This is how He comes to us
When the tears cannot cease
Voice of evil seems to overwhelm
Glimmer seen in distance
Like water in a desert place
When loss is our adagio and andante
Hey presto
He is here
Not with trumpets and fine clothes
Still alone where his mother swaddled him
On a cold, bright night in Bethlehem....
http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/794936_Column--The-world-he-came-to-save.html
samedi, décembre 22, 2012
vendredi, décembre 21, 2012
Moos from the farm
"Would you like to come in to talk to Dad?" asked the slender teenager.
You bet, I said.
It was freezing outside, night had fallen, and even the trees were swaying in the wind. Having finally gotten my head wrapped around the idea that Christmas was happening on Tuesday, whether I had a tree or not, I'd gotten in the car and driven to Bethany Farm.
Now Bethany, as I've written before, isn't miles away. In fact, it's about a mile down main road (if anything in Glenmoore can be called a main road). The farm just happens to need a right turn, when most of the time I go left (no snark, people).
Having written my last book review of the year, with no work to do next week, I was (mentally, finally free to ponder buying a tree. Most of my neighbors have had theirs up since a bit after Thanksgiving, by the way.
As have most of you, probably (those of you who have trees).
When I got to the farm, no one was visible. Usually I get a live tree, and then ask a friend if he has time to plant it. But as I was leaving Farmer Dan a note and a check in the little office where he sells raw milk, apples and other foodstuffs, his daughter emerged from the brightly lit barn.
I get to see the cows! I was excited. Farmer Dan has a lot of dairy cattle. I didn't know what other animals spent their evenings in the large structure, but I was eager to find out.
I know. I sound like a darned Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms, don't I? What can I tell you? To a city girl, an opportunity to scope out farmers milking cows and see goats is about as cool as it gets.
It was a little fragrant inside, but these baby cows were about as adorable as you get in animal territory.
Farmer Dan said that he allows them to roam around, so that they can be close to their mother. He pointed to one who was chewing her cud, reminding me of the Biblical roots of cud-chewing.
After exchanging some news with Farmer Dan (who had been in the hospital last year when I got my tree, and was now doing a lot better, but has been through a lot), I walked back out, past the goats and Farmer Dan's daughter, sitting by the door with the barn cat.
What if I'd gotten my tree three weeks ago when really organized folk were buying trees? Would I have gotten to see the barn when the family was out helping customers?
This procrastinator says no. Leave her to her delusions. They've worked for her so far!
You bet, I said.
It was freezing outside, night had fallen, and even the trees were swaying in the wind. Having finally gotten my head wrapped around the idea that Christmas was happening on Tuesday, whether I had a tree or not, I'd gotten in the car and driven to Bethany Farm.
Now Bethany, as I've written before, isn't miles away. In fact, it's about a mile down main road (if anything in Glenmoore can be called a main road). The farm just happens to need a right turn, when most of the time I go left (no snark, people).
Having written my last book review of the year, with no work to do next week, I was (mentally, finally free to ponder buying a tree. Most of my neighbors have had theirs up since a bit after Thanksgiving, by the way.
As have most of you, probably (those of you who have trees).
When I got to the farm, no one was visible. Usually I get a live tree, and then ask a friend if he has time to plant it. But as I was leaving Farmer Dan a note and a check in the little office where he sells raw milk, apples and other foodstuffs, his daughter emerged from the brightly lit barn.
I get to see the cows! I was excited. Farmer Dan has a lot of dairy cattle. I didn't know what other animals spent their evenings in the large structure, but I was eager to find out.
I know. I sound like a darned Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms, don't I? What can I tell you? To a city girl, an opportunity to scope out farmers milking cows and see goats is about as cool as it gets.
It was a little fragrant inside, but these baby cows were about as adorable as you get in animal territory.
Farmer Dan said that he allows them to roam around, so that they can be close to their mother. He pointed to one who was chewing her cud, reminding me of the Biblical roots of cud-chewing.
After exchanging some news with Farmer Dan (who had been in the hospital last year when I got my tree, and was now doing a lot better, but has been through a lot), I walked back out, past the goats and Farmer Dan's daughter, sitting by the door with the barn cat.
What if I'd gotten my tree three weeks ago when really organized folk were buying trees? Would I have gotten to see the barn when the family was out helping customers?
