Merry Christmas and its meaning

This year, as many others as well, we scaled back on the Christmas extravaganza.  With two children in different parts of the world we were happy to have one of our "children" and his wife with us for Christmas morning.

Yesterday night I went to my Episcopal Church for the late service.  It is difficult to attend any church service, much less the Christmas Eve one, when you don't really accept the "program."  I do not think Christian dogma is true in any basic sense of the term, "true."  I do not think Christ is/was God and I have to wonder what he would think if he could see us all now.   And yet the rhythm of the church year and the comfort of the Episcopal/Anglican vision (when it is not veering into dogmatic certainty: note current turmoil over gays) lies in its willingness to see human knowledge as deeply flawed and that belief is simply a response to the mystery that is... everything.  The dogmatic Christians (those claiming absolute and complete truth of their way of seeing things) and the "born again atheists" share a common ground of certainty that smacks of the Greek vice hubris.  And hubris will get us every time.

So I am one of many who attend church services, not as hypocrites, but as humans who do succumb to the comfort of a ritual which takes us out of ourselves and as humans who acknowledge the realizing what we do not know is the first step to any pretense to human wisdom.