Beauty and Pain

THIS MORNING OUR SEVEN YEAR OLD GRAND-GIRL KARLEE was standing in the middle of our living room, pulling up her tights. “That looks like a lot of work!” I observed.

Then she explained, “Sometimes beauty is painful.” A lesson, she shared with me in great detail, was from Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid”.

I’ve been thinking this season about the Christmas story, you know the one we’ve heard so many times; this being my sixty-fifth Christmas. I thought about G.K. Chesterton’s quote I shared in the previous post, about adulthood and our loss of wonder which causes us to experience monotony. So I started reading Matthew’s account of the story, and truthfully, almost gave out halfway through the genealogy monologue. But wait… What’s up with these five women?

One of them is obvious: Mary, the mother of Jesus. Of course she deserves to be listed, but these other four? I wonder if there was ever a time when the Disciples were gathered around the campfire waiting for the fish to cook, that maybe Jesus asked Matthew, “Hey, Matt, I get why you mentioned my mom and maybe Ruth; but Tamar, Rahab The Prostitute, and Bathsheba?!”

Of course he never asked Matthew about that. My guess is that Jesus was not at all embarrassed to have listed in his public record women like Tamar, who pretended to be a hooker so she could trick her father-in-law in to having sex with her, or Rahab The Prostitute, a real prostitute, or Bathsheba (mentioned only as the wife of her husband) who had an adulterous affair with the king (David) and then the king had her husband moved to the front line of the war so that he would surely be killed.

Maybe WE’VE made the story monotonous by making sure that it’s all cleaned up and sanitized. We want to make sure that Jesus complies with our politics and religiousity. And in making him like us, we’ve made him boring.

From the Daily Artifact Project by Corey Lee Fuller.

I hope if you were planning to get a “caucasian” nativty set from Sam’s Club, you didn’t wait to late, because they are sold out. What’s even more sad is that some company felt compelled to make a “caucasian” nativity set in the first place, and Sam’s Club knew they would sell like enormous plastic bottles of puffed cheese balls.

Another thing about those “other” women that Matthew mentioned: not all of them were Jews, most were Gentiles, Moabites, Hittites and such. So there’s that.

I’ve never given birth, but I have been present. I know this: in the experience, there was both beauty and pain. Like Jesus, we all have a family tree. In those trees are stories of both beauty and pain.

In Jesus’ life there are two tableaux we remember more than any others. One we see so much this season, with a little baby in a manger. The other is of a cross on a hill. In both there is pain and beauty; and stories that never grow old.

Marker Rendering of The Nativity by Corey Lee Fuller (at a much younger age)

For Sunday, December 20, 2015

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. ”

— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.”

— Lamentations 3:22-26

 — Lamentations 3:22-26.

For This Sunday, December 13, 2015

“The idea that nothing is true except what we comprehend is silly, and that ideas which our minds cannot reconcile are mutually destructive, sillier still.”

— Winston Churchill

“​For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

— Paul the Apostle; FKA: Saul of Tarsus (1 Corinthians 13:12)

The Jesus I don't Believe In

According to the National Candle Association (I’m not making this up), candle sales “have taken off like wildfire.” They didn’t say whether the pun was intended or not. The candle industry experiences growth of 10 to 15 percent a year and annual sales have topped $2 billion with a B.

Some will say that’s a lot of money going up in smoke, but these people have probably never been to a candlelight dinner, saw Liberace play piano, or watched a children’s choir sing a candlelight Christmas concert.

I wish that we weren’t burning so many candles like those we see at vigils and makeshift memorials. I wish this only because I wish we didn’t need to have these, but it seems to be our new reality.

I really do try to avoid politics and religion in anything I post on the WWW. Maybe, if I was the president of my daddy’s university, I could just rant there, but since I’m not, I’ll use my little blog here. After all, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Or, so they say.

Jerry Falwell Jr. and I have something in common: I am so, so grateful that Jerry Falwell Jr. doesn’t represent or speak for all christians. And, if Jerry Falwell Jr. knew me at all, I’m certain he would say that he too is so, so grateful that I don’t either.

In deference to Jerry Jr., I didn’t hear all of his convocation address to his young soldiers, and I won’t repeat the soundbites here. You can find them for yourself if you’re so inclined.

I have a document at home called a Cradle Roll Cerftificate. It states that I was enrolled at the Brookside Baptist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a wee little lad. (I think we were called “Sunbeams”). One of the things I’ve learned over these many years is that we should not hide our light under a bushel. We should share our testimony.

In that spirit, I will testify and confess that I am having a crisis of faith. I’ve had them many times before but it’s been a long time.

My freshman year in college, I was driving back to campus after a weekend at home. I stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. Don’t worry. It was the early 70s. He was a hippie. I knew he wasn’t going to shoot me and steal my car. We talked smalltalk. It went roughly like this: 

Hippie: Where you headed man?
Me: Back to school. 
Hippie: Cool, cool. Where?
Me: OBU.
Hippie: What does that stand for?
Me: Oklahoma Baptist University.
Hippie: That’s a heavy trip man, that whole religion scene.
Me: But you’re not heavy, you’re my brother. (I didn’t really say that. It was probably more something like): Why do you say that?
Hippie: I believe there is divinty in every thing. What do you think of that? Mind if I smoke?
Me: I don’t belive that spirit can enter inanimate things. (I guess I assumed we were going to speak esoterically.)
Hippie: Actually, I don’t believe in Jesus or anything like that.
Me: Tell me about the Jesus you don’t believe in.

And he told me. He told me about a typical, americanized, generic diety that is primarily concerned with sorting good and bad behavior.

Me: I’m pretty sure that the god you’ve rejected is not the true God. I feel like if you would really spend time getting to know Jesus, you would find him to be completely different than your concept of him. He is the creator and source of this amazing thing called grace.
Hippie: Fair enough.

By that time we were halfway along the turnpike. I bought him an ice cream at Howard Johnson’s and as we parted ways, he hugged me and said, “Peace, brother.”

“Exactly.” I said.

Here’s my crisis. I’m pretty sure that the “Jesus” that has been hijacked by the likes of Jerry Falwell Jr. and the most hardcore of fundamentalists for political gain, and co-opted for their agendas, is not the Jesus I know from scripture, from a long life full of teaching from faithful followers, and from personal experience.

This is the Jesus I know:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. —Isaiah 9:6

Peace, brothers and sisters. May the only candles you have to light this season be those of the advent.

P.S.: Speaking of who Jesus is and songs by candlelight. WATCH THIS BREATHTAKING VIDEO FROM PENTATONIX

For more on this topic, I recommend this from Relevant Magazine.