Christmas Comet / Advent Day 22

Advent? Yikes! Christmas is barreling down on us. I woke up this morning in terror, watching the tail of a comet whipping through the front door at mach 10. The explosion that awakened me was the actual comet, splintering our log house, a comet which no one ever saw, by the name of Christmas.

When I caught myself, I realized my brain was making lists. I still want to write a lot to people I love, and haven’t, I still haven’t figured out how to do the gifts that I have for people, I have to do a couple of days full time of work for the UU’s to get credentialed, and I have a sermon at the fellowship in two weeks, and a service this morning to read up on, and a Christmas Eve service we’re prepping this afternoon to read up on...

Waiting. Breathing.

Yesterday the weather was warm enough, like officially minus 8 but actually plus 8 up on the hill, so we took Matteo out skiing. He was all enthusiastic on the stiff, short boards he has, hand-me-down skis. We just strap his Steeger Mukluks in, hand him his beloved brand-new poles, and he’s off, shuffling, in high enthusiasm.

After two trips up the stadium hill, I swooped him up in his chariot, a module on skis which hangs on my hips by aluminum poles, now puffed out with a kid’s down sleeping bag for insulation. Matteo’s angles and chills sank into the spongy womb, we zipped him up, and closed the chassis. Ready for delivery. Marin took off home and I took off up.

We skied trails which took me down the hill in the 3:30 pm twilight. I was surprised and delighted that these weren’t lighted trails. The temperatures fell as I went down, and I could get no glide at all trying to skate ski ourselves out of the colder vale below. But even the trudge was fun. It has been two weeks since the weather was even zero-ish-balmy to do this.

The real gifts are not given, they are not earned, they are received. Life, health, attentiveness. The cold, the sweat, the shortest-day’s descent into darkness, little boy fast asleep in the chariot, head bobbing as I load him into his car seat later. How to learn to see real gifts, to frame life so that gifts can be seen, to open hearts to grace upon grace?

Last year when I couldn’t figure out what to give Marin, I fell back on the "twelve days of Christmas" strategy, which I think should be the norm for every family. The widely acclaimed "Christmas morning" strategy forces you to put everything under the tree, tear it all open, and be done with it. It requires a lot of front end loading, in secret, and the gifts need to be wrapped, that is, they must be physical things, toasters, books, electric ear-and-nose hair removers, stuff.

The "twelve days" strategy is different. It allows for rituals to continue, the daily sitting by the tree, the daily lighting of the candles, the daily singing holding hands, and the daily opening of the presents. And the presents can be gathered, created, and wrapped along the way, allowing almost two weeks of returning to the graced moment of giving and receiving. And the instead of "objects," 12 days allows for "subjects," experiences, promises, and such. Like promising to be the family movie-warrior, getting a family appropriate rental flick the third Friday of the month for the next 12 months, with a bottle of wine, a batch of popcorn, and a mid-movie backrub thrown in. Of course you have to remember it, put it on your calendar, but that beats standing in line at Walmart to buy a plastic and aluminum combo fondue set / deep fryer.

Now I’m showing my hand. This is a great strategy when you’re forty or sixty and you have everything. You cry: "Just what I needed!" Because I need to break into new experiences so I don’t get crotchety. I need to frame what experiences are already open to me so I don’t lose the gift, the gratitude, the grace. "How did you know I needed just that?"

For the hilariously creative tale of a religion-blended family trying to negotiate the best of Christmas without the prevailing religious framing, read "Irving the Snowchicken is Coming to Town." (write me if this doesn't open, I'll send it. It's worth it!)

The Better Part / Advent Day 20

Psalm 131

Lord, I am not proud,
holding my head too high,
reaching beyond my grasp.

No, I am calm and tranquil
like a weaned child
resting in its mother’s arms:
my whole being at rest.

Let Israel rest in the Lord,
now and for ever.

Well, that’s sure not me talking. Here’s where the "beloved" interpretation of the Psalms I talked about a couple days ago, has it right. At best, we want to ask for, or long for, or humbly work toward these qualities. Here’s how Nan Merrill says it:

Help me to calm and quiet my soul,
like a child quieted at its mother’s breast,
like a child that is quieted,
be so my soul.

The weekend before Christmas, I feel like Martha of the Mary-Martha story (Luke 10:38). They are co-hosts of an impromptu reception for Jesus and his entourage. Mary gets all focused on what Jesus is saying in the living room, and Martha out back on the grill is herself steaming. "Tell her to help out," she demands of Jesus. He should know injustice when he sees it, right?

"Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things," he replies. "There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

Not how I would have said it, to be sure. But an important distinction. What do we spend our time on earth doing? Crossing items off our list? Or living out from the center?

How do we find our way back to the center, when we’re in the ice-fog of daily life? Isn’t it by calling out, like a voice in a Psalm, if you believe in being answered. Or by stopping and listening, if you believe that the answering voice comes from within.

My friend Margaret and I were talking over coffee yesterday about "mission." Margaret thought she didn’t have a mission, and I thought we all do, which, after defining terms, we ended up agreeing on. What we do with our hours and days, our to-do lists and our relationships, become our "mission," for better or worse.

What’s nice about religions of the "book," the Bible, is that they have texts to remind you of what you aspired to. You keep coming back to them. What’s not great is when the texts are wielded by someone other than you, someone who is unwise or even cruel. The people who are drawn to authority, and who become "authority," often are people who carry some pain.

Which is where other practices, like sitting and breathing, a la Thich Nhat Hanh, are so helpful. You come back to being "a child quieted at its mother’s breast," because it’s who you want to be for yourself.

