Don't get too Excited...this is just a congrats, not a return...
Well, hey there internets...

I'd just like to send a shout out to my dear friend Ann (her blog's over there in the sidebar.)

This morning she put the final punctuation mark on 5 years of teaching in the Baltimore City Public School System. She's switched schools, she's switched grades - almost every year (this means that she's had to learn a whole new curriculum many time's over).

She's put in 5 years serving kids in one of the nation's toughest school systems. She's taught sick and well, she's served with a great deal of love and patience. She's an outstanding lady, and I'm awfully proud of her.

So congratulations, Ann, and thank you for all you gave. I am confident that it will help make things better out there in Baltimore.

May the next chapter bring much more joy, and many fewer tears than BCPSS.

Auld Lang Syne

The end of a year. The end of a decade. Every media outlet, personal blog, facebook status update seems intent on trying to sum it all up.

I think it's part of the urge we have to make sense of things, to categorize and tie up in neat bows the various parts of our lives.

Wrapping up the year in reflection has occured on this blog at the close of 2003, in 2004, 2005, and 2007/2008 .

It's somewhat reassuring to me that not even Texas Monthly knew how to sum up 2009 in its last issue. Because it was a year of great loss for many, many, many people.

Economically
Personally
Professionally

I don't know anyone who was left unscathed by 2009.

As far as blogging, this year was my second most prolific year with 52 posts. And most of them dealt with faith. It was, I think, the most I have ever written about my faith on this blog. I guess when it all hit the fan, what was left was Jesus and so I wrote about that. It surprised me that there was that much to write, but I'm sure there were a couple of people who it didn't surprise at all.

The thing about 2009 for me is that I don't think it can be summed up, or put into an understandable package, and I won't get a bigger hammer and pound it into a box.

I'm undecided about whether I'm going to bang pie pans tonight. My flight gets into Dallas late. I think I may just have a mug of eggnog, and go to bed. Wake up, and have a cup of coffee with 2010 tomorrow morning.

2010.

I don't think it's entirely possible to get off the internet, and there are too many people I would lose touch with if I did. But I am going to try and step off it for a time.

I'll be writing letters, and making phonecalls. Not checking Facebook, nor updating it. Only checking my email a couple of times a week. For all it's rapidity and convenience, I don't think the internet deepens our communications...so I'm trying to return some intentionality to mine.

I don't expect the rest of the world to step off with me, so keep sending emails if you like.

Which brings us to the blog. I don't know what this new relationship to the internet is going to mean for Bears and Penguins. It's a plucky little blog, and I'm fond of it. So I guess I'll play that one by ear.

For old time's sake then, know that I'll raise a glass to all of you tonight. Toast to your health, your prosperity. Pray for your joy, your understanding, your search for Truth, and your protection in 2010.

Go live well.
Go live deeply.
Be where your feet are and fear not.

And for old time's sake, I hope you'll forget me not, and raise your glass the same.

So long for awhile. Check your tires, and turn up your coat collars against the rain. But when the sun comes out, old friend, shed your coat and soak it up.

Salud.

Advent 25

Between prodigious napping and cookbook perusing, I've watched it snow outside. Outside my parent's house. My parent's house in Dallas, Texas. Where earlier in the week it was 70 degrees.

It started out as tiny, miniscule flakes. So tiny that it was hard to tell if it was rain or snow, and it started off too warm to stick. The day's gotten a bit colder, the snow flakes more confident, and now they are unabashed. They are snowy, flaky, and sticking to bushes, yards, and lawn furniture.

Throughout the day, I've also watched my fellow Texans update their facebooks with unrestrained joy.

"White Christmas"

"Snow!"

"Prettiest Christmas Eve ever"

And it reminded me of just the simple joy of this advent season. Just simple, head out for a romp in the snow joy.

The coming of Christ is an experience of joy, of great song. Of romping, bounding, unadulterated joy. Of raised glasses, blazing fires, barking dogs, and angel choirs. Of fireworks, and tamales, of bread broken, wine poured. Of guffawing laughter, strong embraces.

So I think back to the humble stable, and of that birth. Once Mary and Joseph got through the more frightening bits, they looked down and saw a yowling baby boy, pink, and new. The animals sensing something different afoot, recalling somewhere deep in memory a first day in a long ago garden, when the cacophony of sounds filled the air in songs of the Creator's praise, began to low a bit more cheerfully then usual. I think about the shepherds showing up, perhaps a bit sheepishly not knowing entirely what to expect even though the angel had told them. Maybe when they got there, sensing an occasion for celebration, they shared such bread as they had. Coarse, spread with oil, maybe with dried meat, or nuts, and a bit of fruit. They were humbled and in awe, and thrilled all at once. Maybe Joseph and the shepherds got to laughing a bit, and Mary told them to hush, didn't they see that baby was sleeping. But she didn't really mean it, she was just radiant, if tired, and maybe the baby stirred, but remained at rest in the warmth of the impromptu welcome wagon.

