December, December

So, after December, we may again fail to love all our brothers. But we know, we can not dream of a perfect kingdom,  a place where we run for evacuate.

Every December is to wait. Night will be exhausted, the calendar torn, and early morning intercepted by the half-swallowed question, "What will come? Who's going to come?"

Maybe that is why every December is on the verge of Advent. Christians limit it as the period of four weeks before Christmas. This understanding is said to come from the 12th century, from the Latin adventus, which comes from the verb advenire, literally means "to come to". Advent: the coming of something important and awaited.

Something important and awaited, something unclear, maybe something impossible, a miracle, but maybe also a disaster.

Every December is the beginning of where people pursue a froth in the dark strait that is sometimes tumultuous. On the other side, just a few steps away, stretching period where expectations can be riveting but also spurious. Now we are giddy. Especially since we have often had to rely on broken trust. What we have is just a few scars of violence, a sense fooled by dreams, anxiety.

The evil and armed draws near ...The weather smells of their hate/And the houses smell of our fear.

I remember that sentence. W.H. Auden wrote it through a December that was also wary, between late 1941 and mid-1942, as the rows in For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, a long Christmas poem that opens with "Advent," the first part.

At that time, the war still divided the earth. No one knew whether Hitler (and "vile and armed") could finally be defeated. But poetry was not only centered on a dark point. Oratorio was composed after Auden re-embracing the faith which ever abandoned by him. For the Time Being contains the hope Christians: there's a good news that a miracle could happen. Jesus was born and on that night the bright star rose above Bethlehem.

As if the Stars at a distance touched us when we -- in the words of Auden-- "only vaguely knew what the hell we were and why we were here." And "to discover how to be a man today," that's why we followed it.

To Discover How to Be Human Now is the Reason We Follow This Star

But that's where it's felt that we walk in a miserable hallway to know how to "be human," it turns out we have to wait for something that is practically impossible that the Bright stars, the heavenly bodies which marking when the Divine enters, penetrating into everyday life and the Eternal transforms into the temporal.

The miserable hallways -- perhaps Buddhism speaks more clearly about this -- is endless, even after
dozens of December has gone. Each time we have to travel again the atmosphere as reflected from various Auden poem: an atmosphere of "Audenesque", as mentioned by Graham Greene in 1930: The moodiness which increasingly becomes familiar.

"Audenesque" moodiness is the world of color left by something, and something is very meaningful.

Auden's famous poem, part of Twelve Songs, muttering bitterly,

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Perhaps there is always a moment like that, when we seems to want to stop from the day, and let come "the mourners".

Condolence to whom? Whose corpse on yesterday, today, and tomorrow? We do not need to know. For the dead, destroyed, lost, so much. In fact, not be so odd if we ourselves had been registered at the funeral.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

"The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, "said the last stanza of the poem, "Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good."

In December 1939, Auden was in a cinema in one section of Manhattan, New York, where almost all its inhabitants speaking German. A newsreel about Hitler's invasion of Poland played. Something shook Auden in that afternoon: when on screen appeared a row of Poles who were arrested, the audience shouted, "Kill them! Kill them!"

Nobody was faking. No one was ashamed to "uncivilized". A few years later Auden remembered that experience, "I wonder to myself, at that time, why did I react against the disavowal to each of these humanistic values​​?"

What is his right to denounce? On what basis he can sue the audience in the cinema in Manhattan so that they are not ruthlessly asking the others to be slaughtered? What is his reason to assert that what is burning the world with hatred should not be considered a hero and those who have been wronged should not feel entitled to slaughter?

Auden could not answer. On the verge of despair, when he felt "nothing now can ever come to any good," he returned to the faith he knew in childhood. He was willing to run across the long desert toward the star in Bethlehem.

In place of Birth, he remembered that it was there, for the first time in life, each thing appeared as something precious, something worth to be addressed. Everything became a "You", not just the object (It) which easily to be silenced.

