The Ghosts of Christmas' Past

This is a repost of sorts. Last year I preached this lesson on the last Wednesday night before Christmas. I cleaned it up and edited a bit for the blog. Merry Christmas!

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It's funny to me how things stay with you the years. Some things just seem stick in your head, worm their way deep in and stay there, sometimes despite our best efforts to remove them. And for myself at any rate there's no accounting why some of the things that stick, should stick so stubbornly.

For instance, I can still recall, some 30 years later, the last line to William Faulkner's short story “A Rose for Emily”. I read that story exactly one time, for a high school English class. It was a good story I suppose, but not so good that it should still be with me. “There on the pillow next to him lay a single strand of iron-gray hair.”

Why on earth do I remember that?

But I also remember a time that Daddy and I had to tow my brother's car home from college. We lived in Hobbs, my brother was at ACU, and his Mustang had broken down. Daddy and I drove there to try and get it running, but it couldn't be fixed in the dorm parking lot, so we had to flat-tow it back home, 3 ½ hours away. It was a miserable trip. Wintertime, cold and windy. Of course, since the car didn't run I had no heat. 3 ½ hours bouncing and jerking on the end of a chain, cold and miserable. We got home, parked the car and went inside. My fingers ached, and I couldn't even feel my feet. Mom had a fire going for us, and I stood in front of it, exhausted, trying to warm up before I went to bed. As I stood there Daddy came up to me, hugged me and said “Danny I couldn't have done this without you. You did a good job today.” And like that the cold and fatigue melted, draining from the top of my head to
the soles of my feet and away. I can remember that like it was yesterday, in every little detail.

Not all things that have stuck are good.

To this day, if the temperature and wind and humidity are just right, I can close my eyes and
immediately I'm back in San Diego Recruit Training Depot. I'm almost afraid to open them, afraid that I might find myself on the grinder at the head of a Recruit Company, getting screamed at by a Navy CPO. It's that vivid.

We used to belong to a little home church in the Colony. Just 4 or 5 pretty close families, meeting in each others homes. I remember the time my friend Don, the best friend I suppose I'll ever have, lost his little girl. She got sick one evening, they took her to the ER, and bang, she was gone. I went to call other friends to let them know. Where we staying at the time we didn't have a phone, so I drove down the street to a pay phone. It was raining, and I pulled the van up close enough to stretch the phone into the cab. I remember calling Wanda Morris to tell her and breaking down before I could get the words out. The rain dripping in through the open window, the phone cold and wet, Wanda on the other end trying to figure out what on earth was wrong, me trying to speak through deep wracking sobs, wipers squeaking across the windshield.

I still remember that.

Most of the memories are pretty good ones though. In fact I have another memory from our home church, of Don Ledbetter, the friend who lost the daughter, a very good memory. He read a passage one Christmas about the birth of Jesus that has stuck with me through the years, not quite verbatim, but close enough. But I'll return to that in a minute.

I've always enoyed reading about the early Christian Church. It is always interesting to me the “strangeness”, the almost complete “other-ness” of early Christianity compared to the world around it. It was a odd off-shot Judaism, which was itself considered odd. We were weirdos and freaks. We were very different.

Christianity was strange because it was monotheistic.

All other religions of the time had a pantheon of gods. The Roman and Greek pantheon (recall that they were the same gods with different names) had 12 or so major gods, and dozens, perhaps 100's of lesser deities. In fact, each individual household might have its own particular god.

That's not all. Due to conquest, the Roman empire at the time was very cosmopolitan. And these conquered peoples all imported their own gods, as did visitors and travelers. So in addition to the Roman pantheon, the Egyptians brought along Isis, the Zoroastrians introduced Mithra, there were Druidish and Germanic gods...it is no exaggeration to suggest that there was no counting the number of different gods and religions in the Roman Empire.

Christianity though, like Judaism before it, insisted that there was One True God. All the others were either false or demonic. That was strange, and to many people, insulting and sacrilegious.

Christianity was strange because it was exclusive. No other god was to be worshiped.

Other religions of the time tolerated and/or assimilated each other. One of hallmarks of Roman conquest was it's tolerance of different worship. The Legions would come in, kick your behind, take your land, levy taxes. But if the conquered people would behave themselves, if they paid their taxes, sent men to the military when called, they were by and large left alone to live as they pleased and worship who they pleased. In fact, as a gesture of respect and tolerance you might do homage to your neighbor's god even if you didn't believe in that god. Christians were not only forbidden to do so, they rudely called the others false.