It’s also probably who you want to be to others in the world, holding them close, and loving them for who they are, freeing them, challenging them to be fully themselves. No list-keeping required.

Solstice, Pagan, Christianese / Advent Day 20

Solstice. The enormous machinery of our corner of the universe rolls, slowly, ponderously, into an immense pause. The shoulders of the earth have leaned as far back from the beckoning of the sun as they can without snapping the spine of astrophysics.

The temperatures have walked down the basement steps. Low minus-forties come up on my mobile thermometer, collecting data out the closed sunroof of the 95 Subaru as I streak across town to get the mail. More like "creak" across town. Emerging from the warm garage, the car undergoes a stiffening, the brakes, the steering, the springs, everything enters an instant ice-age, as motor-vehicle arthritis invades the car’s previous suppleness.

I feel like I’m a pagan on a Christian cruise. All the food, the sights, the evening caberets are in Christianese. And I have a little "christian/pagan" dictionary that I’m using to figure out what the natives are talking about whenever we put in to port.

I listen last night to St. Olaf doing their annual Christmas concert. Choral music at it’s liquid, stirring, gorgeous best. I was thinking, if I were a kid raised in a secular family, and suddenly, in college, I happened upon a hall filled with singing of this beauty and challenge, from a group of young people working intently together, all on the theme of the birth of the long-promised miraculous child, I would be unable to resist wanting to join up. Make poetry happen in my life too.

But maybe soon we’ll have a poetics of creation. We’ll have bracing stories that explicate the exquisite bending of the water-strider knees. We’ll hear sweet, lovely four-part harmonies singing the myusterious power of molten rock squeezing through cracks in the earth. We’ll see dancers and drummers incarnating the ecstasy of the sun creeping up on the far horizon of the shortest day of the year.

For now, on this cruise, everyone’s writing, composing, talking, humming, and performing in Christianese, at least within earshot. It’s a bully camouflage for the rank earning-and-spending that most of us really, on a daily basis, seem to be placing our lives on the altar of. Autnentic Pagans, like authentic Christians, decry the loss of faith – faith in the earth and its wonder, for one, faith in the teachings of Jesus to transform us, for the other.

But I do wish there were more Paul Winter Consorts honoring today’s Stonehenge moment – we’ve reached the midpoint of the the tunnel of darkness, and we’re seeing light at the other end. Doesn’t the Earth need Pagan Doctrine more than it needs more Christian Doctrine?

Iffy Love / Advent Day 19

I love everybody
especially you. Lyle Lovett

At Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village, the large bell gongs four times an hour, and you stop to love that moment. To breathe into that conversation. To notice the colors, the smells of that specific task. To remember your life, its beginning and its ending, so you can savor this chapter of your life, this paragraph, this phrase in its wondrous, ex-nihilo conception.

I sat up this morning at 6:01 am. We’re still sleeping upstairs in the living room, though the ventilation unit is installed, and the scant bedroom radon should be way scant now. In the dark, I sensed Marin semi-horizontal on the loveseat, trying to find some kind of comfort, being the living construction site for a fast-growing little baby. Matteo was one foam mattress over, in his butt-up face-down bug position. I thought, now would be the time to meditate. To actively love the moment, to breathe, to notice colors and smells, to remember beginnings and endings.

I’m writing instead, drinking coffee, pushing my way into a crowded subway car of my life, checking my transit map to try to figure out which line I transfer to in how many stops, and wondering if it will be obvious when I get there how I get a transfer, and will I arrive on time, and does it matter anyway. . .

There’s always a couple of weeks leading up to Christmas when I am thinking, I love everybody, especially you. I used to translate that into getting Alaska gifts for everyone in my immediate family and something thoughtful for everyone else, the people I love as friends and those who has been, as Esther used to say, over and again, "good to me." "You’re good to me, Cheffrey." Then there were the sermons to write and the long lines at the post office and suddenly, there’s Christmas in the rear view mirror.

So, I’ve been thinking it over again, how can I better love the people I love, to let their goodness permeate my heart, and to get past my misguided impulse to think myself more capable than I am, resulting in no love just blame: harping at my missed deadlines, unanswered letters, draft Christmas letter, my short temper. My best of intentions swirl into the stratosphere while actual flesh-and-blood relationships sail effortlessly apart like stars in an expanding universe.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Now there’s a thought on how to love the people you love. Open a new entrance into your safe, secure life where others can find shelter, nurture, sustenance. Lay down the welcome mat, if not the whole shebang. Martrydom (dying for the revolution), as they say, is the easy part.

Note: I always help Jesus along here in John chapter 15, by de-linking this stunning and brilliant thought from the next: "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you."

"If?" Can there be "ifs" in this realm?

Isn’t the power and glory found in the "unconditionality" of friendship, family? I suspect an anthropologist could make a strong argument that unconditionality is what what makes us fully human. Relationships work, they are miraculous and transforming when they are unconditional. Simply stated: we love because it’s in our nature to love, not because someone makes themselves easy to love. The harder to love, the more remarkable loving becomes.

Writing the gospel of John, pre-dawn mornings before going to work in first century Asia Minor, the authors lost their focus. From memories of what Jesus actually said, they fleshed out what stands as the most anti-semetic text of the Bible. They inserted a lot of huge, historically supremely tragic "ifs."

Advent, a time for weeding the ifs from the garden of our loves.

The Beloved / Advent Day 18

In the gospel of John, there is a disciple of Jesus who is called, simply, the "beloved" disciple. He is introduced halfway through, days before Jesus death. After Jesus washes the disciples feet – sort of like cheerfully sprucing up the toilets of a home where you’re a guest as an example of serene, committed hospitality – he begins to talk about one of his followers turning him over to the police.

