#epicfail

      O, Lord God, who sees that we put not our trust in anything we do...(BCP)

      Snow is an agent of Satan. Friday, two days into my Lenten fast, and the epic ice storm of 2014 hit.  I am attempting to give up meat, desserts and wine this year.  And so far with the exception of Wednesday and today (but the day is still young), I have failed.  And if it had not have been for the snow, I probably would have stayed on task. 

            My house was one of 144,000 that was without power Friday and gratefully it is has been restored.  I am saying a prayer for all my friends who still do not have electricity.  By 11 am Friday, my house was cold, so I decided to pack up and go to my mom’s house.  Davis and I packed enough for two days.  My mom lives 6 miles away.  Vance was at work, so I figured he could fend for himself.  Between us, we had five bags, four pair of shoes, four coats, two iPhones, Kindle HD, and two pair of boots and a snow shovel.  It was still sleeting and snowing, and I am guessing there was about 4 inches of snow/sleet/ice on the ground and my car.  My trunk was iced shut. It took me and Davis thirty five minutes to clean off the car and we still left all the snow all the back and hood.   We were frozen and covered in sleet when we finally go into the car and I am planning on writing liturgy that extols the mercy of God for granting man the ability to design heated car seats.

            And at the end of my very long driveway, Satan attacked me in the snow.  One doesn’t associate the color of white snow with Satan, but now I do.  The warmer temperatures and periods of rain had reduced all of that snow into a nice gray slush that accumulated under my car.  I have a Sonata that does not have a snow plow attached to the front, so by the time I reached the end of my drive way the snow was well past my bumper and my car just stopped moving forward.  I got out and assessed the situation.  I got back in the car and said a few choice cuss words and Davis just began laughing out loud and said, “Mom, Lent is not going to end well for you.  #epicfail.”

            We were going to have to dig out.  Davis went to the garage to grab our snow shovel.  It was a lot of snow.  And yes, Davis is in much better shape given basketball and baseball workouts along with weight lifting to shovel than I can ever hope to be, but those cars were driving awfully fast.  My decision was if one of us was going to be hit by a motor vehicle it should be me.  So Davis watched for cars and would yell, “Car, two coming…one coming…it’s clear now, etc.” for the next 35 minutes as I dug my car out.  Two police cars actually parked across the street and watched this little comic charade of mine.  I didn’t expect them to help shovel, but stopping traffic for a couple of minutes would have been nice.  Davis said they were just waiting for me to get hit by a car, so they could call it in to EMS.  He was probably right. It was a foolish thing to do, but I was cold.  And by then, I was colder. 

            Finally we were free!  I was so exhausted and so cold and so wet, that I just threw the snow shovel in the bag seat, told Davis to hop in and we left. My mom had asked for me to stop and pick up some birdseed for her, but I was not stopping that car until I got to her driveway.   As much as I love my mom and truly don’t mind driving in all kinds of weather, her birds were going to have to starve.  Davis had been such a trooper through all this and I felt he needed a treat.  He loves Chick-fil –A.   Of course, I do too.  As I drove to my mom’s I noticed the parking lot into the Chick-fil-A was clear, so I drove right up to that drive thru window and ordered Davis a #5 combo and myself an entrée of 8 nuggets. As we pulled off, Davis gently reminded me I had given up meat.  I am not sure but he may have posted an Instagram photo of me eating my nuggets -#epiclentenfail.  

            Lent is tough, so I've compiled this list of tips for anyone entering the wilderness.  I found these while surfing the web looking for ways to succeed at Lent.  Never could I unplug.  Remember my Lenten retreat last year? I am the one who brought the copy of her bible and BCP as an app on her iPhone, so I could also check my son’s baseball game scores.  I kept staring in my lap during that retreat just like my students do.  

The following tips are based loosely on an article by Dr. Tim Stanley found in the Telegraph. (I have no idea what type of website or what kind of authority Dr. Stanley is on the subject of Lent, but these seemed very reasonable to me. But, then again, as my son said, #epiclentenfail.)  

1.    Don’t give up anything you shouldn’t be doing anyway.  Drinking too much, cussing, credit card fraud, overindulging sweets.  Really, really should not being doing those things anyway. 

2.    Don’t give up anything you won’t miss.  Like work. Parking lot duty. Cleaning your room. Having your teeth cleaned. Mammograms.

