Gathering Stones

My daughter, Greta, has a rock-collecting container. It looks like a miniature tackle box but instead of lures and hooks it is filled with rocks. To my eye, Greta' rock container holds a hundred similar stones. To Greta's eye, it holds treasure - not in the bejewelled, golden kind, but the treasure of memories. Greta gathers stones and the visible reminder of the shape and the color of the stone brings back a moment in life.

A few years ago, my family on a vacation. We decided that between my internship year and my last year of seminary that we would see as much of the North America as humanly possible. So, in a six week journey, we put seven thousand miles on the car (and the pop-up camper). Traveling from Iowa across to the West Coast, we visited incredible sites like Custer State Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, Yosemite, Redwoods. We trekked up the coast through Oregon and Washington and finished by traveling from the Canadian Rockies to Lake Superior. All in all, it was an experience that we can't ever replicate not just because of the length of time (or length of journey for that fact) but because life is never the same. The girls were six, four and three and deep into experiencing the world one rock at a time.

Instead of being awed by the magnificent canyons or massive trees, the girls were always on the lookout for things that they could climb whether park benches, trees or rock piles. As Christine and I 'oohed' and 'aahed' over the magnificence of the created world, Elsa, Josephine and Greta had their eyes glued to the horizon for the next rock pile. So, every few hours we would have to stop and stretch while the girls fulfilled their inner spirit of mountaineering.

As I watched the girls do this, though, what I began to notice was that after each moment of rock climbing, Greta was picking up a rock and putting it in her pocket. We watched the pockets of her jeanshorts bulge like the cheeks of a chipmunk carrying seeds. By the end of the day she probably weighed and extra five pounds.

"What are you carrying in your pockets, Greta?"
"Nothing." Three-year-old logic is quite different than adult logic. Well, maybe not.
"It looks like you've got something in your pockets."
It's funny; she actually had to look at her pockets to see if something was in them.
"I wanted to take rocks."
"Can I see them," I asked.

You could see the light in her eyes. She wanted to share those things that she had picked up along the way. Pulling out handful after handful of pebbles, stones, pieces of rock not much bigger than a sand particle. Her little hands were like shovels digging into the earth; some of the rocks tumbled to the ground but she kept her eyes on them making sure not to lose any of them.

To my untrained eye all of the rocks looked basically the same. Smoothed by erosion and time, these gray stones, some of them with a white stripe or a distinctive crevice, looked basically identical.

"Greta," I said poking my way through the mound, "Why are you carrying all of these rocks around. They look all look the same."

Greta moved in between myself and the pile assuming I was about ready sweep them from the table. Protecting them like a mother lioness she looked up at me and said, "Daddy, you're so silly. These are my memories from my walk today." Then, for an agonizing fifteen minutes, Greta recounted every climbing episode that she'd encountered. One rock that was next to the picnic table. Another one from the place where we saw a bear in the distance. She pointed to a smooth rock that she actually tripped over. All of them were a reminder of what she had just experienced. She had gathered up the rocks to remind her of where she had been.

I have written about this in the past, but the same thing happened with the Israelites crossing the Jordan River. God tells Joshua that the priests must gather rocks with them and pile them up on the shore as a visible reminder of where they had just been. The rocks symbolized the difficulties of the journey but also the hope of the future. They piled the rocks on shore and in the middle of the Jordan River. In the midst of where the water just was they piled another set of rocks to remind themselves that God had spared them from death.

What about the stone rolled from the tomb? What about gravestones? These rocks are reminders of memories along the journey but they are also promises of hope for a future. Plans to prosper and not to harm. The stone rolled from the tomb leads to an awareness of the gaping hole that death brings but its emptiness leads us to hope - hope which does not disappoint. Hope which leads to faith and new life. This stone we carry with us - it rolls with us (a rolling stone) like the stone that Paul says rolled with the Israelites through the desert to provide water at a moments notice. (1 Corinthians 10:3,4)

So I asked Greta what she was going to do with her stone memories. She smiled. "I'm going to keep the best ones and throw the rest in the river." With that she picked up her rocks, put them back in her pockets and made her way to the stream where one by one, with great relish, she plinked and plunked the rocks in different parts of the fast flowing stream. With each toss she recounted what she was doing when she found the rock, but at the same time, without even knowing it, she was making room for more 'stone memories' in her pockets.

That was a good object lesson for me. There are so many 'memory stones' that I hold onto that limit my ability to move on. I become weighed down by the oppressive memories of the journey that sometimes I forget to cast them into the river, to let them roll on their merry way so that I can fill my own life journey with the things that God has planned for me/us/we/the world.

What memory stones will you keep and which ones will you cast into the river? Where will you go to gather stones and where will you toss them.

Ecclesiastes 5:5a a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together.

Laughter and Tears

Don Pederson writes in his book Mental Laxatives for a Constipated Mind,
"Most of us do not take laughter seriously enough. Too often, laughter is regarded as child's play. To be an adult is to be hardworking, responsible and serious. We need to revive our natural sense of humor."

Humor is not laughter, but laughter is our response to humor (or nervous or embarrassing situations). Sometimes laughter is not even intended - it just slips out - when someone falls and gets hurt - or at funerals, some people - although they don't find the situation humorous, laugh because their brain doesn't know what else to do. Scientists assume that laughter is an inherited response from our farthest back ancestors; they laughed when danger passed. When the sabertooth tiger missed them, yup - they started to chortle - that is, until the pterodactyl picked them up and took them away to the nest for supper.

Laughter is also a bonding experience. When one laughs and shares in the joke, the others are invited into the company of mirth. Usually, scientists say, the boss is the one who shares the most humor because when the boss laughs, it's going to be a good day. I'll have to keep an eye on that one.

The study of laughter is called gelotology. The ironic part of gelotology is that scientists have found that they can't actually study laughter. When it is forced, it doesn't happen. When they hooked people up to instruments, laughter ceases.

Physiologically, the front part of the brain decides what is funny. When humor reaches the brain, the immediate response is a forcing of pressure from the lungs back up the throat. The ha-ha-ha (or in Santa's case - ho-ho-ho) is the epiglottis closing over the opening of the trachea. When we laugh really hard, this causes us to gasp, some of us begin to cry - not because we are sad, but our body tells us we are suffocating. Even though we are happy and laughing, we cry because it feels as if we are dying.

Tears are a symbol of death. "Jesus wept" - the shortest verse in the Bible and perhaps one of the most poignant. That Jesus wept is a sign that he could feel the ultimate suffocation that the fear of death has on us. When we mourn, it is often a response to the death of something. We cry because someone has died, a dream has died, a relationship has ended. Our tears symbolize and reflect the suffocation that life sometimes has on us. We can't help but crying.

Laughter and mourning are different locales in the same mountain range. Most often, the Bible expresses mourning with visuals of sackcloth and ashes, tearing of clothes, shouting and wailing to the God of the heavens. In Biblical times, often the family of the deceased would hire professional mourners, those who did a good job of crying. Those who cry have an excellent sense of self. Some of us feel like professional mourners sometimes: we mourn people, events, oceans filled with oil, cities and villages imploding because of earthquakes - it seems as if the world will never be free of reasons to mourn.

But God promises us that a day will come when mourning is God - a morning of non-mourning. Revelation 21: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more... And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes; Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.

No more mourning, crying and pain, but as of right now, there is a time for it: and it is healthy. We need time to mourn, to cry, we need time to dance and laugh. That is life.

