SAINT NICHOLAS AND THE SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY

 Excerpt from Sunday Service, 12/6/09

by Aeptha

 When I went into meditation a few weeks ago I asked what it was that we were to focus on for this Service and I heard “St. Nicholas”.  Many of us know him as Santa Claus, which is actually a Dutch nickname for him. But I love how this works, because I was looking through one of the books that I had got on St. Nicholas and I read that today, December 6^th, is his official feast day. Those synchronicities are really delightful when they occur and today is actually the day that is said to be the anniversary of St. Nicholas’s death.

 St. Nicholas was an actual person. He was a bishop who lived in the fourth century in the area that is now known as Turkey. At that time accurate written records were not kept but there are legends and stories that came out of the villages about what Nicholas, the Bishop, had done there. This attracted the church's attention to the point that eventually Nicholas became recognized as a Saint.

 The stories about St. Nicholas and his intervention in the lives of others are on-going, in fact one of the stories that I read dates back to the relatively recent history of World War II and this was told by soldiers from Russia and Germany.  And so these legends, these stories, have sprung up all over the world and they all have a common theme which is the theme of generosity, of hope and of protection. Oftentimes the stories involve children, although sometimes they involve adults as well.

 It's been over 1600 years since Nicholas was alive and yet the energy that he epitomizes is still a strong presence in our world.  One sees different depictions of him and it was not until the 19^th century that he was depicted as full-figured and that was partly because at that time being full-figured indicated that you were rich, abundant, healthy and vibrant. In actuality he was said to be a very slender man. His staff, by the way, was the bishop’s staff, and his hat was originally his miter, the ceremonial head-dress of bishops.

 One of the core stories that tipped Nicholas into sainthood was that in the town where he was bishop there was a nobleman who had fallen upon hard times and he did not have any money. He had three daughters and at that time if you did not have a dowry it was not possible to get married. They were so poor that the nobleman had considered selling his daughters into servitude, feeling that if he did this at least they would have food.  The story is that the Bishop heard about this and he anonymously left money so that the first daughter could be married. He repeated this when it was time for the second daughter’s dowry but this time he was seen, but he asked that no one should be told. Eventually, as a result of Nicholas’s actions, all three daughters were saved from servitude.

 We associate this time of the year with generosity and with gift giving, with abundance, kindness and caring.  One of the stories that I found touching was about a young boy whose neighbor was getting gifts at Christmas but he never got any. So he hid, waiting for St. Nicholas to come so that he could point out his house to let him know he lived there and also wanted some gifts. But somehow, year after year, he always seemed to miss St. Nicholas. He lived in a small house and his neighbor lived in a big house. As the story goes once again Christmas came and he did not receive any gifts but the neighbor’s boy received many gifts, including a boat that had on it the seal of St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas, by the way, is also the patron saint of sailors and there are many stories that associate him with saving sailors: he is a fisher of men. But in this story the little boy felt deeply that it was unfair that he did not receive any gifts.

 As the story is told, the neighbor’s child invited him to go down to the stream with him and play with the boat, but out of his jealousy and anger the child turned down the invitation and told his neighbor to leave him alone. Well the neighbor’s child went down to the stream by himself to play with the boat and there was an accident and he fell into the water. Of course this was in winter and when he was found he was in critical condition. They carried him back to the house and the little boy who had been mean to him was devastated that his friend, by all appearances, was on the verge of death. He kept going to his neighbor’s house to inquire how the child was doing and he was told that there was no hope.

 So the little boy prayed to St. Nicholas to intervene and then he went down to the stream to find the boat that had been left in the snow and brought it back up to the house where his neighbor lived. He rang the doorbell and the father answered the door and was deeply touched when he was handed the boat that the child had found. And by the way, this is a well-documented story. The child handed the father the boat which had made him so jealous and asked him to give it to his friend and then he went home and just sobbed. As the story is told, when the father went upstairs to take the boat to his son, who by all accounts had been close to death, the child had revived.  The mother had been standing by her son's bed in vigil and at the moment that the doorbell rang the little boy’s eyes sprang open and he started breathing normally. And the child recovered.

