A Simple, Elegant Equation (Christmas Eve Sermon)

A new movie came out a couple of months ago, a movie entitled The Theory of Everything.  The Theory of Everything tells the story of famous scientist Stephen Hawking – of his extraordinary career as a physicist, of his marriage family, and of his experience of life with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or what we often call Lou Gehrig’s disease, the degenerative neurological condition which over the course of his adult life has destroyed most of his physical capabilities.

As a brilliant young graduate student, Stephen Hawking began to explore the topic that would become his life’s work: Time. Does time have a beginning or does it not?  How does time work? As he himself explains it, Stephen Hawking wants to find the simple, elegant equation that explains – everything.

I’ve been thinking about this movie for weeks, and about this idea of a simple, elegant equation that explains everything.  As a physicist, Stephen Hawking’s  writes equations that look like math problems.  And if you’ve forgotten what an equation is – and I know that anyone here in high school is a lot closer to that definition that some of the rest of us! – an equation is an assertion that proclaims the equality of two quantity quantities.  For example, 2+2 = 4 -- one quantity is described as 2+2, and the other as 4, and they are equal.  That’s what most of us understand to be an equation. 

What on earth do equations have to do with Christmas?  (I'm sure you're wondering now how this happened ~ you came to a Christmas Eve service and landed in algebra class?)

Well, when Stephen Hawking, who is apparently not a person of faith, at least not in the conventional sense, does his work, he writes in the numbers and symbols of math and science.

But what if he is actually overlooking the simple, elegant equation that explains everything? 

What if the simple, elegant equation that explains everything is the Christian proclamation, the Christmas message?  What if the simple, elegant equation that explains everything is this:

Jesus is the savior of the world. Jesus = savior.

What does that even mean?

What does savior mean?

We have a lot of different ways of thinking about Jesus as the savior of the world, but as Professor Joan Nuth reminds us, it helps ~ yes, it really does help! ~ to begin with the Greek and Latin words from which the word savior comes – words which mean:

To make whole.

To heal.

One who saves -- makes the broken whole.

One who saves--  heals the sick and the injured.

One who saves, in other words --  gives life.  Creates anew. 

It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?  That the Christmas story could be the story by which all things cracked and smashed are made whole, the story by which all trauma is healed, the story which relates the beginning of a grand new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, a re-creation of the lush, flourishing garden of vitality and peace in which we got our start?

Yes, it seems unlikely that this story could tell us how God embraces the world.

The setting? An apparently arbitrary time on a speck of land on a very small planet in a vast universe of galaxies.

The cast of characters?

 

A man and a woman on the road, relying on visions and dreams for their sustenance while they are caughtup in that most bureaucratic of human enterprises – a taxing authority!

 

A baby – the most vulnerable of creatures, entirely dependent upon other human beings for nurturance and care.

 

Some shepherds and their sheep – the rough and tough guys and girls of their world, and their band of smelly, dull-witted animals.

 

And angels – all right, that might be a clue: something completely unexpected and entirely new is happening here.  But as far as the people are concerned?  They all look pretty ordinary.

And what about the context?  A world in profound need of healing, both then and now.

Then: Domination and oppression by a world power, slavery, poverty.  People who were lame and blind and ill, lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors – isolated and excluded and reviled.

Today: War and terrorism, Ebola, relations between black and white in turmoil, injustices and protests, people who are hurting and sick and angry, isolated and ignored.

It seems unlikely, that this story of a stable and a star, of people on the road and a baby delivered in a manger, unlikely that this story could have any impact on the vastness of human need. And yet, and yet --

Jesus is born to save, to make whole, to heal

By bringing together heaven and earth

God and humanity

Angels and shepherds

And by embracing the whole of human life: birth, death, great joy, unfathomable suffering ~

 

Jesus is the savior.

 

A simple, elegant equation? 

 

Let me tell you just one thing more about equations this time, about chemical equations.  Now for this I needed help, from my friend Michelle, who is a chemistry professor and a gifted spiritual writer, as well as from two friends who are chemistry teachers – one of them our own S.A. They explained to me that a chemical equation often requires a catalyst.   A chemical equation tells us how certain kinds and amounts of materials to which a specific catalyst is added result in certain products.

Michelle also pointed out to me last night that in a chemical equation, the materials we start with often bear no resemblance to the products  --  the results -- in the equation. 

 

For instance, hydrogen and oxygen are both gases and both highly flammable – and oxygen at high concentrations is poisonous to breathe! But let’s say that these gases, hydrogen and        oxygen – are our starting materials. 

 

Now add a catalyst -- a spark—and the product is not another gas, but water!  As michelle says: Pure, cool, wondrous water is formed.   

 

From gases, from something we cannot see, we get water – something we can hold and drink and bathe with and swim in, something tangible and refreshing -- and essential to our lives. 

 

Was that too much?  I’ll tell you the truth: it’s hard for me to think about.  Gases plus spark equals water. A mystery.

 

But – tonight – let’s try, just for tonight, to extend this idea of an equation in which we start with one kind of thing and end with another.  To a mystery more vast and more incomprehensible and – yes – more filled with joy than the mystery of H20.

For tonight, and for always, the equation is this:

 

A tiny baby, lying in slumber deep, and a human community in constant turmoil and pain – those are the materials with which we begin.

 

Love – that’s the catalyst.  God’s great love for all of us.

And the product? The product of baby plus humanity catalyzed by God’s love?

A whole, complete, healed, redeemed world.

 

The end product doesn’t look anything like the materials with which we start, and yet -- There it is: the simple, elegant equation: Jesus is the savior of the world.

 

Jesus, that tiny baby, is born tonight, to make whole, to heal, to re-create, to make new. 

 

Jesus is the savior.

 

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

 

 

From our house (where Glinda, the Church Parking Lot Cat, has a starring role) to yours . . . May this be a day of light and joy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St. Mary Star of the Sea

 

Christmas, 2008.

 

Stunned, dazed, bereft, the four of us staggered around Key West in a fog.

 

We had opted for the "change everything" holiday advice to the bereaved.

 

Instead of hosting forty friends in our home for the most traditional of Christmas festivities, our tiny family barbecued seafood on the deck in Key West.  (When we called our friends at home, dear Lynda, whose husband had also died that year, and who had chosen the "everything the same" alternative, and I spoke, and we agreed that there was no solace to be had in either case.)

 

Instead of a Christmas Eve service in the Gothic sanctuary in which we had spent almost all of the previous twenty-five Christmas Eves, we went to the Episcopal church on Duval Street, but ended up on the front steps in tears long before the liturgy concluded.  There we were confronted with a band across the street playing music with obscene lyrics, a direct finger-in-your face gesture to those in the candlelit church.  The Worst Christmas Eve Ever.

 

Instead of the wide expanse of the St. Augustine oceanfront, we tracked sand in from the narrow beaches of the Keys.  Florida magic, Florida birds, Florida skies ~ but in a place we had not shared with Josh.

 

One of my discoveries during my many expeditions near Mile 0 was the Basilica of St. Mary Star of the Sea.  My photo of its chancel window appears on Picturing God today!  The website for the basilica is filled with information, including a description of the window ~ scroll down on this page.

 

I was reminded of that Key West day when another Picturing God contributor offered an image of the spires of the church some time ago. I was sure that somewhere in my messy mass of completely disorganized photos was a picture of the window. 

 

2008.  It was to be more than a year before I encountered any sense of God again, and nearly two years before I was to make friends with Mary at Wernersville, and to find a miniscule of a bit more. 

 

But despite the elusive and silent God who was to dominate my seminary experience, I found this window to be beautifully powerful.  I would love to see it again someday, someday now that the warmth of the Florida  sun is perceptible again.


 

Another Advent and Christmas Season (Almost) Behind Us

I wish that I understood the phenomenon to some small extent, but I am at least coming to expect it. 

At these times of year, these times of anticipation and excitement, God recedes further, and further, and further into the distance.

I don't know why that should be.  People speak so frequently, and so eloquently, of the comfort provided by the presence of God.   I wonder what they know that I don't.

Have you ever looked backward through a telescope?  The image is so small ~ a miniature of itself.

We went to what used to be my home church for the midnight service on Christmas Eve ~ my own responsibilities in my own church completed a few hours earlier, I was officially on vacation.  We were last at our "old" church in 2007.  

In 2007, I was still an active elder, and a first-year seminary student who hadn't quite grasped that it would not be my home church for much longer.   And I had, of course, no idea that in 2008 we would want to erase the holiday season in its entirety from the calendar.

This year, the  service was again elegant, the music spectacular, and the milk-and-cookies afterward a wonderful time of seeing old friends.    Much laughter, and a blend of serious conversation as well, as some of the same people who had been at the outdoor memorial service a few nights previous for the young woman who had just died were there also. 

It's good to be with people who don't mind that you simply skipped the last five years.

But as worship began, as the choir sang so beautifully and the pastors spoke with such passion and joy, that was the image that came to mind: that I was looking backward through a telescope at a life that used to be mine.  They all seemed to belong to another universe entirely.  This one is so very much changed.

There Shall a Star Come Out of Jacob ~ Merry Christmas

is.

Those boarding school years were rough ones.  

But among the compensations: singing this.

A Shepherd's Story (Isaiah and Luke)(Sermon for Christmas Eve)

I am one of the younger ones – a youngest child – which was my main qualification for becoming a shepherd.  I don’t know how much you know about shepherds in my time – the time of Jesus – but shepherding is not a preferred occupation.  It’s the older children, sons mostly, who are the focus of attention, education, training, and land. Those of us at the bottom of the heap – we become shepherds.  We stay out all night, we get dirty and smelly and tired and hungry, and we take care of animals who – well, I’ll get to them in a minute.

There  are some famous younger sons in the Bible, some famous shepherds.  Jacob, for instance – remember Jacob?  He stole his older brother Esau’s birthright and then ran away, and ended up caring for the flocks of his kinsman Laban. Then he married Laban's oldest daughter, Leah -- the oldest are always first!  before – after a long and convoluted series of eventshe also married Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, the love of his life.  Rachel also “kept her father’s sheep.”  Now that’s an intriguing story – two younger children, two shepherds, marrying one another, and Jacob becoming the father of  the twelve sons who would become the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel.

There’s another youngest shepherd son who became even more famous than Jacob: David.  David, the great king of Israel, was the youngest of seven or eight brothers and became – surprise! – a shepherd by trade.  But God had other plans for him, plans that no one in his family could have imagined: that he would become a great warrior, a great statesman, and the King of all Israel.

Well, those are good stories, but they don’t apply to most of us.  Most of us are out there in the fields with our sheep, and we always will be.  And the sheep themselves?  I was going to tell you about them.  Troublesome animals.  They wander off.  They get tangled up in brambles and stuck on cliffs  – sometimes they even fall off.  They don’t think for themselves; they follow anything that moves.  They won’t drink from rivers or streams – we have to use rocks to create pools of still water for them.  They are not intelligent or graceful or skilled animals.  That’s who we take care off.  Troublesome animals.

Not that we don’t develop deep affection for them – we do.  We get to know our sheep, and we love them, and we watch over them carefully and treat them kindly.  But they are difficult creatures.

Now that I’ve described something of my life and work, you might wonder how my friends and I got tangled up in the events of Christmas.  Good question!

There we were, minding our own business.  It was a usual night.  Kind of chilly, since the sky was so clear.  Thousands of stars up there.  But we had warm blankets, and the sheep were settling down, occasionally baa-ing and bleating as they bumped up close to one another for warmth.  Nothing very exciting. 

And then, out of that cold, clear, dark sky, out of the darkness in which we walked every night, out of the darkness in which stars and moon were our only companions: an angel appeared.  An angel!  We were so astonished, so taken aback – I’m not even sure that I could tell you what it looked like.  Light, surely – there was a glimmering, shimmering, radiant light, yes.  Wings? – there may have been wings.  I’m not sure.  A voice? – yes, we heard a voice.

And we were terrified.  Absolutely, unwaveringly, without a doubt: Terrified. TERRIFIED.

