"Who are your people?" Back in my hometown for a Christmas visit to my mom's, I took my granddaughter Marley to "the Monkey Park", Opelika Municipal Park, so called because it once housed monkeys. They kept escaping and were removed in the 1970's, when I was a little kid, and all official correspondence has referred to it as the Municipal Park for 40 years, but the name still remains. The Monkey Park has it all-three or four sets of swings and slides, old-fashioned see-saws and animals mounted on springs, a miniature train, creeks and bridges.
While we were going up ladders and down slides, over and around the bridges and streams, we encountered an old lady walking an overly friendly dog, who immediately questioned me as to whether I was a native Opelikan. Upon finding I was, she wanted to know about "my people". Meaning who I am related to. Turns out she knows-or knows of-most of my family. Not hard to do in a town of 25,000 with deep roots. In case you don't exactly know the family lines named in this type of game, you are always safe with "I went to school with some Smiths." High school graduation dates are pulled out, examined, compared, cousins can be cross-referenced, neighborhoods are sketched in.
Most Opelika folks I run into know some of "my people", so I am part of the narrative, the lifeblood of this tiny little community. Although I moved from Opelika to Auburn in the 1990s. Although I moved from there to Pelham on the outskirts of Birmingham right about 1999. Although I moved to Texas last year. When I go to Opelika I am still "home" since folks know "my people" and accept me as part of the native population.
So its pretty safe to say that in my little corner of East Alabama, if you know Barbers, Burdettes, Harringtons, Sassers, Griffiths, Alexanders, or even Ducks, you might know some of my people.
Which brings up my wife's family. I spent Christmas evening and the next couple of days in Clanton with her aunt and uncle and their grown kids and their families. Tales were told. Coffee-from a Keurig, even!-was consumed, in large quantities, as was homemade soup. Kids abounded, gossip was recycled and fudge disappeared in industrial quantities.
Driving out to the family home, down Lay Dam Road from the big Peach on the side of I-65 in Clanton, I felt the same way I feel when driving to my ancestral homes. Remembering all the visits of years past, the nostalgia of childhood dreams fading into the glow of maturity, the bittersweet tang of memories of those who have died. Just like I feel when I drive past my grandmother's.
Because, you know, it IS exactly the same. When I started dating Stacey back in 1987 and started spending holidays with her family, it started this quarter-century relationship with all of them. In particular, I was very close to her Grandmother Peggy, and would often take the kids to visit her even if Stacey was in school or working or otherwise unavailable. Peggy always had high hopes and plans for Stacey-because I think all the family realized how brilliant Stacey was from the time she was a young girl-and when Peggy made sure that I shared her high opinion of her first-born granddaughter, we got on famously.
When Peggy died, it felt to me like I had lost my grandmother as well. I have related before that I still murmur my Grandmother Lessie's name every week in church during the prayers for the departed, but I have to confess that I murmur Peggy's name as well.
Because, you see, she was the first grandmother I lost.
So all these Pettys and Martins and Curetons and Burkes, all these aunts and uncles and cousins and babies and such that live in Clanton on the way to the lake, those are "my people", too. Most emphatically so, since I chose this bunch out of my own free will. And up in the Carolinas, those Campbells and Swansons? Yep, those too. Just can't seem to turn around without finding more of "my people".
I can't even think about all the people I am related to by not just blood or marriage but by something as powerful and simple as just friendship and love!
In the final summation, it's not just about where you come FROM, its where you are going to, and who you are on a journey with.
So-who are YOUR people?
But Ruth said, “Do not
urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I
will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you."
Friday, December 28, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Playing favorites?
People have favorite cars, favorite brands of beer, even favorite movies and favorite days of the week. We tend to quantify, measure, and compare everything from days of the week to breeds of cat. So with something as important as kids, how can you NOT have a favorite kid? I mean, sure you love all of them, and they are all precious to you, and all that. I get it. But it is just natural that one of your kids be more like you-or less like you, as the case may be. And with different memories in common than the others. So, just like most of you who just won't admit it, I do have a favorite child...
My oldest child, Pamela, was born when I was only 20, so she holds a dear place in my heart of the child with whom I grew up. Stacey and I really learned as we went with Pam, everything was new and chaotic and astonishingly moving. First steps, first words...first tantrum, first school detention. I spent so many years as a young room parent at her schools-since I worked mainly nights as a restaurant manager, I could spend days as a field trip chaperone and room father. Pam and I, we spent so much time and so many precious memories together. While I was figuring out how to be an adult, she taught me what it takes to be a dad. She learned about the Cure and the Smiths from me, and I learned about Barney and the Little Mermaid from her. She is the oldest child, just like me, and she quickly became dependable and mature with her brother and sister, almost a deputy parent, just like me. We are so alike-she also had a child at 20, and when Marley was born, we found yet another thing we had in common-juggling young parenthood and life and responsibility at a time of life when most of your friends are still partying every night. How could I NOT make a favorite of a child who is SO like me?
