The annual cavort down the track to get back to the “real meaning” of Christmas, as if we ever fully knew it, fascinates me.
Then, after fascination, I shudder.
The ramifications of “Getting Jesus Into Christmas” if ever achieved, cause me to shudder.
Then I relax with the knowledge it’s beyond us (definitely me, and probably you).
We are too far gone. Off the mark.
I admit there may be rare exceptions but we’ve gotten so sidetracked with the divine-Reveal, we (you and me), seem to forget that Jesus was a baby for as long as we were.
Then, He grew up.
Fully grown Jesus is quite demanding, a straight-shooter. Uncompromising.
And, He’s exorbitantly full of patience and compassion while personifying, justice, mercy, and humility. Jesus rejects pretension, prejudice, all that comes with both. He does not take kindly to pride, arrogance.
You and I will never get Jesus into Christmas while we hold the (perhaps) secret belief in our own superiority, or remain ready to stone others, any others.
His cup overflows with goodness and mercy but don’t get on the wrong side of Him.
Jesus requires we love those whom we think we’re justified to reject.
He loves those whom we (falsely) believe He rejects and expects us to love (not tolerate, or accommodate, but love) which begins at least with a willingness to engage “them,” whomever “them” is.
Your (our) rejection of – insert groups, nations. Individuals, subgroups, “illegals” – will never lead you or me to greater health or deeper spirituality or deeper knowledge of Him.
It’s impossible to grow closer to Him while rejecting anyone or any group He loves.
Rejection, indifference, scorn, at any one is to reject, scorn, be indifferent also to Him……
No matter how many ways you try to bring Jesus into Christmas you (I do too) lock yourself out while you harbor resentments or rejection for anyone, no matter how righteous or justified you may believe yourself to be.
The real meaning of Christmas is, dare I say, rather frightening.
Allow yourself to experience your emotions – even the extremes. Don’t cover or hide from your grief. If you are feeling joy, express it. Avoid constructing a wall or barrier between you and your emotions. The day may come when you cannot see over the barrier, let alone climb the wall.
Take time to hear as many “sides” to every story. Don’t rush to judgment. There are usually 7, 8, even 10 sides to every story. Hear them all. Things are often not as they appear. Listeners take all the time needed to hear things out.
As far as you’re capable, go back and make right where you have failed. Often, this may be impossible. Make a list of your regrets, determine never to move in those directions again. Learn, recover, learn recover.
Even if it’s not in your usual habit, try to talk more to people you care about about the things you care about. Don’t rehash hobby horses. Let people into unexpressed parts of your thinking.
Notice your indifference. This is where you’ve been unmoved, unaffected, by things that ought to move everybody, ought to affect everybody. Allow the world about you, near and afar, to have its impact on you.
One corner of my home office……. you’re welcome here.
I know competition is tough, really tough, but I think I win the International Best Sister Award. My Australian brother would win a parallel brother award but today I’m celebrating my South African sister, Durban’s own Jennifer Arthur.
As I’ve previously written Jen is the original Facebook. She remembers everyone she’s ever met, be it for 7 minutes on a train or plane somewhere in the world, and somehow gets them a birthday message. She keeps contact with people for years despite the brevity of a first encounter. There’s always a way to stay in touch and Jen finds it.
Jen’s adored by her 9 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild and by my adult sons. I’ve heard children, seen their longing, as they request she be their grandmother. My sister is widely known as Granny Goose.
This week, in fact 3 days ago, my sister landed in the USA for my son’s wedding, a journey booked without awareness that I’d be in need of assistance following my joust with salmonella. My kitchen is organized, my house has beautiful new touches, and recuperation feels 100 times easier.
Even Duke my Lab has switched allegiances and is under her feet as much as possible.
There is nothing like a good listener for feeding the soul.
A good listener determines there will be no distractions — no phones, text checking, no dings or app notifications or glances to see the time — and will offer complete and uninterrupted and undiluted attention to the speaker.
A good listener listens, says very very little except may offer occasional brief words of encouragement like “tell me more” or “go back to the beginning if you want” or “go into as much detail as you think will be helpful” or “could you tell me that again so it’s clearer for me.”
