Celebration of Christmas

by Julia Graves

Here I sit in my favorite chair wrapped in a warm blanket sipping on my soy late. I consider this a small piece of Heaven. I look forward to this daily ritual of luxury. As I sit my mind wonders over yesterdays events.

After Church I went home and readied the holiday meal. A simple meal prepared with love. The desserts that were hand made and loving prepared by the children were set out to thaw; chocolate covered cheese cake, chocolate cookie cream cheese truffles, cheery and apricot breakfast braids.

Next I brought out the everyday dishes chipped and warn from years of daily use. Basic white Corelle, it is amazing how it can bounce off the floor. If dishes could talk these would be filled with many, many exciting stories. This is and will be the only set of dishes I will ever own. They are loved dearly because of all the memories attached to them.

Then I finished off the preparation of the Christmas Stockings. These stockings are filled with an assortment of chocolate kisses, rice paper candy, maple syrup Santa’s, flavored coffee and hot chocolate samples, corn nuts, etc…. food items the children learned to love while growing up. Each brings up a memory of some past wonderful childhood experience. I look forward each year to traveling to different stores to collect these items. They are small, however the memories are rich. When the children dig into the stockings the experiences are discussed with smiles and laughter. These small items are inexpensive, the experience is priceless.

The chairs are placed around the living room, just enough to accommodate the number of guests. The aroma of the holiday meal fills the air. Every thing is ready, my excitement grows. The door bell rings. The guests enter who have traveled from many different locations, the meal is served, and the home fills with laughter and conversation. Empty dishes are gathered and put to soak to be dealt with later. Dishes can wait, moments with family and friends are more important.

Our attention turns to the gifts we have brought to share with one and other. Pickles organically grown and canned, hand print chocolate chip and thumb print cookies (these are gigantic because they are made by adult children’s hands!), and the deserts, truffles, coffee and cheese cake. My mother brought a note book entitled her memories. It is the beginning of her memoir. It shows her humble beginnings in the Deep South. There is a picture of the three room shack she grew up in, the outhouse, and the well where she drew water as a child. Her first set of shoes for school were made out of old truck inner tubes. I read her history and am in awe of how far my mother has come from such humble beginnings.

Desert is served and the conversation changes to our plans for the upcoming week. Leftovers are packaged to be sent home with the children to be enjoyed later. Coats are retrieved, hugs given, goodbyes said. The door is close and the house is once again quiet.

My mind wonders to the Holy Family. I think of the similarities of the Christmas story and my family experience. Mary and Joseph traveled many miles to be counted and taxed; Christ started his life sleeping in a trough designed for feeding livestock. I think of the Epiphany and the Wise Men that came bearing gifts. Gold, a gift fit for a King; Frankincense, some believe carries prayers to heaven; and Myrrh used for treating wounds and also used in the preparation of the dead.

For many churches the Epiphany marks the end of the Christmas celebration and the beginning of Ordinary Time. The colors of celebration, white and gold are packed away and exchanged for green. Similar to what we do with our Christmas decorations. They are put in a box and stuck in the attic or garage for next year. We sit and wait for the change of the seasons to spring and the greening of the landscape. And await celebration of Lent.

Challenge the ordinary and continue the celebration of Christmas. Don’t pack Christ’s humble beginnings into a box. May we continue to celebrate the birth and revealing of our Lord, Jesus Christ, God among us!

Where Are The Answers?

by Kyle Wiseley

It seems to me that there are four basic questions with which all humanity wrestles:

· Where did we come from?

· Why are we here?

· Where are we going?

· What does it all mean?

I suspect every individual, regardless of religious tradition or outside of such, ponders these questions at one time or other. In fact, it seems to me that all religious thought finds its foundation in these questions. I suspect that our individual commitment to this inquiry spans a continuum from those of us who have little or almost no interest in the matter, to those of us who are almost obsessive in finding the answers. The greater portion of us fall somewhere in the space between these two extremes.

Personally, I find this to be a “good news/bad news” situation; the bad news being that there are no answers, but the good news is that the questions are amazingly interesting and the process of seeking those perpetually elusive answers is one of the mechanisms by which we accomplish spiritual growth.

Different faith traditions approach this conundrum in a vast variety of ways, and even within some specific traditions the approach ranges across the entire continuum, with some finding definitive answers within scripture or institutional tradition and others finding nourishment in the seeking process itself. I can only relate the reality of my experience drawn from my personal faith journey, and by no means do I assert or even imply that mine is the correct or only way to approach the matter.

My experience began in a strict religious environment where there were a lot of definitive answers accompanied by stringent rules of behavior. Despite the sincere dedication of my parents to that particular approach to religion, I found there only confusion and overpowering guilt and never inner peace. Once I reached a place in my journey where I could develop appreciation of religious practice based on a balance of my own intellectual reasoning and my personal intuitional conclusions which seemed valid, was I able to find the sense of joy, awe and inner peace that gave meaning to my existence.

As Episcopalians we tend to put more emphasis on questions than answers and find support and nourishment as we attempt to assist each other in our struggles with the questions. Hopefully, we offer a safe haven where all who are searching can find support and companionship on our mutual journey towards the ineffable mystery.

Advent Calendar

by Kathy Douglass

Come, Thou long expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free

From our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in Thee

Her name is Mary Elizabeth. She’s 96 years old. She’s my grandma.

She lives in the valley in a simple room at a comfortable place, the kind of place where people approaching the end of their lives, who cannot live without help, settle in for as long as they have. Here, her most basic, human needs are tended to by underpaid young women with lavish tattoos and loving hearts. They care for her so tenderly, washing, changing, turning. With gentle voices, they call her “sweetie”, they call her “dear”.

