A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
O, Christ Child, how can we ever hope to understand? Your birth brings a thrill of hope, though it is not a feeling we could explain. We are too old, the world is too tired for hope, and yet you come and it is as joy to us. We hardly know why. A baby cannot save us from the agonies of living. The weakness of a baby is not the mighty to save that we pinned our hopes on. Didn’t your birth look like a failure, even for those with eyes to see? God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong. Well, I used to think I was.
Truly, he taught us to love one another
His law is love and his gospel is peace…
And in his name all oppression shall cease
If only I could understand, perhaps I could have peace. Not that that’s what I’ve ever asked for, that measure of gentility and self-restraint. Submission is an ugly word in my mouth. I’ve always wondered if to you peace means silence, as it does to me. I’ve wondered if you could love the wild ones, the ones who thrash under the weight of your hand, the ones who claw at the restraints of mortality so desperately, aching to touch you, but only on their own terms, only insofar as such an encounter does not entail humility or, its synonym, humiliation. Yet here is a mystery that we cannot lash out at, because He has a very fragile soft spot on the back of his head. He is all fragility, really, nearly transparent skin, soft, still forming bones. Christ, did you choose this form of vulnerability so that the wild ones like me would not grow frightened, cut and run, like so many startled horses? If you came to proclaim the peace of God, you did it not as a conqueror proclaiming servility to a trampled people. You came as one we could not fear or fight, and therefore you have won us all.
Fall on your knees!
O hear the angel voices!
O night divine!
O yes, fall down on your knees before this great mystery! Two thousand years later, we are wondering still. We come to find our Lord in a cradle, the apparently bastard son of two peasant parents. I said we could not be afraid of you, and yet I tremble to approach. Because, wee God-baby, I know what’s coming. I know what you will say and do, and what will someday far away be demanded of me. How what you will ask is what I feel I could never give, not even to the baby, because I know within him is the wild man from Galilee who brings earthquakes, eruptions, and tremors to my otherwise quiet life.
Trust.
You want my trust.
But here at the cradle I grow forgetful of all else, remembering that the only true understanding I ever had was that I do not understand, that I am not wise or good, that it is utter impertinence for me to even speak of this mystery with my unclean lips and my dirty heart.
But here I am. And here you are.
And for this moment in time I find myself able to fall on my knees before you and still the wildness in my heart. Not knowing what tomorrow will bring, I surrender, at least for tonight. And so we call this night “divine.”
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Santa Stories
Okay, so, a quick anecdote from the world of the working woman:
So, the place that I work is complicated, trying to do so many things at once. We sell baked goods, we sell pastries, we sell muffins. We sell breakfast, lunch, and dinner, sometimes all at the same time. We sell decorated cakes and pastries and specially ordered giftbaskets. And we sell many other things that fall under the heading of "giftware." This is all the stuff that is set up all around the store: mugs, platters, little figurines, nutcrackers, teapots, all kinds of high priced brick-a-brac that people browse through and buy. It is unbelievable to me how people can come in and just start spending hundreds of dollars on such things at the drop of a hat. For example, today a woman came and bought over 800 dollars worth of giftware, threw in a couple of decorated cakes and then to top it all off bought a boxed lunch. But one of the items she bought was this doll-like figurine that we had had sitting near the cash register for quite some time. I think it was supposed to portray Santa Claus, but it was the ugliest, most wizened looking, spindly-legged little troll of a Santa that mortal eyes had ever beheld. It was as if you took Santa out of the North Pole and forced him to live in the mines of Moria for a few hundred years, this is what he would look like when he came out. The doll thing must have cost over a hundred dollars, but this lady bought it, for whatever reason. But then, it's up to good old Shannon, the lowly drudge, to find some way to box this monstrosity up. So one of the managers hands me a full sheet cake box, which is probably almost three feet long on the long side. I try to roll troll Santa every which way and find that the only way he comes close to fitting, which isn't very close, is lying flat on his back in this brown cardboard box. Both of his hands are still reaching out, kind of suspended in mid-air, gasping for life. I am struck by the humor of troll Santa lying in his little cardboard casket as I seal him in with crushed up newspaper. It makes me think of Edgar Allan Poe meets Nietzche, Cask of Amontialldo meets Twilight of the Idols. "Santa is dead! And we have killed him!"
