I know this is stoning worthy....but I hate christmas music

Now before you begin throwing stones at me, just hold on and let me explain...and because my mind is a sparatic nutso, I am going to use a list that may not flow logically from one point to another at all...

- To begin, christmas music, is not Christmas music. Small c, christmas, music is those absolutely annoying jingles about sleigh rides, santa, and snowmen. Now I will admit at one point they were catchy and I sort of liked them, but after having them played on the radio for 3 monthes a year for the last 21 years have made them lose their charm. I know the numbers may be an exaggeration, but radio stations now adays start playing them right after Reformation Day, if not before. I am disgusted with hearing them, and the 50 variations upon the same theme. Come on people, how many artists(and I use the term loosely) are going to make a rendition of santa claus is coming to town.

- Beyond being annoying, the jingles detract from the true nature of Christmas, and turn it into a secularized hallmark holiday. Yes thats right, I just classified christmas with sweetest day, valentines day, and all the other hallmark holidays. To prove my point we can look at the origin of many popular holiday music and see it finds its origin in advertising and schemes by companies to make more money. The entire holiday focuses on greed and stimulating the economy. The invention of santa claus is probably the most horrific sin of the 20th century. Why you may ask? Because rather than just causing physical death, like war, santa claus has caused hundreds of millions of people to be led into greed, into sin, into forgetting what Christmas really is. I know its not the only reason, but the invention of santa is one of the causes of the death of Christmas.
Christmas is a Christian feast day following the fast season of advent. Up until december 25th the Church sits in waiting and preparation for the coming King, both the rememberance of His first coming and in expectation of His second coming. The feast season of Christmas doesnt begin until december 25th, and it is a short stint before epiphany. It's time for Christians to reclaim their feast from the pagans, because despite what most americans think, they don't celebrate Christmas! they celebrate x-mas, or whatever other bastardation of the Feast of the Incarnation that removes the incarnation all together!

now you may be saying ok, I agree lets not stone him, or you may have already stopped reading and thrown a few boulders my direction, but time to move from the obvious wretched part of the holiday, to a more subtle, dangerous, and painful criticism of the Christian practice of Christmas. So we are moving from the secular holiday christmas, which needs to be abolished, and removed from the bastardizing power of satan in world, and into the Christian feast day. So lets see what trouble I can get myself into...

- The celebration of the Feast of the Incarnation has historically been within the church a culmination of the fast of Advent. Now adays Churches have a tendency to try and skip advent and jump into Christmas. Churches put up Christmas trees(whose symbolism needs to be reestablished and explained) at the beginning of Advent, if not sooner. While not common yet, I know that many congregations try and push into Christmas hymns during Advent, totally missing the point of Advent.

- Advent is a fast of preparation and contemplation, a fast of waiting. We eagerly await the coming King, and prepare for Him through patient waiting, prayer, fasting, and singing hymns of longing. I feel as though most congregations would rather skip the season and jump into Christmas.
Why? Because we are an impatient people who as a church have begun to forget what it means to prepare and wait in eager expectation. We have bought into sociteies obsessive desire for things right now, for immediacy. We have forgotten the good of longing, of desire, of fasting.


I hate christmas music....because it seeks to destroy the Rememberance of the Incarnation, and turn it into a celebration of the god of money. I loath Christmas music, because it reminds me how we as a church are forgetting to fast and ever seeking to live in 'happy times'.
Christ was not made incarnate because he likes peace and good will towards men, He did not come to earth to make us never want, to make life into a pastoral scene in which animals dont smell and dont make a mess. No, Christ came to suffer and die. We tend to forget the truth of Christ's coming because it makes us feel all warm inside if we say he came to bring peace and good will, that he didnt come to earth the suffer and die for our sins. Yes the incarnation is a glorious miracle which we should sing about and praise, but we must never forget why Christ came, why the immortal ineffable deity became frail mortal flesh.
Let us reclaim Christmas and banish the disgusting perversion that is the feast of greedy consumerism. Let us wait in bitter longing during advent and feel a painful waiting, let us stand up for Christ and His incarnation, and turn from ourselves, and our own desires for peace and good feelings, and serve God, rather than demand that he serve our own desires.

