(Part 2 in my series … Part 1 is here at Pushing My Own Envelope.  I don’t know yet whether or not there will be a part 3 or more, I’m waiting on the muse for that.)

One night a few weeks ago, we all snuggled down together as a family and watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation together. I had truly forgotten how obnoxiously hilarious that movie is. But there was one character who had completely fallen off my radar screen. Aunt Bethany. Remember her? She was the elderly aunt who showed up on Christmas Eve having wrapped up her cat as a gift. Yeah, I’d left her behind too. I looked her up a minute ago, the actress who played her was the same lady who played the voice of Olive Oyl in all the Popeye cartoons for 30 years.

In the movie no one quite knew what to do with her. The actress did a marvelous job with her part, prompting LightBoy to comment that it must have been fun to play that role. This was my favorite scene. Clark reveled in having the family together for Christmas Eve dinner. Everyone gathered round the beautifully set table, dressed, and primped. He did honor to his aunt by asking her to bless the meal:

Her response is priceless. She knows what to do … sort of. When told that she is the speaker, she then knows that something important should be spoken, so she gathered all of her wits and recited. She recited the first thing that came to mind. The Pledge of Allegiance.

Clark was devastated. My heart broke for him. He wanted a blessing. He wanted blessing on the food, on the day, on the family, and most of all on him. He wanted to know that he was loved. But Eddie, well, Eddie the hick … he knew how to respond. He stood up and clapped his hand right over his heart, his whole body ramrod straight at attention. Yep. Say the Pledge and Eddie knows what to do. No one else quite did though. They did not know where to put their eyes. There were some uncomfortable wiggles. Sideways glances. Then everyone settled in and accepted the Pledge of Allegiance as the blessing for Christmas dinner.

When she done, Aunt Bethany smiled shyly at a job well done and Clark began to cut the turkey. And that was yet another disaster neatly averted.

You have to feel sort of sorry for Clark. He’s clearly going insane straining against increasing odds to pull off some sort of Norman Rockwell Christmas for his family … capped by a swimming pool gift at the end. He’s giving himself a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder and most of it is caused by his own set of expectations.

As I watched and later reflected on the film, I wondered how the story would have changed if Clark had just gone with it. In some cases, he did. As he did with the blessing to hilarious results. But in real life (irl) we don’t. We call this planning. We plan for things so that there won’t be snafus or messes to clean up. We don’t want people to be exposed to the Aunt Bethany’s and the Eddie’s of real life, so we plan and give out scripts …

We explain our expectations to people so that they can meet them. We script life, worship, events, parties, etc. so that when the time comes for a blessing we don’t get the Pledge of Allegiance or something equally messy. Real people misunderstand what is expected and/or asked of them in critical moments and they make mistakes. But here’s the thing … our culture has zero tolerance for mistakes. We have a zero tolerance for reality; for the texture and nuance of human-ness.

This is why movies like Christmas Vacation remain at such icon status. We laugh and wonder why no one is like this anymore. Reality television is a huge hit because mistakes get you “voted off the island.” Err at work, and there are hundreds more like you to hire in your place. Mess up in a relationship? Your significant other will find someone new. There are other friends, other relationships out there. Make a mistake, and you’re gone, done, finished, finito. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Church. Why … it’s Biblical to vote people off the island, doncha know? Just cover your behind by making certain that they’re unrepentant.

No wonder so many people are taking pills to cope. I heard just the other day of yet another friend taking up the pill train of anti-depressants and another friend who is investigating the possibility. A sister-in-law is on them and another ought to be but isn’t. I do not have enough fingers to count the friends who take them. Maybe I need to use my toes too.

As I consider this intersection of culture, expectation and reality I begin to wonder how it effects our emotional state. (Or is that affect? I never get that right.) We are in many, many respects a culture devoid of grace. We talk about love, but we have none. We talk about tolerance, but there is none. The roots of so very many of our problems may be found in a lack of love, respect and honor for our fellow human beings as individuals. We talk about large groups, but we cannot get along as neighbors on a cul de sac or street corner.

