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Early Season Christmas Thoughts
While growing up, we have been taught that giving gifts was the central theme of Christmas.
Not quite Jesus, not quite justice, but the simple act of giving.
We’re taught, in order to hold the spirit of Christmas true, we must be happy and give willingly. We seem to have missed the point… or rather; we seem to have failed to complete the thought.
I listened to a children’s play today in which the actors discover the true meaning of Christmas is giving. This revelation happens, of course, after they break down into a fight over who gets to do what and so forth (a representation of our greed during the Christmas Season). This play exemplified the underlying theme that we continue to drive home to each successive generation: The act of giving is simply enough. It also continues the cycle of Bad Theology spreading down to our children.
I remember, during Christmas’s past, being given money so that I could then buy gifts for my family. The idea starts as a gesture of “love” and “appreciation” with the gift exemplifying the heart of the giver, but in the end, the gift given was simply something un-needed by the receiver, and probably cast away in a pile of Junk that grows with each successive season. My wife accurately described Christmas (at least within the circles we run in) as “A season that celebrates the accumulation of (choice word).”
The end result of our current ideal, that we should give, and give freely, has turned into an act in which we continue to attain more Junk. We are simply expected to give gifts; it is no matter what the gifts are, as long as they are given. Any attempt to give meaningful gifts is often met with resistance, and any attempt not to give gifts, as the receiver has no need for a gift within your financial ability, is seen as an act of hostility. These feelings, that we must give gifts, continue to place us in a cycle of debt and cause a continual feeling of dread, when you have very little money to devote to the purchase of Junk.
To what end does the cycle lead us? Our we truly celebrating the birth of Christ, or are we celebrating our ability to purchase (an ability that we are fast losing, yet refuse to give up) We seem to have confused two separate stories into one, the story of the Birth of Christ, and the story of St. Nicholas. In the end this confusion causes considerable hurt towards the heart of both stories.
I’ll not lay out the details of each story right now, for that would be a better post for another day (and has already been done by others), instead I will pass this wish, or perhaps better stated this blessing over the gift giving this Christmas season:
May you bestow gifts with no expectation of return, for that is the true meaning of gift.
May you accept gifts with no guilt towards repayment, for that is the best gift to the giver.
May any gifts you give be meaningful, for the world has enough junk.
May any gifts you receive be put towards good use, for again, we have too much junk.
May you keep at heart both stories we celebrate during this season, for they both have much to speak to our hearts.
Grace and Peace
The unwritten unfinished pt 2
I’ll admit, my last post took a bit of a different direction than I originally intended, I meant to take an overview of the letter and go from there. After reading over it a few times I think I got so incensed that I felt like I wanted to tear it apart.
Bit
by bit
by bit
by
bit.
Alas, as Andrew pointed out, I think I the reaction I had was entirely more than the letter deserved. So for that I will apologize.
I think I’m tired of this election.
Actually… I am tired of this election. I’m tired of the smears (on both sides), I’m tired of the 24 hour news cycle, I’m tired of my beloved John Stewart and Colbert Report (and I would think they’re tired of the election as well). It’s too much.
Thus, I think I am done with politics for now. I’ll say the only thing that will bring me back anytime soon is if the GA senate race goes into a runoff (highly likely) thus placing Georgia center stage in this whole crazy election. I’ll probably speak up then.
For now… look forward to my next far less political post.
Letters from the future (pt-1)
Hey Matt, have you read this new letter from Focus on the Family? It’s a fictionalized letter from a Christian in the year 2012. Normally when one thinks of 2012 they remember all the talk of the end of the world, with the way this letter is written one might think that the world did indeed end, or at least for one portion of the population of the US.
You see, right now there’s a race going on, a race in which many evangelicals are becoming disheartened with the political party that has held their sway for decades. This sway is certainly scaring those in charge of both the party, and those with whom the party has place “in charge” of the evangelicals. With little over a week left until the election, both the party and the evangelical leaders are fearful losing this election.
These evangelical “leaders” decided that the best way to win an election was to continue the fear mongering that the party they are aligned with has begun. This letter is a “fictionalized” account of what may come should the Muslim Obama win the election.
What do you think, Matt?
Renewal
If you’re like me your a prophet with a belly full of fire who can’t be stoped by anything.
Except time.
I have a tendancy to run hot and cold, normally my hots run quite hots whereas my colds are actually lukewarms, but the point stands that I tend to live a life in which I get passionate about something and lose that passion somewhere down the road. Over the (brief) course of my life I’ve probably run the cycle of passion and calm dozens of times over dozens of topics, never quite learning from my previous cycles. It’s really the story of our lives often times, I guess most people play it out over longer periods than I do, but still this cycle seems to repeat itself in most of the lives I see.
Sometimes, we just need a little renewal, a second wind, all this time I never found a way to grab that second wind (let alone the needed third wind to make a passion into a lifestyle) and instead found myself moving on to the next passion. All these years, I never really thought about going back to the source that started the passion.
Maybe you’re in the same spot as I am. Maybe passion’s run out for you, maybe the belly full of fire that you once had is cooling down, you see it, you don’t like it, but complacency feels so good to us. The status qou that we held before we began is so much easier to keep up than the activity that passion requires. Sometimes you see how high the wall that your passion wants you to tear up really is. You realize how difficult it will be to take down that wall is. You see how much you will have to sacrifice if that passion is to be sustained.
I started my slide toward complacency in earnest just a few week ago. No longer were books being devoured, no longer were thoughts churning in my mind, no longer was imagination flowing freely, its a sad time in life when that happens, but then I was jarred out of it when I caught a glimpse of how high and powerful one of the walls I want(ed) to take down is, and how deeply rooted the wall is in my life.
We (being Becky and I) talk(ed) all the time of non-violence, of the imaginative third way, we debated others about it, and we’ve taken the so called high ground on the subject of violence in our lives. Now, for two people who claim such ideals, my actions Saturday night certainly show how far I have to go.
To make a long story short, we were victims of some drunken road rage Saturday night after leaving my parents dinner. The driver of the vehicle got out of his car and threatened to rip up my ass and such, to which I would have hoped an imaginative third way would have came in (third way being not violent nor passive), maybe several months ago I would have reacted in such a way to diffuse the situation in such a way that was on par with my ideals. My response however was to give the guy the finger and stare straight ahead.
Pathetic.
Anyways, this night kind of jarred me into looking at how poor my response was, and how far away I am from where I want to be. I realized that for me to waste all I have learned and strived for over the past year would be pathetic. I realized it was time for renewal, time to return to square one and relook at the things that first brought me to my passions.
I realize how close this is to sounding like an old school revival service, where the travelling pastor encourages the flock on the last night to resubmit their lives to Jesus, and every impulse I have urges me away from the route, so I leave it at that. It’s time to return to the source.