Isn’t that a lovely scene portrayed above? Ah, Christmas with the family. It was all so perfect, right? Well, as we ramble today, we feature a few more realistic pictures of what family Christmas is often really like — quirky, strange, and downright dysfunctional. Actually, some of these family Christmas photos make me want to convert to Judaism.
At any rate, are you ready to ramble through a winter wonderland? Let’s join this happy tree-family and go!
But wait. Before we go any further, here is a public service announcement —
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Donald Trump is banned from entering this post today.
This is only temporary, until we can figure out what’s going on with him.
Note from CM: Yesterday marked the 47th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death. On December 10, 1968, he died in an accidental electrocution in Bangkok, Thailand. His body was returned to the U.S. in a military transport plane that carried the bodies of soldiers killed in Vietnam, a war he had condemned forcefully. He was laid in the earth on a hillside behind the monastery, overlooking the Kentucky woods where he had prayed and written and served as a brother at the Abbey of Gethsemani.
Internet Monk would not be Internet Monk without Thomas Merton. He was one of Michael Spencer’s great heroes. And one of the reasons I have become forever grateful to Mike is that he introduced me to Merton and the Abbey of Gethsemani, which has become my go-to place for spiritual pilgrimage and renewal.
Today we present one of Michael’s tributes to Merton, from August of 2004. Please note this remarkable passage in particular:
“Thomas’s gift to me has been sanity and security. Because of him, I have stopped trying to be a good Christian and devoted myself to being the prodigal on his knees, enjoying the undeserved love of the Father. To try and stand and be the older brother has no appeal to me.”
• • •
One of the joys of having a hero is sharing him/her with someone else. If you know me very long, you’ll hear about my hero, Thomas Merton: monk, writer, poet, activist, Christian, enigma, good looking bald man. Merton (1915-1968) is one of the most significant religious writers of the twentieth century and a lasting influence on untold numbers of Christians (and non-Christians) from every tradition and culture. For those of us in the Bluegrass state, he also holds the distinction of being perhaps the most significant religious figure to reside in Kentucky, being a monk at Our Lady of Gesthemeni monastery near Bardstown for twenty-seven years. He is buried there today.
Merton is a strange kind of hero for me. I am a conservative Reformed Protestant. He was a liberal Roman Catholic who could easily have become a Buddhist. Merton was a former communist sympathizer turned Democrat who found Gene McCarthy too tame. I am a libertarian-Republican who wishes Pat Buchanan’s brain could be surgically altered and put in George W’s body. Merton befriended and praised the sixtie’s liberal pantheon; wrote poems about them, wrote letters for them. I think those people- Baez, Berrigan, etc- were alternately amusing and frightening. Merton hated systematic theology and loved modern literature. I hate modern literature and love systematic theology. Merton choose monasticism over marriage. I think that was a crying shame. Merton thought a good time was walking barefoot in a cornfield reading Muslim mystics. I’d prefer a Dave Mathews show. He loved jazz. I love bluegrass and rock. Merton died by touching a faulty electrical fan after taking a shower, thus becoming the patron saint of all clumsy people. I haven’t yet decided how I’m going to go, but it could possible involve all the White Castles I can eat.
So how did I ever pick this guy to be my hero? Certain qualities have such an innate attraction, that when you encounter them in anyone, no matter how different from you they might be, they draw you into admiration. Tom Merton made an unforgettable impression on everyone who met him. No one ever nominated him for perfection. He could be selfish, manipulative and vain, often putting his friends through absurd abuses to get him out of the monastery and into the city. He gossiped, and often whined. He seldom paused to be content, and often enjoyed being an irritant. He sometimes drank too much and could hold a grudge for years. Yet, the unanimous verdict of those who knew him in life and those who know him through his voluminous literary output is that Merton was an authentic human being of the rarest sort and master of the things of the spirit. Words like genuine, self-knowledgeable and deeply spiritual occur again and again in descriptions of Merton. People sought him out from all over the world because of what they sensed in his writing. I’m no different. If he were around today I’d be throwing rocks at his window like the rest of the gawkers. “Come down, Tom, and put on some Coltrane.”