Then it reads: "One of the disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to Jesus..." Immediately, Peter asks this "beloved" disciple to be an intermediary, grilling Jesus as to who the betrayer is. This shows that Peter, in other gospels the go-to guy, is really not tops on Jesus’ list, at least not in the Gospel of John. The beloved disciple is.

This shows that at the beginning of Christianity there was a non-hierarchical way of "following Jesus." It was community-based, not leader-centered, and focused on relationships rooted in authentic love, not on doctrines or on the succession of dynasties. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. One led to the Vatican, which did all it could to destroy the other road compeletly. The other led to the Society of Friends (the Quakers), and all kinds of committed communities based on human rights and earth-sustainability.

My friend Kathy Franzenburg, a Lutheran pastor in Palmer, AK and now in Iowa, sent me an interpretation of the Psalms which refers to God always as "the Beloved." It’s not your grandmother’s Book of Psalms. A "beloved" God assures that there is love at the center of each of the 150 laments, prayers, and songs. Christians would call it "grace," as in "Amazing Grace How Sweet the Sound."

With love stipulated as being central, community follows. Love, at the center of things, means that we are all part of one community, even if we fail to acknowledge it or live by it.

I believe this. I believe that when we live as if we are part of a community, things fall into place nicely. When we don’t, it’s sometimes easier – like not changing the oil in the car is easier. But it’s also destructive, possibly painful, and probably irresponsible.

Beloved. I was telling Marin as we drove through the -30 degree ice fog this morning – her truck blew a hose – that a lot of the edginess and difficulty of the Psalms can vanish in this interpretation.

Psalm 137, for example, a lament of a captive, hauled across the desert from Zion where God dwells -- Jerusalem -- to a ghetto "By the Waters of Babylon." His revenge fantasy includes dashing infants, children of his captor, against rocks. (Luther finessed this psalm, apparently, by allegorizing infants as nascent sin, and rocks as sturdy Jesus: dash those infants!) In the new interpretation, the songs that are sung in Psalm 137, are sung by dolphins, and no alien babies are harmed, or even mentioned.

Wading In / Advent Day 17

Advent is for waiters. And for waders.

Teo used to be a swimmer, buoyed by his styrofoam butt-pack. We went three times a week last winter, and even took "lessons" in the spring. Early last year, he’d take off across the pool hanging off a foam noodle, and later in the season I convinced him to give up the noodle, and he’d stay up using his arms and feet (and but-pack). He’d head off across the pool while I would be talking to my friend Laurent. No longer.

I’ve gone four times this winter so far. The first time, Teo held on so tight I could barely breathe. The second time we brought a friend Cooper along, and I played with Cooper some while Matteo clung to the side of the pool. The third time I eventually peeled him off me and set him up on his floaty noodle. His subsequent howly tantrum scared everyone. Margie, the no-nonsense but congenial woman who’s taught all of Fairbanks to swim when they were Teo’s age, marched in from her front office, and reprimanded me...

As did my wife. Marin, who rolls her eyes every time I compare Teo to other children (as in, "the other kids trust their parents and play together in the pool, and laugh together, and have fun..."), said simply, "Maybe he needs someone else to teach him to swim."

So, yesterday I resolved to desire nothing. Simply to show up with Matteo and keep us mostly submerged for the 45 minutes so we wouldn’t get cold.

Clinging was the order of the day. Matteo’s little arms clenched around my neck, and my arms gathered him in as I ambled in from 3 feet – the shallow end – to neck deep. Like a ccockroach, Matteo kept climbing higher on the sinking flotsam which was Papa.

Whenever I removed a hand from him, his alarm would go off. "No, HOLD me," he’d insist, right in my ear. Remembering his ability to bring the law down on me, I didn’t disobey. So we were pretty much cheek to cheek, banging noses whenever one of us turned his head. Dare I mention the parents who were pulling their 18-month-olds on the other end of snaky noodles, laughing, splashing; or the other Papa whose son was jumping into the water from the deck, into his arms...

I opened the door into the little intimacy Teo was creating with me, against the rest of the world. I started singing "O Tannenbaum," while bobbing and turning a little. We became ballroom dancers. When I’d get a little too emphatic in rhythmic ducking or spinning, he’d fire off his stern "No, Papa!" We danced through "Away in a Manger," with several questions posed ("what’s ‘cattle are lowing,’ Papa," or "what’s ‘stay by my cradle?’"). One hand came off him during "Silent Night," and two came off, with him standing on my thighs in full cling during "Jingle Bells." By then he was actually having fun, shouting out "Hey" at the appropriate time in the song, and even splashing a little without panicking.

The time went quickly, which is sometimes all that a parent can ask.

Half a parent-week later (conversion factor: one stay-at-home-parent hour = a day / one SAHP day = a week), when we were lighting candles in the dark at suppertime and giving thanks for things, Matteo lit his candle and said, "for Papa and Matteo singing in the pool."

Worth wading for.

A Moveable Pew / Advent Day 16

One of my first impressions of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Fairbanks my first service, December of 2004, was that I belonged there. It was simple, actually. Every Sunday people light candles and talk about their lives, struggles, people they love, and so on, and place the candles into sand. It was the closest thing I’d seen (which I myself as a pastor hadn’t started) to Taize prayer around the Cross, a simple but moving meditative service from a religious community in France.