Which brings me to my son, Andrew. He is so funny, so unabashed, and such a natural in social groups. He never meets a stranger, and he works a room better than any politician I have ever seen. From working in soup kitchens and church functions in Florence while he was in school, he found that he has a way with people; old ladies in particular take a real shine to him. Of all my kids, Andrew is the one about whom I have the most stories, of things said and done that just amaze, amuse, and astound everyone we know. Playing golf with me when he was about three, he was troubled by our golf partner's lack of a left arm. "Dad, he doesn't have one of his arms. How is he gonna hit the ball?" he asked in a loud stage whisper. Horrified at this lack of discretion, I tried in vain to shush him, to no avail-after two or three more repetitions of this line of query, he jumped out in front of us, pointed right to the fellow, and yelled "But, Dad, look!! He has no arm!! Dad!! How is he gonna hit the ball!!??" My mortification has fueled retellings of this episode at family gatherings for almost 20 years now. He loves to talk to people, is generous and helpful and extremely sentimental, just like me. How could I NOT make a favorite of a child who is SO like me?
Sarah, my youngest, is younger than Andrew by 5 years and Pam by 10. As the baby of the family, she was fortunate enough to come into her own when we had more patience, more money, and more wisdom. We have called her "The Littlest Camper" many a time, and the whole family loves the stories of her bringing wildly inappropriate items like a three-foot stuffed animal as well as a camp chair for said bunny to our trips. She is known for not arguing or pitching a fit, for simply going ahead and doing what she wanted to anyway without even discussing it. Of all the kids, she is the one who excels in school because she is driven to do so, rather than to satisfy a rewards-based system. She gets pissed off at poor grammar and by fellow students who interfere with what she sees as her serious work. She speaks fluent sarcasm, and has a very dry sense of humor, just like I do. How could I NOT make a favorite of a child who is SO like me?
So there is my big confession. I know it is wrong to pick out a child as your favorite-why, it will probably warp all of them. But how in the name of common sense can you NOT ally yourself more strongly with the one who is more like you in personality or circumstance? I know that I grew up with two brothers, and I am firmly convinced that my Mom played favorites when we were growing up. I am definitely her favorite child, sorta like Adam and Shawn are.
I have not exactly discussed this in certain terms with her, but I am pretty convinced that my stance on this issue is shared by Stacey. She, of course, is my favorite wife.
My oldest child, Pamela, was born when I was only 20, so she holds a dear place in my heart of the child with whom I grew up. Stacey and I really learned as we went with Pam, everything was new and chaotic and astonishingly moving. First steps, first words...first tantrum, first school detention. I spent so many years as a young room parent at her schools-since I worked mainly nights as a restaurant manager, I could spend days as a field trip chaperone and room father. Pam and I, we spent so much time and so many precious memories together. While I was figuring out how to be an adult, she taught me what it takes to be a dad. She learned about the Cure and the Smiths from me, and I learned about Barney and the Little Mermaid from her. She is the oldest child, just like me, and she quickly became dependable and mature with her brother and sister, almost a deputy parent, just like me. We are so alike-she also had a child at 20, and when Marley was born, we found yet another thing we had in common-juggling young parenthood and life and responsibility at a time of life when most of your friends are still partying every night. How could I NOT make a favorite of a child who is SO like me?
Which brings me to my son, Andrew. He is so funny, so unabashed, and such a natural in social groups. He never meets a stranger, and he works a room better than any politician I have ever seen. From working in soup kitchens and church functions in Florence while he was in school, he found that he has a way with people; old ladies in particular take a real shine to him. Of all my kids, Andrew is the one about whom I have the most stories, of things said and done that just amaze, amuse, and astound everyone we know. Playing golf with me when he was about three, he was troubled by our golf partner's lack of a left arm. "Dad, he doesn't have one of his arms. How is he gonna hit the ball?" he asked in a loud stage whisper. Horrified at this lack of discretion, I tried in vain to shush him, to no avail-after two or three more repetitions of this line of query, he jumped out in front of us, pointed right to the fellow, and yelled "But, Dad, look!! He has no arm!! Dad!! How is he gonna hit the ball!!??" My mortification has fueled retellings of this episode at family gatherings for almost 20 years now. He loves to talk to people, is generous and helpful and extremely sentimental, just like me. How could I NOT make a favorite of a child who is SO like me?
Sarah, my youngest, is younger than Andrew by 5 years and Pam by 10. As the baby of the family, she was fortunate enough to come into her own when we had more patience, more money, and more wisdom. We have called her "The Littlest Camper" many a time, and the whole family loves the stories of her bringing wildly inappropriate items like a three-foot stuffed animal as well as a camp chair for said bunny to our trips. She is known for not arguing or pitching a fit, for simply going ahead and doing what she wanted to anyway without even discussing it. Of all the kids, she is the one who excels in school because she is driven to do so, rather than to satisfy a rewards-based system. She gets pissed off at poor grammar and by fellow students who interfere with what she sees as her serious work. She speaks fluent sarcasm, and has a very dry sense of humor, just like I do. How could I NOT make a favorite of a child who is SO like me?