It is Merton’s honest humanity and thorough Christianity that won my admiration. In my particular evangelical suburb, Christian piety takes some bizarre turns, focusing on all varieties of robotic behavior, enforced personality traits, phony religious experiences and outright lies. Merton was the first modern Christian writer I encountered that was completely and totally himself and at home in his own skin. As much as I admire C.S. Lewis, Lewis never had the insight into his own perplexities and contradictions that Merton records. Only in The Screwtape Letters and A Grief Observed can you see the kind of human experience that lurked under Lewis’s scholarly persona. Even in his early, more traditionally pious writings, Merton showed remarkable and brave integrity in recording the terrain of his soul. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, will always be a classic of conversion biography, but the editors had to mark out tracts of Merton’s honesty deemed too controversial for the Christian reader. He never broke the habit of engaging the real self with the God of Jesus Christ. While his interest in Eastern religions might seem to open the door to a denial of the self, Merton always affirmed that it was the self, as made and loved by God, that we must accept in total honesty.
I have found the most appealing Merton in his journals and letters. Seven volumes of the journals have been published, along with several collections of letters. (And of course many books and articles.) I would venture to say that Merton is the most extensive journalist and correspondent of any modern Christian writer. Merton’s life is never far from his pen, and his honest soul hardly wavers. In these journals, we experience Merton’s growth from a monk withdrawing from the world to a Christian engaged with the world and wrestling with the place of a monastic calling. Merton evolves from a confident advocate of monasticism to an articulate critic of the institutional church. With a breathtaking range of reading and interests, the Merton reader will explore politics, prayer, peacemaking, fame, mysticism, Asian religions, the foibles of romance, the absurdity of institutional Christianity, and a constant excursion into a Godly appreciation of nature. Merton’s journals are an education, a journey and an exploration of the soul. He is funny, catty, spontaneous, profound, insightful, opinionated and so recognizably human that it is hard not to see yourself in page after page. To walk with Thomas day by day is to walk with Thomas and God, and that is what all of us should be going for.
Thomas’s gift to me has been sanity and security. Because of him, I have stopped trying to be a good Christian and devoted myself to being the prodigal on his knees, enjoying the undeserved love of the Father. To try and stand and be the older brother has no appeal to me. Thomas Merton’s conscientious recording of his own human journey into self-knowledge and God’s love has been the model for me of what a “relationship with God” (evangelical jargon) actually looks like. Even though he lived in the most religious and structured of monastic communities, it is the person, not the monk, that drew me into this friendship and helped me to be the person loved by God, not the preacher/teacher performing for God.
Every month I hear of ministers who have left the ministry because of adultery or emotional breakdown. It moves me deeply because I know something of what these men are going through. As a public Christian, it is easy to become a walking house of cards: appearing to be all together, but waiting to collapse. And the faith you are trying to present seems to be the reason for denying your human struggles, thereby making you all the more susceptible to temptation and moral collapse. You despise your phoniness and the people you perform it for. It’s easy to come to hate the faith itself. Without walking with Tom through these same struggles, over and over, I might have self-destructed long ago. Merton’s simple commitments to solitude, scripture, prayer, reading, community, humor, writing and above all, honesty, have rescued me a thousand times. I owe him a lot and I will say thanks at the first opportunity.
Merton’s last recorded words were “…and now I will disappear.” Thankfully, he didn’t and shows no signs of doing so. I commend him to lovers of honesty everywhere.
“So, would you like to meet Nathaniel?” she asked.
“Of course, I’d be honored.”
We left the living room, where the hospice nurse was talking with the woman’s husband and doing her assessment. She led me down a narrow hall to a back bedroom. “Please excuse the mess,” she apologized, “I’ve been using his room to go through my Christmas things.”
The bedroom was small but empty of furniture, except for an old dresser tucked back in an alcove. A baseball cap hung from its mirror and there were a few boxes in various states of organization on top of it and on the floor. And there were three small tables, one each on the other walls. On these tables sat picture frames and various personal items that I assumed belonged to Nathaniel.
