Last year at Christmastime, I gave an interactive presentation on exploring the personal meaning of
Peace On Earth to Human Souls of Goodwill
I find this translation from Rudolf Steiner, the most empowering of the individual and the most meaningful in awakening the forces of community. Do you?
Let me give you two contrasting translations,
"Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men." King James version and the one I grew up with.
"...on Earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." New International version
(which I feels leads to war - one group feeling another group is in disfavor and therefore unworthy of the respect and safety of peace)
Whatever translation you feel most comfortable with or most engaged in, I encourage you to seek the deepest personal connection to the declaration. Is this wording the right wording for what lives in your heart?
I thought I would share with all of you the basic questions and thoughts I explored with my audience.
I took them through each word and asked them to meditate on the meaning.
How do you experience "Peace"? How do you experience "Goodwill"?
These are words of great mystery and live beyond personal definiton. What is the thought behind each word?
I led my audience through brief meditations on each word asking them to let the meaning of the word speak to them in their hearts rather than thinking a definition in their heads.
As everyone shared their imaginations of Peace and Goodwill, I captured them on the whiteboard. "Seeing" these heartfelt meanings brought a warming energy to the group.
Perhaps each individual expression of Peace and Goodwill was filled with the resounding voice of an angel. Certainly there was a sense of a host of meaning.
How does Peace live in your soul, your actions, your conversations? How do you practice goodwill. When in the last year have you been the beneficiary of the goodwill of another? I hope this stimulates deep thoughts. This is the time of year when our souls call out for these questions.
Ask your self, your friends, your family members to meditate on these words. What a Christmas gift. Remember these words were spoken to simple shepherds.
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I have spent some time considering our Christmas music and the relationship of Christmas carols and songs to each of the six Christmases. In looking at the Christmas of Nativity and the Shepherds and the Kings, I was surprised to see most Christmas music relates to the experience of the Shepherds.
Interestingly, most paintings of the Nativity focus on the Kings.
The shepherds hear the voices of the host of angels. The kings see the Star. Magi share the same root as image. The shepherds and the kings reflect on the two gestures of our brains. The left hemisphere is auditory and analytical and the right hemisphere is visual and intuitive. I see the shepherds as auditory and intuitive and the kings as visual and analytical. I find this fascinating. Do you?
With all my heart, I wish you peace and goodwill.
I agree with you that "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men" is the more universal and beneficent translation of the angels' message to the shepherds. Lately, my favorite bumper sticker has been, "God bless the whole world, no exceptions." "Peace on earth" means a cessation of wars, crusades, ethnic cleansing, tribal rivalries of all sorts, and peaceful resolution of border disputes. I had never thought about the correlation between the majority of the songs being about the shepherds who heard the angels sing and the magi who saw the star.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that there is a sort of flip in polarity between the left brain as anyltical in most cases and the visual modality as intuitive. There has been interest work done on the effect of music, especially singing, on the brain in very young children and in the elderly who are experiencing dementia. I was visiting my father in an Assisted Living facility for older folks with Alzheimers and senile dementia some years ago. Residents who had been non-verbal for years suddenly sang aloud, they were singing the Christmas carols that they had learned as children. My best friend, whose significant, other had suffered a debiliating stroke and had lost the power of speech, began to sing along to recording of American standards from the 1940's and 1950's. The power of music is amazing. It crosses all nations and all cultures. As a matter of fact, rock and roll has gotten some credence as one of the catalysts in both the civil rights movement, the peace movement in the 60's and 70's, and in the fall of communism in the USSR and in Eastern Europe.
If only we could find some music that would unite all of humanity.
Lynn, like your recent newsletter asking us to give genuine thought to the meanings of the words "divinity" and "certain," the words "peace" and "goodwill" are also words worthy of slow contemplation. Perhaps,like the slow food movement, our culture would benefit from a "slow talking" movement. I find myself most at peace internally, and most at peace with the world when I know that the lives of each human, animal, or plant that I come into contact with is somehow enriched by our encounter. For me, peace always starts within the immediacy of the landscape where I live my life.
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