Jemila just hit me in the latest game of tag. This one is particularly fun. Here are the “rules.”
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating! Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences. Post the next 3 sentences. Tag 5 people.
I can do this. However, most of my books are in the “other” room as I do most of my blogging/computing in the family room on my trusty laptop. My books are either on my bedside table, or on the bookshelf in the bedroom. But there was one peeking out at me here in the family room … so you were not treated to odd sentences from Drawing for Older Children & Teens (at the top of my current reading pile -in the school room- as I am prepping to teach LightGirl and a friend). And the book which peeked out at me?
Saints & Sinners In the Early Church: Differing and Conflicting Traditions in the First Six Centuries, by WHC Frend. I haven’t forgotten it, but it was in my bag to read on our ill-fated anniversary get away. I’m on a quest to learn more about Pelagius (or here or here or here) and this book was recommended by a trustworthy friend. Without further ado, here are the three sentences:
“He would be rewarded or condemned accordingly. On the practical side, the Pelagian was a social reformer — in this he would contrast with the follower of the Western ascetics Jerome and Paulinus of Nola and with Augustine himself. Three quotations of a Pelagian Briton(?) living in Sicily: “
“He would be rewarded or condemned accordingly.
On the practical side, the Pelagian was a social reformer — in this he would contrast with the follower of the Western ascetics Jerome and Paulinus of Nola and with Augustine himself. Three quotations of a Pelagian Briton(?) living in Sicily: “
Here are my tags …
Peggy – the Virtual Abbess
Janet – Secret Women’s Business
Cathy – Sharing Information
Patrick – Dance of the Spirit
Maurice – the Sinister Minister
Jeremy – the New Light
The other day I retold the story of a conversation between LightBoy and I about the difference between freedom and justice. He’s still mulling that over. In the meantime, I gave him an assignment (LightGirl too). They have to write a paper every two weeks. Their current assignment is to write about William Wilberforce. They can pick anything about him that they want. Their last assignment was the Lewis and Clark Expedition. LightBoy’s paper morphed into Benedict Arnold, but that’s okay. Now they are researching the famous liberator.
LightBoy, “Dad, what’s hersey mean?”
“What? How do you spell it?”
“h e a r s e y … I think.”
“Oh, that’s hearsay, and it means to overhear something and repeat it.”
LightBoy went back to the encyclopedia. Pretty soon he came back, with the encyclopedia and a very dire look on his face.
“Dad! I don’t think that’s what it means. LOOK!”
LightHusband looked at the picture and the word in question:
H E R E S Y.
And promptly explained the difference.
“Mom, can I call PlusOneFriend and see if he can play today? I’ve finished my Latin.”
Mom, distracted by writing a draft of a letter to the board of the hockey club about the atrocious behavior of the opposing team this weekend (but that’s another blog-post): “Sure …. ”
“Good, what’s his number”
“Oh … no … wait a minute. You can’t. In an hour, you’re going with Dad to pick up LightGirl from her sleepover then the two of you have to pick up that trashdump you call a playroom.”
heavy sigh, stomping … muttering
“I thought Martin Luther King Day was about freedom!”
parental grinning and smirking …
“No, Martin Luther King Day is about justice.”
“Well, I’m not going to have any justice if I’m locked up in the playroom all day!!!!” stomp stomp stomp
As I mentioned in my earlier post, we watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation a couple weeks ago. The whole Vacation series with Chevy Chase are rapidly becoming favorites with the LightFamily.
I was struck by a number of things in this movie. As must be obvious because I can’t stop talking about it. The thing I want to write about here is both the differences between Clark and Eddie.
Clark is Mr. Suburban Everyman. He has dreams and visions life that seem to come from a combination of Norman Rockwell, Currier & Ives and advertising aimed at suburban bliss. So he plans, he works, he cuts the grass once a week. He lives the right kind of life. It’s not too competitive; that is reserved for the next door neighbors (and you’ll barely recognize Julia Louis Dreyfuss in this role). He saves for a rainy day. His wife and children know how to dress and behave. In fact, their family looks very much like many of the families populating many churches across white America. What Clark wants most for Christmas is to have his extended family around him … and his Christmas bonus to purchase an inground swimming pool for the backyard. The swimming pool will be a good investment, good stewardship as it were. getting prednisone Then cousin Eddie with his wife and children show up to join the holidays. It’s a surprise.