The good listener knows listening and any attempts at multitasking — even the most subtle — distract the speaker and obliterate listening. A good listener gets all the potential impediments to listening out of the way before sitting down to listen.
The good listener knows a listener’s inner-noise —- things the listener is refusing to hear or address from within — will emerge and sabotage attempts at hearing others and so addresses unresolved personal matters as much as possible so others may encounter a clear-headed listener.
The good listener does not formulate replies or develop counterpoints while listening and does not one-up the speaker with the listener’s own experiences whether they may appear to the listener to be helpful or not.
A good listener sees, hears, knows, acknowledges the speaker by listening — the most powerful and tangible expression of love.
I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
In a world of chaos and discord may you and I be part of the solution and not part of the problem. May we not fuel fruitless discussions but rather attempt to be agents of calm and sound reason.
In a world of selfishness and greed may you and I find it in ourselves to be self-aware and generous. May we assist when possible and necessary but may our help be carefully considered so that it is authentic, helpful and empowering help.
In a world of indifference and frequent contempt may you and I be engaged with others and accepting of others. May we learn the art of seeing, validating, and hearing people and loving those whom we may have formerly regarded with indifference had we noticed them at all.
In a world where many people are demanding and entitled, may you and I learn when to give way, to accommodate, to compromise, to yield, and when to stand firm. May we learn the art of repeated healthy responses to unhealthy expectations.
In a world of sarcasm, hurt and rejection may you and I represent hope. May we be people of healing and listening and grace. May you and I learn how to be safe people in an unsafe world.
The soul – enigmatic, yet so incredibly powerful – is what brings to life, and is the essence of life, feuling and energizing an inner-being. We may refer to a young person, even a toddler, as an old soul and we know the toddler is, as many toddlers are, or appears to be a deep thinker. We may say a spritely person of advanced age is a young soul and we ready ourselves for an elderly person with a spring in her step or a youthful inside. Soul is often packaged with a prefix: broken-, angry-, critical-, abandoned-, creative- and all reflect on an inner-condition.
The Soul is the Person housed in flesh and bones; pulsating immortal vitality ferried, decade upon decade, within the mortal corpus, while not limited to it or by it.
May I illustrate? As I write my soul is reaching out to your soul. Hopefully our souls are connecting right now as you read. I have no idea where you are but I assure you, my soul is firmly here with me while simultaneously seeking to reach you and be received and embraced by you.
I hope it does, and is.
It has happened before.
I know it occurred through the thousands of newspaper columns I have had the joy of writing and hearing in return from many readers.
The soul is the spark of light within that lights up the eyes – eyes which will cease to ignite (yours and mine) once the soul is freed from the body, a body that, for whatever reasons, can no longer house or contain it. On this side of life we have named this moment of release, rather unfortunately, death. Perhaps, rather, it’s a new beginning, a refreshing adventure of deeper love and deeper companionship than any of us has ever before known, and it’s not death at all.
That’s my belief.
Installed, divinely imputed and imparted, at the milli-moment of conception, itself also learning, the soul begins immediately, within the womb, to impart strength and resilience into the made-from-dust flesh-and-bone outer form. Soul-power sweeps into the body, bringing with it a life-time’s worth of the capacity for love, a life-time’s worth of the desire for survival, a life-time’s worth of joy in human connection. It imparts to the physical being, an enduring and innate urge for worship, and a compelling desire to impact the larger environment and leave behind a beautiful and substantial legacy.
You and I are not limited to our physical bodies and I do not mean some outer-body experience, well, not exactly. It is much much more than about my soul reaching out to yours.
When we write, paint, sculpt, love and rear (raise) our children, adore our grandchildren, and enjoy great-grandchildren; when we arrange flowers, build skyscrapers, plant vegetables, light birthday candles for 3-year-olds, leave fortunes to find cancer’s cure, we are gathering the best of our pasts and throwing our souls into the future.
Generations yet unborn will know our departed souls:
They will know who we are from the stories told by those whom we have loved.
They will know who we are from what we have written.
