Christian Materialism : The Good

Tis the season, again. The shopping with the twin complaint of the over materializing of Christmas, along with cries to remember the reason for the season. Like the cold, the falling leaves, the shorter days, these indulgences and complaints are now part of the decor of the next few days and weeks. We will again be bludgeoned with reports of people behaving badly trying to get a bargain on the hottest Christmas present, this year it was pepper spray, last year, a death, 30 years ago battling mom’s over Cabbage Patch Kids (remember them?). We will listen to the siren track of pop Christmas music both frustrated by the holidays and filled nostalgia and anticipation.

They are all integral to the annual rite of our holiday season. As are the related complaints of offense given by saying “Happy Holidays,” instead of “Merry Christmas” or the opposite offense of saying “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays.” Of course somewhere there will be a nativity banned or a counter display for Atheists will garner news. We will all have our opinions for Christmas brings out a great deal in us. Lets not forget some poor families will be remembered, when usually they are forgotten. Many will get items they would not have, and the cuisine for the homeless will turn remarkably better. For a month, the poor will be called less fortunate and not their what we normally call them. Christmas in America, like all things human, is a mix bag.

Some how it seems strange to believe that pointing out the obvious, the commercialization of Christmas, will somehow turn it into one of our imagination or make it, at least, look more like a Christmas TV special. Like indulging the illusion of pointing out the blue of the sky will somehow make it red. It’s more like if we complain about it, then we can participate with a minimal amount of guilt. We live in a consumer culture and one where Christmas can mean up to 40 percent of the year’s business to most retail shops. We will be shocked at the excess of Black Friday. And in this economy, we also will rooting for big shopping numbers just the same. Yet, we complain. The complaints have been around longer than before my birth and most likely long after I am dust.

As a Christian, a follower of Jesus, what am I to do? Shake my fist at the appropriating of the holiday (all the while pulling out the credit card for presents for my family)? Indulge with the comfort that of course I know better? I have come to believe that the complaining does as much to keep the commercialization of Christmas in place in our own lives, because the complaints are directed to the society or the other, not me. The complaining, like the lights and the anticipation for getting presents and the anxiety of getting presents for others are all just distractions.

I have written before in Praise of Christmas materialism.   Christmas should be about the flesh around Christmas time, as we Christians are in fact worshiping when God became flesh. But Christian materialism is based being together and taking care of each other. It is summed up in the two great commandments, love God and neighbor. The most telling words for Christian at Christmas is in John 1.4 “dwelt with” for after the Word became Flesh, the Word (Jesus, God incarnate) dwelt with us. God being with us in skin, bone and blood as a baby, helpless and needing mother’s comfort makes the very act of living Holy. This is a materialism in reality.

This made me think about the nature of consumerized Christmas. The reality is that it’s not a materialism, but a disillusion. I remember as a young boy wanting a deluxe Electric Football Game, you know the one where plastic football payers move on a vibrating metal plate. It looks so cool on the commercials. I did get it on Christmas morning and for all of Christmas day, I was happy. After a few days, the game was boring and I did what most boys did, I experimented with other things to vibrate like dirt, and my sister’s dolls. That became boring, as well. Within a couple of weeks it was in closet. The promise of endless fun was not real. What was real and I keep coming to was moments and rituals of my family. I plan to cook Beef Bourguignon for my in-laws this year, because I want to share space with them and show them I love them. A group of us will serve at Ronald McDonald house and share food with families that have a child in the hospital out of a sense of knowing what means to have a child in the hospital. Joy comes from sharing good and suffering. I will not complain but find moments to look into the eyes of my fellow humans, even if they complain. Because God came to us.

For where everywhere God trends the ground becomes holy, and choice to be with us, and so our lives have been touched by the Grace of Emanuel, which means God with us. So as I watch my son, a 2-year old with dawning of the awareness of Christmas with its wonder lights, I am reminded for the glory of God-loving us in the touch of a new-born. If any thing we, Christians, should pause on the materialism of Christmas. Enjoy the excitement of the children at this time. Taste and see the goodness of the holiday treats. Be with people where ever they may be. If a person is offended by saying “Merry Christmas” I will say Happy Holidays (at least Merry Holidays to shake both of our non-thinking for a while.) I will serve at the Ronald McDonald House, as we do once as month, not as a duty but as gift from God.

Commercial White Water Rafting

Commercial White Water Rafting

Rather than pouting, the pair pointed upward

in a gaze, daring the gathered around them

to see the bearings of the universe in the fight

on one lone eagle gliding in the blue of dispersed

light. On their feet, the gesture of the two, leads

the others to the untouchable show above them.

Soon, the Eagle disappears in the updraft,

and we return to our smoked gouda sandwiches.

The Arkansas River leading to prime show

of Browns Canyon still flows past, while the rental

equipment loses a bit of its water coating to the sun.

The 12 year old boy from Delaware still talks of the Golden

Eagle’s visit as if the bird made a personal visit.

The meaning and metaphor are there, but my hands

too small to grasp it. Between our lunches end, the fourteen

of us, our two rafts, and our remounting in formation,

I count eleven passing rafts filled, two kayaks

and one canoe, which means seventy-seven

photos will snapped before ours. The pair that fell

into the cold Colorado river water just before lunch

will, fifteen years later, still have the frame image

on their living room wall. The boy? He is lost

to the mystery though his breaking voice remains.

