Staples of Christmastime: Peace

Thou dost keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusts in Thee. —Isaiah 26:3 (RSV)

I don't do a lot of personal revelation here at Cerulean Sanctum. For the benefit of those people who grapple with the whole idea of "Peace on Earth," I thought I'd share a few things. Candle Last year, I wrote on peace, but wanted to revisit the issue since I struggle with inner peace more than most people, I suspect. In trying to nail all the things down that I must do before Christmas, deal with the fallout from last week, and just get my head right in this season of the Coming King, peace fled away faster than a rocket-powered sleigh.

I start by noting this is the second time I've written this post. It started out paired with the post on Prosperity, then I realized I needed to split it. So I duplicated the tab in Firefox, giving me two copies of the post. I deleted the Peace from the Prosperity and the Prosperity from the Peace and saved both. the Peace section first. Sadly, in doing so, WordPress could not distinguish the post IDs from each other, so in saving the Prosperity second, I said goodbye to the Peace post. Evidently, duplicating the tab was clever, but stupid at the same time. Lesson learned. A perfect metaphor for peace—or the lack of it—we find at Christmastime. Say goodbye to all that work and do it again.

So much for clearing the To-Do list.

A couple weeks ago, I went to bed at 2:45 AM after a day of frenzy. A half hour later, my head still buzzed with things to do. Over the next hour after that, I would get up four times because I'd forgotten to

Take out the trash
Feed the rabbit
Start the dishwasher
Close the garage door.

If I don't attend to those little activities, who will? Let them slip and the next thing you know, Junior's weeping because Fluffy Bunny won't "wake up." So sleep becomes a precious commodity.

Someone should have informed the world at my birth that I'm not one for frantic activity. I have a tendency amid busyness to stand in the center of a room and wonder why I'm there. I know I came in for something, but what? The older I get, the less I seem capable of handling the fast-paced American lifestyle we're each called to live. I don't think God intends us to live like headless chickens, but what's a headless chicken to do?

Knowing Christ dealt with my sin certainly gives peace. I think that's the peace the Bible speaks of when it talks about peace. The passage that begins this post is from the RSV because it's the version I memorized long ago. Despite knowing that verse backwards and forwards, peace still seems elusive in an age when machines scream at you to attend them. A couple weeks ago, my Palm PDA, the phone, and the beep of an incoming e-mail on my computer all went off in a fury of audible technical alerts at precisely the same moment. My scalp still hurts from ramming my head through the tiny plaster points of our textured ceiling, such was the altitude I achieved.

Peace. What is peace?

It's not just busyness that kills peace. I'm not a good one for the type of decision-making peace my wife comes by so easily. When an enormous, forever-life-altering decision must be reached, she determines the correct direction by peace. You may have heard it before, that "I felt peace about it" thing that so many utter when assured that God's delivered unto them the one perfect choice. Hours spent searching the Scriptures for some evidence that the saints of old justified their choices by the amount of peace they felt in making a decision came to naught for me. To this day, I don't think I've ever felt that kind of peace when making any of the major decisions I've confronted in life. That nagging feeling I wasn't doing the right thing never left.

I've seen a lot of people who made a decision at eighteen and decades later were still wilting like some sun-starved petunia under the shadow of that choice. Good people. Christian people. People who wrestle every day with a lack of peace because they don't want to add shadow upon shadow. It's one thing to quote them Romans 8:28 and something altogether different to stand by them until the shadow flees in the bright light of the Son. The latter reflects the heart of God, but how rare it is to find among people beset by too many e-mails, crying babies, and a Charles Schwab account manager on line one begging you to sell now or kiss your retirement goodbye.

Someone's got to take the blame when a decision goes awry, right? Not being one of those "get mad at God" types who likes to shake his fist at the heavens (where I come from, that's called "rebellion"), I tend to fall back on blaming myself for not scrying God's Master Plan for the Universe more thoroughly. I keep hoping that one day someone tries to hawk the Urim and Thummim on eBay. THOSE I'd bid on. You can keep the rest.

And so, dear reader, I ask: what is peace? And how does one find real rest for one's soul in the middle of lives kicked into overdrive?

In this season of peace, when you can still get away with sending a Christmas card festooned with an olive-branch-bearing white dove and not be blamed for offending someone else's beliefs (or lack of them), the answer to that question may be the best gift we can hope for under our trees.

Regulation, Ritual, and Remembrance

This last week, I celebrated Saint Nicholas day at the home of Eric and Jennifer. We go back almost twenty years and have shared in each other's faith journeys.

The gathering featured good cookies, plenty of candles, and a hearty dose of Christmas carol singing. Eric and Jennifer instituted the Saint Nicholas remembrance as a way of keeping old traditions and rituals intact. In my own childhood, we put up our Christmas stockings on December 5, and Saint Nick filled them during the wee hours of the following morning. My mom sought to keep that tradition alive.

The Bible says this:

Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it." And he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you."
—Genesis 28:10-22 ESV

And later…

And [God] said, 'Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.'"
—Genesis 31:12-13 ESV

And later still…

Now Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people, saying, "Keep the whole commandment that I command you today. And on the day you cross over the Jordan to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones and plaster them with plaster. And you shall write on them all the words of this law, when you cross over to enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you. And when you have crossed over the Jordan, you shall set up these stones, concerning which I command you today, on Mount Ebal, and you shall plaster them with plaster.
—Deuteronomy 27:1-4 ESV

I don't understand Evangelicalism's obsession with wiping out the past. In many parts of the American Church today, a flagrant disregard for what and who has come before us dominates all expression toward God. It's as if today's Christians must live in a self-imposed vacuum. "Jacob's Ladder" by William Blake We are told by the more "learned" to build no Bethels. Soon, forgetfulness washes over us like a dulling fog.

Part of this unhealthy contempt for the past springs from mistaken notions about the New Testament Church. Some sectors of the American Church believe that all practices of the Old Testament ceased at the empty tomb. But that notion casts doubt on the immutability of God and the essence of how we experience Him.

Yes, the Holy Spirit now dwells inside us, but this does not do away with remembrances. God does not want us to forget what He has done. The healthy expression of Christianity in today's world should still erect remembrances, as Jacob did, when encountering the living God. When God set the rainbow in the sky, it formed a remembrance—not only to us but to God as well—of God's promises. I don't see that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit erased rainbows from the skies. Remembrances of the past matter.

The Saint Nicholas gathering is a remembrance, the kindling of a ritual designed to remember the generosity of a man who gave away his money so that three poor sisters would have dowries and not wind up in prostitution. Do you know the story? If not, then it only goes to show how poor we American Christians have become in our crazed effort to establish ourselves as the pinnacle of historical Christendom.

When I moved out of the Lutheran Church of my youth into full-fledged Evangelical "superiority," I looked down on rituals and observances as mere icing on an already tasty cake. Who needs an advent wreath at Christmastime? Why read the same Bible passages yearly on the Sundays leading up to Christmas? Why have rites of passage for our youth? Why do anything that smacks of ritual?

"Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children– how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, the LORD said to me, 'Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.'
—Deuteronomy 4:9-10 ESV

One of the curious artifacts of the Saint Nicholas party concerned the children. They sang "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" with unusual gusto, but stumbled through the old carols of their parents' youth. Those kids only know an Evangelicalsim devoid of rituals, their lives lacking what I experienced as normative in my childhood. Children grow up without rituals that root them to all of Christendom before them. Today's Evangelical children float in a secularized sea, cast there by well-meaning Christian leaders who employ "regulations" that denounce rituals or scry pointless contemporary "alternatives" to tradition. Is it any wonder that our children reach age eighteen and have no roots to keep them from being torn away from the Faith? How easy is it to depart from God when the experience of God one's been fed has been solely intellectual, tradition relegated to weepy-eyed emotionalism by people who rarely weep!

And it's not only churches that adhere to modern worship music that suffer from this. Some that perpetuate the old carols unwittingly toss aside others rituals and remembrances. Catechism—gone. Studying the history of Christianity after the deaths of the apostles—gone. Gone too are the sights, sounds, and smells of traditional, historic Christianity: incense, candles, organ music, and stained glass.

Fluff? Hardly. All those things root us. They create Bethels that call to mind history and help us remember the eternal and perpetually valuable in our lives. They mark an experience of God that persists through generations. Unfortunately, Evangelicalism's righteous assault on all thing ritualistic has turned us into shallow people unfamiliar with the sacramental, yet we call this "progress" and "spiritual maturity."

What will our children call it?

