The Last Post of 2012...

reminds us of what we are leaving behind...

It will only take 4 minutes.

On a New Year's Eve

Hal Borland
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

Quick Reviews

Christmas - New Year Week is a great time for movies. Have seen several and just wanted to give some quick notes:

Les Miserables (Tomatometer- 72%): Spectacular movie version of what I always saw as a much overblown musical. The music is terrific - as it was in the stage version - but here the storyline becomes much clearer and less hidden behind the staging. Victor Hugo's novel translates well with a great story. But it is the acting and singing that makes this such a spectacular cinema. They sang and acted together in this one and that makes the emotions real and intense, transferring the power to our experience. (I disagree with the Tomatometer on this one. I was not expecting to like it as much as I did. Easily a movie that should be in the 80s.)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Tomatometer- 77%): A wonderful British ensemble cast about "retirees" moving to India. Colorful and personable storyline that ended where I expected it to end, but there were lots of wonderful plots and stories that got us there that were entirely unexpected. Made me stop and think about the issues of getting older and retirement, since that is my age group. Charming and fun with lots of good quotes, the most famous being:

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not yet the end.

Arbitrage (Tomatometer- 84%): Richard Gere is as slimy as you can be in this high quality drama/mystery. Money, family, loyalty, business. It's all wrapped up in a fine dramatic show. No spoilers. It does treat the subject well. That's it. Gere is certainly in the running for a Best Actor nod.

Christmas Eagle

Driving to the Cities on Christmas morning, I saw the unmistakeable silhouette and a patch of white to the west of the highway.

"Eagle!" I called to my wife as he soared at tree-top level to our left.

The white was clear on the head and tail. A majestic bird.

Surprisingly this was the first one I have seen in quite a while. I didn't get as many bike rides on the trails this past summer where I usually get the chance to see one of these birds several times. We also have not had the great view of a small lake like we used to have at an earlier apartment.

I am not superstitious, but I find these sightings of this great bird as positive signs. In some Native cultures, the Bald Eagle is seen as a messenger between the gods and humans. There is also the great quote from Isaiah that

they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

I saw my first Bald Eagle in the wild almost 25 years ago now. I had just gotten sober the autumn before. I was at church camp and looked up to see a Bald Eagle soaring not far from where we were standing. As a symbol of power and strength, I saw that as a message that I have not forgotten.

Thanks to the incredible resurgence of the Bald Eagle population in these past 25 years I have seen many of these majestic birds. I always take them as a sign. Sometimes just a reminder that the strength is real and available to do what I need to do each day. My Higher Power is real and present.

Sometimes it is a reminder of memories or people or situations. That's what happened on Tuesday. A reminder of the theme for the day in the mindfulness course I am involved in- Compassion. The news was still carrying the stories from Newtown, CT; another story from western New York of a killing of firemen; memories of people I know who have died or who, today, are going through difficulties and trials.

Behind all of this, I was reminded by the Christmas morning Eagle, there is a power greater than ourselves who can restore us to sanity. We, too, can soar, spiritually, with wings like eagles. We, too, can find the ways ahead of us by looking with the sharp eye of faith and trust.

Mindfulness is simply to be open to the moment and the signs that are always around us. The signs may mean something different to me than they do to you, but that is because we are each in different places. When I see one of these signs, on Christmas, the Bald Eagle, I can know that there is more to this than meets the eye.

Darkness Amidst the Light: Light Beating the Darkness

Dec. 28- Liturgical Calendar date of The Slaughter of the Innocents

 It is now 14 days since the tragedy at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School. Two weeks of mourning, questions, fears, and a seemingly endless news cycle broken only momentarily by Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Time to make real what President Obama said at the vigil on that Sunday evening: This has to end.

That means some sensible gun control discussions and debate. Let's forget the hysteria. You know it well. I know it well. We need assault weapons in private ownership like we need to return to using quill pens and oil lamps. NO, it is not a way to protect ourselves from the government, as I heard one legislator say. Are you freakin' insane, I wanted to ask? Having hoardes of private citizens own assault weapons to "protect from our own government" is not a constitutional right. That is NOT a "well-regulated militia." That is anarchy, which by definition is not well-regulated. Arm the principals of the schools? You may very well lose a lot of good principals who don't want to be part of a gun-culture. Put armed guards in every school? Columbine and Virgina Tech had those.

And will we put armed guards at every mall, place of worship or beauty spa in the country? Will we become an armed camp with guns in the hands of every Tom, Dick, and Harry? How scary!

