So here comes the Christmas holiday! Our house is specially blessed this year in that Inga and the kids are with us for a week....first time having all the grandkids for Christmas in 9 or 10 years. Skylar is 11, Keenan is 9 and Jordan is 7. Although it doesn't feel once-removed, I am technically the step-Dad and step-grandfather of these beautiful creations. However, I suppose it's that very fact that lends some objectivity to these next 7 days. With blood family there is a whole raft of emotional baggage and hot-buttons present...pretty tough to experience much objectivity there.
Anyhow, we're just 48 hours into out time together and I've noticed some storm clouds that have seemed to roll in. You see, concurrent with the Swope visit is the fact that about 12 are coming tonight for an hors-d'oeuvres-type of Christmas celebration, 18 are coming to our house for a full-blown dinner on Christmas Eve and 15 for Christmas dinner. Wow! That is alot of entertaining at a house where the Queen of the house (I love you to pieces Sandra!!) is the kind of woman who is a staunch member of the "all my ducks must be lined up in neat rows well in advance" party. Her world view, when she is the hostess, calls for near perfection, complete with a terrific presentation of whatever is being served in a house that is dusted, vacuumed and neat. Hey, I'm not suggesting there is anything wrong with this. Yes, some people are more casual in their approach to such circumstances and breeze around as if they are benefiting from having had a goodly dose of Valium for breakfast. Perhaps it's a generational kind of thing. I know my Mom was very similiar to Sandi in her approach and I would even see her dusting the underside of vases in preparation.
Nonetheless, there is a perfect storm a brewing. The Swopes come from a decidely "use it, drop it" kind of strategy. The concepts of picking up and putting away are not part of their value system. So on one hand you have Sandi, well aware of how she raised her children and how they were forced to behave while under her tutelage. On the other hand you have her daughter who long ago freed herself of such priorities as neatness and who requires little or nothing from her children in this category.
So, here is the whirling dirvish Swope clan in the same house where lot's of company is coming where the less-than-casual Queen bee is in full-production mode yet also really wanting to enjoy her time with the kids! Yowser! I pray God's grace, God's adaptability and even his Kingdom teflon to lubriciously coat our family and the proceedings of these next days. For it's the thief's ever present strategy to steal, kill and destroy. How like him to want to come in and rob the joy of these days of shared moments. Jesus come...as we celebrate your invasion into this fallen earth I ask you to reign over all family sensitivities, all propensities for mis-understandings, hurt feelings and assorted irritations.
And so I rejoice at this opportunity to be together with family. Thank you for the messiness of it all. Thank you for the substantial healing you have brought to my heart. I notice it in the virtual absence of dread that has normally accompanied the holidays in the past many years. January 2 is no longer my holiday goal...that feeling is gone. Bless the Lord oh my soul! I flop back into your arms and just say thank you Father for blessing us with each other. I am seeing Jesus shining through the eyes of those around me as they deliver tangible pieces of his love for me. Man that feels wonderful! Thank you for transporting me into the sometimes elusive "Christmas spirit". Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The magic of words
So I see it's been 10 months since my last visit to this blogging experiment. Really what leads me back today is just this latent desire to write and the pleasure of using words to express thoughts. I find hitting just the right combination of words that spot-on nail what I am attempting to articulate absolutely satisfying.
Really coming back today is prompted by my meeting with Mark and a passing comment I made about writing and his encouraging response. There have been a few others over the last year as well (thank you Rob, thank you Kevin). My dilemma is content. I don't want to simply prattle on in some self-absorbed treatise. And yet I'm not an expert in any particular area which is beckoning me to write on . And still there is this desire to express (suddenly I see movie clips in my head from Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Dreyfuss compelled to express Devil's Tower in whatever medium he could find, from mud to mash potatoes).
I do it in emails and email responses mainly. A couple of times there have been writings to accompany Sandi's art. Like little demitasse glasses of writing are these short pieces. But they often have contained some of the essence of what so intrigues me about writing. Namely, in the process of asking God what he would have me say, sort of abandoning my typing/writing fingers to him and having his words filter through the stained glass of my unique personality, I often end up writing words that are this weird combination of me and not me.
I confessed this to Mark at our coffee meeting. I say "confessed" because I have never really understood the feeling I often get when I go back and read my "own" words and find them ministering to me. Even to type it here seems unseemly, narcissistic even. But Mark's encouragement came in the form of assuring me that this experience has been cited by no less than C.S. Lewis and G.MacDonald, two men who I respect immensely.
