It’s just days past January 1st, which means a majority of the population has already waged battle with their New Year’s Resolutions. And been defeated.
The best resolution this year is to de-resolution your life. To avoid the pitfall of defeat entirely. So that you can’t possibly fail and then feel bad about yourself. Because really, who needs that?
I suggest the following de-resolutions: first because they’re foolproof, and second because if you do fall into the inevitable rut of breaking your New Year’s Resolutions after, oh, say two days, it will still be a victory of sorts.
1: Nap more. The real kind of napping. In your pajamas. Under the covers. With the lights out and the shades pulled. And a really good book to keep you company.
2: Read more (see #1). Not the “should read” books but the “want to read” books. Whatever that means for you. Within the bounds of good taste.
3: Eat more. Especially stuff that you like. Peanut Butter M&Ms, for instance (which are especially good when consumed with almonds at a ratio of 1:1, or maybe 1:1.5 if the almonds are puny-ish). If you eat more of the stuff you like, you might be less likely to overeat the stuff you don’t like, which has to count for something in the end (calorically, if not nutritionally).
4: Comfort yourself more. Preferably with food that is scientifically proven (and approved) for such a task (see #3). Dark chocolate comes to mind. Dark chocolate wrapped around something crunchy and/or salty. Like a pretzel. Or a nut. Or bacon.
5: Live more. Since this is a broad and vague statement, make of it what you will.
Five seems like enough. One for each weekday with weekends off. That’s a pretty happy kind of schedule. And what do we all want? To be happy, happy, happy. (Okay. 6: Watch more TV. Especially Duck Dynasty.)
And for those who truly love the idea of clean slates, fresh starts, and do-overs, you might consider ditching New Year’s Nonsense altogether and instead consider the God who offers such things daily rather than annually. Being ‘made new every morning’ is soothing to the soul in a way that ‘making myself new every year’ can never ever be.
Gently and beautifully, she tips her brow
Down t’wards the babe while at her breast he sleeps.
She moves beyond the joy to wonder how
Love strikes so deeply ’tis pain, and she weeps.
Her eyes drink in the beauty of his hands,
His feet, his face – so small, perfect, her own.
In her heart, she cannot conceive the sands
Of years changing babe to man, birth to grown.
The heavn’s dance as angels shout the birth
Of pure love. The stars and seas cry joy.
And even the God smiles and sings for earth.
All time and space celebrates her small boy.
Eternity is pressed in this one night
As she lies bathed in Emmanuel’s light.
____________________________
Dance with the angels! Shout with the stars! Messiah has come, and with Him faith hope love.
Long ago and far away, on a deeply dark night and after a weary day of travel, a young woman labored long to deliver her son into the world.
He rushed forth from her womb, leaving behind its warmth and safety to enter a world of both pain and love, joy and sorrow, birth and death – just like other newborn babes.
Someone scooped him up, wiped him clean, bundled him tightly, and lay him at his mother’s breast – just like other newborn babes.
Someone named him, held him, gazed at him lovingly, and brought him home to safety and warmth – just like other newborn babes.
Someone counted his fingers, counted his toes, stroked his delicate skin, fingered his silken hair, marveled at his quivering eyelashes, and traced his perfect face – just like other newborn babes.
Someone basked in the glow of new life, marveled at this bundle of humanity, and rejoiced in his miraculous breathing, wiggling, yawning, crying, sleeping, and eating – just like other newborn babes.
But this was not just another newborn babe.
This was Mary’s child. The carpenter’s boy. The son of God.
This was God himself, come to earth as a helpless babe, rushing forth from Mary’s womb – the Creator of everything, reduced to this wiggling, yawning, crying, sleeping, eating infant.
Jesus certainly was not just another newborn babe.
But because he willingly became a newborn babe, and then willingly went to the cross for all of humanity, we are offered life that only He can give – the kind of life where Jesus now washes us clean, names us, holds us, numbers the hairs on ourhead, and basks lovingly in the miracle of ournew life – just like other born anew babes.
Breathe deeply and rejoice both in the miracle of newborn life and life born anew because there is nothing “just” about either one – for the first is undeservedly miraculous and the second is miraculously undeserved.
When a Chicago girl marries a Minnesota boy and they live near Indianapolis, the NFL season is, well, challenging.
