Preparation - reboot

Here is a previous post about preparing for Christmas

Claiming Christmas

Pondering

To ponder: to weigh in the mind; to consider especially quietly, soberly,and deeply.

"But Mary kept these all these things, pondering them in her heart".Lk 2:19

How right Merriam Webster is: pondering is not merely thinking about a thing. To ponder is to keep something in your heart, to consider it quietly, soberly, and deeply, as St. Luke tells us Mary did at the birth of her son.

She weighed in her mind the knowledge that her savior had been born. While every one else was amazed and talked about it with great excitement, Mary kept it in her heart. She was quiet, she was sober... solemn... grave... with the import of what had occurred, and she took it all deep within herself.

The dignity of Mary is striking. She preserved her modesty by keeping what was hers to herself. We might think she was reserved... maybe even a little cold in her quiet reflection. I certainly thought of Mary as distant, impossibly perfect, and untouched by the events happening around her: Angels delivering messages? The Messiah born at last... as her son? Fleeing to Egypt based on a dream? No big deal. She won't let any of it distract her from being serene and composed.

The truth, of course, is something else indeed. The magnitude... the importance... of the event deserves some quiet thought; it is worthy of pondering.

Preparation

First week of Advent. The world is hushed, awaiting the birth of the Christ Child.

Ok, it's not. It's crazy, rushed, and noisy, with lists and lines, and sales. There are plastic reindeer on green lawns, and piped 'Christmas' music everywhere you go. (If songs about chestnuts or lovers coming home can be considered Christmasy)

Still, a feeling of anticipation is building. The urge to prepare is growing stronger: to clean the house, bake cookies,to delve into quiet and prayer.

Every Advent/Christmas season has its own flavour. Some years we (the House of Nuts) go all out with the decorations, the festivities, and the food. In those years, our joy is exuberant, vital.

In other years, the preparation runs deeps and still, well below the surface. The joy is subdued, the mood more reflective.

This year is one of the latter. We are quiet and still in mood this Advent, preparing for a quiet and still Christmas.

I hope these next four weeks will bring moments of peace to you and your family as you make preparations for Christmas.

Christmas Eve

We are balanced on the delicate edge of excitement and losing our minds here, in the House of Nuts. With five boys under the age of 10 having endured four weeks of building up to this moment - Christmas Eve - there is a simmering awareness that the least thing could ignite the powder keg, causing them to spontaneously combust, taking us Big Nuts with them in a haze of giddy insanity.

It's a difficult task, curbing their enthusiasm without extinguishing their wonder and joy, but a necessary one, because they can't maintain the high level of excitement without burning out. And frankly, we can't endure it any more than they can.

How wise the Church is to guide us throughout the year, giving us periods of fasting, preparation, celebrating, and ordinariness. We need all of them, in balance, in their proper time. We have had four weeks of Advent - a time of waiting and preparation - and now, at last, Christmas is upon us!

I've felt a great deal of trepidition about this one. It's The First One without Pop, and if you had asked me four weeks ago, I would have preferred to not do it at all, thank you very much. However, the intervening time has brought some peace. Most of all I've come to accept that I don't miss him any less because we're still celebrating Christmas. It's ok that I'm not miserable without him. It's taken a year to come to this point - a very long Advent.

Christmas is about hope and promises fulfilled. My Christmas wish for you, dear reader, is that you will experience the truth of that over the next 12 days.

A most blessed Christmas season to you and yours from the Lighthouse.

Monday of joy

Hello, dear reader. It is the Monday after Gaudete Sunday, sometimes called Joy Sunday, or Pink Sunday. It's the third week of Advent, during which we light the pink candle...get it? The anticipation for Christmas is building, and the light is growing brighter as we get closer to the coming of the Christ Child.

Here in the House of Nuts we had a really lovely pink candle day. The tree was strung with lights, and baubles full of memories were hung in its boughs; Peanuts were bursting with exuberance; the sun shone (well, actually it rained, but for the purposes of the theme I've got going, let's pretend the sun shone brightly); yummy aromas of baking permeated the house (that part is true).





In the picture, is Five, waiting patiently after lunch, while we were busy cleaning in the kitchen, for someone to come and get him out of his chair. He would occasionally call out "all done!", and wait some more.





Do you remember the story of the cookie sheets? The ones that I'd originally bought didn't fit in our wee oven, so I gave them to Oma who has an oven of adequate size. However, here in SOHOE, we have an actual grown-up stove with full-sized oven, so Oma graciously gave the cookie sheets back. Yesterday, I put them to good use, baking up a batch of delicious pumpkin cookies. The cookie sheets are aMAZing! I feel as proud of them as if they were my own invention. (I was so struck by the beauty and size of the trays, I had to take a picture before the cookies were even baked. Note the wings on the sides for easy handling with oven mitts; the smooth edge closest to us, so delicate creations can be gently scootched off, rather than manhandled over the rim...genius! And the size! 25 large cookies on one sheet!)

