Just for New Year's Eve

A Year Passes in a Second

Ringing in 2013!

In a second--one year passes into the next.  I will always remember that New Year's Eve that I could not make it up the road to celebrate the New Year with Eucharist at our Church.  I was lucky to make it across the room to the bathroom!  What I did recall was sitting in my living room (pot in hand) and watching the ball drop on TV into Times Square.  Then, I needed cold air and stepping outside on the porch, I hear the  church bell ring in the New Year--and as I knew, the priest was elevating and breaking the bread.  What a contrast--the ball drops in Times Square and the host is raised and broken in the mass.  One drops into madness.  One raises to Life eternal.  It is the sign that new life is found turning around our lives and going in a new direction--because we want it more than anything the world offers--the party that ends in one giant mess.  Or, the forever celebration of what God gives us. 

                                                                                     

Making the Journey

 

 c. Michael Podesta Graphics  Request a Catalog | 1-800-922-3595

 Meditation for 12 Days of Christmas

"If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things, and again with things, if we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action, when will we have time to make the long, slow journey across the desert as did the Magi? Or sit and watch the stars as did the Shepherds? Or brood over the coming of the child as did Mary? For each one of us there is a desert to travel, a star to discover, and a being within ourselves to bring to life."

I love the graphic artistry of Michale Podesta--and this one in particular has a wonderful blue background that speaks of the ocean of life into which we journey.  The lighter we travel, the saying goes, the more chance we have of picking up God who comes as deftly as a hitch-hiker who we discover later is not so much of a random hiker after all. 

"Then Jesus went about among the villages teaching. ⁷He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. ⁸He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; ⁹but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics."   Mark 6: 6-9

Putin--The Man Who Forgot Christmas

The Man Who Left Christmas Behind

The story of Christmas for these 12 days is the gift of the Christ Child and how he transforms life.  It seems so unbelievable that even Putin would forget his own humanity in blocking countless adoptions to the USA as a matter of politics. Something greater is on the table. Oh, of course, there is the fact that 6 of about 60,0000 adoptions (figure that percentage!) have ended in abuse and fatality.  Nobody glosses over that horror.  But what is the difference in blocking orphaned children from even taking that risk?  Which is the greater abuse?

Compare these pictures...   Perhaps unfair because nobody told Putin to smile for the camera.  But nevertheless, there is something in children that disarms and opens us up--precisely what is missing in international affairs.  No wonder Isaiah declared that "a little child shall lead them" and for Jesus, "the first shall be last and the last first in the Kingdom of God."  

Maybe that is the message for the 12 Days of Christmas.  We are given the Christ Child so that we can become more child-like...."for of such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven."  In what ways can we continue to be open and giving this Christmas season?   

Given the Child for us to become childlike....

The Scrooge Secret

The Scrooge Secret

This should be the last entry this year for old Scrooge, the timeless Saint of Christmas which never seems to wear out. We have another thing coming if we believe that Scrooge just stepped out of a vacuum as a stingy miser.  Ever wonder why he turned out the way he was? It’s there in the script. Scrooge’s mother died in childbirth and his father blamed Ebenezer for that death.  He entered life without his mother and father, blamed for his mother’s death.  Then why blame him for his greed?  He took the only part of the world left to control—which is what greed is all about.  Remember too that his sister also died in childbirth giving birth to his nephew—Fred, the painful remembrance of that double death.  Fred then haunts him with “Merry Christmas.” Why blame him for not entering into relationship and seeking their riches? 

There is still the second secret.  What is that really changes Scrooge?  Is it the sight of his own death—with nobody concerned for him?  I always thought that the cold steel of greed broke when he beheld his own grave and death.  But hold on—that fact was always before him, especially that Christmas Eve he watched Marley die.  As he said at Marley’s bedside—“We all have to die sometime!” 

So what changed him?  In the book and movie, Marley’s ghost points to the anguish of the other ghosts. Now they really see the need of others, and death has robbed them of the power to intervene and help.  Hell is living the loss of helping others, of being a part of others’ lives.  However, absent from the movie are the critical words from Scrooge as he gazes on his own corpse covered with the sheets.  He does not pull them back. But he feels the knife like an icicle in his heart that in death, he has lost the chance to help those in real need.  The horror for Marley has become his own—the eternal separation that leaves him powerless to help others—and thereby restore his own humanity.    

