Where did the good Christ go?

I long for him.  The Christ that could have been.  Where did the good Christ go?

When the world begins to still and darkness draws near the light of the God energy comes to me in hushed moments.  I seek reverence.  My internal feminine divine wants to ritual around the miracle of his rebirth and coming.  I yearn for his return.  I sit amongst the ancestors.  This is my most holy time. Flame strikes match and meets wick as I light candles in homage to the divinity I seek.  I wish for community, for simple illuminations, for rites as old as time.  Why is this time of year the only one which tempts me into the man-made temples constructed in his name?  The eternal scent of incense fills my nostrils and beckons me to come in.  The vibrations of the hymns of the season a siren’s call.  Ancient rituals buck below my skin as they were stolen and kept in the crypts of the Vatican so through their stained glass I peek in.  I am not a Christian, not in the way of the name.  I don’t believe I ever was, but I have fallen in love with Christ.  He comes to me when I do not expect him.  He comes even when I search for my reflection in his counterpart and the face of every Mary I see.  The real Christ is patient, he is kind, and he is a twin-flame alive in me. I am the embodied counterpart of his mirror, I the beautiful red cloaked lover who was his favorite disciple and whose words were erased because they held too much power.  I am the blue caped Madonna awaiting his conception.  Where did the good Christ go?

               Some of you may gasp in glee.  “She’s a witch,” they say and “look how she comes back to Christ.  He is the one and only God, the true son who rules at the right hand with an iron fist.”  But alas, that is not the Christ I know.  I seek the one that says to me I AM the one true son(daughter) of God too.  I do not seek the Christian God.  The one who from flesh and blood’s mouth on pulpit’s floor is pro-claimed to hate sinners and whore, who incites fear, shame and guilt.  That is not the Christ that I long for.  I do however wish that I could steal back his rites, his rituals locked away in your vaults.  I long for the smell of incense burning.  I wish to sing an ancient hymn and hold hands with my neighbor.  If only it was that easy.  You may say it is and “come back to the church,” but I know too much now.  I do love you.  I wish you would wake up and see it too.  It is not without great grief that I am bereft in this time.  Oh, where did the good Christ go?

               I’ve searched for the even long before forgotten and asked myself “where did the old gods go?”  Perhaps, they are where I could lay my worship on the floor.  I feel them too, mostly in the archetypal realms of story and myth.  I love the embodiment of their energies and their archetypes.  The sea’s heart song of Aphrodite, the unexpected sexual rites of the Morrigan, as I work with them in story as medicine, but my heart does not involuntarily beckon them to come near when I am in need.  They are strong too but they are not where my love lies.  They are not my god-partner whom I call to me this time of year to witness his rebirth.  Some of my witch sisters upon hearing this revelation may sigh and say, “not him.”  You see to them he is two thousand years of red-flags.  So much trauma lies within one name perpetrated upon my kind for generations even the whisper of it can make the witch wound begin to feel aflame.  They burned the wise women in his name.  They persecuted the healers in his name.  They killed the psychics in his name.  They created man-made rules in his name.  They waged wars and killed our sons in his name.  I tried to turn my face from him so I could be free to embrace the Old Ways and solely worship the divine feminine, but there is something in my soul.  Perhaps it is the familial traditionalist in me, or the nostalgia I seek.  Whatever it is my soul, which I believe houses the feminine anima has evolved to such a place that it is his name, his animus dei and his flame which burns dually within.  He is the spirit to my soul.  The Shiva to my Shakti.  The Buddha to my Bodhisattva.  Sometimes I wonder if he was a catalyst for the next evolution of our collective consciousness, the great bridge to reunite the old Indo-European religions.  The red cloaked rebel in my soul can never seem to choose the easy way, so I ask again.  Where did the good Christ go?

               For me to love Christ is not an easy thing.  Some days I ask myself why am I so difficult?  Why can I not just be a blind shepherd amongst the flock?  Do you not think I want to be able to easily walk into a church and pray?  I do.  I wish I could.  My life’s work to him however will be the long red cloaked and rebellious road less travelled by.  I am the Magdalene.  I am the rebel.  I was the first and only witness to his resurrection.  I am powerful and they fear me because I know the secret and it is simple.  He is love.  I am love.  You are love.  He loved everything and everyone.  He loved feet and bodies.  He touched people.  He worshiped his reflection in you and taught you to worship your reflection in him.  My mother-in-law once told me that for her, in life, in the hierarchy of worship there is everyone else, there is Jesus Christ and then there is her son.  I laughed it off as a touch of the crazy Greek mother thing but that’s exactly it.  She could see the Christ energy in her son, in his conception, in his face and in his heart and now that I have my own sons, I get it.  I see the love too. I thank her for teaching me.  She is the wisdom keeper.  We red-cloaked women are the key.  We are the vessel of the wisdom.  He is inside me, all around me and he dances with my inner-Magdalene.  I know where he went.  He never left.  I light a candle this season to the Christ within as we await his rebirth.  I wish you knew that too.  I want to ritual beside you in the name of good Christ so I ask you.   Do you know, where did the good Christ go?   

-This blog is in dedication to Aliki, to her son and the Christ within.