Swimming against the tide

Garrison Kiellor said in a recent "News from Lake Wobegon" that the Episcopalians have ADD - Advent Denial Disorder.  He means (and he's right) that Episcopalians want Advent to be Advent, not Christmas, and therefore we pretend like the Christmas rush everywhere around us isn't really happening. 

Advent is the season of the church year that begins at the end of November and includes the four Sundays before Christmas day.  During the season of Advent, we do not sing Christmas carols in church - we sing Advent carols which are fairly formal and quite Anglican.  We don't put up lights or decorations until Christmas eve.  So unlike the rest of the country, which has been celebrating Christmas for weeks (or in the case of retailers - have been pushing Christmas since October or even late September) we stubbornly struggle to remain in Advent - insisting that it's a quiet season of preparation and anticipation.  We tend to look down our noses at those who put up their Christmas trees right after Thanksgiving.  Don't they know it's not Christmas yet?  But, as Garrison Kiellor points out, other than giving a token nod to Advent with Advent calendars or Advent wreaths, pretty much everyone thinks of the month of December as the Christmas season - rather than the Advent season.

I think this is too bad because I like Advent a lot.  So I had a strong case of ADD this year.  And in many ways, it was great.  I avoided the Christmas rush - choosing instead to take some quiet time to rest and prepare and take care of myself.  We didn't even buy our tree until Dec 23 - a practice we might repeat again because it was quite festive and joyful and we got a beautiful frasier fir for only $20.  And we had a lot of fun decorating it together as a family on Christmas eve.  It is still glowing brightly in our living room today, the fifth day of Christmas.  It will remain there until the 12th day of Christmas - January 5th. 

I really like honoring the church calendar rather than succumbing to the commercial calendar.  But this year I've found it to be rather a struggle to honor the Christmas season.  In Advent, it was easy enough to be counter cultural.  But this week, as I say "Merry Christmas!" to people, I've noticed the strange looks I get.  "Yes.... um .... Happy New Year," people mostly respond.  What's wrong with her?  Doesn't she know that Christmas was last weekend?  I've been posting a different Christmas song or video on the church facebook page each day of Christmas, and I notice I seem to be the only one still talking about Christmas at all.  And I bet it'll seem even stranger when I'm still saying Merry Christmas to people next week.  After New Year's Day, it'll be right out!  People have become Christmas weary - and who can blame them?  We've all had enough tinsel, Jingle Bells and Rudolph to last another year for sure!  People are ready to take the tree down and be done with it.  Time to move on to 2012.

So I'm left to wonder what it means to want to honor a calendar that is no longer normal.  What does it mean to want to stick to traditions that are no longer known, let alone fashionable?  And this leads me to ask: as fewer and fewer people consider church an important part of their lives, what does it mean to be a faithful churchgoer?  A person who professes a particular religious faith?  A disciple of Jesus?   Although sometimes it feels like a struggle, I'm not sure this struggle is all bad.  Because these days, I have to consciously choose my faith, to consciously decide to learn to swim in it and to really work at claiming it as my own - instead of just being swept up in the tide of what everyone else around me is doing.  I have to intentionally choose my own priorities when what's important to me seems counter cultural to most others - whether that's something as small as calendar traditions or as large as choosing my basic priorities in life.  I have to learn what it means to stand up for something even when it makes me stick out and seem strange to others.  I simply can't be smugly comfortable in my religious faith as some of my recent forebears had become, and I think it is a good thing.  I take heart that Jesus himself did not have a smugly comfortable life of faith, either.

 

All Saints and All Souls

I had breakfast with a colleague this morning, who recommended that I take a look at the eulogy Steve Jobs' sister's delivered at his funeral.   A eulogy about Steve Jobs?  Really Janet?  I have to admit that I've secretly resented all the attention Steve Jobs' death has gotten in the media and how his words of wisdom are now so often now quoted on facebook as if he were a wise philospher and not just a businessman.  I have generally judged this as a sad commentary on our culture - turning a wealthy entrepreneur into a kind of consumerist society saint - which has seemed to me to canonize wealth and influence and rugged individualism as our highest ideals.

But my conversation with my colleague has opened me up to a different viewpoint.  She spoke admiringly of Steve Jobs' creativity, his commitment to excellence, his love of his work, his ability to risk and to change, and his search not just for function but for beauty.  She pointed out that it is no mystery why people have paid so much attention to his passing is because he and his company and his products have really changed life as we know it for almost every individual in the US.