That IS life.

Weeping - Laughing

A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.

It's sounds as if Solomon is painting the picture of opposites. Interestingly enough, weeping is made synonymous with mourning, and laughing similar to dancing. Mourning and dancing are the actions and weeping and laughter are responses to the actions. So:

Mourning necessitates weeping and laughter follows dancing.

I can definitely find myself in the latter. Every time I dance, pretty much the assembly begins to laugh. The use of the body to copy the rhythms in music is at the very core of how the world works. Have you ever noticed someone who is walking while listening to music through headphones? By nature, the body - even those who are rhythmically challenged - will gravitate to the beat of music. And once in tune with the music, we become one with the song and its meaning. I believe this is why people clap to keep the beat during a song or even move their feet. It's rare, I know, in Lutheran circles in the United States, for people to consciously become part of the music, but in certain places in the world, if you don't dance, you aren't really worshiping.

I have some really good friends who are Tanzanian. As part of the New Life Band, they witness through music and message to tens of thousands of youth and adults every year. Every three years or so, the band travels across the Atlantic Ocean to be missionaries to the United States and to gather funds for their ministries in Tanzania. They told me the story of their first experience with Christian worship in the United States. These are the things that struck them as totally outside their realm of experience in Tanzania:

1. Worship is one hour long. If it goes any longer than that, people start to look at the watches; they start to fidget. If they haven't gotten their God-fix by the time communion is over, they start heading for the doors. American worship services have tried to squeeze the amount of praise for God into one hour (sometimes less) and then move on to the really important things of the day like soccer practice, mowing the lawn, watching football, whatever kind of entertainment or work that might captivate a sabbath afternoon. In the last one hundred years, western society has lost all understanding of Sabbath. We no longer have a day of rest, to thank God for the peace of a day apart from work. We have an hour - an hour that many would say is simply 'putting in their time.' The Tanzanians were amazed by the lack of rest and reflection on God's abundant goodness to humans.

2. People don't dance. All the songs during a Tanzanian worship regard dancing as essential as much as the piano or guitar. To really understand the song, one must be one with the rhythm and the melody. They move back and forth. It seems coordinated, but it is more that they are completely in tune with their bodies and their congregation. God gave us bodies to praise. The New Life Band found American worship services so sterile that worship seemed almost a necessary evil rather than an expression of praise.

3. There is so little interaction between those that have come. Most churches have aisles, but they might as be walls. Most churches have permanent indents in the pews or chairs from the current residents who have been sitting in the same space for the last thirty years. We are creatures of habit and what the band noticed was that apart from the sharing of the peace (which lasted thirty seconds) there was no interaction at all between congregation members. I think we, as Christians, have lost the sense that we are a living body: what one person does affects all the others. Sharing the peace in Tanzania may take twenty minutes; they actually share the peace - find out how family members are doing - taking an interest in the lives of the people around you.

All in all, they (and I think I am included) would love to see a different type of worship that frees us from the starched repetitions that we have always done. Whether traditional or contemporary worship, a dose of dancing (which leads to laughter) might be just what the worship doctor ordered. I'm not saying that I'm all that comfortable with dancing, but that's because I don't often allow myself to be part of the Spiritual music of a congregation.

Dancing leads to laughter, and laughter leads to health.

That's where I will continue next week, I think.

Summertime

The dam is barely holding.

You can see it behind their eyes, the excitement building somewhere in the growing brains - brains that for nine months have soaked in information, videos, gossip, rules about what is cool and not (I don't even know if 'cool' is a 'cool' word anymore). These cerebral cortexes not only look like sponges but they act like sponges - they soak up anything in the near vicinity, whether good or bad.

Sponges are some of the coolest things on the planet. They are considered animals even though, to me, they look more like plants. Sponges, although animals, do not have a circulatory system, a nervous system, or a digestive system. In other words, they don't think, they don't feel and they don't really eat - they basically take up space, waving back and forth in their territory waiting for some kind of food they can envelope. Our neighbors' dog is really a land sponge. It does not behave as if it has a brain; if it moves at all, it is so slow that the squirrels stop in front of its face and have a good chat knowing that Harvey couldn't catch them if he tried; the dog has also lost the hunting instinct - Harvey's idea of the thrill of the chase is to blow a fly off the bowl of yummy dog food placed directly in front of its muzzle so that he only has to lift his head to lick out the crunchy tidbits before it goes back to his non-stop rest. This dog makes a koala bear seem like a whirling dervish (a koala averages 20 hours of sleep per day).

Sponges, as I was to learn, can survive at the very depths of the oceans; some of them have been found 8,800 meters under the surface of the ocean. For those of you who live in non-metric countries, that's five and a half miles from anyplace where the sun shines. Imagine the pressure at five-miles down. Imagine living in a place where darkness is swallowed - swallowed like a doggy treat.

I don't really know how I got off on this tangent; I think it was that I was thinking about how children's brains are like sponges - yes, that's it - like sponges. Ocean sponges (there are a few fresh water ones also) don't really soak up water. The water simply passes through it where the cells of the sponge gather food and oxygen from the water. Children's brains sit in the steadily flowing informational flow of school picking out bits of things from the instruction that feed them - help them grow.

But now, the brains of the children feel full. Nah, not really. Their glassy-eyed expression is from staring out the windows of the school at the absolutely gorgeous weather. Like moths to a lightbult, the children's face float towards the sun shining through the dust-streaked glass. Their very apparent sense of freedom is only a week away.

As my children come home from school, their homework is dropped in a screaming heap by the back door and the dam bursts; they are like screaming eagles streaking out the back door to play in the back yard. Sometimes I watch them from inside the house, through my own dust streaked window, remembering how summer (and summer school vacation) is truly what makes life go round.

I have often wondered how summer got its name. From what I gather from the incredible world of the web, the word 'summer' may come from the Norse god 'Sumarr' who is the god of summer. I would guess that Sumarr was a really short god. In case your not following, Norway has a really short summer.

It's been too long since I've blogged.

Almost every good thing happens in summer. The heat returns from its vacation to the south - the sun is a snowbird, I think. The rains come to the deserts; the cows start calving; the crops grow; the Monarch Butterflies begin their return from Mexico. Road construction continues in earnest.

Okay, it's not the greatest thing, but that's what happens when you live in a northern latitude - ice and snow eat roads for breakfast.

So, I watch my girls through the dusty window remembering the times when I was little, the last day of school had come. Ripping off what was left of my paper bookcovers, I turned them in with great pleasure. I no longer needed science text books, math workbooks and English quizzes. Now, I could simply learn from nature. Summertime is the time when nature teaches us more than classrooms probably ever can. Nature teaches us how to care for creation. Nature teaches us how to survive. Nature teaches us how to breathe in fresh air and exhale all of the conditioned air that comes with indoor living.

But too often now, we have taken the shape of the living room sofa. We continually express in our brains that 'I should go outside for a walk or a run' but the sofa seems to have a seatbelt that keeps us in place helping us to believe that tomorrow is really the best day to let our brains go for a walk in the great outdoor.

This summer, I'm not just going to watch the girls smile through the window or see them run quickly through sprinkler water. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to reinvent myself as a child of the summer where my brain soaks in the sun preparing it with rest for any future possibilities. Summer is a time of play and rest.

Play and rest this summer.

Duality

There are two sides to every story.
For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.
There is a time to kill and a time heal.

