Sunday Meditation #12: Christmas Threads and Contradictions

An odd run-up to this, my forty-seventh Christmas on Earth.  Alone in my house two days ago, chuckling at my own weirdness as I stood in bar of sunlight, a copy of A Year With Thomas Merton in my hands, and the supercharged chant of Rollins' Band "Shine" shaking the walls a little as I read.  How this came to be I cannot recall.  I do know that at the time, it made perfect sense.

I have been reading the Merton book since June, which is the month in which I acquired it.  The short daily meditations I mostly read at the pace of one a day, in sync with the calendar.  Time and circumstance conspired to disturb the symmetry of that schedule.  Lately I have the habit of neglecting the book for days at a time, then catch up in a concentrated burst of reading when I have time.  So it was this time.

"In The End, Grace Alone" the title of Merton's meditation.  Henry Rollins exhorts me to "Shine" as I read it.  I lean against the door frame and grin.  This time the apparent cognitive dissonance of the ideas before my mind does not bother me.  Merton writes of his frustration with being an intellectual in a land of "businessmen and squares", while Rollins practically boots me in the ass to be a hero.  It is to laugh, and I do.

Truly it does not bother me, these two ends of the tug rope.  I've lived with the bifurcation of my interior life for so long it seems normal.  I feel like a warrior-poet, except I cannot squarely identify my foe or my muse.  I very often, in the words of Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame), "obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul".  These exhortations I have trouble explaining to myself, much less to others.

Yet I listen.  I savor.  I worry them with the teeth of my mind.  Somewhere on there exists my destination.

The season and in particular, this day, always place me in this frame of mind.  A season of merriment and good will towards humankind marred by either too much belief or not enough.  By some lights it isn't enough that you be kindly disposed to those around you, you must be Christian and you have to believe.  Never mind all the ironies involved in the chauvinistic demands for "keeping Christ in Christmas" when Christmas itself was taken over from a pagan holiday and has been further hijacked by a consumer-driven, free market (arguably) capitalistic and money-driven culture.  No wonder this time of year produces so much anxiety in so many.

There seems to be little real peace, and true love.  For better or worse, Christmas as a season and a holiday has been dilated too much by the demands of an open society for the 'at-large' return to a ritual acknowledgment of the birth of Jesus Christ.  To do so would be to ignore entire segments of our society, and would not be allowed by the money machines of consumer capitalism because it would cut down on the profit pool.  From what I see in the news, it is either about mass consumption or religious narrow-mindedness.  Hardly anyone speaks of peace, at least, not in a pure sense.

For myself, I want peace of mind.  I want the simple joy to be found in caring for those around you and in the communion with life in the universe.  I do not want to be wrapped up in questions of salvation versus damnation, belief versus non-belief, extravagant consumption in the face of need.  The former question misses the point of personal faith, and the latter question is one that exists independently of any holiday.  Neither is a question to be solved if this is supposed to be a matter of peace and love.

Thomas Merton and Henry Rollins: the yin and yang of my Christmas season.  They both speak to me, in different tongues.  The thinker and the warrior tell me to seek inner peace, but I will have to fight for it.  This makes me laugh. Salvation and consumption both seem to me to be missing the main point: that we should exist in love and seek peace in ourselves so that we may know it with others.

As I meditate on my roots this Christmas, I feel I am closer to casting aside the distractions and noise of this world, and getting much closer to love and to peace.  This is my wish for us all.

Winter Poetry Slam: Patuxent River Meditation #6

Green scent of pine boughs,
Motley lights cradled, sparkling,
waiting for her love

Every Light My Love

"Pine or fir?" following her eyes
Then she looked at me to say
"Pick the one you like" and smiled
So fir it was, on top of the car

Rode home with windows open,
Just a bit with cords stretched taut
While she sang doggerel, softly,
sanding down the edges of my soul

Electric jewels strung across green tips
Porcelain doll hands carefully place an orb,
as if she were hanging up my heart;
She likes it, pronounces it "Pretty",

and I pronounce it Love.

Nollaig Shona Daoibh!

Happy Christmas, one and all! -

from Irish Gumbo

Merry 'Effin Christmas To You Too, and a Scoop!

Gumbo News Network (Semi-) Exclusive - For some reason, the local newspaper has been really interesting as of late:

Item #1 – AHMADINEJAD: FARSI FOR ‘ANNOYING RECTAL ITCH’
Our buddy Mahmoud (henceforth known as ARI) is at it again. Leave it to him to suck the life out of what is ostensibly a time of reflection, peace and goodwill to all:

I know, he is the leader of a nation that is ostensibly majority Islamic, so Christmas shouldn’t be an issue. But, dude (doud?), can’t you just give it a rest, at least for one day? Yeah, yeah, we are infidel dogs, bootlicks of Satan, blah, blah, blah. And to be truly fair, it isn’t just Islamic demagogues that cynically use religion when it suits their purposes; our own current lame duck (for example) isn’t free of the taint on that score. The “Jesus were alive" comment is especially interesting. Not to lob a theological grenade, but what a secular Muslim (or many so-called Christians) such as ARI really know about the mind of Jesus? Too bad ARI didn’t include “belligerent, fascistic theocracies bent on conversion by sword” in the groups Jesus would oppose. And he didn’t finish that sentence with “And then we would kill him as an infidel.” It also seems obvious to me that when ARI refers to leaders who have turned away from religion, what he really means is “that have turned away from MY religion”. Again, not a sentiment exclusive to Islamic leaders, but annoying enough in this context. And the Christmas day timeslot? ARI, if your intent was to diss Christians by spewing this nonsense on Christmas Day, news for you, bro: the Christmas season has already been corrupted by consumerist, corporate culture, unfortunately. You cannot insult Christmas more than it already has been.