The only worship artifact banished with me from Fairbanks Lutheran had to do with Taize worship. It was a set of four boxes on wheels which Jerry Zelmer made and Al Holmberg filled with a pickup-truck load of sand. The boxes could be set in a square, creating between them the shape of a cross for Lent, or placed in a circle for Advent. Turn off the lights. Put in the background the Cello Suites of J.S. Bach. Initially, there are four candles lit, and people are invited to the center of the circled pews to sit or kneel beside the sand, and to light a candle. Let the flame, the heat, the longing, the hope, seep into your soul. I miss these times to sit together in the dim, stirring candlelight.

Yesterday we stayed after the UUFF service to plan the Solstice Celebration, which is coming next week. Again, I received confirmation that I belong in this tradition. First, we’re working with real things, darkness, light, directions, candles, creating a liminal space by words and actions. Second, I get to be the lead drummer of four during chants. Third, and maybe most interesting, without any controversey or church council meetings, we moved the "pews," we circled the seating. From rows to two concentric circles.

No biggie? Well, it’s what Fairbanks Lutheran is reported to have disliked most about my worship style – that I wanted to change the "normal" pew orientation in Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. I set the Fairbanks ecumenical movement back 40 years by moving pews.

Speaking of real things, I’m trying to figure out how to mimic one undeniable strength of Christian worship – that the stories of the book (the Bible) are oriented to the solar calendar. Jana reminded me yesterday that the Christians stole the calendar from the pagans, that all the animists already had ceremonies oriented to the changing year. Christians infiltrated the Saturnalia with the birth of Jesus, and continued to celebrate yearly the pagan spring festival of rebirth with the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In a community which has consciously chosen to live out something different from the many available religious traditions that we are coming out of, or going in to, we tend to have services with a lot of words and ideas. That’s a relief to many, for whom rote and highly charged actions (like holy communion) or the reciting together of creeds or prayers became intrusive or even intolerable.

But watching Jana put together a rehearsal for what was as elemental and sensual as the best that good religion has to offer, I was thinking, there’s a lot of potential here.

At the end of the service next week – after waiting in darkness, calling the circle, north, south, east, west, lighting candles, chanting chants, telling stories about Raven and Hummingbird bringing back the light to the earth – someone will hit the "play" button, and we’ll walk out of the sanctuary into the 11:30 am dawn holding sparklers while the Beatles sing "Here Comes the Sun."

Talking to Pepita / Advent Day 14

Susan alerted Marin and me to this poem in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, which some of us receive in our in-boxes daily. At its best, Advent for Christians is a time of waiting for life, for new life, to emerge and touch our hearts, transform us. The classic narrative here is the mother pregnant with a special child.

Oops. For my part, I have to admit that I haven’t been paying the attention she/he merits to the little one Marin is carrying, whom she calls "Pepita," or little pumpkin seed. The little one is tipping the scales at 4 pounds and has turned him-/herself upside down in the past week, Marin thinks. Little Pepita kicks through the night, and I sometimes feel the kicks when I have my hand over Marin’s belly, or when she spoons with me.

Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child

Tadpole, it's not time yet to nag you
about college (though I have some thoughts
on that), baseball (ditto), or abstract
principles. Enjoy your delicious,
soupy womb-warmth, do some rolls and saults
(it'll be too crowded soon), delight in your early
dreams — which no one will attempt to analyze.
For now: may your toes blossom, your fingers
lengthen, your sexual organs grow (too soon
to tell which yet) sensitive, your teeth
form their buds in their forming jawbone, your already
booming heart expand (literally
now, metaphorically later); O your spine,
eyebrows, nape, knees, fibulae,
lungs, lips... But your soul,
dear child: I don't see it here, when
does that come in, whence? Perhaps God,
and your mother, and even I — we'll all contribute
and you'll learn yourself to coax it
from wherever: your soul, which holds your bones
together and lets you live
on earth. — Fingerling, sidecar, nubbin,
I'm waiting, it's me, Dad,
I'm out here. You already know
where Mom is. I'll see you more directly
upon arrival. You'll recognize
me — I'll be the tall-seeming, delighted
blond guy, and I'll have
your nose. by Thomas Lux, from The Drowned River

Isn’t it striking how readily we can come to attention when we are considering our flesh, our family, photos of us holding each other, issues of our own house, or automobile. But it’s a stretch to gin up the same yearning for other’s children, or lives. It’s as if there’s a limit to the amount of emotion we can secrete.

But we know that isn’t the case. Love begets love, hope begets hope, and so on. It helps when our heart breaks, seeing children who hunger, seeing tribes direct lethal attention on others, hearing our own people lash out at undocumented aliens and at Muslims. It helps when our heart breaks, because it enables more feeling.

Ten years ago, when I came to Alaska, I believed that a 21st century Jesus would feel the most sadness and would direct the most healing to the divide between people and the earth that sustains them. The "poorest of the poor" which the Catholic Worker sees as Christ’s main focus, would be the snakes, the ants, and the tigers whose tenuous grip on existence is loosening. Extinction is the modern holocaust. From the cross on which humanity would again crucify him, Jesus would look down and say, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," and he’d be looking at us, us consumers, us car-whisperers, us elephant poachers, us gold-wedding-ring-wearers.

And that, my dear little Pepita, is the world we’re hoping to save for you, so you can do the same. Out of a deep, incomprehensible, and never-ending love for this brilliant earth, this sweet, rich life.

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright / Advent Day 13

In Advent, Christian people are supposed to watch before dawn, wait through the night, looking out into the heavens across the universe. Believers are to contemplate their lives as a version of the loneliness of the watchman in the tower, eyes on the horizon, longing for the first sign of light, when the promise will be fulfilled.