This procrastinator says no. Leave her to her delusions. They've worked for her so far!
mardi, décembre 18, 2012
Spiritual crisis, yes. Spiritual opportunity? Perhaps
As the daughter of a historian, without my dad's historical knowledge (miss you so much, dad), I know just enough to be dangerous.
I have been reflecting on the messy and often violent arc of American history, the ways in which the pendulum can swing towards injustice and cruelty, and then be moved back, closer to center.
Are we at one of those moments? What do you think? Feel free to comment, on my Reuters blog post or here.
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2012/12/18/guestview-america-a-nation-in-spiritual-crisis/
I have been reflecting on the messy and often violent arc of American history, the ways in which the pendulum can swing towards injustice and cruelty, and then be moved back, closer to center.
Are we at one of those moments? What do you think? Feel free to comment, on my Reuters blog post or here.
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2012/12/18/guestview-america-a-nation-in-spiritual-crisis/
samedi, décembre 15, 2012
To people who keep God out of our schools ( and those who want him back in)
I hear that God isn't allowed in our schools.
Apparently, that's why the tragedy in Newtown occurred -- because God is a "gentleman" who doesn't go where He's not wanted (in spite of a history of doing precisely this throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures).
Prayer is not an official part of the public school curriculum.
So God decided to leave -- and, by implication, to abandon children to the mercy of a crazed killer.
One can assume that it went down something like this.
God listened to the discussions of school boards all over America. He also sat in on courtrooms, where the "Establishment Clause" was debated.
The judges decided that while it was o.k. to have a Bible Study meet in a classroom after school, or an individual student pray, having an officially sanctioned or mandated prayer in the morning wasn't. It violated the Establishment Clause.
At which point, God said "if they don't want me, I don't want them", leaving public schools which disallow prayer and innocent students to their fate.
In other words -- God is not all-powerful, or all-compassionate. He doesn't distinguish between good and evil.
He takes our debates so seriously that if we put a foot wrong (assuming that one believes that not sanctioning state-sponsored prayer IS wrong), He's going to leave us to boil like a lobster in the waters of our own sin.
Those who fought for the establishment clause would be amazed that they were powerful enough to bar God from schools.
I happen to believe that He can't be barred, in spite of all our puny human battles -- and the evil that stalked those halls that day.
He was present in the classrooms of Newtown.
He inspired the brave teachers and hero principal.
He comforts the grieving families.
He does, as our President said yesterday, bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted.
That's the God I believe in.
He's so, so so much bigger than we are.
Thank goodness.
vendredi, décembre 14, 2012
America the violent
I went out for a walk this afternoon.
Having been working at my desk in the kitchen (with a perfectly excellent office upstairs, I wonder that I continue to do this), I crossed the street that divides us from the elementary school and walked towards it.
Parents drove past me to pick up their children at the kindergarten-fifth grade school, built around four years ago for the growing district.
I didn't look up too often, tuned as if hypnotized to the reporting on the massacre in Connecticut.
According to media accounts, Newtown is a bucolic, lovely, traditional New England exurb -- except for that it's the capital of the American firearm industry.
Aside from this fact it's a bit like Glenmoore.
Have you been to my little village?
Let me tell you about it.
There's no traffic light.
One store that sells pizzas, pretzels and little else.
A few churches.
And our school, set back from the road, circled by a walking trail on which I am, often enough, the only one walking.
It is unthinkable that the kind of carnage that took 20 young lives and eight adult (including the gunman's) lives could happen here.
Or maybe it's just that we don't WANT to think about it.
The same way we don't want to consider how our slackening gun laws and assent to extraordinary First Amendment "freedoms" to peddle violence open the door to so much senseless killing.
Look at other civilized (yes, I know I'm being very politically incorrect) countries, and we are loss leaders, continuing to lower the bar on violence.
That's certainly true when it comes to gun control
The assault weapons ban expired in 2004, and in 2009 it became legal to carry guns in the national parks.
Some gun "rights" advocates are now pushing for open-carry laws where they hadn't been legal before.
And the gun lobby has the gall to talk about "politicizing" the discussion about sane gun laws. They politicize it every time they propose a state bill that weakens existing laws.