Don’t fret, dear readers! I am still optimistic about this matter! I believe that most folks all around the world would like a little peace and goodwill, no matter which version of God/Yhwh/Allah (ad nauseum) they choose to carry in their hearts, and no matter how hard cynical politicians seek to exploit belief for their own grabs at power.

Item #2 – THE GUMBO NEWS NETWORK HAS A SCOOP
To those of you who laid some eyes on my post of December 24th (link), you already know how I feel about the prevailing pressure to consider accruing/spending to equate with joy/happiness. So it was with some satisfaction that I came upon this little tidbit in the Christmas edition of our local cage liner, written by one of their regular columnists:

Did you see that? “…more spending equals more merriment.”
CAN I GET A WHUT, WHUT!? I was most gratified to see that SOMEONE in the local press was at least thinking about this subject. The article was much longer than that, and was fleshing out the same theme. She took it a little farther than I did, with some good points about how this current economic situation was maybe an indicator that we should all do some soul searching about how much stuff we have, how much stuff we buy, and whether we do all that because as a culture we have lost sight of the things that truly matter. Testimony out there, brothers and sisters!

I was right there with her, but I confess a smidge of jealousy: she gets paid to write about that stuff! Maybe someday, I will, too. For now, though, this feels good.

Not Numbers, But Brown and Wrinkly

Some items of note from the morning edition of our local fish wrapper, that I felt deserved some discussion:

Item #1 – IT’S THE WORST CHRISTMAS EVER!
This is a direct quote from a news article regarding the retail business: “The holiday season is shaping up to be the worst in years”. This is not a particularly original statement about the state of things these days, just a variant of what we have been hearing for weeks if not months now. On the surface, there is nothing that seems unusual about it, either. But by the time I read to the end of the article, I was astonished and saddened by the very banality of that statement. To be able to make such a statement, to have it make sense to the reader, implies an existing set of conditions that the readership at large takes for granted. The basic implication is: the value of the holiday season is gauged by the transfer of money for possessions, fewer transactions equals less fulfillment.

I know the focus of the article is on the retail environment, not the holidays in general. But it was troubling to me because the tone of the article was that numbers equals joy. This seems to be pervasive within our culture, to a disturbing degree. Around here, we often hear the same dire predictions every summer regarding the effects of bad weather on the “success” of the vacation season at Ocean City. Everything always gets tied back to “business”. If “business” isn’t fulfilled, then we aren’t fulfilled.

With all due respect to business owners at all levels, I am tired of hearing it. I am weary of the culture of money telling me I won’t be happy unless I spend, fed up with it being implied that I have to consume or there will be no joy. I guess I am plain wore out being told I have to gauge my happiness by the amount of money I am spending and that others are making. Maybe it is exhaustion brought on by a culture that allows and expects APPETITES to drive everything. I like to eat, but at some point you have to push yourself away from the trough.

Item #2 – IT’S NOT A FORTY, IT’S THE BABY JESUS!
The headline reads “Shopping-bag Nativity scene”, and with a hook like that, I couldn’t resist a read. I was expecting something tacky, like an “I saw the face of Jesus on my grilled cheese!” type story. But it was better than that, in its own low-key and heartfelt fashion.

A local church has a yearly tradition of constructing a Nativity scene out of brown paper shopping bags. That’s right: brown paper shopping bags. Every year, a local grocery store and others donate the bags, and volunteer parishioners (one of whom was born near Bethlehem) cut and shape the bags into a cave-like grotto. They crinkle them up and paint them to look like rocks and moss, even make the walls look like they are sooty from campfires. The grotto is about 15’ feet high and 20’ feet wide; they set it that way because there is some evidence to suggest that Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the animals more likely would have been sheltered by a cave; something to do with available building technologies, I think. Anyway, the church uses statues to represent all the people and animals involved, and it gets blessed on Christmas Eve. One of the parishioners is quoted as saying “It is to remind people of the simplicity and poverty of the birth of Christ”; another says the crèche is “a labor of love that we all enjoy doing”.

I can’t claim to be a devout Christian. Hell, these days I am still trying to figure out if I even believe in God (a post, perhaps, for another time), but, still: a labor of love that we all enjoy doing. What an amazing, beautiful summation. Maybe this is why we should be doing anything, especially at this time of the year, when we are encouraged to love one another and find peace with each other.

I do know this: the red and the black in ledgers I do not keep will not be the arbiter of my happiness. Success cannot be defined by the bills in my wallet. This year, and for all to come, my labor (if you can call it labor) will be to love and be loved. Merry Christmas, and peace to all!