This and That

We put our Christmas tree up yesterday. Well, in the interest of honesty, we decorated it yesterday. My parents put the tree itself up last weekend. They were saving the decorating until I came home, a decision I was very much in favor of. Christmas in the Reid family has always been a bit of a homemade affair—another word I might use is “ramshackle.”

When my brother and I were growing up, a yearly tradition was to make a new Christmas tree ornament every year. Looking at our tree tonight, I see sheep, angels, snowmen, gingerbread people, and stars all in various states of artistic genius and carefully marked: “Elizabeth, ’96,” etc. This, mixed in with the usual lights and tinsel and store-bought gifted ornaments, makes for, as I said, a bit of a ramshackle effect. Our tree looks best as I’m looking at it now—lights off, illuminated by the tree itself and a candle or two on the window sill.

It’s a strange way to celebrate, I’ll admit. What does the mystery and awe of the Incarnation have to do with this tree and these craft projects and this rush to buy and wrap and bake and give? Why do we celebrate that like this?

It ought to be a familiar thought for us as Christians: Why do we celebrate that like this? Why do we eat this bread and this wine and call it the body and blood of Jesus? Why do we let ourselves be pushed underwater and call it our death, burial, and resurrection? Why do we look at this infant and say, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”? (Do we really mean it?)

This could change our lives if we let it. Take it out of the nativity scene. Lift it out of “Away in a Manger.” Forget about baby Jesus with a halo floating over his head. This is important—bigger than your nativity scenes, your Christmas carols, and your spiritualized understanding of what it means to celebrate Christmas. This is the culmination of a cosmic battle being waged for your soul since the dawn of time. I AM has waited long enough. The days are accomplished. The Ancient of Days is acting, moving into human history to undo every wrong which has been done since the dawn of time. God is about to turn the entire world upside down. Are you ready? Can you feel the anticipation? The whole world has been holding its breath for this.

It’s also so much smaller. The Ancient of Days moves into our world as a baby, only a few hours old. A baby, utterly dependent on its mother for everything it needs. Whose idea was this, anyway? How could I AM rest all hope and expectation on this tiny, hapless infant? How can this baby be that? He can’t even hold his head up yet.

Application lies in several directions. I could remind you that, as God acts, we also ought to act—the cosmic battle is fought and won in our own lives with our incarnational actions. I could urge you to make Christmas tree ornaments with your children in the hopes that one day they’ll think big thoughts while looking at their childhood hanging from a branch. I could ask you to consider: why do you celebrate this with that? And do you need to eliminate part of your celebrations in favor of a more genuine “that?”

But I won’t—can’t, really. The newly born Ancient of Days is beyond my attempts to speak. And for this I am glad.

These thoughts were fleshed out in a conversation I had with Andrew Cox tonight. I am deeply indebted to his influence.

Friends

The child was a mess. Belligerent, violent, adorable, but prickly like a cactus. Mischievous to the extreme. If you were watching him, you'd better make sure you never took your eyes off him. He had a grin as wide as his face and he flashed it right before you tried to reprimand him for running off or hitting someone. It was hard to stay angry when he was grinning at you. He had favorites, people he'd let in, and one of them was his teacher. His name was Jarred but we--the kids, the staff, his boss, everyone--called him Mr. Cat Daddy because he could do the Cat Daddy like no one's business. I'd seen him do it several times. Incidentally, Jarred was everyone's favorite, largely because of his ability to do the Cat Daddy.

At any rate, he and Cat Daddy were huge friends. I could not do the Cat Daddy, plus I am a girl, which is a giant liability in the eyes of a seven year old. On a good day, I was tolerated.

"Elizabeth." Mr. Cat Daddy obviously had his hands full. "Go make sure he's all right." Me? Are you sure? Okay. Cat Daddy sent me over to the pouting child. If he could've pushed himself INTO the wall, he might've.

"Hey, buddy. What's the matter?" Silence. Not that I'd expected a response. I sit down next to him and see that he's been crying. I'm no good with crying, but I try again. "What happened, buddy?" I can only assume that he was at his wit's end, just completely at the end of his seven year old rope (or maybe it was the grace of God) because he wails out this pitiful, barely understood story about hurt feelings and being angry. I make an effort at the problem solving techniques we've been taught, to little avail. He's still crying.