“Surprised?” Clark says, “Why if I woke up tomorrow morning with my head sewn to the carpet I couldn’t be more surprised.”
His face and body language are all too clear … this is an unwelcome surprise. From his perspective, Eddie is a fool. And … Eddie is. Eddie hasn’t worked in ten years “… waiting on a management position.” His oldest son is not with them this Christmas. He is out in the world, starting his career … with the carnival. Next year he hopes to be a barker for the Yak Woman. Everything Eddie touches seems to get dirty or fall apart and his fashion sense made even my 10 year old boy cringe in embarrassment. As the movie progresses we discover that the family has fallen on hard times and Eddie has lost his house. They are now living in the rustbucket RV out of necessity, Santa will likely only visit Clark’s children unless Clark and his wife provide for Eddie’s children, etc. ambien usa I can’t stop thinking about Eddie. Everything about him was repulsive to me. He was stupid, illiterate, foolish, unplanned and unlearned. He slurped his eggnog. Wiped his mouth on sleeve during a more formal event when napkins were present … and was uncaring. But most of all he was a grasshopper. Think about that for a moment. where to buy zithromax If there were a fable to describe the North American church it would be the ant and the grasshopper.
The Ant and the Grasshopper
An Aesop Fable retold by Rose Owens
One summer day a grasshopper was singing and chirping and hopping about. He was having a wonderful time. He saw an ant who was busy gathering and storing grain for the winter.
“Stop and talk to me,” said the grasshopper. “We can sing some songs and dance a while.”
“Oh no,” said the ant. “Winter is coming. I am storing up food for the winter. I think you should do the same.”
“Oh, I can’t be bothered,” said the grasshopper. “Winter is a long time off. There is plenty of food.” So the grasshopper continued to dance and sing and chip and the ant continued to work.
When winter came the grasshopper had no food and was starving. He went to the ant’s house and asked, “Can I have some wheat or maybe a few kernels of corn. Without it I will starve,” whined the grasshopper.
“You danced last summer,” said the ants in disgust. “You can continue to dance.” And they gave him no food.
Fools, or those we perceive as fools, are not suffered lightly. The Eddies of the world are given a “kick in the pants if you don’t,” as my mother used to say. But … being an ant requires that we become very, very busy. Ants are planners, builders, kingdom (with a little k) creators. North Americans, westerners, and especially western Christians aspire to be ants. We’ve made it into an art form and given it much thought. Indeed, there is an entire book of the Bible (Proverbs) devoted to admonishing us to follow the way of wisdom rather than suffer the folly of foolishness.
Have we interpreted God correctly on this? Or are we re-interpreting something which cannot be found anywhere in Scripture? God helps those who help themselves. Grasshoppers live for the moment, they fly where the wind (Spirit) takes them. They do not spend every waking, living moment planning and investing for the future when they will die. They live. Think about that … they live. where to buy antabuse How will you live for God? As an ant or a grasshopper?
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This is part of a synchroblog on fools and calling … please read what the other grasshoppers had to say this month.
I wrote at some length about my best Christmas gift the other day. But here are some other gifts I received on Christmas.
We have a new tradition now … spaghetti for dinner. I spent a couple of hours making a (new) recipe for dinner. Chicken Cassoulet with Acorn Squash. It smelled delightful and yummy. Just the thing for a winter dinner. The thing about cassoulets is that they are soupy stews that you bake. So I did as directed. For the last half hour you should remove the dutch oven lid. When the time came, I was feeling lazy and LightBoy loves to help in the kitchen. So I directed him to remove the lid from the pot. It seemed simple enough, but just pushing his envelope of responsibility so that he would feel necessary. No. It was too much. He had not traversed the foibles of a heavy pan in the oven with the rack and the heat and everything before. No one is really clear on what happened, but the cassoulet ended up on the floor, along with LightBoy’s self-esteem. I hugged him and reassured him and mentally kicked myself in the a$$ for not getting up off the couch. Then I promptly forgot everything I ever knew about the properties of heat transfer and suggested that he pick up the blazing pan lid that was sitting on the floor without an oven mitt.
