Considering the Massacre of the Innocents

Samhain                                                                Moon of the Winter Solstice

Since Christmas is a festival of the incarnation, a festival of a great God becoming human in the form of a baby, we can take this wonderful mythic idea and use it, especially now, as a filter for the news around us.

(Egon Schiele, Death and the Maiden)

Think of it.  Each baby born a potential or an actual god.  Each one.  How might we know?  Who’s to say?  A great God, an omnipotent God, could conceivably inhabit as many babies as ever are born.  So, it’s possible we might be wrong if we judge a child to be not a God.  We might even misjudge ourselves.

How would this perspective change your life?  Have you ever considered that you might be a god or a goddess?  How would you know?  Not sure.  The baby we’re talking about grew up to be a guy, a carpenter, then the ruling authorities arrested him as a troublemaker and executed him.  If that’s the profile, it might fit a good many of us, even those of us not fortunate to be so threatening to the status quo that we go through life with no fear of arrest or execution.

It seems we ought to err on the side of caution.  That is, each person born, each infant is not a child of god, but a god themselves.  We could then practice the Indian namaste, roughly, the god in me bows to the god in you.  How about that for a holiday ritual?

Looking for the gods and goddesses in your lives and acknowledging them with folded hands, a slight bow and namaste.  Might be good.

Then, of course, we have to parse out the killing of all the children.  How could we do that?