Category Archives: Family

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The Party Wouldn’t Have Been Complete Without You….

There are significant moments in the lives of those we love which call for us to stop and pay attention.

Marriages.

Births.

Deaths.

And 80th Birthdays seem rather appropriate as well. If you have followed this little blog very long you will know it is the time of year for my Dad’s birthday, and this year marks the 80th. He has now lived longer than his father, and has entered yet another decade.

What on earth do you do to celebrate? Well, when you are part of a family that is not terribly crafty, and when there is not really a gift you could give that would be more than a mere gesture…you simply come together.

All of my siblings are in Albuquerque for the present time, and I am the only one no longer living in the home town. So, our “gift” was a surprise dinner, including my flying in from TN just for the dinner.

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Our gift, though is really just recognition of the gift we have received. We have this tremendous blessing of growing up in this family. This legacy is the real gift, and the dinner was just a simple way of recognizing that this is important to us.

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Recognizing that we were blessed to have a rather tremendous man as a Father.

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.” -Buechner

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I have written much about my Dad in the past, but it is worth saying again that he inspires us as he cares for Mom. He examples selfless love on a daily basis, but more than that…he has always made us feel special as his children. He has always pushed us to do more with our talents, and to be thankful in the simple things.

He is one of the constants in my life, and along with Mom has created a family that truly enjoys being with one another. We were thankful that Mom was content for nearly three hours as we laughed and told stories. That is a gift in itself…and she was not only content, she seemed to enjoy being with us.

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When I think about memories and about thinking well about our lives, I do turn to Buechner often. He does not fail to have the words I need to express this importance of family…

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.” – Buechner

Tableside

I would not have missed out on my Dad’s 80th birthday, but the reality is part of the gift he has given us is simply who we are. Hopefully we give that back to him as well. He has given us a foundation to be a family where there is strength and laughter, where stories flow quickly when we are together. He has raised up children who are eager to bless him, and that is part of the gift.  We didn’t have to say that…sometimes flying a few states over makes the point.

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Happy Birthday, Dad. 

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Glimpses of Home

It finally happened.

Throughout this month I have pondered Bethlehem. We’ve looked at poems and listened to music. Suggestions have been made about how to silence the noise and focus on the reality of Incarnation. The Word made Flesh. And…walls have been hit. Sickness has completely thrown schedules askew. Unexpected expenses have added stress.

Oh, and of course, there was hiding out in the bathroom for the tornado warning. In December.

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In the midst, though, the groundwork was laid. Reminders in twinkling lights and candles. Reminders in choruses sung in the assembly of friends and strangers…in an old, old building that seems to hold the echoes of other choruses raised.

The old, old, story. It was laced in between the sickness and the walls, the unexpected expenses and the noise. The old story is strong and does not demand, but when the moment is right it resonates with our hearts.

Then it looked a little more like this:

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Sodas at dinner, which is a rare treat. Candlelight and twinkling lights. Delight. We didn’t do the Advent readings I had hoped for, although we’ll try to finish  the one book we have been working through. We did not do all the things I envisioned, but we had a moment in the midst of the clamor where we all sat around the table and laughed and talked and were present. For a lengthy, healthy time.

We were home. That is what we long for, and that, my friends is what Advent whispers to us. We have a home, and it is not what we expected. God became homeless to bring us home…

“For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning – not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last.” -Frederick Buechner

 

The House of Christmas

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

-G. K. Chesterton

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The Extraordinary Thing is Coming…

“The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin b​ows are poised. The conductor has raised the baton.

In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.

You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.

But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.”

 -Frederick Buechner  “Advent”

Yes.  This is what I am trying to convey in my own clumsy way. Advent is not something that belongs only to certain strains of the Church. Advent is not some ritual which aims at adding burden to our lives.

Advent is the opportunity to concentrate. The opportunity to change our focus, and we need this all the more in the midst of a season that screams at us constantly. The Christmas season has become so filled with noise, we need the reason and the opportunity…and the push…to be silent more.

We need the tradition and the ritual and the rhythm of Advent to bring wonder into our midst and to teach us to sit with that wonder.

God made flesh.

Incarnation.

Redemption.

I know that I am spending much time leading up to Advent pestering you about this tradition. No, I have not forgotten Thanksgiving, and I promise I will pause the Advent pestering to spend some time thinking about Thanksgiving. Here’s the thing, though…Advent takes preparation. I have so often been caught by surprise that Advent is beginning, that I enter the season feeling flustered. Or worse, I simply decide I have failed and it’s not worth trying to jump in.

So I pester.  Advent begins this Sunday.

You may not want to make a big deal of Advent, but I encourage you to take a look around at some of the resources that would help at least get your toes wet. Again, The Village Church has an excellent Advent Guide which will have sermons connected and even a Spotify playlist of music to go along. They have done a great job of including ideas for ways to bring your kids into the understanding of Advent.

Tomorrow I’ll post mainly resources and links. For now, read again Buechner’s words above and begin preparing your heart.

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

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Enlarge That Imagination!!!!

Okay, I know I am repeating one more article, but again it says what I want to say. Part of the wonder of Christmas, and part of the wonder of the Advent season, is story. I have a multitude of friends who enjoy participating in the Elf on the Shelf tradition. This year Mr. Creative, our middle boy, has been pestering me for an Elf on the Shelf. He is at that precarious age where he knows Santa is not real, and he knows these things are imagination and play…and yet he is not quite ready to give them up. He doesn’t want to say outloud that all of this was fairy tale and play.