After the Peanuts were in bed, we put on the special extended version of Lord of the Rings. The story seems perfectly in keeping with this time of year. Tolkien didn't set out deliberately to write a Christian allegory, but as a devout Catholic, his imagination, creativity and craft were undeniably informed by his faith. LOTR is a story about struggle, journey, enduring, hope, and ultimately, victory of good over evil. Sound familiar? We only made it to the end of the Council of Elrond...a mere 1/6 of the way through the whole saga. We are sadly out of movie marathoning practice!


And, to top it off, there was wonderful football news. While my beloved United lost their game on Saturday (a great upset, as all the stats pointed to a sure win... goes to show, numbers lie threfore math is pointless) my bestest player of all, Ryan Giggs - he of the Welsh national team, and 20 years of devoted Unitedness - has won the BBC sports personality of the year award. With all the awards and accolades he's received over the years, this is nowhere near the top in terms of prestige, but reading headlines about it today, nearly all mention something about "Humble Giggs" or "Modest Ryan". They also go on to mention something about declining years, swan songs or other such blather. He's 36 years and one week old, which may be 85 in footballer years, but he's showing no signs of needing to hang up his boots. I think he's got a lot of beautiful football left in him. Congratulations, Mr. Giggs.

I wish you all a week of joy.

My snow globe

Cue Christmas

Today I feel like I should start to get ready for Christmas. There's been some talk around the house about Christmas plans, and I know that some little things have been tucked away in secret corners for the Day. We've got the Advent candles on the dining table, and we've been praying the Advent prayers before meals. Advent calendars have been raided each morning for their chocolate treasures, and daily readings have been replete with messages to prepare the way, make straight the path and so on.

With all of that, I still haven't been feeling remotely Christmas-minded. Part of me is tucked away in a quiet place, because I don't want to do this without my dad. But today something happened which poked at and awakened the Christmas spirit: it snowed. Is snowing, actually. I have to squinch up my eyes to see the snowflakes, and they're far too few and fragile to even make it to the ground, but nonetheless, snowflakes they are. Outside my window.

Now I'm longing for boughs redolent with the aroma of winter woods. I want clusters of red berries to display in clear glass vases. I'd like to hang twinkly lights in front of the windows, and dangle victorian icicles in the tree outside. It's time to ponder Christmas baking. More importantly, I need to really devote some time to examining my spiritual state in order to be able to really enter into Christmas fully prepared to receive the Christ Child.

All of this led me to think about people who live in the Outback, or Monte Carlo or...wherever else the weather doesn't really change from season to season. Falling snow is a cue to deck the halls for us in the Land of the Big White; how do they switch over emotionally from ordinary time to 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'? Is it the incoming flocks of Canadian geese? The blossoming of an indiginous winter-only flower? I'd like to know.

The importance of trees

Symbols are important: they're a shortcut to mutual understanding. For example, when a snake appears in a fairytale, the author is alerting you to the presence of evil without having to spell it out.

Christianity has its symbols as well; many of which are familiar sights at this time of year such as candy canes and wreaths. Sadly though, we're losing touch with the meaning behind the symbols, and the symbols themselves are becoming weak.

One of my favourite fixtures of Christmas is the tree. Here's what the Holy Father said about them this week:

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- "With its
loftiness, its green [color] and the lights in its branches, the Christmas tree is a symbol of life that points to the mystery of Christmas Eve," says Benedict XVI.With this, the Pope explained Friday the Christian meaning of the Christmas tree. He was speaking to the delegation from the Austrian region that donated the 108-foot-tall tree in St. Peter's Square."Christ, the Son of God, brings to the dark, cold, unredeemed world in which he was born, a new hope and a new splendor," the Holy Father said.

In winter, while everything else sleeps, the evergreen gives us hope of new life...of eternal life. That's something the most artfully decorated white plastic tree can't give.

(The Vatican tree is lit with over 1,000 lights and 2,000 ornaments and after Christmas it will be recycled to make toys and furniture for children.)

Gaudete

Rejoice! Today is the third Sunday of Advent - Pink Sunday, Joy Sunday. Let us lift our voices with angel choirs and rejoice in the Lord always.

The readings for today make the point over and over: rejoice; share your joy; and in your joy prepare yourself for the coming of the Lord. His time is now, He is equipping us now, calling us now.

The first reading is one of my favourites, and in fact is something of a recurring theme in my life:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, To announce a year of favor from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God, to comfort all who mourn; To place on those who mourn in Zion a diadem instead of ashes, To give them oil of gladness in place of mourning, a glorious mantle instead of a listless spirit. They will be called oaks of justice, planted by the LORD to show his glory.

