Keeping the startle in Christmas?
Maybe for some!
NZ parliamentarian Russell Norman, self-declared atheist, gives one of the most profound Christmas sermons I have heard.
Keeping the Startle in Christmas
Silverfish!
One of the biggest challenges for those of us charged with narrating the Nativity each year is to allow the essence of the story to emerge through the sentiment and tinsel and, yes, the celebratory drudgery that many deem it their annual obligation to tolerate.
A few Christmases ago, we ordered a heavy duty set of Nativity figures to display at the front of the church. They arrived, mere outlines cut out of marine plywood, blank and unadorned – white canvas upon which we amateur artists were invited to take acrylic paints and fill in appropriately. Being who we are, we saw this as an opportunity to make a statement beyond what might be expected of the traditional manger scene. We kept all the original players – Mary, Joseph, shepherds, magi and, of course, sheep, cattle and camels. Rather than paint the life-size figures, we dressed them in fabrics depicting ancient middle eastern dress, but used posed photographs of various members of the congregation who were quite happy to model Melchior, Joseph or a shepherd.
The effect was that the Christmas creche had a startling effect on those who saw it. The figures gathered around the Christ child were not exotic and foreign, but people they knew. “That’s us!” came the involuntary exclamation several times. “You know what – you’re right!” I replied. The traditional message of Immanuel – God with us – had snuck in at a different level and startled Christmas worshipers as surely as the messengers startled the shepherds on the outskirts of Bethlehem.
We aren’t putting the figures out this year. Silverfish have been feasting, and maybe the impact has softened anyway.
We are searching for another way to keep the startle in Christmas. We have two days left. We might just wait and see what happens!
After all, the unexpected usually emerges out of something going wrong.
Mice ate the organ bellows rendering the little Austrian church without a musical instrument one Christmas Eve. The pastor hurriedly wrote a simple a capella carol. We sing it today as “Silent Night.”
Who knows what the silverfish will bring?
I reckon I could manage this….
… I’ve got just enough energy!
Blogging from Android
Trying out the new WordPress feature for my tablet. Could come in handy in a week or two when I’m in Adelaide looking for hotspots.
Advent Reflection – Love: action,not sentiment
Last week was tetchy. People were tired and stressed. Meetings were terse and abrupt. Summer storms, both meteorological and emotional passed swiftly over. The combination of festive preparations and end-of-year wrap ups added to the testy cocktail.
Yet there were moments of pause and reflection – little oases of reality that emerged through the fluff and rush. A leisurely conversation with a colleague as we waited for those held up in rush-hour traffic, to arrive for a meeting. The catchy excitement of two people in two different scenarios about to launch out on a new venture. Quietly holding the hands of several who are bravely anticipating an empty place at the table for the first time this Christmas.
It is when we are truly present to one another that love actively expresses itself – not the automatically flung out seasonal phrases as we rush past each other.
Circumstances of the season increase the kind of activity that reduces our capacity to be present. There just isn’t time.
Awareness however, increases our alertness to the occasions to stop and simply “be” with another.
Vale Christopher
I am saddened at the death of Christopher Hitchens. I enjoyed his writing, even though I struggled to find the words and arguments to counter the blistering clarity and oh-so-reasonable logic of his wit.
We differed on much, but we also shared a few things.
- A birth year. 1949 is a good vintage, and I think one generally feels some sort of affinity for those who begin their travels on planet Earth around the same time.
- He was a dissident and stepped outside boundaries to argue his position on many issues contentious and otherwise. He stridently destroyed the shibboleths he perceived.
My dissidence has tended to happen within boundaries, but increasingly I have come to ride the perimeters, using the devil’s advocacy technique. In fact someone once asked if I saw myself as a boundary rider. I said my aim was to be a gate-opener. - He wrote a book – God is Not Great. My life’s vocation has been arguing the opposite. Same topic, different perspective.
So yep, we differed in many ways, yet I have this felt affinity. And it seems funny attempting to align my pigmy reasonings with his gigantic intellect. Maybe it’s simply our shared humanity – “Ask not for whom the bell tolls…”
I resonate with this reflection from John Shore:
Generally speaking, atheists have championed what we Christians too readily surrender: the sacredness of thought that’s uncompromisingly rational and unapologetically independent.
It’s not within Cooee …
She frowned with miscomprehension, “What did you say?”
“It’s not within Cooee of here,” I repeated. “In fact, you have to go south of the river to find it.”