This verse, I knew, was going to be the hardest to write about because that phrase 'to kill' is such touchy one. In my Jewish study Bible, it's even worse "to slay" which brings about all sorts of systematic visions of movies like Braveheart, Gladiator, and Hot Shots: Part Deux. Our current culture has the most distinctive dualistic relationship with death and violence. On one hand, we do everything by every means to avoid death and dying, but on the other hand, we are fixated on death to the point where we consciously or unconsciously slow down for car accidents, rewatch injuries during athletic contests or even subject ourselves to the vilest forms of 'entertainment.'

What is it about death that makes us feel squeamish and fascinated at the same time?

A few years ago I attended a Halloween party that was bacchanalic in its embracing of gore and violence. I was shocked by how much Halloween had changed from a "boo! - Oh, that's a good one" kind of funny, to explicitly portrayed violence through the haunted house which featured decapitated corpses staggering from a casket, to pools of fake blood running across the cement floor. It doesn't seem that long ago when Friday the 13th was the scariest movie of all time, but kids don't even notice a movie like that any more. There's no realism. There was no realism until a series came out in the mid 1990's - black listed of course - called the Faces of Death which were live video footage of people dying.

Now, we don't even have it blacklisted: it's on our own news services, whether religiously inspired beheadings, suicide bombers driving planes into buildings or car accidents happening too fast for the mind to comprehend. America has become immune to violence and it is a sad, depressing thing. Many of the kids I have asked "Why do you watch this stuff?" respond - "If it's happening to someone else, I can be thankful it's not happening to me."

So, our world is inundated with death and the fear of death and we sink further and further into the presumed safety of our own little worlds, inside our texting devices, in front of our television screens, typing furiously before the computer monitors hoping and praying that the angel of death is, like a moth to a street lamp, more attracted to the light of the outside world . Our relationships suffer; we become a society ruled by fear of the other. Remember what it was like to shake hands with everyone without the thought of 'swineflu' running through our brains. Our fear of death is killing community life one village at a time.

There is a time to kill but I believe it's not killing of another person; that, to me, makes no sense, but the killing of our ego - the killing of our pride, the death of our fear; phobicide. What would happen to this world, to our nation, to our village, to our families and selves if we moved past the fear of death to open the door of abundant life which is in community with other people. What if we murdered our television sets and took steps outside the front door for hours at a time. What if we wrote letters again, called people on the phone just to hear the sound of their voice? What if we began to heal our society from the inside out learning to forget the fear and find ourselves in the middle of a family of humanity? What if?

The dualistic nature of Ecclesiastes 3 is no more apparent than in verse three. "A time to kill, and a time to heal; (an alternative translation from Hebrew is: A time for wrecking and a time for repairing). A time to break down and a time to build up.

"Breaking down" can mean a multitude of things.
1. To cut something up into manageable pieces. "Can you break that down for me?"
2. Something most football players despise. During my football years, the coach would blow his whistle where we would then run in place as fast as we could until he blew the whistle again and yell "Break down!" which would see us then fall to the ground as fast as we could then rising attempting to not be the last one to stand again.
3. To extemporize rap-style. i.e. In the immortal words of M.C. Hammer "Break it down, now."
4. To flatten card board boxes. When I worked at Radio Shack, this was the main focus of my job. I always wanted to be a great salesperson. I would study the specs for all of the electronic gadgets - the robotic toys, the CD players, all sorts of needless necessities that kids crave - and then every time someone would come in to buy a computer or any other high end product, the store manager would approach the customer, relieve me of my prospective commission and relegate me out the backdoor to break down cardboard boxes. I grew so frustrated with him that I pretended the boxes were him and I punched them time and time again. He only caught me once. It was especially embarrassing because I had drawn a picture of him on the cardboard box and talking to the box while punching it saying things like, "Oh, you think that's funny, stealing my fifty dollar commission? How funny is this? Do you like that? How about a double kick to your face?"

There's a time to kill cardboard boxes, I guess.

But the breaking down that Ecclesiastes calls for, I believe, is the breaking down of walls of pride. And oh, the walls that we build are hard. The only thing that seems to have any sort of success against our walls is a word of forgiveness. I, for one, would rather have the wall than speak of forgiveness sometimes.

Sometimes our sinful self would rather kill a relationship than to work through the difficult times of confession and forgiveness. Mark Steele has an interesting view on how human nature works. From his book Half Life/Die Already

There have been too many important decisions to count in my life -

but six are instrumental to this story.

The first of which was the transition from offended to teachable. My assumption had been that this would be an evolution - something that would grow in me over time without much effort on my part. This was, of course, ridiculous, because offended is easy and teachable is a state of being about as attainable as invisibility. I had assumed I was teachable because I was sometimes teachable, but of course, this also meant that I was at other times offended. This is not a decision. This is a state of stuck. I had always hoped that in every instance where I experienced tension between these two states oppositions would eventually merge into one reality.

No Dice.

It became evident that change would not come until I began deep introspection in every aspect of my life. The first aspect: When things did not go my way, how did I respond to disappointment? More often than not, by holding on to the offense. So funny. I have hurt so many people in so many different ways and, because I understood what I intended, I think the wounded should leap over tall buildings to forgive me. But when the hurt is done to me, I think the wounder should pay. I don't actually say this, because that would be un-Christian. I instead imagine lengthy conversations that are awkward for them and rewarding for me and when I am finished with the imagination, I have less hair and a pit of acid in my stomach. In certain seasons, I have carried unforgiveness, and it has tangled and soured in my stomach like spilled milk in a shag rug. Many ask me: Why do people keep hurting me? But I think this is the wrong question. Maybe when wounded, we should ask,

What am I refusing to learn?

In other words, why am I refusing to learn to forgive. I think at the heart of healing or building up is forgiveness. We heal others by giving the gift of forgiveness which truly is the gift of life. If my spouse has erred in some small way, I could hold that transgression against her thereby giving me a sense (albeit false) of power over her, but at that point, our married existence is being strangled, losing air, losing life - it is being killed. But forgiveness opens the airways, it allows new life to begin. It allows us to take the fear out of marriage and gives us renewed zeal to begin again.

A time to kill - I'm being a bit terse but - try and kill our love affairs with electronics. Turn off the tube - talk to the family; share life with the neighbors.

A time to heal - Speak, write - lay down the cell phone.

A time to break down - unforgiveness; it is extraordinarily easy to retain forgiveness, to hold the power of life or death over a relationship

A time to build up. Experience new life in within the bounds of forgiveness.

Have a great week.

Reid

Planting and Plucking

Ecclesiastes 3:2b "... a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted."

Some people are born with green thumbs. Interestingly enough, the history of 'green thumb' presumably dates back to King Edward I of England. According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, King Edward I loved peas. He enjoyed fresh green peas so much that he had half a dozen serfs working to keep him supplied, a prize going to the one with the greenest thumb, presumably from hours of shelling.

I have shelled many a pea pod in my day. When the sun would shine mid-summer, my siblings and I would be dressed in play clothes and moved out the door to the half acre garden where all of my parent's plants lived and breathed. These memories seem to have a crusty, golden feeling to them, like an old mirror that has some rust around the edges but the reflection seems almost accurate. Walking toward the garden, late morning, the grasshoppers would have already started their click-clacking, the cabbage moths would be floating between dandelion patches and the mosquitoes would still be shaking off the morning dew.