First because their teams are almost never on TV here.
Second because when their teams play each other twice a year, things get a little heated. Today, for example, the Minnesota boy is wielding a Vikings barbecue burger flipper so that he can “scrape the Bears off the floor” and “cook up some bear.”
That kind of thing.
Today is one of those bi-annual days of battle. The girl and boy are hunkered down at a sports grill where the food is grand, the crowd is loud, and the screen is larger than their kitchen wall.
The girl is wearing a 99-cent Bears ‘jersey’ from Goodwill that is really a Gap Kids XXL shirt that has a company slogan on the left chest.
The boy is wearing an old shirt while his legit NFL licensed #28 jersey hangs in his closet at home, protected with a plastic garment bag, tags still attached a year after acquisition.
She’s weirdly cheap like that.
He’s weirdly careful like that.
Their NFL loyalties are not the only thing that distinguishes them.
And yet more than 27 years after saying “I do,” they still watch the game together, cheering and jeering in turn. It’s a win-lose kind of day for them in the NFL but a win-win kind of life for people whose NFL loyalties are weirdly secondary to the things that really matter.
Babies are my grounding point. When I need a visible and tangible reminder of God’s majesty, deity, splendor, creativity, love – even very existence – I find it there: living, breathing, crying, wiggling, squirming, sucking, sleeping, breathtaking babies.
Those fingers. Those toes. Those eyelashes, like spun silken strands in miniature.
That hair. That nose. That skin, like softened velvet robes in space.
Who can comprehend the miracle? Who can fathom the process? Who can understand the astonishing surprise of human life appearing in such a thoroughly helpless yet perfect bundle of being?
And most of all: who can grasp the unimaginable truth that Almighty God, Creator of the universe, would willingly choose such a form for His greatest work of all – the rescue of mankind from itself?
Christ, the living babe. The helpless, living, breathing, crying, wiggling, squirming, sucking, sleeping, breathtaking babe.
The incarnated Word.
God in flesh.
Majesty on earth.
Love embodied.
It boggles the mind (if one really thinks about it). It astounds the senses (if one really absorbs it). It overwhelms the soul (if one really believes it).
Oh my word, what could be more startling? (There is nothing like it.)
Oh my Word, who could be more salvific? (There is no one like You.)
Amen.
[Here is quite certainly the most delightful Christmas pageant ever. I’d be mightily surprised if this video of children-as-sheep, children-as-wisemen, children-as-stars, and children-as-holy-family didn’t make you smile broadly and cry joyfully.]
At least that’s what it looks like to me, the token non-coffee drinker.
I didn’t set out to be a teetotaler It just happened that way.
I’ve taken a few sips now and then – sips that were dressed up with as many creamy and sugary accessories within reach.
So basically sugarized French-vanilla creamer with a dash of coffee.
Blecch. In every way.
So why does it smell so good?! So delicious? So delectable? So perfect?
Every time I walk into a coffee shop with one of my coffee-drinking friends, or wake up to the smell of my coffee-drinking husband’s timed brew, or catch a whiff of the beans as they spin through the grinder, I think that surely I must be mistaken. Surely this beverage must be liquid gold. Surely my past poisonous sips have been flukes of brewery shenanigans. Surely, if I gave it just one more chance, I would become a devoted disciple and connoisseur whose entire self shivers with delight as she cradles the mug between her hands, raises it to her lips, shuts her eyes in anticipation, breathes deeply of the heavenly aroma, and then kisses the rim lovingly as the drink of goddesses washes over my tongue, into my soul.
Whatever.
I can’t stand it. I just can’t. I’ve tried it every way I can and – except for very rare occasions when there is absolutely nothing else available to wash down the wedding cake – I have resigned myself to being nothing more than a coffee-breather. A wannabe. A poser. A non-drinking Norwegian-Swedish-German-American. I’m pathetic.
Still, I suppose it could be worse. I could hate diet Coke with crushed ice and a vanilla flavor shot in 32 ounce styrofoam cups from the gas station fountain.
It seems presumptuous to join all the other Lewisians today in celebrating what would have been his 114th birthday.
But I’m going to do it anyway. Perhaps not brilliantly, but oh well – we can’t all be Lewis.