A large collage of pictures dominated one wall, telling the story of a mischievous looking little boy in various stages of childhood, complete with school, sports, band and family pictures. The frames on the tables held more recent shots. There was a young man in a cap and gown next to a college diploma, another of the same person in an obviously uncomfortable suit, and several casual pics in which beer cans seemed prominent. She picked up one, where her son had a ball cap on backwards, sporting a heavy growth of beard, a sleeveless t-shirt, and his head cocked with a sly grin. “This is what he looked like last year,” she explained.
“And here’s Nathaniel.”
She placed her hand gently on a small wooden box in the center of the table. “Right here in his room, where he belongs, safe and at peace.”
“I come in here and talk to him often,” she added. “It’s been a little over a year now and I still can’t believe it.”
Without much prompting Nathaniel’s mother launched into a story she had clearly told many times. A good boy, smart, talented, with a kind heart, who loved his mother dearly. Then out of nowhere came the whirlwind of drugs and he would be gone for months at a time. She and her husband kicked him out of the house. Some mornings they would look out the window and there would be Nathaniel, standing on the sidewalk looking at where he used to live. Just standing there. On occasion he would hang around all day, slouching there by the street, until they looked out the curtains and he was gone again, out of sight and back into his chaotic world of addiction and craziness.
Mom and dad figured out the neighborhood where he and the other druggies stayed. They made some connections with people there who kept an eye out for him. Occasionally dad would drive through the neighborhood and drop a garbage bag filled with clothes and other essentials on a corner for him.
At other times, he straightened up his act enough to come live with them for awhile. Last year, when he turned 32, Nathaniel and a girlfriend moved back in again and he started working for a housing contractor. Seemed to be happy and keeping his nose clean. She recalled a day he came home so excited after he had finished a project on a house. Mom went to bed that night hopeful.
At about three in the morning, as she put it, “A voice screamed in my head: ‘Check Nathaniel!’ I came in here and saw something no mother should see. My boy was lying lifeless on the bed, dead from a heroin overdose. His girlfriend was barely alive next to him. I was able to save her, but he was gone.”
“We had him cremated,” she continued, “and the funeral director was so kind. He let us have a whole afternoon alone with him in the funeral home before they took him. My husband and I sat there with Nathaniel and cried our eyes out, laughed, told stories, and cussed him out too. It was just the three of us, like it had been for so long.”
“And so it’s just the three of us now again. That girl used to call and try to get money from us and she’d say Nathaniel told her his parents would take care of her, but that was a lie and we knew it. So she finally gave up and doesn’t contact us anymore. I find myself spending a lot of time with him here in this room.”
She didn’t show any tears; perhaps she’d run out of them over the past year. For the last six months, in addition to the loss of her son she had been facing the ever more likely prospect of losing her husband. He had been diagnosed with an inoperable form of cancer and was adamant that he did not want to go through the rigors of chemotherapy and radiation. At the time of my visit he was still doing well, even going out and working a little at his store each day. But this time she can see death coming, and she set her jaw as she spoke, steeling herself against what she knows will arrive eventually. Maybe soon.
I didn’t have much to say, other than to give out my standard lines: “Here are a few ways we might be of help. We’re available. You’re welcome to call anytime.” And so on.
This was our first visit and we’re just getting to know each other. We’ll see how this goes.
I already know enough to realize I don’t know anything at all.
Note from CM: I will closely moderate this post. Please be respectful and serious and stick to the subject today. If things get out of hand, I will not hesitate to shut down discussion.
• • •
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.
I don’t really want to write this, for fear it will be seriously misinterpreted. In fact, I haven’t wanted to touch this story because I respect the grief journeys people go on when they lose loved ones. I also was afraid I might get lumped in with others who have raised suspicions about the grieving widower in this story and who have suggested that his reactions lead them to suspect that he might have been involved in the horrific death of his young, pregnant wife.
But as a hospice chaplain and one who deals with grief issues regularly, I want to respond to just one part of what is happening with this story. I do this, not to criticize this man personally but to express my concerns about the way evangelical Christians of various kinds are being taught to handle their griefs and deepest sorrows.
Note from CM: For this Jubilee Year of Mercy (which begins officially today), the Catholic Church has produced some excellent handbooks to help ministers and congregants focus on the theme of mercy. I found it interesting that the very first chapter of book one (called Celebrating Mercy), emphasized that the place to start was with a fresh understanding and practice of the liturgical year. So we’re focusing some of our posts this week on that topic.