So, we’ll pick up an Elf. And we will heartily play with our imagination that this little doll can come to life at night and we’ll try to keep the cats from eating him. And hopefully we will expand our imaginations a bit, and we will mark the season by joy and by laughter mixed with the awe and amazement of the true Story of the season. All of these other stories are truly just play…and they pale as we begin to talk of the God who created the heavens and the earth, and then walked that earth.  Here are some thoughts again from last year:

December 22, 2012    Enlarge that Imagination

I did not know that the sugar cookie recipe called for orange zest, so I had to run back to the store. Yep, that sugar cookie recipe that I mentioned the other day…we’re making Grandma’s sugar cookies tonight and the kids are decorating so they can take them in the morning the Children’s church workers. They are, well, children-decorated. You can tell the kiddos did the work. We’ll do some more that are a little more, well, less “sprinkly”

Back to the story, though. I didn’t know it called for orange zest, so I had to run quickly to the store. The show ‘This American Life’ was on NPR, telling stories of how people celebrate Christmas across our country. The story I caught made me stay in the car in the parking lot at the store…it was a story about parents who made Christmas amazingly magical. The children, now around 30, were telling the story. Telling of the elf that lived in the attic before Christmas: they could hear him working wood up there, hammering and sawing. They would go up and find wood chips after Christmas. Their uncles and Dad would tell of how this elf could do great mischief, sharing stories of the past.

Then, they told of Christmas morning when the rather bedraggled looking Kris Kringle showed up. One of the boys said it felt a bit like they were helping him out; that he had had a tough night and they were giving him a little bit of rest before he went on his way. Then, one year they were walking near the golf course by their house and they saw someone ahead of them hiding behind the trees. Their father encouraged them to go and catch him. They did, and found another of the Santas, this one Klaus. His clothes were a little worn and he had a bag of toys. Well, sort of. He pulled out vegetables and finally bones. Telling the children that the bones were from Rudolph and it was what he used to call the reindeer.

Then the children, who had been 2, 4 and I think 8, told how this Santa, Klaus, asked them if they wanted to go on a sleigh ride to the North Pole. Only, it could only be the kids…no adults. And all three kids told how they were scared to death, even though a part of them wanted to go. Only, that part didn’t happen. Turns out the “Santa” never invited them on a sleigh ride…it was a suggestion of their dad when they were talking late that night.

The story goes on, talking about when they finally found out that all of this was an elaborate…very elaborate…ruse that their parents had developed. It was part of the story of their childhood and led to many discussions and a myth that their childhood chased after.

I was completely caught up in the story…laughing out loud in the parking lot. I was completely caught up in the lengths they went to in the attempt to create something magical and filled with wonder and imagination and surprise. The capers of the Santas, because they believed there were several different ones working together, became part of the lore of the family. To the point that the oldest boy defended Santa to his Junior High class and got in trouble, and even later blamed his parents for his inability to trust. He laughed about it as well, though.

So, here is what struck me. As I sat and listened to this really delight-filled story, I watched the people coming and going from the store. Heads down, furrowed brows, heavy hearts. There was not much wonder or joy or delight.

It seems to me that children grab hold of stories of delight and wonder and they cling to those stories. I have friends who do the Elf on a Shelf, and I know their kids look forward to the antics. It is part of their lore. Our oldest just really came to grips with Santa not being real…but now he is excited about being in the lore himself and helping to keep it alive for his siblings.

In a world where terror is very real and where fear is easy to imagine, I think it is important to give our children a framework of fantasy and wonder and imagination. These stories, whether it be Santa or the Hobbit or Star Wars or Cinderella, they enlarge our children’s imaginations. They open their eyes to something beyond what is before their eyes. The create a lore for their childhood. When they hear their parents talking about the stress of some fiscal cliff, or they hear of children slaughtered in their classroom, or they hear of 9/11…they may not understand, but even the innocent little ones in our midst get the glimpse that there is something bad out there. These stories…they tell the children that there is also great good, and that that good is strong and creative and surprising.

“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” G.K. Chesterton.

I do not think that the story of the Gospel, or the story of Creation, or the story of Easter is diminished because we played around at the stories of Santa and the dragons and the hobbit. Rather, I think the mark of our Maker is a great creativity and imagination…and as we create a framework for wonder and surprise our children find that the greatest surprise and the greatest wonder is that the most amazing story….

Is true.

We play at Santa and we play at fairy tales, but the reason we keep coming back to them is we have this itch we cannot scratch…this desire for there to be someone, something, that puts it all right. Someone who rescues or who simply knows that we are lonely and we are desperate to know someone cares and will save us.

And the Incarnation, the Gospel….Jesus…tells us that that itch can be scratched. That ache we have to be known and to be saved…it can be fulfilled. The fantasies keep our attention and keep us coming back because they hint at the truth. Santa is fun to play at, but ultimately the truth of the Incarnation brings us to our knees.

So, I hope that I can have an inkling of the creativity of the family I listened to today. I hope that I can live in a way that inspires imagination and fun and wonder and creativity….but I also hope that as we laugh and giggle and tell stories the children catch when the hush comes over our voice and we proclaim…Unto us is born this day….in the City of David…A Savior…who is Christ the Lord.