November 5, 2022

50 days until the Christmas and the Holy Nights

Dearest Friend, 

I have been so focused on developing the content of Beyond 63, creating the workbooks for each module, and being sick with RSV (what an endless drag for the body) that I haven’t had the time or the forces to write any posts during October. 

Now it is November! 

The Inner Christmas Journey will begin with Inner Advent in just a few weeks. And then begins a new cycle of the Sun, a new inner year to contemplate. 

For me, this time of year brings a blessed urgency to my deed of the Holy Nights and the Inner Christmas Messages: What will be the theme that inspires the messages? I feel doubt...what if no inspiration comes? But for 19 years, the inspiration arrives, often in surprising ways .

The theme always appears in my soul. It’s not like I determine or choose a theme. The theme arrives! And my whole being says “Yes!”

Yesterday I began the post below. I planned to write about the mysteries of luminous darkness and invisible light. You will see around 36 words into the post, I wrote the word “dance” and then found “inner ballet” and then “The Nutcracker” came to my imagination. 

So I wrote an unplanned post on the Nutcracker and found the theme for this year’s Inner Christmas Messages appearing in my soul. Can you guess what it is?

I hope you will join me on the Inner Christmas Journey. Your invitation to the Journey will be showing up in your inbox soon. It will be a sweet journey this year.

With lots of inner warmth,

Lynn

Photo by Alain Bonnardeaux on Unsplash

Do you feel it starting to glimmer — that inner light drawing you soul toward the Threshold of Inner Christmas when the Spirit World blesses you with new wonder and wisdom? 

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the dance between day and night, between outer light and inner light moves into the soul’s pas de deux. The dark nights of Christmas can lift our inner light to greater awareness. 

Pas de Deux! Seems I am being surprised by an inspiration…An Inner Ballet.

It’s quite inspiring to think of the soul’s activity through the seasons of Nature as a ballet: the story or theme, the music and the orchestra, the lighting, the choreography, the costumes, the supporting corps de ballet, and all the rehearsals and performances. 

So let’s fly with this imagination.

The Nutcracker is the ballet of Christmas. In many ways, the story of the ballet offers a children’s version of the Christmas mystery of the Holy Nights.  (I would love to see this as a eurythmy performance!)

Clara is a young girl who is not quite happy, doesn’t quite feel like the others in her affluent family on Christmas Eve. Herr Drosselmeyer, her godfather and a toymaker, brings her a present, a wooden nutcracker which is quickly broken by her foolish brother.

Clara is unhappy in the materialistic world of her family. She longs for something that she can’t name. Does the Nutcracker represent the capacity to break free, to find the sweet nut hidden in the hard material shell? When her brother breaks the Nutcracker, she is filled with earthly despair and falls asleep only to awaken when the rest of the earthly world has gone to bed. 

She goes to find her broken Nutcracker and joins him in defeating the greedy Mouse King. Embracing him, she falls into another more magical sleep. 

The Nutcracker has been restored to his true self, the Prince. He brings Clara to the Land of the Sweets where she is crowned Princess. The Land of Sweets is alive with harmony, love, joy, and peace. But she cannot stay. 

When she awakens in her bed, she is strangely happy. She doesn’t quite know why. Later Herr Drosselmeyer visits again. This time he brings his nephew who looks very much like the Prince. 

Yes, the  Land of the Sweets represents the Spiritual World full of Spiritual Beings offering the wisdom, love, and freedom to those who having broken free from their earthly dramas, visit. 

Like Clara, after the 12 Holy Nights, we don’t quite know what has happened or changed but soon something appears in our souls that feels mysteriously familiar and utterly new. 

Every Christmas Eve, we can travel to the Land of Spiritual Sweets where we can remain for 12 Holy Nights experiencing something so beyond our ordinary existence. We then wake up on the Day of Epiphany mysteriously the same, but yet, so mysteriously different. 

This Christmas offers the 19^th set of Inner Christmas Messages. Twelve pas de deux for you and your angel to dance. I love this image of dancing with my angel through the sweetness of the Holy Nights. Do you?

I’ve had several thoughts about the theme for these Messages, but maybe it will be the Twelve Sweet Gifts of Soul. Many of us have struggled with sourness, saltiness, and bitterness over the last few years. We need to spend the Holy Nights tasting the sweetness of the spirit.

I've loved The Nutcracker ballet since I was a child. Imagine Sugar Plum Fairies! 

But I never knew the E.T. A. Hoffman story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, it was based on. Here is a link to the story. Here is the link to the development  and history of the ballet. Both are good to read as The Nutcracker is such a fixture of our culture. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutcracker_and_the_Mouse_King

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutcracker