Grandma, Reindeer, and Sacred Surprises

I don't know where this month has gone! I do know that I have been traveling a lot, or so it has seemed, in large part because this is The Year my children have established themselves apart from me: Daniel emptied the "nest" in May; Rachel delivered my first grandchild in July; and David, well, he's been his own independent self for quite a little while now. So, a Christmas without kids... Very different.... So I went to them for some holiday face time-- I was gonna say something to the effect that "the mountain went to Mohammad," but that didn't seem to be appropriate, not even in a year when Eh'd (I think it's spelled) fairly coincides with Christmas!

In any case, I've had a chance or two to reflect on the current state of my life, and have the following observations:

1) My granddaughter is growing up in a very different world than I did, or at least, her parents are preparing her for whatever is out there in ways quite different from what my parents did with me. When I was an infant, I had a wooden playpen, with bars far enough apart for me to get my head stuck in between, if I'd wanted. It was on casters, and I was able to move it around the room by shaking the bars in just the right way. I had few toys there to keep me company, mostly plastic rattles. The crib's pad was thin, and pastel to the point of being nearly white.

My granddaughter on the other hand is growing up in a world of primary colors, and animal shapes. It is already a "jungle out there" for her, but that's OK, because the lions and monkeys and giraffes all smile back at her. Not only is everything she plays with colorful, but it is well padded! And there is a LOT of it! She "sits" (her feet are able to touch, and she actually can stand in place with minimal support) in the center of this one toy, surrounded by a multitude of objects that rattle, buzz, ring, and play short tunes, and everything can be put safely into her mouth so that she can come to know it better.

Watching her, I couldn't help but think how things had changed since my day-- or Rudolf's! What constitutes "reindeer games" has sure become more complicated, and more electronic!

To help catch up with my granddaughter's world, I exchanged my old phone for a new one. The newer model not only makes calls, but sends text messages, "instantly" if I want; has a camera and a video recorder; and can play music, and even do email-- pretty much anything one would get connected to the internet for. All in a device about 1"X3"... And this is not the fanciest model of such contraptions by any means! No, Daniel got himself one of those...

I can only imagine what my granddaughter will be doing to stay au currant with technology in her lifetime...

2) Plus ca change, plus le meme chose may no longer be true when it comes to technology, but I have found it comforting to try to grasp some things from my past to make Christmas meaningful this year. After all, this was the year that "Grandma got run over by a reindeer"... I apologize if putting it that way seems irreverent, but when that song came from the radio on Christmas Eve, it let me laugh a little in the middle of my mourning...

Not only was I without my children this year, but I was also without my mother... So one thing I did was make "Grandmom's Famous Cinnamon Buns"-- a scratch recipe of the best one can imagine-- and it turned out that my daughter AND my sister did as well! Remembering Mom through her cooking would be one thing she'd appreciate. And it turned out that it made Christmas morning a little sweeter, too...

3) The other thing I did on Christmas Eve was attend the Candlelight Service at my favorite local United Methodist Church. This was something we did as a family when I was growing up, and somehow I thought I'd "find" my mother more readily in the denomination in which I was raised as opposed to the one I've chosen for myself. I was pleased to find them celebrating communion, too-- something the Methodist church of my childhood did not do on Christmas Eve. The result was a nice blend of my roots and my own "trunk!"

I don't think my mother would have liked the homily the pastor offered, however! Not because it wasn't good, but because he mentioned the annual Harley Davidson rally in Sturgis, SD, and my mother had this way of reacting negatively to certain words or concepts, regardless of how benignly they were used-- and "motorcycle rally" would have been one of them!

For myself, I found the pastor's main point a good one: He said, "there were no angels at the manger!" His point was that the angels came to the shepherds, and then went back to heaven, so that Mary & Joseph had to learn about the angels not directly, but indirectly, through the shepherds... The pastor didn't say too much about what this means for us, but I took from his observation that the same might be true in our lives, in our experience. Maybe we are not to have angels ourselves descending from heaven and singing praises to God. But maybe we can hear about God's great blessings best, indirectly, from the witnesses of others, who, in this way, "shepherd" us toward the Holy, and remind us about the ubiquity of the Sacred.

I don't want to say that I had to look hard this holiday for evidence of God's Presence; that would not be true. But my whole year has been one of letting go of so much, and holding onto whatever I could, so that my usual ways of affirming God's Presence have had to be set aside, and I've had to see God in Novelty, in Innovation, and even in the midst of Chaos. And truthfully, I have been very much helped and comforted by those who have come to me as the shepherds did the Holy Family, to assure me that, sometimes with all evidence to the contrary, this is indeed how God is and has been present in my life. Much passes away, but the Love and Grace of God endure...

In a world that is changing more rapidly than I can possibly keep up with, to affirm and confirm God's companionship with me through it all is an act of faith... And a hearing anew of "Emmanuel," "God With Us".... God with me; God with you; God with all of us.

This is the meaning of Christmas for me this year. I trust that you have found your own meaning, too... Blessings...