Set aside for the moment that Lewis and Tolkien had a serious falling out, in part because of Lewis’s decision to join the Church of England after his conversion.
And that his writing sometimes echoes faintly of British snobbery.
And that he occasionally leaves you guessing as to what he really thinks and believes about specific doctrinal points (purgatory, for example).
And that Robin McKinley, one of my favorite young adult authors, who recently converted to Christianity, is quite thoroughly allergic to him (as stated here).
And that Hollywood has made a flozzergnashing priddlyshnotz of Narnia (there are no words for it, really).
And that HarperCollins has ignored all textual evidence, literary logic, and scholarly output by INCORRECTLY renumbering the Chronicles of Narnia (which many of us have ranted about in the past for all the reasons outlined here).
And that Tolkien pooh-poohed his Chronicles in part because they included Father Christmas.
And that many of his colleagues felt he’d sold out to the world of commoners via the BBC and popular publishers (or maybe it was just jealousy).
And that sometimes you have to read his sentences several times over to really digest all of the truth and logic and brilliance packed into them.
And that his literary scholarship can sometimes make current literary scholars feel incompetent.
And that he often leaves readers hanging with, “In a book I read one time – I can’t remember which one…” (the price of possessing a searchable-PDF-high-quality-flatscanner-like memory).
And that he smoked (this one really gets some people).
And drank (now I’ve really done it).
Set it all aside because it doesn’t matter; the fact remains – C. S. Lewis was a brilliant writer. Since his writings are all I personally have of him, they are all I can speak to.
And they are indeed brilliant. Delightful. Unexpected. Rich. Deep. Profound. Playful. Reflective. And so many other things.
The Lewis Society to which I belong does, on occasion, genuflect a bit more than necessary. And a friend of mine sometimes jokes that I adhere to the doctrine of the Quadrinity. But I recognize my sometimes excessive adoration of Lewis for what it really is – sincere admiration (with a dash of awe) for a man who wielded language like a warrior’s sword, waved words like a magician’s wand, and rang truth like a chorister’s bell.
He did this as an expert of literary scholarship.
He did this as a devout believer of Jesus Christ.
I am glad to know him, even if just through his books. Those are more than enough.
________________
[Lewis is so very much more than his Chronicles; even so, many readers only know him as the man who created Narnia. And so here are some of the best lines from that land where we all want to be.]
“Then he isn’t safe” said Lucy. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” –The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.” “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he. “Not because you are?” “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” –Prince Caspian
“If they’ve said it once, they’ve said it a thousand times. ‘Puddleglum,’ they’ve said, ‘you’re altogether too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits. You’ve got to learn that life isn’t all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.” –The Silver Chair
“My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.” –The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
“Was it all a dream?” wondered Shasta. But it couldn’t have been a dream for there in the grass before him he saw the deep, large print of the Lion’s front right paw. It took one’s breath away to think of the weight that could make a footprint like that. –The Horse and His Boy
Then there came a swift flash like fire either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.” –The Magician’s Nephew
“Come further up, come further in!” –The Last Battle
______
Okay, just one more, from Out of the Silent Planet, basically summing up the entire doctrine of the fall and our subsequent need for Christ’s redemptive work on the cross:
They were astonished at what he had to tell them of human history – …
“It is because they have no Oyarsa,” said one of the pupils.
“It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,” said Augray.
I love my book tree just as much unlit by day as lit by night. It’s gracious like that.
Like all beautiful and bookish things, there’s more to this book tree than just a tapered stack of tomes. There is truth. Loads of it. Mostly about the Church and her people.
Lesson 1: If one book falls, they all fall. (Really – is it too obvious to state?)
Lesson 2: Each book brings something unique to the tree – colors, textures, topics, covers, authors, views, titles. The variety is astonishing.
Lesson 3: The tree is made entirely of books that were either destined for the trash pile or stacked in a junk shop before being rescued, bought for a price, carried home, and given new life.
Lesson 4: Some of the books have divergent views on such things as history, humanity, and society, but they all agree to play together nicely and be part of this particular tree.
Lesson 5: Together, these books make something bigger, better, and more beautiful than they do alone.
Lesson 6: Even the smallest amount of book tree light pierces the surrounding darkness.
Photo: CKirgiss
Lesson 7: The inner book tree lights radiate the space within, then spill out the cracks, tumble over the pages, and radiate the space without.