And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”   Matthew 25: 38-45

The Child's Glow

In the Glow of a Candle

The 12 Days of Christmas

It was a very special moment in the Christmas Eve Service. Silent Night, Candles and a time of peace… and then I caught the glimpse of my granddaughter in candlelight.  She was absolutely mesmerized; her eyes followed the light everywhere. In the glow, I caught sight of the Christ Child.  Now, I knew for a fact that this was not Christ himself.  After all, the carol does say, “Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes!” And that is most definitely not her.

I am talking about a different image.  In the same way that a new mother greets a newborn with the glow of a miracle, the Child herself radiates that love back.  That’s what happened Christmas Eve—that greater Love “in light uncreated” radiated from her.

(Annie Dillard) 

“On the first day of Christmas, God’s true Love came to me,

The glow of our granddaughter, God’s Child for us to see.”

Christmas Benediction

Christmas

Benediction or Invocation?

The Benediction comes at the end of the program.  The Invocation comes as the beginning of the program.  For those of us so highly programmed by the season--which will it be for us?  Does Christmas Day end the hectic shopping days of Advent (Thank God!)--but where are we left and for what end?  
 
Is Christmas the respite we take, 
shortly before we awake and reclaim
the world in the madness of shopping,
and the insane believe we do make
that God's promise is something we
do not deserve, nor cannot receive, but
musty have a hand in ourselves somehow. 

These words came to me this Christmas as the challenge of the Child.
Do we give the Child a token nod at the observance of this annual fete....
Or, do we tell the world where to get off as we seek him in the world that
turns its back on him? 


For the Time Being
Christmas Oratorio

IV
Chorus
He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.
-- W. H. Auden

Light a candle it.  Think about it.  Then take your first steps toward the new year as God's invocation.

For Christmas Day

The Dialogue for the Day of Days

“What is today,” Scrooge yelled down to the boy below.

“Today, why it is Christmas Day,” the boy shouted back.

“I haven’t missed it,” said Scrooge. “The Spirits did it in one night.  

But of course they can do anything.”  

Lift up yourselves to the great meaning of the day,

and dare to think of your humanity as something so divinely precious

that it is worthy of being an offering to God. Count it a privilege to make that offering

as complete as possible, keeping nothing back. And then go out to the pleasures

and duties of your life, having been born anew into His divinity,

as He was born into our humanity on Christmas Day.

– Phillips Brooks.

Only for Christmas Eve

  The Journey of a Lifetime Begins Tonight!

I cannot go through Christmas Eve without that Dicken's of a story--A Christmas Carol.  Of course, we are with the Holy Family on that donkey plodding to Bethlehem, aren't we--and that is after all--"the story of stories."  Christmas Carol is great because it plays out that nativity story. The world on earth opens into the kingdom of heaven, the angels sing, and life is indeed never the same. 

Even so, who does not like that thriller of Marley's dramatic entrance through doors bolted and double bolted?  The world of the miser cannot lock itself out of God's work--which is the reclamation of one soul.  In the same way that God focuses his attention on the Child of Bethlehem....the center of all Creation--at the same time, not one single soul is forgotten with every hair counted on Scrooge's head.
 

 Of course, the focus is on old Scrooge, but listen carefully to the dialogue.  Why does Scrooge of all people get this second chance.  "A chance of MY procuring," says Marley.  The Nativity Story is the story of hope born into the world.

But what of Jacob Marley?  When does his second chance come?  Well, you need to read Tom Mula's Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol to find out.  It has something to do with his ability to redeem Scrooge.  Sin binds us in chains.  Grace breaks them and frees us--apparently even in the afterlife we have a "ghost" of a chance. 

Then again, perhaps...let Bill Murray have the last word from the contemporary Christmas Carol called "Scrooged:"

It's Christmas Eve! It's... it's the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we... we... we smile a little easier, we... w-w-we... we... we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be!

Perhaps the story we tell as Christians is that Christ comes to be with us to walk with us into the year.
May it be said of us!

As Good As it Gets?

 

Christmas is Coming...

and 

Jack Nicholson Gives the Leading Line? 