In the Valley of Life: Stories

I have been reading John Goldingay's reflection and remembrance of his wife, Remember Ann. I have had the book awhile and have been fearing reading it. I knew John and Ann during my days at Fuller. Ann was 

diagnosed with MS early in their relationship and John took care of his wife throughout their forty year marriage. I made the acknowledgements. But I fear reading it on two fronts. First, my son has NF-1 and it may be a severe form and I don't know if I have the strength to go through if I know what that means. Better in such journeys to only dealing with whats in front of you. I remember when a friend from Colorado was looking up at the top of Mount of the Holy Cross mountain. Seeing the top he could not imagine making to the top. I had been on the top already, by taking on step a time. I did not what to deal with seeing the top from John's story. Second, I am dealing with a persistent Glaucoma problem. I fear being a blind husband to my wife, and undue burden up her, especially if our son also might need care. It was to overwhelming. 

Last night, the three of us, wife, son and me, sat a the dinner table and laughed. My two year old laugh with a deep laugh that filled his whole being over something little. I saw God in this moment. I found the courage to read a friend's story. Tears mixed with laughter, this is what I am grateful for. This does not change the devil's choice that my wife and I will have to make. Nor does it change the possible terrors my son will have to face. But sharing the story, as John does, somehow makes more alive. Below is a poem I wrote when I found out Ann had passed away. In it I remember what many forget about the Gospel is about being fully alive and fully alive with others.

The Early Church Father St. Irenaeus of Lyons famous quote about the meaning of Gospel, comes to me through the giggles of my son, “The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God”

In the Valley of Life

In memory of Ann

  

The music exists

           in time, in silence,

     and in the valley of the bones before the prophet,

               the mortal, spoke. The dryness of the land

    lacked the wind of life before the God’s

question. God

          asked the prophet if the bones

      could find flesh again and dance as a living

              people. Demanding an answer,

We become

         Mute to the fractures of our time.

      Snap, and we are orphans. Crackle, and life

             Dissipates like the smoke

From an extinguished

         Beeswax purple candle. The still hot

      Liquid of stilled blood longs to move as if

              It remained a springtime brook.

On the crossplanck

          Where the points of the valley meet,

      We answer with a song, only God could know,

            of cold loss in our marrow.

God asks the prophet

        Again, and we defer our different

      Ignorance. We speak to the bones of our past,

          Finding memories, finding

Sinew attaching

      To our stories. Will they spring up

    From out of the ground? Will they speak to us

         In a new voice.

The mortal speaks

      To the brittle dust and water begins

   To turn to blood. The skin needed to contain

          The red wine colored

Fluid covers

      The memories. Notes of forty plus

   year marriage begin to play the dignity of Ann.

           Through the silence,

She heard

      God’s s libretto through the voice

  Of the mortal. The mortal proclaimed the words

       Of life, of body broken

For new being. Alive,

     Again and for the first time,

  We remember  and give thanks and sing

     For sweet Ann given to us.

The Pain in my Thoughts and Thighs

 The Pain in my Thoughts and Thighs 

I start my morning with a cliché,

a lukewarm one at that. Walking

on ice, my reality.Trending on ice

that was once was snow, but tires

and time turned into a sheet of a mixture

white and black ice, another overused

metaphor of good and bad. So, here

I was pushing, with likeness of a beer

induced dance, toward my morning bus

stop. In the wide middle of the street

there was a path cut by tires, I meet

the moonlight of the walk and snow dust,

making sure of the planting of the heel,

the best way to avoid slipping in real

time. The red lights of warming cars

with exhaust breathing into the darkness,

became markers in my not falling.

Already, I ave pain from the ape walk

that I use to walk on the ice. Being

a meaning making machine, I wonder

why? The best I can come up with, due

much to the weakness of my morning coffee

yet to hit, and the knowledge of so many

thousands of year of poems, predictions,

pacing on ice, both black and white,

is that sometimes it snows in November

and being prepared to start earlier

will keep you from missing the bus.

Luckily, I did not have to run on ice,

another cliché altogether.

Going to the Well in the Middle of One Hot Day

Going to the Well in the Middle of One Hot Day

a mediation on a question about the purpose of a Sunday Night Bible Study

You ask how, on our emerald

and blue ball, I would direct

the coming of God, fearing

if we are doing right. I know

the temptation. Just gather under

a name and wait to see what happens,

while for others, home watching

a football dances on TV? Really,

that’s it? Better, let us go

out and conquer for the Kingdom.

Pull out the sword and cut the ear

of those who do not hear.

Dance upon the waters

through faith and trust of the message,

less we fall into the murky sea.

Adventures in the cross, yes,

but patiently pounding the book,

timid in talking about timing and tempo

in our prayers of pows, wows and hows?

Again, that’s it? Sitting in stillness

of the darkness of a random Sunday

night? What would Jesus think?

Feathering the threads

of our individual lives

into a joint blanket, what’s the use

when so many are crippled?

When so many need to be lowered

from the roof to meet the God

incarnate they so desperately need. Feed

the hungry. Yes, 

God is with us when two

or more, but Martha knows the work

still needs to be done.  Come,

and follow, 153 Sundays

and what will we know?

So, I stop and sound

your question to the wind.

What is the use?

I know the terrible secrete.

It blows in the upper floors,

His question, “Do your love me?”

leads to life, the unknowable risks

and at times to an upside down

death on a cross.