The Remembrance Codes

Christmas as Remembrance: Leaving the Pyramid for the Circle

• Susan Sutherland

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What if the most radical gift of Christmas isn’t a figure placed above us, but love moving through us?

In this episode, I offer a gentler, truer frame for Christmas - one that steps out of hierarchy and returns us to the living circle of belonging. Drawing from an experience that stayed alive in my field after hearing Robin Wall Kimmerer speak, and from the heart of Yeshua’s teachings, we explore how a pyramid worldview quietly shapes our relationships with God, the Earth, and ourselves - often without our consent.

The pyramid trains us to measure, perform, and strive.
 The circle remembers kinship, interdependence, and shared light.

Together, we look at the subtle ways hierarchy shows up in religion, culture, family systems, and even spirituality, and how this lens turns teachers into unreachable authorities, the Earth into a resource, and holiness into something we must earn. We then reimagine a different way of being - where a teacher is a point of light in a shared constellation, a tree is an ancestor, not an object, and Jesus returns not as an icon above humanity, but as luminous kin whose embodiment awakens what already lives within us.

This reflection isn’t abstract. It shapes how we speak to ourselves, how we take and return to the land, how we relate to power, and how we repair when a link in the strand goes dim.

The episode closes with a gentle, guided meditation - a simple image of a Christmas tree wrapped in light - inviting you to feel interconnection in your body rather than just understand it with your mind.

If you’ve ever felt weary of striving, disillusioned with hierarchy, or quietly certain that the sacred was never meant to be distant, this episode is an invitation to remember what you already know.

You are not meant to climb toward the holy.
 You are part of it.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, my friends, and Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate, and warm blessings to those who honor this day in their own way. Today I want to share something that has been alive in my field since attending a lecture by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It's something that feels like the perfect remembrance on this day, a return to right relation. Because Christmas, at its essence, is not about hierarchy. It is not about a single exalted figure placed impossibly high above us. It is not about performing worthiness or proving devotion. Christmas, beneath the tradition, the expectation, the commercialization is about remembrance, of love incarnate, of the spark of holy within all beings, of the truth that we belong to one another in a web so intricate and so sacred that the word interconnectedness doesn't even begin to describe it. Today I want to talk about the difference between the pyramid that we inherited and the circle that is actually true. And then I want to guide you on a short meditation to help you feel this truth in your body. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a beautiful soul and a storyteller. And she shares earth wisdom through her experience in the trained Western tradition as an esteemed botanist, as well as her indigenous heritage. And in Robin's lecture, there was a slide put up that stopped me. It was a pyramid, and at the very top was a solitary human. And below that, primates, and then the four-legged ones, and then the swimmers, and then almost as an afterthought, you've got the plants and the fungi at the bottom. And it was a visual representation of the story we have unconsciously inherited, and thus in our relation with Earth, as she pointed out, have adopted fiercely. That humans stand above everything else, and that intelligence is linear, that worthiness is hierarchical, that power moves from top to bottom. And whether we consciously agree with this or not, the pyramid shapes us. It shapes how we treat the earth as a resource rather than a relative from conquest rather than communion. It shapes how we treat our teachers as masters placed above humanity rather than mirrors for what is possible within us. It shapes how we treat ourselves, constantly measuring whether we are climbing high enough or doing enough or becoming enough. The pyramid is subtle, but it is everywhere. It shows up in religion and in culture and in families and in spirituality. Even in the way many of us were taught to relate to Jesus as someone so elevated and so unreachable that our only correct posture is bowing below him. And yet that was never the point of his embodiment. The next slide Robin showed was the same beings, humans and animals, and trees, and waters and moss and birds, but arranged not vertically, but in a circle. And I don't mean the circle of separation where each hand holds politely to the ones beside them in their designated space, but a circle that was woven and filled in and overlapping and feeding and touching and informing. A tree isn't less than a human, it is an oxygen bearer and a shade giver and an ancestor. And a human isn't above a deer, it is kin and steward and participant. A teacher isn't above the ones they teach. They are simply a point of light in a shared constellation. And a master is not above only a being embodying what is possible in all. The circle is not a symbol. The circle is the true shape of reality. It is the design of life itself, interconnected, interdependent, and alive in every direction. And that is what the indigenous people have always known. It is what the mystics have always whispered. It is what Yeshua himself taught. That the kingdom is within you and around you and between you, not above you. The circle collapses that illusion of separation. The circle returns us to right relation. The circle reminds us that everything needs everything, even the beings we think of as holy. On Christmas Day, we honor a great master, a being who embodied compassion and truth and healing and justice and sacrificial love. But over centuries, his teachings were arranged into a pyramid, with him at the top and humanity below striving to become worthy, kneeling their brokenness before his perfection as the way to salvation. But that was never his message. Also, and more. His embodiment was not meant to create hierarchy, it was meant to dissolve it. So today, I want to offer a gentle invitation. Receive his teachings in full and see the one in everything. In the tree outside your window, in the child laughing in the next room, in the bird that is on your patio when you wake, in the elders whose hands have grown weary after decades of tending the earth, in the stranger you pass at the gas station, in your own reflection. Christmas is not a celebration of a one being elevated above all. It is the remembrance that the holy took form so we could see the holy in ourselves and everything around us. When we stop seeing God as external and exclusive, with the divinity flowing through, around and between us all, we restore right relation with each other, with the earth, and with ourselves. If you are able to now, I ask that you close your eyes for a moment. And if not, simply soften your gaze and allow your breath to expand. Just a tree that feels familiar and warm. Now imagine a strand of lights wrapped around this tree. Not the lights that flicker harshly or change colors rapidly, but a soft, warm, glowing strand. Each toll represents a life, a being, a consciousness, a soul, an expression of the one light. See how they glow. Not in competition, not in comparison, but in harmony. Now recall what happens when one bulb goes out. Not because it fails, but because it is connected. Sometimes when one light loses its spark, the entire strand dims. Not as punishment, but as a truth. Interdependence. We belong to each other. Take a breath into that. Now imagine that you are one of those wolves. To radiate, to glow. You bring warmth to the strand simply by being yourself. And now imagine Yeshwa. Not as the light at the top. Not separate. Not towering. But as one bulb among the strand. Radiant? Yes. Glowing beautifully. Yes. But glowing with you. Not above you. His light awakens yours. Your light awakens another. This is a tree of living remembrance. Now breathe into the entire strand. The humans, the animals, the plants, waters, stars, ancestors, angels, teachers. Feel the web of connection. And feel this truth. There is no single source of light. There is only the light expressing itself through all. Let your breath expand. Let your body soften. Receive this remembering. You are part of the whole. You are necessary. You are connected. You are lit by the same source that lit him. Take one final deep breath. Imagine the whole tree, the whole wide world glowing in this warm, even light. And slowly, when you're ready, you can return to the room. You can open your eyes. But you can carry that warmth with you through your day, through your week, through your life. Imagine each time that you lay eyes on another, whether it be an animal or a plant or a friend or your family, they too are a bulb on your strand. Their light matters, it doesn't compete with yours, but it shares the same source that breathes and lights you up. When you look in the mirror, remember that that God, that source, that divine spark radiates through you. Speak to yourself kindly. You are God expressing yourself in form. Thank you for spending part of your Christmas with me. Whether it's the day or the season, may this be part of your remembrance on right relation of the circle that holds us and the light that lives through us, and of the one that appears in every living thing. Merry Christmas, my friends, and blessed remembrance to you.

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Susan Sutherland

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