They will see what we have painted, sculpted.
Our handiwork and heartfelt work, our generous love and nurturing gentleness will live on, revealing the power of our souls long after the fuel of our inner-being has escaped our aging, dust-to-dust, ashes-to-ashes bodies, the whereabouts of our remains marked with a stone or a plaque, and our souls have returned to the Place from whence they came.
So? Write it (whatever it is). Record it (whatever it is). Say it in poetry, with colorful paints on paper or on canvas. Write a book, gather photographs, place them in an album. Dance it (whatever it is). Sing it. Declare it, while you can.
You’re seeking a soul-mate in a great-great-grandson yet unborn.
When he is old enough to understand what you have created for him – your name signed at the end of a love letter or your family name on a high-rise research hospital – he will appreciate it and you will be generational soul-mates.
You may have noticed a certain keenness and sharpness within your soul, a sharpness and keenness that may far outpace the keenness and strength of your body, even your intellect, mind, memory. Perhaps your soul is more aware than you may think and knows it is teetering on inevitable escape, in a year, or three, or more. This is why this is as good a time as any to dance, to sing, to declare, and to do so while you can, however you can, ……. when you can.
Your soul is intricately invested in beauty and in your life’s legacy.
Reach for the diary, the photograph album, the compendium of letters your grandparents or great uncle or favorite aunt left to you and allow those precious souls – now adventuring or resting paradise – to speak to you anew across generations, and then, via you, let them, too, continue to live in the generations yet to come.
We are holding hands, not across a mere oceans, not across mere time zones, but with the generations, past and future, and so, let’s Do Like David did – DLDD – and let everything that has breath (life, soul, energy) Praise the Lord (Psalm 150:6).
One of my favorite paintings — I keep it illuminated 24/7/365 to remind me ever of the women who made me a dad — and sent my soul soaring.
“What parenting advice could you offer my wife and me,” said the delighted dad, “my son is 16 months young.”
Above all, love your wife with joy, freedom and courage. This will reduce and deflect loads of the anxiety that naturally tries to derail all childhoods.
Lavish your baby, then young child, then pre-teen and teenager with affirmation and affection. No matter what you and your wife face, when you come home from work, or he returns after time away, or when he wakes in the morning or in the middle of the night — baby or teenager — be glad to see him, and, say so. Verbally express the joys your son brings you, to each other, and to him.
Teach him to talk Joy.
Regard the ages 5, 8, 12, 14 and 16 as transition ages. At these times discuss with him your parental plans (your mutually agreed upon plans you’ve made as parents) to do less and less for him, while expecting more and more from him. Yes, even at 5 — point out that he can make his own, age-appropriate decisions. Include him in planning and establishing his growing independence. Plan your parenting so that by his eighteenth year your parenting roles are accomplished and he has all it takes to be an interdependent young adult.
Hold in high regard the beautiful idea that you parent (the verb) for his sake and not yours.
Our new painting will go up in my home-office this week….. from Friday this week, both of my adult sons are launched and living independently of me. Oh the joy; oh the niggling pain. #graceupongrace
Within milliseconds the drawbridge – we each have one – may go down with a hearty welcome or remain up and sealed shut.
There may be Immediate comfort or discomfort, or levels of both.
Suspicions may be endorsed or deleted.
Information and misinformation transmission occurs at a speedy rate.
We read and misread and read and misread each other constantly – all within the backdrop of our unique experiences and training, our hurts, pains, goals, and desires – known and unknown.
The accent (if one party is not from “here”) is loaded with meaning. Clothes (anything unusual); laid-back or dominant stance; voice tone, volume, intonations; levels of energy or lack thereof, are cumulatively processed.
Triggers can be triggered. Stereotypes ignited. Warmth flows, or doesn’t.
The wave, the handshake, the hug, smile or frown, degrees of sincerity or insincerity are downloaded by the “who-are-you” antenna and the “can I trust you” antenna issued to all at birth to be processed with the morass of stored history, experience, memories, good and bad.
Every encounter is a miracle.
And, yes, with all that, we — you and I – are called to be neighbors and to love one another.
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