Today we hear from our friend Jonathan Aigner, another one who admits he was not always a fan, on the benefits of liturgical worship. I respect Jonathan for his outspoken support of traditional forms of worship and hymnody, and I try to use his posts whenever I can to back him up and get an even wider audience for his thoughts. I think you’ll find this an excellent companion piece to Michael’s classic post we ran yesterday.
• • •
With the arrival of Advent this upcoming week, I’ve been thinking a bit about the benefits of following the Christian year. I’ll admit that this is a practice I once disregarded with sneers of haughty derision. But over the past decade, I’ve grown to see the liturgical year as one of the more important of our Christian traditions. Here are a few reasons why.
It reminds us that we are a people set apart, and as such our lives aren’t oriented around nominal civic holidays and observances. When I was growing up in Baptistland, I never heard of the liturgical calendar. Church just wasn’t organized that way. Oh sure, we had our annual 6-week Christmas celebration, and Easter was a fairly big deal. But next to those, the biggest “feasts” we celebrated were Independence Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, and Thanksgiving (in that order). Most of the year was spent in a sort of liturgical purgatory; a perpetual ordinary time without the guidance of any spiritual organization, and revolving around whatever the pastor wanted. But as people of faith, we serve a higher throne, and our purpose in gathering together isn’t ever nationalism, cultural pride, or sentimentality. I love grilling on a warm summer evening, but the 4th of July has nothing to do with the Christian story, and neither do fond remembrances of mom and dad, or commemorating that one time the Pilgrims let the Native Americans dine at their table.
It distinguishes our holy days from their secular knock-off celebrations. I do love many things about this time of year. The weather, hitting the mall late into the evening, holiday parties, watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (“Where’s the Tylenol?”). But, as fun and exciting as these things can be, the discipline of the church year helps us realize that these things are merely periphery.
It organizes and shapes our lives by the Christian story, instead of the things the kingdom of the world holds valuable. Our lives are divided up into semesters, work schedules, electric bills, tax deadlines. Intentionally choosing a gospel-centered organization system helps us to maintain our first allegiance to Christ and his kingdom. Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Stop worry being the “Happy Holidays” police or petitioning to keep the nativity scene on City Hall lawn. We serve a throne that calls us to rise above that noise.
The colors are so pretty. I’m kidding, of course. Sort of. Not really. The changing colors of the liturgical year can be powerful and meaningful symbols of our response to the holy events.
It brings texture to our gathered worship. The object and definition of our worship never change, but observing the Christian year allows our corporate worship to reflect all the feelings and nuances of the gospel events. In that sense, it is a powerful rhetorical device, driving home the drama of the Christian story.
It unites us with the holy catholic church, past, present, and future. Christ wasn’t crucified during the Clinton administration, and we don’t do the Christian life in a vacuum. We are part of a long faith tradition, one that has observed the Christian year in one form or another practically since the actual events themselves.
It disciplines us to linger in the valley instead of rushing toward the mountaintop. Our culture believes wholeheartedly in the right to instant gratification, which plagues the church like festering boils on Egyptian necks. Like a kid locked unattended in a candy store, left to our own appetites, we will gorge ourselves with the sweet, sugary stuff until we puke. We need the anticipation of Advent to truly recognize the miracle of Christmas. We need to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, sing along with the heavenly host, and be without shelter in Bethlehem, before we hear the cry of the Word become flesh. We need to walk with Christ for those 40 days, see him ride into Jerusalem over the path of palm branches, dine with him in the upper room, fall asleep in the garden, and feel the hammer locked in our palm’s grip as the nails pierce our Savior’s body. Yes, we are an Easter people, but Easter doesn’t happen without the terror and anguish of the week before. It’s time to forsake the supreme quest for the Hollywood ending, and be willing to put off the unbridled excitement for our own edification.
