I'm reading a book, Autobiography of a Yogi. It is the first book I've ever read about Hindu spirituality. I am surprised by the points of contact and agreement I find in the book. I am also struck with its emphatic claim that the human story reaches its ultimate end when humans transcend the body and all other material reality.
The Christmas story presents a radically different conception of spirituality: The story of God reaches its climax in God becoming incarnate. God the Spirit reaches "perfection" in uniting with human flesh. At least that is one apparent meaning of the hymns of Revelation 4 and 5.
For Christians, ultimate spiritual life for humans is realized through employing our bodies in service and worship and in knowing ourselves (including our bodies) as beloved by God and others.
For Jesus people, dirt and "spirit" are not opposites. They are not competitors or opponents. Dirt and spirit are complementary elements of a glorious whole. To switch metaphors: You don't "elevate" water by separating it into hydrogen and oxygen. One element is not better than the other. One is not "more essential" to the identity and service of water than the other.
So to be fully human--to live the ideal for which we were created--dirt and spirit cooperate. Changing diapers, having sex, eating food, shoveling snow, painting pictures, crafting stories, cleaning toilets--these are at the very heart of spiritual life. They are spiritual life, for those who are attuned to the purposes of God.
God became dirt in Bethlehem. The story of Christmas is a wonderful invitation to us who naturally dirt to become "divine" through love, worship and service. [I use "divine" here in the sense it is used in Orthodox theology to describe ultimate human development.]
Merry Christmas
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