Three things: Christmas, resolutions, and musicals

I hope you had a very merry Christmas! We did… although it was looking a bit touch and go the week before when a tummy bug did the rounds in our home–twice!–and, in the midst of that, a last minute sermon request made it onto my ‘to do’ list. In the end, we had a marvellous celebration with a friend of ours, a Kiwi living in Holland who has now become a part of our Christmas tradition. He bought all sorts of Dutch treats–gouda! mustard! licorice! ginger cake! gin! dry sausage!–for us to enjoy alongside our traditional Christmas fare. It’s funny the things that have made it into the yearly must-have list: Advent calendar, nativity scene (with the Baby Jesus making his entrance on the 25th), tree complete with a popcorn chain (where did L. get this idea from?), Lego, pigs-in-a-blanket, and Brussels Sprouts. Our kids are small enough that it is not too hard to keep Christmas simple and a part of me wants it to stay like this forever.

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions? I know most people (with thoughts of self-denial and unreachable goals) roll their eyes when I ask, but I mean ‘resolution’ in the most expansive and enjoyable sense of the word. Usually I have a list of thirty or so things I want to get up to in the year. But this year, I have one tangible goal–sort out my photo system… groan. I have one thing to improve at–picking up rubbish as I walk. And I have a number of little projects that I would like to finish off or pick up again during 2018–I won’t bore you with them. There are no new things on my list to learn… although I am sure that I will learn new things until I die! There is nothing on my list to quit… although I am sure I could do with quitting at least one thing this year! One more thing: recently I learned that they (who exactly? Neurologists… I don’t know which ones) have proved how the brain can latch onto negative things/comments/events/interactions immediately, but it takes, on average, 15 minutes exposure to a positive thing for it to stick in the brain. Negativity sticks like velcro and positivity slides off like teflon. I am going to try my best to notice the positive things and sit as long as possible with them. So that’s it for my resolutions. Now yours?

Somehow we are in a musical phase in our viewing habits. I’m not sure this is a good thing. Les Mis. Fine. La La Land. Not sure yet… is 20 minutes in too early to pull out? However, have you seen Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? This was the beginning (and perhaps should have been the end) of our habit. Here are links to some of my favourite numbers: Remember That We’ve Suffered, Let’s Generalise About Men, and A Diagnosis.

 

 

Haiku-sday: Lights

Snow twinkles under

street light. In windows, plastic

trees flash and flicker.

Magnificat

I preached on the last Sunday of Advent (Christmas Eve this year) at our church. This day is centred around Mary and the readings included the annunciation (when the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to tell her she will give birth to Jesus) and the magnificat (Mary’s response to the annunciation which is often sung as a canticle or hymn). I felt very privileged to be able to think about these readings and to share this homily:

Three things: Snow, apocalypse, and Deferred Gratification

We’ve had some gorgeous days of snow this last week. Oh so gorgeous. The snow fell and the wind blew until the snow stopped, and for two or three days windward sides of trees and walls and parked cars were silver lined. And now it is oh so muddy, oh so neck-breakingly slippery. I walked downtown a couple of evenings ago and it was rush hour on the roads and on the pavements. There was a feeling of camaraderie as people pointed out the black ice to one another or let other drivers out. Photos in order: my walk to work on Saturday, our walk to church on Sunday, our walk to school on Monday, and our sledding on Tuesday. We went sledding with friends on Monday evening, and were so convinced by the fun of it, that we picked a sled up on the way home that night. (Is it ‘sledging’ in Scotland? That word feels funny to me… like ‘we went sledging and demolished a wall with our sledgehammer’, but I will start to use it if you think it would help locals–like the woman at Poundstretcher–understand me).

