Keep Christmas

First, a poem:

Judah's Lion by Keith Patman

Where does the lion, Judah's golden lion walk?
Stealthy under star by winter night his soft paws stalk.
Out on lonely hills a cold wind howls and darkness scowls;
Shepherds shiver - danger in the dark! - some wild beast prowls.
Suddenly up springs a light; a voice rings like a bell:
"Joy, oh men of Judah! Come and see! Noel! Noel!"
Where lies Judah's longed-for lion? "Come and see the sight!
Fear not - your golden one is couched among the lambs tonight."

So here we are, just 3 days after Christmas, and already I've left the manger behind in the dust as I chase after my old friends: worldiness, worry, and anxiety about the future. I caught myself in this today, and felt frustrated. I had had such a good Advent season, meditating on the manger and trying to fathom even a fraction of the mystery contained in the idea of "Incarnation." But was I changed by it at all, if I can so quickly slip back into old patterns and perspectives?

Maybe the mistake was in gazing at the manger then marching away, leaving it behind on December 25th. The manger, of course, is not just a useful symbol for one part of the year, but for every day - to call to mind that night when the world changed, when my world changed - that night, the light, the humility, faith and fulfillment summed up in the Christmas story.

So today I stopped, re-read the poem above, and tried to focus my fretful little mind on the miracle of Lion & Lamb, tried for the thousandth time to imagine what the shepherds must have felt (it always makes me cry!), tried to decipher what it meant for God to come near, and tried to remember that He did it, in part, to take on & take over my worldiness, worry, and anxiety.

Then I remembered that I had this key with me all along (a la Dorothy and her ruby slippers) - the gang on Sesame Street had instructed me long ago, in their TV special "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street." You remember the one, right? Big Bird wonders how Santa fits down the chimney, Cookie Monster eats Bob's Christmas tree, Bert trades his paper-clip collection to buy a soap dish for Ernie's rubber duckie, and we all learned a valuable lesson about giving? Anyways, one of the songs from the show goes like this:

"Keep Christmas with you
All through the year,
When Christmas is over,
Save some Christmas cheer."

Simple but wise words, you sage Muppets! As we leave December, I will try not to leave Christmas, but instead to look each day for the manger, and the golden One couched there.

Christmas Eve Day

Today is almost better than tomorrow: anticipation is palpable now, busyness trumps boredom. It’s a Martha day of getting ready, tomorrow is Mary’s day of just sitting and being. I wake early so as not to miss anything.

My mother is making sausage bread, for tomorrow’s breakfast, so the kitchen smells like my childhood. I finish my coffee and The Post, today a mix of real news and holiday nothingness. Dad tackles Samari Sudoku with furrowed brow. Birds and squirrels at the feeder outside provide occasional distraction. I miss my dog, who would be underfoot if he were here. Brother wakes late, makes noise, disappears again.

I Tivo “Miracle on 34th Street” (made 30 years before I was) which I plan to watch later, after church, assuming my faction wins the battle on which service to attend. Annually I lead the charge for 9:30pm, but my mom often wins out for the candle-light midnight version. She likes to leave church and have it be Christmas. I think lifting lit candles over my head that late in the night spells d-a-n-g-e-r.

Soon there will be knocks at the door, as family friends drop by with plates of baked goods and season’s greetings. Some stay for visiting over tea, ask how I’m doing, give reports on their own kids’ whereabouts. The house is then gezellig (a Dutch word, and nearly untranslatable, but you know it when you feel it).

Later we’ll eat pierogies, the yearly nod to our Polish heritage. After getting ready for church, my mom will plead for a family photo, which we’ll allow, though either me and or my brother will come out looking goofy. Still, this is an improvement over Christmas Eve pictures from our teenage years, where one of us always looked mad. Things are looking up.

Much of the year I try to root out tradition from my life – throw away what doesn’t make sense anymore, what is residual ritual lacking purpose, not pointing to God. Today, however, I grovel in tradition, almost without qualm. Tomorrow I begin again.