So there is my big confession. I know it is wrong to pick out a child as your favorite-why, it will probably warp all of them. But how in the name of common sense can you NOT ally yourself more strongly with the one who is more like you in personality or circumstance? I know that I grew up with two brothers, and I am firmly convinced that my Mom played favorites when we were growing up. I am definitely her favorite child, sorta like Adam and Shawn are.
I have not exactly discussed this in certain terms with her, but I am pretty convinced that my stance on this issue is shared by Stacey. She, of course, is my favorite wife.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
It was bound to happen...
Those who really know me were not absolutely convinced that I could stay as solely a stay-at-home parent forever. Too restless, or too much energy to be consumed, or too easily pulled into doing something which needs attention. So I am sure I will not surprise anyone I know when I admit that I just had to get involved in the neighborhood crisis recently.
See, it has to do with the schools, and the kids, and the buses. Due to some colossal screw-up last year, the school system here dropped about 50 bus routes for kids that live within 2 miles of their school, when in prior years (that sticky word precedent) they picked them up. The most egregious errors involved mistakes in which a school was indeed only a 1/2 mile away from the particular neighborhood-but it was across on the other side of the interstate. Most parents don't fancy the idea of their children walking to school across ten lanes of 70 mph traffic. Especially the kindergartners. So there was a huge swell of criticism, finger-pointing, and lawsuit-threatening by angry parents at the school board meeting, and the response from the school board was to go into crisis hiring mode, trying to call back to work all the drivers that it had previously lost or let go, holding job fairs, sending emails to all parents in the district, and slapping "Hiring bus drivers" signs on all buses and school billboards. My neighborhood was one which lost its service to the elementary school a mile away, and the bus debacle was the topic of sidewalk conversation from August to now.
Which sort of explains why I was sitting down at the Texas Department of Public Safety this morning parallel parking "old number 459" for an examiner to pass my CDL exam. Yeah-that's right. Parallel park. A school bus. I can.
Can you?
Okay, I thought, why don't I take this little part-time job to help out the school? Work a couple of hours in the morning and in the afternoon, summers off, weekends off, any time school is out of session I am home. Save a little money to finance going back to school when I establish in-state residency here in Texas. Get state benefits in the form of some sort of pension or other, get to drive a school bus-a school bus!-and get paid a decent little check for it. Clock in, clock out, go home, easy job, right?
So a funny thing happened on the way to the bus depot....
So after a couple of weeks of training I have passed all my exams. Written exams on the intricacies of air brakes and freight-loading, and then road tests in which one must demonstrate an inhumanly icy control of sixteen tons of yellow metal wrapped around a chugging diesel engine that catches the wind like the side of the Sears Tower and makes turns like an aircraft carrier. And I have ridden as a trainee/observer with other drivers who range from control freaks who wish they could strap their kids down and duct tape their mouths shut all the way to over-friendly aging hippies who call everyone "dude" and ignore anything going on as long as it doesn't involve projectiles, bodily fluids, or litter. Especially litter, because you have to clean up your own bus.
And the grand lesson I take home from everything I've seen happening is a lesson that I already know so well. There are drivers who say they got a bad route and got bad kids this year. Their buses are almost uniformly chaotic and unfriendly, hostile and unwelcoming. Every day is a struggle for power, and the only resolution comes in fruitless meetings with the principal between driver, student, and parents. Then there are drivers who say they have the best route there is, and their kids are great. These kids say hello when they get on the bus, they say goodbye and thanks when they exit. Sure, they make noise and act like kids, but everyone likes to unwind after a day at work-which school is for them.
And these drivers all pick up kids at the same schools and drop them off in the same neighborhoods. So the kids that got off my bus today laughing and smiling live right down the street from the ones that argued with their driver, left trash on the bus, or threw coats across 3 rows of seats. The difference I can see is that the drivers with "good" kids engage them daily, maybe just nodding at them and saying hello as they enter and goodbye as they leave. Remembering their names, how to pronounce them. The lesson is that everyone matters.
Everyone has a name, and everyone deserves to hear himself or herself called by it. Maybe a nod and a smile every so often. Just like adults, kids are people, and I see daily that the way we approach people and approach life has immediate effect upon our circumstances and situations. There are some things, indeed, over which I have no control, but treating people as I like to be treated is always in my reach. I have never been in a situation in which a word of interest or kindness to someone else has not positively changed the atmosphere.
Even if it has only changed the way I think about the other person.
So I daily affirm the profound truth that how I act has immediate and positive consequences for my life.
And did I mention that I can parallel park a bus! Yes, a school bus. Can you?