I remember coming back from a Weston Priory, a Benedictine monastery in Vermont, during college. I was living off-campus, in a two story house, second floor, with four friends. Merrie, Gabrielle, Ken, and Steve. After the monastery, I’d get up every morning way early (for me) and climb up to the roof, and sit with my back against the warm bricks of the chimney, looking out east over New Haven toward the ocean, and sing their song, "Calm is the Night, O Lord, as we wait for you. All the Stars are Laughing at our Wonder. Wait not in vain for the sun shall come. You will know within you His every stirring presence."

In secular Advent, how could we lift up an equally compelling and rich theme, perhaps the theme of watching and waiting for the enormous machine of the orbiting earth to circle the sun, whirling in and out of it’s light, until it reaches the extreme, in another week, of our northern darkness. We wait with the sleeping bear stirring, we wait with the Amazon burning, we wait with the coral reefs slowly melting, we wait and watch with the lovely beloved earth in all it’s diversity holding us by the hand as we walk into uncharted dangers and unending beauty.

In this time of waiting for a return of sanity, a recovery of a deep human love for the earth, a love greater than comfort, convenience, desire and greed, Matteo took me to the San Francisco Zoo.

The zoo is all the way on the other side of San Francisco from downtown, by the ocean. We took the stairs down into the world under Market Street, into the tunnels of the public transportation system. We took this streetcar called the L-Line across the peninsula, popped up in the streets halfway there, into the sun licking the dirty windows of our streetcar, and walked into the world of wondrous out-of-context critters.

A pair of giraffes stood on the savanna just inside the front gate, but the grizzlies were our immediate goal, reading the map, pushing the umbrella stroller, because they were scheduled for a feed shortly, at 10:30 am. We found a blonde griz sister licking honey off some branches, and her sibling was sidling around and tasting a tree. We pressed our noses into the glass and watched. They ambled about, and headed toward a pool, a little foamy, which had fish in it. Maybe only two fish, because the bears seemed to be in a routine, each splashing around only as much as it required to corner a single fish, mouth it, and get it out for a leisurely nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw breakfast. All the children and their mommies and daddies watched, in awe.

The polar bears were considerably more sedate, two pairs in two settings. Teo loved the parrots in the Amazon house, the tarantulas in the insect house, and was struck that there were quite a few Kangas but no Roos. And the Kangas weren’t standing, they were lounging, not something you see much in the Pooh books. The koalas were either stuffed and posed in a tree, or sleeping, behind their glass. The huge Pachyderm pavilion was bereft of elephants for some reason. The penguins announced themselves by a rank fishy smell. The mama lion lay on a high rock right next to our viewing window, licking her paws clean, and rolling over. The tigers were pacing, pacing, back and forth, waiting for some action. It was exhilarating to watch, wishing for them a different fate: may you take a big stalk somewhere wild, fill your belly, take a long sleep, and spend the afternoon marking territory in the search for a mate, Tyger Tyger, burning bright. Take us with you into the forests of the night.

The seagulls – entirely free and natural – terrorized people at lunch, coming closer and closer to people’s french fries and burger buns until they freaked out, leapt up, and abandoned the field to the winged marauders, who then fought among themselves for priority, squawking loudly while flipping food everywhere.

After lunch Matteo walked among the sheep and goats of the children’s zoo, first scared, and then a little too jerky direct when he decided he wanted to get in a patty-pat. What he liked the most was the kiddy wheelbarrow with the dirt in it, and when that was commandeered by others, the kiddy rake, with which, at great length, he made his mark in the dirt.

Isn’t it interesting we’d think we were worshiping God inside a dark building with pretty glass, burning candles, and the strange smoky smell of incense, the echo of distant voices singing something ethereal, but not in the zoo. The zoo, where are the wondrous tongued and snouted anteater, the ship sized hippopotamus, the armored rhinoceros, the snakes, the spiders, the animal mommies and their dear children, the human mommies and their dear children. A lovely community, a rich experience of some of the whole earth’s holy and sacred diversity in one place, breathing and bleating and hungering and living out lives that are gifts.

Living out our giftedness, together, we come to the end of another epic traverse around our mother, our creator, our sun.

Teo, Mike, and Maroni / Advent Day 12

I lie beside Matteo this afternoon, trying to help him move from waking into his nap. He resists, and kicks his legs, flails his limbs, sings, sighs, complains of throat pains, and actually gets counted down (1 2 3 Magic) and spends five minutes in the hotel room bathroom by himself, doing his crying routine – all very familiar.

But then I turn gruff, and he surrenders. Two minutes later, he’s fast asleep.

In those two minutes I think of the passage into unconsciousness. It’s an acceptance, on one level, of our limitations. I can’t stay awake forever, I have to let sleep take over.

On another level, it’s an acceptance of mortality. Finally, there will come a day when I will let go of life, in essentially the same way. Resisting, resisting, and then, in two magical minutes, surrendering, and passing.

I think of my little boy, who may be there holding my hand (as I was a six weeks ago, holding my dying mother’s hand), guiding me then as I guide him now, as I breathe my last, and relax into death.

It always is so sweet to fall asleep with Teo, who often will throw his arm over me to join mine over him, with my hand tucked under him behind his back. All hunkered down like a litter of puppies while I tell him a story until one or both of us doze off. Falling asleep with someone I love is the very best thing.

Interestingly, the Advent theme of the end times could have been for Christians a gentle letting go, a breathing in of God’s breath as God comes to bring us all to a rest which will grant us strength to live a deeper intimacy with God.