This caused problems with emperor worship too. The emperor was to be worshiped as a god, honored with sacrifices and oblations. This was blasphemous to Christians, and they were forbidden to do so.

Perhaps the biggest difference, the thing that non-Christians found strangest of all, was found in the character of Jesus Christ himself.

Other gods were, as a rule, super-sized and heroic figures. Jupiter was the King of the gods, standing with a lightning bolt in his hand, and Mars was the god of war, usually portrayed in full armor, with spear and shield. Venus was the beautiful and seductive goddess of love. Vulcan was the god of fire, at his anvil and furnace forging weapons for his fellow gods and sometimes, if his forge-fire got too hot, it would spew out of the earth as a volcano. And Mithra was often depicted as being born from a rock, already a strong and healthy young man, with a knife in one hand and a torch in the other.

Jesus, when the ancients compared him to the gods they knew, was so thoroughly ordinary, so disappointingly human, so frail. Not a mighty warrior, or a handsome lover. Not a stern dispenser of justice, ready to smite wrongdoers with a hammer or a lightning bolt. He appeared to be an itinerant preacher and malcontent, but that was about it.

Recall Mithra. He was the most commonly worshiped god in the Roman army of the time. A fine god for a soldier, strong and virile, chipping and breaking his way into the world out of solid rock, weapons in hand and ready to fight and conquer.

Remember I mentioned the passage my friend Don read, about the birth of Jesus? I thought of that the other day while reading of the Romans and their ideas about Christianity. Compare those ideas with this passage from “Moments with the Savior” by Ken Gire.

“The night is still when Joseph creaks open that stable door. As he does, a chorus of barn animals makes discordant notes of the intrusion. The stench is pungent and humid, as there have not been enough hours in the day to tend the guests, let alone the livestock. A small oil lamp, lent them by the innkeeper, flickers to dance shadows on the walls. A disquieting place for a woman in the throes of childbirth. Far from home. Far from family. Far from what she had expected for her firstborn.

But Mary makes no complaint. It is a relief just to finally get off her feet. She leans back against the wall, her feet swollen, back aching, contractions growing harder and closer together.

Joseph's eyes dart around the stable. Not a minute to lose. Quickly. A feeding trough would have to make do for a crib. Hay would serve as a mattress. Blankets? Blankets? Ah, his robe. That would do. And those rags hung out to dry would help. A gripping contraction doubles Mary over and sends him racing for a bucket of water.

The birth would not be easy, either for the mother or the child. For every royal privilege for this son ended at conception.

A scream from Mary knifes through the calm of that silent night.

Joseph returns, breathless, water sloshing from the wooden bucket. The top of the baby's head has already pushed it's way into the world. Sweat pours from Mary's contorted face as Joseph, the most unlikely midwife in all Judea, rushes to her side.

The involuntary contractions are not enough, and Mary has to push with all her strength, almost as if God were refusing to come into the world without her help.

Joseph places a garment beneath her, and with a final push and a long sigh, her labor is over. The Messiah has arrived.

Elongated head from the constricting journey down the birth canal. Light skin, as the pigment would take or even weeks to surface. Mucus in his ears and nostrils. Wet and slippery from the amniotic fluid. The son of the Most High God umbilically tied to a lowly Jewish girl.

Mary bares her breast and reaches for the shivering baby. She lays him on her chest, and his helpless cries subside. His tiny head bobs around on the unfamiliar terrain. This will be the first thing the infant king learns. Mary can feel his racing heartbeat as he gropes to nurse. Deity nursing from the breast of a young maiden. Could anything be more puzzling-or more profound?

The baby finishes and sighs, the divine Word reduced to a few unintelligible sounds. Then, for the first time, his eyes fix on his mother's. Deity straining to focus. The Light of the World, squinting.

Tears pool in her eyes. She touches his tiny hand. And hands that once sculpted mountain ranges cling to her finger.

She looks up at Joseph, and through a watery veil, their souls touch. He crowds closer, cheek to cheek with his betrothed. Together they stare in awe at the baby Jesus, whose heavy eyelids begin to close. It has been a long journey. The King is tired.

And so, with barely a ripple of notice, God stepped into the warm pool of humanity. Without protocol and without pretension. Where you would have expected angels, there were only flies. Where you would have expected heads of state, there were only donkeys, a few haltered cows, a nervous ball of sheep, a tethered camel, and a furtive scurry of curious barn mice.

