Losing my Marbles

I used to be a very convivial, intelligent, thoughtful person. At one point in my life I wrote "Thank You" notes.  At one point in my life I had no inkling of the non-hyperbolic nature of the term "bouncing off the walls."

And yet, I find that way back then, before children, my house was a mess, and I rarely managed to finish a project.  Why is that??

I find a certain poetry in the odd truth that as I lose my marbles, I seem to be finding them. 

I have always wanted some kind of Advent thing.  A tradition. A practice. A drumroll for Christmas. You know, a thing. And last night we finally set up our thing. We filled 75 envelopes with puzzle pieces and hung them from a super awesome string in our family room. I can't even begin to tell you how Pinteresty it is!!  Each day each child will get four pieces and by Christmas, voila!! A puzzle. 

So it's a moderately lame thing, but it's our thing and every family needs a thing. 

Hail, Mary, Full of Grace

Today I have an essay in our church's Advent devotional.  I hope you will download the whole thing and enjoy the spirit of this season!

Lully Lullay

Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

By, by, lully, lullay.

Lullay, Thou little tiny Child.

By, by, lully, lullay.

There is a part of the Christmas story that we do not tell to our children on Christmas morning, it has never been a part of any Christmas pageant I have ever seen and this week it has been haunting my thoughts and prayers.

It is like our whole kingdom's birth is all about love and inclusivity and social justice except for the part where some guy KILLS ALL THE BABIES!  My heart just wants to scream, "what the #@$&, God?"

O sisters, too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day;

This poor Youngling for whom we sing,

By, by, lully, lullay.

I hate this story.  It is all the worst of life rolled into one little, tiny excerpt.  I want to yell and scream and protest that this is not the God that saves Mary from stoning or finds Zaccheus in the tree.  This is a Olympian God who promotes God's agenda and if all the babies die...well, the hero escapes, so it's all good.  I hear the voice of the Psalmist raging out, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?"  

Do the ends justify the means?

Could any ends justify those means?

Herod the King, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day;

His men of might, in his own sight,

All children young, to slay.

And yesterday, another day of weeping.  Another day of overwhelming sadness.  Another day of lament.  

But we skip lament in our stories, so we don't have any framework for this grief.  So, we say it is God's plan, all things have a good purpose or just vaguely pray for comfort.

I say no!  

I say we stop and scream and lament.  For the moment that an enraged king orders every child under two killed or a gunman opens fire on children is no other thing than hell.  The why's and how's are out there, but the spirit of the thing is hell.  

God stopped and wept.

I believe that God's heart weeps with the mothers of those innocents and those many long years ago, I know God wept with Rachel.  And God weeps when a child is stolen for sex or whimpers and dies of starvation or is abandon or beaten or lost.  These things are hell.  God weeps when a homeless woman hears herself ridiculed.  That is hell.  God weeps when people are rejected for being different.  That is hell.  And God weeps when a man's hurt, pain and confusion turns violent.  That is hell.

These are not God's plan.  These are things about which God weeps and we also must weep.  Deeply.  

Is there a hell?  Yes, when we hurt and hate and reject, that is hell.  Those children died at Herod's hand and hell came to earth and although we all know Easter is coming and there is a powerful good coming, it is worth a moment of lament and grief to remember why our "souls thirst for God."  On the long road to Bethlehem this year, we have all been forced to remember that love might win, but pain and loss is real and there are times of weeping. 

Then woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,

And ever mourn and say;

For Thy parting, nor say nor sing,

By, by, lully, lullay.

Blood and Water

The nativity of our faith is a story of life.  Our precious nativity sets don't reveal the real grit at the bottom of this story.  First, Mary, terrified, facing an angel who is giving her news that will change her life forever.  Will she risk everything to say yes to God's call?  Will she risk losing her place, her home, even her life to say yes?  And Joseph, his scriptural right was to throw rocks at Mary until she died, but my nativity scenes didn't come with a pile of rocks.  Joseph chose life and love even if it meant making a fool and spectacle of himself.  And shepherds.  We don't even have names for them.  A nameless, faceless group who lived in fields with sheep...sans showers.

But it is also a story of a generous, mysterious God who did not abandon Mary without hope or help.

But do we choose to find abundance or poverty in this story.

Is this generosity?  A first time mom, terrified of giving birth, terrified of leaving her family to go with a man she has not learned to trust yet to a strange town when she knew her child's birth was close.  In those last weeks she would have thought of little besides the coming birth of her baby.  And now, she is standing outside the inn waiting to be let in to the relative safety of a room with a bed and a mid-wife.  Babies are rarely born without warning, and Mary was probably gripped by fear and terror at the thought of giving birth to her first child away from her home and family.

But there was no room for them at the inn.

Is this abundance?  I can see Joseph's shaking hands as he tries to clear a place for his increasingly terrified almost-wife.  He is ashamed to be unable to provide a suitable place and angry that his strong, skilled hands have no idea how to help a baby into the world.

But he did.

Was there a mid-wife?  Did someone bring hot-water and towels?  We don't know, but we do know that shortly after Jesus's birth, simple, lowly shepherds who knew the way of birth and suckling and new life, came and worshipped the baby.  The gospels don't tell us that they helped, but I hear the heart of God there.  These men would have been comfortable handling a new-born lamb and would have known some of those things that babies need in those first few hours.