No question for me.  This is Jack Nicholson at his very best. The neurotic guy only succeeds at writing because his social skills are about as good as his inability to walk down the sidewalk without stepping on a line.  Yet it is to Nicholson that my mind keeps turning before Christmas.

Remember the scene when he emerges at the Vet clinic, looks at the people sitting around and declares:  "Is this as good as it gets?"  At once, he opens up and calls life into question with 7 profound words.

So what about it, just a few days before Christmas?  Is Christmas the holiday break time after spending a month running ourselves into the ground?  So we take a day or so off.  The world is on hold.  There is a real truce as long as you don't turn on the TV---or venture into the world for a movie. We might even hear those familiar lines from "O Little Town of Bethlehem:"  our hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. 

This peace requires something far more than putting on Christmas.  It means what Christians call the Feast of the Incarnation.  God comes to us in human flesh and blood in a manger to feed us and go with us into the world.  It means much more indeed than arriving at the manger and leaving the Christ Child behind to greet the New Year...instead of bowing humbly to the God who greets us in Jesus Christ.  That may not solve the world for us.  It leads us into a Kingdom.  And there we find the rest for our souls that the world cannot give.

Time to Play your Part

And Finally...

the Conductor Turns to YOU!

There I was just a few feet from the stage at the Kennedy Center listening to Messiah.  The Conductor, soloists, and orchestra were all in sync.  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of a door opening towards the back of the stage.  Out steps a trumpeter with music in hand.  He made his way to the back corner of the orchestra, set music on the stand, and began getting his trumpet ready.  Then, just in the nick of time after his arrival, the conductor waved his arm and pointed at the trumpeter--and the sounds of the trumpet filled that small space in the chorus, "And the glory of the Lord."  He then methodically gathered up music, trumpet and exited through the same rear door.  Of course, later on he returned and stayed longer!

What struck me is that we all play a part in the Messiah.  In God's work, everyone is called to sound their special unique notes.  Because you live a day in your life, only you can make that contribution which is YOU!

Is Messiah a performance or the drama we are all a part of.  Jesus Christ is born for us--but his mission is called "messianic" and all of us are called to play our parts--to toot our horns the best we can. 

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

 Shakespeare, As You Like It

Coming Light

A Poem for the Coming of Christmas

Credo

I cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.

No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all--above, beyond it all--
I know the far sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the light.

by:  Edwin Arlington Robinson

Frequently I sit on the rocks below the Maine cottage of EA Robinson and read this poem.  In the thickest fog, his words bring light..."the coming glory of the light."  I must give a nod to author Annie Dillard who writes of "light uncreated" that shines in the darkness of the soul,  and as I like to add, finds its way into the world through acts of love and grace. 

This is the coming of Christmas....
                                                   any time, any place, any condition. 

The Most Wonderful Christmas Story of All

The Most Wonderful Christmas Story of All

Every year, the woman made the same pilgrimage to the cave.  She would light a torch and enter the cave at night…and search through every inch until she came to the place where he had been laid. Then she would extinguish the torch and slowly in the dark until emerging into the deep dark night ablaze with stars.  Then she would close her eyes and imagine, just imagine what it must have been like for her son to have stepped out of death into the light of new life.  

Mary always went back to that cave.  It was after all the place of his second birth and hers as well. He was her son, no question about that, but he was God’s son as well and all people are his heirs.  It is the story of Christmas given for all of us.  

Oh Christmas Tree!

The Griswald Family Christmas Tree! 

My favorite scene in Christmas Vacation is the drive to get the tree. When they find it, lights from heaven fall upon it.  This is THE tree picked out just for them. A heavenly chorus plays in the background. 

I also recall the move, "The Nativity," in which the traditional story line of the birth of the Christ Child plays out.  Nothing different, same story, enduring miracle.  Except!  At the moment of the birth, the scene shows the same light pouring from the heavens on the stable -- just as it appears on this tree. Once again--the heavenly chorus plays in the background.  The parallel is striking for me because it seems that the only way we can distinguish God's work is if God puts a spotlight on it. 

Here you see the light shining on the child. It also shows the light shining brightly on the stable. 

