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The impossible christmas

Posted by on 2010/12/12 No comments | 390 views

This does not fit with the modern idea that we are all getting through to God in our own way. No, says Matthew. God has got through to us in this way. And Jesus is no great teacher, no guru, no peer of Mohammed or Gandhi. He is God with us. That is the essential claim on which Christianity is built. It is a claim which cannot be abandoned without abandoning the faith entirely.   –Michael Green

I think it’s hard, really, to reflect on Christmas.

Many times we’ve heard the account of the journey to Bethlehem and the birth in the manger…maybe too many times.  We recognize the Three Wise Men from our nativity scenes and we’ve sung the Carols year after year.  I think it’s hard, really, to get proper perspective on the Christmas event…not just every year, but EVER.  How are we to even begin understanding that God came down, that the Creator entered His creation, that Timelessness and Limitlessness took form in a time and place, that the hands of He who sculpted mountains and painted oceans could barely cling to his mother’s finger, that the great Sustainer of Life became totally dependent on the care of His earthly parents, nuzzling in their arms that Christmas morning?

I think Christmas tends to evade us in one of 2 ways.  Either we believe conceptually in the miracle and get lost in the traditions or the traditions have somehow kept us from the miracle altogether. In the first case, we may celebrate even in a very positive way—believing it’s all about giving, for example—but in the process lose the Gift that is for us. In the second case, when Christmas is synonymous with trimming trees and a jolly old man in a red suit, we remove the Big God from it altogether. We’ve tamed Him into images we’re more capable of wrapping our heads around. It’s easy to see how this God could come for a visit…

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Merry mixmas

Posted by on 2010/12/05 No comments | 294 views

I have in years past sent mix CDs, crafted with much love, as Christmas gifts. Many of you email me every year to tell me your listening to old “Very Bs”. I didn’t have the time this year to manufacturer the discs, but here is the code for Very B Christmas ’10. If you click the link, it will allow you to buy the songs in iTunes.

I consider this my Christmas hug to you through your iPod. I hope it does something to increase your enjoyment and reflection on this special time of year.

With Love, Merry Christmas….. inklingz

Kicked out: home, pt II.

Posted by on 2010/09/30 2 comments | 935 views

When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere; just ask him. If you listen, he’ll tell you how he got there–how he forgot where he was going and then he woke up. If you listen, he’ll tell you about the time, he thought he was an angel and dreamt of being perfect. And Then he’ll smile with wisdom, content that he realized the world isn’t perfect. We’re flawed because we want so much more. We’re ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had.  –Donald Draper, Madmen

If you asked me to sum up the human experience, I don’t think I could say more with many words than I will say with just one: Longing. There’s a certain shiftiness those things for which we hope and desire–they either evade us or aren’t quite what we thought they would be when we get them. In the end, they aren’t enough. We previously discussed the idea of Longing in terms of a desire to go Home.  I’d like to pick the topic back up today using the idea of Shalom.

Shalom is a Hebrew word meaning: a state of peace, completeness and welfare–fully restored and whole. It’s a state of being, not a place. In many ways, it’s the opposite of Longing. A man cannot be at peace and still ache–cannot be whole and still empty.  I think Shalom may be the thing for which we seek–it’s the Home we have never known, and yet we somehow know of it. Our longings point us there: both the incompleteness of our joy and the pain of our sorrow.

Ever notice how even the very best things in this world somehow fail to keep their promises? C.S. Lewis put it this way:

Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.

We are left wanting more or other, but left still wanting–still longing…

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