3.    Don’t give up everything because you will die or perhaps someone else will.  Some people go on crash diets of no meat, no carbohydrates, and no alcohol. While you might feel like a saint for 24 hours, (I made it for a whole two days), you will feel like a raving lunatic in about a week.  I am just a middle-aged teacher/nurse from Virginia and not Jesus.  The chances of me keeping a strict fast are very, very slim. God is very accustomed to human beings letting him down.   And I often suspect that God expects us to fail far more often than we do.  

4.    Don’t let Lent sink you into despair.  A monk said once, that the thing he was giving up for lent, was giving up. 

5.    Don’t think you can sneak off the Lenten vows behind God’s back.  He is omnipotent and omnipresent.  He really does know about the Dove chocolate you have hidden in your dresser drawer. 

6.    It is about God, not you.  Lent can sometimes be turned into a second chance at New Year’s resolutions or an excuse to shed a few pounds.  The entire point of Lent is to remind us about God-not to fit into last year’s swimsuit.  Try to think about Jesus living on a diet of grace and sand-that’s the real point of fasting. To get all of your demons (which could be chocolate, social media, booze, selfies, anger, fear, snow, heat, jealousy, grudges,  Chick-fil-A,etc.), out of the way so you can actually see God every once in a while. 

       The good news is that even if Lent turns out to be #epicfail, and you wake up and find yourself hiding in the bathroom eating an entire bag of Dove chocolates, it really is ok.   It serves as a reminder of how weak and frail you really are.  I hate to break it to you, but the job of God has already been taken. The entire Lenten season or Christianity for that matter is about facing your humanity and owning up to your failures.  Better still; the message of Lent is one of redemption.  Of being resurrected again and again and again.  It is about life coming from death. It is knowing that whatever goes wrong in life, God always gives second chances.  Lent is about falling down, getting back up and trying again even the entire 40 days were #epicfail.  

March Madness...Lent for the rest of us.

 "And you will be the called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live."- Isaiah 58:12

Exactly 53 minutes into Lent, I failed. With ashes on my forehead and everything. I have to say this is a new record for me.  Usually I make it to at least Thursday morning. To make things worse, by 4 pm, I was trying to rationalize why Lifesaver gummies were not considered candy and I don’t even like them.  And I didn’t realize until about 1153 today that Trader Joes carried so many different kinds of chocolate.  Who knew?  For Lent this year, I have decided to give up meat, desserts and wine.  I could never maintain a strict Orthodox fast.   In the Orthodox tradition meat, dairy, fish, olive oil and wine are forbidden during Lent.  However, octopus is allowed as is vegetable oil. I am not sure what the Orthodox eat exactly during Lent, but I knew I could never maintain that kind of fast, given that I don’t like octopus.  Does anyone really even eat that?  Meat, wine and dessert will be enough of a challenge for me.  I wanted to give up parking lot duty, but I am fairly certain my principal wouldn’t go for that, even for religious reasons.  It never dawned on me until today that food is truly not my obstacle to loving God and my neighbor, groceries stores are.  Seriously.  I get into more sin in a grocery store and it has never involved food or wine.  OK, maybe wine once, but never food.   And to be honest, I am fairly certain that the only chocolate that ever was stumbling block to loving my neighbor was those special chocolate covered eggs. And we all know how that turned out. 

Someone asked me what it was about the Ash Wednesday liturgy I liked exactly.  I didn’t really have an answer for that question, but it wouldn’t feel like Lent to me without walking around with ashes on my forehead.  I was introduced to the concept of fasting and ashes by a cardiologist, of all folk.  I was his nurse and every year on Ash Wednesday his wife called me to remind him to attend mass before he came home that night.  Lucky for him, the hospital had chaplains on standby round the clock on Ash Wednesday for the sole purpose of imposition of ashes.  I am not sure he ever made it to mass, but he always had ashes on his forehead because I made a call to the chaplain every year to stop by and mark him.  I didn’t want him in trouble with his wife.  The first year, I didn’t want to hurt the chaplain’s feelings when he came to put the ashes on my forehead, plus it seemed such a waste to come all the way to our unit for just one person, so I just pretended like I had done this my entire life.  

But that is not the only reason I like Ash Wednesday.  I like the liturgical calendar. (I also think the Joel chapter 2 and Isaiah 58  is beautifully written and I love to hear it read aloud, something that usually only happens about once or twice a year in the church).  Something about keeping sacramental time makes me feel grounded and something about ashes on my forehead makes me feel like maybe one day I might shine like all those saints in the glass windows at church.  Plus, it reminds me that life is shockingly short and we need to live it and be exceedingly grateful for it.