We kids would be equipped with five quart empty ice-cream buckets or else five gallon water pails to collect the produce of the garden. As we approached the growing vegetables, it would be amazing to think that just 10 weeks before, these enormous plants had sprouted from seeds. Most parents think the same things about their kids when they get older, I think. I've heard so many adults say, "They just grew up so fast." It's easy for grandparents to say that; they aren't in the midst of diaper changing, discipline and sleepless nights when seven-year-olds are coughing every four and a half minutes. Someday in the not too distant future I will probably say the same thing about my girls and then I will have realized, I'm closer to grandparent's age than I am to a new father.

Off topic, sorry.

Planting wasn't so hard. Dad would bring out the old tiller, its rotating claws looking like a machine from a science fiction movie. The motor on that thing would frighten the dickens out of our gun shy dog while the cat, Ozzie, would simply yawn at the goings on. When the tiller started up, it was like a parade; dad driving (or being pulled along) followed by skipping young ones stopping to pick up a rock to attempt mothacide (I never did hit one of the cabbage moths but it was still fun). Tillers aren't fast but they are powerful and as dad finally hit the garden we watched the claws dig up the black dirt bludgeoning the clumps into small clods. We would follow behind picking up juicy worms to fish with. It was a good summer life.

The '80's were a time of small jean shorts and tank tops. Sunscreen was rarely used; nobody cared about sunburn. We spent hours in that garden. My dad and mom would put some seeds in each of our hands and tell us how far to space them. After we got bored, I watched my brother look around near the end of his row and dump most of the seeds in one tiny clump. Impatience is a necessary part of childhood.

For those ten weeks we watched the plants grow. What our hands had put in the ground, our eyes watched come out of the ground. At first they were just plain, small sprigs of green, but soon the leaves began to open and in the instance of peas, the tendrils of vines stretched for the sky seeking to grasp anything which to climb.

Just like kids. It seems like from the minute they are born they are looking for things to climb, things to pull them up whether chairs, hands, steps, light fixtures, garage doors or radio antennae on a large combine. Kids long to be higher, where the adults are, assuming life is much better at a higher altitude. It is most beautiful; they never stop reaching for the next step. Like peas, they reach one rung and keep going for the next all the while growing taller and taller.

During most of the summer, that's what peas do: they climb. Then, when the heat of summer beats down, the peas start to blossom. The fragrant blooms fill up the garden. It seems the whole world is filled with the beauty of the pea plant. Walking down the rows of peas, if you could step close, you could watch the fingers of vines wrap around the chicken wire fence as if holding on for dear life. They don't want to be on the ground - the air is much better up there.

Then, when the blossoms have come and gone, the pods form - first flattened, but then seemingly filled with moisture, they burst outward seeming to stretch the seems of the pod itself. They look like they'll pop like a balloon if you just touch them, but the pod itself is hard. It is weathered and strong as a safe. It can withstand quite a bit of pressure.

And there we were, we kids, in mid-summer pails in hand walking out to the pea plants to pluck from them the pods only to bring them back to the house to shuck them. It was not hard work, but to a child, anything repetitive is dull. We would hurry down the rows picking as fast as we could, missing many, but probably eating many more raw, right from the vine. There aren't many vegetables as delicious as the fresh sweet pea. They are quite a bit like candy, crunching between your teeth, squishing. Even the juice of the pea pod can be chewed and swallowed although swallowing the whole pod is not as enjoyable.

Sooner or later we would return to the kitchen hauling pounds of pea pods. We would spend the afternoon pulling back the tip which would pull the pea string (that's what I called it) to make opening the pea pod that much easier. Then, you would pop one end of the pod and run your thumb down the middle freeing each pea from its nest. By doing this, one's thumb would turn a nice, pea green. Thus, a green thumb.

We spent many a summer with brown skin, dirty-black clothes, and green thumbs. There is something inherently good about working the soil - planting and plucking. The cycle of life replicated every year gives life a complete kind of meaning and feeling. Planting means spring; plucking means summer, plucking up means fall when we would go back into the garden to free the chicken wire from the dried vines of the peas. But that is life; it is a circle.

And it is beautiful.

Mark 4 - if you get a chance, read how Jesus describes planting. Read carefully and find a little extra meaning behind the seed.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Soon I will be 37 years old. For some, that seems like a lifetime ago. There are two gentlemen at church that, when they greet me, call me 'young fella'. For others, like those in my confirmation class, they see me as ancient. Thirty-seven years old seems to put me at the age of Stonehenge. When I try and interact with them using some of their own lingo using words such as 'like' a lot, or throwing in a couple of 'Whassups', I can actually hear there eyes rolling. I might be a little past it, but as Steve Martin says (perhaps denying reality) "I still got it!"

So, I am almost thirty seven. That's how we say it in English. I am my age. My years determine who I am. If I was fifty seven - I should act like a fifty-seven-year-old. If I was thirteen I should act like an early teenager. But in most languages, the phrase for stating age is not 'I am..." but "I have thirty-six years." It seems like a slight difference, but in reality, the attitude difference is huge. If I say "I have thirty-six years" that means I am not defined by the digits, but defined by the ownership of the memories of thirty-six years.

A better way to look at it is, each of the years that I have might have a different theme because of location or outlook on life. For instance, my early twenties were defined by my college experience; my mid-twenties by traveling, my late twenties by early fatherhood. So, in a metaphorical way, each moment of my life is a rock - some are diamonds, some are coal, some are granite - whatever. But, I have them - they are mine and belong to no one else. As I look back at the moments of my life, I can sort the memories by category of rocks - diamonds, the beautiful moments of growing up, the fun moments of college, married life and children. These are the rarest and most beautiful like the gems.

The granite is the most abundant. I don't know the make up of the earth's rocky crust but it seems like there is a lot of granite. Granite is hard and composed of many different minerals - so is the majority of life. Most days are composed of repetitive patterns of behavior of which we sometimes take no notice. But, have you ever studied granite closely? There are rainbows of colors that sometimes our eyes miss. The granite of our lives is what makes us who we are; it shapes who we will be. This rock is the strength of our person.

Lastly, the coal. Of course coal serves a purpose. The coal of our lives, the episodes that we'd like to forget, or burn for that fact, reminds us of who we don't want to be. I don't want to be impatient, mean, envious, boastful, arrogant and rude. I don't want to insist on my own way, be irritable and resentful. Basically, the anti-love from 1 Cor. 13. But the coal, when pressured by heat and weight turns into diamond (after a very long time). We learn from our mistakes and we move to be better.

So, we have these rocks in our lives. These are our years. We aren't the things that we have done - we own them; we have them.

When I probably had seven years of age, I think I remember hearing the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" by the Byrds. Every time I hear this song it brings back some really groovy memories of my childhood - music tends to do that, to bring you back to a time where everything seemed a little more diamond like. The Byrds didn't write the song, actually Pete Seger did, but the Byrds made it popular with their twangy guitars and lilting voices. If you get a chance, YouTube it and listen to it again with fresh ears. Pete Seger may have written the music, but someone much older wrote the words: Solomon, third king of Israel.

Ecclesiastes 3: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die...

In the next few weeks I'd like to go through the list of supposed opposites and dig a little more into the seasons of life. I like how Solomon understood life itself - seasons. I've heard that phrase before that the segments of life are defined by seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Most would think that the seasons are of equal length but I would like to think that they are not. In my opinion, spring is the first 30 years, summer the next 25, autumn the next 20 and winter - whatever happens after that. Each season in nature is characterized by certain events and so is life.

