Christmas Remembered

I assume most have treasured memories of childhood, of special days and seasons, of people – relatives, teachers, friends – whose lives and words weave among happy reminiscence. And of course there are many who remember little worth treasuring, for what might have been good and beautiful is blanched by too much of the awful. I grieve for those whose story is so up-side down. And I am grateful for all the good in my own story that managed, in the great line from St. Paul, to “overcome evil with good.”

The story is long and joyful to me, with a thousand points of light (for starters). It could be a book, and should be. Contrary the carmudgeons, I think that is true of everyone's life. Mix in some imagination and dare, a wide-eyed perspective that lets wonder find its breath; throw in bracing honesty and laugh-at-yourself humility and every story sees and emits light that shines through a window on reality.

And that's what we need, I propose. Reality. What other option do we have? Living by lies is no strategy for good living, nor is the pickled, jaundiced look or, for that matter, a foolish naivete. See life as it is, I maintain, and the good seeps out everywhere. I'll just leave that there, knowing all will never agree, including my lesser self on some days.

But I was talking about memories and, in particular, Christmas. Some of the best come from those days in our bungalow on North Glenn. The tree in the old paneled living room was magic. My younger sister and I would get up early and go sit on the floor and soak it in. I was 9, she was 6 and we couldn't wait to open the gifts and, on one or two occasions, we didn't.

There was always food and family. As memories sometimes lodge in the mind and settle in the soul, I once awoke at 2 AM or so on Christmas Day, sat up in bed, hearing voices. The light was on in the kitchen and I peered through the door. My Mom and Dad were together, making cookies, and I still see them smiling at me.

We lived in Ulysses, Kansas, a farming and light-industrial town in the southwest corner of the state. The winters were cold and windy but the main street stores shut it out as best they could. We lived one block off the North end of downtown, across the alley from the Ulysses News, and I could do my

Similar to this in my memory.

Christmas shopping within a few blocks' walk, especially at the Duckwall's store.

Duckwall's was the store that had everything. Baseball gloves that smelled of real leather because they were, arts and crafts, televisions which, if we were lucky, were showing the latest football game. They had an Atari game you could play until the next person indicated your turn was over. Of course there was candy and watches and clothing and who knows what else. It was Walmart lite. It was right.

I remember those low-light winter evenings -- storefronts all lit up, carols playing on the street loudspeakers -- whenever I hear Fogelberg's Same Old Lang Syne, though I'm no fan of the somber purview of that melancholy song. Snow does “turn into rain” as the song says, and there are plenty of sadnesses and “what-might-have-beens” in this life. But we can't live there.

Instead, I live with the happy, the muted wonder of the ordinary in those good days of growing up. Piling into the old white Mercury to go to church, wading through the snow to build a snowman, going back inside too soon to find a seat beside the floor register stove, looking through all the old World Book encyclopedias to learn more than we knew and wondering what life would bring. Whatever we dreamed for the future, it paled beside the wonder of the present.

That all seems true and right to me now. Life is a grand adventure, a gift we barely know how to receive, much less handle. If we let it, Christmas takes us there, past the sadnesses, for they are real indeed. Past even the memories, as much as they mean, to the daring possibility we face every moment, the haunting idea bigger than the world we know: my life matters, breath is a joy beyond knowing, giving and loving and caring make me real again at Christmas and everyday of my life.

I hope you and I can believe again that the sadnesses, whatever they are, do not blanch love and goodness. For in the end evil will lose and good will prevail. I'm all in on that bet. It is the only way to live. Happily, it is the bottom line in all my memories, and it is the life-changing story of Christmas.

A Beginning Verse [100WW]

We do too scarce, or so I'm told.
We should reach up and be more bold.
The soul knows more than it can tell
but laziness is easy sell.

 
And there is more than simple verse
that helps us learn the rhythm serve
But this feels right and so I stay
as if this path's the only way.