Soup

I know... It has been a while since I have been active in this form of my writing. I have two excuses! On the one hand, I have been doing "other" writing: a coupla articles and a book proposal with my co-author in AZ. On the other hand, maybe it is as a "Pearls Before Swine" opined recently, that blogs "provide their frustrated creator with the delusional outlet of being a published author." (!)

Anyway, I've built up a backlog of a number of topics... Let me at least give each of them a chance to contribute to what is likely to seem more "stew" or "soup" than anything else...
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First, back on Nov 21, my "astrological forecast" said: "People change-- even you. And lately, especially you! Others approach you wanting to know your secret. How you got from A to Z isn't going to work for everyone, but some will benefit from your story."

I read it and thought: Man, I hope so! It sure would be nice to have a story that some others might benefit from hearing!
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I got my car washed recently, and got a discount from coupons I'm sure we all get in the mail. Along with the usual coupons was one for a $2 Lotto purchase! HA!, I thought. I never play the Lotto-- and suddenly I had a two dollar stake in the estimated $25 million jackpot of that week.

I faced an odd dilemma. I thought of giving my ticket to one of the guys who was doing such a good job on my car, you know, as a tip. How would he regard it? As a gift? As a chance at something "more"? Or would he prefer the cash, straight up? Would I be giving him something real, or something of an illusion? And which would be the greater Good?

HA! I decided to give him the cash, and keep the lottery ticket for myself to see what would happen. I figured he'd rather the "bird in the hand" instead of the "flock" in the bush.

Days later, I'd completely forgotten about the ticket and then had to scrounge through old papers to find the winning numbers... It won't surprise you that none of my numbers matched. I wasn't surprised either!

But what might surprise you is that, when trying to decide whether to keep the lottery ticket or give it away, one question I did NOT ask myself was: What would Jesus do? I had good reason: In a classic sense, a lottery, like all gambling, is a secular form of prayer, only not to God but to the god of Chance. Therefore gambling is a form of idolatry!

Does it surprise us that idolatry is increasingly popular? Or does it surprise us that, per capital, Las Vegas has more churches than any other city in the US?

Anyway, that hard working man who made my car shine is probably never troubled by such questions!
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I was surprised to read in the paper the other day that someone had the intestinal fortitude and good sense to stand up to Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuala who is making such a name for himself in South America. The story goes that, at a conference of leaders of the Spanish-speaking world in Santiago, Chile, the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, had had enough of Chavez' interrupting Spain's Prime Minister. Suddenly, the King said to the president, "Por que no te callas?"-- or "Why don't you shut up?"

That the King spoke for more than just himself can perhaps be measured by the burgeoning popularity throughout the Spanish-speaking world of T-shirts and (of all things) cell phone ring tones using this phrase! A nerve has been touched...

Recently I received as a gift from my son, Daniel, a T-shirt emblazoned with the four letters, "STFU," and the Latin, Subsiste Sermonen Statim. Essentially, this is our college-age peoples' way of saying what the King of Spain did!

Maybe these folks are onto something. I mean, at movies there are repeated pleas from the screen to turn off cell phones and pagers. And how often have you been shopping or in some other public place and heard half of a conversation as someone using a cell phone speaks out loud as if they were alone? These common experiences leave out those occasions when we have to listen to politicians mouth well-rehearsed responses instead of actually communicating something of interest. Haven't you often felt as I do, that in the information age there is increasing less truly useful information, and in a an age of proliferation of personal communication devices, we are experiencing an increase in noise and a decrease in actual communication?

Maybe we need to be able to say to those who are texting during movies or talking in line at the bank or grocery store or whose ringtones disrupt concerts: WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP?!

There ought to evolve a new sense of etiquette that would permit this! It would be very useful-- and perhaps help all of us who, out of a misplaced sense of what it is to be polite, end up having our lives disrupted by the insensitive and the truly impolite!
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Last week, I was given a book to read, The River of Doubt:Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey. Giving me a book is a bit of risky business. I mean, in recent years my list of books unread exceeds my list of books read! The best part of being given a book is the affirmation of the giver that I am a reader... I am... And a writer... Both in an age when books themselves are somewhat an endangered species... See Newsweek of a coupla weeks ago...

But when I was given this book, I had another feeling, too. These months, this time in my life between what was my employment and what will be, has been one of the most difficult periods in my life. Maybe you could tell from what I've written in this space? The best way I have of summing it up is that I've never before lived with so little sense of what God's ultimate Vision is for me... So how then can I have one for myself?

Well, into this space often flows a "river of doubt"... It is a sobering place, to camp beside this river... And doubt is, as Thomas knew, a faith-challenging experience... So perhaps there is a kind of mythic meaning to be gained from reading Teddy's true story?

Of course, the other thought I had about books in general? That maybe the future of publishing is not on paper, but through some sort of internet format...

Perhaps even blogging!

HA! Blessings, everyone! I hope not to be so long between these communications again.