Here's another story I didn't plan to tell when I started, but is really quite...well, quite something. We were listening to the Christian station on the radio in the car with my family the other night, and this woman starts going on about how Santa Claus is "exalting himself against Christ." He's claiming to be omniscient because he claims to see when you're sleeping, to know when you're awake. And he's trying to take the focus of Christmas away from Christ and get children to worship commercialism. I would like to be able to believe that this was some kind of parody, but this is not that kind of radio station. So my response was, "What is this woman smoking?" This is one of the things that I don't enjoy about evangelicalism. What kind of religion says, "You know, I think what we need to decry, I think the true poison in our culture, is the presence of this big jolly guy who gives presents to little kids. That's what we need to get rid of! And to hell with childhood hunger and the destruction of the environment! We really need to resolve this Santa issue!" Awesome.
And don't even get me started on Halloween...
So, the place that I work is complicated, trying to do so many things at once. We sell baked goods, we sell pastries, we sell muffins. We sell breakfast, lunch, and dinner, sometimes all at the same time. We sell decorated cakes and pastries and specially ordered giftbaskets. And we sell many other things that fall under the heading of "giftware." This is all the stuff that is set up all around the store: mugs, platters, little figurines, nutcrackers, teapots, all kinds of high priced brick-a-brac that people browse through and buy. It is unbelievable to me how people can come in and just start spending hundreds of dollars on such things at the drop of a hat. For example, today a woman came and bought over 800 dollars worth of giftware, threw in a couple of decorated cakes and then to top it all off bought a boxed lunch. But one of the items she bought was this doll-like figurine that we had had sitting near the cash register for quite some time. I think it was supposed to portray Santa Claus, but it was the ugliest, most wizened looking, spindly-legged little troll of a Santa that mortal eyes had ever beheld. It was as if you took Santa out of the North Pole and forced him to live in the mines of Moria for a few hundred years, this is what he would look like when he came out. The doll thing must have cost over a hundred dollars, but this lady bought it, for whatever reason. But then, it's up to good old Shannon, the lowly drudge, to find some way to box this monstrosity up. So one of the managers hands me a full sheet cake box, which is probably almost three feet long on the long side. I try to roll troll Santa every which way and find that the only way he comes close to fitting, which isn't very close, is lying flat on his back in this brown cardboard box. Both of his hands are still reaching out, kind of suspended in mid-air, gasping for life. I am struck by the humor of troll Santa lying in his little cardboard casket as I seal him in with crushed up newspaper. It makes me think of Edgar Allan Poe meets Nietzche, Cask of Amontialldo meets Twilight of the Idols. "Santa is dead! And we have killed him!"
Here's another story I didn't plan to tell when I started, but is really quite...well, quite something. We were listening to the Christian station on the radio in the car with my family the other night, and this woman starts going on about how Santa Claus is "exalting himself against Christ." He's claiming to be omniscient because he claims to see when you're sleeping, to know when you're awake. And he's trying to take the focus of Christmas away from Christ and get children to worship commercialism. I would like to be able to believe that this was some kind of parody, but this is not that kind of radio station. So my response was, "What is this woman smoking?" This is one of the things that I don't enjoy about evangelicalism. What kind of religion says, "You know, I think what we need to decry, I think the true poison in our culture, is the presence of this big jolly guy who gives presents to little kids. That's what we need to get rid of! And to hell with childhood hunger and the destruction of the environment! We really need to resolve this Santa issue!" Awesome.
And don't even get me started on Halloween...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Ave Maria
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the time of our death. Amen.
I have been thinking about you lately, Mary. I can’t think of God, or scarcely of Jesus, but I have been thinking about you. I think you have spent a long time reaping that promise, that all generations will call you blessed, but I’m not so sure. Have we overestimated your serenity? The sweet, somber Madonna faces on a thousand crystalline icons, is that really you? Maybe in the angel’s presence you were shy and sweet, but I have seen your way as a way of shaking fists, of tears and groanings, of weary questioning. Did you rage against God in your secret heart while the baby grew, wondering what all of this must be for and why you of all people couldn’t be told? Of course you were honored, as much as you could understand yourself to be, but you couldn’t have really understood who the child was that you were bearing in your weary body, who added sighs to your days and aches to your young back. Your cheeks still burned with shame to hear them whisper about your supposed indiscretion, to see the questions in your wounded fiancé’s eyes. Didn’t you question, why me? Why do I have to carry this without you?