And the voice said, “Do NOT be afraid. I am bringing to YOU great news for ALL.”  And then the voice – the angel – told us that our Savior, the Messiah, has been born, and that we would find him a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

And then, suddenly, as suddenly as the first had appeared, the sky was filled with a multitude of angels.  LOTS of angels. They FILLED the sky.  And they were all crying out, “Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest! “

And then they were gone.

Well, what would you do?    What would you do if an angel appeared and said something completely unexpected?  Not, “I am bringing everyone else some good news from which you yourselves might snatch a crumb”?  No -  I am bringing to YOU great news for EVERYONE!

I’ll tell you what we did. We took off.  We decided that a journey was in order, and we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and we woke up the sheep and we headed for the place which had been described to us.  And when we got there, we saw exactly what we’d been told we’d see: a mother and a father, and a newborn baby, lying in a manger, warmed by the hay and by the animals huddled together inside.

That little family, those parents – they looked as unsettled and surprised as we were.  We learned later that they had come to town for the tax census; I’m sure that they’d been hoping to make it home again before the baby arrived.    And we learned that they were ordinary people, as we are -- a carpenter and a young mother far from home, as we are, with a newborn for whom they could barely provide. 

A newborn who was the Savior of the world.  The king of all creation.

It was a most unlikely occasion.

We ourselves, we shepherds, were all the youngest, the people with the least in the way of prospects. No one listened to us, admired us, even wanted us around. And as the least of people, our job was to keep the least of animals.

And yet we were called, by heavenly beings, to journey, to gather, to celebrate, and to proclaim.

Think about it: We are the least, and we care for the least. And we’re the ones who were called to see, and we’re the ones to whom the good news was first entrusted

When you are among the least, when you walk in a land of deep darkness, light shines.

When you care for the least – for those who stumble and wander away and get lost and fall down – you proclaim God with us –  God healing all – God embarking upon the labor of restoring all creation.

Someday, the baby we saw will be known as the good shepherd.

He will walk among the least, and light will shine.

He will care for the least, and God’s compassion will be revealed.

He will die as one of the least, and his alignment with us will be complete.

He will rise, and there will be rejoicing in the midst of sorrow.

And tonight it begins:

When we are among the least – when we live in the darkness of grief, of anger, of loneliness, of poverty, of frustration, of conflict -- when we like sheep have gone astray – the light shines.

And when we care for the least, when we feed and house and sit with and hope with and pray with the least – we proclaim God with us. 

We may be the youngest, the roughest, the most excluded, the most unlikely of visionaries and messengers – but the baby Jesus brings good news to us for all.

For unto us a child is born.

Merry Christmas. 




(With thanks to theologian James Alison, who raised the Scriptural theme of youngest sons for me in Broken Hearts and New Creations.)

Have You Seen a Child the Color of Wheat, the Color of Dawn?

From Amahl and the Night Visitors:


The mother remarks on the packages the kings have been carrying, "Oh these beautiful things, and all that gold!"
Melchior tells her, "These are the gifts to the child."
the Mother: "Hmmm the child... which child?"
Melchior: "We don't know . But the star will guide us to him."
the Mother: "But perhaps I know him... what does he look like?"
Melchior:

Have you seen a child the color of wheat... the color of dawn?
His eyes are mild; his hands are those of a king - as king he was born.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side; and the eastern star is our guide.

the Mother:

Yes, I know a child the color of wheat.... the color of dawn.
His eyes are mild; his hands are those of a king as king he was born.
But no one will bring him incense or good... though sick and poor and hungry and cold.
He is my child my son, my darling my own.

Melchior:

Have you seen a child the color of earth... the color of thorn?
His eyes are sad; his hands are those of the poor as poor he was born.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side, and the eastern star is our guide.

the Mother:

Yes, I know a child the color of earth... the color of thorn.
His eyes are sad; his hands are those of the poor, as poor he was born.
But no one will bring him incense or gold... though sick and poor and and hungry and cold.
He is my child, my son, my darling... my own.

Melchior:

The child we seek holds the seas and the winds on his palm.
The child we seek has the moon and the stars at his feed.
Before him, the eagle is gentle the lion is meek.