It helps church leadership avoid the narcissistic and self-referential pursuit of our own personal agendas. In the churches where I grew up, and a couple others I’ve served since, corporate worship was held hostage by the personal agendas of the pastors. Case in point: the topical sermon series. I’m not completely against the sermon series (of course, I think the Revised Common Lectionary is the greatest and most relevant sermon series possible), but so often they’re driven primarily by the personality instead of the Christian story. Following the Christian year doesn’t totally eliminate that possibility, but it’s a very helpful check.
It reminds us of the parts of the Gospel story we often forget or neglect. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what Pentecost was about until I was in my twenties, nor did I ever observe the Lenten season, understand Epiphany, or even hear the story of Christ’s ascension. I don’t remember hearing most of those words used, or if they were, they were too far embedded into an unrelated sermon series that I didn’t get it. I’m sure that some people grow up in liturgical churches and still don’t get it, but my Christian journey is poorer for not having the opportunity sooner.
It is a supremely effective method of discipleship. While churches everywhere are falling for the latest and greatest discipleship program in the effort to revitalize their congregations, the best option might be older than all the rest. I like what Chaplain Mike over at the Internet Monk says about this curious phenomenon.“I don’t know why so many Christian groups think they need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to “discipleship programs.” This time-tested annual pattern for the life of individual believers and the Church together that is focused on Christ, organized around the Gospel, and grounded in God’s grace, is sheer genius. It is simple enough for a child. It offers enough opportunities for creativity and flexibility that it need never grow old. Each year offers a wonderful template for learning to walk with Christ more deeply in the Gospel which brings us faith, hope, and love.”
There is no better time to discover (or rediscover) the power in this beautiful discipline.
I love the Christian year. When I was working on church staff, we were told to organize the church year around the various offerings and denominational emphases from the Southern Baptist Convention. Other than Christmas or Easter, there was no vestige of the Christian year. It was the program of the church that held together our worship and proclamation. I remember how this never really struck me as odd until I had children. Then it became obvious that the Christian year was a primary way of teaching our children–and the whole congregation– the story of the Gospel.
Today the Christian year is one of my passions. Advent, Lent, Holy Week, Epiphany, Trinity Sunday, Christ the King, Ascension, Annunciation, Holy Baptism–all of these days teach us the story of Jesus and preach the Gospel to us. Why would we want to neglect this great heritage? Why can’t all Christians see the value in the visual and artistic celebration of the Gospel that is made possible using the Christian year?
One of the saddest mistakes of fundamentalism is in assuming that if something is “catholic” it is Roman Catholic, and therefore poison. The Christian year is the property of all Christians, and I can only rejoice that more and more evangelicals of every kind are discovering Advent and Lent. Hopefully, soon we will see the Christian year reclaimed in all churches, and a great unity of worship created as a result.
I love the lectionary. Three scripture passages read in a worship service! In my revivalistic roots, you could wave the Bible around, you could slam it on the pulpit, tear pages out for an illustration, talk about what it said and quote isolated verses, but you couldn’t actually read from it much except in Sunday School. Three scripture readings in church would have been a special Christmas program, or maybe January Bible study run amuck.
Of course, there is the irony. In liturgical churches, the Bible is read all the time and shows up in every part of worship. It’s been said before that even if the sermon is repeatedly terrible, one can still get the Gospel and a good deal of solid teaching in just the liturgy and prayers of the liturgical churches.
In addition, lectionary preaching is a wonderful alternative to the “whatever text strikes Brother Billy this week” method. Lectionaries bring Christians together, as many different churches read the same lessons and hear sermons from the same Gospel or Epistle passages. Lectionary resources allow preachers to share their ideas on how they will approach the text. And, of course, the lectionary keeps the scriptures front and center. You can’t just chase the issue of the day when the lectionary does its job.
I was in an Episcopal church the week before the big vote on ordaining Bishop Robinson. The text of the week, of course, had nothing to do with the issue of the day. The rector, who felt his congregation needed to hear about the controversial issue, made the text work for his purpose, but still had to come back and talk about the Gospel for more than half the sermon. I thought that this was a good example of how the lectionary resists our own agendas, and keeps us in the scriptures, preaching Christ.
I love the creeds, confessions and responses of liturgical worship. Nothing seems to agitate the non-liturgical Christian more than the twin sins of 1) saying things together and 2) saying something every week. Why is this so irritating? Apparently, these folks think they don’t do it.