We have every opportunity in the world to make our experiences of God like Jacob's. Each family can preserve its own traditions recalling what God has done and is still doing in the lives of His people. So can each church. I'm glad that Eric and Jennifer saw fit to call us all together every year on the Feast Day of Saint Nichololas in order to prepare our hearts for the coming King of Kings. I'm even more happy for our children. How much better that our preparation for Christmas begins by remembering someone whose heart lay with the poor and downtrodden, just as our Savior's was.

Let us never forget the Lord, even in the seemingly inconsequential. Because even the small things may have lasting effects.

Seen So Far This Christmas Shopping Season…

Some random things I've observed in the first weeks of the shopping season. Nothing of great spiritual import, just interesting.

I've not done much shopping, but already I've noticed that almost every item on the shelves is about 15-25% more expensive than last year, especially if it's made of plastic. I suspect that this shopping season is the first one to reflect higher petroleum prices. Almost every toy that was $30 last year is $35 this year. One classic plastic toy I bought my son last Christmas sold at a regular price of $12.95. This year that same toy is $17.95. Same store, same time of the year, same exact toy.

Discount stores like WalMart are lowering their sales figure expectations, while more expensive department stores are seeing a 6% rise in sales over last year. Not many pundits are speculating on this odd discrepancy, but it fits with studies showing the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. If too many discounters have a bad selling season, expect to see them move upscale quickly. I know that Costco continues to upscale their offerings. Now I buy about two-thirds fewer items from them than I did just ten years ago. Aldi, here I come.

Who are these people who buy giant battery-powered vehicles for their toddlers to drive? I saw a Hummer model selling for $300. Are you kidding me? The American savings rate is in negative numbers, but people are buying $300 Hummer replicas for their kids to drive around in?

Over the past decade, I've purchased most of my Christmas presents online. In nearly every case, I found items online for significantly less, even with tax and shipping figured in. This year, though, the brick and mortar stores seem to be beating online stores in average price.

When I was a kid in the Sixties and early Seventies, Spirograph held our interest for years. We had a Super Spirograph kit containing a half dozen ring and bar templates, plus a couple dozen circles, crosses, and even "rotary engine"-shaped pieces to go inside/outside them. I probably cranked out a couple thousand Spirograph pictures over the life of our kit. So this year I go looking for a Spirograph for my son, only to find a scaled-down abomination: one tiny circle template and some weird ovoid, plus about a half dozen circles. What a bitter disappointment. So I check eBay and the best Spirograph kits are going for $50+! Hasbro seriously missed the boat on this new "Deluxe" Spirograph. Way to mess up a perfectly good, inexpensive plaything.

Prices for digital cameras jumped right before Christmas. Companies bumped their $200 models to $250 by adding features no one will ever use (built-in sepia tone, anyone?) Canon replaced the excellent Powershot A620 with the A640 and jacked the price $60 for no real reason I can discern. Bah, humbug!

Board games seem to be coming back into vogue—and that's great. (Unfortunately, most stores stock the same boring ones everyone's played. Honestly, does anyone find Monopoly fun?) For a break from the ordinary, check out Boardgames with Scott. Scott Nicholson's premise is one of the best uses I've seen for online video snippets: introduce people to new games and demonstrate how they're played. I'd love it if Ticket to Ride (America) showed up under my Christmas tree this year.

A pox on toy manufacturers who play up some electronic gizmo with plug-in cartridges one Christmas, then a year later you can't find the cartridges anywhere.

I spotted only one Salvation Army bellringer so far. That's sad. They've got a fantastic series of commercials and print ads this year, but the number of bellringers goes down every year.

Sorry if this post appears Grinch-y. I'm usually done shopping by Veterans Day, but this year I can't seem to get into shopping like I once did. Growing up, my family saved all shopping for the year for Christmas, so presents swamped the tree. I'm used to taking hours to open gifts.

This year, though, I'm distracted. I see so much need around me. It's so easy to buy, buy, buy and miss the people whose Christmases will once again be sparse. I think about the elderly people who would much rather have their family pay them some attention than to toss a gift their way one day and ignore them the other 364. Or single parents struggling just to keep a roof overhead and food on the table.

I'm watching more than participating in the six week consumer bonanza that makes up the majority of yearly spending in this country. Frankly, our own Christmas promises to be a little thin this year. Don't know how I'll square that with Christmases fondly remembered, but I still have room to grow.

I believe God's desiring that all of us receive less and give more, thinking outside the bunkers we call home to the less fortunate tucked in the cracks of the world. We got the ultimate gift in Jesus. I pray we don't forget to offer His gift of eternal life to everyone we know.