The Third Day of Christmas: Becoming virgin
An icy November paddle at a MN lake. (c) A. Furchert
Dear fellow traveler,
We greet you on this Third Day of Christmas with an impression from our last paddle on a icy November day here in MN. We are glad you found your way here and hope our journey to the heart of Christmas will touch your heart, too.
Have patience
Take your time, walk your pace. Find your place of Divine solitude. Maybe you will find simply meditating on today’s photo is all you came for. I remember my reluctance when Chuck convinced me to this last paddle after the first freeze. What followed was a “manger moment.” A moment when heaven and earth meet, when nature becomes a cathedral, when your soul quietens, and when the sacred breaks into your heart. So be kind to yourself – when you encounter reluctance. Just try again. The sacred always waits for you at unexpected places.
But how, in this season, do we take part in the holy birth?
There is probably no other term in religion which is so badly misunderstood than a “virgin” person. Frankly, our obsession with its physical manifestation has obscured its spiritual meaning. I have written about this on another journey and was reluctant to come back to it this time. Until it dawned on me that surely our Christmas journey must revisit the important movements of the heart every year again. And so today I want to offer you a variation on the theme, which I call “the virgin heart.”
For guidance, we will look to Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), the medieval German mystic.
While in the physical world we speak about someone being born virgin and loosing it somewhere on her or his journey it is the other way around in the spiritual world. We must become virgin instead.
But what does that mean? The spiritual world points us to the world of our heart, not in the physical sense, but in the metaphysical or, as Kierkegaard has it, metaphorical sense. How can a heart be virgin like the heart of the virgin Mary?
And this now leads us to the other aspect of our spiritual nature: our becoming. Only now can we speak about becoming virgin, meaning to grow a virgin heart.
Becoming open
A virgin person, says Meister Eckhart, is a person who is open to God. Such openness does not come easy. It is, rather, an ongoing task. If you meet some resistance on the way, wait and observe it. It might be the sure sign that you are entering holy ground.
(So again, be patient with yourself and with this journey’s unfolding.)
What other than openness to God does the virgin Mary stands for? Her pregnancy is the everlasting call to each of us, to not be ashamed to go pregnant with the Divine. But such a metaphorical reading only makes sense if we translate Mary's virginity into the spiritual world, where each one, woman and man, can become virgin. Open to receive God. Every time anew, and again. What a hope and what a promise in a world where we have grown accustomed to guns on Christmas family photos.
Cultivating a “virgin heart”
Here is how Meister Eckhart preached about it some eight hundred years ago (I translate and illustrate here freely from his German sermons, published in Vom Atmen der Seele, by Reclam 2014):
Meister Eckhart refreshingly and surprisingly leads our view away from the concentration (and often obsession) with female virginity towards the virgin person, a person both free and willing to receive the Divine. God asks to be born in our inner being, asks for a heart which empties itself. From all the images one has collected over the life time, from all the stuff and ideas, crammed into corners, even the religious ones, until God god-self can fill our hearts again.
Meister Eckhart refers here to the other Christmas text in John 1, about the word in the beginning which becomes flesh.
But how did the word become flesh? By falling into a person's heart open to receive it. As far as a person is able to receive God this way, "he or she is a virgin", he says.
Therefore, we all become mothers to the Divine spark. We must walk pregnant with it and birth it in its time. And this brings us back to our last days with little Hannah, who playfully and undoubtedly placed the three of us in the manger scene.
We are the manger. We are Bethlehem. We are called to give birth to the holy.
And may Christmas find you where you are, Almut with Chuck and little one
Some reflection questions
Here are some questions for you to ponder today and throughout this journey:
Is there a Divine word for me, knocking at the door of my heart, looking for a dwelling place?
What needs to be released first so I can open the door?
Who can help me find courage for this journey?
This post is part of our 12 Days of Christmas Series 2021/22: “Always we begin again…”, a Contemplative Journey towards the heart of Christmas. To enter our virtual gathering space or to subscribe click here. To share your thoughts with us, write us here or comment below.
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