For all the O'Brien kin who dare to eat at my house on Christmas...and for nieces and nephews who bring me much joy...
So
if the crumbs mean anything, my cake was a success or maybe everyone was just
being polite or the wine was that good and that it makes everything else
seem that good. The wine was gone too,
but then wine always is. Is there
really bad wine? I personally have
never turned down a glass or thrown one out on the lawn. Most folks won’t turn
down a plate of butter and brown sugar either.
My family is especially gracious in the fact that they allowed me to
take over the blessing. And they seem
to love to participate in whatever I come up with. One year, I had each child read the one of the O Antiphons. (This would have made more sense to them had
we not been a mixture of third generation Methodist and Moravian). One year, we sang all the
verses of O Come, O Come Emanuel. My
very musically gifted family members (of which I am not ONE), informed me that
was an incredibly hard carol to sing and could we change. I was slightly devastated because it just happens to be one of my faves. One year, we sang Joy to the World. I seem to recall my nephew played his
trumpet to accompany us, in my very small living room and to my ears it sounded
glorious. I could actually have an
entire brass quintet and just might do that next year. One year we read parts of Isaiah
antiphonally. This year I had them
bring all of their used Love feast candles, I ended up with about 21 and some
had purple wrapping instead of red- that means they were incredibly old-we
O’Briens never throw anything and I mean anything away. This would include flower vases from florist shops as well as liquor that as best we could tell was made in 1936. I wouldn't open it. We could make a couple of episodes for
hording reality shows. Seriously. This year I deciced we would light used Moravian candles and sing the third
verse of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” which interestingly is different in every
denominational hymnal. Who knew? (Not only do I collect prayer books, I
collect hymnals and save odes from Love feast, apparently for the sole purpose
of finding a random verse). My nephew had us sing the Methodist version of the
third verse. We practiced and everything and were even given the pitch to sing
in, which I am sure was perfect given the giftedness of my kinfolk. O’Briens
love to perform, but sometimes I think they cooperate with my various blessing
strategies, not because they love to sing and perform, but because beef
tenderloin is in the oven.
All of that to say, I love to host Christmas dinner, and
though I am not entirely convinced my family loves cramming 17 people into my
house, if you feed them they will come.
This of course can be traced back to a childhood trauma/drama.
I have two younger
brothers who also happen to be bigger than me and for a while we entertained
this very large hound name Princess who pretended to hunt and be our family
dog. I am sure I am embellishing
slightly here, but to the best of my recollection Princess weighed 50 lbs. at
least. One would think the size would
not have bothered me given the fact that my cat, Sami weighs in a just a tad
under 25 lbs. Which according to my
students is not a cat at all, but rather a small mountain lion. She is kind of large.
We owned a blue Oldsmobile.
One year, an artic front was passing through which was caused
temperatures to hover around 8 degrees in the sunlight. The trip to my grandparents was about 2 ½
hours across the mountains between here and southwestern Virginia. For as long as I can remember we left every
Christmas morning to go over the woods and dashing through the snow to
grandmother’s house. On this particular
Christmas, the trek was especially painful, since we had to take Princess with
us and she sat in the back seat. The
heater in our car was not functioning.
The backseat of an Oldsmobile is just not big enough for three kids and
a large dog. This was the age before
mini vans and to be honest, a Suburban would not have been large enough that
day. And despite the 14 blankets, the
toboggans, the mittens and a dog sitting on top of me, we were still cold. My mother used to drug us with Benadryl for
the trip so we would sleep and not fight.
This rarely worked though and this particular Christmas, I seem to recall
the dog sitting on my lap, my middle brother getting the rest of the back seat
and my youngest brother laying in the floorboard and I was not allowed to put
my feet down. I also remember my dad
stopping every 15 minutes or so to scrape the ice off the windows. I think I neglected to mention the snow and
sleet that was falling, making the driving conditions a tad hazardous,
especially without a working defroster.
The point of these trips of course is to increase family bonding, but it
was more a scene out of The Christmas Story or Christmas Vacation. I seem to recall, after the dog rearranging
herself on top of me, and complaining to my mother, that Bobby was “hogging”
the backseat and her giving me that look that says, “Don’t make me make your
father stop this car….”, and blowing the icy snot out of my nose, that I made
the vow. It went something like this,
“No matter what, I will never make my children leave their house on Christmas
Day and I will never visit family that lives farther than 10 minutes away and I
will be a dog owner. And I will own
very, very large cars.”
As childhood vows usually go, we rarely keep them,
especially those involving the things we will never to do to our unborn
children. The only part of that vow I
have ever kept is the fact that I have always been a cat owner and for a large
part of Davis’ childhood we have hosted Christmas dinner. Oh, I forgot to
mention, Davis is an only child, hence not needing really big cars.
I was reflecting during dinner, (wine will do that you
know), that maybe my family might dread my house like my car rides on Christmas
day or maybe they really do enjoy all the chaos and mayhem and Joseph really is
the star of the Christmas story. Wine
makes one very philosophical. Beer
makes you truthful. Water just has
bacteria. Something to ponder the next
time you drink a glass. Any who, I was
wondering if they thought it was too crowded, (which is was), was the beef
overdone, (maybe a tad on the ends), did I have enough plates set, was my
niece’s friend about to jump off my roof and/or go running out the back door
never to return, (he’s a trooper and the kids loved him), should I make more
tea, and even though they are not my blood, they are kin. And isn’t funny, that when they are kinfolk,
there just isn’t a whole lot you aren’t willing to do. From having 17 people in your house, to
attending your girlfriend’s family function, to bringing all your old ove feast
candles at a moments notice, to singing random verses of carols, sitting
really, really close, eating all the food and saying it is good and taking
photos to post on Facebook and Instagram.