Interfaithiness
For the past couple of weeks there has been a menorah (a hannukia, specifically) on the altar of my church. This is a church after my own odd little Judeo-phile heart! I love to celebrate Hannukah, and not just because it gives me an excuse to play Peter, Paul and Mary's "Light One Candle" in excessive repetition. No, more than that, it's a holiday with a powerful message and one that Jesus himself probably celebrated. In the Gospel of John (chapter 10, verse 22) we see Jesus in Jerusalem at the Temple for the Feast of Dedication, aka Hannukah. The holiday commemorates the re-dedication of the Temple, which had been desecrated by a statue of Zeus and pagan sacrifices during Seleucid occupation of Jerusalem (around 168 BCE). When control of the Temple was finally reclaimed, the priests removed the defiled elements, built a new altar, and re-dedicated the Temple with a celebration that lasted 8 days. During this season, reflecting on the Hannukah story, I try to examine what elements of my life need to be re-dedicated to God. What needs to be cleaned out, purified? What elements of the ruling culture have I let into the space that should be filled by God - what idols have I set up and worshipped in my heart? I may not have a statue of Zeus lying around, but there are plenty of other things/concepts/goals acting as idols in my life. I ask God to help me identify these, and help bring me back to Him.

"So, Lord our God, send out Thy light and Thy truth and let them lead us. Let them bring us to Thy holy hill and to Thy tabernacle. Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight." (from Psalm 43)

Happy 6th Night of Hannukah everyone! [Aside, related to this blog's title: Did y'all see that "truthiness," a word credited to comic-genius Stephen Colbert, won Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year? Click here to read Colbert's crazy-hillarious acceptance speech.]

Neighbors

So I have this neighbor, let's call her "Brownie." (This pseudonym is not racially motivated, but rather dessert motivated; her actual name is also a baked good.) Brownie has lived in the building for many years, and livened up the drab hallway on our floor with, among other things, a poster of a golden retreiver holding 3 tennis balls in his mouth, a painting of 2 men (who may be former Supreme Court Justices, I am unclear on this), some "Support Our Troops" stickers, a couple plants, and a full length mirror.

In the past few weeks, Brownie has enhanced the existing decor with some holiday spirit - she wrapped the plants' tables in red and green paper, and hung a wreath and a few "Merry Christmas" signs on her door.

Today, however, I arrived home to find that the holiday decorations had virtually exploded and multiplied - a 'Santas of the World' figurine collection has replaced one of the plants, and the walls are now covered with images of candy canes, mistletoe, and reindeer. These images spill down the staircase into the 4th floor hallway, and up the stairs leading to the roof: the 5th floor cannot contain Brownie's festivity! It runneth over with Christmas cheer.

I walked slowly to my apartment, scarcely able to absorb the "splendor" of it all and stiffling a laugh. At the end of the hall, hanging between my door and my other neighbor's door, was perhaps the best part of all: a small, shiny metallic "Happy Hannukah" banner taped to the wall.

I am not sure who made this interfaith contribution to the holiday-riffic hallway - some of you readers at home may suspect it was me, but I swear it wasn't. My other neighbor has a mezzuzah on his door and an Israeli-sounding name, so the banner seems to be in deference to him. But it's anyone's guess if he hung it there himself, in an attempt to maintain his Jewish identity in the face of so many miniature Santas staring back at him, or was it placed there by Brownie, a decorating concession made in effort to promote 5th floor religious harmony?

If I find out, I'll let you know. In the meantime, Season's Greetings!

Faith & Certainty

Anne Lamott writes the following in her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

"I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me - that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns."

I read this yesterday and immediately thought of Frank, a guy that my friend, KT, and I met on Friday night and subsequently journeyed with on a seemingly-endless subway ride. How we came by Frank's acquaintance is a long story, but I will say that someone's uncle, an aerial advertising business, and a bar in the Lower East Side figured prominently.

We had been introduced to Frank by the aforementioned uncle, who noted that we all shared a common interest in the Bible. However, Frank's repeated references to the 144,000+ "elect," secret Bible codes, and peoples whom "God hates" tipped me off that perhaps Frank had a different sort of faith than me.