Remembering the stable where for once in our lives. Everything became a You and nothing was an It. - W.H. Auden

How deep and amazing the moment. When the Holy enter, penetrate into the everyday life and the Eternal taking temporal behavior. The Eternal do a temporal act.

But at the same time, the moment is actually also not something completely impossible. When "every thing" becomes "a Thou", then that's when we sincerely welcome others beyond ourselves. And we want to accompany it.

This is a epiphaneia. When "every thing" appears as "You", that's where the Divine self-manifestation occurs, Love, the Eternal, the Divine, so we did not want to shackle and ruin it.

Ibn 'Arabi will call the moment as "beam". He will talk about "The Most Holy Aura" and " The Breath of Love" exhaled by the Absolute, from nothing into existence.

But with that view, the world seems to change. And not everyone is glad. Herod, the king who decreed that all the babies must be killed on that day -- just to counteract the birth of Jesus into the world -- had arguments that justifying the preventive measures. Auden depicted Herod as a person who thought long -- or more precisely, he was a person who wanted to preserve the life of a rational, social, and practical. If anything be "a thou", how the world would not be messed up? When love is not fear of anarchy  ("Love does not fear anarchy substantial," said the wise men who came to the cowshed at Bethlehem), what will happen to the social order?

Herod saw how dangerous it was if the "Divine honor" given to each case: tea from a silver pot, shallow burrows in the ground, the names on the map, pets, collapsing windmill. The king wanted to maintain an orderly system. He did not want the knowledge was chaos because when the ratio was lost, there's only "a chaos of subjective views." He liked the "Rational Law." Subjective world disturbing it. What happens when the need to worship God channeled in lane which can not be socialized, and the hero story entirely "written in private languages​​"?

Coexistence supported by consensus will collapse. The rules will not be applicable universally. Law will be the uncertain joints. When life is treated as an expression of "the Breath of Love," will we be able to give justice, in the sense of punishment?

"Justice will be replaced by Mercy ...," Herod said with sad, "And all fear of retaliation will vanish"

But what will we choose? It is December 2013 overshadowed by terror, war, harsh statements. Also stern voice which reverberating that retaliation is more effective than compassion, more orderly, because tit for tat will form symmetrical. In the unison with it, hate has become a political task. No longer a private matter, but it is in neat rows, galloping. Not strange, because even worship of God has also lost its private language.

Of course, Auden could not choose Herod's argument. He had known what the meaning of the birth, when each case became a "Thou". For him the world is no longer composed of likeness which can be fully controlled from a control room. Love has gone down, and, as stated by the wise men who came to Bethlehem, "Love requires "a disorder that can say I", an otherness that can say I."

That means, life is a heterogeneous subjective building. We will not be able to put an orderly system. We can not live only by faith lined up in ready and safe grooves. God must be sought in the Kingdom of Anxiety, "Kingdom of Fear". There, perhaps faith is as the faith of Kierkegaard: a bold leap, alone. After the birth night is over, and the day will be day, the soul must afford the a solitary which does not support nor oppose the beliefs that God's will is going to happen."

In other words, it is the faith in uncertainty, in an ambiguous way. Also when we live with the scars of violence so that "Our houses sniff our fears". So, after December, maybe we will again fail to love all our brothers. But we know, we can not dream of a Perfect Kingdom to where we run and flee. The dream is part of our punishment.

On the contrary, "Receipt which should be paid, Furniture which must be repaired, The odd words which must be memorized", all trivialities, the unfinished things can have meaning when we remember that life and love can be amazing: when The Holy penetrates into everyday life and the Eternal is in the middle of temporal.

Herod would not understand it. But it was our base to be grateful, not to condemn. And from there we will be able to "admit our defeat without breaking our expectations". Because all communities and age are just the details that will be over.
***
(CZ-lacalifusa122313)

Merry Christmas, dahling.
Welcome to your birthday. May you always be in good health, both physically and spiritually.
We will have many children as you like and as much as I can. 
With you, I'm always willing.
Love you. - Me.