Spring, new birth, new growth, new learning - everything is new. Solomon writes, there is a time to be born and a time to die. When spring rolls around it seems like every living thing is singing "Turn, Turn, Turn". The winter is past, life has come. The world has a new year. It is in the springtime of life when the sun begins to warm the earth. As I write this, those of you who might be reading this in temperate climates, just imagine the re-awakening of the earth from under a thick blanket of snow, like a sleeping giant shaking off the sleep, stretching and yawning, taking a huge breath! In spring we hear the birds beginning their happy songs again, the worms screaming in horror that the birds are back. The fresh wind from the west promising not snow but longer hours of sunshine soon. People seem to walk with a new bounce in their step, more willing to say 'hello' less willing to say goodbye. In this season, there is a time to be born and a time to grow, but spring is also a time to die. In the first years of our life, we learn to die to the things that hold us back. No longer are we completely dependent on our parents for everything. It is a time of utter change, and that can be frightening, just like death.

So, I haven't done a specific Bible study on this blog yet, but perhaps we can do one together. If any of you would like to share some stories of the springtime of your lives, the newness of life, new birth, please e-mail or respond to this post. I won't publish without your consent, but I would love to hear your own stories - your own diamonds, granite (and coal, if you wish). In the next weeks, I think I'm going to try and work through Ecclesiastes 3 so please read through the first 15 verses and give me some thoughts and ideas.

Peace,

Reid

Scarred for Life

I see it almost everyday. Right outside my office window it flies. Rarely do I pay attention to it other than when it is flapping so hard it makes a whipping noise. It is the flag of the United States of America. Like the flags of every other country in the world, it has specific meaning. It is a symbol embedded with symbols. I won't write today about the feelings of patriotism that is, in some, inspired by the stars and stripes; that is not my intent. My intent is to write about something very visible that has a history - a history that I have not really thought about, not until it was blogday, at least.

Disregarding the Grand Union flag of the Continental army (which was never recognized as a flag for the the entirety of the union), there have been 26 different flags that the United States has used as the flying symbol of the country. If asked before my research, I could have picked out two: the 13 colonies flag (the one supposedly seamed by the esteemed Betsy Ross) and the current one consisting of 13 stripes and fifty stars - which symbolically stand for the 13 original colonies of the country and now the fifty states which make up the union. I've never really thought about it that hard but I guess every time a new state was added to the union they would have had to have a new flag. If you want to see a progression of flags from the inception of the country in 1776 until 1959 (our present flag) go to Wikipedia and look it up. Our current flag, like almost all symbols, has a tinge of folklore with how it was adopted as our country's flag.

When Alaska and Hawaii were being considered for statehood in the 1950s, more than 1,500 designs were spontaneously submitted to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although some of them were 49-star versions, the vast majority were 50-star proposals. At least three, and probably more of these designs were identical to the present design of the 50-star flag. At the time, credit was given by the executive department to the United States Army Institute of Heraldry for the design.

Of these proposals, one created by 17-year old Robert G. Heft in 1958 as a school project has received the most publicity. His mother was a seamstress, but refused to do any of the work for him. He originally received a B- for the project. After discussing the grade with his teacher, it was agreed (somewhat jokingly) that if the flag was accepted by Congress, the grade would be reconsidered. Heft's flag design was chosen and adopted by presidential proclamation after Alaska and before Hawaii was admitted into the union in 1959. He got an A.

In the basement of our house we have multiple flags. Because Christine and I have a large worldview, we try to collect flags from many of the countries that we spend a goodly amount of time in. The Canadian, Danish, German, Tanzanian, American and English flags hang on the west wall of our basement. The Jamaican flag is there too - my brother bought it for me when he and his wife returned from a second honeymoon. We haven't been to Jamaica, but its got green in it - so we put it next to the Tanzanian flag - green makes me happy.

The Australian flag has an interesting history also. I could go through all of the flags but the two prominent ones in my life are, of course, American and Australian. The Flag was established in 1901 when Australia became a federated nation under the 'supervision' of Great Britain. After Federation on 1 January 1901, the new Commonwealth Government held an official competition for a new federal flag in April. The competition attracted over 32,000 entries, including many originally sent to the Review of Reviews. The designs were judged on seven criteria: loyalty to the Empire, Federation, history, heraldry, distinctiveness, utility and cost of manufacture. The majority of designs incorporated the Union Flag and the Southern Cross, but native animals were also popular. Five almost identical entries were chosen as the winning design, and their designers shared the 200 pounds prize money. They were Ivor Evans, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy from Melbourne; Leslie John Hawkins, a teenager apprenticed to an optician from Sydney; Egbert John Nuttall, an architect from Melbourne; Annie Dorrington, an artist from Perth; and William Stevens, a ship's officer from Auckland, New Zealand. The five winners received 40 pounds each.

Incredible, isn't it, the creativity of youth?

The symbolism of the Australian flag: Union Jack - protectorate of England. Seven pointed stars - 6 states and one territory - federation, Southern Cross (five starred constellation seen from all states and territory). For many years, the Australian flag was backgrounded by two colors, either red or blue, until 1954, that is. In that year, the red background was dropped because red was the symbol of communism.

Amazing the how the history of the symbols informs us of what the personality of the country is. The history has shaped how the country views itself.

For me, symbols on flags are like scars on the body. Each scar is a significant moment in the history of a person. And, each scar influences how we respond to stimuli in our environment. Some people are full of scars and will often engage in a game of 'scar wars' with another person to see who has had the most physically traumatic experiences in life.

Some people would say that people with few scars are either a.) incredibly lucky or b.) incredibly dangerous. I would say that people with many scars fall somewhere in the middle of unfortunate and daring. I've got quite a few scars myself; multiple knee surgeries, a head surgery from birth. My brother and I, who are identical twins, have the same scar running down the middle of our heads (we were born without soft spots and needed to have strips of bone removed from each side of the middle of our heads so that we didn't end up looking like twin E.T's when we grew up). I used to tell young children that my brother and I were conjoined when born - right down the middle of the head. The doctor's separated us successfully but left each of us with half a brain. Only conceptually is that true.

Each scar has a story and a memory of trauma. I can remember the instant my knees decided they had had enough torque and blew out. I remember having warts on the tops of my hands and having them frozen during football season. They blistered so badly that I had to wear surgical gloves during football practice so that they wouldn't get infected. It worked until I caught my hand in the face mask of a rushing lineman effectively ripping the glove and all the skin of my knuckles off.

I could go on in detail describing all the scars of my past and perhaps grossing every reader out, but more importantly the scars that I want to talk about are unseen. Whether we like it or not, our hearts are scarred by what others do. As much as we like to say "Sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt me" they do. They hurt bad. We carry the scars of off-hand remarks about our looks, about our personalities and about our ideas. We learn what topics we should stay away from like learning to keeping our hands away from a hot stove. It takes a long time for the scars to heal but one thing remains, the memory of the pain.

There may be moments in your life when you have scarred for life by the actions of another. But what softens our hearts is the universal solvent of faith: Forgiveness. Once we learn to forgive, we free ourselves from the pain of the past. It no longer is a festering wound by a symbolic reminder to be aware of how people can be cruel or mean. And, on the other hand, a symbolic reminder to treat others in the same way that our own soul longs for. When we forgive, the scars of emotional pain can be softened. Forgiveness is less for the other person and more for ourselves. If we don't forgive, we continue to wallow in a sense of resentment. We learn to hate ourselves as much as the other person effectively locking ourselves out of a place of love.