Then out of nowhere he says, "I miss my daddy!" He crawls into my lap and keeps crying. I rub his back and ponder. It's an appropriate reaction. Life is big and scary and sometimes you need your daddy. Heck, I missed MY dad and I had plans to see him soon. There was nothing I could do about it, though. I couldn't get his dad for him. I wasn't even sure if his father was in the picture. I couldn't heal his hurt feelings. I couldn't make it better. And so, I sat there with him on my lap and I cried. He was crying, I was crying. I don't know if he knew I was crying, but there we sat, crying together.

Afterwards, he and I were friends.

I am a Monad

I began this blog on Monday, May 17th, 2010, right around the end of my freshman year of college. Here's an excerpt from my first post:

"Female. 19. Follower of Christ. College student. Ridiculously interested in learning. Everything. Reading. Everything. Writing. Artistic ventures. Music: vocal and instrumental. I journal, I essay, I expound my personal life's philosophy for the world. "

Some of these things are still true. I am female. I am a Christ follower. I am still in school, although graduate seminary has replaced college, which would presuppose a love of learning, reading, and writing. I research, I journal, I write and write and rewrite. I think and begin the process over again.

In other ways, I am drastically removed from my 19 year old self. When I was 19, as you will see from some of the older posts on this blog, I was confused, lost, insecure, and mourning the lost safety of my sheltered childhood. At 19, I had a much firmer grasp on God and theology than I do now and than I ever expect to have again. At 19, I was still months away from my first real faith crisis, my first boyfriend, my first drink, my first solo vacation.

In many ways I still feel like a monad:

"Why monads? Our dear friend Gottfried Leibniz proposed monads as simple creatures which contain within them the course of the world and all the possible choices each individual could make. I am small and insignificant: no one knows me or cares about my writing. But maybe someday they will. Maybe someday I will take my potentials and turn them into actuals. After all, I'd hate for my monads to get bored and leave me, wouldn't you?

I am a monad, and I choose to participate in my own reality."

These things are still true: I want to say something that matters. I want to be an active participant in my life.

Except now I'd like you to participate with me.



As a disclaimer: I thought long and hard about either beginning a new blog entirely, or deleting all previous entries. I wanted my blog name--I feel very attached to these monads after all these years. Ultimately, I chose to leave most of them up, because I think it's interesting and important to remember where I started and to see the progress I've made. I would not currently defend many of the positions I wrote about. Of the positions I DO still hold, I would probably choose to express them much differently than I did. During the process of "tidying up" this blog, I made small changes to several entries to make them read more smoothly, but I did not change any ideas.

I suppose this disclaimer is asking you to give 19 (and 20 and 21) year old Elizabeth a bit of grace due her age and inexperience. I'm working on the same goal.

Mercy

Is this your idea of mercy, Lord?
Is this the best you can do for us,
For your people, who struggle and
Toil and cry and yell?
We work and we work and we search after you
And all we receive in return are
Broken hearts
Closed doors
Hopes destroyed.
Is this your idea of mercy?

Is this your idea of mercy, Lord?
Is this what you had planned for us
In your sovereignty?
We, who have left houses and fields,
Family and friends to follow you?
You take and you take and still you want more,
Unsatisfied in your quest for all of us,
Every part of us
Everything we've built, everything we've done
(we did it for you).
Is this your idea of mercy?

Is this your idea of mercy, Lord?
That all we have be shattered?
Endings, with no beginnings in sight?
For losses, failures, insufficiencies?
Is this your idea of mercy?

Beautiful

When I was working at City of Refuge, one of my daily tasks was to accompany another staff member on his route to pick up children from the community. Our fifteen passenger van careened around tight curves and narrow roads as our driver yelled, “Roller coaster!” which was his passengers’ cue to put their hands in the air and scream. In his van, I came to terms with my inevitable death many times. The children loved him. I, not so much.

That summer was one of paradox. I remember the shock I felt on our first morning (a shock that never really went away) when we turned a corner and there it was, filling our horizon. The Georgia Dome. As we traveled our bus route, I remember thinking, “What must it be like to grow up beneath the shadow (literally) of such wealth?” The children in the English Avenue community, Vine City and Joseph E. Boone are poor—food stamps, drugs, low education levels, out-of-wedlock children; every negative stereotype you associate with inner city Atlanta is true about this area. And they live within walking distance of a land of excess, where paying $180 for a ticket to a football game is a thing people do. Midtown—yuppie downtown Atlanta—is a short bus ride away. And these children and their families are struggling to live hand to mouth in the shadow of the Georgia Dome.