Instead, their vision is of the world dissolving in fire and suffering, as God loses patience with all the evil (think Noah’s Ark – that frustrated, vindictive God). And, as Jesus articulates it, some people will be ready and safe, but most will be shocked and in torment. Why’d the early Christians take this domestic lullaby of endings, and raise it to a shrill murderous shriek?

There’s a video making its way around the web which takes up the origination myth of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons.

In a cartoon format, it explains how gods in the spirit-world gave birth to a spirit child, Elohim, who grew up and came up with the idea for our planet to be physical home for the billions of spirit children they all were generating by having methodical celestial sex.

Two of Elohim’s spirit children, the Mormon-Jesus and Satan, were in competition for stipulations to add to human free will. Satan wanted no free will, the Mormon-Jesus wanted lots. Satan and a third of the Mormon heavenly host rebelled and were punished by being sent to earth, but without bodies. The undecided heavenly host came to earth, enfleshed, but black, with no hope of redemption.

The rest came as whites, and had the opportunity to earn planets after death to continue to have sex and create more spirit children for the universe.

By the way, Elohim and Eve started things on earth, and later Elohim came and had sex with Mary to give Jesus a body to live in. Guy’s pretty focused on sex for a God.

During his life, Jesus married Mary Magdalen, Martha, and the other Mary, and had kids, before being crucified. On his resurrection, he converted a white race in the New World, which fought the rebellious, dark skinned Indians, and lost. Moroni was the last of that race, who hid the gold tablets of their writings (which explain all this?) in the ground before his death.

Which Joseph Smith discovered, translated with Moroni’s angelic help, and then lost. Smith, the God Elohim, and the Mormon-Jesus will judge all who die.

While former Baptist Minister Mike Huckabee abruptly backed down from his observing that(Mitt Romney and) Mormons see Jesus and Satan as brothers after the Republican debate in Iowa last night, I have an humble observation.

I want to observe that both the first century cosmology (Jesus will return to judge the earth with fire) and John Smith’s cosmology (compliant Mormon men earn planets and continue the solemn, cosmic sex after death) – both are a sad, empty preoccupation of vain men clinging to the silliest power there is, religion (or in Smith’s case, sex).

Enough with that version of the end-time Advent theme. Instead, let’s make a religion out of the simple, real things. Like: to put our children to bed, helping them graciously to let go of the lovely golden sunsetting afternoon. To breathe their breath, clinging to their little bodies, giving thanks that we don’t have to worry either ourselves or others about some demented version of life after death.

Treasure Map / Advent Day 6

I teach guitar lessons these days. A couple of years ago, I volunteered to teach Colin, the son of Josh Snow and Tracy Lease, friends of ours in Fairbanks – Tracy was my yoga teacher last year. Colin, at age 8, has a passion to become Eric Clapton, or John Prine, and it’s fun for me to see how a child learns music. For one thing, singing isn’t second natue for Colin. He works at it, finding the pitch, memorizing the melody. Sometimes he just can’t find the tune at all. I usually have to sing in falsetto in order to provide support because singing an octave down from him is confusing. (Last year I taught group guitar lessons at Chinook Charter School, but that’s another story. Whoa!)

Colin wanted to surprise me yesterday, after I’d taught him a couple new songs I’d worked up, "The Times They Are A Changing," and "Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore." He wouldn’t let me see the page in his notebook he was playing from. Then he played "Jingle Bells," and followed it with "Deck the Halls" and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." Earlier in the lesson, he told me to turn around, and I realized that they had a big old Christmas tree all lit up.

What a surprise! I felt a sudden confirmation in what I’ve been saying the past week, that people want to be on track, waiting for something important, they want their lives to have a direction, they love traditions that help them know they’re on the right path, that others have been here, that there’s a treasure map they’re following, and they’re on course for the next big clue.

Part of the surprise was disappointment. I have a thin skin, which is annoying. I suddenly thought of myself as Kierkegaard’s Hegel. Let me explain. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, said of his predecessor, Prussian thinker Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, an authoritarian metaphysician: "He builds a great castle in the air, but then goes into life and lives in a dog house." I realize how enthusiastic I become with ideas and plans, but yet how the opportunities to put things into place can escape me.

For example, were I to spend even an hour thinking about what would be fun as preparation for Winter Solstice, for Christmas, a celebration of light returning in the darkness, a celebration of darkness itself, I would get very excited. But would we put these things into practice in our family? Colin plays songs I prepared for him and other kids at Chinook last year, but Matteo hasn’t heard me play a Christmas carol for him in his life. (Note for today, play music together!)

We do have a little son, right now, making getting things done a little more challenging. We don’t get out much, like to cabins or on hikes. We don’t actually get out in the course of a given day, except to drive around town and get groceries or do errands. I have this idea of "being in Alaska" which includes loving the dark, the cold, and getting out in it, skiing, skating, feeling the wild "otherness" of the land and the sky, the forests and the frozen rivers.

I sometimes panic, like yesterday when Matteo came home from preschool saying the days of the week, and I realize that I’ve missed realizing that it was time for that. Has yet another "station" passed us by. I want to read a hundred books on childhood development and ideas for creating a stimulating environment, and I don’t. I want to throw balls around with Matteo, and we don’t. The days fly past, and Matteo doesn’t even know how to poop on a pot. Though they know how to do that, too, at preschool, and he brags about his accomplishments in peeing. And so he should.