Frank's beliefs were further elucidated as the three of us left the LES and headed north on the 6-train. His matter-of-fact tone left no room for debate and he barely paused to let us ask questions; he spoke rapidly of 9-11 conspiracies, annual pagan retreats attended by major world leaders such as Tony Blair, concentration camps being built in Indiana, and exegesis of the Book of Revelation which foretold that 95% of the people currently on the subway train with us would not survive the coming destruction.

This last topic caused quite a few of the people on the train to turn and stare at us, as Frank was not exactly whispering. Thankfully our stop was next, and we quickly took our leave of Frank, amidst his promises to send us links to websites that would further explain these ideas.

What bothered me most, as I thought back over our encounter, was not the ideas themselves (though they were troubling) so much as the way Frank presented them: as unquestionable. Had he personally attended a pagan retreat with Tony Blair or known anyone who had? No. But his certainty of their existence was absolute, and his attitude clearly suggested that anyone who didn't know about the retreats (and everything else he spoke about) was stumbling in ignorance.

I thought, If Frank's demeanor is indicative of the "truth," then give me ignorance any day. It wasn't winsome. And it scared people on the subway! In his focus on & certainty of these conspiratorial facts and doomsday prophecies, faith, hope & love seemed absent from his message and worldview.

I'm not really sure how to conclude, except to say that my encounter with "certainty" last Friday led me to resonate with what Anne Lamott wrote above about faith. Certainty seems often to be dogmatic - a clinging to facts and precepts above all else, and prone to stagnation. Whereas perhaps faith is more responsive, flexible - stemming from and being rooted in the Living God, it is itself living. Certainty calls for you to be either all in or all out; faith makes statements like "I believe, help my unbelief" possible, lets us be messy, allows us to wade into God.

However, of all this I am not yet certain. :) I still have some more thinking to do.

Singing "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" In Front of Ira

I thought I had my entire day planned out, but what I hadn't planned on was running into a certain someone with his certain someone at my bus stop this morning. The possibility of such an encounter had vaguely troubled me ever since he informed me (sometime last month) that I now lived on the same block as his new girlfriend. New York is a city of infinite possibilities, millions of people, and five boroughs...what are the odds that I would randomly move to the exact same block as this girl? I marveled at God's sense of humor, wrote a bad poem, sought friends' affirmation, then tried to forget about it.

That is, until today, when the situation presented itself unavoidably at the bus stop. Though my first instinct was to run in the other direction, I reasoned that was not something an almost-29-year-old should do. So instead I smiled and said "hello," accepted his awkward hug, and politely shook her hand. Thankfully, we were relieved from our strained small talk by the arrival of their bus after only a few minutes. As they rolled away to brunch, I called Chantal for support.

I bemoaned the fact that the girl was not named "Ethel" nor did she have a lazy eye (as we had previously schemed), and Chantal very wisely pointed out that she probably has a peg-leg or something, currently disguised under winter clothing, but it would be most unsightly during the summer. This made me feel better; not so much for its likelihood, but because it reminded me that I have good, supportive friends. :) I was further reminded later in the day, when Denise supposed that it was highly doubtful the girl was a natural blonde, and that there was no way her butt looks as good as mine. These are true friends, indeed; they know just what to say to cheer me up.

The mystery remains, however, as to why I needed cheering up in the first place. I couldn't figure out why I cared. Why should a brief encounter with a boy, who I broke up with almost 9 years ago, have such an emotional effect? And why would I hope that his current girlfriend would have an ugly name or lackluster character or a prosthetic limb, even? I have come to a few preliminary conclusions:

1) Being a girl is annoying. Or at least, it can be when it comes to emotions. A wise friend said to me recently that often the things we admonish ourselves for are the things that make us human. So girly emotions, frustrating though they may be, are part of my human condition; I will try to just accept their presence, though not necessarily act on them.

2) There are lasting consequences when we do things apart from God. My relationship with this boy was certainly apart from God, so it is understandable that there may be lingering effects and messiness and awkwardness left to sort through, even 9 years later. This too is part of my human condition. Yet see #3 below for the good news...