All the kings join in a chorus:

Choirs of angels hover over his roof and sing him to sleep.
He's warmed by breath.
He's fed by mother who is both virgin and queen.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side, and the eastern star is our guide.

And at the same time, the mother sings about her own son:

The child I know on his palm holds my heart.
The child I know at his feet has my life.
He is my child, my son, my darling, my own...
And his name is Amahl.

Christmas

Before we headed down to my Small Church on Christmas Eve, my husband suggested that we surprise the congregation with luminarias on the walks.  His idea; the kids' execution, as he took off to see his mother, re-hospitalized for complications of her heart surgery two weeks earlier.  (She's expected home again tomorrow.)

I was very grateful that he made it back and that my family was with me for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services.  The people at church loved the lights and responded with enthusiasm to both services.  I know that I'm still in my honeymoon period as their pastor, but it's wonderful to serve a congregation that expresses its appreciation at every opportunity.

We spent Christmas evening at the dinner hosted by the family who took over our 20-year tradition after Josh died.  We haven't been here for the past three years, but the combination of cancer and calendar conspired to keep us in town this year. The evening was beautiful: the house, the tables, the food, and the friendship.  I came home pretty early, exhausted by the previous two days, but everyone else was there for hours more.

It was hard ~ all the other young men were there, those who live here and those who live in Boston and Portland, and the one who brought his wife and baby home from Chicago, which I see as the future that was intended for us ~ but I guess that I'm getting used to it.   Christmas will never really seem like Christmas again, but then, neither will anything else.

And so . . .  a blend of melancholy and gratitude, missing my boy and yet grateful that I have been given work that forces me out of myself to think of others and their longings.  I am well aware that I'm not alone.  My husband's brother is confronting both his family's grief over his mother-in-law's death a week ago and his own mother's medical situation, two women in my congregation are making their way through their first Christmas as widows, and several others as fairly recent widows, and a friend from my home church stopped me in the grocery a couple of days ago to say that she wished that the Blue Christmas service had been held again this year.

I have to admit that I am grateful that next year's calendar will permit an immediate post-Christmas Eve escape!

Room at the Inn (Christmas Eve Sermon)

It's a monologue, spoken in the voice of Mahala, the midwife and innkeeper, and here's the end of it, more or less:

Where is your inn?  Where is your life crowded, and noisy, and ordinary?

               In your home?  At your job?  On your farm? 

               At your school?  Where you volunteer?

 

A friend once told me that she had realized that, if Jesus came to dinner, she would be so busy with the preparations and the serving and the cleanup that she would never sit down to talk with him.

What about if he came as an infant?  

Would you overlook him, in order to get on with more adult preoccupations?

Would you get busy with diapers and formula and forget to gaze upon the newborn?

Or would you realize that you have a manger somewhere?

               That you do have room?  In unexpected places?

I had room out back.

            

Maybe you make room in those places in which you help friends who need rides and household help. Maybe you have room in those times when you volunteer for the homeless or give to the community center. Maybe you find room when you welcome new folks to church. Maybe you have room in the busiest parts of your life, when you stop whatever it is you’re doing to pay attention to what someone else is saying. Maybe you have room in the darkest, loneliest, saddest places – the places out back.

I think – I think that we’re all innkeepers in one way or another.

But we may not realize just where we need to make room. 

My stable turned out to be the most important part of my inn.

What about in your life? Where is the light glowing?  Where is your manger?

Thanks be to God for the one who is here to make it shine!

Image from The Nativity Story (2006)

              

King's College Choir, Cambridge

Blue Christmas

There is no question in my mind; it's my friend  Karen East who should be the pastor.  I don't know many people who can hold a candle to her compassion, eloquence, and faith.  She's written  the best piece I've read this year about the experience of the holiday season for those of us who live on the far side of jolly.

O Lord - Or Not?

I've tried without success to recall anything of significance about the Advent or Christmas seasons of my twenties.  The Quiet Husband and I were married, and in graduate and law school, and then we embarked upon our careers, working in large downtown firms and returning to our first suburban home in the evenings.  We decorated Christmas trees in our apartments and in our first house, and we spent time with family over the holidays ~ but I'm not sure that we darkened the doors of a church or discussed God in any way until the end of that decade of our lives.  It wasn't that we were materialistic or culture-bound ~ we simply were not people of faith.