The scar remains - scarred for life; but new life can be born from the pain.

Ascribe

I like to write.

I should say, I like to type. No one really writes any more, except my grandmas. Regularly I still see the beautiful script of aged ladies, diligent words pressed respectfully with a pen to paper. Although, my Grandma Matthias has found the 21st century and is into e-mail and Facebook now. I can always tell it's her even without peeking who it's from because Grandma only types with the caps lock on. When I read her e-mails I have to put aside my thinking that capital letters means lots of emphasis should be put on the words. My grandma Matthias doesn't typically put a lot of stress on a phrase like this: THE SUN WAS SHINING TODAY AND GRANDPA CHOPPED SOME WOOD. HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY. GMA MATTHIAS

Really jumps out and catches the eye, doesn't it. But nobody really writes like that. No one, that I know, hand writes in capital letters. There's so much more subtlety to hand written words. And, people are much more likely to take seriously hand written words than typed words or spoken words.

A pastor friend of mine was telling me a story of how handwritten letters affected the life of one of his parishioners. The woman, who had made some considerably life altering changes, had received letter after letter from her family. My pastor friend, I'll call him Larry, was sitting with the woman one day when she broke down crying. The woman had read the letters daily which boldly proclaimed what a sinner she was, how disappointing she was to the family, she had no part in family dynamics. In effect, the letters were castigating her for choices made, but in essence were letters of fear that somehow they had failed her.

The woman, Anne (not her real name), lived with a constant source of guilt and dread that she was not human being anymore. Larry prayed with the woman and asked her to give him the letters for safe keeping. The words were stones. Like the woman caught in adultery, she was caught in the crossfire of a verbal stoning. Battered and bruised, physically she had escaped with her life, emotionally she was dead.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Yeah, whatever. Especially written words will kill. How many times do we see it in the paper that words have destroyed reputations, ruined relationships and brutalized life. The spoken word is air - breath released; it brings a memory but the written word is permanent and if written by hand, we know that the hand of a person actually pressed on the same page that we are holding. It's personal, very personal.

Many times, though, handwritten letters bring joy and contentment also. I love receiving handwritten Christmas cards. I got one this year - from my Grandma Nacke. I love reading the stories of the lives of people who I know and am endeared to, but often I will skip most of the information if there is a personal, handwritten script on the bottom. That usually means that they had a special message just for us. Yeah, they did a lot during the year - that's great - but LOOK AT THE HANDWRITING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE! THEY STILL REMEMBER US!

Remember not that long ago when almost all letters were still sent through the mail not filed electronically, typed, texted or Facebooked? Christine still keeps all the love letters that I wrote when she was in Australia and I lived by myself in Arizona. Every time she would receive a letter (so she tells me) she would read it three, four, fifty times not only to read it but to see my handwriting - because my handwriting is unique to me.

There are experts who can tell when signatures are forged or simply tell what people are like by their handwriting. (They soon might be out of jobs when everyone in the world forgets how to use a pen) They are called graphologers. For example, graphologers would suggest that these types of script say lots of things about us:

SIZE Small handwriting- research-oriented, good concentration, methodical, not always social Large handwriting- people oriented, outgoing, outspoken, love to entertain and interlock Right in the middle- you like to be with people, but value your own time

SPACING Good deal of space- you need your freedom, to do things in your own time, don’t like to be overwhelmed or crowed. Very little space- it shows a tremendous about of irritability and constant pressure on yourself

HOW LETTERS ARE SHAPED Rounded letters- indicates creativity, artistic abilities (writing, painting, acting, etc.) Pointed letters- shows you are more aggressive, intense, very intelligent, curious Connected letters- you are logical, systematic, make decisions carefully

LOOPING Loopy handwriting- very social individual, huge imagination, sensitive to criticism Not loopy- more isolated, reclusive, within themselves

DOTTING YOUR I’s Right over the I- attention to detail, organization, emphatic in what you say or do High over the I- shows great imagination To the left- procrastinator Circle your I’s- visionary, child like Slashing it- overly self-critical, don’t have a lot of patience for inadequacy or people that don’t learn from their mistakes, irritation

CROSSING YOUR T’s Right in the middle- you are personally safe Short crosses- shows a lack of determination Long crosses- great determination and enthusiasm, can be stubborn Very top of T- you’re an idealist, ambition, good self-esteem Cross downward at the top- you dominate your environment, authoritative nature O’s Open- you are talkative, social, able to express your feelings, have little secrecy Closed- you are very personal, limited sharing of your personal feelings, introvert

LEAD IN’S OR EXCESS FLOURISHES Lead in’s (or excess flourishes) - shows family orientation is important to you Lack of lead in’s (or excess flourishes)- you tackle problems in a direct, practical way, unhampered by sentimentality

MARGINS Writing all over the page- you can’t relax, constantly thinking Left hand margin- you live in the past Right hand margin- you are always looking towards the future

PRESSURE Tremendous pressure- very intense, may have some evil qualities, aggressive, blow up easily Average or light pressure- laid back, go with the flow

DOODLES Boxes- you need structure, stability and order Flowers- idealistic, romantic, creative Triangles- perfectionist, structured, people that feel stuck- don’t risk easily Circles- dreamer, creative, takes thinks personally, visionary Smiley faces- illusionary, wanting life to be beautiful, optimistic Color inside the box or shape- you are very intense, serious, worrier, can suggest sign of temper because of tension or frustration

PUNCTUATION MARKS Lots of exclamation marks- ego is involved, you want to be understood, passionate

SLANT If you write upward- you tend to be optimist, hopeful, honest, ambitious, motivated If you write downward- you tend to be negative, slightly depressed, dishonest

SPEED If you write things quickly- you are impatient, dislike delays or time wasters If you write slowly- more organized, more methodical, more self reliant

SIGNATURE (this is your public self image!) Legible- shows integrity, confidence, leadership, open to show your true self Not legible- very private person, hard to read or understand .

I didn't come up with these ideas - I found them by typing words onto the internet. But, the handwriting really does say something about the person. I will not tell you which of the styles is mine but needless to say I'm a bit loopy.

Larry and I met this week. We read from the book of Psalms as we always do and this week it was Psalm 29: Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name; worship the Lord in holy splendor. Within the word 'ascribe' is of course the need to write. How often do we write down what is due to God? I don't do it very often, not in my own handwriting anyway. Often it is typed form that comes in the visage of a sermon. What would happen if every week we took time to hand write down all the goodness of God? Would our view of life in general change? Would the words that jump off the page remind us of the goodness of God? That God's own handwriting is nearby?

Paul writes in 2 Cor. 3 "Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves shall be our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts ---"

Our lives are living letters prepared by God written in the script of the Holy Spirit, legible to the whole world. God's handwriting does not need ink but is impressed on our very souls. What do you think God's handwriting looks like? Loopy? Extra spaces? Speedy? I would guess that God takes His time to prepare a love letter and writes it carefully and slowly on our hearts so that we can open it every day and remember that all of us are beloved children of God.

So, this week, try and write a few letters in your own hand. Ascribe to God the glory, ascribe to others all the love that God gives you, and ascribe to yourself that you are beloved of God and many.