You also are willing to make a fool of yourself playing the latest game
app called Heads Up.
Which brings me to Joseph.
Who, in my opinion doesn’t get enough press. He’s really the hero in all this. Mary’s role as the mother of God just doesn’t impress me as much
as Joseph and those wisemen and then of course John the Baptist. (Now
there’s a story.) I sort don’t imagine she had much of choice. She was a pregnant, unwed teenager in first
century Palestine and for some reason, not entirely clear to me, thought of as
poor. Not sure she was going to get out
of the whole birth thing. It also seems
that by the time Gabriel let her in on the little surprise, she was already
pregnant. Also, given the fact that
Jesus was male and I have son, I know raising him was no picnic and pretty much
she did what she had to do. I can just
hear her saying, “Jesus-I really don’t care who your dad is, clean your room or
I am going to pull your ears off.” Or
at that whole temple incident, “Jesus- do you have any clue how worried I have
been. Messiah thing or not, you will
not leave my side until we get back to Nazareth. Is that clear? Now march to the front of that line and
don’t step out.” Or at the Cana
wedding, “Really- you think you are going to embarrass my girlfriend by not
getting more wine? Let me know how that
works out for you.” “You are so busted
right now and the saving the world gig is going to have to wait because I told
you to take those dirty, filthy sandals and put them out back days ago. This is not a manger and you do not live in
a barn, might have been born in one, but I will not allow filth and vermin in
my house.” “Look, son, I am really concerned
about your choice of friends- James and John- not only is their mother a hot
mess, they carry knives and I am thinking they are gangsters. Perhaps we need to reconsider our
choices.” So, I am not sure she was so
much obedient as doing what mommas do and that is raise children – theirs, ours
and yours. And for the incarnation to
have any meaning to be me at all, it is realizing that Jesus grew up. This includes hormone rages, adolescent
crushes, acne, selective hearing, thrill seeking and boundary testing. Remember the desert. Talk about testing boundaries and thrill
seeking. And Mary was the mom in all of
this. I think most moms will tell you
that we are genetically hardwired to raise children and there is not a lot of
choice in the matter. And pretty much
we will step in and raise anybody’s child.
Men on the other hand, seem to have choices about
fatherhood. And this is why I love
Joseph. He stuck it out. Fathers have choice and back in first century
Palestine, Joseph had a lot of choice.
He knew this kid was going to different. This kid was not his own.
There would be no long talks in the wood shop, no skipping rocks across
the river Jordan, no son to take over the family business, no son to look after
the kids and Mary when Joseph died. Not
to mention, apparently Jesus could out talk anyone at the synagogue, and maybe
Joseph’s friends lacked appreciation for Jesus’ intellect. I suspect they too gossiped about Joseph not
being able to control his kid. He even
moved to all places- Egypt, just to keep Jesus out of danger.
Jesus wasn’t his kin.
He took him in anyhow. He fed
him, took care of him, raised him, and loved him. He didn’t have to. He
adopted him as his own. Which is kind
of what God does when you think about it.
And honestly, I think this is the message of Christmas. At the end of the day, human relationship is
worth the risk and the trouble. Having
relationships with other humans is quite dangerous. More often than not we refuse to take the risk. We don’t like messy. We don’t like noisy. We don’t like endings we can’t control or
see and we certainly don’t like people different from us, much less people who
can’t love us back the way we would choose.
We are a fairly self-centered lot actually, and if someone doesn’t fit
our mold or measure up or love us back the way we want to be loved, we pretty
much quit them.
It is pretty easy to say we believe in the Christmas story
but much harder to live it out. It is
easy to love our neighbor and to take care of the invited guests- but love the
guy who votes different than you or watches a different news channel or has a
different haircut and maybe, maybe even looks at the Christmas story a little
different – now that’s a challenge. God showed up and took a risk to become
fully human. Joseph embodies that somehow
for me. He lived out his convictions,
he lived out his beliefs, he manifested his identity and integrity to the world
by choosing to love another human who was radically different from him.
We are never told what happened to Joseph and this makes me
kind of sad. I like to think he sung
lullabies over the sleeping Jesus. And
I suspect his fatherly advice may have went something like this:
Go on and go to sleep.
Rest. You have a long road ahead. I think he probably prayed for God to guard
his heart so he could sleep. I think
Joseph probably told him to go and chase his dreams, saving the world could
wait till another day. But mostly
Joseph just did what we all should do and cared for the ones standing right in
front of him. Joseph chose to be human
and in doing so ended up touching the divine.
Joseph risked everything just so Jesus could sleep for a while.
‘God’s incarnation in Jesus… God’s word become flesh. If the
incarnation – the mystery of being both human and divine – means anything, it
means that the “mind of Christ” is a mind that mortals can take on. The scandal
of the Christian profession is that God took on mortality in order that mortals
could take on God’s life’ – Parker Palmer
All is grace,
On the first day of Christmas:
Grateful for:
Wine
Tabletalk
Nephews who love to sing and know random verses of
carols
Moravian candles especially the old ones
Butter
Brown sugar
Small living rooms
Twice baked potatoes
Instagram
Apps for games
Charades with a twist
Loud laughter
Tissue paper
Guests
Skin
Cows
12 days instead of oneRealizing perfection is really over rated
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