universe—and even possible universes beyond? That it can speak to our humble, human place within it all? Is it possible that the concept of a ‘universal Christ,’ a timeless, cosmic spiritual entity of profound love and acceptance, temporally manifested in the person of Yeshua, but always present in all of creation, could be an answer? Could place human belief, experience, and narrative within the vast context of the cosmos?

Most of our sacred stories—touchstones and guideposts for cultures, civilizations, and religions—are from long ago—most of them from the Axial Age—a time of unprecedented thought, reflection, intellectual and spiritual growth, but a time when any advanced knowledge or understanding of the universe was as far away and beyond human vision as the dark side of the moon. I love many of those stories. I was raised within the one celebrated at Christmas. Was raised for the most part within the river of traditions and teachings flowing from one man’s birth, life, and death. It is impossibly strange, I thought, how sometimes—rarely—a single life can begin in some unknown, humble place—a small room, a tee-pee or seasonal shelter, a cave or stable, or on the bare earth itself—and in the gathering of its days flow on to effect all of history, to impact billions of lives, and in doing so can change the world. Just as one single raindrop, falling to earth at the right place and time in geologic history, can gather other raindrops to itself, gather brooks and streams and tributaries over the course of time and space, and become a great river. Become an organizing, determining force on the landscape itself, a ‘story’ that will be forever told.

I followed my own snow-covered river, and in the faint light saw the mink tracks I was trailing veer into the tall grass along the riverbank. The little hunter had heard a mouse perhaps, or a vole, and instincts aflame, had darted from the open ice into the grassy, labyrinthine world of the tiny rodent. I could not follow there in the dark, could not see how the story turned out. Pulling my hood back and stretching in the cold, I gazed once more up to the twinkling heavens and saw the navigation lights of a jetliner, perhaps 35,000 feet high, blinking against the cold stars. It made no sound audible on the river far below. What did the world of the mink and the mouse have to do with the modern world of sky-walking airliners, of intercontinental travel? Perhaps as little as our small, planetary world of ‘modern’ human technology and achievement has to do with the vast realm of the stars, with intergalactic distances, the mysteries of dark energy, dark matter, and possible multi-verses, all far beyond our reach. Perhaps as little as a time of shepherds and primitive, stone-walled huts and “inns”—with cattle living below the human quarters and poor infants lying in mangers—now has to do with our modern world of glass-walled skyscrapers, luxury hotels, computers, Internets, and interstate highways.

And yet the world of the mouse and the mink, the world of the manger, the infant and the shepherd, are still worlds of blood and bone, sense and sinew. As is our own. As, presumably, are other worlds in other galaxies, beyond even the white river in the sky. Was it possible that some great soul who lived in the days of the shepherds and stone huts—someone of deep and penetrating insight, wisdom, and empathy—could know this one world as well or better than anyone today in a high-flying jetliner or a glass-walled tower? Perhaps even understand the essence of life as it might extend to some other planet, circling some other, distant star? People on our own planet live in simple stone huts and tend sheep yet today. The constellations, the pictures in the sky, shine down now in nearly identical form to the pictures of a night some 2,021 years ago. Mink leave their tracks upon the snow yet today, for a tracker, a seeker, a questioner to follow, wondering at the stories in the snow as well as the stories in the sky.

And the inner world—the world the Teacher spoke of—remains as mysterious and holy and consequential as it ever was. All that happens in the great, external world comes first from some impulse somewhere within. Every action, word and deed, every track in the snow or spaceship to the stars, begins somewhere in the mind. And it is in that inner realm of self-reflection and self-knowledge that we must examine our own heart and conscience and determine how best to conduct our lives in the context of our small planet among our fellow beings.

Walking on the frozen river, following my own tracks back to their source on the riverbank, near the old cabin under the pines, I continued to think about the world of twenty centuries ago. The world of shepherds and flocks living under the same stars I gazed at now. The world of an infant in a cattle stall, and later of a Teacher carrying his shepherd’s crook and guiding his flock, a Teacher whose words and thoughts are honored yet today. It is all one world, I thought, one universe, one realm of light and darkness, mystery and beauty, bound together by the world within—what the Teacher called the Kingdom of Heaven within