One hundred words to say a thing
that helps a soul or could we sing;
the words will rhyme – that's not enough
it needs so much of other stuff.

But if it needs a hundred words
it stops right now enough.

Back to Normal (sort of): [10'TU]

Well, this is the first ten minute Tuesday since my injury and I suppose I will treat it as a bit of reminiscence on the injury and the writing.

I ruptured the distal biceps tendon in my right arm on September 13th while trying to lift a washing machine out of a trailer into a dumpster. It is the kind of chore I have done many times, but this was a little heavier and my arm was slightly twisted as I lifted. I heard 3 pops and it was done. Some others came and helped finish the job. The pain was manageable, and I drove to an MD friend for advice. He said definitely worth an ER visit as it was nearing 7 PM and clinics would be closed.

On the 23rd, thanks to expedited process by local surgeon Mark Wade and one of his colleague helping behind the scenes, Dr. Jim Matai, I underwent surgery. He made a 3 inch incision longwise in the inside of my elbow through which he reached to pull the tendon down from where it attached to the bicep. The other incision, also about 3 inches, is on the right side of the forearm where the tendon, after passing along the elbow bones, attaches to the forearm bone so I have twisting strength in the arm. Here he found about 15% of the tendon still attached so he had to disconnect that, properly re-orient the tendon, and re-attach to the bone. 

I came-to around 4 PM or so and was home by about 5. The pain was manageable, not least because I had a complete block in the arm that didn't subside for 48 hours. After that I took the 800 mg Ibuprofen and the other pain med off and on for a week and then quit. Very grateful.

A thousand lessons in all of this, not least gratitude for the aptitude, skill, training, and love of the doctors, nurses, and various other attendants. They give such a vital service to the world and to each of us. It is no small thing, though we easily take it for granted.

Glad to be back in the loop, able to type almost normally. 

Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

I remember an anecdote from the inimitable Chesterton in which a given thought was compared to a cow suddenly speaking in a drawing room. Thus, I suppose, our best thoughts may only ever be best to us, if that, and one may dare believe they may surpass untranslated Bovine utterances.

Be that as it may, I wondered about this: Ontology and meaning go together so much so they are nearly indistinguishable. This is the relation between created and Creator, yet deeper. It is as if the Creator and created are one.

This being true, whenever our ontology is skewed, we are in trouble. Thus when families divide, thus when God is imagined expunged, thus when we consider ourselves self-caused. To have a false ontology is to implode.

Yet, there is mercy. The pain of false ontologies calls us Home and we begin to believe it is God alone we need. To deny Him is to deny our very being, and meaning in the process. It has been suggested that such a construct is not a life-enhancing strategy. I concur. But then again, if life has no meaning why would it matter?

Ontology and meaning cannot be separated. Pray for the wisdom to know to whom you pray. Dare to believe the infinite, personal God exists, and He may be known by the likes of you and me. That faith -- that reality -- is the only thing that will save us. And it lives within the wedding of ontology and meaning that simply is.

*The way of understanding God in the last paragraph is borrowed from Francis Schaeffer.

To be honest

To be honest when we really don't know, and say so; 

to acknowledge facts that seem to go against our treasured thoughts; 

to listen long and quietly with open heart to learn; 

to love the unknown ones whose thoughts we can't abide.

All too rare is such a thing for we are right, you see. And we may be, or me at least. And yet to stop and hear; to pray and dare believe the One who knows us best holds us to account and says, "The greatest of these is love."

"How do I work that out?" we ask, beloved, errant friends in mind. "Figure it out," comes the reply. "I will help you. But you'll have to listen."

Empty

“Empty is as empty does”
and people find their way -
through pitfalls here
and there to keep
the empty from display.

We are told what we are told
And often take as true -
the mantras that
remind us how
our weakness sees us through.

There is surely more to this
the half has not been told:
or if it has
the other half
is written large in bold.