Except for Joseph, there was no one to share Mary's pain, or her joy. Yes, there were angels
announcing the Savior's arrival-but only to a band of blue-collar shepherds. And yes, a magnificent star shone in the sky to mark His birthplace-but only three foreigners bothered to look up and follow it.

Thus, in the little town of Bethlehem...that one silent night...the royal birth of God's Son tiptoed quietly by...as the world slept.”

No mighty warrior. No thunderbolts or hammers or spears.

No goddess of love, or fertility.

No glorious palace on Mt Olympus, or dramatic emergence from solid rock, chipping and breaking and fighting and conquering the very earth to emerge ready for battle.

Christians worshiped a puny little God. Born to humble circumstances, he grew to be a carpenter as an adult. He had no home. His family thought he was nuts. His friends were common laborers, or worse, prostitutes and tax collectors (and in the Jewish world of the time, one was as bad as the other). And in the end He died the most humiliating of deaths, crucified between two common criminals.

No wonder they thought Christians were crazy.

Remember how things stick with us? Another of those things that really stick with me are Christmas cartoons. I remember the first time I watched “Frosty the Snowman”, and how horrified I was when towards the end Santa walks into the green house and finds the little blond girl crying over the puddle that used to be Frosty, with his hat and pipe lying in the water. Frosty was melted! A few minutes later Santa of course does his “Christmas magic” and Frosty comes back, but for those few moments I was inconsolate. I remember being absolutely heart-broken.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” is another one. I love the whole thing, but that one moment, when Linus explains the meaning of Christmas...It doesn't matter how many times it's been on, or what's going on in the living room at the moment. When Linus walks out on the stage and says “Lights please?” the volume must be turned up, everyone has to be quiet and still, so I can listen, just as I did as a 6 year old boy.

And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And Lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shown round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them “Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest, and on earth Peace. Good will towards men.

Remember the words to O Holy Night? His law is love, and His gospel is peace.

He didn't come to conquer with the sword, to enslave, to beat down. Rather He came to offer peace, to conquer with love, even to the death. To give His life a ransom for many. Let us resolve, as much as is possible in our human frailty, to do the same.

Merry Christmas my friends, my brothers, my sisters.

And Joy. Joy to the world.

The Lord is come.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says President Barack Obama's first priority in his second term should be to lead the country on gun control.

In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Bloomberg says the kind of violence resulting in the deaths of 20 schoolchildren "only happens in America." And he says it happens "again and again."

Bloomberg has been an outspoken gun control advocate for years. He noted that New York state has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, and New York City the lowest murder rate of any big American city.

The mayor says it's time for the president to stand up and tell the country what needs to happen — not go to Congress and ask what legislators want to do.

Article found here.

Un-freaking-believable. This is what passes for political leadership in NYC?

His first priority should be gun control. 

Our foreign policy has no clear direction. Instability in the Middle East, Syrian revolution and possible war with Turkey, Iran is working on developing nukes, North Korea continues work on ICBMs, China and Japan rattling sabres over the Senkaku Islands.

We are 16 trillion dollars in debt. That's $16,000,000,000,000. We add roughly $1,000,000 to that every minute. Our tax revenues are no where near enough to make a dent, we're molding a mill stone around the necks of our children and grandchildren that gets bigger every day. We're inching closer galloping head-long towards a real fiscal cliff, not the "scary headline" fiscal cliff that you're hearing about in the news, but a for-real, default on the sovreign debt, plummeting standard of living, unable to pay for the essentials of government much less the optional, out of money fiscal cliff.

And Mayor Bloomberg thinks Obama's first priority should be gun control. But you know what's worse? There are undoubtedly thousands out there who heard him say that and nodded their heads in agreement.

It disgusts me that we're having this conversation right now. I think the notion of gun control is not just unconstitutional, but ignorant and foolish as well. I understand the emotional appeal to a certain kind of person though. If they must wring their hands and talk about bans and background checks and gun show loopholes, hey, some people think it's worth pursuing. But there's no good reason we should have this conversation right now, while the bodies aren't even in the graves yet, except that that same sort of person apparently feels no compunction whatsoever against using a tragedy like this to score political points. Just the tiniest bit of decency would compel them, one would think, to hold off on the grand-standing for a few days, but we mustn't let a crisis go to waste, right? And so we have the conversation.

Back to Bloomberg. This sort of thing happens only in America he says. Apparently the Honorable Mayor has never heard of Anders Breivik and the Workers Youth League camp. Or Matti Saari and Seinäjoki University. Or  Farda Gadirov and the State Oil Academy. And did he sleep through Rwanda, and Iraq, and the Balkans? Is he ignorant, or just taking advantage of great opportunity?

Are his statistics any better? After "only in America" we should probably check. It's true that New York has some tough gun laws, and that NYC has a very low murder rate. Texas law is fairly lenient, gun ownership is much more widespread, and Texas rate is slightly above New York's. But gun laws in New Jersey, right across the river from New York, are similar, and yet the rate in the Garden State is higher than the Empire, and on a par with gun-crazy Texas. Montana's laws are pretty lax, and their murder rate is much lower than New York's, New Jersey's or Texas'. Even more interesting, murder rates have been trending downward for years in places with stringent laws and lax; so if tough gun laws are the answer, then why do states with lenient regulation follow the same trend, and often at similar rates? Could it be that there's something more going on?

I do need to give the Mayor his props though. In a difficult time he's not above making a joke to try and lighten the mood. At any rate, I found it funny when Bloomberg says Attorney General GunRunner's boss should tell the rest of us what we need to do about gun violence. It has to be a joke right? If Bloomberg was serious he'd be pressuring the President to hold his Attorney General accountable for illegal gun trafficking, meddling in the affairs of a sovreign nation, and facilitating the murder of a Federal Agent. Okay, it's not that funny a joke, but I'll give the Mayor an E for effort.

Bloomberg is right about one thing though. It happens again and again. It's not going to stop either. Homo homini lupus est is as true as it ever was, our pretensions of civility and enlightenment notwithstanding; run on by your local clinic and watch a partial-birth abortion if you want to see the latest in lupine fashion. No, it's not going to stop, and because mankind is wonderfully, horribly, tragically creative in finding ways to do violence to the innocent, it can't really be prevented. It can only be resisted, sometimes to great effect, sometimes to little, but resisted it must be. A pox on those who, because they are too timid to do so themselves, would deny others the most effective means to do so.

Hey Mayor Bloomberg. I hear rumors of a convenience store on the lower East Side that is selling Coke in 32 ounce cups. Why don't you run on down there and catch those vile scum in the act, and leave those of us that don't live in your fair city alone. Hell, I'm a reasonable man, I'll make a deal with you. I'll never drink another Super Big Gulp again if you'll at least try to educate yourself before opening your big mouth and lecturing the rest of us.

Musings on Linux distros and desktops

I've been using Linux for about a year and a half now. I've been interested in Linux for a lot longer than that, but my previous laptop, an Everex model somethingorother, had some hardware bits that didn't play well with the distros I was interested in. The mobo on my Everex went south :-( , which gave me an excuse to get a new machine :-) . I went shopping for a netbook, looking for something that would let me dual-boot, and ended up with an Acer Aspire. Had it about a week before I got around to installing Ubuntu, and it's been penguins ever since.

One of the things I love about Linux is that it allows me to do whatever I want with my computer. I'm not a Windows hater (Apple, however, is another story), and it's true that one can customize Windows to a certain extent, but there are things one cannot do without incurring the Wrath of Redmond. Entirely their perogative. In Linux however I am the final authority on what happens on my laptop. I am Root!

One of the good things about Linux is that it lets me tinker with things. One of the bad things about Linux is that it lets me tinker with things...

I'd had Ubuntu installed for a year or so, happily playing and tinkering and customizing. And it started to get a bit, well, buggy. Odd things happened, or didn't happen. My fault, and I knew going in that I might break something. But again, if something breaks in Linux, and you can't find the problem, or don't want to take the time, an new installation is relatively easy. And did I mention that I like to tinker?

Out with the old, in with the new! Ubuntu 10.10 had served me well, so I tried Ubuntu 12.04. It took me all of an hour to decide that I hated the new Unity look, and that led me on a several week long experiment with different distros. I tried OpenSUSE, Fedora, Puppy, Kubuntu, and finally settled for a bit on Mint. It was nice, but Gnome3 at the time was not very customizable, and Cinnamon was a work in progress, so I settled on Xubuntu. Which is where I've been for a couple of months. It's nice, relatively quick, but a bit boring and sometimes kinda cheap looking. The new distro bug bit again, but there's nothing out there that fits my needs like Ubuntu (although Fedora came very close). I finally decided to stick with Xubuntu but give Gnome3 a second chance.