Cars don't kill people, drunk drivers do. That is just insane to even post as a reasonable thought. It is why we have laws ABOUT drunken driving, what you could call "Drunken Driving Control." When Minnesota got tough on drunken driving, for example, DUI arrests shot up AND deaths from drunk driving dropped. Note that no one outlawed cars- or even drinking. Just putting the two together.

Why should it be harder to get good mental health care than to buy an assault rifle? Why are background checks for gun ownership so difficult? We do it for teachers and counselors. Is owning a gun so much of a right? Freedom of the press is just as constitutionally protected, yet we say there are times and places when there is such a thing as privacy and confidentiality limiting some of that. Why are firearms so sacred?

Perhaps in that last word is part of the problem. They have become sacred- a holy grail- inviolable- more important than human lives. They have become a god. There is the real, profound issue that no one can talk about. We have set up a false god that controls us. The power of the gun. No, not the gun lobby. The power of the gun. It is devouring our nation in its primal scream to survive.

I am not a gun owner. I don't believe I would ever own one. Protection? I wouldn't be able to use it for that. I would be so afraid of over-reacting and shooting someone I love by mistake. It happened locally here just a few weeks ago. Accidental deaths by guns may be more than were killed at Newtown.

I am not against gun ownership any more than I am against people owning cars or driving cars. Let's not over-react in either direction. But let's be sensible and reasonable about it. High-capacity weapons and clips controlled or banned; assault rifles made for the single purpose of killing people banned; background checks required. These are reasonable.

Is this politicizing the deaths on Connecticut? Yes. It was politicized the minute the shooter walked into the school. It is an issue of how resolute we can be to both protect lives and rights. We have to be able to do both. We remember the freedom of speech measurement- you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That limits free speech just as libel laws limit it and the freedom of the press. Democracy is a delicate balance between rights and protection; freedom and life.

We can do it. We are a bright and caring nation. Let's use our ability to overcome the barriers to discussion and sane legislation. Too many ore people will die if we don't.

Wisdom Is

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

The Work of the Year Ahead

There's a flaw in our Christmas ideal, I realized. 

After I wrote about grace
            For the naughty and nice on each Christmas morn …

Different questions came to mind. 

How many didn't get what they wanted?
 

How many got next to nothing?

            Only the naughty? Only the bad ones?

                        Nope. Didn't think so.

How many poor or homeless children woke up to naught? 

Did they spend their day
wondering if they were bad? If it was all their own fault?

When all around them has called for gifts and grandeur
            iPads and fancy toys
were they the ones left wondering if next year,

Maybe, Hopefully,

They could just do something differently?

If they do what's right and proper and nice will
            Christmas 2013 give them what they need, even more than
                        what they want?

Could they, perhaps,
            pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? With enough
            elbow grease, might they find the light of next Christmas?

Or could we,

who have discovered grace, naughty or nice,

Do something to make a difference?

A task for all before Christmas returns again.

I close my Christmas season as I have done many times
            reminded by the poet of the work of the season

                        every day.

 

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

--Howard Thurman

One Last Christmas Shot

Rochester, MN

December 9, 2012

What Did You Get?

Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?

                The right color?

                                The right size?

With the pre-Christmas season over we can now

                Stop being nice or even start

                Being naughty again.

                                No one is looking anymore.

                No lists being checked once or twice. We can resume life.

But did it do any good to try to be nice so

Santa would bring us what we wanted?

Did it do any harm for all the naughty ones

who just frankly didn't give a damn?

Nope. Didn't think so. Since most of us probably got something of what we wanted.

                And didn't get some of what we longed for.

That's the way Christmas is. Year in and year out, naughty or nice.

Shepherds and a virgin, Joseph and a defenseless Baby
                Angels and stars breaking the heavens for
Naughty and nice together.

I think we call it grace.

Covenant Moravian Church, York, PA

M e r r y

C h r i s t m a s

 Christmas is loud, as the angels sing out and

Christmas is quiet with the gentle breeze of the fields

Christmas is bright as heavenly hosts shatter the night and

Christmas is dark, with only stars to light the way.

Christmas is children gathering around the Eucharist and

Christmas is the elderly being helped to the front by their children

Christmas is the organ and flutes, the trumpets and drum and

Christmas is the silence between the music holding it together.

Finally, in the silence,

Christmas is the words as each is served

Words rising above the silence,

Descending into each soul

The Body of Christ

The Bread of Heaven.

Christmas: 

The Gift of God for the People of God.

Christmas Eve 2012

Cathedral, Seville, Spain

It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did ... for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it. It is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him.
--Frederick Buechner

Still the Better Story

As Christmas looms, the story is still reverberating in my wandering mind. I posted a few weeks ago about looking for the “real” Christmas, getting past the greeting card sentimentality to something with substance.