LightHusband and LightMom made spaghetti for dinner after that. I just could not recover.
And discovered that after years and years of thinking that Christmas dinner had to be special … it’s really the people, not the food. We usually have roast beef because I love it. Spaghetti was really wonderful. They dressed it up pretty nicely with red wine and leeks and cut up steak and chicken sausage and whatever else they could find in the frig. But it was wonderful. I think it was one of the best Christmas dinners ever. Yummilicious. And there were no hours spent preparing it. Half an hour. And we all love it. New tradition!
I heard two new family stories that will remain with me for a long time. I’m working through them to find the nuggets to incorporate them into my life. But they were gifts to me this Christmas. One was a back story that filled in the gaps and holes of a story I’ve known for a long time. The other was new. They were both about my paternal grandparents.
When my dad was little, his paternal grandmother lived with them. His mother was my grandfather’s second wife after my grandfather was widowed with three children. So my grandmother raised 3 stepchildren and 2 of her own children in a house the size of a small apartment AND she had her mother-in-law living with her. By all accounts, my great-grandmother was not the easiest person to live with either. All accounts meaning my grandfather told me this one day. I also happen to know that she was a person of fairly deep faith (because my father still pretty bitterly resents having to sit and read her Bible to her when she couldn’t see anymore … hehehe … he used to try to skip verses in the Psalms and she’d know right away 😉 ). Just so you have some context. So one day my grandmother was in the kitchen making dinner or something and fuming about something my grandfather had done or was doing or something and said to my great-grandmother (her mother-in-law), “When will men stop being so stubborn?” and the story goes that my great-grandmother replied, “When women stop being so willful.” Now, don’t reply to that … just let it sit with you for a while. It’s pretty deep.
The other story is about my grandfather. I’ve known this much for a long time … that one Christmas when my dad was young, my grandfather got grumpy about something, collected all his gifts and refused to open them until April. Everytime my father got a little grinchy about Christmas or a birthday or any celebration, that story was hauled to explain it. So I asked my father about that this week. Why did his dad put all his gifts away that year? My dad got a funny grin on his face and said, “Oh, I think he (my grandfather) was mad because he told everyone not to spend so much money on him. And he was making a point.” We were all sitting around the table when that was said … LightHusband, LightGirl and LightBoy all turned and looked at me … AHA, that’s where you get it from! My dad went on, “My father … from the first time he began earning money … always, scrupulously put 10% of his earnings into savings. So he always had money set aside to help his family. He didn’t think people should spend so much on him, but it should be spent on other things.”
My intangible gifts … I’ll be pondering them as I continue on my journey. You’ll probably be reading more about these thoughts as we enter the new year, but I’ve been appreciating them in the Christmas afterglow.
My parents are here for the holiday. We’re all having a grand time enjoying each other’s company. We all sort of hang out together and laugh and talk. We’ve already enjoyed many memory gaffes. But that’s not my best Christmas gift.
We did Christmas morning in our traditional way. Sort of. When I was growing up, the kids got up first. We’d rattle around just enough to wake up my parents. Then we’d get our stockings from the kitchen table. Yes, the table. First of all … we heated with wood and had wood stoves, so Santa would have burned his nether regions if he’d come down our chimneys. So we very thoughtfully left our stockings on the table. I don’t know how he came into our house. As we got older and learned the truth (that Santa is Satan, I mean that Santa isn’t real) we just kept leaving stockings on the table. So, us kids would get our stockings, plus Mom and Dad’s and take them up to my parents’ room. We’d all sit on their bed and open the stockings. When I was growing up stocking gifts were wrapped in newspaper. My parents have a gift with stockings … they do their best work with stocking gifts. They are inventive and silly; thoughtful and whimsical. I think that is my Dad’s contribution to Christmas, but I’m not entirely certain.
After stockings, we have breakfast. Then we’d feed and water all the animals … chickens, geese, cows, horses, dogs, cats, sheep. Some of the favored animals would often get a special treat or special ration of grain or something. Load the wood bins for the day. The woodstoves did not get any special wood. Clean up the kitchen and be dressed in decent clothes.
