I am not one to whom hope comes easily, But it does come.
Serious faith for misfits, lousy joiners, and other homesick souls
Month: December 2011
Today I listened to even more stories hard to hear, Stories that were never meant to have to be told. I am reminded there are places where life is still taken from the young, children are unwanted or used, and innocence can be traded for cigarettes and bags of chips.
It is this very world into which every child is born. This life, with all of its risks and violence, is where every human body has to live. We like to think we do our best. Not everyone does. Some tearthrough the landscape of life like a wildfire out of control. This is the world into which every baby is born.
It is in this molested, abandoned, cockeyed world that Mary has her baby. God was born into all of our danger like every child and in fact even he didnât make it out alive, âŚat least as far as we could see at that time. Perhaps that is as far was we can see now.
God knew the mess Jesus was getting into and Jesus came anyway. There is no darkness God refuses to touch, or to be touched by. There is no darkness into which the light is not willing to shine.
Let this be our last night of waiting.
related post:
Yeah, Actually, Mary Did Know.
Something happened to me at Roseanne’s birthday party. She can not sit up on her own let alone stand our walk. She does not speak. She can not feed herself and she can only eat soft foods. She is someone who many people see far more quickly as an “it” than a “hello my name isâŚ.” Her birthday party is one of those moments I can point back to and say, this is the moment that changed my life.
I liked going on tour with the college choir. Â The old music wasn’t much to my liking. I guess I harbored a conviction that the old church songs related to old people, that is was time for new songs 
and “relevant” songs only. Â My sent me on a quest to stay with Don Adams when I got to Roswell New Mexico that would be a shift in my convictions. He gave me permission to believe that trying to prove Christians can be cool might be a less interesting endeavor than to learn to live a little, well, alien to what was relevant.
Whew! Â So that was the longest night of the year. Â I am not at all unfamiliar with its is like to be stuck in a night that does not seem to want to end. Â Sometimes the darkness is a habit of thinking that is hard to break.
This far in to the holiday season there are always a few folks who want to be in the spirit of things but just haven’t got there yet.
Well the night is over. Â The sun returns and IÂ think surprise is an important part of a complete breakfast. Â So here are a couple ideas to get the ball rolling.
1) Shock yourself:Â Some gifts you open, some gifts open you… Â
I always thought glitter would play an important part in the revolution. In Juarez, Mexico members of a small church put it on their faces and their hand made wings. This is standard for for a lot of Christmas pageants but these angels aren’t about to sing in the annual cantata. They are headed downtown Juarez. What they are planning to do really puts teeth and nails in hope.
Swearing off the exorbitant gift giving of Christmas is something I cannot help but get behind. However, we also run the risk of being, well, scroogey. Giving gifts is something that is fundamentally human and to relinquish the practice to those who trample each other at Walmart might be as much of a concession to consumerism as maxing out the visa cards. âSpend money or donât give gifts.â That doesnât sound at all right to me.
I love the songs that capture what horror it must have felt like to be a teenage girl who God had chosen for, well, anything. Â I feel both a sense of honor and terror every time I think that there is good on earth God would have me do.
So songs like âBreath of Heaven,â by Amy Grant and âMary Did You Know,â by Mark Lowry tap into our sense of how overwhelming we would have been and how overwhelmed we are right now. Through our eyes we can only imagine such a call to be suffocating, full of fear. This, however, is not at all like the song Mary actually sang.
The miracle of the oil is a simple one. There wasnât enough oil to keep the lamp lit for more than one day, but it lasted eight full days. Just enough time to get more.
This year has reminded me a lot of the fragility of history. The âyear in reviewâ videos are popping up on FaceBook, websites, news channels. Social stability, the economy, and heck, even the weather seems delicate enough to go any which way. Â The future has exposed its own uncertainty
Sometimes I hesitate to call it until I get a clear sense that âeverything is going to be ok. But I usually donât get to see everything, let alone be assured that it is ok. Â Â The miracle of Chanukah is not that the entire outcome of the future was revealed. The miracle was not the sudden appearance of endless amounts of oil. It was just enough oil each night for one more day, for just enough days… until they could get more oil.
I have come to believe  hope carries itself with us like a small lantern: Just enough to see the step you are on, and the next one you need to take. It turns out that kind of light can take you anywhere.
Christmas – or any holiday – does not have a meaning behind it.
Of course holidays have certain narratives behind them, but I know of no single holiday that has ever celebrated a story that wasnât so complex it wouldnât be summed up in a word or sentence. Nor one that has ever had just one meaning, especially one about the incarnation of God. Â Tricky…