By her bed on the wall is a calendar. A black felt pen rests within reach on the nightstand by her bed, somewhere between the tissues, the emergency call button and the bowl of butterscotch candies she has kept nearby for as long as I can remember. Each morning, as she wakes to a new day, she crosses “yesterday” off the calendar.

She can’t clothe or wash herself, she can’t walk or throw an extra blanket across her bony feet. She can’t open the mail or tend to her African violets. But she can raise that pen to the wall each morning and cross off another day.

Grandma isn’t waiting to die. No, she’s just waiting. “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus” has leapt off the pages of the hymnal for her.

Jesus has come to her over and again in her 96 years. He came to her in the tin-shack laden industrial town in Pennsylvania where she was born. He came to her in the lonely days of growing up with a daddy who was on the road, playing pro baseball, and whose image on a trading card could never make up for his absence. Jesus came to her as a young woman, as she gave her life to a man who dreamed of giving his life to the ministry. He came to her in the loss of a longed-for baby girl. He came to her in the suffocating silence that crept in after that loss, as she determined to never speak of such deep wounds. Jesus came to her in the small towns and churches filled with people who needed more than a young preacher and his wife could sometimes spare. He came to her as she found a way to spare what she could.

He came to her in the loss of her son, my dad, a loss that crushed her not so much because of the cancer that killed him, but the spirit of rebellion that plunged him into confusion and brokenness a few years before the diagnosis. She never dreamed her grown son would take a prodigal turn, and when she finally spotted him heading for home, he was taken.

Jesus came to her as she spent her later life tending to the lonely and forgotten. And He was there on that morning a few years ago, when grandpa touched his fingers to his lips, waved her a tiny kiss, and took one last breath.

Jesus has made himself at home with grandma ever since she invited Him to. As a fair companion on her journey, He’s held her through these sorrows and losses, but also kept sweet company with her through every joy, every delight, every surprise. And even in the mundane moments that make up a life, ninety-six years worth, He has been her ever-present Friend.

On a recent visit, I pulled a chair close to her bed, held her withered hand in my fleshy one, kissed her and stroked her face. I quietly told her a few stories; I asked her the simple questions I ask every time I visit. I asked if I could take her picture. She said I could, as long as her hair looked alright. I told her she was lovely. As we sat together in the stillness, I looked at the calendar. December. The fourth, the fifth, the sixth, all crossed off. I imagined her waking up in this room in the morning, reaching for her black pen, and crossing off the seventh. And in that moment, I realized, this is her Advent Calendar. This is her way of watching and waiting in the dark, in this time between Now… and Not Yet.

For years, grandma and grandpa kept a tiny ceramic plaque on the wall in their home. It followed them to a dozen humble parsonages; it kept them company through 70 years of marriage. It’s nailed today to the wall by the door in her room, positioned in such a way that she can see it from her bed. The inscription simply reads, “Perhaps Today”. I understood, even as a little girl, what that meant. Someday, Jesus will come back. Someday. “Perhaps today”. I never questioned it, but I did wonder. And sometimes I wanted to ask them both: ”I know you want Jesus to come back, but, um, grandpa, grandma, don’t you wanna live?”

Yes, yes she does. She wants to live. So she marks off her calendar, her calendar of Advent. About death, C.S. Lewis said that “one day we will turn the corner, and all our dreams will come true.” She wants to live in that place of dreams come true. “No more crying, no more separation, no more dying.” The place where “these former things are passed away”.

Her body is dying, and yet she is alive with the spirit of anticipation, the spirit of Advent. Her longing heart is filled with joy. She believes that Jesus will come to her still, again, and finally.

She’s 96 years old. She’s long-expected Him.

Let It Be

by Jack Bevilacqua

I’ve heard many people complain about the ads and decorations for Christmas starting up even before the Thanksgiving turkey has been lifted from the oven. We woefully note that our whole culture is in such a hurry. Celebrating Advent can be a way of slowing down this wave of commercialism for us. In my former church, we marked the four weeks of Advent by the lighting of candles - waiting to light the center candle on Christmas day. But on Dec. 26th, Christmas was definitely over! Then, depending on how long the needles stayed on the tree, we would begin to remove all the decorations.

Understanding Advent as a season has given new meaning to this time of waiting and has slowed down this whole process. In the Episcopal Church, “Christmas carols” are not sung during Advent. They are reserved until the baby is born. Only “songs of waiting” are sung. Christmas begins with the birth of Christ and continues through those famous “twelve days of Christmas.” Christ is usually born a “preemie” in our culture – delivered way before the due date! So this year I will sing the waiting/longing song: “O come, O come, Emmanuel” at Advent and enjoy the anticipation of singing “O come, all ye faithful” on Christmas Day!

I have yet to encounter a music CD strictly made for Advent, so I have been giving thought to great Advent songs and carols. It occurred to me the other day that this season of waiting and of “The Annunciation” was sung about in the famous Beatles song, “Let it be.” Growing up with this song, I had completely missed that it is based on Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would become the mother of the Messiah. “Let it be to me even as you have said.” Wow, suddenly Paul McCartney’s lyrics gain new meaning.

When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And in my hour of darkness

She is standing right in front of me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people

Living in the world agree,

There will be an answer, let it be.

For though they may be parted there is

Still a chance that they will see

There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,

There is still a light that shines on me.

Shine until tomorrow, let it be.

I wake up to the sound of music

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.

There will be no sorrow, let it be.

This year I am letting Mary’s wisdom and the Beatles help me slow down and reflect on this coming birth – the baby is not yet born. I will wait to see God’s plan unfold in my life. LET IT BE!