Yesterday's O Antiphon calls Jesus Lord.  It seems odd to me, now, that there should have been a decade of my life in which the idea of calling and following someone as Lord was entirely foreign to me.  Not surprising ~ most of my closest family and friends are in the same boat today.  But odd, in that, slowly but persistently, Jesus Christ has become so the center and focus of my life that it is difficult for me to imagine it otherwise.

Everything back then was about work.  Clothes, house, friends, vacations ~ everything revolved around work.  

If I look back at that decade with a view toward God in all things, I would say that, insofar as my own life was concerned, God was providing me with many opportunities to prepare intellectually for the call that would become mine three decades later.

I wish that I had been able to notice, back then, and prepare in other ways as well.  I wish that work had not been Lord.  I wish that those years had not been so barren of any knowledge of the God who sustains the universe.

I find that I am envious of those several of my college students who have written papers and emails stating that their introduction-to-religion course has challenged their complacency about their faith, caused them to realize they do not know nearly as much as they once they thought they did, generated an appreciation for other faith traditions and, in some cases, sent them scurrying off to make appointments with ministers and priests for further exploration.  

I was nothing at all like they are.  And I am much the poorer for it.

O Wisdom! Teenage Christmases

Yesterday's O Antiphon hailed Christ as Wisdom.

As I was rummaging back through Christmases past, it occurred to me that the teenage years are not themselves generally viewed as a period of wisdom, at least not in contemporary western culture.  And yet, isn't much of the foundation for what will, one hopes, become a mature understanding laid in those chaotic years?

When I think of Advent seasons during those years, I discover that I was, indeed, becoming more aware of the world around me and of the reality that I was not ~ surprise! ~ at its center. 

The Ursuline nuns who ran the boarding school I attended during my middle school years endeavored to ensure that we understand we were responsible for more than our own little world in part by taking us deeper into the Appalachian countryside to deliver Christmas packages.  One house in particular still stands out in my memory: nestled into gentle hills, its interior walls were entirely covered in newspaper.  I was baffled at the time; now, I suppose it was a matter of insulation.

We all (yes, even I) sang a Christmas concert each year just before our vacation began.  One year when several of us were behaving rather badly, the imposing Sister Miriam, who was in charge of our musical efforts, waved her finger magisterially in the air.  "For many in our audience, this is the one respite of music and cheer that they will experience all winter!  Now pull yourselves together!"

Music flowed through my life in those years, all of it an invitation to something far grandeur than anything I could imagine on my own.  My second boarding school boasted an impressive music program.  Possessing limited abilities, I participated only on the fringes, but two nights, both from December of my senior year, stand out in my memory even today.

The first was an all-school Messiah sing.  I had no idea what Handel's Messiah was, but a friend dragged me out to the event.  Despite my six boarding school years of religious classes and observances,  I had no interest in the God whom I perceived to be an imaginary figure.  The music that poured out of the old auditorium building that evening, into the dark and across the snow, was the first intimation that I might be wrong.

We, too, presented a Christmas concert the night before we all departed for our homes. That particular year, as the magnificent choruses were concluded and we all burst out of the chapel into a snowstorm, one of my best friends, a girl from Arizona, cried out, "I'm so glad that I go to boarding school in New England!"

Most of the time, neither of us were glad of any such thing.  But there is something about the music of the season, something in the generosity of those who share their traditions of service and song with a new generation, something transcendent that hints at the potential for wisdom to emerge . . . someday.

Online Images: 1983 Christmas Vespers at Northfield School's Sage Chapel

Childhood Christmas

 It was about 6:00 a.m. on Christmas morning and my father, sleepy in his pajamas, was most unhappy.

"GO! OUTSIDE!" he exclaimed, and retreated to his bedroom.

We were a blended family before such a term existed.  My widowed father and divorced stepmother had joined forces the preceding winter, and combined us into a household that included  10-year-old me and 10-year old stepbrother, almost 8-year-old-brother, and 5-year-old-stepbrother.  