See, it has to do with the schools, and the kids, and the buses. Due to some colossal screw-up last year, the school system here dropped about 50 bus routes for kids that live within 2 miles of their school, when in prior years (that sticky word precedent) they picked them up. The most egregious errors involved mistakes in which a school was indeed only a 1/2 mile away from the particular neighborhood-but it was across on the other side of the interstate. Most parents don't fancy the idea of their children walking to school across ten lanes of 70 mph traffic. Especially the kindergartners. So there was a huge swell of criticism, finger-pointing, and lawsuit-threatening by angry parents at the school board meeting, and the response from the school board was to go into crisis hiring mode, trying to call back to work all the drivers that it had previously lost or let go, holding job fairs, sending emails to all parents in the district, and slapping "Hiring bus drivers" signs on all buses and school billboards. My neighborhood was one which lost its service to the elementary school a mile away, and the bus debacle was the topic of sidewalk conversation from August to now.
Which sort of explains why I was sitting down at the Texas Department of Public Safety this morning parallel parking "old number 459" for an examiner to pass my CDL exam. Yeah-that's right. Parallel park. A school bus. I can.
Can you?
Okay, I thought, why don't I take this little part-time job to help out the school? Work a couple of hours in the morning and in the afternoon, summers off, weekends off, any time school is out of session I am home. Save a little money to finance going back to school when I establish in-state residency here in Texas. Get state benefits in the form of some sort of pension or other, get to drive a school bus-a school bus!-and get paid a decent little check for it. Clock in, clock out, go home, easy job, right?
So a funny thing happened on the way to the bus depot....
So after a couple of weeks of training I have passed all my exams. Written exams on the intricacies of air brakes and freight-loading, and then road tests in which one must demonstrate an inhumanly icy control of sixteen tons of yellow metal wrapped around a chugging diesel engine that catches the wind like the side of the Sears Tower and makes turns like an aircraft carrier. And I have ridden as a trainee/observer with other drivers who range from control freaks who wish they could strap their kids down and duct tape their mouths shut all the way to over-friendly aging hippies who call everyone "dude" and ignore anything going on as long as it doesn't involve projectiles, bodily fluids, or litter. Especially litter, because you have to clean up your own bus.
And the grand lesson I take home from everything I've seen happening is a lesson that I already know so well. There are drivers who say they got a bad route and got bad kids this year. Their buses are almost uniformly chaotic and unfriendly, hostile and unwelcoming. Every day is a struggle for power, and the only resolution comes in fruitless meetings with the principal between driver, student, and parents. Then there are drivers who say they have the best route there is, and their kids are great. These kids say hello when they get on the bus, they say goodbye and thanks when they exit. Sure, they make noise and act like kids, but everyone likes to unwind after a day at work-which school is for them.
And these drivers all pick up kids at the same schools and drop them off in the same neighborhoods. So the kids that got off my bus today laughing and smiling live right down the street from the ones that argued with their driver, left trash on the bus, or threw coats across 3 rows of seats. The difference I can see is that the drivers with "good" kids engage them daily, maybe just nodding at them and saying hello as they enter and goodbye as they leave. Remembering their names, how to pronounce them. The lesson is that everyone matters.
Everyone has a name, and everyone deserves to hear himself or herself called by it. Maybe a nod and a smile every so often. Just like adults, kids are people, and I see daily that the way we approach people and approach life has immediate effect upon our circumstances and situations. There are some things, indeed, over which I have no control, but treating people as I like to be treated is always in my reach. I have never been in a situation in which a word of interest or kindness to someone else has not positively changed the atmosphere.
Even if it has only changed the way I think about the other person.
So I daily affirm the profound truth that how I act has immediate and positive consequences for my life.
And did I mention that I can parallel park a bus! Yes, a school bus. Can you?
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Rehabilitating Scrooge
At this time of year, exposed to endless retellings of A Christmas Carol from productions as diverse as the Muppets to the Alastair Sim 1951 classic version to Jim Carrey's recent film, I find myself thinking a lot about Ebenezer Scrooge, about what he means to the modern zeitgeist and that of Dickensian London. He is a character about whom I am really conflicted and can never quite pin down.
To start with, his name has gone the long way round in giving him a bum rap. "Scrooge" has come to mean a miserly curmudgeon in our days, but in the English of Dickens' day it meant to squeeze, so the surname Scrooge would carry the meaning of squeezing rather than miserliness. As in squeezing or pinching pennies, or wringing work out of his clerk, or payments out of his debtors. And how unfair that the name Scrooge has come to mean an angry and cheap old man when if you were to give justice to the conclusion of the book it might stand for reborn or redeemed or newfound generosity of spirit.