Uhh…what? Ever heard of singing? Most Protestant Churches spend a large amount of worship time saying/singing the same things together with as much gusto as they can work up, but when you take away the instruments and the tune, suddenly it’s a march over the cliffs of Romanism. Isn’t that silly?
Further, last time I checked in at my home church, the spontaneous prayers and comments this week sound remarkably like last week. Take such weekly boomerangs as the offertory prayer offered by Deacon Smith: “Lord, just bless this offering, bless those who give. Bless the sick and be with our pastor. If there be anyone here today who is not saved, may they come to Christ before it is eternally too late. In Jesus name, Amen.” Sound vaguely familiar to anyone? This makes the weekly Collect a regular oasis of innovation.
One of my favorite times in the worship service is the congregational confession. Standing together, saying in unity the words that agree we are all failures and all in need of grace, I really feel at home. It’s the same with the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, questions from the catechisms and our weekly responsive Psalms. Together, as one body, no one showing off, we confess our sins, announce our faith and talk to God in the words He has given us.
I love the fact that liturgical worship isn’t every worshiper doing whatever he or she wants to do. I’m not one to criticize the particular behaviors of any group of worshipers, but I would like to suggest that there is something really wrong with a service where people are given permission to try and outdo one another in participation and enthusiasm. Now many of my friends call this being “free” in worship, but this sort of freedom seems to have certain predictable consequences.
Showoffs and people who want attention really get into the act. People who want a life on the stage and screen feel invited to make that big impression on…..the rest of us? (When will the endless numbers of young people claiming to be called into “Christian music ministry” end?) Distractions are the norm, and the poor guy who just sits there gets bombed with guilt and constant admonitions to “get free” and “Shout/clap/jump/stomp/holler/dance for/to the Lord.”
Liturgical worship says if we can’t all do it, we probably won’t do it. It’s that simple. Oh sure, some people kneel and others don’t. Some sing louder than others. There are always ways for human nature to come through, but the idea here is to worship as a congregation, and the freedom to worship God comes along with a freedom from the domineering reign of the human ego and the demands to be recognizable to the culture.
I’ll say it plainly: some churches have turned worship into an embarrassing chaos that has no resemblance to the “decently and in order” command of the Apostle. We are fallen human beings. When you take off the restraints and tell us to be “free in God,” don’t be surprised at all if you get someone running around acting drunk or who knows what. Yes, that is a worse case scenario, but it is rapidly becoming too true to ignore. Thank God for the sanity of liturgical churches.
In fact, I may be most grateful of all that liturgy feels no need to impress the world by being like the world. It is the most un-contemporary, un-seeker friendly thing I know of in the church. It is the church’s own way of hearing and speaking, and so far, the world has made very little successful progress in turning the liturgy into a commercial for the spirit of the age. That is not to say that some liberals and innovators haven’t fallen for the temptation, and done violence to the Book of Common Prayer tradition in the name of something modern. But go to any liturgical church–anywhere–and marvel at how much of Christianity has survived even the onslaught of the blasphemers.
I love the fact that most of what is said outside of the sermon is scripted. In other words, I love it that I don’t have to listen to brother Billy Bob carry on about what God has laid on his heart THIS WEEK!!
I once had a long conversation with a thoughtful young man who couldn’t–absolutely couldn’t–come to grips with my preference for liturgical worship. I asked him if he ever got tired of hearing preachers talk. Just constantly talking to fill the hour. Especially, didn’t he weary of the banter and the cute comments and the unnecessary asides? Didn’t he sometimes wish he could come to church and hear the Bible, good words of encouragement, short, to-the-point prayers and a minimum of happy talk? He admitted that I was right, but no amount of preacherly imitation of Jay Leno would convince him to go where they were reading the service.
I understand his feelings, but once you are inside a good liturgical church working at making worship meaningful, that “scripted” feeling gives way to an appreciation of EVERY WORD that is spoken in the service. The value placed on every sentence and every small prayer or response is one of the richest treasures of the liturgy. Words ought not be thrown out as if they really didn’t matter, and they shouldn’t be used to manipulate in the way the world uses words to sell and corrupt.
