I have remembered!

AND it only took 7 days of Christmas to get there …

a beautiful sunrise.

a chilly morning.

a quiet home.

an email with a flight intinerary for Christy’s visit.

and words from a spiritual hero!

And finally all the bits and pieces of Christmas started to connect. 

The lights, the trees, warm scarves and mittens, the Sound of Music, Christmas carols, Messiah, friends near and far, presents, presents and more presents, a new table, baking, my neice’s delight, breaking bread, pulling crackers, parcels, cards, the creche, fires and candles.  

I get it.   I get why we keep doing it.   I get what God continuously tries to remind us (especially during this season).   I get what theologians (including myself) have complicated with fancy words and big concepts.   I get that not even all the secular and commercial  attempts to take over Christmas, can really beat out the heart of these 12 days.  

I get it.   7 days in and I get it.   I have remembered.

I am loved.  

That’s it. 

That’s what I’ve remembered.   That’s what God whispered this morning.

I am loved. 

That’s what it, the Incarnation, the joining of Heaven and Earth, the salvation and redemption of this world, comes down to:  I am loved. 

The God of all creation; the Holy Triune (Abba, Savior & Abiding Presence); the Maker, Redeemer and Healer of this world  LOVES ME.  

All those Christmas lights and trees … all the carols and music… all the baking and cooking …. all the wrapping and opening…  all the driving and staying… all the starbucks and the pots of tea …  all the movies and wine … all the family and the friends …  all of it, all of it comes down to just that.   Reminders and icons that I am loved.   

Whether in England, Alaska, Cincinnati or here at home in Nashville, I am loved.  

the 6th day of Christmas - keeping things straight.

I’ve really been working on remembering all 12 days of Christmas this year, in fact I still insist on listening to my Christmas music and last night I insisted on watching a Christmas movie of some sort.

But today the 6th day of Christmas, sitting beside my little tree, I realized - I’m tired.    Sure I’ve been off work since Christmas Eve but I’ve been celebrating Christmas with friends, family, food and gifts since day 1.   And today I realize I’m tired.   Twelve days of constant celebrating is tough.   And it’s only day 6. 

But this morning in the quiet and calm of my little home with Bugs sacked out beside me (5 days of Christmas has worn him out as well), I think I’m getting things straight again.    With all the presents opened, most of the food eaten, travels completed, I think - maybe, hopefully - Christmas is straightening out, lining up and me along with it.   

 And so now I actually find myself quite thanksful that I still have 6 days of Christmas left.      Maybe we have 12 days because we need 12 days to get it straight, to get ourselves back into line with what the incarnation really means in our lives.    Maybe we need 12 days to fully remember and practice loving and be loved;giving and receiving;  conversing and sharing; feasting and celebrating together around the tables and the fires; and perhaps more importantly we need 12 days to remember why we do what we do and why we need to do what we do.    I’m just not so sure we’d get it all straight in one or two days.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been with my neice a good bit over the last week or so and the way she plays right now usually has something to do with “lining” things up … putting all the magnets on the fridge in a straight line; sitting all her cuddlies in a little row on the stairs.   And I admit she actually got me thinking about all this -  What she does is not just sweet (if you ask me) but actually quite profound: a two year old intuitively likes to put things in orderly rows, likes to line things up, likes (in grown-up terms) to bring a little order to chaos and set things straight.  

O God, our Emmanuel, what you began so long ago and so far away, this act of salvation, this act of redemption, this act of setting things straight;  O God, our Emmanuel, what you continue to do today, let it also be so in me.     

another day of Christmas

Janey learned to say “doodlebug” and is now about as excited to see Doodlebug as she is to see me …  even in Cincinnati!    you would have thought Santa arrived at the door by the look on her face when I arrived a few hours after they had.

child-like joy …  child-like wonder …  when and why did we loose it.

