Light and Momentary

Repurposing

When a girl with four older brothers gets a jewelry box for Christmas, she says joyfully, "Oh, look, it's the perfect place to keep the darts for my Nerf gun."

And the rough places plain

My mother gets cranky about the crowds at church on Christmas and Easter. I get the feeling, though she might not put it this way, that she thinks you need to earn your seat at Christmas by showing up the rest of the year. But I am going to Mass tonight with a person who is emphatic about not going to Mass most of the time, and I am grateful that there's something about those celebrations that draws the reluctant and the skeptical.

Last night at choir practice the altos and tenors were picking their way through their parts in It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, and I was thinking about the third verse: O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing. Maybe the people who will be there tonight after a long time away will be thinking they're there to please family or to satisfy a dubious obligation. But I wonder if it might be an echo they're hearing, a little snippet of angel song pulling them into the crowded parking lot.

And so I hope that I can keep my own ears open, listening for those strains of angel song. I hope I can remember to be patient with the parking situation, and the seating situation (it helps that I'm singing with the choir tonight), and the communion line situation. This morning at the gym I was reflecting on the gift of desiring God, and it left me a little wobbly with gratitude. I am so grateful, too, to serve an open-handed God; I really want to be generous as I go to celebrate his generosity.

The wobbliness at the gym was partially fueled by low blood sugar and by seasonal blues. In the early part of December I was congratulating myself on my relative sanity. Wasn't it nice that I was feeling so calm about things? Wasn't it nice that I was recognizing shreds of seasonal crazy as, you know, crazy, instead of being whipsawed by them? Imagine the crazy lumbering after me, dragging its knuckles as it loped along determined to catch me. About a week ago it tapped me on the shoulder, panting, "Didja miss me? Didja? Didja?"

The place where I'm most likely to get sucked in by the crazy is in my self-perception. Last night I was trying to pull off a birthday celebration for Stella in time to get to choir practice. She had requested a castle cake, iced in ivory with ribbons and tall candles. I was doing fine with the baking, doing fine with the algebra required to turn a square into a regular octagon, but then I was clotheslined by the piping bag. I made my sad little rings of cockeyed shells, lamenting the too-warm cake and the too-soft icing; I made squishy rosettes in lieu of actual roses; I wound gold ribbon with a wincing awareness of the gulf between my version of the cake and the picture in the cookbook. I will not reproduce my inner monologue here; perhaps you can imagine it. But then, you guys, the kids came in. And where I saw only shortcomings, they looked with loving eyes on an offering made in love. "It's amazing," they said. "You," said my husband in a voice both tender and stern, "are always too hard on yourself."

I think that anything I offer to God is bound, in the big picture, to look more like the catawampus crafting of a kindergartner than the crackerjack creation I conceived. I write this, though, sitting next to a tree covered in ornaments made by kindergartners. I treasure them, of course.

A week ago we marked the end of the 10-week Alpha course that kicked off our parish's new RCIA program. I agreed to help with a measure of reluctance, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of the fall for me. It prompted me to begin a difficult daily practice, of sitting with open hands and inviting God in. It feels like work, you guys; it's really hard. But in that discipline of opening, of emptying, I believe peace and transformation are waiting for me. The secular world will not believe our claims about peace on earth if we lack peace in our own hearts. So this season when God emptied himself to open a door for us -- it seems like just the right season for emptying and opening.

I was listening to The Messiah this afternoon while I made pots de creme, and I was thinking about those beautiful words at the beginning: every valley shall be exalted. I was thinking about how the low places are temporary and the rough places, the irritations in our life, can smooth us out, if we let them. December presents plenty of opportunities for being smoothed, does it not? I am wishing you a peaceful Christmas, and a joyful heart, and as I head off to cook our Christmas Eve dinner I am still thinking about Isaiah's exhortation: Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Procrastinator's Gift Guide

Are you startled to discover that it is the 22nd of December already? Did you just drop your Christmas cards off at the PO while feeling inadequate and hassled? (Wait, that was me.) Do you still have gifts to buy? Friends, I am here to help you out. Why don't I tell you about the best books I've read this year, and you can return the favor in the comments? If you order today, Amazon will get you an actual book in time for Christmas. And if you are a person who gives e-books, you have boatloads of time. Bushels of time! So much time that you could go back to scrolling through Facebook and wondering why it always makes you so grumpy. (Or, you know, not.)

