I have danced around this idea because it seems, well, somewhat heretical. And, yet, this idea is not new at all in Christian thought. In the years 949–1022 AD a Byzantine Christian monk and poet who was one of the last saints canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church wrote the following poem:
We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).
I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? —Then
open your heart to Him
and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ's body
where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,
and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed
and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.
Symeon, the New Theologian expresses the idea of becoming Christ so clearly in this poem. He makes us utterly real. What an amazing idea—that by being Christ (not Christ-like) we are made real. A childhood story that expresses this idea as eloquently is The Velveteen Rabbit. In this favorite story from my children's childhood, the rabbit is cast into the rubbish heap after his young owner contracts scarlet fever, but a fairy comes along and turns the rabbit into a real bunny. Before this wonderful event takes place, however, the Velveteen Rabbit has the following conversation with The Skin Horse:
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Who would have thought that the Velveteen Rabbit and Symeon the New Theologian had so much in common? When we put on Christ—become Christ—you cannot be ugly; rather, you are transformed into a lovely, whole, and radiant being who is named Beloved.
I want to choose this way of thinking—to see myself as Christ, the Beloved One, especially on mornings when I awaken not feeling as well as I would like to feel. When I imagine moving my hand, and knowing that I am wonderfully in Him and of Him, then like The Skin Horse, I can smile, for I will have become all of Christ. I will have become utterly real.
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Williams, Margery. The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1922.
Poetry Chaikhana: Sacred Poetry from Around the World. http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/S/SymeontheNew/WeawakeninCh.htm. Translated by Stephen Mitchell.
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