So how did I manage to fail Lent before noon today and less than an hour after I left church?   It was going to the darned grocery store. I am sure you all remember my Advent incident.  Pertinence, grocery stores and I don’t mix.  (I am also trying to give up cursing this Lent and I am proud to say, that I went to a baseball game tonight and have watched 10 minutes of the Wake game and have not said one curse word).   I had gotten my organic bananas, (which yes, I realize is completely irrational since they are encased in a peel), my trail mix without chocolate and my cheese.  I was standing in line thinking about all the chocolate around me, when out of nowhere a man rams his cart into mine, crushing my fingers and then breaks in line.  True story.   After I rubbed my crushed fingers, I turned to glare and say something very clever like, “I would yell at you right now, but I just came from church”, or “I realize this is the season of pain and suffering, but that doesn’t mean to inflict it on others,” or “I am guessing you are not giving up rudeness for Lent this year?”, or “I do so hope what is in your basket is to feed the hungry and poor and not your gluttonous self.”  Then I began to wish him ill or at least a parking ticket or a migraine.  I paid for my things, stomped off to my car, inwardly fuming and as I started my car, I saw him.  I realized that he was aged, he was walking with a limp and couldn’t really see all that well.  He really looked sad too.  And he was having trouble loading his groceries in his car.  And I glanced over at my BCP and then it hit.  The reason why we wear ashes or even keep Lent at all.  It is to keep us human.

True, giving up things might make us a tad more aware of our inner selves and the stuff we carry around that God is (literally), dying to heal.  But I think it might be more about becoming more humane which is to say to behave like humans.  I honestly sometimes think that is what the cross is all about.  To remind us what happens when we fail to be human. And humans do one thing that other living things cannot…LOVE.  If God wants us to do anything at all during Lent, it would be to be humans.   And that, my friends is more easily said than done.  Particularly, when your neighbor breaks in line at Trader Joes. The next 40 days of Lent really aren’t about how much meat I give up or how much wine I don’t drink or passing up Lifesaver gummies or chocolate at Trader Joes.  It is about Who I am giving in to.  Lent doesn’t say it is not my problem, it is not my neighborhood, it is not my child, and it is not my responsibility.  What Lent really says is… “this is not happening on my watch.” 

So as tonight, I try to wash ashes from my forehead and remember that from dust I came and to dust I will return, perhaps, instead of “Jesus please help me not eat meat or Lifesaver gummies…” it should be, “not on my watch.” 

All is grace…

What the Rolling Stones have to say about liturgy

 For all my friends who might not get what they want but they might just get what they need...

 

I never know what to say when someone asks me where I attend church.  (Truth is told, I stammer a lot, which is why I am usually glad Vance answers for me).   It is very complicated.  Novel worthy actually, and at times the narrative reads like the script of Downtown Abbey or The Blacklist depending how snarky and/or dark, as well as how bluntly honest I may be feeling at the moment. My character is a mix of the Dowager Countess, Raymond Reddington and Lady Mary all in one. 

 One of the hardest parts of telling a good story is coming up with an opening line.  Unfortunately for me, “Call me Ishmael” or “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or “It was a dark and stormy night,” have all been taken.  I have been known to give an answer that ranges from, “I am a recovering evangelical fundamentalist or a closet Anglican or someone who has married into the Methodist tradition and had her child baptized in the Methodist tradition or a frustrated theologian who agrees mostly with Wesley and less with Calvin or as someone who thinks St. Paul had issues.”  Once at a Lenten retreat, I passed for a Catholic and even my new Baptist friend that weekend had no idea I was raised more in line with her tradition than not.  But perhaps the best answer would be, “It remains a mystery…”

  I am a frustrated theologian, a novice liturgist as well as an armchair church historian.  And I am quite certain I would have found seminary far easier than nursing school.  Each of those traits made me a really good hospice nurse and it remains to be seen whether or any of those will serve me well as a high school teacher.  It will always be my personal belief that if I understand your theology, I can make sure you have a good death.  I am not so sure theology works well with high school students; although staying prayed up certainly has its value, if for no other reason than it keeps me from killing any one of them.  

