Pageantry

On Saturday and Sunday my church put on their annual Christmas Pageant. People--especially the people who are in it--go nuts over this thing. My first autumn at this church, I was enlisted to be a "Traveler," in the "King's Procession," and in the "People of Other Lands," and I hadn't even seen the production yet. I mean, I know the Christmas story, of course, but I hadn't seen this version of it, and by the time it was all over, though I had a rough idea of all the components and how they all came together, I was still a little uncertain about what I had just been involved in. Mostly all I knew was that we were talking about Jesus' birth and that at the end the narrators said that one day people of all walks of life and all nations of the earth would come and worship the One who gives us life, and then there I was, a white girl in a sari, walking down the aisle.

Last year I got to opt out of the "King's Procession," but I still didn't get to see the whole production until this year, when one of our three narrators couldn't participate. I jumped at the chance. My family read aloud to each other up through the time I graduated from high school, and beyond, so I love reading and being read to. It didn't occur to me that by taking this role, I would also get a different perspective on the Pageant.

On the night of the dress rehearsal, it was not maybe such a good different perspective. Everything was chaotic and we kept having technical difficulties and the whole thing lasted far longer than I had expected or hoped. (God promises to do more than we can ask or hope, but . . . somehow that wasn't what I had in mind.)

On Saturday I had a raging migraine, such as I have not had in a long time (though I've been getting them more often again, of late). I sat up in the balcony far earlier than I needed to be there and tried to relax and stay warm and drown out the low hubbub that was going on around and below me. Then it got to be 2 o'clock and they turned off all the lights and I sat in the quiet darkness and waited for the first scene to go by before I had to read anything. The Pageant had begun.

As it went on, the pain all over began to subside, and I watched as adults and youth and children I know and care about made postcard-scenes in their bits of cloth and glitter and gold lam'e. And I noticed something strange. The best descriptor I could think of for it was Picasso's pithy saying to the effect that "Art is a lie that uncovers the truth." Here we were, a whole bunch of ordinary people, telling an extraordinary story, but not telling it in a very realistic way. There were songs and darkness and spotlights, and no one's costume was, I don't suppose, legitimately first century or Middle Eastern. We had two sheep and a donkey (who at one point almost stole the show because she did not want to exit stage left), and magi wearing bits of drapery and upholstery, and the combined effect was truly beautiful. I hadn't thought those things, which in real life would be quite tawdry, really, could have that kind of a result.

Maybe it helped that I know people here now and all the teens who played Mary and Joseph and the major angels are "my" teens in "my" youth group, but it just seemed like something about everybody's getting dressed up totally differently and putting themselves in a completely "other" context brought out things about them that highlighted who they are, that ennobled them. People carried themselves differently, or the colours they were wearing highlighted certain features about them that made them "more" than they usually seem, or someone caught just the perfect facial expression for the character they were portraying, or the spotlight hit someone just right so that they looked glorious.

Churches nowadays are really "big" on authenticity, and rightly so, I think. I'm really big on authenticity. But sometimes (and I feel I can say this because I feel I've fallen prey to it on more than one occasion) what is touted as "authenticity" turns into self-promotion or self-indulgence, and maybe it's time to recover something that other Christians of other times understood, and that was a sense of wonder and a sense of pageantry and that sometimes, while you don't want to make the costume and mask the place that you live, if they are just temporary measures, they uncover a truth greater than we would have expected.

On the Side of the Road

Now that we're done with bumper stickers for a while, how 'bout billboards?

There are some really dumb ones out there lately. McDonald's are just weird. Clearly they're trying to be clever ("Good things come to those who wake"), but . . . I dunno. Something just seems to fall flat. My favourite one is "Our hotcakes are going like . . . " but after that, it's just "If coffee is Joe, ours is Joseph." Huh? What does that even mean?

The most bizarre billboard up on the main highway going through our City right now, though? It depicts three women, each in a different decade of life. They all look like they're laughing hard enough, if they had any sort of bladder control problem, to . . . have a bladder control problem. The caption says, "Not your mother's hysterectomy." Okay. Guess not.

Everything You Think

Here at Jennwith2ns' blog, we're analysing popular cultural catch-phrases. Why are we doing this, you ask? Because they're there, and I, Jennwith2ns, overanalyse everything. (You mean you hadn't noticed this yet?)

