Hello everyone, And so we are coming close to Christmas, and I've done
many Christmas videos in the past, and so I thought we'd try to take
a little bit of a different tack and look at one sentence in the Christmas
Story, a sentence that since my childhood I was always confused and wondering about,
and even when I was in university, I remember a professor that I
had of biblical studies saying, you know, this is the kind of statement
in scripture that doesn't really mean anything, that nobody knows what it really refers
to and what it's talking about. And that is the statement of the Angels,
the Song of the Angels, which is glory to God in the Highest
or glory to God in the Highest heaven and on earth, peace to those
on whom his favor rests, or peace to those on which He has goodwill.
And sometimes it's also peace on men of goodwill. And so what exactly
does this sentence mean? This is Jonathan Pegel, Welcome to the symbolic world.
So the context is pretty clear. We have, first of all,
extremes in the very story, which is that we have these shepherds that are
you know, tending to their cheap. We always have to remember that shepherds
in the ancient world were something like the lowest class of people, you know,
peasants. And then and they're also tending their sheep at night, and
so you have two images of two extremes, which is the lowest type of
person. But then at the same time the darkness at night and in the
heavens appears an angel and ultimately a choir of angels or a group of angels
that announced to them that the Messiah is born in Bethlehem, that the prophecy
has been revealed. And then they start to sing this or say this,
you know, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to
those on whom its favor rests. So you have this contrast in the situation,
which is that the glory of God shines, and so in this case
you have to really understand the glory of God is light. So you have
to think of this contrast in terms of the situation, which is that it's
dark, it's night, and then all of a sudden in the heavens appears
alight. So the contrast between heaven and night, there's a contrast between the
highest and the lowest in the sense of the figures in the story, which
is that the angels above and the shepherds below. Now the shepherd, it's
important to understand also that the shepherds in some ways are related to being a
nomad, related to not necessarily having a fixed place and moving around with the
sheep, you know, tending the sheep, moving following the sheep around,
and so there's a kind of you could say organic or chaotic or you know,
a lack of stability down here. But then above then you have the
angels. Now, what's important to understand in terms of the angels is to
understand the relationship between the angels and the stars. This is something that we've
talked about on this channel several times, which is that for the ancients,
there was really no difference between the principalities, the angels that were assigned by
God to manifest the patterns of reality, and the stars in the heavens,
of these points of light that are up above us and that are kind of
a clock that manifests the patterns of reality. And so it's important to see
that because if we don't see that, then it'll be difficult to understand that
there's a relationship between this story of the angels appearing to the shepherds and the
story of the wise men from Afar, the wise men from the strange wise
men also seeing the star in the heavens and following the star to the Messiah,
or following the voice or the song of the angels to find the Messiah.
These two are completely analogous and help one can help you understand the other,
which is that what the shepherds are encountering is something that the ancients could
call the music of the spheres, right the music of the cosmos, the
deep deep, meaning the deep patterns of the cosmos. This is also important
to understand that when the ancients talk about music, what they really mean is
the pattern like quality of reality, and when they would study music in the
ancient world, it wasn't just the way that we think of music as some
of the kind of entertaining sounds that we listen to, but rather the notion
that reality has a musicality, that there is a repetition and a pattern,
and that this is something that we have to enter into. And what they're
encountering is, of course the movement of the stars and the heavens. They're
encountering the pattern of reality. They're, you know, both the shepherds and
the wise men. The wise men are a little different, but they're not
that different. So instead of being the lowest in terms of the shepherd,
they're the strangers. They're the ones that don't necessarily belong in Israel. And
so there's something like the light above, the star above is calling to the
like you could say, the stars that are far away, or the glowing
embers, the glowing sparks that are not from Israel that are there out in
the world, the places where the glory of God is hidden. You know,
the wise men who are able to discern the signs from very far away
come in to find the Israel. And so it's similar to the shepherds that
are far away in the sense that there are these nomadic people that are wandering
the land. They don't have a fixed place. They're the lowest of society,
and so they notice they hear the angels. So understanding this structure is
important in understanding what exactly that this sentence means, which is what is the
relationship between saying that glory goes to God in the highest heaven and then on
earth, that we find peace on whom God's favor rests, for whom God
has goodwill. And so this is really just an image of This is an
image of reality. This is a cosmic image like almost all of the cosmic
images that I've shown you before, which is that it's a little image of
how reality actually works in its extreme. But the way in which it happens
in the extreme is also the way it works at smaller levels in our existence.
So let's separate the statement into the two parts. One is, of
course, giving glory or attending, giving up the proper attention, the proper
praise to that which is the highest, celebrating the highest, in the best,
in the proper way, which recognizes what it is. Okay, that's
the first part. And then that brings you could say, causes peace on
earth. So why does that cause peace on earth? So the way to
understand it is that it's apply it to smaller things so that you can understand
how it works. And so let's use a let's use a basketball team again.