 The point of this story is that this little boy, who had felt so much resentment, hurt and anger because he had not received what he understood to be the generosity of St. Nicholas, found within himself that generosity and he then expressed it. And that is the call of this energy that we call generosity. In Buddhism they call it cultivating generosity and there are actual practices to develop it. You cultivate it ethically, psychologically and you cultivate it spiritually, because in Buddhism it is said that selfishness is a habit, and in order to break the habit you have to be mindful and cultivate generosity. When we look at the stories of St. Nicholas and what he represents to us today, perhaps we see this as a force outside of ourselves and as something that is separate from us. But in truth this spirit of generosity, awareness and hope is within all of us.

 I’ve read several books on St. Nicholas and they are really engaging and I recommend that you read some. Many of them are written in the tone of the old world and have been translated from folklore. Another aspect of St. Nicholas is that he is the Patron Saint of prisoners. By all accounts when he was a bishop Nicholas was indeed in prison for a period of time because, remember, we're talking about the fourth century and at that point Christianity was just beginning to be established and there were a lot of disputes.  So for those who were holding that particular belief system it was a tenuous state, particularly if you were considered to be in a leadership position. So he was imprisoned for his beliefs. Several of the stories and legends that have come down to us tell of how he has protected prisoners in various situations.

 He has also been the meeting ground for people that enabled them to reach beyond hate and this is found in the story that I mentioned that came out of World War II. There were some Germans that had been sent into the hinterlands of Russia to establish a base and a hospital there and they ran into some of the locals.  The bottom line is that they were about to be killed when they recognized an image of St. Nicholas. This became the meeting ground because both the Germans and the Russians were familiar with the image and the legend of St. Nicholas. The German soldiers were not killed and were allowed to go free because of the mutual respect for what St. Nicholas represented.  The story states that the Russians actually gave one of the soldiers an image of St. Nicholas which he took back to Germany.

 And that is also what this energy calls to us to do, which is to find a place that is beyond our differences, the place where we can reconcile our experience of separateness. It is the place where we can be generous of spirit, because we can get into the habit of picking everything apart, including ourselves. We can get into a mindset where we are so fearful that somebody is going to take something from us that we start to hoard, and we don’t just hoard things but we hoard our kindness, our good intentions and we hoard something as simple and yet as powerful as our presence.

 I recently made a trip to the city and what I noticed was that people don’t look at one another and if you establish eye contact the reaction seems to be one of discomfort. It was weird and very strange. But what struck me was that making connection with others is also part of generosity. It is taking the time to be present and it seems that this is a habit that has fallen into misuse. We have got into a habit of isolating, of separating and of being too busy. We've got into the habit where we do not see one another as humans but just as objects that move around. Generosity expresses itself in extending beyond our sense of separateness, beyond our fear that somebody may think you are weird because you look them in the eye and say “Have a great day” and mean it.

 I would like to tell you one additional story that I read that I found poignant.  There was a young man who was being sent out into the world to make his own way, because at that time this is what happened to boys when they reached the age of sixteen or seventeen.  The mother sent the boy out but she gave him 60 gold pieces to make his way in the world with the understanding that this would be all he got, so he needed to make wise choices. So this young man left and he was going to do what many young men chose to do which was to join the sea merchants. On the way he stopped in a church and this church was in ill repair, but it was a church that was dedicated to St. Nicholas.  While in the church he heard a voice that asked him to make a donation for the repairs of the church. He looked around but he didn't see anyone. He went back to praying and he heard the voice again, “My temple needs to be repaired.” And so he found the priest of that church and asked how much it would cost to repair the building.  Well, it ended up costing 50 gold pieces which left him only 10. He boarded a ship which sailed to a foreign land, but there he was robbed. Not only did he get robbed, but he was then thrown into jail.