Previously on Lost . . . I mean, on this blog, I analysed an email forward, and then right before this here post here, I analysed a couple of bumper-sticker sayings but this afternoon, because I found the previously-mentioned awesomely-hippie site, Soul-Flower, I have a whole lot more bumper-sticker-catch-phrase fodder in which to revel, so here are my bumper-sticker reviews. I'm not going to give the nod to every single sticker on the site, but it turns out I have something to say about quite a few of them, so here I am, going to say it.

Bumper stickers that make me feel very un-hippie (i.e. make me want to punch someone in the face):

1. Coexist - Indeed. Please let us exist together peaceably. But I don't intend to stop talking to people about Jesus and the fact that I believe He has a vested interest in their lives, and also, I don't believe that all religions are on the same level, so seeing all those symbols mashed together on a dark rectangle makes me start having extremist feelings, which I don't really want to have.

2. Treehugging Dirt Worshipper - "So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen" (Romans 1.24-25, NLT).

3. Karma Happens - I actually kind of agree that it does--I kind of agree that there is something like karma out there. I just feel like Jesus came to free us from it. If it was really for freedom that Christ has set us free, I'd rather not get tied up again in slavery to the law--even by acknowledging it on the back of my car.

Turns out, though, that there are a lot more bumper stickers on here that I actually do like, even though you might not expect all of them to be right up my street.

1. Peace Be With You - Hey guys, they say this in church. 'Cause Jesus said it first. I'm down. (Interestingly, though, He isn't cited. Unlike Bob Marley, Gandhi, and John Lennon on other bumper stickers.)

2. Lord, Help Me to Be the Person My Dog Thinks I Am - This might not be a bad thing to pray, really.

3. Support Organic Farms - 'Cause I do.

4. Support Your Local Revolution - Especially if it's the next Great Awakening or something.

5. Break the Chains! Shop Independent Stores - I like this sentiment. I would never put it on my car, though, because it would make me a card-carrying hypocrite. I shop at Marshalls and Old Navy and I used to work at Starbucks, for crying out loud.

6. Change is Inevitable. Growth is Optional. - Both things are true. As I have observed and personally experienced.

7. Roots Run Deep - I don't know if I even know what the hippie meaning for this is, but they do, and I want to be rooted deeply . . . in the Jesus-life.

8. Compost Happens - Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

9. If We Don't Change Direction, We'll End Up Where We're Going - Do I need to explain this?

Okay. The end. I'm happy to have got this off my chest. What are some of your loved or hated bumper stickers?

Partying It Up

This morning I woke up and it was a sunny day off and it was Good Friday, and I felt that kind of gratitude that you can't drum up yourself--the kind that comes when you realise disaster has been averted and you could in no way have averted it any more than, um . . . an egg could descramble itself. That's a kind of silly simile, but I think it gets the point across.

So I went downstairs and thought, "I am going to make myself a Really Nice Breakfast, to celebrate Good Friday with Jesus." I was about halfway through deciding on the menu for this Really Nice Breakfast before it dawned on me that this is not normally how Christendom, or even this particular Christian, observes Good Friday. I have fasted on Good Friday before. I have been sombre and silent and spent the entire day not talking to anyone unless I went to church at some point during the day, and even then not a whole lot of talking went on. I have seen The Passion of the Christ and (to me the more moving experience of) the Life of Christ at Wintershall in England. I have cried my eyes out during the former and, with an unexpressible mix of emotions almost wiped the blood from Jesus' face in the latter.

This kind of thing is good for me, I think. I would be a pretty calloused individual if I couldn't mourn the part that I myself have played in torturing and denying and betraying and killing God.

But today? I made the Really Nice Breakfast. Because, as is the way with most things Jesus-related, Good Friday is both simple and complex, both a horror and a Good--a paradox. And today I'm celebrating. I'll celebrate the Resurrection on the day I'm "supposed" to, but the fact that God would come down here and sacrifice Himself because I couldn't relate to Him otherwise and He wanted it that much, and the fact that He has called me into the same adventure of sacrifice and forgiveness and joy is such a big deal . . .

Today my dad read me the following over the phone. It says what I mean better than I'm saying it I think:

This table is different. This table of the Lord isn't where sinners find Christ but where sinners celebrate being found …

Maybe some morning, instead of solemnly passing these trays, we should dance for joy. Maybe we should sing every born-again song we know. Maybe we should tell our "homecoming" stories and laugh like people who no longer fear death. Maybe we should ask if anyone wants seconds and hold our little cups high to toast lost sisters found and dead brothers alive.

