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Christmas Message

"LEBKUCHEN ! It must be Christmas." Every year, at this time, a German friend sends a care package filled with Bayerische Lebkuchen. As soon as I have consumed all, I forget about Lebkuchen and Christmas, until the next year's surprise delivery. ...and that is my entire Christmas experience.

No, I am not an Ebeneezer Scrooge type. I simply do not adhere to any religion and Christmas, originally, was a religious holiday. Niether am I much of a adherant of materialism and Christmas seems to have been taken over by the materialists and mercantilists.

I do enjoy the seasonal mania of young children and I do recognise and respect that a few people truly follow a religious tradition.

Each of us searches for the customs and personal beliefs, which comfort us best, as particular individuals. Each of us must recognize that we all are searching. We need be tolerant of each others search. We can help each other find the particular niche, which best fits each and every one of us. We must revolutionize our religions to allow for each man’s search and need for a particular religion that suits his or her own particular unique needs and biological energy patterns. Religions should become tolerant towards each other. Religionists must stop behavving, as if they are the only ‘truth and light’, and begin realizing that they are only one of many. Religions each have a crucial part to play in man’s overall purpose. They are meant to be unique, not because that makes one right and one wrong, but because that allows for the needed variation, which allows for the diversity of so many individuals trying to retain their own identity, in a sea of humanity. The variations in religions provide a niche in religious customs, which will allow each of us to find inner peace.

As we gain more knowledge as a species and as individuals, we develop a need to become even more individualistic.. This leads to even greater needs for variety and what appears to be major variations between religions, but prove to be, in regards to the immensely large picture, relatively minor differences in customs and beliefs. This, in turn, accommodates the need for more niches created through the acquisition of more knowledge by man. And so the cycle goes. This need for a means of filling unique religious niches leads to a need to assist each other to find these niches, in order for us to each find peace and tranquillity.

This revolutionary reversal of the religious frame of mind regarding the concept of “I’m right and you are wrong”, cannot begin until we, as individuals in large enough numbers, insist upon it, within our religious groups. And this cannot begin until we are willing to accept that God is God and not who we dress God up to be. We cannot create God. God has created us. We cannot insist that God is who we have, through time and custom, painted God to be. Rather, we must understand that, who we have painted God to be through time and custom, was who we needed God to be, in order to find our niche. We needed God to be such in order to find comfort in our lack of knowledge and to assuage our fears of what we perceive to be mortality.

We must recognize this process of painting a secure mental picture of God, before we can show tolerance and empathy for our fellow man’s painting of God. Once we have accepted this concept, we will begin to accept our fellow man, as our true brothers in soul.

Regardless of when this metamorphism to tolerance within society occurs , and it will occur, God will remain God, and not who we wish to paint God as.

Any questions??