So I got off my high horse and took a look at the eulogy.  Mr. Jobs' sister obviously loved him a whole lot, which her words clearly show, and according to her, his last words were, "Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow!"  Such final words would endear me to anyone, no matter what I knew or didn't know about them.  So I decided that perhaps I will let go of my resentment about the press coverage of Steve Jobs' death and instead choose to focus on how sometimes it is only through another person that we can manage to see something bigger than our human selves, and how just a few very human words can somehow fully express the power of love, the adventure of death and the mysterious presence of God in and among us.

Overconsumption

My neighbor and I went out to breakfast together recently, and she ordered a pancake special called "One is Enough," and this is what she got.  Wow!  That was the biggest pancake I had ever seen (the picture really doesn't do it justice - it is very thick as well as wide!)  She said it was delicious, but of course she couldn't finish it even half of it.  My first thought was that I had to bring the boys to this place because Carl, in particular, is a pancake fanatic.  But you know, who really needs that big a pancake?    

Christmas is coming and this weekend is the biggest shopping weekend of the year, and American consumerism is at its ugliest.  We are all like kids in a candy store (or Carl in a pancake shop) and we just want more and more cool stuff.  Why have a stack of two pancakes when you can have a gorgeous stack of 5 or 6?   Why have a regular cell phone when you can get a smart phone?  Why have a regular TV, when you can get an HD flat screen?  I heard that in certain places, people were camping out in front of stores on Tuesday in preparation for Black Friday.   They were camping out in front of some big box store right through Thanksgiving Day.  

My family has moved 5 times in the last 5 years.  We haven't been any place long enough to accumulate much, and each time we move, we get rid of LOTS of extraneous stuff.  Yet each time, I am still amazed and appalled by how much stuff we still drag around with us.  My parents didn't have this much stuff.  Their parents, who immigrated from Sweden, didn't lug along anywhere near that much stuff.  Old houses have tiny closets because that was all they needed.  And they didn't rent storage units, either. 

I was just listening to an economist on NPR, talking about our national debt and deficit.  She said that the problem is that Americans have increasingly become "overconsumers."  We have lived beyond our means for a very long time.  She said that unless we learn to consume less we will not be able to maintain a sustainable economy.  Overconsumers.  Hmmm.  I thought immediately of the size of that pancake.  (not to mention the amount of food I ate on Thursday!)

I have been considering the issue of our society's unsustainability in many areas lately.  The U.S. uses most of the world's resources.  We eat ourselves silly.  We build acres of 5000 square foot houses with 3 and 4 car garages.  We heat and air condition all those houses and fill all those cars with gas.  And, I am sorry to say, we also have a church on just about every street corner, each one with its own furnace to fill, roof to repair and staff to pay.  All you have to do is look at global warming, increasing obesity, the mortgage default and bankruptcy rates and the rate of decline and closure of churches to know that we are behaving in unsustainable ways and things have got to change.

We are in a transitional place in history in our country.  We know we need to change things but we don't yet know how.  We know the future needs to be different, but we're still clinging to familiar habits.  We know many of the things we do aren't good for us, but we keep doing them anyway, unsure of what a future without them would be like.  This reminds me a lot of the kinds of stories I hear in 12 step meetings. 

And I guess I'm thinking about unsustainability in the month of December in my own home.  And I am praying for the courage to change.  Am I going to spend more money than I have to get stuff to go under the tree that gets enjoyed for a day or a week and then gets stored in a closet?  Do I have to buy stuff this Christmas or can we find a different way to show God's love to each other?  All I know is what we've always done.  What would a different kind of Christmas be like? 

Well, I'm not going to solve our country's issues of unsustainability myself this season.  But I can take some little steps toward change.  I've decided I don't need to fill the stockings with fun little items that last a short time, but then fill the landfill with more plastic.  In fact, I'm thinking twice about buying anything made of plastic lately.  I'm thinking about giving my kids an experience for Christmas (like a family trip) instead of giving stuff.  I'm thinking about walking to the grocery store when I need a few things instead of jumping in the car.  It's only 1/2 mile away!  And I'm turning off lights all over the place.

And I'm praying.  Praying that God takes my life and my will and turns me toward sanity.  I want to become entirely ready to be made new and to welcome healing for my - and my society's - unsustainable ways.