After all of that, the unwrapping of the gifts would commence. We went one gift at a time … youngest to oldest. Everyone had to wait turns and watch each person unwrap so we all knew what everyone got. This eternally confounded my maternal grandfather. He managed to call every year when we were about 1/3 of the way finished to talk to us. Every year he was surprised that we weren’t finished. Every year … Surprise! What?? He was of the rip and tear all at once theory. We did not ascribe to that theory. It was funny. And we all always laughed.
So … I am still the first person awake every Christmas morning. Still. At 46. What is wrong with me? I first woke up at 4:15 and decided that was silly. So I went back to sleep. I woke again at 5:30 and that was the end of that. So I got up and made a carafe full of coffee (3 french press pots), emptied the dishwasher for LightGirl and sat in front of the lit Christmas tree in awe. But that wasn’t my best gift
LightGirl was the next person up at 6:30 so she joined me with some hot chocolate, then LightBoy for some hot chocolate. We had a few minutes together with our drinks looking at the tree. But that wasn’t my best gift.
LightMom and LightDad came downstairs and we opened stockings that had been left (as we do) on the kitchen table. But we do this in the family room. It was so much fun to have them participating the stockings again … as I wrote above … it is their gift. But that wasn’t it either.
We did breakfast, cleaned up. And began opening. We were most of the way through when I got a gift with a tag that read: “This made Mom cry, but it will make you laugh. To Sonja Love from Mom & Dad” LightHusband jumped to get his camera. LightMom looked funny and I was not certain I wanted to open this package. If it made my mom cry, I was fairly certain I might cry too … and just what was contained herein that made my mom cry on Christmas?? It was all too mysterious … and squishy as well.
Then it was revealed and we all dissolved into howls of laughter.
The story goes like this: When I was a baby my mom knit me a stocking. It was the stocking I had all through my childhood. Until a small closet fire when I was about 10 years old. The fire was started by my little brother who was playing with matches. My stocking and my other brother’s stocking and other family things burned up. My mother burned her hand pretty badly, too. I think a lot of my dad’s things from his term of service in Alaska were destroyed. So the stockings were gone. Except for the brother’s who had started the fire. There is no justice. Oh wait. My mother was too busy by the time he came along to ever knit him a stocking. So now none of us had stockings. Maybe there was justice. But I mourned my stocking. I held no grudge, I just missed my stocking.
When I got married, I discovered that LightHusband had had the same stocking all his childhood that his mother had knit for him as a baby!! What are the chances? So my new mother-in-law knit me a matching stocking. I had a new treasure and I loved it because of it’s ties and significance.
When the babies started to come along in all of our siblings families I discovered that my mother had been hiding her light under a bushel all these years. My mother loved to knit! She became a knitting machine churning out tiny sweaters and hats and mittens for the grandchildren. Each one also got a personalized Christmas stocking. I don’t mean name either. She would change and modify the directions to make the stocking for each child personally. They are all beautiful. So are all the sweaters and hats and mittens. We have all treasured them.
Sometime less than 4 years ago, my mother surprised me with a replacement stocking for the one in my childhood. We can’t remember the exact year, but we know it was since the youngest of my nieces was born and she turned 5 this past June. But she forgot. We don’t know what happened … she just forgot that she’d done that. I didn’t. But then you never tell the recipient of a gift what you’re thinking. In my family of origin that principle gets carried out perhaps a little too far. You tell no one. We operate like the Dept. of Defense when it comes to Christmas. So my mother did not even mention this to LightHusband, because he would have known and reminded her.
So she planned and found the special wool (white angora) to make Santa’s beard. She knit away on their trip to Florida and back to visit my uncle this fall. She grinned happily when she read my philosophy on gifting on my blog. She was thrilled at her choice in gifts this year. She knew she had outdone herself. And … she had. Oh yes … she had.
She had outdone herself TWICE!! I am doubly blessed! So that is the story of my best Christmas gift … of 2007.
UPDATE – (written by visiting author LightMom) –
Once in a lifetime….I hope!