But WHY has Scrooge come about, to keep Christmas like no other, to be kindly and generous? This is where another conflict comes in. From a quick read of the book, it appears that Scrooge's motivation is to escape a quick and ignominious end. Time and again he entreats the Spirits who haunt him "Can I still have the power to change my future?" after being confronted with visions of business associates speaking harshly of him after death, of cackling servants who steal and sell his few possessions as soon as he is dead, of his lonely and neglected grave. Jailhouse conversions are not always impressive; Scrooge turning to the path of family and friends and celebration rather than continuing in his solitary misery because he is given a vision that he will die unmourned and unloved is hardly stirring. It is simply self-interest. What glory is there in coming to the right path simply to avoid the wrong? If you want me to celebrate Scrooge's great redemption you had better do better than dodging an evil end.
But wait!but see!but read!-there is more, there is more lurking when you read further. Scrooge's REAL redemption comes not through following his own enlightened self-interest, but through the welfare of others. His heartstrings-and ours-are stirred not by his surface acceptance of Christmas, but by his appeal to others in his life. His shame at the shabby manner in which he has treated his nephew Fred, his horror at the idea that Tiny Tim will surely die if he does not receive help, and his disgrace at the memory of his brusque treatment of the men out collecting donations for the poor-these have more to do with his redemption. When Dickens tells us that he kept Christmas as well as anyone could, we know in our hearts that this phrase has little to do with decorating a tree or buying gifts or attending church, but in the works which his newly realized love wrought.
So I should worry less about Scrooge's motivation in self-improvement and let him work out his salvation in his own manner. Accordingly, I should not worry about others who are motivated to seek God or to do good in order to dodge hellfire and damnation, or in order to look good to other people. After all, EVEN IF a huge corporation decides to run a downtown soup kitchen in order to increase its public image before a major trial for public fraud commences, a few lives still may be blessed by full bellies no matter the motivation. As Jesus noted, those not against us are for us. Who am I to question anyone else? I have plenty of my own to work out.
The power of A Christmas Carol is in its ability to reach out to all of us after more than a century and bring our faith and actions into concert through its fable. Keeping Christmas is not only the self-interested ploy to escape shame and death and humiliation, but a joyful manifestation of all that makes us brothers and sisters in life. To extend a hand to each other, all the year long and not just for one day. To celebrate together, to share burdens together, to believe and to work together.
To remember that "It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour."
....especially when watching the Muppet version-there is nothing so full of laughter and good-humour as a Muppet.
To start with, his name has gone the long way round in giving him a bum rap. "Scrooge" has come to mean a miserly curmudgeon in our days, but in the English of Dickens' day it meant to squeeze, so the surname Scrooge would carry the meaning of squeezing rather than miserliness. As in squeezing or pinching pennies, or wringing work out of his clerk, or payments out of his debtors. And how unfair that the name Scrooge has come to mean an angry and cheap old man when if you were to give justice to the conclusion of the book it might stand for reborn or redeemed or newfound generosity of spirit.
But WHY has Scrooge come about, to keep Christmas like no other, to be kindly and generous? This is where another conflict comes in. From a quick read of the book, it appears that Scrooge's motivation is to escape a quick and ignominious end. Time and again he entreats the Spirits who haunt him "Can I still have the power to change my future?" after being confronted with visions of business associates speaking harshly of him after death, of cackling servants who steal and sell his few possessions as soon as he is dead, of his lonely and neglected grave. Jailhouse conversions are not always impressive; Scrooge turning to the path of family and friends and celebration rather than continuing in his solitary misery because he is given a vision that he will die unmourned and unloved is hardly stirring. It is simply self-interest. What glory is there in coming to the right path simply to avoid the wrong? If you want me to celebrate Scrooge's great redemption you had better do better than dodging an evil end.
But wait!but see!but read!-there is more, there is more lurking when you read further. Scrooge's REAL redemption comes not through following his own enlightened self-interest, but through the welfare of others. His heartstrings-and ours-are stirred not by his surface acceptance of Christmas, but by his appeal to others in his life. His shame at the shabby manner in which he has treated his nephew Fred, his horror at the idea that Tiny Tim will surely die if he does not receive help, and his disgrace at the memory of his brusque treatment of the men out collecting donations for the poor-these have more to do with his redemption. When Dickens tells us that he kept Christmas as well as anyone could, we know in our hearts that this phrase has little to do with decorating a tree or buying gifts or attending church, but in the works which his newly realized love wrought.
So I should worry less about Scrooge's motivation in self-improvement and let him work out his salvation in his own manner. Accordingly, I should not worry about others who are motivated to seek God or to do good in order to dodge hellfire and damnation, or in order to look good to other people. After all, EVEN IF a huge corporation decides to run a downtown soup kitchen in order to increase its public image before a major trial for public fraud commences, a few lives still may be blessed by full bellies no matter the motivation. As Jesus noted, those not against us are for us. Who am I to question anyone else? I have plenty of my own to work out.