3) God does not leave me alone to sort through the above items. I am in need of continual grace: grace to let go of vanity and jealousy, grace to heal, grace to truly seek and pray for the peace of others, grace to believe God's promises, grace to see myself through His eyes and not through other people, and grace to (gracefully) survive awkard small talk at bus stops. And happily, God's grace is abundantly available; I just need to remember to keep asking for it.

Coffee as Muse

While cleaning out old emails, I came across a poem I wrote back in the dark days of temping, circa 2002:

Coffee #1

Eyelids weak, but coffee's strong

This afternoon drags on too long

Cup o' coffee, cream and sugar

Only thing that rhymes is "booger"

Contents Hot! And yes indeed.

Cup o' coffee gives me speed.

Files filed, letters written,
By the Caffeine Bug am bitten.

[That last phrase "am bitten" reminds me of the Dutch word "aanbidden" which means "adore." And I do adore coffee. Go figure.]

Interviewing (Part 2)

In addition to interviewing for jobs, last week I had an interview of a different sort: a membership interview for my church here in NYC. Although I've attended several churches over the past few years, I never officially became a member of any of those congregations, so this is a new experience for me.

The interview was with one of the elders of the church who, in contrast to many of the HR people I've met with recently, did not make me feel inadequate and awkward. We had a great conversation over coffee about faith, my spiritual journey, the role of the church, the role of a church member, etc. Then he asked me a set of 5 questions dealing with basic tenets of Christianity, just to make sure my beliefs were not diametrically opposed to church doctrine or anything.

At all my recent job interviews, my answers to questions have felt canned and phoney - "Just looking for a position where I can utilize my administrative and organizational skills blah blah blah blech..." It was nice to be in a setting where I could answer truthfully and admit weaknesses, instead of trying to cover them up to impress my interviewer.

So, God willing, I will become a member at this Sunday's service. I find that I'm pretty excited about it; already I feel a sense of responsibility and ownership in the church that I didn't feel before. And though commitments usually freak me out, I find that committing to my member-ly duties (regular attendance, service, financial support, submitting to church discipline if necessary, etc.) actually brings me peace and, perhaps ironically but not surprisingly, a sense of freedom.

Though Advent began only just yesterday, I'm sensing that the theme of the season for me this year will be the concept of "home." And thus it seems quite fitting to formally adopt a church home during this time. Thinking of the church, both local and catholic, as home helps me understand the aforementioned sense of freedom: though one's home is often characterized by rules & structure, it is also often the place you feel most free to fully be yourself.

A Break from the Interviewing Thread

Tonight I caught my first glimpse of ice-skating this season, in the form of TV's Ice Wars: USA versus the World. Now, I admit this is not necessarily high-brow skating (interesting choreography and technicality being exchanged for crowd-pleasing pandering), and usually I would not go in for anything involving the strategy "USA versus the World." (this is why I didn't vote for Bush. Ha!) However, Ice Wars does have one thing going for it...and his name is Kurt Browning.

Yes, yes, my fondness for this Canadian superstar has not abated over time. Though he has lost his hair, he has not lost his place in my heart. The obsession began in college, when I first tuned in to the many merits of Kurt. At the time, roommates and boyfriends alike mocked my heart-shaped shrine to the 4-time World Champion, but I didn't care. Though the Olympic gold medal eluded Kurt throughout his amateur career, his wit, his charm, his unparalleled footwork and showmanship have always made him gold in my book. As one fan's poster at tonight's event summed up so eloquently: "Kurt is Kool."

Other notes on Ice Wars:
Was it wrong to feel a twinge of satisfaction when Brian Boitano tripped on his signature 'Tano Lutz? Probably yes, but I feel it may also be pay-back for Brian having the gall to skate to Sinatra's "That's Life." You can't skate to that song unless you have grit (like Frank did) to back it up, and 'Tano doesn't have grit. He's really better suited for songs like "The Girl from Ipanema."

Hometown-boy Michael Weiss skated to "I Can Only Imagine" - a song about heaven and Jesus. Is Michael a Christian and I didn't even know it!? Time to google-investigate...