God with us (part 2 of 2)

[namesake note: this is the second of 2 parts.  the first part is here.]

I reflected on my setting when I started this mental escapade - sitting over 2000 years and several thousand miles from that barn and those teenagers and those shepherds and that cow – in a church with over 800 of my closest friends.  We were singing about that baby.

It’s likely that billions of people reflected on the same thing last week.  I wonder how many billions of people have reflected and worshiped in response to that “good news” since it was first published.

In fact, the music on the overhead speakers in every business I patronized last week – Wal-Mart, and McDonald’s, and Target, and Starbucks, and every other icon of American consumerism – was singing about that baby.

There’s no way to deny it, believe it or not, support it or not, love it or not, that the “good news” and that baby have made an impact.  I mean, I hear Caesar Augustus was big in his day, but as far as I know, I’ve never heard a song about him – at least not in Wal-Mart.

On the other hand, there were several songs about a dude called Santa Claus, too.  Apparently, he’s a big deal, as well.  So maybe, that Jesus kid and his story, are just news, but not “good news”.  Maybe the news merely evolved into goodness over the years as a bedtime story for frustrated parents dealing with washing-machine puddles, fevers, and starving children.

BUT . . .

I made cookies and pumpkin bread on Christmas evening, after we had returned from our newly-traditional Christmas dinner at McDonald’s, as my children sat around the table discussing the options for giving away their money.

Our kids are required, once they start receiving an allowance, to put aside a portion of everything they earn, or receive as gifts, for charitable giving.  They get to decide where it goes, but it has to be some type of charity.  We call it “church money” though it doesn’t always go to the church.

For Christmas each year, we gather around the table and talk about the options for giving away any remaining church money they have in their banks.  In years past, the money has gone to World Vision or Samaritan’s Purse.  This year, as I baked, the kids perused and discussed options from two ”gift catalogs” – one from our church for missions projects around the world, and one from Samaritan’s Purse.

The kids brought over $400 to the table, and when it turned out they couldn’t finance everything that was meaningful to them, they dipped into their own personal spending funds to produce another $60.

The nagging cynic on my shoulder says that they responded merely out of their training and environment because we’ve set their expectations and principles in such a way.  That cynic doesn’t stick around long, though, when I start noting the tears and passion that were displayed around that table.  It was an indisputable display of unworldly beauty.

And, I wondered, in response to that experience, if I was witnessing part of the “good news” about a baby savior.  I believe that’s what it was, but I also recognize that a few dollars and some tears don’t justify, much less explain, the hype of this Christmas story.  Kids giving unselfishly is definitely good news, BUT there must be more.

I read something today that helped me along this way, though.  I feel better about it now.

It is an immense hope and is the gift of faith; and faith, it seems, is in part a readiness to receive the symbols not only as gifts of immeasurable value in themselves but as far more; echoes, gleams, reflections, intimations of what George MacDonald calls ‘the secret too great to be told.’ The symbols cannot tell us what it is, but if we are ready and willing to watch and listen and receive, they breathe out to us the knowledge that it is there. To breathe in this breath, to catch its perfume or the echo of its music, the faith that Christ likened to a grain of mustard seed. A simple thing, yet hiding within itself the possibility of miraculous transformation. What the essence of our faith can be, I still do not really know, but I do know the words that come to me when I hear great music or see the sun lighting up the spiders’ webs on a morning when spangled with dew. ‘I bring you good tidings of great joy.’  -  Elizabeth Goudge

There is more.  Seriously, I believe we humans all believe that.

We’re frustrated, though, by the mystery of it all:  the difficulty in comprehending, explaining, and applying the “good news”.

It’s like the discussion my kids and I shared last week with our friend Joliene, the PhD student in Inorganic Biochemistry (whatever that is) at the University of Delaware, about atoms and molecules and the things that Legos are made of.  The language of it all is impossible, and the awareness that everything that is visible is made of things that are invisible is an overwhelming, mind-blowing realization.