The other day I wrote about hope being necessary to the process of peace in Kenya and many other “hot spots” world wide.  But I’m beginning to wonder … I think hope may also need to be restored here at home too.  I think hope may look different for us.  Hope looks like clean drinking water, food, education and liberation in Africa.  Here, hope looks like real tolerance, and unconditional love, and acceptance of a messy blessing on Christmas Eve.

I ended yesterday’s post wondering if it really matters and I quoted “Crumbs From Your Table” – a song by U2. If you click that link there, you can listen along as you read the lyrics below:

From the brightest star
Comes the blackest hole
You had so much to offer
Why did you offer your soul?
I was there for you baby
When you needed my help
Would you deny for others
What you demand for yourself?

Cool down mama, cool off
Cool down mama, cool off

You speak of signs and wonders
I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

You were pretty as a picture
It was all there to see
Then your face caught up with your psychology
With a mouth full of teeth
You ate all your friends
And you broke every heart thinking every heart mends

You speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die
Three to a bed
Sister Ann, she said
Dignity passes by

And you speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

So why should any of us care what happens in Kenya, or any of the African nations? Or the Middle East? Or Asia? Or anywhere but our little neighborhood for that matter? What does it matter to us? I can think of a million different answers to those questions. I think they’re different for different people. But I’m interested in answering them from the perspective of a Jesus follower. Why do I care? Why is it important for someone who follows Jesus to care what happens in the lives of people half-way around the world?

There are still numerous answers to that question. There is, of course, the idea of bringing aid to orphans and widows. Then there is the idea that we must succor the least of these brothers and sisters in the name of Jesus for in so doing we are aiding Him. Those are valid and indeed wonderful reasons for caring about people in the name of Jesus.

I think though, there is a larger reason we need to care. Jesus talked about bringing His Kingdom to pass. He talked about it being here all around us and being not yet. He said when it came to be the deaf would hear, the blind would see, prisoners would be free and the lame would leap for joy. He also said it was here … right now. He said that if we have faith that is the size of a mustard seed we could move a mountain into the sea. We could also bring sight to the blind and sound to the deaf and freedom to the captives … that in our presence the lame would leap for joy! Indeed, this is his Good News that we call the Gospel.

We also call it hope. It is hope for a better world, a better place and a better time. It is hope that my children and their children will play together and that the content of their character will count for more than the color of their skin (MLK, Jr.). It is hope that where you live will not determine the time of your death (Bono). Because in the now, those things are true and yet not true. In the not yet of God’s Kingdom towards which we strive, they will not be true at all … and that is the hope which we extend and push forward.

In caring we become ambassadors of hope. In hope there is reconciliation. Where there is not hope, there cannot be peace. When hope has died, neighbors war with neighbors and burn houses to the ground. When the truth of Love has been extinguished, fighting and war breaks out. No one can love their neighbor when hope has left the building.

We see this time and again throughout history. Marie Antoinette was famously misquoted as saying to the French peasants, “Let them eat cake.” It was a royal solution to a bread shortage. The shortage was not of bread, but of wheat. The royals did not feel the pinch or lack, but the poor did. Poor Antoinette had no clue. Her cloistered, pampered life ill-prepared her for the storms that came her way. She loved her country and her people, but could not give them any hope. The Jacobins and other forces at play in the French Revolution tore at the fabric of hope in the lives of the people.

In India the reverse happened. Gandhi was determined that independence from British rule could be gained without resorting to violence. Instead of tearing hope away from the poorest of the poor, he restored it. The more real hope he gave them that they could be honestly independent, the stronger and more united the Indians became. Yes, there was violence, but the Indians were not fighting amongst themselves … until later (but that’s another story).

Kenya (and Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and the list goes on) is important because we Jesus-followers are to be ambassadors of hope. We must restore hope to the little people. It is the poor who are fighting and dying. It is the little people, the poor, who are hurting and crying. The rich all around the world continue to eat cake; while the poor have no bread. If we are ambassadors of God’s Kingdom in the here and for the not yet, we must bring hope. We must restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, freedom to the captives and cause the lame to leap for joy. It is hope, and that hope alone which will restore peace to the country and allow her people to live in harmony with one another; neighbor helping neighbor to overcome the odds.

Restoring Hope:

Christian Mission Aid

OneWorld.net – Kenya … learn more about Kenya overall, follow links and become an expert!