Did you cry at night when you thought no one else could hear you, wondering why God’s blessings made you cursed in the eyes of everyone else you had ever loved? Were you overwhelmed by the mysteries, the thousand questions that you wanted to ask but had no voice for? But perhaps you were brave and you railed against the stars and the Presence and the Absence and the sky, and it is only our memory that has made you docile and silent. “Be it unto me as you have said.” Did you regret those words as the moment of complicity, a quick concession that put the heart-piercing sword in his hand?
But your sorrow made you holy, and you grew with him, fierce and strong and as hard as the packed-dirt roads you walked along with him, rediscovering every day with growing amazement that you had birthed no ordinary baby. Once you were transformed by a long, dusty road of hardship you led them all, for centuries you have been adored by thousands who want to learn what you learned, learn what you would have given your eye-teeth to know all the way back on that joyful-dark night when you held fearfully in your arms this one that you and God had brought into the world.
O, pray for me, Mary. Pray that I could stay the course, that I would not regret my moment of complicity with the will of God. Pray that at the end of all this travailing, I too will be able to bring to life something wonderful.
I have been thinking about you lately, Mary. I can’t think of God, or scarcely of Jesus, but I have been thinking about you. I think you have spent a long time reaping that promise, that all generations will call you blessed, but I’m not so sure. Have we overestimated your serenity? The sweet, somber Madonna faces on a thousand crystalline icons, is that really you? Maybe in the angel’s presence you were shy and sweet, but I have seen your way as a way of shaking fists, of tears and groanings, of weary questioning. Did you rage against God in your secret heart while the baby grew, wondering what all of this must be for and why you of all people couldn’t be told? Of course you were honored, as much as you could understand yourself to be, but you couldn’t have really understood who the child was that you were bearing in your weary body, who added sighs to your days and aches to your young back. Your cheeks still burned with shame to hear them whisper about your supposed indiscretion, to see the questions in your wounded fiancé’s eyes. Didn’t you question, why me? Why do I have to carry this without you?
Did you cry at night when you thought no one else could hear you, wondering why God’s blessings made you cursed in the eyes of everyone else you had ever loved? Were you overwhelmed by the mysteries, the thousand questions that you wanted to ask but had no voice for? But perhaps you were brave and you railed against the stars and the Presence and the Absence and the sky, and it is only our memory that has made you docile and silent. “Be it unto me as you have said.” Did you regret those words as the moment of complicity, a quick concession that put the heart-piercing sword in his hand?
But your sorrow made you holy, and you grew with him, fierce and strong and as hard as the packed-dirt roads you walked along with him, rediscovering every day with growing amazement that you had birthed no ordinary baby. Once you were transformed by a long, dusty road of hardship you led them all, for centuries you have been adored by thousands who want to learn what you learned, learn what you would have given your eye-teeth to know all the way back on that joyful-dark night when you held fearfully in your arms this one that you and God had brought into the world.
O, pray for me, Mary. Pray that I could stay the course, that I would not regret my moment of complicity with the will of God. Pray that at the end of all this travailing, I too will be able to bring to life something wonderful.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Trying to Catch Up
Wow. I need to catch y'all up on recent happenings. I can't believe that it's been a whole month since my last post. There's a whole bunch of people that I want to invite to come check this blog out, but I feel hesitant because I can't seem to consistently post good material, in spite of the fact that this is pretty much my only good outlet for intellectual/spiritual/meditative outlet. Hmmm...oh well. Newsy update is clearly the order of the day.