What a difference a few months can make.

Gnome3 is a very pretty desktop. There is a certain elegance to it, it seems quicker than xfce (I know, it's not supposed to be, but it sure feels like it), and it can now be customized in ways that it couldn't be before. I installed it last night, and with a few clicks, checking this option or that, installing a plug-in or 2, I have an elegant, fast, easy to navigate desktop that fits my needs and my desires. It looks nothing like old Gnome; one could make it so if one wanted, but what would be the point in that? I've already gotten accustomed to having everything at the top of the screen, I like the way it handles Workspaces, the Acitivites hot spot is cool (and finally the Windows button has something to do), and the global search (I think that's the right term) is very handy. It's a new way of handling things, without being so new that it's too confusing.

So it's Xubuntu with Gnome3, at least until the bug bites again...

Okay, this is a few-days-late clean-up post, but...

...congratulations to Johnny Manziel, 2012 Heisman Trophy winner.

On the occasion of my eldest son’s first love poem

...well, the first one I’m aware of, at any rate.

Hello to any who happen by. This is my first real blog post, written on a blog that is still being fine-tuned. The writing is still being fine-tuned as well, so patience would be appreciated. I feel that this is terribly self-indulgent, this blogging thing, but I like to write and “it seemed like a good idea at the time”. It seems to me also that the whole exercise is pointless if I’m not going to be open and candid, so that is the target, though one shouldn’t be surprised if I sometimes send a shaft into the weeds.

Back to my son.

As you noticed if you checked the “About Me” sidebar, my wife and I have 10 kids. 6 boys and 4 girls, ages 5 to 23. They are the delight of my life, bringing in equal measure much anxiety and much joy. That thought brings us right back to my oldest boy.

Boy 1 is an impressive young man, surpassing excellence in just about any venue he desires. I know, I know. I’m his dad. But I speak words of truth here, well-attested by others who know him who are NOT related. He is responsible and diligent, intelligent and skillful, caring and kind-hearted, with just enough bull-headedness mixed in to keep him from appearing TOO perfect. Just enough to keep him interesting/exasperating. Pretty good-looking too. So it’s no surprise at all that he’s attracted the attention of a girl, right?

I’m not handling this well at all.

She’s a super young lady, by all accounts Boy 1‘s equal in the good qualities mentioned above. A strong Christian from a good family, so it's no surprise that she's attracted his attention as well, right? I'm very happy that they have found each other. I’ve prayed from the very first that God would bring suitable mates for my boys and girls, and it certainly appears that He has done so here. At any rate her grandmother thinks so; she's the one that introduced them at church, with this very result in mind. So it's not like this whole situation snuck up on me. And if their relationship should grow even deeper, why I’d be pleased as punch. But I’m not ready to let go just yet. And it’s killing me.

This blog is called Arrows in Flight, and unless you’re hopelessly illiterate you’ve surmised by now that my children are the arrows. An archer will retrieve his arrows after a shot, and unless the shaft is damaged beyond repair, reuse them. And so it is, sort of, with our children. We raise them carefully, making sure they are straight and true, well-fletched with heads on straight, and then when they are ready we launch them. Practice shots at first, safe and simple, but then longer and more difficult. And with each shot comes the knowledge that someday they will go where they cannot be retrieved and replaced in the quiver. It’s supposed to be that way. They will go off, the arrow becomes the archer who finds a bow, and together they build a quiver and begin to stock it with arrows of their own, to carefully craft and build and launch. It is my hope above almost all else that my arrows will fly straight and true and find whatever target our God has planned for them.

But I hear in that love poem (nicely done, btw, but that’s to be expected from Boy 1) the echo of the twang of the string, the one that will send him forever from my quiver and off into the wild blue to start his own life with some one else. I am filled with joy and sadness, again in equal measure. That this is The Way It's Supposed To Be does nothing to ease my anxiety. On the other hand, it does nothing to lessen my Joy either; I'm enormously proud and happy at the man he's become, and I pray that God will bless his life as richly as He has blessed mine. I pray that God will someday bless Boy 1 with a Boy 1 of his own. That day will come, when it comes, too soon. And not soon enough.

I love you my son. I hope I have served you well. Fly true.

P.S. I remembered this from a book I read some time ago. It seems appropriate to include it here.
"Let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go straight. Each is his own witness. God is judge."
Eastern proverb, as quoted in Hira Singh: When India Came to Fight in Flanders by Talbot Mundy

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