Lighting a Candle

Today is a snow day.  Today the power went out for a time.

It was an awesome way to slow down the huge rush to run through the season. You can't fly through life when you can't get on line. You can't drown out the whisper of God when there is no sound to distract, no lights, no buzz, no clatter.  Cereal for breakfast.  Sandwiches for lunch.  Blankets and books.  I took a nap. The power came back on, but the result? Four kids are watching the old Sound of Music, three are making cookies, two are outside sledding.

Advent requires deliberate action, deliberate wakefulness to the heavenly song as versus the jingle the world cranks out every year this time.  Here's a great article discussing it with ideas on how to deliberately rebel.  Read it, and then read the link it links to as well.

Then, seek out the softer part of Christmas.  Write cards.  Light candles. Bake cookies.  Sing.  Cultivate deliberate loveliness in a cold dark world.  Drink deep the joy of the day when it is offered, for it may not come again.  (My son just invited me outside to sled  and while I hate cold, I just wrote those words so...I'll be finding my socks and warm coat).

 In the meantime, enjoy this piece of Christmas awesomeness:

and consider, the goal of our lives is to be like Fred in the Christmas carol to all other wounded souls.

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round - apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! 

Then, I'm going to go eat some gingerbread and hot cocoa with the kids.  Blessed Advent.  

The Girl Who Cried Swiper!

One of my favorite shows to watch was Deep Space Nine. I liked it better than the New Generation, Enterprise or Ugh, Voyager. It ran a close contest with Babylon Five for sheer quotability and the capacity to do something with a sci-fi scenario other than resort to technobable and pc solutions.

The writers used the existence of aliens to allow for different perceptions of reality to be explored in a conversational manner. One of the best at conveying this sort of insight was Garack, the Cardasian tailor/spy ousted from his world and government. When told the story of the Boy who Cried Wolf, he explained a different interpretation of the outcome; "that you should never tell the same lie twice."

Children often make us rethink our preconceptions about how things are understood.

My four year old is a big Dora the Explorer fan. So we've watched her Christmas special about Swiper being placed on Santa's naughty list. The fox must go about his past rectifying times when his past self was selfish and refused to share in order to garner a present from present day old Saint Nick. It's sort of a Christmas Carol with Dora as the guide of past, present and future. What did Dickens do to deserve this...well, there's Little Dorrit, but I digress.

When my sister-in-law gave us two bags full of beautiful outfits, this same four year old kept pouncing on the very best outfits, most of which her younger sister wanted as well. After she'd claimed the patent leather shoes and velvet red dress and a satin blue purse as hers permanently, I reminded her of the Dora special. "Don't you want to share? Didn't you learn like Swiper that it's more important to share."

She flashed those glowering brown eyes at me, "No. Swiper didn't have to share until the end. He got all the toys and then just had to share a little."

In a way, she wasn't wrong, and in the same way, neither was Garack.
So it would seem, I have work to do.