Avaaz.org – send an e-mail that encourages your foreign minister (US Secretary of State) to put pressure on all parties in the conflict to continue mediation.

Global Partners – invest in Kenya’s future: women and children

WorkNets-Help Kenyans – direct connections with Kenyans on the ground during the crisis. I can’t vouch for any of these people or this site, but it looked interesting. Apparently Kenyans can trade phone credits for food?

Amani Ya Juu – a womens cooperative dedicated to peace and hope in Nairobi (here’s where you can donate to help the women in the current crisis)

Restoring Relationship:

The Walrus Blog (ht Achievable Ends)
Mentalacrobatics (ht Waving or Drowning)
KenyaUnlimited Blogs Aggregator

I wrote about Kenya the other day. I was a little passionate and perhaps obscure. I’ve had time to sort out my understanding, my knowledge and my senses. I have no direct connection with the unfolding violence and mayhem there, but I find it strangely compelling nonetheless.

I wrote this statement: “Africa is crumbling. In the West we will be held to account for this in some form or another. It is on our shoulders that this mess lies.” I asked these questions: “But … have we done the work of understanding the other? Of knowing who they are? Of truly becoming One with them as God asks us to? Or do we simply wrap our culture on top of theirs like a blanket and hope that it takes?”

In a comment, Janet wrote so succinctly:

I don’t believe the missionaries are the worst offenders… the Colonial powers drawing up national boundaries based around geographical features rather than tribal identity or ancestral lands hasn’t helped. Nor has economic systems of trade that advantage the West. Nor has political covert interference by Western nations… especially in the cold war era by Russia and the U.S. Nor has impositions of political / military systems that work in the West but haven’t perhaps been translated to work with cultural realities. Nor has the world community’s tendency to tolerate the utterly intolerable as if African nations are a special case… we seem far more willing to ignore civil war, genocide and famine there than we are if white people are involved….

I’ve been contemplating that and then there’s my long since misplaced classmate from college.

He stood out even on the first day. I think he was about 6 foot 4 or so. With a smile to match. The purple and gold beanies they made us freshmen wear looked even more ridiculous on him than they did on the rest of us mortals. But Ken wore his with style. The ever-ready grin became his fashion statement. As did the workboots he wore year round. Dunhams. He wore them with shorts or jeans. It didn’t matter. They were his shoes and I never saw him in anything else. No one could keep up with him walking because his legs were so long.

I had several classes with him as the International Relations department at our college was small. So we crossed paths often and had an easy going friendship. Ken … from Kenya. He was smart, funny and good looking. And interesting to talk to. But it was not a deep or long lasting friendship. He was returning to Kenya and I went to college BI. Before Internet. For all intents and purposes I went to college BC (before computer). I typed all of my papers on … get this … a typewriter! So I lost touch with most of my classmates almost immediately upon graduation. My class is still the least reported class in the alumni rag … except for the class just before mine. We’re terrible.

In any case, I’ve remembered Ken from Kenya. I’ve remembered his full name. It’s a name you don’t forget … though I won’t reveal it here. So, when the recent poop hit the fan I began to do some research. I wanted to find him again, if I could, and mostly reassure myself that he was likely okay. I found him alright. What I found gave me pause and made me sad.

I always knew that Ken’s father was a “minister” in the government in Nairobi. I found him alright. It wasn’t hard to do. The name, as it turned out, was fairly well known. Or infamous. Depending upon one’s perspective. As I read articles about Ken’s father I read all the sad stereotypes that come to mind about African government officials. Then I also read heroic things about him as well. It really did depend upon the perspective of the author. The author’s perspective depended upon their ethnic background. Were they Western? If not, what tribe were they from? The answers to those questions really did color the perspective of the author. Western authors tend to view ministerial activities in a very light than African authors. Africans tend to have their perspective colored by their tribal affiliation. So it’s very difficult to sort out where the lines are.

