Christ's birth is "a finger pointing to the moon."

In Zen Buddhist tradition, there's a famous image about regarding all scriptures as "a finger pointing to the moon."  Here, the moon represents Ultimate Reality, or - in the theistic traditions - "God."  I like to imagine calling to a pet dog, and then pointing toward the moon, hoping the dog will look as well.  However, as everyone knows, no matter how hard we try, we won't get the dog to look WHERE the finger is pointing.  Instead, the dog will always SNIFF THE FINGER!

We human beings are just like that dog.  While all of the world's scriptures - and the words and ideas they contain - are trying to point to an amazing Reality that lies BEYOND all words, we all insist on sniffing the finger itself.  That is, we act as though Ultimate Reality - God - is somehow contained within the scriptural words, and within the ideas on which those words are based.  Or, to use another Zen image, we insist on "eating the menu" instead of ordering the food to which the menu only points!

It is the same with Jesus, and with the reality of Christmas. Although we focus on the birth of Jesus in time and space as an individual person, we are intended ultimately to become one with him and to look out through his eyes AT THE ULTIMATE MYSTERY and AT THE WORLD.  In other words, Christ intended that he would be a "finger pointing to the moon."  Here, the "moon" is the "Father" on the one hand - that is, the Ultimate, Loving Mystery - and the embodiment of that Reality in the world around us, on the other.

I've always been impressed by the story in the Gospel of John (chapter 12) where a few Greek people came up to the apostle Philip, saying: "We would like to see Jesus."  When Jesus found out, his reply was quite enigmatic.  He told them that "unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds."  In other words, the answer to our request to "see Jesus" is that Jesus insists on EMPTYING HIMSELF and hopes that we'll focus on the amazing sacredness and beauty of the world that sprouts from his boundless self-giving.

This Christmas, may we look at the world through Christ's eyes.  May we see the divinity present - often hidden - in the most challenging of circumstances, and may we understand the need that all things have to be loved by the God who is present within us. May we look with Jesus' newborn eyes, with the eyes of a child, with "beginner's mind," as Roshi Shunryu Suzuki would say.  In this way, all the world will light up in the glory and glow of Christmas.

Photo: A charred stump points to the moon at sunset; Fern Lake Burn, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012