Category: Christmas/Advent

What Do I Thirst for this Christmas?

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A friend recently pointed me toward Mary Oliver’s poem “Thirst” and encouraged me to consider what I am yearning for in the coming season. I’ve been reflecting on this all month, both because it’s Advent and because I’ve been in the habit this year of writing in my One-Line-a-Day journal. I’ve found it supremely helpful to spend a few minutes summarizing the day, good and bad, before bed. However, it’s rather different to look back on a single day than to look forward several weeks toward a day seeped in so much expectation and attention and baggage.

I have been looking forward, however, with the help of a one-page-a-day Advent journal. Each day of December, the journal prompts you to answer a question about your upcoming Christmas and provides space for you to record the festive things you did that day. Many of my entries thus far include passages processing my younger cousin Santee’s death, as well as notes about what gifts I’m looking forward to giving, what traditions are new for Tyler and I, the movies we watched, the shopping I did, and the flavors I’m experiencing (like gingerbread cookies and peppermint hot chocolate).

So what do I thirst for as Christmas approaches?

Comfort for Santee’s friends, girlfriend, sister, and niblings. I yearn for comfort as well for our extended family, including conversation about Santee’s life and death. A death so near Christmas, as well as experiencing the first holiday without a loved one, is it’s own unique brand of pain. Worse because your grief is in direct tension with calls to be jolly and joyful and the insistence that all is merry and bright. Our family has experienced this before, but many of Santee’s friends won’t have.

Time to rest and enjoy the season. That means time to read a fluffy Christmas romance and watch a ton of movies. That means time to bake and make ornaments. Time to run errands without feeling rushed. I’d love to get my wedding photos organized and printed but I’m concentrating on enjoying the season, not bogging myself down with something I can do any time of the year.

Peace for all people. The peace I refer to comes from a Hebrew word, shalom, referring not only to a cessation of violence and vehemence but also the wholeness and wellness of the entire community. This won’t happen on the scale I want, maybe not even in my family, so I’ve chosen several ways to work toward providing a more peaceful holiday for others.

What do you thirst for as December trots on? Silence? Solitude? Companionship? Rest? Understanding? Shortbread? I’d love to hear the desire that sings for you.

A Creative Christ

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Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the life of my cousin Santee, who died very suddenly yesterday. In time I may write more about him here, but for now I just want to say that he was always such a loving, sensitive person. And he had the best smile in the world. He struggled and he kept secrets and he died in a way we as a culture cringe away from and immediately judge: an overdose. An overdose after years of successful rehab and good community and generous support of others. We thought he was through the worst of it, out of the woods as much as one can be. But the Christmas season is hard. And his late mother’s birthday was coming up, and it was an accident. He worked with his hands and gave that gentle love to so many people. The same love that sent him running toward me for a hug and a game when we were kids. My little cousin. We’ll bury him on his birthday beside his father. He’d lost so many and been hurt so deeply. It is so hard to comprehend that his brightness has gone out of the world.

A few weeks ago, I read an introduction to the song “The Gospel According to Mark” by a musician I had yet to encounter: Nick Cave. Indeed, the article seemed to be as much an introduction to the book of the Bible as to the song, which I have repeatedly forgotten to listen to. I’ve since read conflicting reports about Cave’s theology, but his intro sparked a lot of thinking, and therefore a lot of blessings, so I want to share one those.

Cave said of Jesus,

“He enters a wilderness of the soul, where all the outpourings of His brilliant, jewel-like imagination are in turns misunderstood, rebuffed, ignored, mocked and vilified and would eventually be the death of Him.”

I had not considered that Jesus’ words, at times confusing even for those of us who’ve heard dozens of sermons and read countless books on that very phrasing—as well as the rest of the Bible—sprouted from Christ’s imagination rather than a vague sort of above-ness. I considered Jesus to be more divine than usual in his understanding of the world and in his use of metaphors to describe it. And I viewed the people around him dense and hopelessly defined by the cage of their literal minds. Only after Pentecost did I believe those cages flew open and they understood.

I’ve thought of the phrase, “jewel-like imagination,” daily since I read it. Immediately, my brain pulled forward my memories of a friend whose mind I would describe as having a jewel-like imagination. Her brain is wired brilliantly and much differently than all others I have known. When we lived in the same town, I loved to spend time just listening to her interpret whatever inputs surrounded us. We could be on a walk or crafting or driving to get milkshakes or discussing a movie. She once explained to me, in tremendous detail and depth, the personalities and appearances of her and her three sisters, including who got what from which parent, how stress alters the performative actions of each, and in what ways the older ones influenced the younger. She spoke passionately and precisely, as if she’d been studying a specific scientific phenomenon all her life, rather than a unit of individuals to which she also belonged.