Lee Eclov, "The Sinner's Feast," PreachingToday.

I propose a toast to that very thing. I don't have to punish myself anymore because my sins killed God--He's the Judge. And He took the punishment. Now I can celebrate that He did. So today I'm toasting Him--and you and me and Life (which would be Him again--did you notice?). You in? Cheers!

Dependence

I feel that there are some lessons to be learned here about dependence. Whether or not I learn them remains to be seen. But since the power outage on Thursday I have:

1. Showered at the Clevelands'.
2. Eaten breakfast at my Old Church.
3. Done laundry and watched a movie at Pastor Steve and Pastor Val's. ("Pastor Val" is not really what anyone calls her, but it is essentially what she is, so that's her name for this blog. So there.)
4. Worshipped at my Old Church because my New Church didn't have power either.
5. Had dinner with five other families at the Barrows'.
6. Availed myself of the Clevelands' intervention with my car.
7. Used the Barrows' computer.
8. Used my computer at the Barrows' house.

I also anticipate staying at a friend's or friends' in the City a couple of nights this week.

Besides all that, I have spent the entire autumn depending on rides and hand-outs and cooking and cry-on-able shoulders of various and sundry friends and relations before this weather-related disaster, because of my health-related sort-of-disaster.

This is hard for an American. And a New Englander. And a Jennwith2ns.

I feel very dependent. The cancer diagnosis made me feel dependent on people in new ways. The "Ice Tornado" (as some people have dubbed it) has not only heightened that feeling, but also kind of highlighted how dependent I am on things that are not people. Like electricity. And my telephone. And the internet. And my car. And clear roadways. And showering.

The whole ordeal is very blessed and very irritating (two qualities which may, I suspect, belong together more often than not). Most of all I'm realising how God is the only one I can depend on. But I'm also resonating more fully with Teresa of Avila, when she told God, "If this is the way you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few!” (I also resonate with her saying, however, “What a great favor God does to those He places in the company of good people!”)

Adjusting for Accuracy

Actually, I still don't exactly remember what New-York-David initially called me yesterday, but Old-Timer-Ben (who's 23, by the way) reminded me that it had the word "democrat" in it. We think it was something like "left-wing hippie liberal Democrat." Yeah. He called me a Democrat.

(Well, I can't say I'm a Republican.)

Selves

"I am only facing the two quite general, but quite sufficiently rousing facts: that we all of us have 'selves' (the enemies of our good true selves) to fight, and that only so fighting are we adult, fruitful and happy."

--Spiritual Counsels and Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hugel
as discovered by me and quoted by Susan Howatch in Glittering Images.

Quote

My friend the Molly Llama just sent me the following, which I love:

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

--Fredrick Buechner

They said . . .

Here are some thoughts I didn't come up with myself, but they seem related to mine and struck me as very true:

The first one is from a novel based on a true story, about a young man who is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan:

"It was a broken world, I knew then, that would allow a boy such as me to bury a boy such as William K."
--What is the What?, Dave Eggers

"We’re thankful for this time of year. It reminds us that the unlimited God took on the very limits that rob human beings of our own feeble glory—and then broke those limits."
--my brother

It's is unquestionably true that Starbucks Christmas mix CD's that we play in our stores get a little old, because there aren't as many Christmas songs as there are Everything-Else songs. But on the other hand, I noticed on Christmas Eve, there really are a whole lot of beautiful Christmas carols, even beyond the familiar ones. And they're deep and rich or just plain delighted and all of them sound like a winter-coloured party. I read somewhere else (Crossing Borders by Rodney Clapp, to be exact) recently that Christians would regain Christmas as our holiday if we regained our sense of the enormity of Easter. I believe this is true, but I don't think that means it's bad to try to celebrate Christmas for all it's worth in the meantime.

"Sing, daughter of Tziyon [Zion]; rejoice! For, here, I am coming; and I will live among you," says Adonai."
--Zechariah 2.10, CJB

That's a lot to sing about--that God would play by our rules so seriously. That not only would He submit to rearranging our messes according to the brokenness we instituted, but also submit to the form He had given us, and live here with us. That someday He will fix the world and live with us, not just by His Spirit, and not just in His pre-resurrection body, but in a way we have never imagined.