A baby born out of a miraculous conception. Fully God. Fully Man. A child given unto us, upon whom would rest the names, "Wonderful. Counselor. The Mighty God. The Prince of Peace."

To bring everlasting peace, to raise the sons of earth.

Incredible, isn't it? Truly unbelievable, impossible sounding.

But then again, so is snow in Texas.

Will wonders ever cease? I sure hope not.

The most Merry Christmas to all of you out there. Raise your glass, laugh a roaring laugh, laugh until you cry. Hug up your parents and your children, your brothers, your sisters. Your dearly loved friends. We've got much gratitude to mark with joy this season. Peace to all this Holy Night.

Advent Day 24,

In a few hours, I'll board a plane back to Dallas to spend the Christmas holiday with my parents. Tomorrow, I'll attend a church service somewhere. Mostly, I'll be with family.

I've been thinking about the Christmas Truce for the past several days. If you read about it in fiction, you'd think it was the most maudlin, farcical story ever made up - except that it's not fictional. It's truth. It happened.

In the trenches of Ypres, Belgium, mudlogged, flooded and cold were men that had come in July thinking, as it seems people always do, that they'd be home after a few weeks. But here it was Christmas Eve, and already the losses suffered by the British, French, Belgian and German arms reached numbers that seem impossible to conceive - above 200,000 men in the four-weeks of the first battle of Ypres. It must have seemed complete and utter madness.

But on Christmas eve in 1914, not at the bidding of officers, and not everywhere along the trenches, but in small pockets, the fog of madness lifted for the briefest moment, and the opposing armies began to sing carols in their trenches - answering each other. Some met in the middle of no-man's land, and exchanged such gifts as they had - food or tobacco. There is even an account of a spontaneous soccer game.

Then the moment passed, and the war continued.

Unbelievable.

I guess it gives me some hope that for those few hours the madness of violence and ill will ceased. Hope that there really are such things as redeemption, as peace, as reconcilliation, as an end to strife, and that they are not simply pretty fairy tales that we tell ourselves in order to go to sleep at night.

I saw a video the other day that had been posted on a facebook page for the church orchestra I was a member of in high-school. The video showed a kid who is a few years younger than me, in Army fatigues with a shaved head, wishing the church a Merry Christmas from Iraq. He was always a good singer, and in his mellow baritone, he sang "I'll be home for Christmas."

There's still a lot of soldiers out there on the front, in a wars that I remember hearing would only last a few weeks, but have taken up the better part of a decade. There will be soldiers on the plane I take home tonight.

War is a grave thing - always has been. I don't know much more to say about it then that.

I think perhaps the only thing to say is that once there was a Christmas truce.

And if it happened once, maybe it can happen again. I'll keep hoping for the day when we turn those swords into plowshares, and we wake into a sanity to last for the ages.

Advent Day 23,

The season flees quickly, nearly gone now, and then will come the long walk through Lent, and the great Easter Morning.

23 days of actively waiting in Advent. And I'm no better at it then I was at the start. I remain impatient for the waiting to be completed. For Jesus to arrive. For the dark night to give way to dawn.

Bread knows how to wait. It sits on the counter, and waits for the yeast to do its thing, for itself to become fully bread, and not just something that could turn into bread if let to wait. And no matter how I tap my finger, nor how often I resist the urge to poke it just to nudge it along a bit, the bread will take its own time.

I'm terrible at waiting - waiting for bread, for brownies to cool, for the morning to come, for it to be late enough in the morning to call my friend in California without waking him up. Waiting for the day of the trip to come, waiting for things to mend with a person I'm cross with, or who's cross with me.

Sometimes it seems that all my life is waiting - for an author to email me, for the page proofs to arrive from India, for the light to change, for the line to shorten, for the show to start, for intermission to end. Just waiting.

Waiting for the Lord to make Himself known, or the Holy Spirit be near me in prayer. For divine provision. For Jesus to calm the storm, multiply the bread, heal what's ill, bring peace for once, for all.

Everytime I have to wait for something, I feel like the Lord is bending near to me and saying, "Dear Child, you must learn to wait upon me, in that to trust me, you must learn to stop poking at the bread with your finger and have faith that the yeast will work. Dear One, Dear One, Let me teach you how to wait."

In this season of expectancy, Jesus is asking me to wait like bread. To rest, without kneading or pounding or shaping, and let the Holy Spirit change me from the inside out, and in that to become the lady He plans for me to be.

It would be so much easier if He would give me a list of jobs to do while the waiting was happening, if there were more I could do to get the dough to rise. But there's not. There's just sitting at rest, and letting the change happen through His work, in His time.