In the 50’s I started knitting Christmas Stockings for my nephews – nieces would arrive much later! As our children were born (1961, 1963, 1nd 1965) I knit them what had become a favorite stocking with name, a Santa with angora beard, and crossed candy canes.
In the summer of 1969 with Sonja at camp and LightUncle1 visiting a friend, LightUncle2 (not quite 4) practiced lighting matches in the front closet of our home at Kent’s Corner. And, of course, the result was….fire! Fortunately for us the closet was lined with tongue and groove cedar boards and GrandPea and I were able to squelch the fire and throw much of the burning material out the door onto the lawn. Among the belongings that were too burned to save were Sonja and LightUncle2’s stockings. I suppose in the back of my mind I intended to replace them but ….it must have been w-a-a-y-y back!
LightUncle1 continued to use his stocking, and when his daughter was born in 2002 asked if I might knit one for her. I searched the internet and various knitting stores for the pattern, but it was not to be found. So, I did my best using LightUncle1’s as the model. He was satisfied, I was not. Since we are trying to get rid of the flotsam and jetsam that has accumulated over 45+ years, we are continually sorting through it all. And wa-la I found the original – now 50 year old – pattern.
So, I set about re-knitting LightNiece3’s stocking (I hadn’t liked the non-wool yarn I had used, either) and now (2004) one for her brother, LightNephew.
So, this Christmas I decided to start replacing the burned stockings and since we were due to spend Christmas with Sonja and family, hers would be for this year! So I set about the task, and a friend found me some faux angora. And it was actually completed before we boarded the train to D.C.
Sonja had written that she and her family were trying to move toward a less commercialized Christmas and she most wanted to give gifts that she made or were really relevent to the giver/givee. Ahh… I had the perfect gift!
So now…imagine my dismay when I walked in their home to find……………..all their stockings ‘hung with care..’ and one of them being a replacement stocking I had apparently knit around 2004 or 2005! I was crushed. This was to be my major gift to my daughter and it was now a mere ditto!
I decided I needed to ‘punt’. Instead of hanging the stocking after she went to bed Christmas Eve – my original plan – I wrapped it as a gift under the tree. The tag read, “love to Sonja from Mom and Dad. This will make your mother cry and you laugh.” I forewarned photographer son-in-law, LightHusband, to be ready with his camera.
And boy, did we laugh – the laughter went on for some time – we held our sides and wiped the tears and just let it roll. Even a ditto can be the best Christmas present ever!
LightGirl “Mom, what do you want for Christmas?”
Me “I’d really like world peace. … but I’d settle for peace in the house.”
long pause complete with sardonic look on LightGirl’s face …
“I was thinking of something I could buy!”
“Because if you haven’t noticed this house is FILLED with stubborn people.
So. Is there anything I can … BUY?”
At which moment I was practically on the floor in laughter. That’s my daughter for you. Almost fourteen, full of herself, and tellin’ it like it is. The funny thing is that she’s usually dead on.
Our house … filled with stubborn people, attempting to live out the Kingdom, incarnation and all. And isn’t that really much of the problem with attaining world peace too? Our world, filled with stubborn people. Hmmm … kinda makes you think.
8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it. 9 No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, 10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it.
9 No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there,
10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, we did lectio divina the other night with 7 children and 5 adults. There were varying reactions. LightBoy recognized elements of the Psalms in this reading which cheered his mother’s heart greatly.
It was very interesting to me that verse 8 rang out to me and LightHusband and LightGirl, but for different reasons and in different ways, but when we put all of our parts together the story became complete. LightGirl heard a command to holiness and was offended because no one can be completely holy in this life, so who could walk on this highway? I heard a promise that all will be kept safe from highway men and beasts. LightHusband heard a prophecy fulfilled in that we live after Jesus in a time and place when there are no unclean, and the lions and ferocious beasts are penned. We have been redeemed and walk in freedom.
Not all who live in the world are so blessed I reminded LightHusband. Those who live in the land where these words were originally spoken might disagree that they have been fulfilled. Then one of the other children wanted to know where they had been spoken, so we talked about that for a little.