So, since Thanksgiving, I had a great visit up to the Houghton/Buffalo area to see a whole slew of friends, which was superlative. Then I returned to glorious Houston, after some air travel gymnastics, and started my awesome, awesome job. Currently I am working at a bakery/coffee shop/cafe which is less than fantastic. Basically, I was hired to be trained as a barista, and there has been absolutely no such training taking place. Pretty much I fold boxes, move muffins around from one place to another, and grill sandwiches for six hours a day. Believe it or not, it's not really a picnic. Nor is it really where I pictured myself at this point in my life. I feel like I never have any time to do what I want and I’m generally exhausted. Too exhausted for much deep thought or life revision. Which is regrettable because I feel like that’s what I most deeply need right now. It’s too bad because in many ways I don’t want to engage in any kind of introspection, it’s so much easier to just live on the surface. I was recently talking to a friend who was saying that she struggled with not doing anything terribly significant like working or earning money or anything for a couple of months and feeling guilty until she realized that that’s exactly what she needed. I wish that I was brave enough to do something like that. I think I’m too afraid to not be working anymore, now that I don’t have something super significant like a big missions trip to look forward to. I feel like I want to consider and restructure my entire spiritual life, but I don’t even have time to think, most days. I don’t think I can handle this whole adult thing. There’s a woman that I work with who has four kids and at dinner the other night my mom was saying, “I don’t know how she could do that with four kids, what a day that would be!” And I was like, “Yeah, she would have to put in a shift at work, six hours on your feet, go and pick up the kids, go home and make dinner…oh wait, that’s what I do.” Which is true, that’s pretty much my day. Sometimes I shower. It’s awesome. I feel like what I want right now most of all is guidance. Should I quit this job and find somewhere else to work? If so, where? Maybe I should just quit everything for a while and try to pull my life together. Should I be working in this state or one of like three others where I’d rather be? Should I get teacher certified or try to find something really awesome to do to give me money for seminary? How in God’s name can I feel like I’m getting enough sleep?
On the other hand, baking. Lots and lots of baking going on here in the privacy of my own home. Pretty much I have been cooking amazing meals lately because grocery shopping and cooking has been taking up the bulk of my outside of work time. Therefore, shells stuffed with pancetta, spinach and ricotta in asiago cream sauce. Turkey pot pie with cheddar biscuit crust. Kofta kebabs with tzatziki. Superlative. Kind of makes all you folks wish you could drop by for dinner, doesn’t it? You should. There’s always an extra place at my table for a friend.
So, since Thanksgiving, I had a great visit up to the Houghton/Buffalo area to see a whole slew of friends, which was superlative. Then I returned to glorious Houston, after some air travel gymnastics, and started my awesome, awesome job. Currently I am working at a bakery/coffee shop/cafe which is less than fantastic. Basically, I was hired to be trained as a barista, and there has been absolutely no such training taking place. Pretty much I fold boxes, move muffins around from one place to another, and grill sandwiches for six hours a day. Believe it or not, it's not really a picnic. Nor is it really where I pictured myself at this point in my life. I feel like I never have any time to do what I want and I’m generally exhausted. Too exhausted for much deep thought or life revision. Which is regrettable because I feel like that’s what I most deeply need right now. It’s too bad because in many ways I don’t want to engage in any kind of introspection, it’s so much easier to just live on the surface. I was recently talking to a friend who was saying that she struggled with not doing anything terribly significant like working or earning money or anything for a couple of months and feeling guilty until she realized that that’s exactly what she needed. I wish that I was brave enough to do something like that. I think I’m too afraid to not be working anymore, now that I don’t have something super significant like a big missions trip to look forward to. I feel like I want to consider and restructure my entire spiritual life, but I don’t even have time to think, most days. I don’t think I can handle this whole adult thing. There’s a woman that I work with who has four kids and at dinner the other night my mom was saying, “I don’t know how she could do that with four kids, what a day that would be!” And I was like, “Yeah, she would have to put in a shift at work, six hours on your feet, go and pick up the kids, go home and make dinner…oh wait, that’s what I do.” Which is true, that’s pretty much my day. Sometimes I shower. It’s awesome. I feel like what I want right now most of all is guidance. Should I quit this job and find somewhere else to work? If so, where? Maybe I should just quit everything for a while and try to pull my life together. Should I be working in this state or one of like three others where I’d rather be? Should I get teacher certified or try to find something really awesome to do to give me money for seminary? How in God’s name can I feel like I’m getting enough sleep?
On the other hand, baking. Lots and lots of baking going on here in the privacy of my own home. Pretty much I have been cooking amazing meals lately because grocery shopping and cooking has been taking up the bulk of my outside of work time. Therefore, shells stuffed with pancetta, spinach and ricotta in asiago cream sauce. Turkey pot pie with cheddar biscuit crust. Kofta kebabs with tzatziki. Superlative. Kind of makes all you folks wish you could drop by for dinner, doesn’t it? You should. There’s always an extra place at my table for a friend.
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