We can’t figure out this “good news” stuff.  It’s a different language expressing foreign ideas about invisible, incomprehensible things.  We feel the stirring of it in our hearts and in our hope, but we really can’t fathom the way it all comes together to provide meaning and power in the practical moments of this life.

So, we leave the explanations aside.  We let the story become cliche, full of pop culture, because we can’t figure out how to manage this life and the invisible and distant at the same time. Our hearts tell us it’s true, but we’re not really sure how to talk about it.

Then, yesterday morning, after yet another church service talking about that baby, we sang songs about him.  As we sang, I cried (more water coming out of my face – what’s up with that?!) when we got to the part of the song that says, “. . . there is no one else for me, none but Jesus . . .”

The bad attitude I’ve had and the questions that disturb my soul about this whole Christmas story thing, cannot deter my heart.  I believe it.  I believe it is good news.  He is the savior.  My savior.

I can’t explain it, and I’m often irritated by it, BUT everything that is visible is made from things that are invisible, and everything that is good comes from Jesus.

This one thing I know.

God with us (part 1 of 2)

[namesake note:  this post is entirely too long, so I split it into 2 parts.  it's still too long, BUT . . . ]

“I bring you good tidings of great joy,” the angel proclaimed.  “Today, in the city of David, a savior is born.”

As I listened to the pre-Christmas sermon in our church a couple of weekends back, in the packed worship center with 800 or so of my closest congregant friends, and my kids all tucked away in their classes, except Meghan who was sleeping on my lap, I thought about how cliche the Christmas story has become in our culture and how that reflects my own recent attitude.

The story is not new.  My kids have persuaded me to discontinue the tradition of a dramatic reading of the biblical account on Christmas Eve by explaining that by the time we get to Christmas Eve each year, exhausted and frantic from the season’s pace, they’ve heard the story a dozen times in the previous weeks from various angles and interpretations.  They know the story.

We know the reason for the season, and the arguments for keeping Christ in Christmas, and the importance of saying Merry Christmas rather than Happy Holidays.  We know about the wisemen and the shepherds, the manger and the donkey and the star.  The cattle are lowing at the baby in swaddling clothes, for whatever that’s worth.

Christmas has become cliche and we typically scratch only the surface of its meaning.  What’s the use in letting the story have more time?  We’ve heard it a thousand times, and we’ve heard the arguments for remembering why it needs more time more than a thousand times (or some other big number).  We’re overstuffed with Christmas and the guilt of not giving it its due.

My family spent a lot of time over the last few weeks shopping and running errands, preparing and planning and having hushed conversations about who needs what.  Not to mention the effort expended to meet social obligations – the Christmas pictures and letters, the parties, the neighbors, the cards, the calls.

Meanwhile, we’ve had kids with bronchitis and fevers, a washing machine that’s forming a pond in the laundry room carpet, a 14-year-old minivan with the driver’s door flying open at random moments and the other two doors almost functioning, and a growing list of things that need to be done yesterday in order to maintain the illusion of sanity and competence.

I know, I know.  I’m whiny and cynical, but I’m not finished.

On the Monday before Christmas, the cover photo and story of the New York Times portrayed a pack of starving Zimbabwean children picking up kernels of corn that had been spilled by a passing truck.  The only times in my life I’ve been hungry have been voluntary and temporary.  I found myself trying with great difficulty to relate to the way a child in Zimbabwe, or wherever, would feel as he kneels down to pick up a few crumbs to ease his hunger pains.

Now, as you would suspect from a post such as this, from a well-meaning, yet occasionally pitiful, fellow like myself, there’s a big “BUT” coming somewhere in the next few sentences to redeem all of this pathetic account.  As it is for most of us humans, hope abounds, and even when it doesn’t we like to focus on the “good news”.  We want our heroes to win and get the girl (or the guy); we want the good guys to win, and families to be reunited, and justice to be served.  So, I’ll get to that, and appropriately so.

Before I do, though, let me say that even though it’s been more than a week since that sermon and those initial thoughts on the nicely-wrapped, aesthetically pleasing package that is the Christmas story, I continue to struggle with this issue.  It remains unresolved in me, and disturbing, though I know the answer, and I can recite the prescribed catechism of self-healing theology.  I’m struggling.