Photo: CKirgiss Inner light, outer glow
Lesson 8: The seemingly ordinary books are quite as necessary as the fancifully decorated books.
Photo: CKirgiss (extra)ordinary
Lesson 9: The tree stands tall and true only because it is built on a foundation that is strong and level (and also happens to be made out of an old shed door decorated in crayon by the neighbor girl).
Photo: CKirgiss On this table I will build my tree.
Lesson 10: The tree brings me joy. Great, great joy.
So should the Church. And so can the Church. But often she does not because (sometimes) each of her books determines to write its own story, construct its own foundation, and be its own individual tree.
And yet the Lord loves her (and her books) still. Glory be, that is Good News indeed.
[Just one more thing…]
My particular book tree has its own peculiar mix of doctrines that I discovered only after constructing it. (NOTE: The views of my tree do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or its author.)
My book tree:
is ecumenical
Photo: CKirgiss Dante and Catholic Philosophy
embraces teaching that is both didactic and narrative
Photo: CKirgiss Pinocchio and English-French Dictionary
is evangelistic
Photo: CKirgiss Billy Sunday
wallows gleefully in human depravity
Photo: CKirgiss The Seamy Side of History
is egalitarian – or maybe complementarian?
Photo: CKirgiss Call of the Wild and A Girl of the Limberlost
is confidently heaven-bound
Photo: CKirgiss The Country Beyond
warns against backsliding
Photo: CKirgiss The Danger Trail
deals with behavior lapses simply and swiftly (and – let’s hope – privately)
Confession: I own too many books. Not just a few too many, or some too many. A lot too many.
Someone keeps saying it’s a problem.
I keep not listening.
So when I got an email today from one of my literature students with “book tree” in the subject line, I was intrigued. I thought it might be some kind of narrative thematic diagram resembling a family tree, which would be pretty cool.
But it wasn’t.
It was an idea. For a book tree. (Go figure.) Made out of books. To look like a tree. You know, for Christmas and all.
Which was so much cooler than cool I can’t even put it into words.
This email, and the resulting fervor it whipped up in my soul, is precisely why I don’t Pin. I would forfeit my life to this and that and such-and-such and so-and-so and ladeedahdeedoo and pretty soon I would be a crazy person who only converses with glue sticks and rotary cutters.
Truly.
Proof positive is that I spent several hours tonight constructing this:
Photo: CKirgiss “The Word became flesh.”
It was a lot more work than I expected. The light schematic is pathetic. In a few places, I had to jerryrig shims of folded paper to keep things level. I didn’t know how to finish it off. I made a mess of my bookshelves.
But oh my, I am delighted. Beyond words. Because not only do I love my books (too much, says someone) but I love the season that my new book tree celebrates. The incarnation. The Birth of Christ. The eucatastrophe of mankind’s history (for all you Tolkien fans).
Breathtaking indeed. Beyond words.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
I’m not a political activist, pundit, or powerhouse. That’s why after voting yesterday, I wrote that the precious freedom to vote is of less significance than the precious truth that we are human.
This morning, 51.5% of voters are euphoric (to varying degrees) and 48.5% are despondent (on various levels) based solely on their personal answer to this single question:
Who did you vote for?
Several hours ago, the political map of our country looked like this:
2012 Electoral Map – 11.07.12
For entirely non-political reasons, I hate this map. Everything about it screams division and dissent. The non-United States of America.
I prefer this map:
United States
A person has to really scrunch up their eyes to pinpoint “my” place. The color scheme has an artistic air about it. The division lines are faint, more like the marks on a master blueprint than the “cut” lines on a butcher diagram.
This map is even better:
This one is better yet:
And this is the best of all:
I vote because I can. Because I have been given that right. Because voting matters – on a temporal level, that is.
But I am not a pinpoint on a blue/red electoral map, defined primarily by my political leanings or judged by my voting record.
I am, rather, a pinpoint in a vast, immeasurable universe. I breathe because I live. I have been granted that miracle. Pinpoints matter – in spite of their smallness – solely because they are defined by their imago Dei and judged by undeserved grace.
The real question (for today) is not Who did you vote for?
The real question (for beyond days) is Who do you live for?
Breathe 