My New Year's resolution is to try and keep typing this blog.

If only I could hand write it. Maybe more people would read it.

Peace,

Pastor Reid

Santa Claus

Being Santa is not easy.

I've only had the opportunity to don the Santa suit once in my life. I was not prepared for it: physically, mentally or emotionally. All my experiences of Santa occurred in a mall when I was younger. Usually, Santa was sitting in the center of the shopping area. Situated on a throne, usually red, surrounded by bored looking teenagers dressed up in elf costumes, Santa was probably the premier draw for the synagogue of capitalism. Scores of kids would line up for the privilege to sit on the lap of this jolly, obese, octogenarian to ask him to lend his ear to the whimsy of children. For some reason, Santa's throne was always cordoned off with a rope as if families would rush the throne, trampling each other for Santa's boon. I never understood the power of the rope: it's not like kids couldn't just stoop under it (or, for the vertically challenged, walk under it) - but for some reason, that golden cord held the kids at bay whispering animatedly to each other about all the presents that Santa was going to bring them. You could watch them checking their lists - if another kid had a good idea, the child would pull on the sleeve of their impatient parent and ask for a pen to add that special doll or toy to the list. (I'm not even sure if kids ask for dolls or toys anymore. It seems as if they are all asking for technical gadgets or movies?)

So, the elves would carefully take each young boy or girl to the seat of honor - the ever diminishing lap of the red-suited genie. I'm sure that some kids enjoyed the experience, but I don't know if I ever saw one. Most of them were frightened of the outlandishly large beard which obscured the Santa's face ("Does Santa have a mouth?" I heard one child ask) The child was placed on the lap of Santa who almost always had a bit of halitosis. The prerequisite "Ho, Ho, Ho, what would you like for Christmas little..." He would look at the parent who would whisper the child's name "Janie." The child would start to understand that perhaps, just perhaps, this wasn't the same man that lived at the north pole because he knew every child's name - even identical twins, in my case. The child would then rattle off an enormously large list of Christmas gifts that Santa was to pack in his enormously undersized sleigh. The list brought to Santa realistically was a list for the parents who really wanted to know what their children wanted.

Then, after list was spewed out, Santa would inevitably pat the child on the back, promising all sorts of things that no human could keep, and attempt to send the child on her way. Invariably, the child would want to add a few more things to Santa's ear who then would have to employ the slaves, er... the elves as bouncers sending them away from the throne in tears.

It's a tough thing to be Santa.

So, as I began telling a bit before, my connection of being stuffed in the fat suit occurred when I was a senior in college. I had neither white hair, nor the girth to pull it off, but sometimes pillows do wonders. After I had donned the traditional attire of the merry man o' the north, I gazed at my reflection in the mirror. No mouth. This might be a problem. I tried talking but every time I did, I ended up with Santa's beard hair caught between my teeth. It was then that I wondered how many Santas before me had eaten the same hair. Filled with revulsion, I walked sideways out the door and squeezed behind the steering wheel of my 1986 Chevy Cavalier. As I drove to the piano store, I wondered to myself, "What have I gotten myself into?"

My piano teacher in college was a short, willful woman who always liked to be called Doctor. It was much more formal than Suzanne - that was the name for a nurse, or a receptionist - but certainly not a piano teacher. The piano teacher I'd grown up with was Shirley - she was a strict, rote, pedagogical teacher who I actually learned to love greatly after I stopped taking piano lessons from her. Anyway, Doctor had convinced me that I was the special student chosen that year who would be playing the part of 'Accompanist Santa' at a local piano store where local students were having piano recitals. Doctor decided that my personality lent itself well to playing "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" at ingloriously slow tempos.

So, I said yes, not because I was particularly enamored with the task, but because it's never wise to say 'no' to piano teachers. It will come back to haunt you.

I drove twenty miles in that stuffed Santa outfit. On the way down, as I waited at stoplights, I did garner a lot of attention. One time, I looked to the left and a little girl was staring at me. I could almost read her mouth as they pulled out in front of me. "Mommy, Daddy, where is his sleigh?" I'd hate to have been in that car for the rest of the drive.

I arrived at the piano store fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. The local piano teachers greeted me at the door with their thanks and appreciation, and, I think, a great sense of amusement that I had been connived into doing the role. The kids arrived later; many of them shrank from fear looking at me. Others were inquisitive: some of the smallest ones were pushed forward by their parents who then came to me and tried to get their lists in first. Mostly, I just stood by the Christmas tree wanting to drink some eggnog but knowing I couldn't because I'd get a hairball from doing so.

The recital started; I took my place at the piano. One by one, the children came forward to sit by me at the piano bench, I on the left and they sitting as far as they could to the right side. Some of them even standing because they really didn't want to sit that close to an icon of epic proportions. Most of them wouldn't even look at me; only one of them started crying. It was a good thing she had the song memorized really well because her whole body was shaking with sobs. While I was playing, I looked around at the director of the store who gave me a frustrated point of the finger and mouthed the words, "Keep playing!"

By the end of the evening I think I had frightened three quarters of the piano students in the Waterloo area and the other twenty-five percent had torn up their lists. Their was no way any of them were going to get close to the piano playing Santa. I stood up, turned around and said, "Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas!" You'd think I'd said, "I've got a gun and know how to use it!" Everyone seemed to jump a little bit. The children cowered between their parents' legs and the parents stood with kind of a smug disapproval of a twenty-two year old Santa that couldn't seem to connect with kids.

Everyone liked the idea of Santa coming but I don't think they really wanted Santa to be there. The idea of Santa was kind of nice - a well proportioned, happy, old man who wanted to bring gifts to every boy and girl on the planet within a 12 hour time frame. The idea of the aforementioned jolly man sliding down the chimney when everyone was asleep is a nice little myth that we tell our children to appraise them of the situation of why there are dozens more presents under the tree in the morning than when they went to bed. But in reality, no one wants anyone sliding down their chimney (or coming in any other entrance) in the darkness of night. Instead of leaving cookies and milk, most of us would be calling the cops and having Santa brought up on charges of B & E. The idea of Santa is much more appealing than the reality of him actually showing up.

Same with Jesus, I think. Before I get all sorts of theological vitriol about comparing Jesus to the saintly old fellow, let me say this, I don't think Jesus is Santa, but I think some of us view him like that. That Jesus is somehow this cosmic baby that comes at Christmas every year, who we can bring our wish list to and he will deposit them in some way to our lives during the darkness of night. The idea of Jesus is very nice; that Jesus is a nice, peaceful comforter who was sent to this earth to basically provide a buffer between us and his dad - God. You know, because God is the ever angry God who wants to punish - even at Christmas. The idea of Jesus is very nice; a baby we can hold, like that big cartoon figure that holds Bugs bunny and says, "I'm going to hug him and stroke him and call him George."

The idea of Jesus is nice, but the reality is, when Jesus sits on the throne of our hearts, everything else is pushed out of the way. There isn't room selfish ambition, vainglory, pride, ego, lust - you remember the list. When the king sits on the throne, those that come to him must listen. When Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow me," that doesn't mean - well, maybe tomorrow, or, let me see if I can go to the Christian store and find the smallest cross possible. What it means is, Christ calls us to pick up the cross and die - die to ourselves and let him...

Be born in our hearts again.

At Christmas.