A kingdom for the nameless, quiet, dirty ones.

God let God's own self be birthed in a dirt-floored animal shelter, but God found gentle souls to come and share in those first moments of love.  God did not leave Mary without a protector and God did not leave her without help, but she could have found heaps to complain about in her story.  When we say yes to God's call and find ourselves in a dirt-floored animal shelter, do we look for the gentle, humble shepherds who check the baby's cord and tidy up the afterbirth or do we decide God has abandoned us because it didn't turn out as we had expected?

Do we look for abundance or poverty in our story?

Through rain or snow or kinda chilly but still unseasonably warm weather

Today we wrote a letter to our mail carrier.  Laine drew a very fancy picture.  I wrote a note.  We included a little gift.

Then I realized I didn't even know if we were writing to a he or a she.

Shame on me.

Nice, Andrea, nice.

So, I guess today's lesson from Advent is to notice the people around you.

Sigh.

Tomorrow: Visit a nursing home or shut in

An Advent of Service

In typical fashion, I have waited until just after the last minute to get my act together for a project.  This year for Advent we are going to celebrate with daily acts of service and kindness.  If you would like to have the whole list early, please leave me a comment below.

Today the service activity is making cards (to be delivered to a nursing home on Thursday).  We will probably find some idea on Pinterest like hand print trees or something (I will pin whatever we find to the "Advent" board).  Hopefully I will follow up with a picture this afternoon.  That would be fun.  Also unlikely.


In other news, my son has discovered Samson.  He was riveted by the story.  He is now upstairs knocking down towers.

Actual quote:

"Annabel (with thick whine), Samson was going to knock that tower down!"
"Soah--weeeee, Waine!"

My house is not going to survive.

Hope your Advent is starting to twinkle.  I hope you find some way to connect with the coming of Christ's gentle kingdom during Advent.

Tomorrow: Prayer Service

PS Why is my dog licking the couch?
PSS Why do I shelter, protect, feed and cuddle an organism who licks the couch.
PSSS If the dog told my kids about it, they would lick the couch too.

Advent two

Today in our Sunday school class we talked about Advent (naturally) and we began to talk about how the Kingdom of God is like that moment in a novel when you realize that the protagonist is special.  He or she has an appointed task that they struggle to realize is their destiny, but when they do amazing things start to happen.  Well, the Kingdom of God is like that.  It is like a special power that begins to flow from Christ through you to the world when you accept the mantle of being an heir of God with Christ.  Cool, huh!

So I asked my class (the "kids" as Laine calls them) what special powers people would have in the Kingdom of God.  They are supposed to get back to me next week.  Healing and strength were already suggested.

As an unashamed lover of fantasy, I am thrilled by the image of the Kingdom of God being a fuller, richer  more abundant life here on earth.  One where we are part of something bigger and what we do matters.  So, my question to you is, what special power would/do you have in God's Kingdom?  Now, I do not like SiFi, so put all those weird ideas about laser shooters and mind rays out of your head.  I am talking about things that are possible, like healing, loving, noticing the poor, visiting the sick, touching the lepers.

Leave a comment below.

How does God use you in the Kingdom?

Advent One

Happy Advent.  Finally, the start of the new year!  Time for a fresh start.  Time to reset.  Time to get those things done you might have meant to do last year but didn't.

Ok, for those of you who are not Christian year aficionados, Advent is the beginning of the new year.  So, welcome one and all to Year...dum dum da duuummm...B.  We need to work on the nomenclature.  I love the church year.  Just like the seasons keep me rooted to the land, the church year keeps me mindful of the Kingdom of God.

Here at the beginning, I have all kinds of hopes.  What this year will bring, how I will be more dedicated to my disciplines, how I will seek the revelation of God in my life and respond with joy.  Maybe I will write down some goals, but so far this Advent (all three days of it) my major struggle is to keep Advent about preparing for the birth of Christ in my mind and my children's minds.

This year we are trying a few new things to try to reclaim Christmas.

• Instead of doing presents on Christmas morning, we are going to exchange gifts on Epiphany (January 6th).  This will separate Christ's biggest competition from Christmas day.  It will also give us a chance to do our shopping/crafting/baking after Christmas.  This will give us a chance to celebrate the season of Christmas.
• During Advent we will look for those in need around us and make plans to share the joy of Christ's coming with them in a new way.  I am looking into a dinner.  Not sure...still working on that one.
• Also, I hope to have some major crafting days to make some pictures/paintings for shut ins from our church and go visit them.

Hopefully, if I am not working on a flurry of presents, I will have more time to notice those around me who are lonely and broken. 

It is terrifying how quickly children learn to associate Christmas with presents.  How easily we cheapen the gift of Christ by diluting it in a maelstrom of giving and getting.  God gave us his only child, and the celebration of that gift has to share billing with foot spas, perfume, ticklish puppets and iToys.  I confess that I love presents.  I love getting them and picking them out.  I really love nailing the perfect gift for someone, and it secretly really thrills me for someone to pick out something that means they know me too.  And that's what Epiphany is for...let's all dress up like wise men and drown each other in gifts...but Christmas is the celebration of Christ.