I like using sport analogies. They're the easiest and they're the easiest to
understand, which you could say it's something like proper attention to the highest aspect
of the team brings about peace among the players. And let's say not only
peace among the players, but peace among those on which this highest aspect of
the team finds favor, has goodwill towards. So the idea is that if
we understand what it is that we're doing, and we aim towards that highest
aspect of what we're doing, we give the proper attention, the proper celebration
to what it is that binds us together in the first place. To say,
in terms of a basketball team, that is, we're playing basketball to
win. In this way, you know, we have a team name,
a team identity, We have a way to recognize that we are together,
that we're not part of the other team, that we're part of this team.
We have all these things that kind of bind us. And if we
can, if we all are able to celebrate and participate and raise up the
unity of our team together, then what that will do is it will bring
peace among the players. Right, the players will stop thinking of their idiosyncratic
desires, They'll stop thinking about the other things that could they could contend with
that they because they're all their focuses on the purpose and the reason and the
highest part. Then they will work together towards that purpose. They will have
peace among themselves. They won't be fighting, because fighting is basically different people
with different purses, different purposes, that are in conflict with each other.
It will bring them to have piece together, but then it would it's it's
the piece is applied only to that on which the identity of the team has
good favor. That is, only the things that fit within that identity,
only the things that have you know, that that receive the grace of that
identity. You know, because if you are part of the team and you're
not in favor with what the team's purpose is, like maybe let's say you're
doing something else, maybe while you're on the team, while you're thinking about
is some other interests, your girlfriend or whatever, then there won't be peace
among for that person, because it won't be in favor of the in the
favor of the identity of the team. There's actually another reading of this verse
in different versions of the text, which is you could also read it in
certain versions as peace on those who have goodwill, that is, peace on
the men of goodwill, and that also works. It's similar to the other
one, which is that for those that have the right intentions that those that
you know are acting properly within their attention to the highest goal, then they
it will bring peace to them in their in their endeavor. So you can
apply this now at any single thing that you that finds unity in uh,
that finds unity in multiplicity. It could even be in yourself, you know,
which is that if you yourself are distracted by different things and you don't,
you know, focus your attention on the highest purpose that you have at
the moment, then what will happen is you won't have peace within you.
You'll have conflict within you, you'll have discord within you, and you and
you know it won't work. But if you're able to align your different aspects
of your being into one common attention which is raised up above all the others,
then you will have goodwill among those things that are working towards that attention.
You'll have peace. I mean, you'll have peace amongst those things that
are working towards that attention. And so now what's going on here in this
story is something like a cosmic version of that. It's like the extreme version,
the most encompassing version of that, which is if we praise, if
we celebrate. If we attribute glory, if we raise up the name the
source of all things, if we raise up God in the highest heaven,
that's the God we raise up, then there will be peace on earth.
And so it's like it's showing you the structure in the sense that this is
what's going on. For example, in anything that you do, it's showing
you the structure first of all, of what Genesis one is about, which
is also about that which is also about. Let's say God is up in
the heaven. God attributes unities, attributes ways in which things bind together,
and those things, if they are well aligned and they remain in communion with
God is a good way to say it, then they will be at peace
and they will not be in discord. So it's hinting all the way back
to Genesis one and talking about what is the relationship, what is the proper
relationship between heaven and earth? And you can imagine that what happens in Genesis
is that man, you know, takes things for himself instead of rendering up
to God. He tries to take the fruit for himself. He tries to
attribute the qualities of God to himself. And therefore what happens is discord.
What happens is things break down and they lose the favor of God because they
are not glorifying Him to the highest, They're glorifying themselves to the highest.
You know, that can help you understand how this is really this little verse
is really a cosmic image. It's the same thing that happens, you know,
when Moses goes up the mountain at Sinai and gathers the people's attention up
towards a covenant with the Highest. And then when they do that which they
do, what happens is they receive the law, and they receive the cohesion
of the tribes. You know, they actually become in some ways a nation
when they all accept a covenant with that which is highest in that case also
also with the God of their ancestors, which is that they make an analogy
between that which binds them together in terms of their lineage and that which binds
them together more metaphysically, that is the God of Heaven. And so this
was just a little video to help you kind of see how deep some of
these verses are and how something which we just sing every Christmas when we sing,
you know, Gloria in x Chelsea's deo and you know this verse that,
like I told you, my professor in university said that they it was
just kind of a kind of like a theological statement with not much sustenance,
like it was just something that people say, glory to God, you know,
and peace on earth. But it actually is a powerful cosmic image and
helps us understand how complexity works, how attention works, and how it all
comes together into the cosmos and into little microcosms that we participate in. So
I hope this was useful. I want to wish everybody in merry Christmas.
Christ is born. I'm probably saying that a little bit in advance for you,
but since I won't see you on Christmas Day, I'm giving myself the
right to say it. And I'll see all of you, you know,
in the in the new year. My next video will probably be about that,
about symbolism of the new year. So thanks everybody for your support,
for your attention, and I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye.
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