Hands down, favorite book of the year: Being Mortal. I love Atul Gawande's work, and this is the best thing he's ever written. Beautiful, thoughtful, powerful, and lots of other cliched -ful words -- all of them true. Read it, for real. Give it to the people you love and talk about it afterward. Pro-dignity, anti-euthanasia, with a memorable blend of professional and personal experiences.

I read two fantastic novels back to back in the late winter: All The Light We Cannot See and Everything I Never Told You. All The Light is about a blind French girl whose path intersects with that of a German boy. I found it utterly un-put-down-able. I can see Marie-Laure so clearly in my mind's eye, curious and fearless. Everything opens with the death of a girl, but from there it goes in many unexpected directions. A painful read, but a good kind of painful and not a salacious kind of painful.

The Rosie Project is the fun if implausible story of a man with Asperger's. (I am trying to decide if recommending it does a disservice to people on the spectrum, and I'm coming down on the side of probably not.) I told you about The Long Ships when I read it, and it remains on my list of favorites from 2016. I did not expect I would enjoy immersing myself in the story of a medieval Viking, but I had to force myself to come up for air. I also did not expect to enjoy immersing myself in the story of a medieval physician, but The Physician was a real pleasure despite the disappointments of its sequels. I fully expected to enjoy immersing myself in Our Mutual Friend, and it was even more fun to revisit than I expected. (Coming in 2016: David Copperfield, the read-along! You know you want to!)

I bought Astonish Me on a whim and really enjoyed it. I suggest that you not read any of the descriptions -- just plunge in and enjoy the ride without any spoilers. I liked it so much that I bought the author's other book, Seating Arrangements. Both of these books are describing demographics that I emphatically do not belong to, as is Laura Vanderkam's I Know How She Does It. But I always find food for thought in her reflections on employment and enjoyment, even if "hire a (second) nanny" is not likely to be a workable solution for my family. On the subject of demographics I do not belong to, I am currently reading Dr. Thorne, the third book in the Barsetshire chronicles. Trollope is hugely underrated, if you ask me, and that Kindle version of the Barsetshire chronicles is only 99 cents.

When I wrote my lament about how there are not enough good books in the world, Rachel-who-needs-a-blog recommended Naomi Novik's Uprooted and OOOOOOHHHHHH, I am so glad she did. I have a post all about it in my drafts folder, but for today I will just say: read it. SO GOOD.

There are other books in my 2016 reading log that I enjoyed almost as much as these, but I'll make just one more non-book recommendation: Telestrations. It's a super-fun hybrid of Pictionary and Telephone that accommodates a wide range of ages and reading abilities. We have a hard time finding games that everyone can agree on, but we've laughed and laughed playing Telestrations together.

Happy shopping! [Disclosure: these are all affiliate links, so Amazon might pay me a quarter if you click through from this page to buy something.]

Crash

I was going to pop over to Petco tonight to pick up crickets for the gecko. I had a meeting at 6:30, so I needed to be efficient. I parked, and opened up my car door, and -- bang! An SUV was pulling into the space next to mine, moving quite briskly. It caught the door and yanked it all the way forward. We made shocked faces at each other through the windows.

First piece of good news: no one was hurt. Second piece of good news: the other driver was very pleasant and civil. The not-so-good news: our van is undrivable.  The driver's side front door can't be closed.

My insurance company said, "Of course you're not liable. You were parked!" The police officer said, "Your insurance companies are going to wind up duking it out because it's not clear who's at fault in a situation like this."