Walker Percy, American Book Award Winner, says that we write stories that blow the ending. God does not work with spotlights. We slowly open our eyes to God's work like a newborn. Sure there are times when things really light up for us.  I am just saying that spiritual eyes are different from a supernatural light show in the skies.  I do not need the Star of Bethlehem to open my eyes to the Christ Child--it is over the journey of a lifetime that we learn who it is who is born for us. 

Saying so Much without Words

Deer stand statuesque in conversation with onlooker

Speaking without Words

The dog was walking me at dusk when she first spied one deer moving slowly away in the woods...and then another and another, more than 8 or so...save one that stayed behind and stood there a statue without words deep in conversation with us. She felt no need whatsoever to catch up with the others, her curiosity holding her in place while preferring our company. 

It reminded me of the poem by Mary Oliver, Pulitzer Prize Winner. It's called, "The Place I want to get back to," and the title serves as the first line for the poem.   Enjoy it for the day! 




The Place I Want to Get Back To
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground , like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

Bear the Burden

"Bear each others' burdens 

and fulfill the law of Christ."

Galatians 6: 1

I am still in a painful place everytime I feel the loss of those children and teachers in Newtown, CT.  They are the slaughter of the innocents, Herod's victims from his pursuit of power, writ large in our day.  I go back to Shakespeare--"Speak not what we ought to say.  Speak what we really feel."  Who can find the words to say how we really feel?

For me, I go back to my roots as a Christian and Paul's call to bear each others' burdens...or more literally from the above image, to carry each other. Certainly in Tolkien's Return of the King, it is only by Sam that Frodo completes the vocation by being carried up Mt. Doom to toss the ring in the fire.  I want to suggest that we carry those lost children, that we lift them and their protectors up who perished--that  we can lift up the people in that school system and town--and where?  In our hearts that our broken, we can carry them and not rationalize them away to makes us feel better.  In carrying their loss, the Gospel says, we birth to the new life of Christ in a world that rises to new life. 

The comfort quilt--the living sign of bearing burdens

What is “The Comfort Quilt?”
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, a school in Ohio created a simple, patchwork quilt for children whose parents had been killed in the attacks. A school in New Jersey hung the quilt, and there it stayed–until four years later–when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The Comfort Quilt was sent to a school in Mississippi which had taken in many displaced New Orleans’ students. When the Nickel Mines School shooting occurred, the Comfort Quilt moved again…this time to bring comfort to the Amish families of Nickel Mines. The Comfort Quilt was taken by the Amish to Virginia Tech, after the tragic shootings that took place on April 16, 2007. (from the internet)

The quilt was always taken by people who had been in great need to people in need of great comfort.
The heart and soul of the quilt was a living sign of people who had stood in the depth of the pit of death and walked out of it--through forgiveness, hope, and grace.  That was the way to peace.  Can we envision our lives as that same fabric of comfort--bearing the burdens of others?  There is no higher law than love in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  (I Cor 13)  "the greatest of these is love..." the fabric woven into our souls.  

Newtown Good Friday

The Good Friday Reflection Embraces our World

In Memoriam

The Children and People

of Sandy Hook 

Elementary School

Newtown, CT

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love

will have the final word in reality.

This is why right temporarily defeated

is stronger than evil triumphant."
Martin Luther King

The tragic slaughter of school children in Newtown, CT brings us all to our kneels with fervent prayers for the victims, the wounded and for all of their families: Lord have mercy. I hear the sound of Holy Innocents slain by Herod to murder the Christ Child.

'A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,

because they are no more.'

                                                                                       (Matthew 2 18)

The connection with our Christian story is our only hope. No tragic death removes life itself, and all lives are forever in the hands of the risen Christ. Let there be no rationalizations--this is an unspeakable horror. But let the Light shine in the darkness which has never put it out. In our faith, "life is changed, not ended, and... there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens." (Episcopal Prayer Book, p. 382)

Prayer for Sandy Hook Elementary School

Newtown, Connecticut

By Kelvin Holdsworth

Eternal God,

hear your diverse people
as a world unites in prayer and compassion
for the people of Newtown Connecticut.
We pray for all involved in the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Bless with your kindness those who speak to the broken-hearted.
Bless the teachers, paramedics, medical staff and police
with courage, skill and wisdom.
Bless those who mourn.
Bless those who grieve
and comfort the bewildered.
Help us each to build a world safe and fit for children.
Amen. Amen. Amen.