In searching for Ken I’ve had a primer on Kenyan politics for the last 40 years or so. There is a lot to learn. I think it’s important that we in the West learn our lessons quickly and well. The ghosts of Rwanda and Somalia are still too fresh. We cannot afford to let those happen again. Ultimately the responsibility does lie on us. For we did carve up a continent based not upon the people who were already there, but upon a boundary system that was guaranteed to create problems in the future for these people. We have then laid over top of the cauldron of tribal/feudalism a blanket of democracy that is supposed to repair any problems that were created during the colonial period. The blanket has created a warm dark place for the problems to fester and grow … like a rotting wound covered with an unclean bandage.

I thought about attempting to write that primer out here. But I am still unsure of myself. I do not understand the finer nuances of the intertribal conflicts to spell it out yet. Here are the parts I do understand (I think … and I may have missed huge chunks) and there will be a list of links at the end.

Kenya gained independence in 1964 from Great Britain. Her first president was Jomo Kenyatta. He was first prime minister under British rule and then President of an independent Kenya from 1964 to 1978. I believe that he was a member of Kikuyu tribe. This is the main taproot of the violence and unrest that we are seeing today.

The second president of Kenya was Daniel Arap Moi. I believe he was president for 24 years (1978 – 2002). He was a member of the Kalenjin tribe. While he was president the Kalenjin was ascendent, but the Kikuyu tribe maintained it’s hold on power as well.

In 2002 Kenya held it’s first contested presidential elections and Mwai Kibaki was elected president. Kibaki is a member of the Kikuyu tribe (again) This was the first presidential election in which more than one person (man) was running … for real. In late 2007 another election was held and I assume it was accordance with the Kenyan constitution. Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent, ran again. He was opposed by Raila Odinga (a member of Luo tribe) among others. The reason that the presidential results are in question is that most of the parliamentary incumbents were ousted; especially those who were of the Kikuyu tribe. When Kibaki declared himself the victor and had himself sworn in without the election being properly overseen violence ensued.

Given the pattern established by his predecessors (Kenyatta and Moi), it is not unreasonable to think that Kibaki anticipated that he would be in office (by hook or crook) for a number of years. Certainly he anticipated more than five years in power.

Tribal politics and vendetta relationships are the primary driving forces creating the state in Kenya at the moment. An unspoken issue is that when this generation dies out, there is a vacuum in leadership. The men who drove Africa to independence in the 20th century and have governed her since, have not raised up leaders to replace themselves. There are very few young Africans willing and able to take the reins of government and administration when this generation passes from the scene. The middle class is paltry and small. We, in the West, have done a pitiful job at passing the flower of democracy to the cradle of civilization.

Kenya: Roots of Crisis by Gerard Prunier

Ethnic Tensions Dividing Kenya by Adam Mynott

New Broom For Graft Ridden Kenya by Jeremy Scott-Joynt

African Successes: Four Public Managers of Kenyan Rural Development by David Scott

Where Tribe Is Everything by Geoffrey Clarfield

UPDATE – Because I’m Western my perspective is questionable as well … as you may discover here, in Kenya: Causes and Solutions:

That the elections results were rigged – of that there is little doubt. The hasty inauguration, the blanket banning on the broadcast media, the dispersal of security forces to deal with expected protests – all these have given the post election period the flavour of a coup d’etat. What was not expected was the speed with which the whole thing would unravel. The declaration of the members of the Electoral Commission that the results were indeed rigged only added to the growing realisation that a coup had indeed taken place.

People across the country took to the streets to protest and were met with disproportionate use of force by the police and GSU.

Emotions ran high. And there is evidence that politicians from all sides used the occasion to instigate violent attacks against their opponents’ constituencies. There have been rapes, forced circumcision and forced female genital mutilation. The western media has been quick to describe these as ‘ethnic clashes’ – but then they appear only to be able to see tribes whenever there are conflicts in Africa. What is ignored by them is that the security forces have been responsible for the majority of killings.

When our beds are burning?

I’ve been reading the reports out of Kenya with increasing agony and sense of shame. I read the latest and wept inside. People were burned inside a church. They had fled for sanctuary to a church and it was burned. There is something about the idea of being trapped inside of a burning building with dozens of other people that scares me skinny. It seems like the worst form of torment.

Africa is crumbling. In the West we will be held to account for this in some form or another. It is on our shoulders that this mess lies. And it all brought this home to me. I’ve seen it before, but BlisteringSh33p gave it to me again yesterday:

We gave them our creeds. Then we tried re-writing those creeds for them:

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the bible, that he would save the world and all the nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

But … have we done the work of understanding the other? Of knowing who they are? Of truly becoming One with them as God asks us to? Or do we simply wrap our culture on top of theirs like a blanket and hope that it takes?

