Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Francis Beckham
The Christmas Day, December 25, 2023
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This remarkable little word is umwelt, from the German meaning “environment.” The reason for umwelt’s recent rise in esteem is its centrality-of-concept within our current refectory book, An Immense World, by science journalist and author Ed Yong (Random House, 2023). In it, Yong explains that umwelt was “defined and popularized by the Baltic-German zoologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909” and that it is meant to express specifically “the part of those surroundings that an animal can sense and experience – its perceptual world” (p. 5).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the untold legions of animals who have ever lived and ever will live in our world represent a mind-boggling array of umwelten. For elephants, raising the trunk like a periscope is the normative way to check for scent, whereas a rattlesnake sniffs out its world using fast flicks of the tongue. Blood-seeking insects like mosquitos use their antennas to cut through the air, searching for the tell-tale marks of carbon dioxide to locate their next meal. Each animal has a very different way of perceiving the world, and each way is optimally suited to its particular set of circumstances. They’re different, but they’re all valid! So, even when animals share a common environment – such as alligators, herons, and panthers in the Florida Everglades, or lions, gazelles, and turaco birds of the Maasai Mara of Kenya – they do so while inhabiting what are essentially completely different perceptual worlds, courtesy of each one’s distinctive umwelt.
It's fascinating stuff, and it really does shine a fresh light on all our old, familiar surroundings. But one may wonder, what exactly does any of it have to do with the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord? We could certainly make an Incarnational link between the arrival of the Eternal Word-made-Flesh and the German-made word umwelt. And that would be a pretty good way to go. It would certainly make it much easier to incorporate the fact that on this day in 1223 – that’s exactly 800 years ago – the famous Christmas at Greccio took place, where Saint Francis of Assisi enlisted the help of animal friends in staging the first-ever living creche. But, truth be told, there’s another connection that’s been on my mind which I’d like to explore. So, I guess I’ll just have to leave that bit of trivia out.
You see, I feel quite strongly that there’s a dimension of umwelt among the Christmas-season experiences of humans just as there’s one in the light-perceiving experiences of deep-sea fish. In the liturgical – or, at the very least, the cultural – sense, we all move through the same seasons of Advent and Christmastide. Whether we were really aware of it or not, we all woke up on Advent I, brushed our teeth on Gaudete Sunday, and donned our socks on Christmas morning. But our spiritual, cultural, intellectual, mental, emotional – indeed, even existential – realities during this time of year are anything but the same.
Yes, Christmas may be our common watering hole, so to speak, but where one person is caught up in the joy and excitement of the season, fully invested in its spirit of hope, enjoying the Christmas music and Hallmark Channel movies, and warmed by the gathering of family and friends around the table, others are experiencing things differently. For any number of reasons, there are those for whom Christmas is less joyful, or at least less festive. It’s harder to get into the spirit of things when you’re working the overnight shift as a first responder, or covering a shift in the service industry so people can come in and enjoy the fruits of your labor with their families, at the expense of you being able to be with yours. Sometimes the season bears the wounds of losses and regrets which, regardless of how new or old they are, always seem to make themselves felt particularly strongly this time of year. I’d guess that, in any given year, many people experience some combination of Christmas feelings.
And then there are the struggles we may have with Christmas itself. What is the real meaning of it? Can it truly be the promise of hope and the heralding of a Savior the way we’ve always been told? “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). That’s Isaiah, of course, who seeks to explore the role Jerusalem is destined to play in God’s plan for our world, focusing on themes of God’s holiness and righteousness, justice for the poor and powerless, and the assurance of a Deliverer, born of a Virgin, who will bring peace and freedom to God’s people. In our Christological understanding, this is the Reign of God. It’s a beautiful vision. It’s just not always easy to believe.
For one thing, depending on the time, place, and circumstances any of us lives in, there may not be a lot of peace and justice going on around us. There certainly isn’t in places like Ukraine and Palestine right now where, as always, those bearing the brunt of the violence of war are civilian women and children. I imagine they long for a peace-bringer to come, one who has ‘authority resting upon their shoulders’ who can put an end to all the suffering. But instead, all they get is Herod, still very much alive and loose in our world, still reigning genocide on the Holy Innocents of society.
In our own country, as well as many others, there are millions whose umwelten mean that Christmas is characterized by poverty, hunger, and loneliness; by neighborhoods or households racked by toxicity, trauma, and violence; by systems of economic injustice, racism, xenophobia, and other forms of hate that seek to stifle God-given talents, identities, longings, and dreams.
One could be forgiven for questioning Isaiah’s prophetic credentials in light of the brokenness, pain, and unheeded history lessons that seem to be constantly swirling around us.
And I just want to say, whatever anyone’s reality of Christmas happens to be as the result of their unique perceptual place in life: It’s perfectly valid. It’s okay to experience Christmas with less merriment and cheer than the ads and the culture insist. It’s okay to experience Christmas with less certainty and more doubt than our scriptural readings proclaim. It’s okay to experience Christmas apart from family and friends, especially when that’s what circumstances or our needs require of us. And it’s okay to experience Christmas with sadness and longing, even if we really have no idea why we feel the way we do.
That’s because – whether it feels like it or not – God is present in all our experiences, just as our sacred stories tell us God has been present with Israel during periods of exile and occupation; with Mary and Joseph during times of fear and confusion; and with Jesus while those ‘upon whose shoulders authority rested’ plotted again and again to kill him for proclaiming the holiness and justice of God, the very vision of Isaiah. God, who has been present in all moments of suffering, quietly sustaining those who long for better times, is still in our midst. This is the God whom the Gospel of John proclaims is in our world, made flesh, right here and now, to share our joys and sorrows, to rest with us during seasons of peace, and to shelter with us in times of conflict.
This, I believe, is the hope of Christmas: that in whatever way we experience it through our own particular perceptual worlds – our umwelten – God is surely present, permeating every part of our senses, drawing us ever deeper into God’s self, and becoming more and more Emmanuel, God-With-Us.
I pray that the peace of God and the hope of Christmas, in whatever way you experience it this year, be upon you and remain with you, during this holy season, and always. Amen.