The power of A Christmas Carol is in its ability to reach out to all of us after more than a century and bring our faith and actions into concert through its fable. Keeping Christmas is not only the self-interested ploy to escape shame and death and humiliation, but a joyful manifestation of all that makes us brothers and sisters in life. To extend a hand to each other, all the year long and not just for one day. To celebrate together, to share burdens together, to believe and to work together.
To remember that "It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour."
....especially when watching the Muppet version-there is nothing so full of laughter and good-humour as a Muppet.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
I need more reason in this season
'Tis the season. The Christmas season, in which we split into several different crowds all scrapping and fighting and tugging over our common holiday much as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all lay claim to Jerusalem. Just read Facebook and it is obvious to see this: Calls to focus on the fact that "Jesus is the reason for the season" intersperse with secular posts about Christmas trees and ho-ho-ho-ing. Deeply spiritual musings about the quiet preparation of Advent vie with someone's Granny's 100-proof fruitcake recipe for attention. What is one to do, how is peace to be made between all the aspects of Christmas? Religion, family, tradition, gifts, movies, carols, overeating and overdrinking?
I am firmly in the middle of all these battlegrounds. Christmastide is one of the most looked-for events of the year, when all the work of the church is bent toward celebration of the Incarnation and all that means for reconciliation and redemption. From Advent to Christmas I move each year, growing in awareness through the Holy Spirit in this retelling of the seminal event when God entered life among us and breathed as a man. But I also carry within me the memory of all the past Christmases celebrated with my family and my friends. Christmases of my childhood, the yearning nostalgia for my past childhood that can never be lived again, and the Christmases spent as my own family has grown, sweet memories of holidays spent with my wife and children and now my grandchild. Of mother and brothers and sisters-in-law, of grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins and great-this-and-thats of all sorts.
Tied up in all these powerful religious symbols and family connections are all the rest of the Christmas meanings. Special music both holy and secular that foretells this glorious moment each year as clearly as the robin foretells spring. Santa Claus movies and a cold snap in the weather and jingle bells and all the rest of it, the whole mass of commercialism, American myth, tradition, and fa-la-la-ing that makes the season so very full and exhausting.
I think Christmas is big enough to belong to everyone. Originally, the wintertime Saturnalia was hijacked and the pagan elements married to Christian observance in order to integrate the existing Roman holiday into an emerging Christianity coming into its own. All of the pagan trappings were bothersome enough to folks like the Puritans, in fact, to move them to outlaw the celebration of Christmas, and it took Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", among others, to teach our modern world to "make merry" with caroling and feasts and gifts and Christmas trees.
And reconciliation.
Although there is a tension between religious and secular camps in relation to the celebration or "ownership" of the season, there is about a crucial basis of Christmas NO real difference in opinion.
Christmas is about reconciliation. It is about the reconciliation of God to man, when God became incarnate (embodied in flesh) to reconcile us to Him. When He used human means to His purpose of redeeming his fallen and straying children to His loving presence. When He reached out to the least of us by becoming one of us, to teach and lead and heal and save. It is also about the reconciliation of man to man, when we reach out one to another inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Even the most ardent of atheists agree that Christmas is a time for reconciliation of man to man. A time of the year when one thoughtfully steps back from the battle which is often characteristic of life and vows to treat one's neighbor more charitably. A season for renewal of old friendships, of extending forgiveness to those who have caused pain, and for enjoying family and friendship ties.
Although there is plenty of annoyance to go around-annoyance at missing the "real point" of Christmas whether you feel that that is the birth of Christ or simply the comfort of your family enjoying a meal around the table-there is generally all over the world the consensus that Christmas is a time for setting ASIDE our differences. For getting along at least for a day. For letting people cut into line in front of you at the grocery store. For plunking a quarter into the Salvation Army bucket whether or not you agree with their politics. For these simple reasons and many more Christmas is proof of work done in our poor broken world by kindness and sympathy. I know this to be from God, and it may be that you know it to be only human decency.
For this, Christmas offers to everyone peace and reconciliation. I love Christmas, and I try, as Dickens wrote, to keep Christmas well. From the small still space cultivated in Advent to the excitement of Christmas Eve with my family, I trim the tree and right my heart and try to make room for love in my life. I hope you are able to enjoy Christmas this year, in whatever manner you keep it.
And, as Tiny Tim said, God bless us, every one.
I am firmly in the middle of all these battlegrounds. Christmastide is one of the most looked-for events of the year, when all the work of the church is bent toward celebration of the Incarnation and all that means for reconciliation and redemption. From Advent to Christmas I move each year, growing in awareness through the Holy Spirit in this retelling of the seminal event when God entered life among us and breathed as a man. But I also carry within me the memory of all the past Christmases celebrated with my family and my friends. Christmases of my childhood, the yearning nostalgia for my past childhood that can never be lived again, and the Christmases spent as my own family has grown, sweet memories of holidays spent with my wife and children and now my grandchild. Of mother and brothers and sisters-in-law, of grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins and great-this-and-thats of all sorts.