How can we sleep while our beds are burning?

Today is LightGirl’s 14th birthday. I write that in a much more understated manner than I feel. What the h e double hockeysticks happened? Where did the time go? How did thirteen whole years go by so fast? Why is she wearing so much makeup? So many, many questions with no answers. I feel all gulpy inside. Some days I want to hold her close and make certain that nothing bad ever happens. Most days I know that’s not possible; I have to know that she has a good head on her shoulders, a sprout of faith, and the best I can do as her mom is to prepare her to handle life with grace and aplomb. The rest is up to her. But I still feel all gulpy inside.

So … in order to deal with that feeling of gulpyness here is a list of my personal favorites from last year. These are not necessarily the posts that got the most hits (in fact some of them barely got any), or the most comments (again, most of them got zero), but they are my favorites because they are the posts that I still think about. I may revisit these ideas this year in other forms, you never know …

On The Ways of Geese – perspectives on leadership
Losing Ground – decision making
My Vision – for faith communities
Shavuot-The Feast of Pentecost the Megillah of Ruth
Slice It, Dice It, Anyway You Want It … social, cultural constructs for looking at the Bible
Book Review – Organic Community – surprise! A book review.
Christendom? Post-Christendom? – a look at labels.
Critique, Criticism and the Gong Show – what’s love got to do with it?
On Creating Space – what do hockey and church have in common?
Living Within The System and Non-Violence – a look at living in the world but not being of it.
Good Gifts – every parent desires to give good gifts, but what are they?

He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Isaiah 2:4

I still remember my first encounter with this verse. It was at this monument to peace outside the United Nations. Across the street from the General Assembly building. It is engraved on the foundation stone. I was with a group of students who were studying at the United Nations for a semester. This day was our introduction to the General Assembly and we were exploring on a break. I recall standing in front of this statue transfixed by the thought and the beauty of the man. I was 20 years old at the time. Fresh out of the country side of Vermont. I stood there for a long, long time … drinking it in. And I’ve never forgotten it.

I remember very, very little from that semester. There are moments that I’ve captured. The moment that I think I was very nearly arrested at the Romanian mission was one … they just did not believe I was merely seeking information about their country’s response to the Law of the Sea treaty! The day I spent at Central Park listening to the first Simon & Garfunkle reunion concert was another. The moment I first saw this statue was a third.

The fright at the Romanian mission and the Simon & Garfunkle concert have remained interesting and titillating memories. But the moment before the statue changed something deep in my soul. At the time, I had not had enough exposure to Biblical literature to understand that the “poem” came from scripture. It was quite simply breathtaking. It stayed with me for years and years. I remembered it and it whispered in the deep places of my mind for a decade until I read the Bible for the first time.

Ironically, the statue was a gift to the United Nations from the (then) Soviet Union in 1959. I say, ironically, because the Soviet Union is/was known for being atheist. So it is ironic to me that a statue dedicated to peace would have Judeo-Christian scripture engraved upon it.

I’ve been thinking about that scripture quite a bit this week. It was one of the scriptures we read during our advent candle lighting last Sunday. I found it interesting. Last Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, was the Sunday of Hope. I’ve been wondering why this reading from Isaiah 2 was included. It seems to be more synchronous with the second Sunday, the Sunday of Peace.

I’ve also been thinking about how to go about keeping the peace. About the nitty-gritty, if you will, of peaceful living. Living at at peace with my fellow men and women with whom I’m walking the earth. Ohhhh … there are days when beating swords into plowshares seems like the easy button.

As I have been going about my days this phrase, “swords into plowshares” has been fluttering around my head beating against the edges like a caged butterfly. They resound inside my head and there is, as Aslan might say, a deeper magic there. I think I might have found some of it finally as I was driving to (or was it fro) the rink the other day.

We think of war and think of killing, bombs, guns, destruction, death. We think of ugliness. Often in movies I’ve noticed that times of war and war scenes are subtly shot in greyed out colors, stark, brutal.