“That word …Cuey?… I’ve not heard that before.”
It occurred to me that another word of our unique vernacular might be on its way out.
Pity. It’s very useful and expressive. Especially if you are lost or wanting to tell others where you are. The first European settlers of this land learned it from the local indigenous folk around Botany Bay. It’s not so much a word but a high pitched call meant to carry maximum distance over the airways – thus the context of my remark.
Anyhow, heres a demo…
Busier doing nothing?!?!
We had most of the group end of year breakups last week. Just one or two to go in the next day or so. (For those north of the equator, the combination down under of summer holidays, Christmas and New Year makes for six weeks of what we call the silly season – don’t worry, we’re back to normal about the last week of January). Once the break-ups have occurred, my calendar suddenly begins to look very empty. There is momentary relief from what can develop at times to be a grinding schedule. But, ahhh – now – a chance to catch up on some reading, a bit of writing, maybe even clearing away some filing and tidying up a little. But no! The demons of chaos descend, attracted by the vast emptiness of the Outlook calendar. Urgent administrative appointments, papers set aside for “later” and that should have been signed off two weeks ago, and a range of organisational trivia break the dam and flood the waking hours to bursting. Truth is – all this was there all the time. Routine intimidated the important but not urgent and it all kept its distance. But now it is taking insistent opportunity and declaring its urgency, and the days to Christmas are full. Just as well I’m taking a couple of weeks’ leave in the New Year!
Advent Reflection: Joy, anticipated and celebrated
Ever have some odd quirky thing from years ago that sticks in your mind that you can’t get rid of, no matter how hard you try?
One of mine is a segment from a Rem and Stimpy cartoon – inevitably triggered when I hear the word “joy”. Perhaps because I have been in so many circumstances where an MC has attempted to force-feed “joy” on a passive-aggressive audience. Here’s the clip for those who dare!
Joy that is artificially manufactured is like a stone being skipped across the surface of a pond. Joy that is deep and real often emerges out of a season of yearning and anticipation.
We live in a time where refugees and homeless seek a place to call safe, where many unemployed face an empty Christmas table, and the mentally ill seek a moment or two of sanity. Here there is yearning. When hope has not vanished entirely, there is anticipation and the possibility of joy. Such hope often rests on something good remembered and an entertainment of the possibility it may yet recur.
The Psalm for this third week of Advent reflects the dynamic. It is a song of ascent – meaning it was sung by pilgrims to Jerusalem as they approached the Temple.
Times are pressing, the latter verses of the psalm suggest hardship due to drought and poor harvest, maybe even a season of duress under tyranny. The opening lines, however, recall and virtually re-live an occasion of being “surprised by joy”. Their despairing ancestors, captive and exiled in Babylon for several generations, are released and allowed to go home in freedom when the Persian king Cyrus invades and subjugates Babylon. So great is their deep happiness that Isaiah speaks of their pagan deliverer as “God’s anointed.” Unexpected yet remembered in messianic terms. The psalm implores God to “do it again.”
Perhaps the temple pilgrims anticipated a reconnection with the grounding of their faith through the temple rites, something that would help them face an uncertain future with confidence and purpose. By remembering unexpected encounters with the divine celebrated by their ancestors, they could live out the anticipation of their own liberation.
If this kind of joy does that, it is a true gift.
Film Review: The Ides of March
Free spirit that I am, I took some time out for a cinema fix after a busy week. Mrs WP was otherwise occupied, so it was a lone choice, and it boiled down to either The Iron Lady or The Ides of March. What a dilemma! Both portray political dramas and the machinations behind the scenes – the first focused on the conservative Thatcher years in ’70s Britain and the second on a fictional but contemporary Democrat campaign in Ohio, apparently a benchmark state in the primaries for presidential election.
Because of the currency of the 2012 USA elections, I chose The Ides of March, hoping to gain some insight to the mysteries of the USA election system. I confess I remain as mystified as ever, and perhaps in Pollyannish naivety, wonder if the cynicism and duplicity in which the plot is soaked was used for dramatic effect or, reverting to my nay-saying shadow side, fighting the evidence that often shouts at us on a daily basis, “Yep, that’s the way it is.” Pragmatism usurps loyalty; expediency trumps ideals, political survival smothers ethics, both personal and public.
Will The Iron Lady convey something different? I sense another cinema event occurring soon.
Related Articles
- Movie Review: Ides of March (socyberty.com)
Wondering Pilgrim 