A Christmas Message from Alexander

As I write it is almost Noon here in Santa Fe. Tonight will be the largest gathering of the year at the Blue Door Retreat. We observe the Feast of Solstice Night. This great night was for a thousand years the night we observed the Great Feast of Christmas.

Then when Pope Gregory reformed the calendar in the 16th century - every day on the calendar slipped three days earlier. In the revised calendar, Solstice was now the night of the 21st rather than the 25th.

This put Christendom in a quandary. What to do with the date of Christmas - should it be changed to the 21st or left on its traditional day of the 25th.

After great theological debate - an answer arrived.

Solstice literally means 'sun stand still.' To the naked eye one cannot see the light of the sun increasing until three mornings after Solstice night.

That was the answer. On the third morning after Solstice - the earth and all people of the Northern Hemisphere rejoice - for we now experience light re-born!

Christianity has another Triduum to match the Three Days of Easter. For this Triduum we watch and wait with the heavens and earth - not simply to 'believe' in re-birth but to know!

With every apology to the original author of The Song of Songs - here is my mediation this day:

Hark! my lover - here The Christ comes springing across mountains,
leaping across hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag.

Here The Christ stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.
My lover speaks; The Christ says to me,
"Arise my beloved, my beautiful one,
and come!

For those of us now walking the path of Quadratos - we are given great hope with great challenge. We who are returning to the Great Three Year Cycle of Christianity now know that Christmas is never just Christmas. This year we do not celebrate a historical reality born in a home in Bethlehem. (Note this is place where Matthew tells us The Christ is born - in Joseph and Mary's home in Bethlehem.)

We are called to go beyond what John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg are calling The First Christmas. What we note and celebrate is a far different and profound reality: Within each of us is a place of our deepest questing and challenge - and that place of wrestling is the bed in the home where The Christ wishes to born anew.

In the former middle years of Christianity - we wished each other "Merry Christmas."

For those of us walking again the Three Year Path of Christianity let us wish each other something ancient and new.

Let us wish each other Matthew's Christmas.

Let us wish each other - that THIS Year will bring us deep courage to find the bed of our wrestling and to lie in it - expectant that this is THE place The Christ will be born.

From the hearth of the Blue Door Retreat and from my heart to your community, family and to you

Jeru-Shalom!

When we find The Christ in our wrestling bed - We will know how to live in a way that increases Shalom in every bed.

Two Pieces of News

First, Book II is set for release in early March. It really is that close. You will be able to pre-order through Cold Tree Press in January. And you may order the books through the Quadratos website - to receive Book I and/or II with an inscription by Alexander.

And second, news of great rejoicing for Quadratos - We may now receive tax exempt donations! We need $25,000 to make expenses - including releasing Book II by early March.

Bread of Life Center in Sacramento, CA - an educational and charitable 501(c)3 - is acting as Quadratos' fiscal agent. To make a donation send your check payable to Bread of Life. Please note on the check's memo line: "Quadratos". Mail to -

Jean Holsten
c/o Bread of Life
650 El Camino Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95815

You will receive a receipt by return mail for your tax deductible donation.