What is the opposite of war? Peace. How do we think of peace? What do we imagine a peaceful existence to look like? Have we, as a culture or community, ever imagined peace?

People joke about it. But we cannot truly envision it. Some of us Jesus-y types speak in erudite terms about the Kingdom of God and we think glow-y thoughts. We know the glimpses of it when we see it, but we don’t know how to define it. We want to bring it closer, but know that we cannot … not on our own. So what is the opposite of war? Peace. What does that look like? With its unique formulation, antabuse helps you stay committed to your sobriety by creating unpleasant side effects when you consume alcohol.

Plowshares. It looks like plowshares. It finally hit me. Peace looks like plowshares.

For those of you who are currently thinking, “Girlfrien’s done lost her pea-pickin’ mind,” give me a minute or two. First, you’re probably wondering what a plowshare is. A plowshare is the metal/iron part of the plow that actually digs up the dirt, breaks up the clods, and prepares the ground for planting. It generally has to be sort of sharp, not like a sword, but it has to be sharpened for each use as well. So turning swords into plowshares is not as unlikely as it seems. At the time that the words were spoken, both were made of the same material (iron) and forged by the same guy (blacksmith). This held true for many hundreds of years afterwards.

I started to think about what a plowshare could stand for, now that we are not an agrarian society any longer. Plowshares … they are the source. They allow creativity, development, beauty, art and ultimately, life. They could be an icon for fullness, life, food, community, family (a person cannot plow alone), health. We have talked about peace for so long that we no longer really know what it means. It is ephemeral, evanescent, fugitive and flitting. It dances around the edges of our consciousness and taunts us with it’s shadow.
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Looking for peace. Looking for signs of the plowshare. Places where swords have been consciously put down and redeemed into the icons of those things that can give humans back their gifts. Where people are redeemed and not sacrificed to Baal, er, the system. That’s what I’m looking for this season. Sometimes I see it peeking around the corner at me. I’m still working on my definition. But at least this year, I’m beginning to know what I’m looking for.
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Redeeming the Season is the Topic for this month’s SynchroBlog. Now there are a variety of seasons being celebrated at the end of each year from Christmas to Hannukah to Eid al-Adha and Muharram, from the Winter Solstice to Kwanzaa and Yule. Some people celebrate none of these seasonal holydays, and do so for good reason. Below is a variety of responses to the subject of redeeming the season. From the discipline of simplicity, to uninhibited celebration, to refraining from celebrating, to celebrating another’s holyday for the purpose of cultural identification the subject is explored. Follow the links below to “Redeeming the Season.” For more holidays to consider see here

Recapturing the Spirit of Christmas at Adam Gonnerman’s Igneous Quill
Swords into Plowshares at Sonja Andrew’s Calacirian
Fanning the Flickering Flame of Advent at Paul Walker’s Out of the Cocoon
Lainie Petersen at Headspace
Eager Longing at Elizaphanian
The Battle Rages at Bryan Riley’s Charis Shalom
Secularizing Christmas at JohnSmulo.com
There’s Something About Mary at Hello Said Jenelle
Geocentric Versus Anthropocentric Holydays at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Celebrating Christmas in a Pluralistic Society at Erin Word’s Decompressing Faith
Redeeming the season — season of redemption by Steve Hayes
Remembering the Incarnation at Alan Knox’ The Assembling of the Church
A Biblical Response to a Secular Christmas by Glenn Ansley’s Bad Theology
Happy Life Day at The Agent B Files
What’s So Bad About Christmas? at Julie Clawson’s One Hand Clapping

I don’t like drawing those much.  But sometimes ya jus’ gotta.  I did that today with my son.  He asked me a question and I felt my stomach flop over in revulsion.  So I drew a line.  I made a boundary and set a new tradition.

He’s not happy with it.  But I suspect he will live.  I hope it will give us fodder for some conversation over time.

At the very least he will learn never to ask a question that you do not want the answer to.

He asked me if he could play a war game on the computer.  I do not like war games at any time.  At best I merely tolerate knowing that he plays them because he’s a boy and he loves them.  Someday he will have to make his own decisions about peace, violence, love and war.  I cannot make those decisions for him.  Neither can I just remove all of those influences from him now, because that will just make them more tantalizing and appealing … it will also make him more bitter and resentful of me.  So he plays them with some regularity.