At the moment I am reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest novel ‘Here I Am’. I really enjoy his writing… but like other novels I have read this year, it has taken a turn for the apocalyptic. Does anyone else have a rather diminished tolerance these days for apocalyptic themes? We can turn on the radio and hear leaders of the free world taking us a step closer, or hear the stories of Rohingya refugees experiencing what I can only imagine feels like an apocalypse. It is very hard to escape reality when art appears to be amplifying it. I continue to soldier on with this novel, but I am not above setting it aside until the world feels a little less crazy. Anyway, I loved this interview Foer did with Terry Gross a while ago, especially this nugget where they refer to an earlier interview that Gross did with children’s writer+illustrator Maurice Sendak. On Sendak’s thrice repeated statement ‘live your life’, Foer says:

Jacob at the end of this book – he’s taking his dog to the vet, a very aged dog. And he’s thinking about it, and he’s thinking about the dog’s life. And he says to himself life is precious. And he said, you know, what a stupid thought, what a cliched thought, what an utterly obvious thought that never need to be mentioned. And yet that most important of all thoughts is very, very hard to self-generate. You know, we have that thought life is precious maybe – what? – on a birthday on New Year’s or when somebody, you know, falls ill.

But it’s very, very hard to generate the thought on your own. And he said it often comes with its companion, which is, I live in the world. So, you know, life is precious, so I ought to, you know, throw off the earphones I’m now wearing, push away the microphone, run into the street and proclaim whatever. Life is precious, so I ought to spend my days, you know, making sandwiches for homeless people and tending to the elderly in hospice care. Life is precious, so I should give everything away, except that I live in the world. And in the world, I actually have needs and wants, and I value my needs and wants. And I live in the world, and I can’t just go make sandwiches every day because I also have to take kids to school. I also have to, you know, write books because that’s my livelihood.

And I also have to do very, very boring things like separate the recycling from the regular garbage and so on. And the conflict of the wrestling match between those two ideas – life is precious and I live in the world – fuel the book. They’re the energy, the friction that sort of heats this novel up. And they’re also what I think was kind of releasing that final sentiment that Sendak said of live your life that – I think that sentence is actually able to contain both of those ideas. Life is precious, and you live in the world.

A beautiful song I have been listening to this week. 

Haiku-sday: Winter’s bones

The trees’ windward snow

shadows–hundreds of them–are

the night’s skeleton.

 

Three things: Dead computers, Ignatian spirituality, and Advent

It feels like such a long time since I have been on my blog! It’s good to be back. Just after I posted that I would be taking a break, my computer died–suddenly and irreparably. It was wonderful to be without digital obligation. But a little stressful too, because I still am making up for lost time with deadlines for things like newsletters (one of the reasons I was taking a blogging break)–the files for which are still on my dead computer and may never make it off. Sigh.

The other reason I took a break was because I began a course on Ignatian prayer and meditation. The course runs over a series of weekends in a retreat centre just north of Inverness. My partner was out of town for the first weekend, so I skyped in (from the office that had a view of a local university chapel, above), running home to see the kids in the breaks. Probably not the most mindful way of participating in a course like this, but it had to be done, and really, I got so much out of it despite the busy spaces between sessions. S.’s godparent, Katja, came and spent the weekend with us, and did all sorts of lovely and energetic things with the kids. (Do you know much about Ignatian spirituality? It is based on the nearly 500-year-old teachings of St Ignatius of Loyola [founder of the Jesuit order]. He instructed the early Jesuits to go out into the world and find the Divine in everything. By extension, Ignatian spirituality is contemplative, mindful, and very active in the world. A while ago, I heard an interview with the actors who played Jesuits in the Scorcese film, ‘Silence’. In preparation for their roles, they studied the Ignatian spiritual exercises. In the interview they reflected that these exercises are much like how an actor approaches a script–leaving themselves behind, and entering into the text/prayer with a great openness to creative insight).

Happy Advent to you all! I love this time of year. We’ve had some crazy weather–I am writing in the midst of high winds and snowfall. The days are so short and after a brisk walk, we come home to light candles, drink hot beverages, and do crafts. I know you are thinking: ‘what amazing Christmas crafts are you making?’… well, it is more like L. finds paper and goes all Edward Scissorhands on it, and I spend the next half hour picking up paper shards from the far corners of our flat while S. finds the discarded afforementioned scissors and goes all Edward Scissorhands on books, clothing, and upholstery. However, we did manage to channel our inner Martha Stewart over the weekend and make this wreath from willow (from the woods nearby), rose hips and alder cones (from behind Lidl), and ivy (from our garden).

Haiku-sday: Ice shrinking, not in spring

Pavement ice creaks and

shrinks with salt; I think of spring

branches emerging.