Apparently the guns used to kill kids in Newtown were legal.
But the question remains: why don't we regulate guns the way we regulate automobiles? Why aren't guns considered (note the nature of this question) dangerous weapons? Why aren't they treated as such?
One wonders why there were (at least) three guns in the house of the murdered mother, weapons that don't seem to have been used for hunting.
Why does a man shoot a Congresswoman and kill her aide and a nine-year-old girl, and some other innocent bystanders?
Why does a man shoot his own son because his sister sees him lurking outside her house, instead of calling the police?
Perhaps it's because, by loosening our laws and not speaking out against the enduring violence of society, we all have given them permission.
So when IS the time to talk about gun control?
When the shock of the carnage of today, or of the Oregon shootings, or of Gabby Gifford's bullet to the brain is lessened?
When we go back to remembering how powerful the NRA is, and the stranglehold they seem to have on our Congress?
When we recall President Obama's lack of courage in standing up to the gun lobby?
Don't you see? If it were up to the well-financed merchants of violence who pull the strings in our House and Senate, there never WOULD be a good time.
Here's how British-born New Yorker writer John Cassidy put it after watching President Obama's emotional words to the public from the White House --
"They were only words, of course—words and tears. If we really want to persuade people overseas, people such as ones I grew up with, that what happened today was an aberration—a desecration of American values rather than a twisted display of them—more, much more, will be needed: a willingness to face down the N.R.A. and introduce proper gun control. Until such a display of national resolve materializes, the massacres will occur at intermittent intervals, the toll of needless deaths will climb, and our overseas friends will continue to shake their heads, saying, “It’s America, you know. That sort of thing happens there.”
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/12/after-the-newtown-shooting-americas-gun-shame.html#ixzz2F5DuL300
Coming back from my walk, I watched the bus drop off two children at their house across the street. The little girl toted a guitar case, the boy a backpack.
Watching from a distance, I wanted to shout: "You're safe!" You're o.k.!"
But I didn't.
And couldn't.
When our children aren't safe in their schools, we are in danger. Not solely our bodies, but also our souls.
Do those of us who call ourselves Christians and bear arms love our guns more than we love "our" Jesus, the nonviolent Prince of Peace?
When the blood of little children stains our national conscience, it's tough not to wonder.
Having been working at my desk in the kitchen (with a perfectly excellent office upstairs, I wonder that I continue to do this), I crossed the street that divides us from the elementary school and walked towards it.
Parents drove past me to pick up their children at the kindergarten-fifth grade school, built around four years ago for the growing district.
I didn't look up too often, tuned as if hypnotized to the reporting on the massacre in Connecticut.
According to media accounts, Newtown is a bucolic, lovely, traditional New England exurb -- except for that it's the capital of the American firearm industry.
Aside from this fact it's a bit like Glenmoore.
Have you been to my little village?
Let me tell you about it.
There's no traffic light.
One store that sells pizzas, pretzels and little else.
A few churches.
And our school, set back from the road, circled by a walking trail on which I am, often enough, the only one walking.
It is unthinkable that the kind of carnage that took 20 young lives and eight adult (including the gunman's) lives could happen here.
Or maybe it's just that we don't WANT to think about it.
The same way we don't want to consider how our slackening gun laws and assent to extraordinary First Amendment "freedoms" to peddle violence open the door to so much senseless killing.
Look at other civilized (yes, I know I'm being very politically incorrect) countries, and we are loss leaders, continuing to lower the bar on violence.
That's certainly true when it comes to gun control
The assault weapons ban expired in 2004, and in 2009 it became legal to carry guns in the national parks.
Some gun "rights" advocates are now pushing for open-carry laws where they hadn't been legal before.
And the gun lobby has the gall to talk about "politicizing" the discussion about sane gun laws. They politicize it every time they propose a state bill that weakens existing laws.
Apparently the guns used to kill kids in Newtown were legal.
But the question remains: why don't we regulate guns the way we regulate automobiles? Why aren't guns considered (note the nature of this question) dangerous weapons? Why aren't they treated as such?
One wonders why there were (at least) three guns in the house of the murdered mother, weapons that don't seem to have been used for hunting.
Why does a man shoot a Congresswoman and kill her aide and a nine-year-old girl, and some other innocent bystanders?