Evangelicalism has become a cult of celebrities. Leading pastors are superstars, even cult-like figures of adoration and near-worship. Most evangelical worship encourages this imitation of the entertainer. Musicians, preachers, worship leaders all take their cues in style, dress and manner from the entertainment idolatry of our culture. Liturgical worship does not encourage this, and actually works against it by restraining the minister within the liturgy. The minister is the servant of the Word. He is ordained for the ministry of Word and sacrament, and his personality must become his servant that the Word might be heard and seen.
Whatever comes out of the preacher’s mouth are…the words of a man. A fallen man just like me. I know that the liturgy is also the words of fallen men, but there is something about the common service of worship in a high church that shows what can happen when human personality is harnessed to words selected precisely to give glory to God and not man. The liturgy has been “purified” like few human creations are, to bring the words of men into subjection to the Holy Word of God. I like the result, and I believe it has done me good.
I love a lot of other things. I love the use of art and architecture to glorify God. I love the hymns. I love the sense of history. I love the humility at the heart of Liturgy. I love the constant return to the language of the Bible. I love the voices of people from across the ages becoming the voices of worshipers in my little church. I love the centrality of the Sacraments, especially of that neglected celebration around the Lord’s Table. I love the theologically driven message of liturgical worship, where God matters more than the audience.
11th Century Nativity icon in Tokalı Kilise, Cappadocia, Turkey
Advent II Mercy takes the risk of birth.
I thought of this poem last week, when each day seemed to bring more news of violence, death, and fear. It gave me words when I had none.
It portrays the world in realistic terms and speaks of God’s response to the world at all times: overcome evil with good, overcome death with life, overcome hatred with mercy.
The Risk of Birth, Christmas 1973
This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war and hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out and the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour and truth were trampled by scorn– Yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time for love to be born? The inn is full on the planet earth, And by the comet the sky is torn– Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
Hello, friends, and welcome to the weekend. I offered to write a couple Saturday columns to give our over-worked Chaplain a break. Shall we Ramble?
1964 Rambler Marlin
Not much in the way of politics this week. Though the Republican Presidential hopefuls did raise some funds and eyebrows at the Republican Jewish Forum, held in a phone booth in D.C. The Donald, for his part, showed his consistency in racially stereotyping yet another group. Trump told the Jewish audience that would not vote for him because he is funding his own campaign: “I don’t want your money so therefore you’re probably not going to support me. . . You want to control your own politician.” “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals?” he asked at another point, and then answered his own question. “Probably more than any room I’ve ever spoken.” And, “I’m a negotiator, like you folks.” Ben Carson, oft criticized as a lightweight on foreign policy, read from a script [safe move!] but repeatedly pronounced “Hamas” as “hummus” [maybe not]. Carson said all options are on the table to eliminate hummus, including vegetables and pita chips.
Oh, and the Donald earlier revealed his plan to deal with ISIS: kill their families. Because, ya know, there is no better way to show the superiority of western values than murdering people because of who they happen to be related to.
And the latest poll, offered without comment [except a whimpering sigh from the fetal position]:
I always thought he was a little creepy. I’m talking about Elf on the Shelf, the latest trend in parental manipulation. Some are suggesting Santa’s snitch has a more sinister and serious side [say that ten times real fast]. The elf, a new paper argues, promotes acceptance of a surveillance state. This is because he encourages children “to accept or even seek out external observation of their actions outside of their caregivers and familial structures.” Though Snopes busts the rumor that the little guy is a program secretly instituted by the NSA, he still normalizes “dangerous, uncritical acceptance of power structures.” Hmmm. That may be too far. But surely he does play to a side of Christmas at odds with the gospel: that good boys and girls are rewarded, while the bad are left out. In any case, he’s also a big, fat hypocrite. Look what compromising pictures are popping up on the internet in just the few short years of his existence:
Fortunately, we have man’s best friend to help with the situation:
In the benign stories of “Santa” most of us were told, the jolly old elf knew who was “naughty or nice.” He checked his list (twice) and gave gifts to the good children, and, tradition says, a lump of coal in the stockings of children who had been bad. Bummer on Christmas morning, but hey, you can get over it by mealtime.