God bless Mr. Scrooge, everyone!

Welcome....

A Christmas Carol! 

Alistir Sim as Scrooge 

Christmas comes for me every year with Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. It gives me one "Dickens" of a Christmas.  It tells the story of every soul in the journey from the self-centered infant to the centered soul in a mature faith.  Bah-humbug???  Well you might want to say that since Scrooge popularized it and put it into our vernacular.  But isn't true that every Christmas, we journey from self-centeredness to being people centered in the needs of others?  

I love the adaptations!    Authors and Directors know the spirit of the text so well that they are able to add lines and actions that fully express Dickens.   Today I saw a version that I have now seen for three years--and it is wonderful.  If you are in the DC area, take in a show at Ford's Theater.  

The Ford's Theater Production  "It is I who needs to thank you!"

At the end of that version, old Scrooge forgives the debts of three people.  They erupt with joy--"Oh thank you Mr. Scrooge," they exclaim.  Then Scrooge turns and says--"No, it its you I have to thank." 

That's Dicken's theme par excellence.  The poor and needy are those in whom we find the Christ Child.  They have learned how to be centered in a higher Power...and they can lead us as well through generous giving.  "It is in giving that we receive," St. Francis' great prayer reminds us--and in which we find the Christ who looks for us. God bless you, Mr. Scrooge, from everyone...for your annual gift.

Squirrel!

S-q-u-i-r-r-e-l!  

How many of you immediately recognized the title of this post from that wacky event in Christmas Vacation?  Chevy Chase peers into his tree, and spies the squirrel.  Immediately, the squirrel jumps from the tree--and absolute mayhem breaks out.  First it chases everyone upstairs, then downstairs--on and on goes the stampede.  What's wrong with this picture goes to the heart of the movie itself.  The complete exaggerated response is way out of line with what should really happen--a squirrel does not chase people, or rather--do people stampede from a squirrel?

Now think about the movie--comedy in this movie comes from being a farce, gross exaggeration. Reality takes a "vacation" and laughter erupts. Comedy itself comes from  the heart of life that places us in a whole new scene—a new place in life from which to gain perspective.  The movie shows us the contours of lives and a season that is way out of line with the season itself—so that perhaps we can recapture what it really means.  

Forget the squirrel--we could just as easily have said "Christmas Lights," and you would have pictured the famous Griswald house ablaze with lights and the Hallelujah Chorus playing in the background as the local electric company hits crisis mode to deliver more power.   

How does this farcical display live out Shakespeare's counsel--"by misdirections find directions out?"
The farce points to the reality of the real, true Light that "shines in the darkness and the darkness has not put it out."   (John 1) 

Oh yeah, by the way--I got into this post because of a squirrel in our wall. No stampede happened.  We evicted Mr. Squirrel and closed his front door.  But I got a good laugh remembering Christmas Vacation and that hilarious scene--"s-q-u-i-r-r-e-l"  !!!

Lift-Off

 Peace

The 737 left the runway,

Broke through the sunset,

Settled me into my seat,

And let go of my baggage,

Dropping it over Nashville.

What secret do planes know,

When to lift off, then let go,

Of the weight of the world,

The baggage dragged behind,

That just needs to be dropped?

These lines wrote themselves in my heart as my plane took off from Nashville and headed to Maine for a respite.  The lift off--utterly a grace-filled moment--of separation from my world and then just letting it go. Then it dawned on me. Even on the plane, your spirit cannot soar until the moment finally comes of letting go and lifting off.  I have heard the same thing in this passage from Matthew 11:28.  

  28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’      

                                                                                                                       Matthew 11:28  

Letting go means letting God have it -- have it all.  It does not mean being care-free which is not caring at all.  It means the opposite.  A deep caring for your soul so that its ultimate care is placed in God's hands.  How do you DO that?  Well, you DO it--offer it, let go and let go again...and feel yourself take flight.  

No Laughing Matter

So Much for a Prank....

I want to do nothing but walk very tenderly around the suicide of Jacintha Saldanha, who apparently took her life after falling for a prank call “from the Queen.”  She was Kate Middleton’s nurse and took a phone call from two DJ’s who were impersonating the Queen and Prince Charles.  The account I found says:

Speaking in a dodgy English accent, Miss Greig said: "Oh, hello there. Could I please speak to Kate please, my granddaughter?"]