Why does a man shoot his own son because his sister sees him lurking outside her house, instead of calling the police?
Perhaps it's because, by loosening our laws and not speaking out against the enduring violence of society, we all have given them permission.
So when IS the time to talk about gun control?
When the shock of the carnage of today, or of the Oregon shootings, or of Gabby Gifford's bullet to the brain is lessened?
When we go back to remembering how powerful the NRA is, and the stranglehold they seem to have on our Congress?
When we recall President Obama's lack of courage in standing up to the gun lobby?
Don't you see? If it were up to the well-financed merchants of violence who pull the strings in our House and Senate, there never WOULD be a good time.
Here's how British-born New Yorker writer John Cassidy put it after watching President Obama's emotional words to the public from the White House --
"They were only words, of course—words and tears. If we really want to persuade people overseas, people such as ones I grew up with, that what happened today was an aberration—a desecration of American values rather than a twisted display of them—more, much more, will be needed: a willingness to face down the N.R.A. and introduce proper gun control. Until such a display of national resolve materializes, the massacres will occur at intermittent intervals, the toll of needless deaths will climb, and our overseas friends will continue to shake their heads, saying, “It’s America, you know. That sort of thing happens there.”
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/12/after-the-newtown-shooting-americas-gun-shame.html#ixzz2F5DuL300
Coming back from my walk, I watched the bus drop off two children at their house across the street. The little girl toted a guitar case, the boy a backpack.
Watching from a distance, I wanted to shout: "You're safe!" You're o.k.!"
But I didn't.
And couldn't.
When our children aren't safe in their schools, we are in danger. Not solely our bodies, but also our souls.
Do those of us who call ourselves Christians and bear arms love our guns more than we love "our" Jesus, the nonviolent Prince of Peace?
When the blood of little children stains our national conscience, it's tough not to wonder.
samedi, décembre 08, 2012
Is he happy? Depends...
"He's put on weight" said a friend after our encounter.
Putting on weight could be a sign of contentment -- right?
And, she added, he doesn't look happy.
I debated that with her. What can one tell about someone else from a moment's glance?
Long run, I doubt he's going to be a happy man. But I wish him well. No one deserves to be miserable. Right now, though, I'm clueless. Wouldn't even want to hazard a guess.
But our conversation got me thinking about the nature of happiness (yea, I know, just call me a blogging Aristostle).
In part, I've been pondering this because the past year and a bit has been so challenging. Last year we were just coming out of the ordeal of the kid's father's cancer treatment, which was hideous (though not as hideous as other people's cancer treatments).
This fall has twinned an internship with the second required course of statistics in my master's program. On top of commuting an hour to work in completely new circumstances, I've been doubling down on the course, going in an extra night to audit another section.
All of this on top, like a cherry on a volcano, of my unceasing anxiety about our daughter (more to come).
Yes to almost falling asleep at the wheel, eating meringues as breakfast on the way to work, not getting enough exercise, back spasms that make it almost impossible to walk now and then.
No to happiness.
But that's not necessary. I'm beginning to realize that happiness is also a choice.
I'm not going as rad on this one as my internship teacher, who said to a sad-looking student in our last class that melancholy is all in your mind.
She perked up right after that (insert irony).
But I do believe that what we see, or refuse to see, can affect the way that we feel.
There's a lot I haven't been seeing in my crazed rush from student meeting to dinner to dashing off a column due yesterday (well, at least it wasn't yesteryear!).
I haven't taken time to watch the moon dance among the stars we see so luminously out in this semi-rural village.
I haven't taken the time to listen carefully to the Grieg and Schubert that pours from my computer speakers.
I haven't walked slowly down the roads I see three or four times a week, looking for changes in our seasonal landscape(and I don't mean roadkill).
Last night I gathered up fragrant pine branches for the front porch swing.
Juniper berries peek out from the arrangement by the door.
Lights glimmer within our cozy house.
There will be time eventually for laughter and celebration, a feast to prepare for friend and stranger alike.
There will also be time for gratitude.
Now is that time.
Every moment is an opportunity.
Happiness is indeed in the demeanor, and voice, and words, of those who chose to embrace it -- eyes wide open.
Putting on weight could be a sign of contentment -- right?