 From this point on the story sounds much like the story of Joseph with his coat of many colors because the bottom line is that there was something about this young man that attracted someone's attention and they ended up getting him out of jail and into a position as a servant.  After this a noble woman fell in love with him – by the way this is a true story -- and he ended up not only becoming a rich nobleman in the society but he also became an ambassador between this country and the country he came from; he was a bridge-maker.

 Now I told you that this was to be the last story but I would like to add something, and this is a more current fact: when the World Trade Center was destroyed the debris destroyed a small church called the St. Nicholas church.  The Patron Saint of Manhattan is St. Nicholas. There was a response from both Turkey and from Greece – St. Nicholas is also the Patron Saint of Greece – and a total of over a million dollars was sent to restore this church. And on a side note, it is said that some of the people who survived in the vicinity of the World Trade Center disaster did so because they took refuge in this church, and even though the church was destroyed, the people inside were not killed.

 As I said earlier, not only is the spirit of generosity one of loving-kindness, it is also one that extends protection, because not unlike gratitude, generosity is a power. It is a power that extends loving-kindness and will-to-good and it offers protection to those in need; it offers love to those who feel unable or unwilling to accept love; it offers abundance when it appears that there is no abundance. That is the message of Santa Claus, who is alive, who is well and who expresses through individuals, through communities and through traditions throughout the world.

 Pathworking

 So in our Pathworking today we will be working with moving into the embodying of generosity and the spirit of Santa Claus so that we would break the habits of selfishness and that we would meet on that common ground where we reconcile those experiences of divisiveness within ourselves and then are able to extend that unity into the world.

 Take a moment to focus on your breath and we breathe in and we breathe out, all the while holding the intent of bringing in balance with our breath, the intent of harmonizing as we connect with our core point, the central still point located in the hara about an inch behind and below the belly button.  And as we connect with that still point we are still breathing the breath of balance. Become aware of the central channel that reaches up to our God-self, streaming through us and down connecting us into the earth below us. And we deepen into the mystery, for we are that which is above, and that which is below. And now with our focus and our intent we extend our awareness beyond our core, becoming aware of our bodies of consciousness, until we find ourselves aware of the sphere that extends 18 to 22 inches beyond our physical body and that is shaped not unlike an egg. And we invoke and invite the spirit of St. Nicholas. We invoke and invite the wisdom of the Buddha. We invoke and invite the love of the Christos. Let love and wisdom enliven, strengthen and fortify the powers and potencies of generosity as this moves in us and through us. And we are aware of our luminescent egg-shaped body of light in which we are centered and we are aware of the pulsating light in our being that is responding to this love, to this wisdom, to this power, this hope of generosity. And in response, the light, love, hope and generosity within us begins to expand out, and it breaks beyond the shell of our egg of light, and streams forth – a brilliant star of light.  And the radiance of this star, a star amongst many stars, shines its light to other stars, to other planets, to the Earth, to the Moon, to all life.

 And on this, the feast day of St. Nicholas, and in the spirit of the season, which is in truth the season of life and death, renewal and resurrection, as a star of light, as a human being upon the sacred Earth, as the promise of hope, we are now invited by St. Nicholas to ask for a gift.  And we open our hearts to receive this gift. And we are being asked to cultivate this gift, to deepen and expand with it, and we are being asked to extend that gift to the world.

 And again, be aware of the still point in the hara just below the belly button. We are aware of our breath, in perfect balance, as we breathe in and out. We are aware of the ground below us and the sky above us, the love all around us and the wisdom within us.

Let us say together the Mantram of Unification:

The sons of men are one and I am one with them.

I seek to love, not hate;

I seek to serve and not exact due service;

I seek to heal, not hurt.

Let pain bring due reward of light and love,

Let the soul control the outer form,

And life, and all events,

And bring to light the love

That underlies the happenings of the time.

Let vision come and insight,

Let the future stand revealed.

Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.

Let love prevail.

Let all men love.