Advent, Day 21:

Tonight, my Aunt and I joined an old friend at her church's carol service.

We belted out the classics, we watched the kids perform the Christmas play. We sat holding our candles as the sanctuary darkened and the little flame made it's way around the church. And once all were lit, we struck up with Silent Night.

More years than not, I've sat in my childhood church in Texas and done that, and my Mom and I have always commented on how surprisingly light it gets when everyone's candle is lit. Which is of course, part of the point - to see that lots of little lights together can shine up a room.

This year I was struck by that again, but I was struck by something else as well - it was shockingly dark in the church. It was dark as pitch. The faces of my friend and Aunt became hidden in it, the shoulders of the folks in front of me disappeared. It was dark. It was impenatrable, and it was shocking in a cold, insidious, frightful, cloying sort of way.

The older children brought their candles to each row to began the lighting, and as they walked from the front, they too were surrounded in that darkness except for a flame that seemed impossibly small in front of them. While the flame burned brightly, energetically, merrily, while it lit their faces, softened and gentled their features, the dark still clung about their shoulders and back, and just in front of them outside the reach of their candle. I was glad when enough of the front rows were lit, so that their backs were warmed in the light.

I thought, "My God, will we really send the children out into the dark? My God, will we ourselves go out into the dark?"

Personally, the tragedies of this year in my own life have made me more keenly aware of sorrow in the lives of others. Not that I didn't know sorrows before, and not that I wasn't compassionate towards others before, but somehow this year has deepened that, has made me more compassionate, more likely to suck the air in over my teeth and say, "Dear Jesus," in a voice tremulous and low and then be silent.

Sadly, this year sorrow has not only left its mark on my life, but upon the lives of friends dear to me. Grandparents, and parents have died. Marriages have fallen apart. Parents have fallen gravely ill. Babies have not grown as they should. Lately it seems that most of the conversations I have come with some ill tidings.

We live in a perilous place. A downright dangerous, and dark place. A place where sometimes there is no reason, where truth can lay hidden, where bad guys prosper, where good guys get left behind.

I wrote that it's awfully tempting to think that we're not quite as bad a sinner as that person over there. I think by the same token it's true, or at least, has been for me in times past, that it's easy to think that our world isn't quite as fallen, or bad, or despoiled and dark as it actually is. To possess the knowledge that the world needed a savior in Christ, but to mostly go about thinking, "Oh it's not as bad as all that, really."

But it really can be shockingly, chillingly dark. Which can be seen in the depth of the sacrifice Christ made. If it weren't really as bad as all that, then maybe Jesus could have negotiated different terms, have paid a settlement, have served a sentence, but the magnitude of the darkness was so great that no partial payment would do, and so our Lord went to the cross, where His own life's spark was extinguished. His magnificent, beautiful heart that had kept Him going for 33 years stilled. His breath that spoke love to people, that calmed storms, that blessed water into wine for the joy of celebration, that multiplied simple food to feed all, that laughed with friends, that rebuked that which needing rebuking, and comforted that which needed comforting, His breath that breathed out laughter and tears, and breathed in all the beautiful world around him, was stilled. And His hands, hands that healed, hands that planed wood, hands that pulled in nets over the side of the boat, hands that greeted His mother, His hands became cold.

The world we inhabit was so dark, that Our Lord died in order to begin the end of the darkness.

Which is the second consideration of advent - we consider not only the Lord's first coming, but His second when He will make complete the redeemption that He started when He breathed His last, and carried on when He broke death's wicked bonds, and continues till now in the hearts of people and until He comes again to end the darkness forever.

There can be a tendency to not acknowledge the dark, or rather to diminish it. To throw platitudes at it - Well things are bound to start looking up, look on the brightside, count your blessings, be too blessed to be stressed, find a silver lining, something good will come, don't focus on the negative, find the positive, etc.

Here's a small part in my own heart - sometimes when people start talking about what's dark, and sorrowful, I shy away from them. I start looking for a cowbell to give them so that the clanging can tell me when they're coming. I think we all do that a little - that's why there's that joke, "I asked someone how they were? Then they told me, and I realized I didn't." Those clangers can be seen as wet blankets, sad sacks, Debbie Downers.

But acknowledging the frightful darkness need not diminish joy, need not diminish gratitude, need not diminish the brightness of Christ. Perhaps quite the opposite, in looking at the darkness in its fearful aspect, maybe the full glory of Christ's sacrifice, the brightness of His earthly and now resurrected life can be seen more brightly, more strongly.

It's fear that keeps us from saying the dark is really as terrible as it is, as though if we don't say how bad it actually is, we could diminish it's power, keep it somehow at bay.

Oh, but Friend, what is it that the Angels said from the darkened night sky: "BE NOT AFRAID."

What I know is that I've got no strength, nor power, nor ability to keep the darkness at bay, for myself, for those I care about, for the world around me. But though the darkness surround me, I have Christ, who is light.

