Starlight: Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long

As Christmas becomes the holiday season and is more and more commercialized, this book allows one to reflect on the spiritual side of Christmas. A wonderful read that will even pull the spiritual out of Santa Claus. Shea has a wonderful way of saying much with few words and in a way to that is understandable to all. If you have been feeling a bit out of touch with the true meaning of Christmas with all the social events and shopping this book is a good way to recover Christmas.

In 'Starlight', John Shea offers narratives that can be read on many levels, with even the most superficial, literal readings being worthwhile. However, it is Shea's reflections on the stories that help us to reach deeper meanings, which resonate with the soul's journey through the miracle of Christmas. His style is lucid and with a (seemingly) effortless use of metaphor, he weaves the threads of the stories into his reflections. There is such depth and subtely to his text that each rereading enriches my soul and gives another glimpse, another facet, of the relatedness of human beings to the miracle. This is a favourite quote: "We are like flies crawling across the Sistine Chapel. We cannot see what angels and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality: we live in our paradigms, our illusions we share through culture we call reality, but the true reality of our condition is invisible."

"We can embrace the (Christmas) season in such a way that it is not a harried time that depletes us but an invitation into a consciousness that sustains us...When the season is working well and we are cooperating with it, it renews our soul," writes Shea in this new edition of "Starlight," first published in 1992. His reflections explore the "theological truths" of Christmas as expressed in the Bible, tradition, experience, culture, reason, and imagination. The stories, for which Shea is famous, are rooted in poetic and mystical traditions of the spiritual masters. Chapter 5, "The Magi Ride Again," for example, focuses on "the abundance of poetry and story" rather than the scarcity of historical data regarding the Wise Men. Shea shares and reflects on numerous Magi stories, essays, and poems with their own messages. There is the legend of the wise men as young, middle aged, and elderly (Christ talks to every age in the life process) and O'Henry's Gift of the Magi (a gift of no value in the eyes of the world may become priceless to the eyes of faith). Shea also addresses the broader theme of a "defiant" Christmas, in which we experience the relationship between God, our neighbors, the earth, and the universe "and defy anything that ignores or obstructs" this view. Adopting this defiant attitude, he suggests, allows us to celebrate the season of Christmas all year long. The book "Starlight" would be a good starting place for individuals and groups wishing to make more of Christmas than a seemingly endless series of shopping trips and social gatherings.

I pick it up each year as Advent rolls around. It gets me really ready for Christmas. I never get tired of reading it year after year. It is especially good, I would feel, for folks not of a religious bent. It gives fresh insight to the Christmas season.