Fencing Bear at Prayer

Posted with Blogsy

Posted with Blogsy

I confess, I was really worried it wasn't going to work this year. You know, the magic. Somehow, no matter what, every year there comes a moment before Christmas when suddenly my heart lifts and, yes, the joy is there. The hope, the faith, the peace at the thought of the coming of Our Lord. Maybe just for a moment, before it is lost once again in the anxieties of the day-to-day, but always, it has been there, if only for a moment. Until this year. Nothing. Part of the reason that I have been using the past week or so to post Sister Mary of Agreda's description of the novena during which Mary was prepared to become Mother of the LORD is that I was afraid of letting myself write anything else.* "Bah, humbug," I wanted to write. "I am sick of our secularized society in which we are forced, out of politeness, to wish people 'Happy Holidays,' lest we offend. I want to buy presents, but thanks to all of the decluttering that I've done, all I can se...

The Lady praises herself: I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures: I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea, And have stood in all the earth: and in every people, And in every nation I have had the chief rule: And by my power I have trodden under my feet the hearts of all the high and low: and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the LORD. Then the creator of all things commanded, and said to me: and he that made me, rested in my tabernacle, And he said to me: Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thy inheritance in Israel, and take root in my elect. From the beginning, and before the world, was I created, and unto the world to come I ...

I wish that I felt comfortable writing more about God. I believe in Him (now, there's a loaded statement!), so why don't I? I've certainly read a lot about God or, rather, about what others have thought about God. And it's not like I don't have my own opinions. So why the silence? Why the fear? Pride, I suppose. I don't want to sound simple, and yet I know I do. I'm not a theologian, I don't seem to have that calling. How could anything that I say about God hold a candle to the great meditations of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, von Balthasar--to name only a few? I am, as Hildegard herself often protested, but an unlearned woman. Who am I to try to play with the big boys deciphering the mysteries of the divine? But nor am I, as a woman, interested in developing a peculiar "feminine" theology. In part, because I don't really think it is necessary. More important, because I think it would be wrong: God created human beings ma...

There, I said it, and nuts to you if you aren't celebrating Christ's birth today. Okay, I don't really mean that. I think it is wonderful that we live in a time and, for those of us fortunate enough to be the beneficiaries of the Enlightenment skepticism about state-mandated religion, a place that allows us to celebrate or not. I really wouldn't want someone to be wishing me "Happy Hanukkah!" if I weren't celebrating it. It would seem wrong, presumptuous, perhaps, yes, even a little aggressive, as if to suggest that I should be celebrating something that I didn't believe in. And yet, my heart sinks just a little bit every time I moderate my desire to say, "Merry Christmas!," with "Happy Holidays!" or "Have a good break!" or an uncomfortable, confused smile instead. Here's what I want to say: "Isn't it wonderful that God, the Author of existence, the Creator of everything that is, visible and invisible,...

"Do you think they've wrapped the puppy yet?"

According to the New England Puritans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Christmas was a pagan (read, "Roman Catholic") excuse to carouse, dance, drink, feast, play games and generally get off work. New England Puritans, accordingly, treated December 25th like any other (i.e. work) day, not even observing the (for them, fictitious) holiday by going to church. Because, as everyone knew, nobody actually knew when Jesus was born and, besides, Christmas was just a thinly-veiled appropriation of ancient pagan solstice celebrations.* And yet, despite the fact that no good Protestant was even supposed to be observing the holiday, over the course of the 1820s and 1830s, merchants started advertising their wares as appropriate New Year's and, a little later, Christmas gifts, thus transforming what had been a festival of communal, often rowdy, drinking and feasting into the domesticated flurry of gift-giving that we now celebrate today. Almost immediately, there began ...

Reasons neither my mother nor I feel like traveling this Christmas: We both like to decorate our own home and have very particular ideas about what kinds of decorations to use. We both insist on driving to each other's home rather than flying, but are nervous about driving on ice of which there is a good deal between the Texas panhandle and the south side of Chicago just now. We both want to attend Christmas services in our own church with the people whom we see every Sunday during the year. We both like to cook our favorite dishes for Christmas in our own kitchens. We both find it difficult to have our routines disrupted. We both promised neighbors to take care of their pets/plants/mail over the holidays. We both wish the other would come visit her because there are so many things that we would like to share with her. And, oh yes, we are both stubborn. But don't try telling us that. We just like doing things the way that we do. And besides, there's so much to t...