Mark went on to describe that truth is truth, it is not owned by us, it is the very nature of God and given to us by him. But when we write, as Christians, seeking the guidance and blessing of our Father as to our words, we are in a position to express truth, uniquely filtered through our personality. Thus Jeremiah and Isaiah expressed the truth of God but not without their Jeremiah-ness and Isaiah-ness shining through as well. That so resonates with me. I so want to be about that. To find a way to more regularly be a sort of "river bank", (thanks Mark), that channels the revelatory water of truth mixed with my James-ness. Lord that, that is something in which I would be blessed to be fathered by you. Father me in this Lord....
The dilemma though still seems to be this content thing. I can be aware of a desire to write at certain times but it is shut down by "what to write about?". My current wiring has me as a guy who, if you put me in a room for an hour with a blank whiteboard, when you come back it will still be blank. I don't create so well ex nihilo. I do much better synthesizing pre-existing chunks of thought, rearranging, adding, deleting, further developing, responding, that sort of thing. Maybe I'm just an editor and should leave the heavy lifting of original writing to those more gifted and called? Other than my status as a child of God, do I even have a platform from which to write? Or is it all just a lot of self-deluded, self-absorbed drivel?
I guess at the very least I have this blog. It is a platform of sorts and there really are no outside expectations that it must measure up to. There is the bit about other's being able to comment but even that can be turned off as I understand it.
But what Lord would you have me write about? One subject, many little vignettes, just about my experience on this sojourn? I am willing, even desirous, but need your guidance.
Well good, this felt good. To get this up and out of me is either a start or perhaps just an end in itself...either way, this felt good. Thanks for dropping by again Santiago...don't be such a stranger.
Really coming back today is prompted by my meeting with Mark and a passing comment I made about writing and his encouraging response. There have been a few others over the last year as well (thank you Rob, thank you Kevin). My dilemma is content. I don't want to simply prattle on in some self-absorbed treatise. And yet I'm not an expert in any particular area which is beckoning me to write on . And still there is this desire to express (suddenly I see movie clips in my head from Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Dreyfuss compelled to express Devil's Tower in whatever medium he could find, from mud to mash potatoes).
I do it in emails and email responses mainly. A couple of times there have been writings to accompany Sandi's art. Like little demitasse glasses of writing are these short pieces. But they often have contained some of the essence of what so intrigues me about writing. Namely, in the process of asking God what he would have me say, sort of abandoning my typing/writing fingers to him and having his words filter through the stained glass of my unique personality, I often end up writing words that are this weird combination of me and not me.
I confessed this to Mark at our coffee meeting. I say "confessed" because I have never really understood the feeling I often get when I go back and read my "own" words and find them ministering to me. Even to type it here seems unseemly, narcissistic even. But Mark's encouragement came in the form of assuring me that this experience has been cited by no less than C.S. Lewis and G.MacDonald, two men who I respect immensely.
Mark went on to describe that truth is truth, it is not owned by us, it is the very nature of God and given to us by him. But when we write, as Christians, seeking the guidance and blessing of our Father as to our words, we are in a position to express truth, uniquely filtered through our personality. Thus Jeremiah and Isaiah expressed the truth of God but not without their Jeremiah-ness and Isaiah-ness shining through as well. That so resonates with me. I so want to be about that. To find a way to more regularly be a sort of "river bank", (thanks Mark), that channels the revelatory water of truth mixed with my James-ness. Lord that, that is something in which I would be blessed to be fathered by you. Father me in this Lord....
The dilemma though still seems to be this content thing. I can be aware of a desire to write at certain times but it is shut down by "what to write about?". My current wiring has me as a guy who, if you put me in a room for an hour with a blank whiteboard, when you come back it will still be blank. I don't create so well ex nihilo. I do much better synthesizing pre-existing chunks of thought, rearranging, adding, deleting, further developing, responding, that sort of thing. Maybe I'm just an editor and should leave the heavy lifting of original writing to those more gifted and called? Other than my status as a child of God, do I even have a platform from which to write? Or is it all just a lot of self-deluded, self-absorbed drivel?
I guess at the very least I have this blog. It is a platform of sorts and there really are no outside expectations that it must measure up to. There is the bit about other's being able to comment but even that can be turned off as I understand it.
But what Lord would you have me write about? One subject, many little vignettes, just about my experience on this sojourn? I am willing, even desirous, but need your guidance.
Well good, this felt good. To get this up and out of me is either a start or perhaps just an end in itself...either way, this felt good. Thanks for dropping by again Santiago...don't be such a stranger.
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