Christmas

And the world wonders at the centuries-long persistence of Christmas among the Christians.

Hung upon this tree, almost every ornament represents a hallowed memory, or a different era of 40 years shared between one man and one woman, and the three now-grown children who filled up the void in their shared life. 

Several ornaments are hand-me-downs from the grand- and great-grand- generations who are now gone to that great yuletide in the heavens.

Gazing at the tree on a chilly December night, although the room is quite warm, calls to mind all those past Christmases.

Christ the Saviour is born. And another family lives to tell the yuletide tale.

Believe it or not, the true, original Christmas spirit is potent, alive and well, and still passing from generation to generation.

A relic of days gone by?

Perhaps. But much more than that, a celebration of eternity to come, made real by the child born in Bethlehem so long ago—the one who grew up to conquer hell and death on a goddam cross.

Believe it not. The manger was good enough for Jesus; it’s good enough for us. It's a potent story with an eternal ending. Join in if you've caught the Spirit.

Glass half-Full

Navidad

. . . And she gave birth to her newborn son; and she wrapped him in cloths, and laid him in a box in their refugee camp, because there was no room for them in the developed world.

but . . . the angel said unto them, Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all people . . . today has been born a Savior, Christ

Czech out this Opus of our Messiah!

Messiah has come.

The people who walk in darkness (we) have seen a great light! Can you feel it? Open up your soul to the flood of good tidings.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH3T6YwwU9s

Listen to the great news--yes, Virginia, there is, in the universe, eternal presence of Joy. Yes, Roy, there is, in this world, a way of overcoming our bad decisions, bad government, terrible events, terrorist evil, massive tragedy, constant temptation, stupid politics, polarizing idiocy, universal iniquity, and even my own and your  very own personal sin. If you've never done anything wrong, just pretend I never sent you this opportunity to repent. But if you find yourself anywhere near feeling the urgency of Messiah's message of deliverance, give it a listen. Watch and listen.

Consider leaving behind  your stubbornness to not believe. Go ahead and  accept that there is a Good Creator of this world, a Corrector of our climate-changed, polluting life within it. Believe there is a Deliverer--Messiah, King of Glory, who has come into human activity  to show us the way out of our stupidity and iniquity.

Believe it! Accept it. He's looking for you, wants to sign you up for the Kingdom of Heaven that in the end prevails over the kingdoms, the democracies, the caliphates, the governments, the autocracies, the oligarchies, the dictatorships, the corrupt regimes of this world.

Watch this musical testimony about our ultimate triumph over injustice and enmity.

Be attentive to the counsel of ancient shepherds who beheld in the heavens never-before-seen signs of our ultimate delivery from pain and death.

If you will only believe the good news!

Victory, as demonstrated by Messiah--victory over the worst of the worst human suffering: torture, crucifixion, even death! It has been done already, and will be done again, inside of you. Go for it!

As bad as things are now, it's not over yet. It's not over 'til that alto lady sings: 

"He was despised, despised and rejected, rejected of men. . . a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."

How many of us humans, through the history of mankind, have suffered the despisal of our fellow-humans? How many of us have endured rejection, how many have  been forced into immigrating from destructive human degeneracy, war, racism, holocaust, persecution, murder and mayhem ? How many have persevered through terrible sorrows. . . how many members of our human race have become "acquainted with grief" as Messiah himself was?

"Surely, surely he hath born our grief, and carried our sorrows!"

The savior of us all had to be a human acquainted with grief. We have no need for a jizya-wielding conqueror. What we require is a fellow-traveler--one who has been there, been here--in the world with us, and understands our plight.

"Emmanuel: God with us!"

'We seek, we need, we long for--as the wise men of old--Messiah who overcomes suffering and death itself, and shows us the way out of our depravity.Hallelujah!

Can you comprehend it? Listen on. Listen to this musicated oration of our great message of hope for all men and women. . . the profound enactment of Handel's Messiah, as only a bunch of passionate, young Czechs could perform it. Thank you, Vaclav Lucs

and Collegium 1704 of Prague! Thanks for renewing our faith in the next generation of creators and musicians. They're not all hung up on meaningless drivel and sensuous provocation.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH3T6YwwU9s

Watch; Listen to the urgent message of the Ages:  the angelic experience given to shepherds who, in ages past, laid the nocturnal groundwork for Georg Friedrich Handel’s revelation of  Messianic visitation: divine intrusion into the sordid affairs of mankind!

Divine intervention in our world. The centerpiece event of human history, between Moses and Mohammed--one man's triumph over unbelief--one man's victory over torture and death!

If you will but believe it, 'tis yours to enter into: triumph over the injustice and tribulation of this life! and ultimate entrance into eternity!

The trumpet shall sound, and this corruption of ours made incorruptible for all time. Listen for the call in this symphony of saved life, and in your own seeking Spirit!



King of Soul

Consummation to Coitus to Coercion

I was born in 1951 and so I have seen a few changes in my lifetime. One major change is the difference between how we thought about sex back in those rose-colored 1950’s and how we think about it nowadays.

Back in the day, a man and a women would marry and and try to make a go of it— a lifetime of extreme one-on-one intimacy and— if they were good at it and lucky enough— parenthood.

Nowadays, not so much.

Seems now everybody’s hung up on the sex part of it. Who’s screwing whom, whether he was raping her, who’s consenting, or not, to whom. And who’s coercing whom into sexual acts. Socialmedia world is all about what he did to her, or he did to him. Whereas it used to be about mama and daddy retiring to the same bed every night, then something mystical happening between them, which would result in a new human  entering into this wonderful life.