We were not destined to become a well-orchestrated unit.  As Tolstoy tells us, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," and in that regard, I suppose, we are all alike.  The details don't seem to matter anymore, but there were difficult and hateful moments, even on our first attempt at a Christmas Day in 1963. 

But at 6:00 a.m.?  We were a group of kids, a tad bedraggled and unwieldy in our losses of parents and siblings to death and divorce, but kids, nevertheless: exuberant, energetic, and wide-awake to the four glistening snow saucers and four shiny sleds under the tree.

Boots and hats and mittens went flying and so did we, down the hillside on which our house was perched, over and over again in the dark of Christmas morning.  Mr. Shivers, our basset hound, bounded up and down the hill, delighted by the snow and the shrieks of laughter,  and for a few minutes at the crisp and cold break of day, we were

Just Kids. 

This N' That

The living room finally looks a little like Christmas ~ greens and lights and manger scene figures here and there.  This is the first of the last four years in which I have had the slightest interest in a tree ~ and it would be cheering, late at night, since I'm sleeping in the living room ~ but with the kids' finals and The Quiet Husband's insane work project (he worked a literal 24 hours last Sunday) and, well, me ~ no tree yet.  We have scheduled tomorrow afternoon as tree purchase time.  We'll see.

**********

I've learned to make no commentary to the plastic surgeon's nurse.  The last two weeks, when she asked how I was, I sort of told the truth about my challenges, and was immediately treated to a firm lecture on what I should and should not be doing.  I guess she takes her role as an educator seriously, but all I was looking for were a couple of words of affirmation and commiseration.  I forget that there are people with no listening skills whatever.  Henceforth, I'm limiting my responses to "Fine." 

**********

I'm pondering Christmas.  Years 1 and 3, we simply swept out of town. Year 2, I was doing my student pastor gig, and found myself reading the Lucan narrative to hundreds of people at the midnight service. Numb, practically catatonic.  Relief came with a 6:00 am flight south.  Now we have arrived at Year 4, I have a congregation to consider, and my situation will keep us in town.  I guess it's a Just Do It situation.  I don't feel the despair that I have in the past, but I'd still prefer to skip the entire month.

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I am genuinely stunned by how tired I still am. I suppose that I'm healing so well because my body is directing about 99% of its energy to that task.  Doesn't leave me a lot for anything else.

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Ignatius of Loyola is an outstanding companion for the physically incapacitated.

A Different Kind of Christmas - Part 3

 

We are hunkered down in a very cold Cedar Key, which is giving me ample time to reflect upon Christmas while everyone else watches football.

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And so we went back to St. Augustine, one of our family's special places, for Christmas Eve.  We stayed in town, rather than out on the beach, but even there we were surrounded by the memories of twenty spring vacations as a family.  We took a long walk through the Old City, had dinner at The Colombia Restaurant, and went to the late service at Memorial Presbyterian Church.  

I was exhausted after two days of driving and most of the sermon went right by me, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about Christmases past.  And I gave some thought to oil and railroad magnate Henry Flagler who built the church in memory of his daughter, who perished in childbirth.  One website says that it's the only example of  Venetian Renaissance architecture in the United States.  It's beautiful  (although not remotely Presbyterian in form or name in any traditional sense), and looks to be a wonderfully active congregation.  Organ fans may listen here for a taste of the music:

(They're looking for an associate pastor, too ~ wish we were ready to move to St. Augustine permanently!)  

We've worshiped there on occasional Palm Sundays and Easter Sundays in past years, but never before have I had cause to think about the heartbreak that led the man determined to blaze a railroad through the wilds of Florida to build such an incredible house of worship in his adopted community.   It's odd, the ways in which we are all connected in this world, one way or another.  My husband once worked for Standard Oil and I was an attorney for Chessie Railroads ~ and Henry Flagler's determination to open Florida to commerce and tourism probably accounts in no small way for my family's presence there through four generations.  

And yet in the end, perhaps the deepest connections lie in lost children and the effort to respond with creativity and hope for others.

A Different Kind of Christmas - Part 2

It's hard to believe that our Blue Christmas service was less than a week ago. It wasn't something I would have been up to in the previous two years, but this year it felt just right ~ to suggest, to help plan, and to lead. 