Ms Jacintha Saldanha can be heard in the audio saying: "Oh yes, just hold on ma'am."

During the outrageous two-minute exchange, the duo even had a third person in the studio BARK in the background and joked about ‘feeding and walking the corgis’.

On the one hand, how low can we go by impersonating the Royal Family in the first place?  Is it really a prank to “get to the Royals” during a hospitalization and not a hunting trip—where is the etiquette the Brits boast about?  

On the other hand, the suicide itself is too tragic for commentary directed at her. She left two children behind.  The price of failure and world wide humiliation?  Lord have mercy....

The question that I am left with is this--how caught up do we become in what others think of us...so that we cannot live with ourselves?  

I have raised this theme in several places that "who we are" is totally separate from the world--our identity need not rise and fall with what others think.  Our value, our self-worth is given to us by God and no thief can steal it, no King can buy it, the world cannot destroy it--we are God's children.  

Let me say this with all due respect.  Which matters more--that we defend the Royal family flawlessly?  Or, that we live out our own Royal heritage as the children of the living God?  If you do not want the faith perspective--we can at least say that we learn early to draw a line between ourselves and what others say about us--"sticks and stones"--you know the ditty. But some place we need to draw the line or the joke, the tragedy is of our own making. 

Putting it on the Line--Again!

Coming Off the Bench--Going Into History!

Yesterday's post was the story of Trent Steelman, West Point QB who came up one fumble shy of the win he dreamed of at the Academy.  The history books will remember it as the game in which the streak continued to 11 consecutive wins by Navy over Army.  Today I saw almost the reverse.  With RGIII (Redskins QB) injured in the waning moments of a must-win game, rookie Kurt Cousins came off the bench and reached back and led the team to an over-time win against Baltimore. 

Get the picture. Here's Cousins the no-name rookie behind instant super-star Griffin--before the guy even made his pro-debut--and look how the unsung, unknown kid comes off the bench to lead the team.    It's called "stepping up."  You see the moment, you seize your time, and you make it happen regardless of the situation.

What about us?  We do not live our lives in front of 50,000+ raging fans that make you a hero one moment, the goat in the next.  But there are so many situations in life that we do not rehearse for--in which we are all rookies--and have to come off the bench and step one.

+The surgeon who drinks the cup of coffee one minute, and saves a life the next from a car wreck.
+The parent goes about an easy day, and rushes to the ER the next after a kid is an accident and must hold the family together.
+The commuter driving to work who stops for an accident and saves a life with CPR,
+The supervisor who must find exactly the correct words to lay a worker off---and the worker who must step up and out and turn it around with a new job.   

Putting It All On the Line

When Men Put It All On The Line

It is said that playing football is not the most difficult thing that collegiate athletes do at any of the Service Academies. They put their lives on the line for us around the world...and protects the freedom for me to even write this blog. 

What I saw this evening in the Army/Navy game made me stop and wonder.  First--should it be called the Navy/Army game after the streak of wins went to the people in their whites and not the grey uniforms.  And watching Trent Steelman, star West Point QB, fumble and then crash emotionally on the field was quite startling.  He was inconsolable in the arms of his coach, the commanding General of West Point and the coach of Navy who sought him out.  I give him his due that I am clueless for what it meant to him and his team to lose that game.  They had only won 2 games all season to Navy's 7.  However, anyone who saw the meltdown had to wonder if too much had been put on the line--and what there was that prevented him from going out with head up. Yeah, pretty painful beyond words to fumble the game away on the 10 yard line.

So let's give him every break in the book. But, let's ask ourselves about times we get overly invested in things going our way.  When we lose out, do we literally come away losing everything?  I have seen losers go out winners because of the way they lost--heads up, gave it the best shot, nobody died. I think the point is knowing how to draw the line between who we are and what we do and do not do.  When the line erases between identity and achievements (losses)--then we become what we do and cannot do.  It is the old "A or F" syndrome--unless I get the A, then I am an F student.  Heard that before.

What does not break you--makes you.  Heard that one?  Or rather, have you lived that one out?  It is only possible if the line between who you are and what you do is kept flexible enough so that when you fall short, you don't go off the cliff with it. 