That is not the idea of Jesus - but the reality. The gift of Christmas is not something we hold in our hands but the Spirit of Christ that grows in our hearts.

He is here. Christ has come.

O come let us adore him.



Merry Christmas,

Santa

History

Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, "As anyone who studies congregations knows, history matters. The story of a church's birth tends to shape that community's identity for the rest of its life, with each new generation adding its own variations to the foundational themes." I've had some time to think about those sentences lately putting them into various thinking terms of my own contextual experience. I don't believe Brown's words are limited just to congregations, but to individual people as well.

For example, while living in rural central Iowa, the town of Story City (not a city by any means but most people and places have delusions of grandeur at one point or another) has a welcome sign off Interstate 35, placed right next to the McDonald's and Happy Chef, which is supposed to infuse weary travelers to exit the highway and come to the happy place of Story City (neither a city nor particularly storied for anything). The sign, decorated with happy, caucasian, blond haired children in outfits right out of the 1850's, states the welcome in Norwegian - "Wilkommen" which every time I saw it reminded me of my grandma's house. When we'd show up at her door she'd yell out from the kitchen "Well, Come in!" Certainly, if I spoke Norwegian, was blond and predisposed to wearing britches and aprons from the mid 19th century I surely would have swerved off Interstate 35 to feast on the famous Norwegian delicacies of Chicken McNuggets and French Fries which, I can't remember if they translated the menu at McDonalds into Norwegian for all the native Norskes, would have been "Kyllingen McNuggets and Franske Venn." If you go to Oslo and visit the local McDonalds, make sure you use these words.

Obviously, the burg of Story City wanted to hold on to its past traditions, roots of its beginnings. They somehow wanted to cling to the Northern European Protestant work and life ethic of stoicism and sub-zero temperatures. The people of Story City we found to be likable, if not a bit standoffish for Christine and I were neither Norwegian nor particularly stoic. Funny thing was, almost every person we came into contact with would wave the banner of their Norwegian heritage. They proudly proclaimed their last names of Oleson, Larson, Johnson, Nelson but if I were to ask if they could speak Norwegian, they stammered that they were out of practice. When they'd tell me they still had relatives in Norway, I asked if they'd ever been there to meet them. "Well, um, we couldn't do that - we wouldn't want to be a burden to them."

I asked one of them if, when they proclaimed their 'full-blooded Norwegianosity', they claimed America as their home country. They promptly smiled through thin lips (no self-respecting 'full blooded Norwegian' would dare confront or even speak about the feelings that I had hurt), turned their back and hoped that I had a good day (even though they hoped that I'd go back to Germany where all my relatives came from).

It is not a bad thing to hold on to our roots, but there comes a point in time when all of us find ourselves in a place of new growth. Our family trees have been established, they have taken root and those trees have budded and produced seeds. The seeds cannot continue to live on the tree, they must fall and, at times, feel the pain of being separated from the tree. Sometimes, the seeds are carried by the wind or other ambulations to places far beyond where they were little nuts.

The trend, though, is changing. Before massive advances in travel and communication (i.e. cars and phones) most young people lived near the family farm, marrying other young people in the community and rarely every left their own county and even more rarely, the country. The advent of technology allowed people to travel but still be connected with home. The computer, cellphones, i-phones has allowed people of all ages to stay connected with their families even while being apart. This is, for the most part, a good thing. But a curious thing is happening with young people of today: the technology is actually stunting young people's growth as adults. Students who attend college (many of whom still live at home to save money) have the umbilical cord, the cellphone, attached to their parents who still desire some semblance of control over their children's lives. It is thought that some college students and young adults speak to their parents at minimum once per day. This may or may not be a bad thing, but a generation of young adults are finding themselves mired in the worries of their parents, frightened of messing up, and parents who worry that if they don't watch over their children, their children will make the same mistakes that they made. In the book When Parents Love Too Much: What Happens When Parents Won't Let Go" by Laurie Ashner and Mitch Meyerson, the authors write, "For parents who love too much, worry is a constant companion. Concern over their chldrens' lives and troubles can become so torturous that they cannot eat, sleep, or think about anything else." Parents forget that the very decisions they made to leave and cleave (leave their own parents and cleave to their spouse) are what make them responsible adults today.

Some statistics: In the year 2006 in America, according to All Academic Survey, 13 million post high school young adults lived with their parents. In Great Britain, the Office for National Statistics says that in 2008, approximately 1/3 of young men ages 20-34 still live with their parents and 1/5 of young women of the same age do. That figure increases in the 20-24 area: 52% of young men live with their parents and 37% of young women.

Is this a bad thing? There are many factors when looking at this issue. The economy truly hurts young people moving out of home. No jobs, no money, no affordable housing - the only option is to live at home. The price of education has sky rocketed in the last fifteen years. It is no longer truly affordable for young people to attend college and yet they can't afford not to.


Surely the financial climate has changed, but the responsibility lies on both sides. Parents, family, friends must find ways to encourage their young adults to take responsibility for their own lives. So often, because we love our children we want to help them in any way that we can. But helping often morphs into enabling them. Our helping actually hurts them in the long run.

Part of my history deals with chickens. My parents raised poultry: chickens, ducks, geese and a few mangy turkeys who had a proclivity to die in the strangest of ways. Every year we watched the seasons of poultry life - hatching, scratching and (gulp) chopping. My favorite was the hatching part. My mother was a 1st grade teacher at the local elementary school and every spring she did a hands on process with the life of animals. She would bring fertilized chicken eggs to school and place them in a metal incubator, turn them every once in a while, and then wait for the little white eggs to begin to hatch. As the years progressed, Mom would let us kids help out with the hatching process. As with most hands on experiences, there are teaching moments. One morning, as we worked quietly in my mother's classroom, my mother was called out to speak to the principal. After she left, I began to hear some cheeping noises emanating from the incubator and I walked over to inspect the exciting transformation. I lifted the cover and a few of the chicks had already made their way through the tough shell. They were ugly little things when they were fresh, kind of wrinkly and hairless like one of the cats we had later on in life. As I perused all the eggs, one in particular caught my eye. The chick's beak was sticking out through a small hole as it was attempting to push its way out. It looked like it was struggling so, after I had looked around to see if anyone was watching, I removed the lid entirely and began to help the chick to release it from the bondage of its white, enameled cage. I fancied myself something of a chicken savior - here I was helping a poor, defenseless creature to escape the struggles of early life.

My mother entered in quietly. She saw what I was doing but, as the wise woman she is, wanted to let it be a teaching moment.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I was so startled I almost dropped the half opened egg. "I'm helping this chick get out. It looked like it was struggling."

Mom smiled. "It was. It was supposed to. The chick has to struggle to get out of the egg to build up its neck muscles so that it will be prepared to eat from the ground on its own. It struggles to be able to grow."

My mom, in her infinite wisdom that day, taught me a little something about myself that day. Even though I still have the DNA of my family tree coursing through my veins, I have been allowed to struggle in life, to learn to stand on my own two feet, to learn to feed myself. My parents, family and friends have watched me (the little nut) be taken to far away places throughout the world and have watched proudly (I think) as I am kept in God's hands to serve people here or there. But, struggles are part of life. Struggling induces growth. We all can learn a bit from our history there.

So, this week, as you have time, think about your own history - what incidents made you who you are today. What things do you hold on to from your past? What things do you need to let go of? What things in your history continue to shape who you are and where you are going?

Just call it a history test.