Yesterday I wrote fifteen little poems to the letters of the alphabet to put in the drawers of Matteo’s tree-shaped Advent Calendar, but when Marin didn’t have time yesterday to "execute" my idea at work, I got super disappointed. Instead of remaining committed to the idea and finding a way still to bring it to fulfillment. Instead of thanking her for what she had gotten to do (I’d hoped for little "packages" of text with Marin’s line drawings, that would unfold, little "treasure maps") and leaving the fine tuning for next year.

There’s this parenting consultant on the web, Scott Noelle, who takes a profoundly gratitude-based, trust-based approach to raising kids. Every day I receive a little encouraging message in my in-box, sometimes it seems a litte woo-woo, but usually it’s helpfully different from the Hegelian way I see the world, trying to control things, figure them out once and for all, instead of finding and unfolding the piece of paper and discovering the next clue in the Treasure Map.

Saint Nicholas Day / Advent Day 5

Today is Saint Nicholas’ day. He was a third century Greek who is said to have rescued a poor man with three eligible daughters, who would probably have had to become women of the night without his aid, by surrepticiously dropping bundles of money into his home, three times, which could serve as dowry for their lives as wives and mothers. Yaay to gift-giving! Boo to the commodification of women.

Caroline Schlossberg, a.k.a., Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the killed president, was on the radio this morning talking about a book she’s authored about Christmas traditions. She talked about peace, about how Isaiah and Luke used their stories to inveigh against war. And talked about how important it is for her to pass on traditions she had as a little girl (like oranges with spikes of spice in them – come on, Mom, what’s this doing in my stocking?).

This is along the lines of my next talk at UUFF. What disciplines do we take upon ourselves as a community, what practices do we hold and work on together which define us? Can we say that what we do together (Sunday mornings and other times) is our best effort at sharing our treasure gratefully with one another and the world beyond, or are we just rehearsing an identity together to keep from feeling lonely and afraid?

Last week, my first talk in this three-fer, was about our children – one, how we "call" them into a relationship with the deepest things in life that we ourselves have discovered. Two, what "stories" we serve up, over and over, so that they (and we!) can learn them and trust them and begin to find their way with their help. And finally, three, what "journey" they will be empowered to take as they grow in confidence and wisdom, how their journey will parallel ours (as childrens’ journeys always do, somehow), and supercede ours (or fall painfully short) on that profound march of humanity toward kindness, compassion, justice, gratitude.

Last night at Chalice Circle, Marilyn spoke again about Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village. Spending several weeks in this meditation community in France has been a way for her to measure everything which comes her way. When they eat in the community there, each person fills their bowl at the buffet, and then goes to sit somewhere quiet to consider their food. For fifteen minutes, each person thinks about everyone and everything involved in providing sustenance to them. The sun brings energy to leaves, the clouds bring rain to the earth, the earth composed of rock broken by roots and ice, of organic material laid down by millenia of plants growing and dying, surrounds roots with rich soil, there are the hands that pick food, there are the many local traditions which combine to prepare food in certain ways – to sit and let all which is contained in that bowl fill your heart with amazement and gratitude.

I was thinking, ah, Eastern spirituality, the place where individual effort, striving, and proud accomplishment lie gently sleeping, while community, wisdom, and gratitude are explored in profound depth. What would Advent look like if it were, as designed by the early church, a time of hungering for what is not yet, of fasting, of longing for presence, of waiting and not anxiously, of saying our brokenness and hope in words and prayers, of letting that empty feeling fill us.

Today I’ll try again to get Matteo’s Advent Calendar to happen, a simple A B C of Advent and Christmas themes, four line poems, whimsical and suggestive, each the tip of an iceberg of meaning that might be explored, or not. It would be nice to leave a child (soon, for us, children) with a rich, robust family tradition, of dates and actions that are undertaken no matter what. Bonfires on the 21st, even if it’s minus-thirty. A cabin trip on Thanksgiving, even if we’ve just gotten home from a funeral. A quiet time before supper, with candles lit in gratitude, even if the children are just back from solitary confinement for ganging up on the kitty with frisbies.

Stories, Lost and Found / Advent Day 3

What I meant, when I said that "the good stories get lost," happens to me all the time. Last night it happened this way. Marin and Matteo were bedding down in our upstairs radon-free nest, and I was reading something at the dining room table.

"Light the Christmas tree," chanted Teo, leaning on "tree" in his sweetly emphatic way, "for the baby." Huh? I didn’t get it, but Marin usually knows what’s on his mind. She replied, "that’s right, Matteo, there’s a baby that’s born during Christmas."

I could barely hold myself back from shouting the corrective, "Baby Jesus," drawing out "Jesus" in my sermony, corrective, highly-annoying-to-Marin way, but managed to.

But what the heck are the Christians doing spending four weeks of their lives in the dark during Advent, lighting candles, praying, longing, listening, singing quietly, asking for God to come. "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (means "God-with-us").

They’re waiting for an intervention in their lives, a sign, a fierce encouragement, a liberation. And when, faithfully, you look for what you need, you receive what you need, in one way or another. This you are required to believe, somehow or other, in order to be healthy, to be a good companion to your friends, your community, your generation, your era. To be a good steward of all the universe has invested in you.

Jesus was one of the heros. He found a richly adorned religious facade with forbidding guards and an imposing admission-fee-structure (no women, no children, circumcision, etc). From the side, though, the view was different. A lot of people knew that, but Jesus was the one who knew what to do about that. He located and entered by the side door, and invited all the people he ever met (+women, +children) to bring their most important hopes, dreams, and memories with them, and help him reconstruct the ancient ruin. To make life-giving a place that inflicted death.

