4 posts tagged “religion”

Earlier this week, I was driving a parishioner to her doctor's appointment in Dayton and happened, by chance of schedule to have my four-year-old daughter with me on this trip.  Now the parishioner and my daughter have been friends since practically the day she was born, and at one point in the trip my daughter was showing the parishioner how she can make loud clicking noises using her tongue.  My daughter asked if she could do it, and the parishioner tried to make the clicking sound, but without much success.
My daughter said sympathetically, "I understand. Sometimes things are harder when you're old."
I was mortified, but the parishioner (who is about seventy) laughed uproariously and said, "You are absolutely right!"
And she was, but we don't say this very often, at least not at times when perhaps we ought to.  We treat age like its a filthy little secret, a terrible condition that isn't discussed in polite company, like syphillis.  While I could go off on the culture of beauty and cosmetics that promote themselves as "fighting the signs of aging," I'm going to take a shot at another oft-harassed element of society: medicine.
This morning I went to visit another parishioner, one in his mid-seventies.  He has a cornucopia of things wrong with him medically: anemia, leukemia, severe heart problems, cancer.  It is so bad that his embedded defibrillator fired while he was using the restroom.  So I went to visit and he said, "Rob, the doctors just can't figure out what's wrong with me!"
And I just sort of blurted out, "you're body is falling apart.  The warranty expired."  I wasn't trying to be cruel, but I kind of wanted to say, "and there's a good chance you're going to die sooner rather than later, and we need to talk about this."  But no, that'd be rude and inconsiderate and mean, despite the fact that it'll mean hardship for his family later when his death comes "unexpectedly."  But mostly I'm sad for him, because he's being told that there is something wrong about what is happening to him, despite the fact that it is his body just doing what is natural: growing old and (as my daughter says) having things being harder.

Well, it is Christmas morning, and the house is quiet.  Last night we had two Christmas Eve services.  The first one was, well, a train wreck.  Somehow between my proofreading the bulletin and it going to the copier, the computer began randomly doubling lines throughout the text (it has done this before, but never so much or on Christmas Eve).  I think it is a flaw in Microsoft Publisher, and frankly if I had the money I might go invest in another publishing software.  My kids were the acolytes and they were buck wild the whole time.  I don't blame them--it's Christmas Eve.  The later service went a lot better, but was a kind of small crowd.
I will admit one thing, I preached the shmaltziest, cheesiest sermon I've preached in years.  And, of course, it was a huge hit.  I won't go into details, but the high point was "Killer the Christmas Cat."  I'll just leave it at that.

It was pointed out to me by a reader that I didn't only get Cracker Barrel gift cards (I got Bob Evans and Kroger too, making be basically not need cash for a week).  Actually, I got some really cool gifts.  A good friends gave me a Ball of Whacks, which I have not been able to put down since I've gotten it.  It appeals to my fidgety nature, my bizarre obsessive-compulsive disorder regarding patterns and geometry, and well its fun.
I also got a new computer bag composed entirely of recycled materials.  The main bag is composed of reprocessed plastic grocery bags, while the straps are made of old seat belts.
I also got some new cookbooks that the kids and I can do together, and the collected works of Dashiell Hammett.

The kids woke up this morning and opened their presents from Santa: a DS Lite for the boy and a My Twinn doll for the girl.  My daughter was initially upset about the gift, since she had made a last-minute substitution in her Santa list, but by the time we got to the airport she had warmed up to it (it helped that my son was talking to her on the way down about how Santa knows the future, and what gifts she'll really like.  I appreciate his contribution.)

Like all part two's of franchises, the second week of Advent is always a little darker than the first.  Last week, it was all about people innocuously disappearing.  This week: Jesus' creepy cousin calls Jewish authority figures a "brood of vipers," a statement that would probably come back to haunt the camel-wearing off-shoot of that same brood when Jews were rounded up in trucks and hauled off to gas chambers.
Sometimes I am actually able to recollect the sermon I preached three years ago on the same week of the Christian calendar (for those who don't know, our readings are on three-year cycles), and I can clearly remember this one because I headed northward to the Isaiah passage and preaching a rambling, cerebral sermon about an American folk artist who painted pictures of the Peaceable Kingdom all the time.  Oh where, oh where, is that not-so-cynical young priest now?  Looking for another good sermon topic, I guess.
And I like John the Baptist, even having an icon of him as a Native American on my desk.  But lately that "winnowing fork" message has been feeling queasy in light of increased antagonism between peoples, cultures, and religions.

In other news, I have woken up (read: paid my therapist) and realized that the Lodunwrisea is yet another example of "WQRob taking on a ridiculously oversized project," a hallowed group including my Hadrian's Wall Milecastle, my Seven Years War army, and my "let's get 3000 points of Dwarfs painted sometime soon idea."  In reality, I'm more geared towards smaller stuff like my f4" by 5" hirst arts house I'm building and my six orc warband I did a while back.  Of course, I'm now fighting the urge to start some sort of large, complicated social network based on small projects, but there you go.

I've started this post like three times, which is never a good sign.  Basically, I get a little tired of the "ooh!  Look out!" sentiment of Advent passages in the lectionary.  For one thing, it has been two thousand years, and every generation of Christianity has been made jumpy and frightened as a result of people thinking that THIS IS THE YEAR that Christ will return and start whupping ass.  I'm looking at Mt 24:36-44 as Sunday's reading, and realizing that this passage has been constantly misconstrued as some sort of revelation that salvation will be random and unexpected, when in fact the passage doesn't support that notion but that our own understanding and experiences of salvation are neither.  People aren't "taken" like they've been kidnapped by aliens, they are "taken" into the community of faith, which is a lifelong and at times ebbing and flowing process that involves a lot of personal decision.  What the Matthew passage illustrates is that, from the outside, members of that community are not perhaps significantly visibly different from others, but they are different.  Ideas like the Rapture are a lot like a open manhole cover: yes, it is "easy" to fall into, but only if you're really not paying attention.

What is random and sudden is human misery, which has been blatantly illustrated to me, not so much in my own life as my friends.  One friend getting divorced, two parishioners sick, a good friend's dog taking ill, my parents losing 3/4 of their combined income, and a friend's husband developing what could be a terminal ailment of no apparent cause.  There's no rapture for the faithful to remove them from the tribulation of human life, but faith affects how we cope, even comprehend, that which is happening to us that seems so mindless and destructive.