This we know, oh sure we do,
it could not other be -
except the 'plomb
and certainty
will seldom let us see

Clearly what is missing there
is simple humble soul -
that with no pride
and prominence
with ease knows where to go.

Empty is, and quick I am
to wish it all away.
And then I learn
the empty soul
can only ever say

“Empty's me it is no lie
with open hands I reach -
believing One
will pity one
who finally can receive.”

Along the way...on time and space and God

The flattening of space and time is the defining action of our age.

I remember clearly my first “remote” event. My beloved Kansas home was several hundred miles away from the little Oklahoma Church where my friends were wed on a non-descript evening. Some months later a small box went in a larger box connected to a still larger box and I watched a fuzzy screen and heard a preacher's voice.

Years later, also in a church, I watched a man with a large machine on tripod video-record the preacher and I wondered how this makes any sense. It is enough to hear a good speech or sermon once, to savor the moment and hopefully gain lasting help. And it is valuable to have things for posterity.

But who has time to listen more than once?

The old cassette tapes bring the same question. I listened to some of them repeatedly as a young man, to much benefit. But most of the time when I thought I should get a tape I never did, and never would have listened again.

Yes, modern digital media has changed all of this and we can find most whatever we want whenever we want and we are better for it.

Better?

This is not the carmudgeon extreme, casting all new things as negative. New things are new and we adjust. Walking to horses to cars to airplanes: talking to telegraph to radio to television to sat-phones. Like all of us I love it. Like all of us I feel the loss and the grief.

I absorb my mind and fingers and eyes in a box putting shapes on screen, soon to be words of meaning, likely to be short-lived and barely noticed, certain to be a mere breath in a colossal storm of similar digital musings. What does it all mean?

I was trying to say the flattening – the death – of time and space is the defining reality of this era. I doubt I have the wisdom to understand this claim, much less prove it. I will only say it is real and I am sad for it.

Because I can always do it later, I often don't. Because no Sabbath is set, there never is one. Because I can always call Mom, I value it less, and because I can always fly to wherever my loved-ones live I have less – of seeing them and of loved-ones.

For love means more than seeing or talking. Face time or zoom or cell or text are all good and happy. I am thankful for them. But they never replace being-with, hearing the voice and knowing the person breathing, laughing, speaking is really there, right in the room. But because we don't have to be-with to have what we call relationship, we do it less and we lose.

It is the painful crux of life, the two-edged sword of relating, the loving and loathing we cannot escape and by which we are often bewildered. We want belonging with our independence; we want someone to care but leave us alone; we want control but despair for the wisdom only others can give us. It means in the end we choose death, for nothing is more real to life than the reality and necessity of relationships. Modern tech is just another way we cheapen or escape them.

Trying to explain it plays into the problem as much as anything I suppose, though awareness seems a good thing. The journey wearies us, the effort to evade the gnawing pain is exhausting. So we pick up the phone, but dare not call. Text will do. But it never does.

I find the answer in part when I invite my friend over and we chat about nothing, coffee and toast, chairs near, and life what it is: embodied, earthy, personal, present.

Later, my wife comes home and the day is real again if I will let it. A grandson visits and the pictures I love become nothing compared to his laugh. And I plan to write a poem for my sons and daughter-in-law, knowing that's as close as I can get for awhile.

Yes, time and space is flattened and we think we control it. But we are controlled in the end. Our need for closeness can never be undone by the fear that makes us run. And time is contrived master that only dies when we surrender to the moment and know it is bigger than the seconds that try to define it.

Perhaps the brilliant line from Scripture ties this together: “It is in God we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) That's time and space all wrapped up in an infinite, personal God who made the world, showed us how to live by giving Himself for it, and will some day make all things new. It ties time to the eternal, space to a Creator, and life itself to a God I dare to believe is good.

That's enough to give hope to the most entrenched carmudgeon, and make this child of God rejoice for the gift of another day!