Showing posts with label christmas in the Holyland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas in the Holyland. Show all posts

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Holiday Stress - Dealing with Holiday Stress - Bringing the Holy back to the Holidays


Too stressed and tired to enjoy the sacredness of the holiday season?

By the time you read this page, you may just be itching to enjoy the holiday spirit. Maybe you've got a headache from contemplating what special gifts to buy that are meaningful, unique and they fit within your tightly stretched budget and there's too little time to complete all the items on what seems like your "to do list from hell".

Even if you don't feel on overdrive, if you're sensitive, whatever is simmering in your subconscious will be magnified, and you'll feel it more intensely.

What to do?

Click here to find out.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Christmas is Different in the Holyland



Isn't this sunset beautiful! I shot it last week from the window of our Jewish-Arab msic program at Safed College. The weather was cold, yet the beauty warmed our hearts.

Birds are singing in the background as I post this blog. Winter rays filter through the blinds of myh living room window warming my fingers as they type these words.
IT is Christmas eve in Galilee. I can sense the Christ spirit through the quiet, through the soft quality of silent reflection which accompanies my morning meditation.

I am not a Christian. My spiritual proclivities are committed to a relationship with what I call the "Source of all". This includes all. How could there be anything separate from the Divine Source? There is a soft and supple quality to this Source, a roundness that continually beckons me to dull my own rough, sharp edges.

I experience the Christ spirit with the soft energy expressed through the Shechina - connected to the mystic Jewish tradition of Kabbalah founded in Safed, twenty minutes up the road from my home. You can see it in the picture.

Because Israel is a Jewish state, there are no huge Christmas sales, or commercial hype which bombards the Western world. In the Christian villages of Galilee, there will be family meals and services in the churches. But there is little hype, allowing for the true Christ spirit to get through. There is something special in the air here in Galilee. If you want to experience it first hand, the Sacred Peace tour set for March is just for this reason.

Someone suggested I rent the DVD Goya's Ghosts about the historic period of the Inquisition. It too me only five to ten minutes to decide that this was NOT the movie for me. I have been on the stretcher long enough. I have persecuted myself and others enough with my insecurities, even in the name of good.

On this Christmas eve morning I receive the gift of forgiveness and compassion towards all those jagged edges of my soul and wish all of you a sense of deep calm that you truly deserve.

I