This Highway … it made quite an impression on me. I’ve been pondering it. Isaiah’s prophecy is rich in description here. I went looking for his timeline and place. Isaiah is dated to sometime towards the trickly end of the Assyrian Empire, he did some of his prophesying during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. This puts him close to 700 BCE and makes the capital of the Assyrian Empire, Nineveh. Ohhh … where have we heard about that city before? I wanted to know where Nineveh is/was. It’s about 2/3 of the way up the Tigris river in what is modern day Iraq. The ancient ruins were completely looted in 2003 and much of our common history was lost.
I found a map .. … of the Assyrian Empire.
Now, if you look at that map, the red line indicates the path that the Hebrew exiles took out of Israel when the Assyrians overran them. Take a moment and ponder the idea of exile in 722 BCE. Let the stink and sweat of fear, loss, hunger and death permeate your bones for a few minutes as you consider a forced march and endless footsteps of dry, dusty desert to slavery.
Read Isaiah’s prophecy again. Read what he has to tell those Hebrew men and women about what God has in store for them. Wait, he says, wait. God’s road back will be filled with water, and safety and clean clothes, and good food to eat and there will be joy and singing at the end. You will come home. You will come home. And we will have a party. What faith. What hope.
Can we too hang on? Can we remember this? This road back to God … She promises it will be filled with good food and water and there is going to be a party at the end. We’ll be safe too. We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, with our eyes on Him.
I haven’t posted in a while. I think it might be the longest while ever. This is not a good record to break. But I suspect that all will live and probably thrive. I finally gave up and just marked “all as read,” in my Googlereader. Some of you will go unread into the dustbin of history. I feel really badly about that … I really do. But I was overwhelmed. Completely. Still … all will live and probably thrive. Such is the stuff of life.
Some really good things have happened lately. My blog, that would be this very blog that you have cast your eyes up now, was accepted into The Daily Scribe. It happened several weeks ago and you may have noticed the shiny new logo in my sidebar. I try to keep it gleaming and crisp because I’ve still got a shine on too about the whole thing. Wander on over to the village square and check them out … what a bunch of fabulous writers and thinkers are gathered there.
We’ve managed to have a few gatherings in our home to celebrate Advent. This has been wonderful and gentle and most of all expectant. The most amazing thing was being able to pray through Isaiah 35:1-10 using lectio divina with 7 children ranging in age from 8 to 14 last evening … and only 5 adults. And, both children and adults got something out of it. I’m still amazed. The kids are loving it too. This is even more amazing. I love watching God at play among the people.
This weekend was so hectic. Four hockey games, a hockey party (for LightGirl’s team), Advent gathering and yes, we squoze in time to breath and eat. The party for LightGirl’s team was so much fun. We had it here at the house. 11 girls, 2 boys and assorted parents. I planned lunch, a couple of activities and lots of time for talking and giggling. One of the activities was building gingerbread houses with ye olde standby … the trusty graham cracker. I didn’t think the girls would buy into it. But it was their favorite thing. They begged to get started and were completely into it. Much more than I anticipated 12, 13 and 14 yo girls would be. I still have their creations proudly displayed on the breakfast bar. I don’t have the heart to properly dispose of them. They are beautiful. LightBoy and his friend made gingerbread tanks (of course!) … after doing the appropriate research! Hilarious.
LightBoy is feeling the tension of not playing the war games, but is being good. He did, however, get a war movie at Blockbuster the other day. He couldn’t help it he said and swatted his eyelashes at me. Today at lunch I joined in mid-conversation when I overheard his father exclaim, “What are you going to do? Behead them and blow them up?”
“What?! Behead and blow what up?”
“No, Mom … I want to get Barbies at the Dollar Store to make angel Christmas ornaments.”
“Oh … well … you can’t do that either. Barbies … whether they’re at the Dollar Store or elsewhere are made by slave girls in China and we can’t support that. So you can’t get a Barbie. Or a knockoff. You could just Google how to make an angel ornament and make one like that.”
My poor, deprived children. They get great, creative ideas and their deranged socially alert mother shoots ’em down and makes them create out of recycled soda bottles and tissue paper … it was the saddest angel ornament you ever saw. I think Sam the dog might “accidently” eat it. That would be a shame. Maybe I will give him a little bit of guidance tomorrow.