I wasn't sure what to do: the place where we'd normally have it towed doesn't have covered parking, and it's been raining all day with more rain in the forecast. It turns out that a towing company will wrap your vehicle in plastic in a case like this, and that the roadside assistance part of our insurance plan will cover it. Props to the people at Geico, who struck the perfect balance between sympathetic and efficient. 

I called home to see if someone could come. I thought I was going to have to wait for the tow truck with no book (THE HORROR), and I also thought I'd need a ride home. Elwood came right away.

He did three things that I want to remember. First, he brought me my knitting. He didn't just grab a random knitting bag. He gathered up the project I'd been working on most recently, popped it into a knitting bag, and brought that to me. Second, he produced a bungee cord and secured the door. At this point I had been holding it closed (or closed-ish; it doesn't close) against the wind for an hour, and I was cold and damp. And finally, he said, "Why don't you go home? I'll wait for the tow truck."

SNIFF.

I am still feeling a little angsty and adrenaline-y, but I am also feeling grateful. It just happened so fast, you know? And it could have been so much worse -- what if I had stepped out of the van just as the other car came barreling in too close and too fast? Here's hoping we get the repair sorted out quickly and cheaply.

A memory

Tonight I was reminded of something I hadn't thought about in a long time. Years ago now I was running at night when I failed to see a stick lying across the sidewalk. I got my feet tangled up in it and went down hard -- really hard. For a minute I just sat there and cried, because it hurt too much for me to put words in a row inside my brain. I fell on a brightly lit section of sidewalk next to a busy street, and I watched the cars zooming by me as I wailed. I was more than a mile from home and I had no idea -- none -- what I was going to do.

After a minute, I got myself together enough to pray. I said, "Oh, Jesus, I offer up this suffering in union with your sacrifice on the cross. Also, I am kind of stuck here." And instantly, I'm talking the second I finished that sentence in my head, a gentle voice behind me said, "Excuse me, do you need some help?"

A young guy named Brad had parked and walked over to me. He offered to let me use his phone to call my husband, or to take me home. This is the reason I never posted the story (it's still in my drafts): I felt really weird telling you all that I got in a stranger's car while injured and vulnerable. But he was so peaceful and gentle that I knew it would be all right. (Or I mostly knew it would be all right. To tell the whole truth, I did try to memorize his license plate as I was hobbling over to the car, but I wasn't in any shape to memorize license plates.) He took me right home, where I iced my poor sad ankle for the next, like, 4 days.

Sometimes you pray and it seems like nothing happens. Sometimes you pray and the answer makes you say, "HAHA, God, VERY funny." But sometimes you pray and kerblam-- God set the answer in motion before you could even form the words, so it would be waiting for you the moment you made the plea.

Hurray for health!

I have been wondering how it is that I do not vault out of bed most days full of gratitude and delight. I spent most of Friday wrangling with a stomach bug. No, actually, I spent most of Friday getting creamed by a stomach bug. I was expecting to feel a little draggy on Saturday and then normal on Sunday, but I was still tender-bellied and miserable yesterday. (Do you have that voice in your head that says, "Cancer. It's probably cancer"? How I hate that voice.) But today-- oh, joy, it felt so good to get up and work with a will. 

Part of the work was grading, of course, but part of the work was also cooking a birthday dinner for my husband. His real birthday was yesterday, but if I had cooked him a birthday dinner yesterday it would have consisted of soda crackers and maybe some Jello. Today I swung by the grocery store to get him some fish, and wound up running with a white-and-gold sort of theme for the feast day.

We ate cipollini onions with chestnuts (white onions, white wine -- it's not the feast of the carmine conception), and cauliflower steaks, and baked potatoes, and obituary cheesecake. I suppose if I had wanted to be consistent about white and gold I could have bought tilapia (or something) and cooked it with saffron (or something), but they had beautiful salmon on sale and I was lured in but its lovely lipsticky coral color. It was yummy, too.

Do you hear that call? It's the voice of finals week, telling me to get back to my grading. More soon, friends...