Then I saw Life of Pi and found my thoughts broken into new perspectives and rewired. The power and truth of “story” was the theme, of course.  The importance of “truth” beneath, beyond, and yet infused with some semblance of fact and connection. (It was a movie far deeper and yet more accessible than last year’s Tree of Life. But I wander.)

I got this far in that post:

None happened as we see it
No matter how hard we try to preserve
Christmas
or try to keep Christ there.
It was dark until the angels called
the shepherds out of their fear.
Then it was dark again.

And then I realized that such a story won’t get us closer to God. It lacks the mysterious, the mystical.

It needs both visions working together to be real. 

Truthful.

For both are true. 

The darkness was real and palpable to those shepherds both before AND after they angels sang their promise of “Peace on Earth.” Hatred was as real both before AND after the angels chanted “goodwill to all.”

What then is “The Better Story?”

A Virgin winces in childbirth

Kept company by her betrothed and no doubt a midwife.

No room in the Inn meant a respite from the crowds and the possibility

Of privacy for this unique first-born’s moments.

No noisy nosy bystanders. Just a Holy Family for all holy families to come.

Which is the story that will lead us to believe in God?

Shepherds bored in the nearby hills, wincing from the sudden light

Changing this from one more dark and lonely night.

Common people with an uncommon visitation news that

For them and all common folk a savior has been born.

They and they alone are there, stand-ins for you and anyone who might need that news.

 Which story do I want to believe?

God, wrapped in strips of cloth, Comforted and

Held in safety and compassion by a

Loving Mother as he feeds and she stares in awe.

Like any Imah or Abba, Mommy or Daddy watching the

Fruits of Creation, breathing, falling asleep with no care.

Unaware of the commotion of life or the lack of peace

He has come to transform.

 The beginning of a

Revolution of faith that even now we fail to grasp. Even now

We try to rewrite it into a different story. One that contains too many attempts

At finding just-the-facts .

But here we rediscover the importance of The Story. 

The Story of Christmas

Christ’s Mass

Nativity- The Birth-

Filled not with “facts” but with “Truth” shining like a

Many-pointed Star, in any and all directions,

Unlimited;

Infinite;

All-encompassing;

Swaddling humanity in strips of the eternal cloth

Of Grace and Love.

May the peace and joy of Christmas be reborn in you this year, hearing the story as it leads us all, again, to believe in God.

Merry Christmas.

An Advent (4) Prayer for Peace

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 23, 2012

Great God, who has told us
"Vengeance is mine,"
save us from ourselves,
save us from the vengeance in our hearts
and the acid in our souls.

Save us from our desire to hurt as we have been hurt,
to punish as we have been punished,
to terrorize as we have been terrorized.

Give us the strength it takes
to listen rather than to judge,
to trust rather than to fear,
to try again and again
to make peace even when peace eludes us.

We ask, O God, for the grace
to be our best selves.
We ask for the vision
to be builders of the human community
rather than its destroyers.
We ask for the humility as a people
to understand the fears and hopes of other peoples.

We ask for the love it takes
to bequeath to the children of the world to come
more than the failures of our own making.
We ask for the heart it takes
to care for all the peoples
of Afghanistan and Iraq, of Palestine and Israel
as well as for ourselves.

Give us the depth of soul, O God,
to constrain our might,
to resist the temptations of power
to refuse to attack the attackable,
to understand
that vengeance begets violence,
and to bring peace--not war--wherever we go.

For You, O God, have been merciful to us.
For You, O God, have been patient with us.
For You, O God, have been gracious to us.

And so may we be merciful
and patient
and gracious
and trusting
with these others whom you also love.

This we ask through Jesus,
the one without vengeance in his heart.
This we ask forever and ever. Amen

prayer for world peace - sister joan chittister - benedictine sisters of erie

World Prayers

Yesterday's Gone

It is the day AFTER the end of the world. 

At least it is if you are reading this. 

So a bonus picture and quote since we have obviously survived.

Chichenitza, Mexico ... February 3, 2010

But don't blame the Maya. It's all ours.

A Bonus- Just for Fun

Same trees, different time

Before and After

A lot like Day and Night

Protecting the Schools?

NRA: Armed Security in Every School

Actually, it does make a little sense. Kind of.

But it does not address the issue. The real issue.

Gun culture. Gun worship.

Armed security in every school?

Sure- until the next mass shooting

at a mall

or a place of worship

or a beauty spa.

I'm tired of the debate. It is time for action.

I will have more reflections on this next Friday. Until then let's refocus on peace. For all.