I spent today fighting with my blog to upgrade it. Tomorrow I can do fun things like make cookies and angel ornaments with my children. Today I had to fight with technology. Maybe tomorrow I will be in a better mood. Tomorrah is a bettah day, after all.
I know most people have heard the term, “ants in your pants,” and most of us have talked about being itchy for something. But I think I’ve taken the idea of being itchy and waiting too literally this year.
I cannot stop itching. I’ve had this rashy thing going on since early November. I had a brief respite last week through the wonders of pr*dnisone. So I have an appointment with a dermatologist today and an allergist tomorrow.
In the meantime I’m on my version of an allergy-free diet (I’m not allergic to meat, dairy, potatoes, apples, and spinach) and I’m waiting. The joke around the house has become that I can eat dirt. If it lives in the dirt, I can eat it. LightHusband (unwittingly) bought a nice pork butt for the crock pot today. I announced, as I put dinner together this morning, “Great! I’m now eating dirt and butt. What a wonderful life!” In true 10 year old fashion, LightBoy pounced on the idea of eating butt.
“Are we really eating butt?”
“Yes.” flat-eye look.
“Well. I hope they washed it first.” and he knocked himself over with his comic prowess.
Being itchy as I am has given me a weird dynamic to reflect on the waiting that we do and how we do it. I suppose I shouldn’t speak for everyone here, I can only really speak for myself. I’m not a very good wait-er. I don’t think our culture is very good at waiting. We want what we want when we want it. If it’s not given to us, then we go out and get it for ourselves somehow. We find ways around the rules. We don’t like change so much. Change requires that we live within the rules and work through them.
God requires that we wait. She sent a baby in response to several hundred years of waiting for a king. It was so upside down that no one saw what was happening. Despite the prophecy, they could not see it. I’ll bet none of us could have seen it. The Light came and the darkness didn’t know it. History is always obvious once you know what is going to happen. But in the moment? Not so much. And no one took note of a poor Hebrew couple from a hick town who were so unorganized and disconnected they couldn’t even find a room for the night. It wasn’t the holiday season back then. It wasn’t cHannukah. It wasn’t anything. It was just mid-winter and a census. There was nothing going on … it was the long dry spell between the high holy days of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret in the autumn and the Pesach holiday in the spring. Into that period of waiting and rest for the winter, Herod called a census.
So, the child/babe was born. We celebrate this every year. But here’s the thing. He had to grow up. More waiting. 30 years of it. For Mary, thirty years of clinging to a couple of sentences with an angel in a barn, sprinkled with a few incidents throughout Jesus’ young life. We throw around casual phrases, “Jesus was either a liar or a lunatic or Lord of all,” and think we’re cute. I wonder about how those paradigms played out for the waiting that Mary lived. Or Joseph. What is it like to have a 12 year old son break all the strict rules when you know in your heart He is the messiah? And very few others recognize that? Mary had a powerful, earthy faith in the Father that allowed her to continue on. We don’t know what questions her heart asked. But we do know that she kept on in the face of them.
How we wait and whether we wait, I’m coming to believe, is a reflection of our levels of faith, hope and peace. Waiting is difficult. Whether or not we can talk ourselves through it is a reflection of where our faith is, whether or not we have hope and what we think of of peace. Are we willing to wait on God and Her timing for a particular issue, or will we shoehorn our timing and plans in where they do not belong? Waiting is hard and discerning the difference between God’s plans and mine is even more difficult sometimes. It is very beguiling to think that because this or that appears to be working out, it must be within the Divine will. So, I must wait. Wait. And wait again. Even then I usually get it wrong. When we want something, that still small voice would appear to become smaller and even more still. This means we need to sit very, very quietly. Instead, what do we do?
When we are not hearing from God, when there is “an issue” looming large, bearing down on us … in our families, in our personal lives, in our communities. What do we do? Do we sit quietly and wait? Do we, in fact and deed, trust that God will come through for us? Or is our real bottom line that we think that God helps those who help themselves?
So, while you’re out shopping, prepping dinner, making cookies, whatever … think about how you wait and how you trust. What do those say about your faith?