Tied up in all these powerful religious symbols and family connections are all the rest of the Christmas meanings. Special music both holy and secular that foretells this glorious moment each year as clearly as the robin foretells spring. Santa Claus movies and a cold snap in the weather and jingle bells and all the rest of it, the whole mass of commercialism, American myth, tradition, and fa-la-la-ing that makes the season so very full and exhausting.
I think Christmas is big enough to belong to everyone. Originally, the wintertime Saturnalia was hijacked and the pagan elements married to Christian observance in order to integrate the existing Roman holiday into an emerging Christianity coming into its own. All of the pagan trappings were bothersome enough to folks like the Puritans, in fact, to move them to outlaw the celebration of Christmas, and it took Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", among others, to teach our modern world to "make merry" with caroling and feasts and gifts and Christmas trees.
And reconciliation.
Although there is a tension between religious and secular camps in relation to the celebration or "ownership" of the season, there is about a crucial basis of Christmas NO real difference in opinion.
Christmas is about reconciliation. It is about the reconciliation of God to man, when God became incarnate (embodied in flesh) to reconcile us to Him. When He used human means to His purpose of redeeming his fallen and straying children to His loving presence. When He reached out to the least of us by becoming one of us, to teach and lead and heal and save. It is also about the reconciliation of man to man, when we reach out one to another inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Even the most ardent of atheists agree that Christmas is a time for reconciliation of man to man. A time of the year when one thoughtfully steps back from the battle which is often characteristic of life and vows to treat one's neighbor more charitably. A season for renewal of old friendships, of extending forgiveness to those who have caused pain, and for enjoying family and friendship ties.
Although there is plenty of annoyance to go around-annoyance at missing the "real point" of Christmas whether you feel that that is the birth of Christ or simply the comfort of your family enjoying a meal around the table-there is generally all over the world the consensus that Christmas is a time for setting ASIDE our differences. For getting along at least for a day. For letting people cut into line in front of you at the grocery store. For plunking a quarter into the Salvation Army bucket whether or not you agree with their politics. For these simple reasons and many more Christmas is proof of work done in our poor broken world by kindness and sympathy. I know this to be from God, and it may be that you know it to be only human decency.
For this, Christmas offers to everyone peace and reconciliation. I love Christmas, and I try, as Dickens wrote, to keep Christmas well. From the small still space cultivated in Advent to the excitement of Christmas Eve with my family, I trim the tree and right my heart and try to make room for love in my life. I hope you are able to enjoy Christmas this year, in whatever manner you keep it.
And, as Tiny Tim said, God bless us, every one.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
My relationship status? It's complicated
Several days ago I unduly alarmed my wife, not for the first time and probably not for the last. Our son had just rejoined Facebook, and in adding him to my list of family, I must have moused over the rest of the family status drop-down boxes in my hurry. Somehow, when I saved the change, it not only named Andrew as son in my profile, but also changed my relationship status from "married" to "it's complicated". I suppose I could theorize on the reasons why the drop-down box choice of "it's complicated" is right below that of "married", but the key fact is that soon I was receiving alarmed queries from all quarters. Within a couple of minutes I figured out what I had done and corrected it, but the damage was done. That's right, I had to explain to my wife why I had termed our marriage as "complicated" for all the world to see. I can certainly thank not my own silver tongue but her vast understanding (or her 25-year experience of my clumsiness and fumbling inattention to detail) for the result that she laughed at me rather than sending me to the doghouse for a couple of days.
The whole sordid incident has me thinking about marriage now, and why "it's complicated" might be a really perfect term for a healthy marriage anyway. I have been married now since 1990, and I know that Stacey and I are somewhat of a statistical anomaly to have been married so long when we violated so many of the common-sense rules. Got married not only young but before we finished college, and then had kids immediately rather than waiting until we could afford them. We moved here and there to support each other's careers, finally ending up out here in Texas hours away from all other family.
We have never been just alike, but have agreed on the big ideas and values such as how to raise kids, what we want out of life, politics, religion. Although we share a lot of common interests of taste, there is enough diversity of preference in music and movies so that we can still have our own standards of what we enjoy. I suppose that since we each have our own interests, we have something new to offer the other. Or at least I hope so. I think one of the ways you stay together is that you neither grow so far apart that you no longer even share things in common or grow so alike that you bore each other to death. Or at least I hope so.
One of the things I learned a long time ago that I credit with making my marriage stronger is that love is a verb rather than a noun. And as a verb, it is an active verb rather than passive. And instead of being just a transitory feeling or emotion, love is a deliberate daily choice to put someone else's interests ahead of or equal to your own. I am just as prone to Hollywood notions of breathless romantic swooning love as anyone else, but what these flights of fancy ignore is the reality of deliberation. Even if I am fatigued, distracted, angry, or moody, I endeavor to act in a manner that is in accord with the marriage vows I made to Stacey in front of God and our families and friends. Either in concert with or in spite of the emotions of love, the action and will of love is what testifies to the depth and strength of my commitment. Also, I attest that you can become more in love by changing your outlook. By dwelling on your spouse's good points rather than minor irritations, by noticing anew the very reasons why you fell in love to begin with, you will find yourself feeling more in tune and closer simply by ignoring outside distractions and paying attention to what is really important.