  I just finished teaching a unit on healthcare career decision making.  Most of my students have no idea which career to choose if any in healthcare, and after the occupied bed making exercise, a few are seriously considering dropping my class.  I asked them to write an essay answering the question, “If I did know which career to choose it would be…” Last night I was thinking about how I could have answered the kind priest regarding my worship preference and perhaps the opening line to my story should be, “Well, if I did know, I would be Anglican, I think…”

  I found it surprising to learn to that if I were a Church Father, I would be St. Melito.  There is a self-survey that you may take online to learn exactly which Church Father you may be.  And I can never pass up a good quiz.  I have a great love for history and liturgy.  I am attached to the traditions of the ancients but also recognize that Old World as great as it was is passing away. I am loyal to the customs of my family but would not hesitate to suggest to a heretic blood relative that the troubles in the Holy Land might be his fault.  Little is known about St. Melito, but he might have been responsible for organizing the Old Testament canon.  According to legend, he had a love for the old and the new and saw rich symbolism in liturgy.

  So, like St. Melito I am often confused by what I want and I what I need. Most of us if really honest, only like about five hymns and two verses of scripture.  We love to sing Amazing Grace and kind of become frustrated if we don’t know the hymns chosen for the service.  We really only want to hear Psalm 23 or that God loved the world.  We really aren’t comfortable with what Jesus said about anger or lust or envy or pride and we don’t like singing theology.  This would be why the priest chooses the hymns and the lectionary repeats itself every three years.  We aren’t supposed to hear only what we like. 

  I have experienced shallow.  I need deep.  I have been down the road with churches that change worship styles according to culture and fad.  I have even been offered a bagel and cup of coffee during the middle of worship.  I was sincerely waiting on a hotdog.  I need ritual that will withstand the test of time.  And you can’t get that at Starbucks and as much as I love Starbucks and a café peppermint mocha latte, I don’t need that a church. I live in a world of uncertainty that changes every day.  I need stability and not a church staff that changes constantly. I need responsive psalms that let me hear God speak and my voice answering. I need liturgy that does not change.  My life is cra-cra.  I am raising a teenage boy and working on 20 years of marriage.  I am a nurse, a high school teacher, a friend and a wife. I never know what crisis will need my attention next or when.  I need communion where Jesus offers healing in exchange for my mess, which is not a fair trade, but then I am not looking for fair. I want peace. I need to pray prayers that everyone says so I am reminded that I am not the only hot mess in town. I need to hear the perfect looking couple and family saying “Forgive us our sins,” so I know that they are likely having fights the same as us. I don’t want a pastor showing me provocative images on a big screen to get my attention so I will remember the sermon point. I am already immersed in multimedia constantly. I want to hear the scripture and I want it ringing in my ears till I walk in again next week.  

 And this is what liturgy gives me.  It was developed over 2000 years.  It was assembled among culturally diverse, multi-generational group who didn’t always agree, but agreed on this: worship is simply about God.  Those ancient prayers go deep into our subconscious, our mythic selves and transform us over time.  Church is not about learning new stuff or feeling good or differently, it is about being changed through sacramental rhythm and that only happens over time and repetition. Like a stone being thrown into river.  Eventually the water rubs the edges smooth.  Eventually.

 I will never fully be able to tell the story of how it is I came to love liturgy and it will always remain a mystery to me how this is saving me again and again.  I have a feeling that all of us show up in church at one time or another quietly and desperately calling for help.  If you are alot like me, you might show up every week or so screaming silently for help and trying not to be distracted by the latest text message, what you are going to eat for dinner, how are you going to retire before 85,  how frustrated you are at your co-worker or the latest argument with your kid or spouse.  We want help and we don't exactly know what this looks like.  We don’t really know exactly what it is that we need, we just know we need something and it is this something that liturgy gives us.  It is through the strange hymns that span centuries, men that dress up in ridiculous clothes that have not changed much in over 500 years, saying prayers and creeds that I would recognize parts of even if spoken in Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish or English, lighting candles and burning incense and kneeling and standing and bowing and raising hands and blessing and being blessed and forgiving and being forgiven and giving and receiving peace, and eating and drinking from the same cup and same piece of bread, that we are given not what we want, but what we need.

When you are wondering if you really should eat that second piece of cake....

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 one
Realizing perfection is really over rated

Let me know how that works out for you

To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe there was another way to get our attention. The Incarnation.  We would have never paid attention otherwise. God had to put on skin. Humans are complicated and complex and I think that is what God loves about us. We are not simple and rarely do we make things easy.  I kind of like to think that is why God invests so much in us.  God loves a good challenge and humans are challenging at best, even on our absolute best days: like Christmas eve, eve, perhaps. And I am willing to bet that today God was putting on his best Dr. Phil voice and saying, "Let me know how that works out for you."