I’m struggling to match the heart of the meaning and value of the good news, the Christmas story that clings to the crevices of my cynical soul, bringing the mystery of inexplicable tears to my eyes at its telling (I mean, who designed this whole thing with water falling from our eyes, right in the middle of our faces, anyway?!), with the practicalities of middle-class, Christmas hubbub in American suburbs, and rampant pain and suffering near and far.

I’ve been struggling to get comfortable with the “good news” as revealed by angels to a few scraggly shepherds a couple of bazillion years ago about a wet, dirty, and wrinkled baby born to teenagers in a barn in a tiny village in circumstances that can’t be more foreign in a place I’ve never seen.

I like babies.  They are good news.  Not many of them get those kinds of “savior” accolades before they’ve messed their first set of swaddling clothes, though.

BUT . . .

(To be continued . . . )

against my back

Sometimes when I’m cold, or loved well, or just lucky, Renee will lay against my back after I go to bed, and she’ll put her arm around me.

She has a certain way of intertwining her arm with mine which I’m sure no other human would know how to do.  After nearly 20 years of practice, most of an embrace between two people falls into well-worn patterns.

When she places her arm around me in that way, I am secure and warm and loved.  It’s like a quick-acting sleeping pill.  I am comforted and sleep falls upon me within what seems to me like seconds.

I’m a 42-year-old, 185-pound man, and I am most comforted by my wife’s embrace.  I’m too big to sit in her lap, but the affect is the same.  In mid-life, the crisis is still about a hug.

More than sleep arrives in those moments.  The heart-cry of a boy is met there.  The cry for a strong foundation finds footing.  The confidence needed to engage again in the battle to push back the ever-encroaching darkness takes hold.  The assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen become tangible.  The eternal kind of fortitude, born in the desperation of brokenness and need, is formed in those moments.

A simple hug.  An embrace.  The familiarity of love unfeigned.

Oh, God, how could I ever adequately express my gratitude for such a gift?

ayda charis

Yesterday, I turned 42.  Old like dirt.

Today, my daughter, Ayda Charis, turned 1.  New like Spring.

Here are some things we have in common:

• brown eyes
• same last name
• little hair
• love for Renee
• flappy ear lobes
• relatives
• dna
• temper
• baby fat
• cuddly
• belly buttons
• address
• curiosity
• confusion
• general optimism

Here are some things I have that she doesn’t:

• a job
• gray hair
• debt
• unnecessary wrinkles
• facial hair
• blemishes
• guilty conscience
• driver’s license
• spouse
• children
• honey-do list
• molars
• fillings
• friends
• responsibilities

Here are some things Ayda has that I don’t:

• good looks
• that smile
• future
• potential
• sagging diaper
• admirers
• simplicity
• pink pants
• self-perpetuating foodsource
• cute toes
• unmitigated hope
• renee’s priority attention
• never-ending supply of open arms and laps

Here’s a few things she and I discussed and wanted to pass along to you:

• life is beautiful, get it while it’s hot
• never put off until tomorrow what doesn’t have to be done at all
• when all else fails, cry for your mom (or spouse)
• food is good
• laughter is good medicine, do it loud and often
• talking is for people without communication skills
• take no thought for tomorrow

the spell of it

Years ago, while I was recovering from surgery or sickness of some sort, if my memory serves me right, I read the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia – “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to my daughters, Katie and Hannah.

Last week, over the Thanksgiving weekend, I had a sudden urge to read the second book, “Prince Caspian”, aloud to whomever I could attract.  It turned out to be just Ben and I.  Katie and Hannah came into the room and listened briefly before moving on to other teenage things.  Ben and I enjoyed ourselves for a couple of hours, though, and made it halfway through the book.

Then Renee rented the movie for all of the kids, so we gave up on the reading and did the watching.  Disappointing, but real.

A few days ago, Ben and I discussed the possibility of moving on to book three – “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”.  This morning, as  I sliced leftover Thanksgiving ham for breakfast, Ben suggested we make our way to Wal-Mart so he could spend the twenty dollars he had earned shoveling snow last week, then walk to Starbucks for drinks and a reading session.