I’ve left Atlanta. I moved away and it broke my heart to leave the children and the city. I live under the shadow of the mountains now and it’s beautiful, just as beautiful as Simpson Street.

"In the Beginning:" A Modern Retelling

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He created the sun and the moon, the stars, the ocean, and the land. He created fish for the sea and animals for the land—all kinds of beautiful and interesting creatures. God created dogs and cats, birds, ferrets, horses, trees, flowers, and grass—everything good and lovely. Lastly, he created a man, Adam. He was the first man and God put him in the garden with all of these wonderful things. God told Adam that he was responsible for taking care of the animals and the plants and God and Adam talked together in the cool of the evening. The world was as it should be...or was it? Adam was lonely.

That Wednesday, he went to his singles’ group at church and expressed his loneliness to his accountability partner. “I want to find a wife—someone I can trust and care for and who will care for me. I’m looking, but I just don’t see anyone who is right for me.” Adam’s accountability partner, who just so happened to be the singles’ pastor at his church, listened, but was unsympathetic. “Adam, if you want to find a wife, you have to take the initiative. As a Christian man, you have to pursue the woman. God made you to be the stronger sex and to initiate relationships. That’s why you’re still single. If you would just man up, you could be in a relationship right now.”

Adam listened, took his mentor’s words to heart, and the very next Sunday, asked Mary to have lunch with him. Mary was cute, cheerful, had a servant’s heart, and loved God deeply. But it was obvious that he and Mary weren’t even remotely compatible. He could see that any further relationship between them would end in disaster, so he quietly broke things off with her.

When his mother heard the news, she was upset. She and Mary had been close. Adam’s mother called him and accused him of being too picky. “You’re never going to find a woman who meets all of your qualifications. Don’t think of it as settling! It’s called making a choice, Adam. I’d like to see some grandchildren before I die. I’m not getting any younger, you know.” Adam hung up, feeling guilty and lonelier than ever.

Later that week, he met an old college friend for coffee. Adam shared his struggles with loneliness and expressed how hard it was to meet Christian women. “Dude,” his friend said, “I met Sadie,” his girlfriend of seven months “on ChristianMingle.com. I posted my profile, got thousands of hits, went on dates every weekend for months, then met Sadie. I’m pretty sure she’s ‘the one,’ you know? We just click.”

Sadie was beautiful as well as a godly woman, so Adam went home, and made his profile—MadeofMud0001—and began setting up dates. He found plenty women who were interested in dating him, but the more he dated, the more desperate he felt. After the fourth one dumped him, saying, “I just feel like God is telling me I shouldn’t date you anymore. I’m pretty sure you’re not my Boaz,” Adam quit the whole thing and deleted his profile (they kept spamming his email for months after that).

Discouraged and downtrodden, Adam went back to his accountability partner. “Nothing’s working. I’ve been looking for a wife for months and I just can’t find anyone I want to spend the rest of my life with. At this point, heck, I’d settle for a cat!” His accountability partner was as unsympathetic as he was the first time. 

“Adam, you’re so focused on getting a girlfriend that you’ve neglected your walk with God. Have you been praying? Reading your bible?”

“Actually, I have—” Adam tried to interject, for he and God were still walking together in the cool of the evenings, but his accountability partner ignored him.

“God won’t bring a girlfriend into your life until you cling to God. In fact, you should trust God to fulfill your emotional needs. If your relationship with God was right, you wouldn’t be lonely in the first place. Work on your relationship with him and when you’re spiritually mature, God will bring you a wife.”

Adam listened, but was increasingly impatient with the advice he was receiving from the world. That evening, he told God about the conflicting advice he was getting from his friends and family and how nothing seemed to be taking away his loneliness. “You know, Adam,” God replied, after thoughtfully considering everything Adam told him, “I’ve noticed this problem too, and I think you’re right: it’s not good for you to be alone. Let me tell you what I’ve got in mind...”

Adam slept and when he woke up, it was good.