By Gonny 
“My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur.
Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness, where
holiness abides in perfect peace.”
When I sat with these words a little longer, something suddenly came to mind.
What if I look at this world as a stage?
Not in a cynical sense, and not to describe the world as false or meaningless, but as a beautifully constructed play in which roles are constantly being performed. Everywhere you look, characters seem fully absorbed in their part. I see joy and sadness, worry and ambition, pride and fear…..all played with great conviction, all taken very seriously.
And just like in any good play, the acting becomes so convincing that something subtle happens. People forget they are watching a performance. Even more, they forget that they themselves are playing in it.
They don’t just have a role anymore.
They become it.
And that is where fear quietly enters.
Then this sentence returns:
“My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur.”
This is the moment when the actor…you, me, all of us…remembers something essential. Not that the play stops, and not that the role disappears, but that we are more than the role we are playing.
“My birth” is Christ speaking, the part of us that knows this world is a stage. The part that is aware.
Awakening to grandeur does not mean becoming special or elevated above others. It means stopping with the habit of making yourself smaller than you are. It means remembering that you are the One who is aware of the play, the One in whom the entire stage appears.
The grandeur is not in the character.
It is in the awareness that knows it is acting.
“Welcome me not into a manger…”
A manger belongs to the set. It is part of the décor. A beautiful symbol, yes, but still a prop on the stage.
In daily life, that manger often looks like our own head.
That busy mental storage room filled with to-do lists, old worries, unfinished conversations, and plans for next year. We try to place peace there too, squeezing it in between yesterday and tomorrow, until peace itself becomes just another task.
“I should feel calm. I should be more loving. I should really get this right.”
That is still the manger!
To welcome Christ there is to keep Him inside the story, as a figure in time, as one character among many. It is like mistaking the lead actor for the director.
As long as Christ remains in the manger, He stays within the play.
“…but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace.”
The altar is not on the stage.
It is not a role, not a costume, not a storyline.
The altar is the seat of awareness from which the play is seen.
In very ordinary terms, it is the moment you stop carrying everything. Like sinking into your favorite chair after a long day. Not to fix anything, to plan, or to improve yourself. Just to stop….
You don’t have to make the silence. It was already there before you sat down !
This is where you can play your role fully, lovingly, even intensely, without losing yourself in it. Holiness here does not mean purity of behavior. It means undefended awareness. Nothing needs to be fixed, proven, or protected.
And because nothing is being defended, there is peace.
Perfect peace.
So what is the “birth of Christ” in this context?
It is the moment you realize: “I am the one in whom the story is appearing.”
You can still be a child, a teenager, an adult. A parent, a worker, a man, a woman. You can experience aging, illness, success, and loss. All of it can be lived.
But the moment fear arises, it is simply a signal. Identification has slipped in again.
And without drama, awareness returns. “Oeps… I forgot for a moment.”
That return, that simple noticing, is the birth.
Not in a manger, but in the quiet altar of awareness, where holiness already abides, and peace was never absent.
That is grandeur remembering itself.
With love and light,
and a happy second( third, fourth, fifth ecc ecc ) CHRISTmas day
G.