We created a simple service, based upon a liturgy we found online:  Isaiah Advent readings alternating with the O Antiphons in the form of the verses of O Come, O Come Emmanuel, with a candle-lighting in which everyone was invited to participate.  There were other prayers and readings and music, but I think that people were most moved by the quiet candle-lighting and the haunting verses cantored in a beautiful soprano voice.

Simple though it was, it was also a tremendous amount of work, and as we put it all together, I observed the process from the point of view of a hoping-to-be-called-pastor. I hope as well that someday I will be capable of exercising the kind of leadership that the pastors of my home church have, leadership that calls forth and supports the gifts of so many others in the congregation.  Music director as organist, choir member as cantor, chair of worship ministry as co-planner and with another member that committee, designer of beautiful space, several other members as readers ~ and we all worked seamlessly together. 

Insofar as the service itself was concerned, I had little sense of it from a participant's standpoint, but the emails that came afterward tell me that it was a great success.  One of the readers said that she had been skeptical of a service devoted to sadness, but that afterward she felt freed up to engage in the remainder of the week.  I realized that I felt much the same way.  Something of a transformation for those of us for whom the Christmas season has been something to endure rather than to celebrate!  Many others seemed relieved and even grateful for a place in which all those emotions which are generally deemed unacceptable, especially at this time of year, were articulated aloud.

I opened the service with some very brief remarks about the lunar eclipse that would take place a few hours later, saying that all of us there were like the moon: living in a circle of darkness and yet, whether we could see it or not, surrounded by a rim of light, a light that the darkness does not overcome.

And I think that we were indeed a little circle of insistent light, creative and hopeful in the face of the darkness of loss.

A Different Kind of Christmas - Part I

For years we did pretty much the same thing each Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, expanding the traditions as our circle of friends expanded:

Christmas Eve church service(s) and a party at a friend's before and/or after, depending upon which service(s) we attended.  Last night at church in St. Augustine I found myself thinking of some of the best memories of those years, but I'll include only two here, both of Josh and me:

When he was one and one-half, he simply could not settle down during the Christmas Eve service, and so I found myself walking the halls with him, me all dressed up and Josh wearing a fuzzy footed sleeper.  "Come here," waved one of the older men of the church, who was out in the hallway himself as the candle-lighting began.  He escorted me into the back of the chancel, behind the lectern, so that we could watch the candles being lit from the front to the back of the cavernous sanctuary from the best vantage point in the house.  Josh was spellbound (finally!).

Many years later, a teen-aged Josh agreed to go with me to a midnight service.  Everyone else thought that the one we had attended earlier was enough.  After church we drove around for a bit, looking at the streets lined with luminarias in the snow, and as we headed home, we passed a Baptist church, still alight and with its parking lot full at nearly 1:00 a.m.  "Well, Mom, we've been to the Methodists and the Presbies; do you think we should try the Baptists?" he joked.

Back to our traditions, the same year after year:

Christmas morning at home opening our presents.

Christmas afternoon cleaning and cooking.

Christmas evening hosting friends and occasionally family ~ over 40 people some years. There were years in which there were eight or nine children ~ two of them our boys ~ the same age (plus all the others) and two trees and Hanukkah lighting and other lights and candles all over the place.

After Josh died, we decided to go for completely different.  

In 2008 we went to Key West.  We tried the Episcopal Church midnight service and ended up in tears outside the front entrance.  We grilled seafood kabobs and ate an evening Christmas Dinner on our deck, just the four of us, and that was peaceful and quiet and about what we could bear.

Last year we went to Marathon, also in the Keys.  Christmas Eve found The Quiet Husband and The Lovely Daughter driving south, me participating numbly in worship leadership in my field ed church,  and The Gregarious Son and I heading for the airport at 3:30 a.m.  On New Year's Eve the Quiet Husband landed in the hospital overnight and two days later we all drove home, abandoning two return plane tickets, because he couldn't.  Not an auspicious year for family healing.

This year we may have found some balance.

To be continued . . . and in the meantime, I hope that you are all recalling wonderful times past today.