The first days of Christmas

my charlie brown tree.

wiped out after opening presies

Janey’s first cracker - crown. a family tradition

tea party at Aunty Sally’s with real Bakewell Tarts (another family tradition).

on the second day of Christmas

my true love gave to me …

a bit of Christmas at my own little home.

• sausage rolls to make; pork to roast; wassail to mull.
• a tea party with my neice
• presents to  find homes for
• paper to recycle.
• friends to draw with.  
• a movie to watch.
• AND the frustration that 92.9 stopped playing Christmas music today and Christmas has only just begun.  

Let the 12 days begin.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:

waking up in my own bed.

a cold and frosty morning.

a beautiful walk with Bugs.

presents under the tree.

cathedral choirs to sing with. 

The Eve of the Nativity.

the darkness is passing.  

from morning prayer for the Christmas season in the Book of Common Worship (TCE).

I like the tense.  

The darkness has lost.

The darkness still tries to linger.

But the darkness IS passing.

That is the time in which we live …  it didn’t just happen and it isn’t done yet.  

But it is happening.

Restoration.  Healing.  Beauty.   Light.   Redemption.   Life.   

Life is happening and darkness is passing.  

happily ever after.

so if Thursday I sat near to the gates of Heaven at the symphony and Friday I sat trapped in hell at Cool Springs Mall - last night I sat in a fairy tale at the movie theatre.    Enchanted was the movie.   Does happily ever after ever happen in this world, the “real” world was it’s question (approached in a  comic and amusing way, I might add).  

I confess I could probably right a fantastic sermon on living happily ever after in a fantasy world  (i.e. living with your head in the sand in a self-fabricated world of not much more than pretend) versus living happily ever after in the real world (i.e. living with hope and peace and trust and faith and belief that the this world is well on it’s way to being restored to all that should it be).   But I’ll save that for another day.

The question rang home though.    Rang home in many aspects of my world.     Clearly life isn’t the way that it should be - the way that it was created, we were created to be - nope definitely not the way that God originally intended.    Not sure about the rest of the world, but I definitely don’t live in a fairy tale nor in paradise.     

I have realized though that my question has changed in the last month … I no longer ask why as much but instead I ask when.    When God? When.    When?  When will all the promises you made through the prophets; the promises you brought to life in a manger and the promises you continue to work to completion - when, Lord, when?   When will things work out?  When will the fairy tale come to life?  When does happily ever after begin?

it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

so if Thursday evening I sat a little closer to Heaven.

yesterday afternoon I sat a little closer to Hell … ok it felt a little bit more like trapped in hell.

Almost an hour to leave the mall car park.  

Three shops I needed to go to in all yesterday afternoon (of course not in the same strip that would have made it too easy).

Three shops and 6 hours.  

Bumper to bumper.  a traffic jam of people trying last minute to put the finishing touches on Christmas - and I’m quite sure carried in those cars were Christian and non-Christian alike.

Sitting there trapped in the midst of this consumerism and commercialism nightmare, I realized that I didn’t want to have anything to do with “this” Christmas.   If this is what Christmas looks like, I want to run the other way.   In fact I highly debated returning everything and just giving money to World Vision instead (which I seem to do more and more of each year anyway).   I was simply nauseous.  

This wasn’t  love expressed through the sacrament of gift giving.   All those cars bumper to bumper, this is national gluttony or greed or pride or something.   a visible sign of how our small, seemingly innocent, misguided attempts corporately become magnified and gross and damaging.  

Harsh, I realize.   Not very grace-full.   Forgive me, seriously.  

But better yet forgive me for my contribution to this corporate sin.  

I’m not sure what Christmas will look like for me next year.  

But it’s not going to look like yesterday.

the music of the night

I’m still singing it.

My head is still swaying to it.

my hands are still conducting it.

and my feet are still tapping it.

 Tonight I heard the Messiah at the Symphony.

Tonight I heard the promises sung.

Tonight I heard my Daddy singing all those bass parts.

Some music is indeed Soli Deo Gloria, To God Alone Be Glory.