I am prone to making my life far more complicated than it need be.  Take this afternoon for instance.  About once a year, I become delusional and fancy myself an accomplished baker.  Usually this coincides with some major holiday that revolves around 17 or so people coming to eat at my house. I can cook and I can bake but it is probably not in my best interest or those of my guests to try out new recipes.  I should probably stick to things I know how to bake.  Like: chocolate chip cookies or pound cake or pumpkin pie. 

I love the seven caramel layer cake.  Decided I would make one for Christmas dinner. How hard could it be?  I would like to add, unless you have attended cooking school, don’t try this at home. While, the cake itself (if you don’t mind baking seven layers), is easy peasy to make, that frosting is wicked.  It is a boiled frosting and for those of you that don’t know, think Julia Childs on her worst manic day, with that psychotic cat running around her kitchen, jumping on everything and Julia drinking her second bottle of wine and speaking that fake French and she left out the part about: it must be buttermilk.  Not cream, not whole, not half and half, not evaporated, not 2%.  Only buttermilk.  This frosting officially has taken me 27 hours to make.  The recipe boasts that it can be made in less than 30 minutes and that would be a lie.  And if you think you can substitute any other milk product in this recipe, think again. 

And this of course, led me to the Food Lion incident and thinking about Joseph and the prophet Isaiah and Mary and how much I miss my friend Sarah at this time of year.  I am standing in the corner (did I mention corner?) of the aisle staring at the seven different kinds of buttermilk, trying to decide which one I need.  And to be honest, had I just gone ahead and texted my friend Sarah instead of feeling sorry for myself, none of this would have happened.  I had no intention of making a repeat trip and clearly from my previous attempts, perfection was required.  I guess it is remotely possible; that I was taking too long to make up my mind, and I guess it is possible I should have noticed the woman waiting (who waits for buttermilk anyway?) to get her buttermilk and offered to move. But then she screamed at me and told me I was in her way and to hurry up and then I sort of went postal, if the stares of others mean anything.  I shouted, (just like the prophet Isaiah, I might add), “Really, are you kidding me? I hope the love of Christmas finds your heart.”

Of course, everyone was staring at me, and then I felt the need to defend myself, “She started it.” 

Fuming, I stormed to the check out line with buttermilk in hand. The gentleman behind me says, “Are you ready for Christmas?”  At least I turned around at looked at him.  I may have smiled, I hope I did and I hope I sounded as least hopeful as I said, “I think so.”  And then I did manage to get out of my own narcissistic spiral and ask, “How about you?”  He said with tears running down his face, “This year I will be alone.”  He went on to tell me about his wife of 59 years, who had died four weeks earlier.  And how many good memories he had and how blessed he had been to love her and how much he missed her but he knew that in the end love trumps death.  He went on to say that many people never know a love like that and that his being sad just reinforced how much he loved her.  He also went on to say that life is brief and fragile and we should just all be grateful and love each other.

After, I choked back tears, paid for my buttermilk and gave him a big hug, suddenly I wasn’t so mad anymore and suddenly as if an angel of the Lord appeared before me:  "Peace, Goodwill."

I thought about the words of Isaiah and Joseph and Mary. 

“The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who have lived in the land of deep darkness- on them a light a has shined…For a child has been born for us…his name is …Prince of Peace…” (Isaiah 9:2,6)

Those are perhaps the most gorgeous words for what we celebrate this time of the year.   That text was written 700 years before the birth of Christ and we can forget it can stand on its own without interpreting them through the eyes of Christmas.  These words don’t take on meaning solely by the message of Christmas.  Isaiah’s words offer powerful hope for those in darkness in any time, any place.  Even in the aisle of Food Lion.  And I suspect my new friend already knows about this kind of peace.  He would not have gotten out of bed today otherwise. He would not find hope in love and he would not see hope beyond death if he didn't know.

 

God took a chance that night long ago.  God decided the only way to get our attention was to take on skin.  It has often been called the great mystery.  The Incarnation.  I am not so sure it matters much how it happened as much as us deciding to do something with it.   Sometimes I think that in my less than holy moments, it is only then that God shows up.  More often than not, I suspect I don’t see him, but today I think I did.  In both encounters.  How frustrating it must be for God to wait on us to see what is sitting right in front of us like seven different kinds of buttermilk and yet when God shows up in chance encounters and love is spilling all over the aisle at Food Lion, we lie on a backs like shepherds watching the night sky in awestruck. 

And maybe the stars will shine brighter tonight, and maybe the skies won't be as dark as before and maybe tonight love is raining down on all the world tonight, it is what we all are praying for.

God is for us, God is with us, God is in us.  Emmanuel.

 

All is grace,

Kathleen