 We continue today with Chapter 15, Christmas as the end of Sacrifice. Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as solely of your making, and seek not safety by attempting to protect yourself from where it is not. Your brothers and your father have become very fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships in which you think you see some scraps of safety. Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts and the thought that has been given you. When they are brought together and perceived where they are, the choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening, and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep. The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by him. In his presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning, for he is host to God, and you need but invite him in who is there already, by recognizing that his host is one, and no thought alien to his oneness can abide with him there. Love must be total to give him welcome, for the presence of holiness creates the holiness that surrounds it. No fear can touch the host who cradles God in the time of Christ, for the host is as holy as the perfect innocence which he protects, and whose power protects him. This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let yourself be healed completely, that you may join with him in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me, you will give it with me. All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice. And without sacrifice, their love must be. You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love, for sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. Through guilt you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. Through peace you invite them back, realizing that they are where your invitation bids them be. What you exclude from yourself seems fearful, for you endow it with fear and try to cast it out, though it is part of you. Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome, and live within himself in peace? And who can try to resolve the quote conflict of heaven and hell in him, by casting heaven out and giving it the attributes of hell, without experiencing himself as incomplete and lonely? As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice justified in sacrificing others. For who could thrust heaven in its creator aside without a sense of sacrifice and loss? And who could suffer sacrifice and loss without attempting to restore himself? Yet how could you accomplish this yourself, when the basis of your attempts is the belief in the reality of the deprivation? Deprivation breeds attack, being the belief that attack is justified. And as long as you would retain the deprivation, attack becomes salvation and sacrifice becomes love. So it is that in all you're seeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and find it. Yet you find not love. It is impossible to deny what love is and still recognize it. The meaning of love lies in what you have cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning apart from you. It is what you prefer to keep that has no meaning. All all that you would keep away holds all meaning of the universe and holds the universe together in its meaning. Unless the universe were joined in you, it would be apart from God. And to be without him is to be without meaning. In the holy instant the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without the body's interference. Where there is communication, there is peace. The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of love by teaching that communication remains unbroken, even if the body is destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the necessary means of communication. And if you understand this lesson, you will realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice nothing and communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed. Where, then, is sacrifice? The lesson I was born to teach and still would teach to all my brothers is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere, for communication embraces everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself. Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so you offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing, such is the message of the time of Christ, which I give you that you may give it and return it to the Father, who gave it to me, for in the time of Christ communication is restored, and he joins us in the celebration of his Son's creation. God offers thanks to the Holy Host who would receive him, and lets him enter in a byde where he would be. And by your welcome does he welcome you into himself, for what is contained in you who welcome him is returned to him, and we but celebrate his wholeness as we welcome him into ourselves. Those who receive the Father are one with him, being host to him who created them, and by allowing him to enter. The remembrance of the Father enters with him, and with him they remember the only relationship they ever had, and ever want to have. This is the time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. Say then to your brother, I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself. I know that you will be released unless I want to use you to imprison myself. In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because I recognize that we will be released together. So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the Holy Instant as this year is born, and take your place so long left unfulfilled in the great awakening. Make this year different by making it all the same, and let all your relationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen. And from the workbook lesson 125, in quiet I receive God's word today. Let this day be a day of stillness, of quiet listening. Your father wills you hear his word today, and so he calls from deep within your mind where he abides. Hear him today. No peace is possible until his word is heard around the world, until your mind, in quiet listening, accepts the message that the world must hear to usher in the quiet time of peace. This world will change through you. No other means can save it, for God's plan is simply this. The Son of God is free to save himself, given the word of God to be his guide, forever in his mind, and at his side to lead him surely to his father's house by his own will, forever free as God's. He is not led by force, but only love. He is not judged, but only sanctified. In stillness we will hear God's voice today, without intrusion of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgment of his holy word. We will not judge ourselves today, for what we are cannot be judged. We stand apart from all the judgments which the world has laid upon the Son of God. It knows him not. Today we will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the word of God. Hear, holy Son of God, your father speak. His voice would give to you his holy word, to spread across the world the tidings of salvation in the holy time of peace. We gather at the throne of God today, the quiet place within the mind where he abides forever, in the holiness that he created and will never leave. He has not waited until your return to your mind, to him, to give his word to you. He has not hid himself from you, while you have wandered off a little, while from him. He does not cherish the illusions which you hold about yourself. He knows his Son, and wills that he remain as part of him, regardless of his dreams, regardless of his madness, that his will is not his own. Today he speaks to you. His voice awaits your silence, for his word cannot be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. Await his word in quiet. There is peace within you to be called upon today to help make ready your most holy mind to hear the voice for its creator speak. Three times today, at times most suitable for silence, give ten minutes set apart from listening to the world, and choose instead of gentle listening to the word of God. He speaks from nearer than your heart to you. His voice is closer than your hand. His love is everything you are, and that he is. The same as you, and you the same as he. It is your voice to which you listen as he speaks to you. It is your word he speaks. It is the word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single mind of Father and Son. In quiet listen to yourself today, and let him tell you God has never left his Son, and you have never left yourself. Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this. To let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes. Only be still, and listen. You will hear the word in which the will of God, the Son joins in his Father's will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the holy, indivisible, and true. As every hour passes by today, be still a moment, and remind yourself you have a special purpose for this day. In quiet to receive the word of God. Amen.