Back to Steelman.  Can't help the play on words--"Steel-Man."  Somehow we need to be made out a substance which can be shaped in life and not broken by it.  Eventually, even steel rusts, twists and breaks under pressure and heat.  There's a very deep teaching from the biblical world.  We are created  "imago-dei"--in the image of God.  It does not make us gods--but the image is something of God in which "all things are made new" (Revelation 21) and where....

those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
   they shall walk and not faint. 

(Isaiah 40:31)  

 

A Hand on Life

"The Light Shines in the Darkness

and the Darkness has Never Overcome it"

John 1

The sun was shining brightly--and it was a very dark day for the man who came into the vet clinic carrying a small bundle in a blanket.  Tears were in his eyes.  He vanished into one of the back rooms and then emerged without the blanket.  This could not be good.  But he stopped to pat an enormous, handsome Golden Retriever named "Barley"--9 months an 98 lbs.  The man stopped, patted and smiled through tears. The tail wagged endlessly, and we all know that dogs can smile, don't we?  

During my appointment, I learned that the man awakened to find his dog had died in the night. She was elderly, had been treated for many old age problems, which of course relieved none of the shock and pain of loss.  Except for Barley that is.  What is there in the darkest of days that reaches out to us with the light of life that can never be put out in us?  Through death--life reached out and that man took hold.  

These days of Advent go deeper and deeper into the darkness toward the shortest day of the Solstice. Christians take that day and recreate it with the birth of God's Son and the coming of Light.  "I am the Light of the world," he proclaimed, without saying--I give light, but "I AM the LIGHT."   It is truly one of those mysterious ways that our extremity in grief becomes God's opportunity to shine that Light into our lives.  Or maybe it takes dark days to open our eyes to Light uncreated. 

The Day of Infamy

"The Day that shall live in Infamy" 


"Gracious God, we commend to your care and keeping the brave men and women of the Pacific Fleet who paid the ultimate price for our nation on Pearl Harbor Day. Turn the pain of infamy into the hope of peace.  Beat our swords into ploughshares and transform our warring madness into your Kingdom.             AMEN+" 

We cannot live into this day without this shocking image of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. On that day, would those who staggered in shock foresee the memorial that would one day enshrine the loss?  Perhaps it is a mark of national pride, but well earned, that the monument has a sway back in the middle. It is supposed to represent the height of national pride before the attack, the depth of depression after it, and then the new height after the war.  Some critics only saw it as a crushed soda can. 

^{Then still, many others find their hope in this enduring prophecy from Isaiah 11:}  

⁶ The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them.
⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze,
   their young shall lie down together;
   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹ They will not hurt or destroy
   on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   as the waters cover the sea.

Others follow the deeper prophecy of enduring hope from Isaiah:

Soul Searching

Captions I Could Not Resist!

"No Rudolph!  I said the Schmidt House---not the..........House!"  

or how about just one word....

R-E-C-A-L-C-U-L-A-T-I-N-G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a twist on this image--how do we find our direction, make our way in the world? Or even more bluntly--where is the GPS for the soul?  

it may just be me.  Do you think that the more we rely on our external technology, the less we know about the inner world of who we really are?  I like the tech stuff as much as anyone.  But, I notice that the more I talk with people, the more I hear a fixation on the outer world and a sense of loss about what Teresa of Avila calls "the interior castle"--or Good Pope John 23rd, "the journal of a soul."  Do we know our soul well enough to enter it as the castle it is--or to write its journey? 

Several times now, I used this familiar logo as a good play on words we need for ourselves.  

It's the familiar--"LOOK INSIDE."  Amazon gives us the click-on so we can look at the book's contents.  By doing that, they hope to sell more books because we see what we want.  Now ask yourself--where is the click-on to peer into your own soul?  In this "Journal," Pope John knows himself well enough to chronicle the journey of his soul.  It is utterly amazing how you come away with this awe of how well he knows who he is and the sense of God's presence within.  

So where is the GPS for the soul?  You can follow the journey of others and hear and see glimpses of yourself.  Or as you will discover with books like this one, start writing your own journal.  God inside.  Paint the picture of your interior castle--dare to get an inkling of your soul.