He asked me this morning, morning number 2 of Advent, if he could play a war game on the computer.  I felt my stomach turn over.  It wanted to heave.  My brain flashed with pictures of guns, cannons, death, mayhem and madness.  I looked at him for a minute and said, No.  No, you may not play war games on the computer during Advent.  This is a time when we consider the coming of peace.  So … no war.

So, he will have a 25-ish day fast from war games.  I guess I’m going to think about how I will consider the coming of peace in my life in tangible ways too.

Sometimes a line in the sand cuts in more than one direction.

Well then. I’m now keepin’ up with the Joneses and keepin’ on with getting ready for Thanksgiving.

Our first guests arrive today. The house is not ready. It will be. Sort of. Things will be fine and we’ll all have fun. It won’t go according to my original plan, but the necessary things will get done and the unnecessary things will drop away. Hopefully, I will remember to put the turkey in the oven on time.

It turns out that I do not have stress-induced eczema. I have a fungus that is causing the itching. Super! In what has become a standing pre-Thanksgiving tradition for LightHusband and I, we had matching doctors appointments yesterday afternoon. He has an upper respiratory infection and a sinus infection. I have fungus. Ewweth. Apparently we all have fungus on our skin, but if it gets underneath through a break in the skin then it becomes a problem. Bleh. Something I did not want to learn.
It makes having 16 for dinner on Thanksgiving and hosting a party for 35 the next day just another hoop to jump through. Keeping up and keeping on.

In other news, the grandparents will stay an extra day. We’re going to a Washington Capitals game on Saturday evening. This came up as a surprise yesterday afternoon. LightGirl has been chosen to skate with 3 of her team mates to help clear the ice between periods of the game that night. So while the rest of the thousands of fans will be there to see the game, at least five of the fans will be watching the cleaning of the ice! It’s very important you know 😀

Last, I’ve finished The Shack, by William P. Young. It was all the rage several months ago. I read several reviews of it all around the blog-o-sphere (including this one). It looked intriguing. So I threw it in my shopping cart in Amazon. Then one day it arrived. Such a miracle.

I know many (most) folks who read it sat down and did so in one sitting. Certainly, that is possible. And I wish I could have done so. But that wasn’t bloodly likely given my schedule lately. So I grabbed odd moments and before bed-time to read it. It’s a very powerful book packed into a small space. There’s a lot there.

I found it made an excellent companion piece to the book I reviewed here recently, It’s A Dance, by Patrick Oden. Having recently read that book gave me texture to bring to The Shack that I would not have had had I read it earlier.

I’m not entirely certain that every last jot and tittle of the theology is correct.  But then, I don’t know that anyone’s is.  Every one of us are making educated guesses.  Some guesses are more educated than others.  But not one of us knows the whole of what God is up to.  At best we see through a glass darkly; we see in part.  This book’s vision of the whole is winsome, captivating and certainly worth considering.  And certainly well worth the read.

As some of you might know I’m married to a shutter bug. LightHusband has been known to take a photo or two. In another life he was once rather affectionately (or so we thought) known as “The Sniper” because of his delight in snapping photos. Now he takes literally thousands of pictures of hockey players. Those that play with the LightChildren that is. He does a great job with it too. Enough so that when the “professional” came to take the team photos this year, I took secret delight at the high standards the hockey moms and dads had for him … that had been set by LightHusband.

In any case, when Brother Maynard mentioned that he’d found a website of 100 photographs that had changed the world, I was intrigued to say the least.  I wanted to see these photographs that had managed to change the world.  Because I’m always interested in the things that can change the world.

It was, in any case, the Life website and the 100 photographs that their photographers had taken that had changed the world … in their estimation.  The introduction and their rationale is well worth the read.  The photographs themselves are revealing and stunning.  They trace a bunch of our shared history for the past 150 years … that period of time during which we have had photography available to us.  It is a site that I really cannot recommend enough.