And, she added, he doesn't look happy.
I debated that with her. What can one tell about someone else from a moment's glance?
Long run, I doubt he's going to be a happy man. But I wish him well. No one deserves to be miserable. Right now, though, I'm clueless. Wouldn't even want to hazard a guess.
But our conversation got me thinking about the nature of happiness (yea, I know, just call me a blogging Aristostle).
In part, I've been pondering this because the past year and a bit has been so challenging. Last year we were just coming out of the ordeal of the kid's father's cancer treatment, which was hideous (though not as hideous as other people's cancer treatments).
This fall has twinned an internship with the second required course of statistics in my master's program. On top of commuting an hour to work in completely new circumstances, I've been doubling down on the course, going in an extra night to audit another section.
All of this on top, like a cherry on a volcano, of my unceasing anxiety about our daughter (more to come).
Yes to almost falling asleep at the wheel, eating meringues as breakfast on the way to work, not getting enough exercise, back spasms that make it almost impossible to walk now and then.
No to happiness.
But that's not necessary. I'm beginning to realize that happiness is also a choice.
I'm not going as rad on this one as my internship teacher, who said to a sad-looking student in our last class that melancholy is all in your mind.
She perked up right after that (insert irony).
But I do believe that what we see, or refuse to see, can affect the way that we feel.
There's a lot I haven't been seeing in my crazed rush from student meeting to dinner to dashing off a column due yesterday (well, at least it wasn't yesteryear!).
I haven't taken time to watch the moon dance among the stars we see so luminously out in this semi-rural village.
I haven't taken the time to listen carefully to the Grieg and Schubert that pours from my computer speakers.
I haven't walked slowly down the roads I see three or four times a week, looking for changes in our seasonal landscape(and I don't mean roadkill).
Last night I gathered up fragrant pine branches for the front porch swing.
Juniper berries peek out from the arrangement by the door.
Lights glimmer within our cozy house.
There will be time eventually for laughter and celebration, a feast to prepare for friend and stranger alike.
There will also be time for gratitude.
Now is that time.
Every moment is an opportunity.
Happiness is indeed in the demeanor, and voice, and words, of those who chose to embrace it -- eyes wide open.
mercredi, décembre 05, 2012
We will not be able to say "we didn't know"
It doesn't take long for your world to shake, if slightly -- to rotate enough so that you look at things a bit differently.
It was a lovely morning, most unlike the way we normally imagine late fall (it might be time to toss away the templates, anyway).
A good day to play hooky from the conundrums that have been playing merry hell with my peace of mind.
Write about them! my son yelled at me recently. It about kills us to fight with each other, so he deals with it by bellowing.
Post them on your blog!
Perhaps I will -- later.
Yesterday, it was other people's pain that concerned me. Other people's agony, out of all proportion to the constant low level sadness that continues to affect me, like a wound that never heals.
Glancing up at the sky and the trees as I hiked past streams and over bridges, I had my phone app tuned into NPR yesterday when reporters broke into the talk show for news.
A Syrian school bombed. At least 13 children killed.
Ninth graders, these kids. The age of my son and his friends.
Maybe the young boys and girls gathered for meetings of the young business leaders of Syria. Perhaps they hung out in the lunchroom, telling stupid jokes to their friends. Maybe they played trumpet in the band, as he does.
No more.
I imagined the grief of their parents -- the wild, agonized cries, torn from the deepest part of their souls.
I imagined the school, rubble scattered everywhere.
I imagined Assad's demonic airplanes flying overhead.
"Never again," Jews said after the Holocaust. And the nation of Israel has made itself into a nation so strong that it could blow its neighbors to smithereens multiple times (whether this is a good thing is a debate for another time).
Yes, again.
Again in Cambodia.
Again in Guatemala.
Again in Bosnia.
Again in Rwanda.
Again in Syria.
We cannot dare to claim that we don't know.
Dear God, if we used our imaginations this world would collapse from the force of our grief.
I could have laid on the ground and wailed and beat my fists bloody against the macadam..
Instead, I walked home, and drove to my internship -- the sky as blue, the sun as bright, the air as lovely.
Except for knowing that, as Hillary Clinton said today -- Assad will go. We just don't know, she added, how many people will have to die before he does. Including children.
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