This afternoon, we did just that.  I have never read this third book in the series, but I’ve heard some quotes from it which have always been a bit magical to me.  I was looking forward to reading it, and the first 3 chapters have not let me down.

I like reading the English version of English, especially from someone so talented as C.S. Lewis, but the story and the symbolism sings to my heart.  It’s so simple and yet so moving.  I have not enjoyed the movies as much, but the language of the books and the poetic elements of the magical story move me.

Reepicheep, the two-foot tall, chivalrous, sword-fighting, knight of a mouse, is the best part of the magic.  He continually displays the honorable loyalty, courage, and commitment of a knight, devoted to Aslan, and whenever he expresses such thoughts, my heart melts and longs to join his story.

After reading some of Reepicheep’s sentiments, I had to stop and explain to Ben and Noah, there at our corner table in Starbuck’s, the beauty of the meaning of these symbolic words, as I remember doing with similar words to Katie and Hannah all those years ago.  I become giddy, and the boys laugh – with me or at me, I cannot tell – but they get the symbolism and I love that.

Explaining his presence and mission aboard the “Dawn Treader” to Lucy and Edmund, Reepicheep says:

“Why would we not come to the very eastern end of the world?  And what might we find there? I expect to find Aslan’s own country.  It is always from the east, across the sea that the great Lion comes to us.” . . .

“But do you think,” said Lucy, “Aslan’s country would be that sort of country – I mean the sort you could ever sail to?”

“I do not know, Madam,” said Reepicheep, “But there is this.  When I was in my cradle a wood woman, a Dryad, spoke this verse over me:

‘Where sky and water meet,

Where waves grow sweet,

Doubt not, Reepicheep,

To find all you seek,

There is the utter East.

“I do not know what it means.  But the spell of it has been on me all my life.”

I know, it seems silly that an old man would be moved by the simple words of a talking mouse about the pursuit of a heavenly country.  I can’t help it though.

I want to have such courage, such unwavering commitment to pursuing the country of my Lord, even without knowing what I’ll find along the way, or at my destination.  I’m inspired to take up the pursuit, and to be loyal to my heart’s longing.

The spell of it has been on me all my life.  I hope to put that spell on my children, too.

Near the end of the “Dawn Treader’s” voyage, Reepicheep explains the power of it:

My own plans are made.  While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader.  When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise . . .

malcontent

I know that Paul says all that stuff about being content in every circumstance, and I’m okay with that.  My circumstances are generally acceptable.

Paul also says, though, in other places and in other ways, things about pressing on and striving and travailing and beseeching (at least in the KJV language) and those aren’t very contented words.

So, I’ve tried to figure out how to be content and not be content at the same time.  Along the way, I’ve realized that whether I can figure it out or not, I’m already doing it.  I am a highly contented malcontent.  You might say that I’m contently discontented, if those are real words and if they can be used like that.

I’m generally content with what we’ve got, the way we live, and the circumstances, realizing that any or all of that is subject to change without notice, and I’m always willing to accept more but seldom willing to passionately pursue it.  I’m crabby, though, in several ways, and I’m generally driven to poke and prod at all of the boundaries I see, both self-imposed and world-imposed.  In that way, I’m generally discontented.

Somehow these can be reconciled, can’t they?  This is good, right?

My friend, KJ, tells me that I write about this often.  I guess he’s right, but I think it’s been longer than that, so I feel justified that it’s high time to hit this topic again.

Can I get a witness up in here, please?

I want more – not more stuff, just more life, more Jesus, more beauty, more assurance that I’m not wasting my time.  Precious time.

The problem is that I’m dying.  I’ll be 42 in no time flat, and that’s just plain scary.  I think that death makes us nervous like long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs.  We’re rushing toward this uncertain deadline and fairly sure that we haven’t finished the prep for it.  We haven’t done enough, or seen enough, or been to enough places.

I’m running out of time.  Time is precious.  That makes me a malcontent, I guess.

How do you feel about it?