This is the time of year we remember people like him, who are born into our world and give the world its greatest hopes back, at great cost. We owe them dearly. In the darkest time of the year (and up here in Fairbanks, that’s no metaphor – it’s 9:00 am as I write and there’s a crescent moon hanging in the skeletal trees behind me through the window, but there won’t be a lightening of the sky for another half hour, and I’m not even talking about sunrise), all people who know their connection to the earth and to each other, prepare to light the bonfires to call down and give thanks for these heros, these enlivening spirits.

They have helped bring us back to ourselves when we have locked ourselves (or been locked by others) into various dark rooms, behind shiny facades of many failed illusions. Each has a side entrance. If you can find it, bring your friends along when you invade, and make a real home for all of you there. Don’t forget Pooh, the bear of very little brain, and his very good stories.

Lost Stories / Advent Day 2

What do I mean, the good stories get lost?

Marin, Teo and I went down to "Little Anchorage" or "Fanchorage" ("Fairbanks + Anchorage) to the Barnes and Noble to see if they had the Pooh book of Nursery Rhymes, which we found at the Library and which he’s crazy about and just now. It was about zero degrees out, and windy, so we parked right up front (next to an Odyssey, but that was last week), at which point Marin exclaimed, "We’re in Denver!"

It was true, it totally felt "Not Like Fairbanks" to be parking in the light of a big-box, light-streaming-from-plate-glass-windows bookstore.

Inside, Matteo made a beeline for the Thomas-the-Train platform to push (hopefully, unleaded) trains a little. Marin lingered surreptitiously to try to locate Christmas presents based on Pooh. We found little of what we came for, with the exception of a bunch of Alaskana picture books we weren’t going to buy, one about kids and trapped beluga whales, one about kids refusing to sleep in the middle of an Alaska summer when it’s light all night, and so Marin read them to Teo while I trolled for more.

But nothing Disney-Pooh-esque. Marin sent me to scope out a sighting of Pooh-books on a distant shelf, and when I sat down in front of A.A. Milne’s originals, I couldn’t help but page through, instantly spellbound. I was transfixed not only by the utterly sweet (incomparably more appropriate than Disney’s more toddler-accessible) illustrations, but also by the flow of the story. I pulled out The House at Pooh Corner, and there began to read the final chapter:
"Christopher Robin was going away. Nobody knew why he was going; nobody knew where he was going; indeed, nobody even knew why he knew that Christopher Robin was going away. But somehow or other everybody in the Forest felt that it was happening at last." Reading this was riveting, after weeks of slaking Matteo’s thirst for bedtime stories which he requires include not some but all of the Pooh characters. That’s Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Owl, Kanga, Roo – do I have them all? Oops – Tigger! And I never take the time to plan ahead, lesson plans... I never seem to have imaginative – to my standards – made-up stories. I feel like I have been bequeathed a spectacular orchid plant (Matteo), but I always forget to mist it as I run out my front door to something else.

My mood shifted techtonically when I got to the climax I sought:

"(Christopher Robin and Pooh) walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap, which is sixty-something trees in a circle; and Christopher Robin knew that it was enchanted because nobody had ever been able to count whether it was sixty-three or sixty-four, not even when he tied a piece of string round each tree after he had counted it. Being enchanted, its floor was not like the floor the Forest, gorse and bracken and heather, but close-set grass, quiet and smooth and green. It was the only place in the Forest where you could sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once and looking for some where else. Sitting there they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons Lap."

Two dear people, Trip and Merrie, sweethearts during my freshman year at Yale and friends of mine, gave me that quote, and it was one of my anchors during college.

I can’t wait to read the books again when Teo’s a little older. But until then, I hope I can escape the prison of my mundane bedtime stories, like last night, when Pooh and Tigger were at the car dealership, wanting Teo (who was bored by his parents’ fixation on the salesman) to join them as they stole the van which was heating up outside, to drive them all over to Christopher Robin’s. Even Teo found that "over the top." When Pooh asked him if he wanted to go along, Matteo (narrated, in real time, into the flow of the tale) said, simply, "no."

"But it’s a party at Christopher Robin’s. Don’t you want to go with Pooh and Tigger to the party?"

"No." Hm. The good stories get lost.

Tree Story / Advent Day 1

Marin came home Saturday with a sleeping baby (we drive Teo in the car to get him to relax enough to go down) and with a Christmas tree. Turns out it was shipped up here from Oregon. And it had to stay inside the house so it wouldn’t freeze. So it was in the entry downstairs.

Matteo was enthralled, it was the first thing he said after rousing from his nap on Saturday, "where the tree?" drawing out the final word as if he were chanting, which is how he talks just now, learning language hand over fist.

Later she came back from mid-afternoon Yoga with a tree stand. The ritual circumcision, baptism, and resurrection of the tree followed, before Marin and the Toot took off for an evening visit to friends, giving me sermon time.

We wrapped the Teo-sized, full, elegant (what we’d never find in a baby tree up here) fir with lights and hung many traditional Kuizenga things, like sewn and stuffed fruit, on Sunday evening.

Then Marin pronounced the moment. Matteo was enlisted in turning off all the house lights. We stood back and sang. Silent Night. O Tannenbaum.

Later we opened a Christmas tree shaped Advent Calendar made of little boxes, which Marin found at Starbucks. Each box holds a chocolate, and when the drawer is removed and re-inserted, the tree begins to mosaic together a new picture of something. I’m still not sure what it might be. I know it’s definitely not a nice picture of a mother and child and donkeys and moo-cows and all that. It’s something less "specific."

That’s one of our dilemmas, we post-Christians. The good stories get lost.