Archive for the ‘Christmas’ Tag
The status quo is just another word for complacency or resignation in my book, it stinks of the stocks. For me, hope is tied to change, so when progress is blocked I despond. I don’t go down easily–I have always been a fighter–but I crippled my emotional resources fighting for the wrong end with the wrong means, and since I crawled from the field of battle, my rehabilitation seems to have no end. I’ve been working on my recovery for over a decade. At this rate, my convalescent home will become my retirement home; my life’s purpose has drained off like water from a cracked barrel. How do I celebrate Christmas on crutch and braces? What gift can I bring to God? I have nothing, nothing but a broken heart. What I have, I give.
“A broken and contrite heart you will not despise.”
Dec. 2: Simplicity: Spirituality on Rations
Kimberly and I are boxed in by limited resources, especially emotional resources. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” Jesus said, and though it doesn’t feel blessed, I find it carries a spiritual wealth that others miss. In fact, the really hard part of our experience is not from our personal limits, but from our society’s values and judgments. Our daily choices must break through a constant barrage that threatens to swamp us. Our society has traded in Jesus’ version of abundant life for the American version of abundant life. It is now measured by success above faithfulness, impact above humility, drive above being, power above brokenness. How can we grasp in today’s world any sense of the blessedness of poverty?
Here are a few of the riches we found in our own experience of poverty.
1) Focused orientation: Excess breeds a casual spirit. With few resources comes a focused life. Superficiality is stripped away, and the things that really matter really matter. If you have one true friend, for example, you learn a depth of friendship that a crowd of pals won’t teach.
2) True values: Someone with a folder of opportunities and a stash of resources has a wide range of choices. Those of us with few resources must guard our priorities or suffer dearly for it. Since my spirit falters under criticism, for instance, I choose carefully the issues on which I take a public stand. I have not always been this way–I used to voice every disagreement with relish, aggressively. That was not good for me or my relationships, or even good for the truth. It was a potent defense mechanism, which I have laid aside, making myself much more vulnerable, but also more authentic, a high value for me now.
3) Enhanced growth: I expected in theory that more resources would create more potential and freedom, but I found in experience that suffering and stringency are much more fertile soils for self-discovery and growth. When life is smooth, I have little need or motivation to go plowing up my soul, but daily struggle demands attention. Patience and courage and perseverance and faith are strengthened by the obstacles we face.
4) Deepened empathy: Recent studies have shown that those who have more care less about others. Statistically, the poor are more generous than the rich. Those of us who feel threatened and battered by life can better understand and feel compassion for others like us, and we feel safer with someone whose soul has been deeply cut. The tender are tender.
5) Healing relationships: Deep connection doesn’t come through sharing our strengths and abilities, but rather, like grafted branches, our exposed wounds bind us together in a living, vital way. It is in shared weakness and want that we create strong community. When the window dressing is stripped off–all our efforts to look good and capable and successful–then the real me can connect with the real you, and acceptance of my true self has astounding power to heal.
I can resent my poverty or scrabble to escape it or pretend it isn’t there, but when I embrace my poverty, the true spirit of Christmas is released.
For November I posted daily a thanksgiving on Facebook, usually tongue in cheek, and I found the daily practice was good both for my writing and my outlook. Keeping a habit is a good bit easier than creating one from scratch, so here’s my carryover: daily advent reflections, starting inevitably with simplicity to which Kimberly and I are forced by our meager resources.
Dec. 1 (yes, I realize it is Dec. 2… I’ll catch up tonight)
So, Thanksgiving’s out of the way, barely. Friday and Saturday I put up half our Christmas decorations, a little here, a little there… the rest is not going up. Kimberly and I scale our life investments to our energy levels, which is one of the secrets not only of keeping the spirit (and Spirit) in Christmas, but of surviving all year.
I could say we are forced into simplicity, and it sometimes feels that way, but truly it is a life choice. We have discovered that our hearts are fuller, healthier, more alive when we spend within our means emotionally, financially, socially, and in every other way. I have to continually remind myself that my lifestyle is a choice. It doesn’t feel that way because our personal poverty level is not a choice–it has been thrust upon us–and though we do what we can to increase our reserves without depleting our souls, we seem to make little headway. But how we choose to live within such a tight emotional budget is in our hands, and I believe we do well with what we have, better than many who have far more in their personal accounts.
Many approach Christmas with a determination to squeeze out of it every ounce of happiness they can–after all it only comes once a year. They decorate lavishly and bake incessantly and shop feverishly. They bribe or cajole all the relatives into coming for this great gala, then spend large amounts of energy keeping everyone to task fulfilling THE PLAN. “Quiet night, holy night” gets swallowed up in the Magnificent Christmas Celebration. Sometimes the spirit of Christmas seeps into our souls more easily when we settle into simplicity.
I am clinging to Christmas past: playing Christmas music, plugging in the tree, snacking on holiday food and drink. My neat wife likes to box up the season quick, but I’ve talked her into observing the 12 days of Christmas, not because I’m liturgically inclined, but because I’m trying to hold at bay the cheerless, cold, dark march of winter days. Our second advent theme this year was celebration, and all our decorations and colored lights inside and out speak of good cheer, pushing back the bleakness beyond.
The first Christmas was a true celebration, the Savior had been born and his whole life of healing and redemption lay ahead of him. His birth was the great crack in space and time through which God poured in. It changed everything. But our little christmases change nothing. We pause to celebrate for a few weeks and then go back to life as usual; our sugar high dumps us on the doorstep of New Years with our purses a good bit thinner and our paunches a good bit thicker. Our celebrations leave us worse off, our only defense the remorse of resolutions to do better in the next 12 months.
As I say goodbye to extended family, vacation, wrapped gifts, boxes of chocolate, TV specials and Christmas carols and return to the mundane of alarm clocks, office memos, bologna sandwiches, and the monthly mortgage, how can I keep alive the magic of Christmas? If there is any real magic in Christmas and not just pretend magic, it must be that God himself is with me–Immanuel–and my ongoing celebration, not simply of his memory from 2000 years ago, but of his daily presence. Any suggestions for how a celebration of that might look?
Janathan Grace Reflections 