12/28/2006
A FEW WORDS FOR 2007
NUMBER 173
A Few Words
for 2007
As 2006 passes into history, I will pass along a few thoughts for the year ahead.
On Prayer
"If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian."
Evagrios the Solitary
On Politics
"With stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain."
German Proverb
On the Cosmos
"The casting of one pebble from my hand alters the center of gravity of the whole universe.":
Carlyle
On Work
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
Thomas Edison
On Food
"Broil a piece of Flounder and you have created an argument for ketchup. Fry that same piece of fish and you have created a plate full of bliss, especially when supported by a small platoon of hushpuppies."
Dave Shiflett
On Hell
"Remember, brother, everything outside the lake of fire is mercy, every drop of water is pure grace."
James McKendrick, Scottish Evangelist
On Religion
"True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time."
A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
On Faith
"Faith is the assurance that the best and holiest dream is true after all."
Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey
12/19/2006
PC HOLIDAY GREETINGS
NUMBER 172
PC Holiday Greetings
For those of you who are struggling with a way to keep Christmas without offending someone, I am passing this along.
I recognize that I may get in trouble once more by using general labels, but I will send this holiday greeting anyway. It was originated by Bruce Pope, and forwarded to me by Joe Cosgrove, both fine graduates of my Alma Mater. If you happen to be a Conservative Democrat or a Liberal Republican, feel free to ignore the labels and choose the greeting you like best.
For My Democrat Friends:
"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."
For My Republican Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
PC Holiday Greetings
For those of you who are struggling with a way to keep Christmas without offending someone, I am passing this along.
I recognize that I may get in trouble once more by using general labels, but I will send this holiday greeting anyway. It was originated by Bruce Pope, and forwarded to me by Joe Cosgrove, both fine graduates of my Alma Mater. If you happen to be a Conservative Democrat or a Liberal Republican, feel free to ignore the labels and choose the greeting you like best.
For My Democrat Friends:
"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."
For My Republican Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
12/06/2006
WAR ON CHRISTMAS?
NUMBER 171
War on Christmas?
For more years than I can count, my wife and I avoided the Malls like the plague during the months of November and December. Such Christmas shopping as we had to do was almost always done in May or June or July. If we weren’t finished by August we began to get nervous.
This year we have been walking two miles in the Mall mornings before the stores open. Christmas came early this year there. The decorations and music showed up before Thanksgiving. The store windows started looking Christmasy even before Halloween.
Our practice of doing the Christmas shopping during the year would not have suited my father—he was always a last minute shopper. When I was about six I remember watching at the front window one very cold, very snowy Christmas eve. My father always closed his Texaco service station at 6 PM on Christmas Eve—but this night it was 7:30 and he was really late. My brother and I fretted because the routine was disrupted, and my mother worried because my father never stopped on the way home unless it was to pick up some smelt from the fish market or something.
He finally arrived bearing gifts, last minute things for us and a big box for my mother. I don’t remember what was in the box, but I do remember the story he told some years later.
When it was almost 6, my father closed the station and hurried downtown with one of his employees—they both had left shopping for their wives to the last minute. They just managed to get in the door of Wurzburg’s, one of the big local department stores, as the last customers were leaving. My Dad and his friend were the only customers in the place.
The employees were feeling merry and decided to give the kind of service seldom seen in these days—especially to a couple of pretty disreputable looking characters. The floor manager found two clerks about the size of the two wives in question and proceeded to give the men what amounted to a fashion show of possibilities.
About an hour later, marvelous gifts in hand, the grease-stained husbands left and headed home. After that Wurzburg’s always held a special place in my Dad’s heart. It is this sort of thing that makes geezers recall fondly “the good old days.”
It would seem that just about anything that could be written about Christmas has already been written, often many times. The holiday season regularly brings a cacophony of hoopla and hype, an incredible load of blather primarily intended to separate the general public from its hard-earned money by stimulating warm remembrances of Christmases past. I hesitate to add my two cents, but I guess I just can’t resist the temptation.
The other day, Fox News Sunday did one of its email polls. The question was: “Is there a war on Christmas?”
Given the conservative nature of those who watch Fox News, I suspect the answers would be mostly “Yes!” But, like most polls, the question cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” My answer would be, “Yes, there is a war, but it is not on Christmas.”
The announcement of this poll was accompanied by the story of a mother in New York suing the school system for discriminating against her sons. It seems the school rules for Christmas displays allow the Star of David and the Menorah for the Jewish students and the Star and Crescent for the Muslim students but restrict the Christians to a Christmas tree. The school explained that a crèche, with the baby Jesus, is “just too religious.”
On the radio this morning is the story of a City Council somewhere that allowed a manger scene in the City Square, but then got cold feet and kicked out the Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The citizens rose up and made a grand fuss and the council relented.
What is it that makes a manger scene at Christmas “too religious”? It is, of course, the presence of the Baby Jesus who also happens to be the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator and Sustainer of all that is-- the One with Whom all mankind will have to do either in this life or the next.
The Sons of Abraham have learned to live with the Messiah in our pluralistic society and the the Sons of Allah are convinced that Jesus was nothing more than a prophet, so neither seems to be a big objector to the baby in the manger at Christmas. For the most part, neither Jews nor Muslims make war on Christmas.
Christmas has become the premier economic holiday of the year. Christmas is big business. Christmas is maxed-out credit cards. Christmas is self-indulgent materialism in its most glorious ascendancy. To make war on Christmas would not be good business, it would not even be patriotic.