Job 28

I still remember when I first clued in to the fact that most artists (writers, visual artists, musicians, what have you) who have ever produced really great art have also suffered in some way, in some depth. This (the light dawning, and not every artist's particular suffering) didn't actually happen until I was halfway through college, which might give you an idea of how quick on the draw I am.

It was kind of a disappointing realisation, because I wanted to become a great writer, but I sure didn't want to have to pay for it. I still don't, really. (Although, speaking of paying, I could, if I had an extra four grand, get a children's novel of mine published. Only I don't, and if I did, I'd probably use it to take a sabbatical in Asia or something instead.)

Some fifteen years after college, I now think you probably have to suffer just for being human, and while natural, God-given talent may sometimes be enhanced by the process, goodness or greatness or genius is not a necessary by-product. It could be, though. Maybe even should be. I'm probably going to explore some of the coulds and shoulds of the universe some other time, but for now I'm just thinking about the book of Job again, chapter 28.

Every so often one year around Advent, I'll decide to read through the readings of the daily lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer. I don't really understand how the Book of Common Prayer is set up, nor how it works, my experience of Episcopalianism being happy but late and brief. But I like the lectionary because you get to read three Bible passages in a day from totally different parts (and literary genres) of the Bible and sometimes they're so related it's uncanny. (It would probably be even more uncanny if I didn't believe in the Holy Spirit--but then I might not see the coincidences either.)

It's the lectionary's fault that I've been reading through Job, Acts, and John all at the same time. So far not too many noteworthy resonances between the three, though all three have served to get the brain ticking a little faster than usual. It's also the lectionary's fault for my having read through the whole book of Job, up to and through God's "comment on the blog" with Job's putting his hand over his mouth and repenting in dust and ashes, only to return to chapter 28 at the end of all of it. I never noticed chapter 28 before, but it's beautiful. Don't ask me how Job would know that much about mining gems and precious metals; maybe he owned a mine or something. It might explain how he got so rich in the first place.

Anyway, in chapter 28 he describes the lengths to which people will go in order to dredge up precious stones and a little about how the ores get there in the first place:

Miners conquer the darkness and dig as far in as they can,
to the ore in gloom and deep darkness.
There where no one lives, they break open a shaft;
the feet passing over are oblivious to them;
far from people, suspended in space, they swing to and fro.
While the earth is [peacefully] yielding bread,
underneath it is being convulsed as if by fire;
its rocks have veins of saffire, and there are flecks of gold . . .
(Job 28.3-6, CJB)

Just a few verses later, Job launches into a monologue about wisdom and where it comes from. Even in the middle of his pain and mental/emotional/psychological anguish, not to mention a bunch of pseudo-friends who are being less than helpful, he just sort of starts wondering aloud about it. And even though he's so (not unreasonably) mad at God, he confesses that if wisdom can be found anywhere, it is only done in some sort of relation to Him.

So where does wisdom come from?
Where is the source of understanding,
inasmuch as it is hidden from the eyes of all living
and kept secret from the birds flying around in the sky?
Destruction and Death say,
"We have heard a rumour about it with our ears"
(Job 28.20-22, CJB).

It's probably safe to say that Job knew a fair amount about death and destruction at this point, in spite of not having completely kicked the bucket himself yet. It kind of makes me feel like he (and whoever put together the lectionary and decided to have all us lectionary-followers read this chapter last) was intimating that wisdom, like saffires, is rare and hard to find, hard and costly to obtain, and caused by fiery convulsions. Kind of like, in spite of the fact he was still mad at God, he was starting to get an idea that wisdom, which can only come from God, can also only really come from suffering. At least--maybe that's not exactly it; I'm still trying to put my finger on it, but there's some kind of correlation.

Even before Luis' email, I have often thought about the fact that giving Job a whole bunch more kids at the end of the story can't really have made up for the ones he lost. (Not to mention I would think it would have taken a lot of forgiveness on his part to restore that much intimacy with his wife who had told him to curse God and die.) I have often felt dissatisfied with God's response. But maybe that's just because I don't have the wisdom Job had. Maybe I can't have it, with the life I have experienced up to this point. Whether or not Job missed his first children, he seems to have been convinced and convicted by, as well as satisfied with, God's answer to him. Maybe, after being "convulsed by fire," he understood things I can't.

Oh, and one more thing . . .

(We're all about quotes today). The award for the best line of the day goes to my maternal grandmother, who says,

Sleeping is not the way I like to spend my waking hours.

Amen, sister. I mean, Grandma. Good night!