I couldn’t follow along. I confused her sisters’ names as well as their traits (none of whom I’d met). I couldn’t keep it all in my head and quickly stopping trying to understand, but simply listened to her and pretended to comprehend. It was all so simple and straightforward to her. She understood and explained it well. But I hadn’t met her family at that point and didn’t have the necessary context to be able to understand and retain. Some years later, once I had spent time with her sisters and parents, I considered asking her to explain their personalities and traits to me again, certain I’d better understand. I chickened out though, not wanting her to know I only remembered the topic of the conversation, and none of the principles or details she’d so painstakingly laid out.

This friend once confided in me that she thought it very rude, even cruel, that Jesus didn’t explain himself to his followers in ways they could understand. Being divine, he ought to know exactly how to do so. Therefore, their lack of understanding must be the result of Jesus’ deliberate choice not to explain it well enough for them. Worse than the choice to leave them uncomprehending, he then grew angry and annoyed with them for it.

Cave acknowledges the disciples’ incomprehension and Jesus’ resulting anger, saying,

“Even His disciples, who we would hope would absorb some of Christ’s brilliance, seem to be in a perpetual fog of misunderstanding, following Christ from scene to scene with little or no comprehension of what is going on. So much of the frustration and anger that seems at times almost to consume Christ is directed at His disciples and it is against their persistent ignorance that Christ’s isolation seems at its most complete.”

My friend’s logic tracks but her conclusions didn’t sit well with me. I suspect they stem from the intense compassion which my friend and my Savior both possess. In truth, I wonder if Jesus isn’t a good bit like my friend. While walking the earth, Jesus interpreted it in ways none of the rest of us had considered, and in ways which seemed perfectly obvious to him. He used elaborate and apt metaphors and images to explain the material and spiritual world to those around him. And though the words were ones the people all understood, they could not all understand. A few with “ears to hear” understood (see Matt 13:16), and the rest did not. None understood all of the time. Even his closest friends and family members didn’t understand his meaning much of the time. We who surround the jeweled imaginations lack the context to comprehend.

If had I had access to the text of my friend’s explanation of her sisters once I did have context, I’m sure I was have managed to understand. Just as, with the help of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, the disciples suddenly understood all that Jesus had taught them.

How lonely for Christ, to be explaining as well as his humanity and divinity allow and to still be misunderstood, misinterpreted, and frequently abandoned or despised because of it. How lonely for all the wonderfully unique people, driven by compassion for others, who struggle to be understood.

Having now entered Advent, let’s consider the brilliant, creative child who came and the lonely, loving man he became.

“My Winter Solstice”

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To the tune of “My Favorite Things” by Rodgers & Hammerstein,
famously performed by Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”

Red stripes on white mugs and antlers on Tahoes,
Bright glitter headgear and fresh trees with fake snow,
Brown Kroger bags hanging from both your wrists,
How are you doing on your shopping lists?

New Starbucks cups and gingerbread castles,
Black boots and gift cards and sweaters with tassels.
Winter solstice is the darkest of days.
Just four sleeps til Christmas. Let’s all dash away!

Friends in short sleeves with ugly socks jingling,
Rainclouds that hide how Orion is twinkling,
Fog that socks in while the river flows on.
Welcome to winter! Look at all the brown lawns!

When the sun sets, when the dark reigns,
When I’m feeling SADs,
I simply remember I could live in Maine,
And then I don’t feel so bad!

Faith in Santa

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***SPOILERS for a long-standing Western Christmas tradition***

In the 1994 movie The Santa Clause, Laura and her second husband Neil are worried because their son Charlie not only believes in Santa, but believes his father Scott (played by Tim Allen) is Santa. The audience knows that, within the confines of this fictional world, Santa and the North Pole and elves and all the mythology is real, but this concerned couple doesn’t know that. Nor do they believe that Laura’s first husband Scott is Santa. As they see his habits and appearance change as Christmas approaches, they assume he’s trying to play into Charlie’s fantasy and take legal action to have Scott’s visitation rights terminated. In the waiting room while the judge and Charlie talk, Laura and Paul recount to each other the occasions when they stopped believing in Santa.

Around the same age her son is now, Laura desperately wanted a certain board game for Christmas. She received “dozens” of other presents on Christmas morning, but not the game she’d wanted. Neil, at the ripe age of three, stopped believing because he, too, didn’t receive a whistle that he’d wanted.