For in David's royal city, was born unto all of us a Savior. One for whom a way was prepared through the wilderness. Christ the Lord, who is the light for all the world, a light that is not hidden. The one in whom there is no darkness. Jesus who is our champion and conquering hero against the darkness. And where light goes, darkness flees - perhaps not quickly, or easily, but flee it does.

The darkness may be a little frightening, but I trust that Christ makes His light my own.

Saving grace again. Strength for today and bright hope for the day after. Joy through it all, deep, abiding, consuming ravishing Joy, for I have not been abandoned. No Christ, with His light, sought for my soul, and not just mine, but all men and women. That we might know Him, and the one who sent Him, and in them abide in light forever.

And all God's people feared not, and said Amen.

Advent, Day 19:

Several months ago, someone said to me, "It's not like you can hit the reset button."

Which is one of those platitudes that sounds somewhat profound, and inarguable, but once you scratch the surface shows up to be about as sensible as saying, "It's not like you can bottle the ocean," or "It's not like you can unring a bell."

All patently obvious statements. I'm curious as to when the concept of the reset button entered our collective consciousness - was it with the advent of video games or prior to that?

I had a Nintendo growing up, and was well familiar with the concept of the reset button - unhappy with how a game was going? No problem, hit the reset button, get a clean slate. It is so easy, so painless, nearly effortless, and mostly costs us nothing.

Which begs the question, why didn't the Lord just hit the proverbial reset button way back when Adam and Eve ate the fruit and fell from grace. Wouldn't that have been inifinitely easier, less painful than what we have all endured since then?

The situation I keep imagining if there were such a thing as a cosmic reset button is much like my childhood Nintendo experience - reach the same challenging point of the game, be defeated, cut your losses and reset, ad nauseum. I think that's what would have happened if God had done that in the Garden, Adam and Eve would have repeatedly encountered the same problem, and experienced the same result. And as anyone who's played a video game can tell you, not being able to get past a particular challenge is particularly frustrating.

If there were such a thing as a cosmic reset button that could be tapped as needed, then no unkind thing would be remembered, we should be at peace and no longer bear the burden of our human fraility, or of the mistakes we make, or the sins we sin. We would not be accountable for our actions. There would be no need for forgiveness or for grace as they would no longer be needed to pave the way forward among people's poor, broken hearts.

The Lord would be able to fellowship with us without gazing towards the cross. He should never need to bear the terrible sacrifice, Christ would not have to endure our mortal frame, or separation from the Father He adores. Jesus would never have to trod the path to dark Gethsemne if God in His omnipotence had chosen the course of the reset button.

Yet, this is not the path He chooses. To have a reset button presents a way without pain or loss to be sure, but a way that seems to have a shallowness that contains no room for the depth of God's love, or the miracle of His grace. A shallowness which does not ennoble or restore or heal the creation in a lasting way, but simply patches it up until it needs fixing again.

So God chose a way that contained great pain, but also great honor, freedom, light. A way that would not leave us stunted in our mistakes and never learning better how to love. A way of healing in us that which needed healing and wholeness. A way through which God could be reconciled to His creation, while not diminished in His holiness.

Mercy. Grace. Forgiveness. Passion. Redeemption. Love big enough to conquer all loss, all sin, all grievous hurt. That's the moving force behind Christ's incarnation.

It is humbling.

There is no reset button, but the Lord does give the ability and the tools to walk a path forward. Through Him, we too share in mercy, in grace, in forgiveness, in a love that believes the best and lifts up.

And overcoming that initial challenge is infinitely more satisfying then simply hitting that small reset button.

Still, how often do we keep trying to hit that button - sometimes we lose relationships because we lack the courage to see them through, we try to rebuild better, more perfect relationships with other people only to encounter the same challenges, the same failures. We keep thinking that we'll be able to do it all on our own, we love the myth of the self-made man, we love to imagine that the last lines of Gatsby are true, that someday we actually we will reach that green light, all by ourselves, cheerful achievers of our dreams. We so often build these clay idols for ourselves - the perfect relationship, the perfect job, etc., etc., etc. And in the end, as we tap our hammer to them once more the clay that they are made of crumbles, and we're left again with dust.

When I was a kid with my Nintendo, I could never beat the third level of the Mario game, but I knew that I could always ask my brother to do it for me. I can't imagine how many times he patiently sat cross legged beating that one level for me so that I could advance.

And that is a bit like Jesus, who conquers what we can't, who vanquishes that final enemy, satisfies the holiness of the Almighty, and places the conqueror's crown on are undeserving heads.

It's Jesus who admonishes us that if we remember that we have something unresolved with someone else, that we're to go and mend - not reset, but abide in the grace of God to find the path forward.

Jesus is the great reconciler. Praise be to Him.