Isaiah

Lately I have been receiving chunks of the Bible in my email box, a little bit every day. I signed up for it months ago, thinking that it would be a good way to develop a greater intimacy with the text that seems to drive so much of the world around me. They offered me choices: I could have had just the New Testament, but I went for the whole thing, Genesis right on through. I figured I could do it. I figured I could be disciplined. A friend said, "Sounds like a good way to fall behind to me." I figured he was being unnecessarily negative.

I read it regularly--for the first month or so. Then life, as predicted, got in the way (the aforementioned friend has known me for a long time and is familiar with my dishes and my laundry--I guess he figured that the Bible was subject to the same rise and fall of my days) anyway, life got in the way and I stopped reading.

I let them stay marked "unread", piling up like an enormous to-do list. Eventually that got to me and I started marking them read, even though they weren't.

Then one day I realised I could read part--just part--of each entry, if I wanted. I could read just the first few lines. I could read the first chapter. I could read the first word. This occured to me around the same time that Isaiah started rolling in, and probably because it was Isaiah.

See, I started reading this stuff partly because of a book: Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. She's a nonpracticing Protestant who finds herself inextricably drawn to a lifelong lay relationship with the Catholic Benedictines. The book is about her experience of Benedictine monastic life, including lectio divina, which as far as I can tell means reading holy texts aloud. Since I've always believed that Shakespeare cannot be understood in print, this made sense to me. Anyhow, she gets to Isaiah in their year's reading-through, and she talks about this book full mostly of raging at the world, at calling down the wrath of god, of the space in this timeless writing for the darkness and the holes in our souls to shine through.

Isaiah starts showing up in December, in Canada. I figured I could use some raging at the world. Turns out there's a lot more to it, although the raging is there. It's not just Isaiah, either. Day of a big interview I checked it out like I check out a horoscope, wondering what the randomness of life has brought me. I see this:

"Surely I am more stupid than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man." (Proverbs 30:2)

No kidding, first three lines in the email. At least I'm not alone, I think, and go to my interview.

Two weeks later (interview successful) I see this:

"Oh Lord, you are my God, I will exalt you, I will praise Your name, for You have done wonderful things...you have made a city a ruin, a fortified city a ruin...never to be rebuilt...for You have been strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress..."
(Isaiah 25:1-4)

Being a strength to the needy is not always pretty, I guess. But there's hope, 32:1 says,
"Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice."

We won't always have to rely on major disasters to mete out justice. We can relax...a little...

"the wilderness and the wasteland shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing...a highway shall be there...whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray."

So it looks like even if I am more stupid than any man, I might have a chance. But then it changes again and the writer is voicing God, taking vengeance by uncovering the nakedness of the virgin daughter of Babylon. To quote the inestimable Pooh, "oh, bother."

It's a rough month, Norris is right. It is rife with destruction and revenge, anger and the glory of fear. Darkness rests heavy on my screen. I stop reading again, some. I go from reading a few verses to reading a few words. Some days I let them pile up.

Email lists are having the same predicament. Not one but two lists of loving wonderful people explode in firestorms over perceived violations of largely-unspoken protocol. I stop reading those, too. I can't take it. Too depressing. Even here in relatively-safe Canada there are reports of shootings, the most I've seen since I came here. Boxing Day brings a shootout in Toronto, at least one bystander killed. I comb my usual sources for rays of hope...but everyone is on vacation.

December is a grey month anyway, snowy but still too warm for any real outdoor sport. Snow is mushy, rain is possible, slush is likely, ice is too soft for skating. I want to curl up on my couch and wait for spring, or at least for the crisp, bright days of winter as I remember them from university. December is mostly a time of waiting, I find. I wait for the lists to come to their collective senses, remember the ideals that brought them into community. I wait for the weather to pick a side of the freezing mark. And I, like others from centuries and centuries past, wait for the sun to begin its return.

At least I'm not alone.

Yule is come.

Today one of the email lists began its turnaround, several someones posting all at once about coming back to the things that brought us there, community and love and kindness and all the rest. As usual, someone said what I was thinking, but much more eloquently. It is someone else's voice, but I am heard. As usual, someone has the strength to break the cycle and there is a flurry of jumping-on-the-better-bandwagon, and a collective sigh of relief.

Yule is come.

As I muddle toward a new career, Jeremiah 1-3 turns up in my inbox:

"Then said I: "Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth." But the Lord said to me: "Do not say, 'I am a youth,' for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you...""

