 It’s Christmas Day and I could have better used the title Christmas mess-edge for this short piece. The story of Jesus Christ isn’t just a sweet and sentimental account of a baby boy born in Bethlehem 2000+ years ago. If it’s true, it’s about God entering the very real messiness of our lives and world and offering the potential to transform them into something completely new. Something beyond our wildest dreams, hopes or expectations. Something that stretches and transcends the boundaries of all human existence and experience. I’ve known something about this notion of stretching boundaries over this past year, about extending the edges of my own experience. I bought a new bike in the spring, challenged myself to cycle over 1000 miles in 6 months and over 50 miles in a single ride. I had never done anything like that before and yet I did it. I also challenged myself to swim 1 mile 3 times in the same week. And I did it. It felt like I had crossed over an important physical and psychological line, achieving things that had previously felt impossible for me. I wrote and had published my first article with the British Association for Counselling and Psychology (BACP). I’d written lots of articles for different publications before but this felt like the next step up in a professional field that sits close to my heart. The editor of Coaching Today invited me to write on spirituality and I jumped at the chance. To top it off, I did my first ever series of radio interviews on spirituality too. It was a great opportunity and a novel experience so sit in a recording studio and to share my beliefs openly on air. And if that was the end of the story, there would be no need for a Jesus, at least for me. But it’s far from the end. I’ve struggled and failed on so many fronts. Sometimes, I haven’t even struggled when I have known I should. I’ve known deeply and personally what Francis Spufford aptly calls the universal ‘human propensity to f* things up’ (Unapologetic, 2013). At times, I’ve failed in relationships, made mistakes at work, fallen short of my own standards, spoken when I should have kept quiet and kept quiet when I should have spoken. What’s more, one of my closest friends has fought courageously with terminal illness. I’ve felt hopeful and helpless, trying to offer support where I could yet knowing I can’t make it OK. I’ve yearned to take the anxiety away but known that I can’t. I’ve watched Syria in the news, the damage that human beings are able to inflict on each others’ lives, on whole countries and regions. I’ve felt impotent and confused. Not all the time, but enough to know that redeeming the world is something I can take part in yet, ultimately, lies well beyond me. And so as I reflect on Christmas, I know what it is to be an aspiring yet fragile human being. I’ve felt exciting moments on the edge of success and have known what it is to screw up and need forgiveness. I have felt the amazing love of others, often undeserved yet tangible all the same. At that first nativity, I believe God himself entered the messy complexity of our lives and world with the most profound message of love and hope possible. Not just in words but in a life well-lived and a promise of presence and eternal life. Merry Christ-mas!
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 The can hit the ground with a clanking sound. It felt empty, painful somehow. The young woman had been sitting in her car, gazing across the countryside in the warm sunshine. She drank the drink then tossed the can through the open window. It looked wrong on the grass, an intrusion, out of place. It felt symbolic, enigmatic. The human paradox, our ability to love and enjoy nature and carelessly, thoughtlessly, to destroy it. It was selfism, nihilism, abandonment of compassion and principle. Should I confront her, should I complain and chastise her? I felt angry, frustrated, a momentary sense of despair. Hold back, best not to speak, best to walk on. Pass by on the other side of the road. The girl looked at me and grinned, a sarcastic smile, a challenging look. I felt conflicted, annoyed but then convicted too. How quick I was to judge her. How fast I was to feel self righteous. The can felt like biblical 'sin', a scar on the landscape, and I felt its dark parallel, a cynical dynamic, tightening its grip within me too. I became uncomfortably aware of how easily I react to things in others that I disown in myself. It's what Jesus exposed as psychodynamic projection with spiritual roots. As I walked on, I experienced a mysterious intuition, a flash of revelation in the midst of anti-revelation. It was as if God had emerged suddenly and unexpectedly as now-here in the apparent no-where. It took me by surpise as the spotlight turned from the girl to me. God holds the mirror in love and truth and now it's me he is inviting to change. |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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