I think that our strengths and weaknesses have always complemented each other. At times she is the one responsible for calming me down when I grow too fanciful or engaged with too much activity. On the other hand, I sometimes take the lead in keeping her involved with social events or friends when she might initially prefer to stay at home. Generally, I am more extroverted than she is, and she is more practical and level-headed than I am, and I find that a lot of successful marriages are made of this blend of personalities.
Of prime importance, though, is the team we make. If separately we make plenty of mistakes, as a partnership we are pretty surefooted. Together we have gotten not only into but out of a lot of situations that would have defeated us alone. Together we have agonized over decisions involving family, finances, careers. Together we have sat down time and again at the kitchen table to plan, to compromise, to decide. This reliance on each other and the team we make has kept us on each other's side; the statement that "you know, this argument shouldn't get in the way of the fact that we're on the same team" has the power to put minor annoyances in perspective in short order.
So, maybe after all it's NOT complicated. Maybe the key to our marriage has always been this stubborn reliance on each other. I know she is my most ardent fan, which includes being my most exacting critic, because she knows what I am capable of and will not let me settle for less than the best. I supply the same function for her. Through it all, we know that regardless of a temporary condition, we are there in partnership with each other, and that we each carry a safe place in our heart for the other.
Still, just to be safe, I'm gonna make sure that I exhibit more care when changing those damn Facebook settings.
The whole sordid incident has me thinking about marriage now, and why "it's complicated" might be a really perfect term for a healthy marriage anyway. I have been married now since 1990, and I know that Stacey and I are somewhat of a statistical anomaly to have been married so long when we violated so many of the common-sense rules. Got married not only young but before we finished college, and then had kids immediately rather than waiting until we could afford them. We moved here and there to support each other's careers, finally ending up out here in Texas hours away from all other family.
We have never been just alike, but have agreed on the big ideas and values such as how to raise kids, what we want out of life, politics, religion. Although we share a lot of common interests of taste, there is enough diversity of preference in music and movies so that we can still have our own standards of what we enjoy. I suppose that since we each have our own interests, we have something new to offer the other. Or at least I hope so. I think one of the ways you stay together is that you neither grow so far apart that you no longer even share things in common or grow so alike that you bore each other to death. Or at least I hope so.
One of the things I learned a long time ago that I credit with making my marriage stronger is that love is a verb rather than a noun. And as a verb, it is an active verb rather than passive. And instead of being just a transitory feeling or emotion, love is a deliberate daily choice to put someone else's interests ahead of or equal to your own. I am just as prone to Hollywood notions of breathless romantic swooning love as anyone else, but what these flights of fancy ignore is the reality of deliberation. Even if I am fatigued, distracted, angry, or moody, I endeavor to act in a manner that is in accord with the marriage vows I made to Stacey in front of God and our families and friends. Either in concert with or in spite of the emotions of love, the action and will of love is what testifies to the depth and strength of my commitment. Also, I attest that you can become more in love by changing your outlook. By dwelling on your spouse's good points rather than minor irritations, by noticing anew the very reasons why you fell in love to begin with, you will find yourself feeling more in tune and closer simply by ignoring outside distractions and paying attention to what is really important.
I think that our strengths and weaknesses have always complemented each other. At times she is the one responsible for calming me down when I grow too fanciful or engaged with too much activity. On the other hand, I sometimes take the lead in keeping her involved with social events or friends when she might initially prefer to stay at home. Generally, I am more extroverted than she is, and she is more practical and level-headed than I am, and I find that a lot of successful marriages are made of this blend of personalities.
Of prime importance, though, is the team we make. If separately we make plenty of mistakes, as a partnership we are pretty surefooted. Together we have gotten not only into but out of a lot of situations that would have defeated us alone. Together we have agonized over decisions involving family, finances, careers. Together we have sat down time and again at the kitchen table to plan, to compromise, to decide. This reliance on each other and the team we make has kept us on each other's side; the statement that "you know, this argument shouldn't get in the way of the fact that we're on the same team" has the power to put minor annoyances in perspective in short order.
So, maybe after all it's NOT complicated. Maybe the key to our marriage has always been this stubborn reliance on each other. I know she is my most ardent fan, which includes being my most exacting critic, because she knows what I am capable of and will not let me settle for less than the best. I supply the same function for her. Through it all, we know that regardless of a temporary condition, we are there in partnership with each other, and that we each carry a safe place in our heart for the other.
Still, just to be safe, I'm gonna make sure that I exhibit more care when changing those damn Facebook settings.
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