We all have wisdom.

Yule is come.

Hope is in the air.

And the year turns toward spring, as ever it has.

Blessed be, and amen.

borrowed Christmas

I never celebrated Christmas as a child. We had other things we did, other days we celebrated, other reasons to give presents. We were not deprived or overly sombre, even...but we did not, in the end, celebrate Christmas.

At first it was just kind of normal. When I realised it was not normal, I was uneasy for a while; then I developed that kind of perverse pride that any seven-year-old holding minority playground status needs to survive. There were simply two kinds of people: Christians and Jews. Some of them celebrated Christmas, and some celebrated Chanukah. I started looking for the "other" tick box immediately.

After the perverse pride stage comes the silver lining stage. I tried to find all the ways in which my way was actually superior to other ways. The most obvious was that I was free to borrow as many other Christmasses and Chanukahs and so forth as I could find...and that developed, slowly, into a tradition of borrowing Christmas.

The way it went was simple: I was not doing anything on Christmas Eve (or Christmas day, or the first night of Advent, or all three) and my friends wanted to invite me to join them. So with much careful phone-calling between parents it was determined that I could in fact actually be away from home that night, and Christmas would find me sitting on someone else's living room floor, admiring someone else's ancestral ornaments, singing carols I was learning on the fly, and eating foods I didn't recognise off of someone else's fancy dishes. It was a mixed blessing: an adventure, an education, an intercultural whirlwind, and the best fly-on-the-wall opportunity the year had to offer. For once I was not expected to be anyone specific, as long as I didn't undermine tradition or routine. For once I was entirely unimportant...and I was profoundly invisible, while simultaneously being that welcome stranger who appears every few stories in the Bible.

At least twenty years now after my first borrowed Christmas, I have a library of experiences to my name. I have borrowed from friends and lovers and acquaintances and classmates and even strangers; I have had big fancy dinners with eight different utensils and balanced my plate in my lap while fending off pets in the living room. I have sung carols in three languages and explained my own complex religious traditions to strangers. I have danced new dances and written limericks for gift cards and played with wind-up toys on Christmas morning and eaten cold cuts off of fine china on Christmas Eve...and I have become an expert at borrowing Christmas.

For those of you who may find yourself the stranger at someone else's table, I offer this:

- love the experience
- release fear
- accept with grace
- expect nothing
- ask for the rules beforehand
- know that every Christmas tradition has rules
- practise forgiveness
- including for yourself
- show no surprise, except at a gift
- play with children and animals
- wear clothes that clean easily
- try everything you can
- laugh easily
- smile often
- respect your hosts
- maintain your integrity
- have your own transportation
- say please and thank you
- bring a gift if you can
- if nothing else bring flowers or cookies
- follow local custom
- offer ideas gently
- honour the ancient sanctity of the kitchen
- remember the spirit of Christmas

Christmas is this celebration of life and new beginnings, of returning light after gathering darkness, of the beginning of preparing for planting. Christmas for me is all mixed up with Chanukah and Diwali and Solstice, times to light the world from inside our hearts out. It is a time of goodwill and good wishes, or it can be.

Whatever you celebrate, and whoever's table you sit at this holiday season, may it be filled with warmth and light and joy, and may we all have a stranger welcomed in this day.

Welcome Yule!

hold on

"Hold on as the very ground beneath us starts to shiver and shake. When you love as hard as this there's bound to be some trembling, some risk, some stakes...something lost and something gained and little earthquakes..."
--Carrie Newcomer, "Little Earthquakes"

Ministry offers more metaphor, more opening, more possibilities for expression than almost every other walk of life...it's a marriage it's a tree, it's parenting, it's art, it's craft, it's love, it's a calling, it's a call, it's cliff diving, it's herding cats, it's an unending dance it's holding hope it's pushing justice it's fear and reckless abandon and careful consideration and always, always always it is hope.

simple

Lately I have been looking for ways to pare down my life. I have eaten out less, I have slept more...and recently I have stepped away from the cell phone.

I am trying to limit myself to doing one thing at a time.

The resulting quiet, even when I still use electronics, still have internet access, still have friends, is astonishing.

There is quiet in my house.
There is quiet in my brain.

as a result, I know what I think more often, and I say it better.
I know what I feel more often, and I attend to it better.
I know who I am more often, and I live it better.

The key, I think, will be doing this as my life accelerates.

I believe it is worth the effort.

numbers

One is sometimes a good number. Like today. Today, one is a good number. :-)