But now that long-lost world of lifetime love and fidelity is going the way of the buffalo— which is to say. . . near extinction.

Mom and Pop are hardly even a part of it any more. The public obsession that’s been drummed up is all about what Harvey whoever did to so-and-so how many times on his studio couch, or about Roy’s groping the girls, or Kevin’s coercing the boys or even Prez pants-down Bill’s spurting on a blue dress in the very shadow of his privileged oval office hegemony.

Now some of us ole geezers are wondering how the hell did we get here. What happened? Funny thing happened on our way to the millennium, we lost something along the way.

We lost some healthy constraint somewhere; we forsook some beneficial bonds on our way to tearing down all those old taboos, pushed the envelope beyond beneficence.

It seems we Boomers overdid it in our campaign for Free Love.

As it turns out, free love is not much more than cheap lust.

And mere rape, be it sardonic, sadistic, or sodomic.

I think it’s time we blaze a path back to where we were before we lost our way in the wilderness of wantonness.

King of Soul 

A Poem for Christmas

Every Christmas season that comes and goes brings an emphasis that is different from previous years. This year's discovery is something called a "Christmas market."

This term, which seems to indicate a market that is in some way unique to the Noel season, a market that is more joyously conducted, perhaps, than just any old assemblage of vendors selling stuff. I first pondered the phrase while reading sad reports of the murderous bus driver at the "Christmas market" in Berlin. A day or two later, while Pat and I were skyping with our daughter, who is in Europe, Katie mentioned that Christmas markets are "all over the place" over there.

This Christmas eve morn, I was sitting in the chair by the tree, listening to Handel's Messiah, and wondering about the Christmas market phenomenon, and how it might be different from just any old walmart or kreske store. In order to learn what it is, I thought I'd look it up. But suddenly, a star shone brightly in my brain and I decided to write a poem about it instead, without even knowing what a Christmas market really is!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

How lovely are your goods to see!

Though not in session when summer's here,

You're only in the Noel time of year!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

How lovely are your figs and pears to see!



Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

How festive Man hath profited from thee!

Thou biddest us to all buy faithfully,

Our trust in free enterprise, consumerly!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free

How enterprising Man hath been with thee!



Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

Thy giftings gleam so, so brightly!

Each purchase doth add its tiny part

To make our economy glow and spark!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

Thy prosperity doth shine so, so brightly!



Oh Christmas time, O Christmas time so holy,

Thy nativity's obscured now almost wholly

by buying and selling of so many services and goods.

We would buy them all, if we could!

Oh Christmas child, O Christmas child,

Where art thou now in this world so wild?



But hey! What light through yonder darkness breaks?

Still through our dark markets shineth

The everlasting light.

The thoughts and gifts of all our years

are giv'n in Thee tonight!

Feliz Navidad, Jesus!



Glass half-Full

Comfort in the Chaos?

Confounding the experience of every man or woman in this world is the unwelcome question: who cares? Does anyone give a damn about me?

Long ago, a psalmist observed , "...he looked for some to have pity on him, but there was no man--neither found he any to comfort him."

Seeking relief from this lonely condition, each person finds within self a desire to love and to be loved, to know and be known, by another. In the nascent setting of life--that of childhood-- many are fortunate to have experienced the comfort of mother love, of father love and sibling love. Unwelcome accompaniments of parental discipline and sibling irritations are revealed as part of the deal too, but they provoke, as it turns out, valuable lessons in the school of life.

Oftentimes, it's when a young man or women gets out on his(her) own, as most are want to do-- then is the time of the rude awakening that: hey! nobody cares-- is laid upon them. It's every man for himself, and each woman is the queen of her own existence.

Take me, for instance. I encountered several facets of this lonely revelation: when my high school girlfriend found better things to do with her college experience than care about me, when the professors didn't bend their grading curves to suit my lax learning, when my employers didn't immediately acknowledge the immense value of my inclusion in their plans, when I sang songs and nobody listened, wrote poems and no one resonated, and generally risked demise at the peril of feeling sorry for myself.

So when I got a little closer the end of all that whiny, self-absorbed need, I found a good woman and married her, and she has helped me a lot for these last thirty years. I like to think that I helped her some too, and that, together, we helped our three kids, now grown, get a good start in this mysterious condition that we call life.

That marriage/family trip is also the path taken by the man who fathered my wife back in the days of Eisenhower and Elvis. Lately, I've been thinking about the old guy, my father in law. He has lived long and well. He's got a few rough edges, you know, and he turns a little grouchy now and then--these days more and more so as he faces the barrenness of a nursing home existence, his own infirmity, and most of all the absence of his lifelong faithful wife who passed several years ago.

He's back at that point of unwelcome discovery: who gives a damn? The wife is gone on; the kids are all doing their own thing. Who cares?

God does. I hope my father-in-law makes his peace with God before the big one comes along. He has heard all his life, and we have counseled him, that God cares. That's the message of the child born in Bethlehem--the one whose creched enshrinement was near the lighted Christmas tree all those seventy-odd years of a man's life--the One who was born of a virgin as the Savior, to rescue us from loneliness, among other things.

Jesus cares, and He lives forever, as I do because of what He did. How about you?
Written this Christmas day, 2010 A.D.

Feliz Navidad, y'all.

CR, author Glass half-Full