If you’re going to punish delinquent children, why not do it right?
Enter Krampus, the anti-Santa and beast of legend who is part of a centuries-old Christmas tradition in Germany, where celebrations begin in early December.
Tomorrow night (Dec. 5) is Krampusnacht, the eve before St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6), when German children check the shoes they’ve left by the door to discover their gifts. An article by Tanya Basu in National Geographic explains:
Krampus, whose name is derived from the German word krampen, meaning claw, is said to be the son of Hel in Norse mythology. The legendary beast also shares characteristics with other scary, demonic creatures in Greek mythology, including satyrs and fauns.
…Krampus was created as a counterpart to kindly St. Nicholas, who rewarded children with sweets. Krampus, in contrast, would swat “wicked” children and take them away to his lair.
In modern celebrations in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, drunken men dressed in demonic beast costumes take over the streets for a Krampuslauf — a Krampus Run — when these “devils” chase people through the streets, stopping along the way to scare the children straight.
“He’s awful nice to have around, especially if you have a really nasty kid who needs discipline,” says Matt Manochio, whose novel “The Dark Servant” centers on Krampus exacting punishment on errant teenagers. “You’re not threatened by getting coal in your stocking? How about being kidnapped by a hairy, cloven-hoofed devil and being, beaten to a pulp, eaten or drowned? Now be good!”
In fact, it’s so popular that in some Austrian villages they’ve had to make special efforts to educate Syrian and Iraqi refugees who have come to live among them, lest they and their children be unduly frightened by the practice. NBC reports:
Fearing the spectacle would be misunderstood, community representatives last week visited the 22 migrants — including 12 children — who have been housed in the Alpine village since the end of October.
They were shown the frightening masks and given insight into the event’s history with the help of an Arabic translator. The verdict? The newcomers had “lots of fun,” according to social worker Nicole Kranebitter.
The migrants “will now know what to expect when St. Nicholas and the Krampus creatures knock on their door,” Kranebitter added.
Krampus is becoming the new rage in various places around the world, including the U.S. This week, a new movie called Krampus is opening, basing its story on the legend and a TV show just had a Krampus-themed episode. There are reports of people holding Krampus parties. National Geographic has published a book in German about the devilish Christmas beast. In Austria, they have begun to cash in on the phenomenon by marketing and selling chocolates, figurines, and collectible horns of the dark monster. This has led to complaints about the commercialization of Krampus, the idea of which I find delightful. War on Krampus! War on Krampus!
However, already I can hear the fundamentalists and evangelicals shouting “demonic” and urging with utmost seriousness that people separate themselves from the evil and corrupting influence of the ungodly culture. I can also see the mainliners defending the practice and even instituting it to a point within their congregations, pointing to oh so serious academic studies about how people need to deal with evil in an embodied fashion.
I’m not sure about what I think of the Krampus tradition, but at the very least one might admire the Europeans’ willingness to include the presence of actual evil in their Christmas celebrations and to portray it as something truly horrific and terrifying — then find a way to make sport of it.
Maybe we could all stand putting a little Krampus in our Christmas.
Why are large segments of the Church in the U.S., made up of people who claim to be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, the Giver of Life, and the Overcomer of Death, so unmoved by this?
I simply want to ask the Church in the U.S. — why are we so unmoved by this ubiquitous violence and death? Where are the prayer vigils? The marches? The media campaigns? Why such relatively little support for mission work in inner cities compared to the church palaces we build in the suburbs? Why are we not moved to lay down our lives for those who live in the shadow of death each day?
But wait. Before we go any further, here is a public service announcement —
or Michael Mott’s excellent authorized bio, 
. A great book of selected journal readings is called 
. 
are vast and moving and puzzling. Pure enjoyment can be found in 
(autobiography of his early life) and 
(early journals.) His finest devotional work is 
. 
is a good political book. Also, Merton was much photographed. Try 
by Jim Forest. Personal favorite: 
containing his brief, life-changing love affair with a student nurse almost thirty years his junior. Attaboy Tom.
), emphasized that the place to start was with a fresh understanding and practice of the liturgical year. So we’re focusing some of our posts this week on that topic.
The Internet Monk Archives 