Happy New Year's Eve 2011

Happy New Year's Eve!

There is so much to be thankful for this year - a happy, healthy cat, visits with friends and family, time hiking in the mountains and laying by the ocean. Time to write, time to think, time to move, and time to work, work, work. Plenty of time to sing in the car, in the shower, and with the Chubby Chasers.Good food and good memories.

I hope you've had a wonderful 2011, and that your 2012 is even brighter, with hopes, dreams and goals to accomplish. I'm off to the mountain to get in a final run or two in 2011, and then S and I - after much debate - will hang out for a dinner date at the Fat Cactus and a rosing round or two of the Friends' game. Life is good.

Insightful

A good post from another, as we prepare for the new year and think about resolutions for that year.

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

I'm not huge on New Year's resolutions, because I think if you want to change yourself you should do it now, regardless of the calendar, and because I think change comes in progression, with determination, and can't be stopped and started so quickly just because January 1st rolls around.

However, I do have a few resolutions under my belt this year, and a few more cooking around in my mind. How many is too many, and more importantly, are these the right ones to have? Ones I really want to work on, and that are really going to help me develop as a human? I think this list can jumpstart that conversation with yourself - whether these becomes your new resolutions, or they just help you figure out which ones to keep on this list!

Snow!!! snow snow snow snow...snow

It'll be my third day on the mountain today. Man, am I rusty. Well, I am a lot better than I was at the start of the last year, and last night I almost didn't fall off the chair lift, which may or may not have been a consequence of the lift operator taking pity on me and slowing down the chair so I could get off of it without bruising myself all up like usual.

It is so fun though! I am looking forward to doing drills on the beginner hill today (literally, going step by step per run like a complete newbie) and falling off the chair lift some more (because that is just what will happen for awhile).

At least I have my blue beanie to keep me warm and fuzzy (thanks, ma!).

Progress...

...is what keeps us alive, together.

Thanks be

This Christmas (and I hope you had a merry one!) I got treated to time "at home" with family and friends.

I don't discount the ability to get home for Christmas - to travel and to have people to travel to. I really felt priviledged this year, in so many ways, to spend time with, to share gifts and food and conversation with, and to experience life during this season with those I love.

If there's anything to be said about the craziness of the Christmas holiday, it's that it has a purpose. We need to feel the frenzy of it all - as we cannot wait to be with each other again - to realize how much we mean to one another. Imagine how momentous the first Christmas must have been, when Immanuel, God with us, was reunited with his beloved children in a brand new way, the simplest way really, of being in the flesh and blood presence of all who he had created.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and Happy Kwanzaa! We are loved.

Origins

We've noticed that decorations for Christmas up here are a little different that in our homeland origins (in the Mid-Atlantic and the South).

Where S and I grew up, folks decorate their houses with lots of lights. So much so, that both S and my mom's side of the family have a tradition of driving through neighborhoods close to Christmas time and seeing all the pretty lights. You might have or have had this tradition too. Sometimes Santa brings the presents while the family is out doing this sightseeing, and it's a big deal.

Well, S and I have been on a mission to have that tradition ourselves (sadly, minus Santa). The only thing is, lights are quite different here. Instead of pristine homesteads with all the windows and trees festooned with color-coordinated light sets, we, on our ventures, have seen either a) the crazy house in multiple locations - you know the one, they are committed to having every type of decoration on their property possible, including, around where we live, a human-sized snow globe and a human-sized Ferris wheel with elves riding on it; Or we see 2) wreaths - just wreaths, and lots of them.

Here it is never enough to have one wreath on the door. Oh, no. Wreaths must be placed on every flat surface of the home if possible.

(This home has a wreath on every window and on every door. This means that if you look hard enough, you should be able to count 21 wreaths in this picture alone.)

All this wreath mania had me wondering what it is about the Christmas wreath that made it so special. Honestly, I had no idea why wreaths were used to celebrate Christmas, until I read this gem of a website, for the holiday geek in all of us. It said:

In ancient Rome, people used decorative wreaths as a sign of victory. Some believe that this is where the hanging of wreaths on doors came from. The origins of the Advent wreath are found in the folk practices of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples who, during the cold December darkness of Eastern Europe, gathered wreaths of evergreen and lighted fires as signs of hope in a coming spring and renewed light. Christians kept these popular traditions alive, and by the 16th century Catholics and Protestants throughout Germany used these symbols to celebrate their Advent hope in Christ, the everlasting Light. From Germany the use of the Advent wreath spread to other parts of the Christian world. Traditionally, the wreath is made of four candles in a circle of evergreens with a fifth candle in the middle. Three candles are violet and the fourth is rose, but four white candles or four violet candles can also be used. Each day at home, the candles are lighted, perhaps before the evening meal-- one candle the first week, and then another each succeeding week until December 25th. A short prayer may accompany the lighting of each candle. The last candle is the middle candle. The lighting of this candle takes place on Christmas Eve. It represents Jesus Christ being born.

It makes me laugh to think that to truly celebrate traditionally with a Christmas wreath, a lot of houses in our area would have to stage multi-hour candle lighting ceremonies, not to mention quite dangerous ones! - each night. Instead, I think the wreaths here have become yet another competition in our local world - instead of having the brightest house with the most straight little lines of Christmas lights around the windows, or the biggest, most beautiful tree in the window, it is an all out wreath camouflage war around here. I suppose I could rationalize the multi-wreathed homes with the idea that their inhabitants live in a colder climate than S and I grew up in, and so we need that hope of spring, but really, it's just people trying to outdo one another (we've gotten 2 inches of snow all year, guys, so we're not pre-Germanic Eastern Europe).
 
