Advent Meditations

What is about Christmas that leads us to keep all manner of kitschy knick knacks, the like of which we would never entertain even selling at a yard sale (for fear of social stigma)?

So last night we unpacked the boxes and boxes of Christmas Crap, and after Jaelyn and Addison tried on their Christmas stockings, we decorated the tree while J & A decorated the stable. A red disco ball hangs just over the Broken Baby Jesus and the motif for stables this year (apparently) is *not* hay, but volumes of red bulbs whose hooks have disappeared. Addison looked wistfully down the steps before he ascended to bed last night and said:

"It's Bootiful!"

and just so we knew that he *wasn't* talking about the tree, he turned to me and said:

"our stable is way coo'er than the Christmas Tree!" (mid-word L's are still too difficult, but they don't, apparently inhibit his ability to delivery his holiday cheer in the tone of Trash-Talking. His assessment of the relative goodness of the stable vs. christmas tree felt like fighting words...)

...

so this morning Kitchmas Kollectible #277 -- a Father Christmas Head (no body) with a five inch long swirling beard -- started playing a strange new game of tag with the very-tiny-but-at-least-not-broken-baby-Jesus. J. correctly recognized that he looked more like Gandalf than any Santa that she had seen. So she immediately endowed him with magical powers. Soon afterwards Father Gandalf Christmas started chasing the cute-mouse-ornament and the v.t.b.a.l.n.b.b.Jesus trying to give them magical healing kisses (vtJesus was squalling incessantly, because?....that's what babies do?). But once the bodyless wizard started chasing Baby Jesus, the Holy Infant became downright impish. Hiding behind the wizards head every time he tried to turn and find him, and then taunting him everytime he escaped.

Baby Jesus the Trickster.

And then I thought to myself : but seriously think about what that teaches us about Advent!....







No. I didn't think that at all. I just thought the adventures of Baby Jesus the Trickster might make for an interesting new serial on the BackBurner....

hope your Saturday is as Chill as ours -- minus the stacks of grading...

peace~

peace vs. ( )

is everything that is not peace violence?

because finals week and/or recovering from thanksgiving and trying to cram too much into too few people in too little time feels to me like....

...a kind of violence.

and it seems helpful to think about busy-ness as violence because it reveals (to me at least) how much i really did choose (am choosing?) violence...

and it allows me to catch a glimpse of (1.) the cultural patterns which promote busyness/violence, but much more helpfully (2.) the moments (so long ago! what was i thinking!?) where i have hooked my cart to this train. where i said "Yes!" & "I can do that!" (and worse) "I could do that better!", and hopefully (3.) the question: is there a way for me to get off of the *busy* train (or whatever train it is for you: the ambition train, the worry train, the confidence train)? I know I can't go back and unmake my choices, but can my future choices ripple backward through time and redeem my then? my now? my next?

You know the strain of Christian thought that suggests that we don't so much get saved / completely redeemed in a moment or at a time during our life, but that ALL the choices that we've made (and are making) give us the capacity to ultimately say "Yes" later / eventually / finally? It's a theme of Lewis' The Great Divorce -- and the implicit subject of my favorite lines from his sermon / essay, The Weight of Glory. He asks -- why bother to think about (the scriptural concept of) Future Glory?

“I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his [or her] own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too much of that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.”

Does anyone know if there's a theological name anywhere for this way of thinking about salvation / redemption / sancttification?

In our heart of hearts, we hope and pray that God remembers us, that when we die, God will notice and call us by name...and yet day by day we forget, overlook, and neglect God's many handiworks in our lives, assuming that Divinity only happens in lightning and tempest, in great raging flood or firestorm.

In my mind, this present world is our proving ground, a practice place where we show God our true stuff. [...] day to day God looks down on this world, waiting and wondering: when will someone stop, look, and notice the works of my hands, and when will someone--anyone--turn their eyes toward me and Love?

Lorianne's words in this post at Hoarded Ordinaries resonated deeply with me...

Because if I (/we) cultivate our vision to recognize Action! and Growth! and Strategic Priorities! and Implementation Timelines! and New Products! and Trends! --

it makes sense to me that ultimately:

that's what we'll see. that's what we'll recognize. and...

that's what we'll Be...?

so training our eyes to look for peace wherever we can find it: here, now, today...

seems a worthwhile vision...

a bit of advice for novice novelists...

No one should ever try to write a novel.

Everyone should be required to write a novel.

That's what it was like.





so i did it. The last chapter, which I felt very sure of before I wrote it, ended up being terrible. And probably quite abrupt. But I'll worry about that over Christmas Vacation.

I really must promote novel writing as one of the best ways to be *present* in your world. But I also should say that its a craft which is exhausting. Keeping up a voice is tricky. Keeping up a voice for every word for 50500 words sprawled across a hundred something pages?! grueling!

Perhaps one of the most delightful outcomes of the new month -- is that i'll stop talking obsessively about writing a novel and regain focus on the rest of the world....

today, i shovel through the piles of paper i politely declined to read for the past two weeks. if I'm lucky i get through them, that is...