No one in his right mind, with the possible exception of a small clutch of pitiful atheists, is going to make war on Christmas. But a war on the Baby in the manger is a whole different story. This is a war that is raging quietly but fiercely at all times and in all places. It is a war on any public reminder that;
“Eventually, we’re all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God… Read it for yourself in Scripture:
“As I live and breathe,” God says, “every knee will bow before me;
Every tongue will tell the honest truth
that I and only I am God.” Romans 14.10-11
Before we finished our two mile walk in the Mall this morning, it began to fill up with shoppers. A tanka I wrote some years ago is even more appropriate today:
CHRISMAS VISIT TO THE HOUSE
OF MAMMON
Muzak croons Noel
To the shuffling, sneakered feet,
Plastic psalms rising
In soft gleam of twinkling lights.
A horror of great darkness.
1/82-12/06
028
UUUUUUU
So there is a war, but not on Christmas—it is on the One of Whom the Apostle John wrote:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1.1-14
May you walk in that Light and rejoice in that Life as you keep Christmas this year.
War on Christmas?
For more years than I can count, my wife and I avoided the Malls like the plague during the months of November and December. Such Christmas shopping as we had to do was almost always done in May or June or July. If we weren’t finished by August we began to get nervous.
This year we have been walking two miles in the Mall mornings before the stores open. Christmas came early this year there. The decorations and music showed up before Thanksgiving. The store windows started looking Christmasy even before Halloween.
Our practice of doing the Christmas shopping during the year would not have suited my father—he was always a last minute shopper. When I was about six I remember watching at the front window one very cold, very snowy Christmas eve. My father always closed his Texaco service station at 6 PM on Christmas Eve—but this night it was 7:30 and he was really late. My brother and I fretted because the routine was disrupted, and my mother worried because my father never stopped on the way home unless it was to pick up some smelt from the fish market or something.
He finally arrived bearing gifts, last minute things for us and a big box for my mother. I don’t remember what was in the box, but I do remember the story he told some years later.
When it was almost 6, my father closed the station and hurried downtown with one of his employees—they both had left shopping for their wives to the last minute. They just managed to get in the door of Wurzburg’s, one of the big local department stores, as the last customers were leaving. My Dad and his friend were the only customers in the place.
The employees were feeling merry and decided to give the kind of service seldom seen in these days—especially to a couple of pretty disreputable looking characters. The floor manager found two clerks about the size of the two wives in question and proceeded to give the men what amounted to a fashion show of possibilities.
About an hour later, marvelous gifts in hand, the grease-stained husbands left and headed home. After that Wurzburg’s always held a special place in my Dad’s heart. It is this sort of thing that makes geezers recall fondly “the good old days.”
It would seem that just about anything that could be written about Christmas has already been written, often many times. The holiday season regularly brings a cacophony of hoopla and hype, an incredible load of blather primarily intended to separate the general public from its hard-earned money by stimulating warm remembrances of Christmases past. I hesitate to add my two cents, but I guess I just can’t resist the temptation.
The other day, Fox News Sunday did one of its email polls. The question was: “Is there a war on Christmas?”
Given the conservative nature of those who watch Fox News, I suspect the answers would be mostly “Yes!” But, like most polls, the question cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” My answer would be, “Yes, there is a war, but it is not on Christmas.”
The announcement of this poll was accompanied by the story of a mother in New York suing the school system for discriminating against her sons. It seems the school rules for Christmas displays allow the Star of David and the Menorah for the Jewish students and the Star and Crescent for the Muslim students but restrict the Christians to a Christmas tree. The school explained that a crèche, with the baby Jesus, is “just too religious.”
On the radio this morning is the story of a City Council somewhere that allowed a manger scene in the City Square, but then got cold feet and kicked out the Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The citizens rose up and made a grand fuss and the council relented.
What is it that makes a manger scene at Christmas “too religious”? It is, of course, the presence of the Baby Jesus who also happens to be the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator and Sustainer of all that is-- the One with Whom all mankind will have to do either in this life or the next.
The Sons of Abraham have learned to live with the Messiah in our pluralistic society and the the Sons of Allah are convinced that Jesus was nothing more than a prophet, so neither seems to be a big objector to the baby in the manger at Christmas. For the most part, neither Jews nor Muslims make war on Christmas.
Christmas has become the premier economic holiday of the year. Christmas is big business. Christmas is maxed-out credit cards. Christmas is self-indulgent materialism in its most glorious ascendancy. To make war on Christmas would not be good business, it would not even be patriotic.
No one in his right mind, with the possible exception of a small clutch of pitiful atheists, is going to make war on Christmas. But a war on the Baby in the manger is a whole different story. This is a war that is raging quietly but fiercely at all times and in all places. It is a war on any public reminder that;
“Eventually, we’re all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God… Read it for yourself in Scripture:
“As I live and breathe,” God says, “every knee will bow before me;
Every tongue will tell the honest truth
that I and only I am God.” Romans 14.10-11
Before we finished our two mile walk in the Mall this morning, it began to fill up with shoppers. A tanka I wrote some years ago is even more appropriate today:
CHRISMAS VISIT TO THE HOUSE
OF MAMMON
Muzak croons Noel
To the shuffling, sneakered feet,
Plastic psalms rising
In soft gleam of twinkling lights.
A horror of great darkness.
1/82-12/06
028
UUUUUUU
So there is a war, but not on Christmas—it is on the One of Whom the Apostle John wrote:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1.1-14
May you walk in that Light and rejoice in that Life as you keep Christmas this year.
