"Make This Year Different..."

A few thoughts on Christmas and 'A Course In Miracles.'

Most of the sections on Christmas in A Course In Miracles were actually dictated to Helen by Jesus around Christmas time. In Chapter 15, for example, there are two, "The Time of Rebirth" and "Christmas as the End of Sacrifice". At the end of the latter, there is a line that seems especially fitting for the new year: "Make this year different by making it all the same." This is basically a plea from Jesus to us to try, as best as we can, to make everything the same, meaning, not to make distinctions between the parts of the sonhip. As the lesson of forgiveness is in every situation, in every encounter and in every circumstance, so is the opportunity to make everything in our lives infused with the same purpose: To learn to look at our egos without judgment and to let go of the seeming differences between ourselves and others. If we start, slowly but surely, to 'make it about them' rather than about us, making it about the people in our lives and not so much about our own imagined needs, we learn that our interests of escaping our ego thought system of separation, sin, guilt, and fear are shared by everyone and everything. Ultimately, the acceptance of Jesus' love for us is something that we all need, despite our resistance against it and despite our ego telling us that there are people out there that do not deserve this love, as if they were not part of the sonship but somehow outside. We are reminded that each time we cast someone out, we are casting ourselves out and shut the door to our own peace and the experience of love we so long for. "Make this year different by making it all the same" becomes the mantra reminding us of our purpose of looking with Jesus at all the differences we see in each other and smiling at them, knowing that they have absolutely no reality whatsoever. As it states in the introduction:

"Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God."