Lord, let me wait in bitter longing with eager expectation for your second coming, even as I await to celebrate your Incarnation and birth. May I cease to abuse your feast for my own good feelings, and remember the true nature of your coming to earth, to suffer and die for our sins. I praise and glorify your Holy Name and remember your cross this holiday season. Amen

traveling agnst

I am currently sitting in the Spokane airport waiting for a flight to get me out of here, and I have been waiting since 6:30am, and wont even know if I can get on a light til 3:05pm......over 9 hours of waiting in an airport.....sigh.

So I am continuing this post in Chicago, which I got to 36 hours after I left from Pullman. Ugh traveling sucks. But highlights....

-I got upgraded to first class on my flight from Spokane to Phoenix, and oh how wonderful it was :-). What a wonderful, and probably once in a lifetime treat. There were free drinks, the seats were comfortable, and there was tons of leg room......sigh, it was wonderful.
- In Phoenix it looked like I would be stuck again, the plane had to cancel 4 spots because of weight restrictions, and things were looking sour, when at the last minute there were a few cancellations and I got on :-).
- It is great being in Chicago again, I've missed it alot, and am extremely excited to see Hugs and Rizzo and whoever else is around...still not sure of who all is here.
- I stayed at the Wyndham hotel because I couldnt get picked up at night, and well..it was also wonderful. The bed was exceptionally good, and their restaurant has wonderful coffee....which I am enjoying as I write this along with some soup. I really should write more often, it is good for the soul, like a good cup of coffee or scotch.

- Did I say I got upgraded to 1st class for free? :-) Wonderfulness

But alas and alack I will end this post to begin a more critical and cranky one.

labor

It is fascinating how manual labor can be so refreshing, and so rewarding, in the midst of a life of study, and mental abuse.

Grad school is like boot camp for the mind. In boot camp they push you to physical limits and break you down in order to build you up, here in grad school I find that they beat your brain to a pulp with a large amount of complicated and extremely taxing mental labor, plus I sometimes believe that grad profs find profound glee in tormenting grad students and giving grades like 65/170 and calling that a B+.

In the midst of this tremendous difficulty, and new mental landscape I find myself not finding comfort where I once did. In undergrad where I had mental power left after doing school work for reading and writing, I find that my mind cannot contemplate anything after the extreme stress of my work and therefore I find myself in need of a new method of maintaining sanity. And surprisingly manual labor has risen as an answer.

Well I should probably realize that it is not surprising given my studies and my predilection to monasticism. 'Ora et labora' The cry of the Benedictine order, work and prayer. The Benedictine's follow a rule of balance, a rule of simplicity. They pray, study, and work; a life which most of us can't imagine, believing it drab and dull, or difficult. Yet I continually find myself returning with joy to patterns of life that I had while living among the Benedictines. Prayer, maual labor, study: It seems that when all these things come into balance life is slightly less crazy, and my sanity is more well maintained. Maybe there is something deeply ingrained in human nature that requires all three, without which there is dissonance.

And yet also the Benedictines teach us that while these three seem separate, they are in fact, and should be inter related. It is not just ora et labora but also labora cum ora. Not just work and prayer, but work as prayer. We were not meant to live a disjointed unbalanced lives, instead God created us in such a way that we should live in harmony with ourselves and with one another. But this harmony isnt just a balance, or a hermenutical meeting of otherness, but a realiztion of the ways that the other express the self and vice versa. We work and pray, yet also we pray by working. What a joyful comforting realization! That when we strip away all the brokeness and imbalance we can find a place in which working becomes a prayer and a restoration. Coming home to do laundry after having gone to class, taught and graded no longer has to be a stressful and painful thing, instead in the quiet mundaity of laundry, in which I am not thinking of physics or of grades I can begin to simply pray and give thanks for the things God gives me: for clothes, and shelter, clean water, and a way to wash clothes. I find that all the small little things of life become an opportunity of praising God while also finding refreshment and renewal of a grad school weary spirit.

Lord let me always remember you in the little things. Amen