Isaiah 61:1-3

This passage is a reminder to be alive in every moment...to be aware of each little moment of joy. (Joy is quieter, deeper, more substantial than happiness; my joy is rooted in the certainty of God's love for me), and to share that joy with others. The Lord's anointing will bring glad tidings, healing, liberty, freedom, comfort, gladness. All these things He promises, and all these He gives, even amidst poverty, heartbreak, captivity, mourning.

We all experience hardships, trials and sufferings, but His promise is that we will also experience joy, renewal and healing. Today in particular is a day to remember that promise and rejoice in it. One thing that strikes me in this scripture, is that God will not just give us good things, He will give us what we need, in place of what we suffer. He is able to transform our ashes into diamonds, and surely that is reason to rejoice.

Peanuts

(That is, peanuts as in Carter, not Schultz)


Like many families, we have long-held and beloved Christmas traditions. One of them is bringing out and setting up the Creche during Advent.

Our Nativity set has been carted across oceans, and stored in various attics, basements and barns over the years - always carefully wrapped and stored away after each Epiphany by mom, into its own special blue plastic bag. Last Epiphany was no different as it was packed away, and we thought this Advent would be no different as we prepared to set it up again. We were not expecting what we found in that special blue plastic bag, that's for sure!

This particular Creche is rather rustic...a wooden barn, with real straw, and simple figures of the principle players, from Blessed Mother to sheep. The barn contains a little loft above the main room: this is where a little mouse usually takes up residence - a felt character added to the cast of characters years ago. (Even mice worship at the Manger, no?) Mom was in the process of assembling the movable bits, and tidying up the straw into a pleasingly artful arrangement, when she noticed a peanut nestled in the straw of the loft. That was rather odd, as peanuts have never featured in our Manger scenes in the past. What was even odder was that the peanut was not alone...it had a companion. In fact, several companions.

As mom pulled blades of straw out, trying to come to grips with what she was seeing, the peanuts multiplied by the tens and then by the handfulls. My cupped hands were filled four times and emptied into the kitchen garbage, before I gave up and merely dumped peanuts straight into the blue bag.

You have to imagine mom's startled exclamations of "How?" "This is nuts!" and "What's going on?" with me on my knees in helpless giggles as mom got more and more baffled, straw drifted down around us, and holy figures were unceremoniously pulled out in the hunt for nuts. Honestly, the Creche turned out to be literally packed full of peanuts. Mom was shaking it overhead, and tilting it from side to side in an attempt to get stragglers out through the loft opening, or trying to scoop them out with a long-handled spoon. And they kept coming, and kept coming. We had them rolling under our feet all over the dining room floor. They were tucked into strands of straw, or lodged between the feet of shepherds. Have you ever struggled to open a bag of candy in the theatre, only to have it spill all over the floor and down the tiers in a long, drawn-out cascade of noise? That's the sound these peanuts made as they came tumbling out of the Creche in the hundreds.

We speculated as to how peanuts came to be in the Manger in the first place. Did little hands decide it would be fun to put Oma's treats in with Baby Jesus last Christmas? But Oma is meticulous and very observant: she would have noticed such out-of-place residents as these. Or perhaps a little foraging critter stored up its winter provisions in the tightly sealed blue plastic bag with no holes. I can't imagine how many trips it would have taken from bird feeder to barn with peanut-stuffed cheeks to fill that Creche...certainly a whole summer's worth of back-and-forthing.

If indeed it was a little chipmunk who did all that hard work, my sincere apologies for undoing all your efforts. Please do not come searching for the Creche in the hopes of finding your stash...a nice fresh pile of peanuts awaits you outside. (and this year when we put the Creche away, we're going to use Rubbermaid!)

Waiting for Advent

Advent is the time Catholics set aside to prepare themselves for Christmas - their homes, their families, and their interior disposition. It can be very challenging to stay in preparation mode while the world is already 'celebrating Christmas'. (I use finger-waggle-quotes, because I don't really mean the true definition of either word in that phrase, but now is not the time to unpack that further) With this being such a festive season, and with chocolate on offer everywhere, I often have to remind myself to attend to preparing for the spiritual truth of this Holy Day. (Much easier to do during Lent, because the bleak end to winter lends itself naturally to inner deprivation and sacrifice.)

This year, it seems particularly important to bring out the old traditional ways, to spend Advent in preparation, and then to really celebrate Christmas. I'm eager to clean everything, and bake scads of cookies, and cover every surface in bits of greenery (there will be no white artificial tree in this house!)

One of the familiar sights of Advent is the wreath. On each of the four Sundays before Christmas, another candle is lit, so that as Christmas approaches, the light from the wreath grows brighter. Which leads to what I want this Christmas: for my home, my family, my interior disposition to be suffused in the warm Light of Christ.

I am leaping ahead through time to leave you with one of the O Antiphons, the one meant for December 21:

O Dayspring, Brightness of the everlasting light, Son of justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

*from Isaiah 9:2. The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen.