It’s Christmas Eve, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning. Marin turns to me in bed and says, everyone else wants Christmas, and we’re hoping for the opposite.
She was referring to the fact that she’s been feeling generally under the weather all day, which turned specifically into having contractions all evening. Her gynecologist didn’t return a message she left. And a friend, a midwife we were thinking of calling, had a Christmas Eve car accident and broke her collar bone.
Our Christmas Eve was outside, the UU "Advent Garden," held in moonlight and candlelight. Some of us at the Fellowship stamped out a 30-foot spiral in the snow after the service Sunday. Tonight, while we sang traditional carols together, 40 of us meditatively, one by one, walked the spiral to the center, lit candles stuck into apples, and set the flaming apple-candles into the fir boughs which defined the spiral against the white snow.
A simpler, sweeter Christmas eve celebration I have not seen. As usual the UU sense of levity mixed in with the ceremonial seriousness, people laughed with me when it turned out that one of my favorite carols, "Lo how a Rose ‘ere Blooming," was known only to me. Someone noted, after the first verse came out without participation, "nice solo."
"Must be a Lutheran song," I quipped back. Merriment ensued.
As in the Solstice service last Sunday, there was a lot of time to think. It wasn’t all programmed. The time it took for people to arrive and get into place with candles and songbooks around the spiral circle, gave everyone a chance to settle in, heartwise. A friend Carrie with her daughter Naomi came, their first UU experience. I’d sent her "Irving the Snowchicken is Coming to Town" (see yesterday) and we laughed about it. It was so fun to see her. Also Trista, one of my Yoga teachers, came with her son, her sweetie, and another family. I never thought of the UU Advent Garden as an outreach service.
I still am being surprised by the healing, joyful potential of belonging to a non-religious Religion.
At a reception we went to afterwards at Larry and Terry’s, Matteo managed to sneak, it was rumored, two pieces of cheesecake. Art on all the walls, some of it Terry’s, what a nice thing. Maybe for us someday... Marin confirmed the cheesecake rumor, which he must have snagged when we were both in separate rooms from the dessert table. "Ringed with chocolate," is how she described his guilty mouth.
Makes sense, then, that he was bouncing off the walls when we got home at 10. And I couldn’t get him to settle. Marin went straight to bed. He and I watched an episode "Peep and the Big Wide World," a National Science Foundation funded cartoon. Then, after tooth brushing, we had a standoff about stories. He wanted two, I wanted to tell one. After five minutes of silence, he gave in. And I told the Mary-Joseph-Baby-Jesus-Shepherds-Angels story. And reminded him that Santa was bringing gifts because it was Christmas eve. "What Christmas eve is?"
Later, when he cried out in the middle of the night, Marin, who couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a stretch, came to sleep with him. He told her, "Papa told me a story about Jesus," and he started the process of waking get up. Marin: "Oh, you’re too early, you have to sleep a little bit more." Teo’s response: "It’s already that day, but I don’t remember what it is, Mama."
And now, much later than normal (7:30 am), he’s awake. We’ve decided not to make much of the "Santa" connection (since presents will be showing up for the next two weeks...), but managed to get the first installment wrapped and placed under the tree. He hasn’t noticed yet.
He’s being the "birdie" in his "nest," which is Marin’s lap, drinking "juice and nurse." And the little one kicking inside her to get out, is still holding back. Time to run!
Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Raven Speaking, Dante Leading / Advent Day 23
In the candlelit darkness of our drum-beat-heart-beating UU fellowship, Raven arose and told the people sitting in circle yesterday (Sunday) morning the story about how he had met in council with all the animals discussing the encroaching, endless darkness. And how he had succeeded in entering the lodge of the sky, by transforming himself into a spruce needle which the daughter of the chief drinks, and later gives birth to, as Raven Boy! Miracle! Raven Boy opens the three nested, glowing boxes in the corner of the lodge of the sky, transfigures himself back, and flies through the open roofed lodge with the glowing sun in his impervious talons.
The UU service worked. Not the least of all because we drummed for a half hour at the beginning of the service while people arrived late to the circle and chairs had to be found. And still we ended early. Nice to have some meditation time in the circle of the gathered people, in the gentle darkness of the Alaska dawn.
Marin had the observation that the UU’s probably won’t use the same story next year, which is probably true, Jana and I already discussed other wonderful folk stories we could use to illustrate the return of the light.
Maybe that’s where the Unitarians go wrong. Instead of having a yearlong cycle of beloved, recurring stories, we keep ranging out and sampling other people’s stories. Are we failing to attend to the repetition which would make the stories our own?
Last night, after Marin and I had queued up in our DVD player "the Lives of Others," a movie about the Stasi in East Germany, when we heard bumping in the bedrooms below. Matteo, back (after a month sleeping upstairs) downstairs in the guest bedroom to sleep, wasn’t. I went down, annoyed, to take a look, but chilled out as soon as I lay down beside him, arm around him, telling a story about Pooh characters throwing Christopher Robin a birthday party.
Then I launched into the story of Santa Claus, which might be his first exposure to that great American myth. He listened closely. "Where North Pole is?" he asked in his lilting, new-to-language little voice.
Then, sleep not coming anytime soon, I launched into a cultural piece de resistance, the Nativity Story. Mary, Joseph, traveling on a donkey, to a town with no hotel rooms, having a baby like Mama’s going to have a baby, then Angels singing ‘Glory Halleluah," and shepherds ("what’s a shepherd?") watching their sheep to protect them from wolves, and kings riding camels (Teo knows about camels) with gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, all duly explained.
He still wasn’t about to sleep, and ended up ejected from the guest bed back into his crib, and the movie went by the wayside. The 45 minute wait had driven Marin to bed before I got done.
But the stories I told, are stories that Matteo is going to hear, each and evey year, for better or worse, until he stops wanting stories or I lose my way in life. And I wish he’d hear the same Raven story at UUFF every year as well, since it’s what cultural identity comes from.
Stories guide us into who we are, they are Virgil to our confused and lost Dante (Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto 1), showing us the opening into the real world of meaning, a mysterious, difficult, darkling passage no one can find on their own.
The UU service worked. Not the least of all because we drummed for a half hour at the beginning of the service while people arrived late to the circle and chairs had to be found. And still we ended early. Nice to have some meditation time in the circle of the gathered people, in the gentle darkness of the Alaska dawn.
Marin had the observation that the UU’s probably won’t use the same story next year, which is probably true, Jana and I already discussed other wonderful folk stories we could use to illustrate the return of the light.
Maybe that’s where the Unitarians go wrong. Instead of having a yearlong cycle of beloved, recurring stories, we keep ranging out and sampling other people’s stories. Are we failing to attend to the repetition which would make the stories our own?
Last night, after Marin and I had queued up in our DVD player "the Lives of Others," a movie about the Stasi in East Germany, when we heard bumping in the bedrooms below. Matteo, back (after a month sleeping upstairs) downstairs in the guest bedroom to sleep, wasn’t. I went down, annoyed, to take a look, but chilled out as soon as I lay down beside him, arm around him, telling a story about Pooh characters throwing Christopher Robin a birthday party.
Then I launched into the story of Santa Claus, which might be his first exposure to that great American myth. He listened closely. "Where North Pole is?" he asked in his lilting, new-to-language little voice.
Then, sleep not coming anytime soon, I launched into a cultural piece de resistance, the Nativity Story. Mary, Joseph, traveling on a donkey, to a town with no hotel rooms, having a baby like Mama’s going to have a baby, then Angels singing ‘Glory Halleluah," and shepherds ("what’s a shepherd?") watching their sheep to protect them from wolves, and kings riding camels (Teo knows about camels) with gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, all duly explained.
He still wasn’t about to sleep, and ended up ejected from the guest bed back into his crib, and the movie went by the wayside. The 45 minute wait had driven Marin to bed before I got done.
But the stories I told, are stories that Matteo is going to hear, each and evey year, for better or worse, until he stops wanting stories or I lose my way in life. And I wish he’d hear the same Raven story at UUFF every year as well, since it’s what cultural identity comes from.
Stories guide us into who we are, they are Virgil to our confused and lost Dante (Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto 1), showing us the opening into the real world of meaning, a mysterious, difficult, darkling passage no one can find on their own.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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