I'm glad I learned about the history of this tradition, and think the pre-Christians really epitomized how wreaths should be used for this season. Sure, the baby Jesus, the reason we now celebrate Christmas, is about victory, and sure, it gets cold this time of year, but I think this whole holiday is mostly about the pure and unadulterated hope of coming life and the love we have for it.
 

Chocolate

You know Christmas is about generosity and giving love when you buy a lot of candy for the ones you're thankful for, and instead of eating it yourself like you did on Halloween, you wrap it.

It

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect and wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Read this on Facebook as I was getting ready to end the work week. What truth is there in it.

A friend of mine recently asked his friends - also on Facebook - why more people don't try to convince others of what they think is right - religiously, politically, morally, or otherwise. Some people responded and said that they didn't try to convince others, because they weren't sure themselves what was "right." Others responded that what seemed most right for some (logic - in the very formal sense) was useless against what felt right for others (faith in a higher being), and vice versa, of course.

When I think of my friend's question and read this quote, I see Jesus, who never said he was God, outright. He was quick to say to others - "That's what you have said of me." But his life was lived with a beauty and constancy and honor and distinction that left no doubt to his followers, as he rose to fulfill his promise, that he was the living God, the word of God made flesh, so that we might know who we are as God's children.

Words would have made Jesus, a normal guy with a normal face, look really stupid. If you or I said we were God, or that we had the "right" idea for world peace, or the end to hunger - just like that - we'd look pretty stupid too. But if we live out who we are at our root, as Jesus did, and as many other very quiet, constant, beautiful people do in this world, we'll draw souls to us and leave no doubt when we leave this earth that we did indeed have had it right all along.

Peace and love and gratitude for those who inspire us to build ships by making us long for the enormity of the sea.

More than any other song

This one's got me in the holiday spirit.

Early present

Guess what Santa brought me!?!!

Which is very considerate, since I've been doing most of the big guy's work for him this weekend.

Off on another gift run!

The right to be joyful. The right to love.

Honor the people who inspired you to be an advocate for human rights this holiday season through Amnesty International's wall of heroes.

While I am fortunate to have so many people to thank, for sharing with me that we are connected, and those who I  think are less than me are greater, and those who I think are separate from me are really my brothers and sisters, I thought I ought to thank the deceased Jonathan Larson one more time for the beauty and message he brought into my life when he created Rent.

Thank you, Jonathan Larson. 525,600 minutes.

Eggnog wishes and gingerbread dreams

Naughty or nice

You know your cat's on Santa's bad list when you come home from work to find an ornament broken, off the tree, and your cat with tinsel stuck to his head.

Your heart

What about that -

The freckles on the chest from the shimmer on the water that reflects and burns?

What about that -

The warmth of the veins of a throat not my own nestled on top of me (nestled on top of me)?

Could this be just the beginning? Could this be you at the start?

I feel you – it startles, awakens my infancy. I don’t know half of your heart.

Pain free

I am sitting in the apartment after what might have been the most pain free Christmas decorating affair ever.

There are lights - green, white and red, lining the porch window, and lights on the tree, which S was nice enough to engineer from the ground up, by organizing the fake pine branches by size and commandeering me to "make them fluffy."

There are stockings, and the most adorable sweater print letters "O," "D" and "S" hanging from the knobs on our entertainment center.

Where a vase once was on our breakfast bar, now stands a glittery silver Christmas tree centerpiece, and where the Buddha stood happily beside our TV, now grazes a reindeer.

Last but not least, Frosty the Snowman is under the tree, completing the perfect picture of the holiday.

Oh yeah, and there's a cup of eggnog by my side.

Pictures to come soon, but suffice it to say I am extremely grateful for our savior, and extremely fortunate to celebrate his birth in peace, comfort, and with the love of family and friends (and O the cat) around me.

I'll enter into this advent season not only with appreciation, and lots of excitement, but also thinking through what a personal hero of mine said recently:

The more aware I am of the work God has yet to do in me, the less aware I am of what He has yet to do in those around me.

May I love with even an ounce of the ability with which I have been loved by God.

The month of November

Wow. It felt weird and old-fashioned signing into the blog, after essentially a whole month away.

What was I doing in November? While quite sequestered in my own little world, I still feel like the answer should be - everything.

I was re-reading Twilight and re-watching Breaking Dawn, visiting Maryland, Illinois and Georgia, saying goodbye to two Great-Uncles and meeting a swarm of new cousins, presenting at a conference of Latin American schools, and despining surveys at home. I cooked my first ever Thanksgiving Day turkey, and bought my first ever pair of skinny jeans. I met Pinocchio the alligator and celebrated Ladies' Lunch Out with a dude (my boss). I waited for more snow, which did not come, except on the first day I ever spent in Atlanta.

Generally, autumn has been my favorite time of year. This year, I have to keep reminding myself that this is what I wanted. In theory, my life is how I wish it to be - down to the very details of day-to-day living and including bigger and broader achievements and circumstances. In practice, though, if I don't reflect on how lucky I am, how much grace has been poured out onto my life, and how hard work and prayer and the support of others has given me this idyllic existence, I am not sure I'll have recognition of my blessings at all.

I feel a bit like a pharisee. The outside of my cup is clean, but what about the inside? Patience, industry, honesty, and well-balanced meekness and boldness are still goals that elude me. The peace that surpasses all understanding is so simple to feel when times are bleak, but harder to achieve when the outside world indicates that there might in fact be an abundance of stability, even in the absence of the Almighty's guiding hand. I need to keep looking within, to challenge myself, much more so now than when times have been tougher.

I've been bounced around alot in the past month, and come out of it all on the other end. I'm feeling a burst of hope from the possibility that as the outside world turns cold and withers away, my inner self is reawakening.