Here is the thought that kept echoing through my head and I cannot shake.  It hasn’t given me nightmares … yet.  But I’m bereft with it.  These photographs that changed the world.  I’m not so certain that it was the photographs that did the changing … it was that they captured the moment that a change began.  And here is the thing that causes my soul to quake … was how many of those moments were moments of utter and depraved violence.  They captured the worst moments of evil and depravity.  Some of the photographs are seemingly innocent.

There is the photograph of the first “Marlboro Man.”  I never knew he was originally a real cowboy, a foreman on a 320,000 acre ranch in northern Texas.  He rode into town once a week for storebought shave.  But there is violence underneath that photo … the violence of using a human as an icon to make money on addiction and ultimately death.

There is the “Earthrise” photo … capturing the moment the earth rises over the horizon of the moon during the one of the trips to the moon in the late 60’s.  It remains one of the most beautiful photos ever taken.  But we still do not know the effects of our pollution when taken into the realms of outer space.  We take it there and blithely dump it as we did for so many decades into our oceans thinking they were limitless.

Take only photographs and leave only footprints … is that truly possible?  Can we really leave only footprints behind?  Or do we make more of an impact on our environment than that.  I wonder about the implications of the curses in Genesis 3.  What did God mean by them?  How far down have we gone?  Can we ever change the world?

I’ve been fumbling around lately. There’s a lot going on in my head (which may be dangerous). You’ve seen the results of some of it, but not too much. I feel torn though. I have a lot of different people who read this blog. Some of them (hi Mom) read it because they love me. Others read it because I’ve fooled them into thinking I’ve got something interesting to say every once in a while. But I find that I want to focus my scope here. So, I’ve been doing some building and creating. I’ve made a couple of other homes … this may make me feel slightly schizophrenic, I don’t know. But I made a blog to talk about my family life; hockey, homeschooling, etc. Like I can brag over there that LightGirl was named Player of the Week on her team last week. That blog is called Grandfather Ent and if you’ve developed any sort of interest in my kids and their hockey, you can follow them over there. I also decided that I needed a place to write about my adventures in quilting because not writing about it was making me a little bit nutty. I’m also going to post occasional photos of my WISPs (that is Works In Slow Progress). I called that blog Withywindle Counterpanes. I’ll be writing more about churchy, Jesusy things here from now on and keeping my children and design things for my “other” spaces. I’ll see how that works.

I’ve done some maintenance on my sidebar here too. I’ve split up my blogroll into two pieces. I wanted to call attention to the women bloggers that I follow and give them a special place. So I called that folder “Galadriel” for the leader of Lothlorien in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She was a leader with power who focused on peace. The men that I follow are still under “Beacon-Hills” which I also think is fitting.

You may have noticed a trend here … I seem to find a lot of my nomenclature from MiddleEarth. Yep. I do. That’s because those stories have always spoken into my life and continue to do so. For instance, Calacirya is the name of a ravine. It’s mentioned only once in the books … but it’s known as the Ravine of Light, hence the reason I refer to my husband and children as LightHusband and LightChildren. I used to have a pseudonym which was Celtic and meant Lady of Light. I like the light theme and will be using it more often in the future. I’m not certain how that will play out, but it will.

I’ve also added a couple of icons to my sidebar.  One is for the new book written by Patrick Oden, It’s A Dance.  This icon leads to the website he’s created to go with the book.  Patrick’s got a unique vision for church that I’d like to encourage … so here’s my tiny, little helping hand.  Click on that link and explore his site.  Better yet, read the book! then go to the website.  I know Thanksgiving is nigh, but I now have a hunger for something better and not yet after reading it.  I’m fairly certain it’s not pie!!  The second icon will lead you to the Daily Office of the Northumbria Community.  I’ve been praying that off and on for several years now out of my book (Celtic Book of Daily Prayer), which can get awkward and cumbersome; flipping back and forth between bible and pages, etc.  I just discovered that the Northumbria Community has their Office on-line and it is sooooo convenient.  I even built myself a “gadget” for my Google Homepage … it will be available to the general public in about ten days if you’re interested.   This makes it fabulously easy to pray with the saints worldwide.  So you can get to it through the icon on my sidebar and wander around the island at Northumbria for a while.  Then stay and pray with me if you will.  I’d love it.

There you have it … I’m seeking some zen or other of blogging.  I’ll let you know if I find it.  We’ll see if this works out … or not.