It’s a heart-felt scene, meant to allow the audience to step back into themselves long enough to relate to these parents who, despite playing the villains in this fiction, want to protect their son. They acknowledge that belief in Santa isn’t bad in itself, and Laura questions whether they’ve been too hasty in condemning Scott’s encouragement of Charlie’s belief. This conversation also sets up the final scene, when Scott, as Santa Claus, gives them each the gift that they stopped believing because of. He’s literally flying in his reindeer-drawn flying sleigh over their heads, after having spoken to them in the house a few minutes before, then parachutes down the game and the whistle to Laura and Neil, as well as other toys to other people in the crowd.

You’d think they’d have let go of this already. You’d think, as adults if not as children, they would have appreciated their other presents enough that the absence of one wouldn’t have mattered so much. True, Laura declares that Scott really is Santa in the previous scene, but there’s still a sense of Santa making things right by giving these gifts. And that infuriates me because we don’t have to receive everything we want in order to have a good relationship with our parents, friends, significant others, bosses, or anyone else. Why Santa?

You’d think Laura and Neil would have had more faith.

The first time I saw the movie, around age 7 or 8, I thought, “They stopped believing when they didn’t get one present they wanted? Where’s their faith. It’s one present out of dozens! It’s one year out of their whole lives!” And even as a child, I knew the same could be said of people’s belief in God.

Santa doesn’t have to get you every single thing you want in order for him to be everything that children believe he is: good, generous, kind, magical, real. But Santa does give children gifts. Good gifts, unless your people belong to the coal-giving persuasion of Western society. And God gives good gifts, too. There are the obvious ones like life and people to love and a planet that provides for our needs, but also ones like a breeze when you’re indescribably hot and a call from a friend when you’re ready to break apart and the awareness of a gorgeous sunset you would have otherwise missed. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him (Matt 7:11, NLT).

God is not Santa. You don’t ask God for whatever you want and God provides, predictably and lavishly, risking your disbelief if God dares to deny you anything. God does not always provide what you want, and that doesn’t make God less good, less generous, less kind, less supernatural, or less real. Much like a parent not making you fried chicken every single day, even though it’s what you want more than anything else in the entire world, we often don’t want what we need or what would be good for us. And, sometimes, we just don’t get to have the good things we want even though it seems that everyone else does. When a storm comes, literally or figuratively, God has promised to be a parent and to be good to us, but we might still lose a loved one, a home, our health, our sense of security, and more.

This has happened before. It happened to Job. And God didn’t come right away to account for Job’s loss or to answer his questions. God didn’t even answer Job’s questions when God did come. Neither did Jesus appear to Thomas right away when Thomas expressed his famous doubt. Job waited an entire book. Thomas waited 8 days. And I think you’ll agree that these people experienced genuine, painful loss. Job lost his children, home, livelihood, and health. Thomas lost his friend and mentor, his lifestyle, his hope for the future and his country’s well-being.

Santa Claus’s ex-wife not getting the board game that she wanted at age 8, something she wanted more than the dozens of other presents she did get, that’s not genuine loss. That’s entitlement. That’s pettiness. That’s a small view of Santa. How little faith! How unsubstantial a belief if you can lose it so easily over something so slight.

It would be easy to shake my fist at people for not having more faith than Laura did in The Santa Claus, but life is not so easy. If you’ve survived on the planet long enough to read this, you’ve suffered. Your suffering is not insignificant. Your suffering isn’t dismissible just because it doesn’t look like someone else’s.

December holidays, when the world and everyone you encounter seems to be screaming at you to be happy, is a painful time for those who have lost. A person, a pet, a hope, a dream, a self of self, a livelihood, a home, an ability. Maybe it was recently. Maybe it was during this time of year. Maybe your loss just hits you differently when “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is stuck in your head and the trees have shaken off all their leaves and red bows on green boughs drape the doorways you must pass through.

If you had faith before your loss, I hope you kept it. I hope your view of God was big enough to include the possibility of pain. I hope you have never thought of God as a celestial Santa Claus, existing only to give you good things. I hope you don’t see God as a Krumpus, either. If you didn’t have faith in God before, I pray that you will search for God. The Bible assures us “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Matthew 7:7). Search for God, and God will draw near to you.

God is good, but God is also so much more than we are. God doesn’t give us all that we want. God doesn’t “only give us what we can handle.” God doesn’t reward the wealthy with wealth and punish the poor with poverty. God demands we help one another, protect one another, seek justice for one another. God offers hope to all who suffer. God is very good and God wants to give God’s children good gifts.

Remember, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible” (Hebrews 11:1-3). By faith, by faith, by faith.

Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief.