Keeping Christmas

"And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!" - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I know, I know. It's too soon to talk about Christmas for most of my readers. Notable exceptions exist of course (Anne, Stephanie, I'm talking to you wonderful ladies!)

I used the above quote because when people refer to someone as a Scrooge, they mean the miserly old skin-flint in the "before" picture and not of the "after." In the same way, a "Grinch" is a mean-spirited, selfish person who hates Christmas. Yet in the story by Dr. Seuss, "the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day" and he ended up being sweet and generous! 

Christmas 2014 - everyone gets in on the fun!

When I was a little kid, I heard stories of my dad waking my mom up at 3:30 a.m. just because it was Christmas. He couldn't wait to see our faces when we opened our presents, to see the wonder and hear the laughter of that day. It was his favorite day of the year. And he didn't get anything else out of the day. We had no money to give him a present. His joy, his Christmas spirit, came from giving to those who had no way to return the favor. 

What a wonderful feeling that is! I've had occasion - here and there - to experience that kind of excitement in anticipation of someone opening a gift that I have made or bought for them. It is truly magical. And it doesn't matter if it's for Christmas, or their birthday, or even "just because." I don't expect anything in return. It just blesses me to bits to be able to give to them something that they need or want - that they like - and that they will cherish and use. 

So, perhaps we can "keep Christmas" all year round. Wouldn't that be great? If everyone had that spirit of gratitude, generosity and goodwill all year, how much sweeter life would be! Folks would be much easier to get along with ... as long as there was no trace of obligation or duty involved ... and therefore, no mad rushing about in the stores, no impatience in parking lots, or any of that. 

How much fuller life would feel with that kind of attitude - to give is better than to receive - present not just at Christmas but every day? How it would transform each of us to find joy in giving to those who have no hope of ever paying us back (which isn't the point anyway)!! Hungry, homeless people, people with hardly two nickels (or tuppence) to rub together, could eat, be warm, and have their daily needs met through the generosity of those who love to give! 

Isn't that worth more than getting the latest gadget for ourselves? 
I'll leave that thought with you, as it has been burning in me. 

And happy Christmas to you!

Soup for the spirit

EASY MINESTRONE (wheat-free)

One tetra box of chicken stock
1 cooked boneless chicken breast, diced
2 and 1/2 to 3 cups water (3 if using celery)
1 minced onion
1/4 diced turnip
1 stalk celery, diced fine (optional)
3 diced carrots
2 medium potatoes, diced
1 to 2 Tbsp summer savory
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 to 2/3 can (5.5 oz) your favorite tomato paste
1/4 tsp ground ginger

Soup in the process of cooking vegetables.
It's so good on a wintry day.

Put the stock and water in a large (4L) pot with the chicken, onion, and turnip (and celery if you wish) and bring to boil. Lower heat to medium and boil uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes. 

Add carrots, potatoes, summer savory and pepper and continue boiling for another 20 to 30 minutes to meld the flavors together. 

Then add tomato paste and ginger, bring to the boil and reduce heat. Simmer for about 2 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently so the broth won't stick to the pot. The soup will be thick, something like the consistency of mulligatawny (or perhaps Irish Stew). However, the taste is like minestrone - without the seeds. Serve alone or with garlic bread.

When I awoke this morning and looked outside to see a snowstorm in progress, I knew today would be a "soup day." I'd seen ingredients last night in the fridge, so I decided to put my creative cap on at around 11:30 this morning. The result was a delicious minestrone-chicken-vegetable soup that stuck to our ribs and hit that "it's cold outside, let's hunker down" spot. My impromptu recipe appears above. It turned out better than I thought it would with no recipe to guide me.

One of the bonuses to soup in the winter is the way it helps with the humidity level inside the house, easing coughs and getting rid of that annoying prickling feeling inside the nostrils. 

A nice thick soup is "comfort food" too. It warms the insides. 

When the cold winds of discouragement whip all around me, when I just want to pull the covers up around my head and tune the world out, that's when I look for a good helping of soup for the spirit. I start to remember all the good things, all the miracles that have happened in my life, all the blessings I've been given. I surround myself with wholesome, hearty helpings of wonderful, uplifting music and the caring company of true friends. These things feed my spirit - they make me feel warm and cared for inside, grateful for even the smallest things and even more grateful for the big things. 

I let that simmer. I linger over the good feelings they give me. I dwell on those great experiences and as I do, more bubble up to the surface. And when the "soup" is just right, when the goodness of those gifts lends flavor to all the other things in my life which might be somewhat bland, I allow myself the joy of letting it feed my innermost being. 

It's okay. That's what soup for the spirit is for. 

On Hold

"Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered by the next available agent."

It's no secret that I hate waiting. In a sense, I guess that's why I think I do so much of it: the cosmos appears to try to neutralize negative pressure. ;)

In other words, "Get used to it."

The theme in the last couple of months for me has been to get used to waiting. I freely admit that this theme has been met with a lot of kicking and screaming. Waiting to get my old computer fixed. (and waiting). Waiting to see an answer to prayer for a friend. (As usual, God let us wait until the last possible moment before charging in and working a miracle!) 

I've even hated waiting for a diagnosis for our eldest whom we strongly suspect has torn at least one ligament in her knee and severely sprained her patellar tendon. Waiting for that appointment with the specialist, even though it was far sooner than we thought, has seemed interminable as I have watched her take with grace and aplomb the events of the last few days. 

Her attitude has been amazing. Mine? Not so much.

I know that in my relationship with God, if there is some lesson He wants to teach that I'm either just not getting or am unwilling to learn, He finds a way to get me to listen. Usually it's through circumstances that force me to do the thing He wants to teach me to do. When that doesn't work, there is that last resort ... sickness.

So you guessed it - I'm sick. It's "only a cold," but by the Mister Man, those little critters can sure pack a wallop! 

It started yesterday afternoon at work. I couldn't concentrate, and I caught myself "zoning out." Last night, it hit. I felt awful.

Suddenly, all around me, people are making ordinary plans, doing regular things, going on about their lives - and I can't join in. I'm too weak, my throat is too sore, and my body is too tired to do much more than sit at the computer and lurk on Facebook, bolstered by Advil, DayQuil, Vitamin C and coffee to stave off the drowsiness. Even then, I find myself drifting off to sleep.

A nap. A nap might really help. 

Life slows down to a snail's pace. And I spend a lot of time ... waiting. 

Waiting for others to finish doing what they're doing. Waiting for the medicines to kick in. Waiting for my body to fight the virus. Waiting for my throat to be well enough to eat the yummy - yet scratchy - foods that everyone is eating all around me: pizza, for example. 

Normal living - well, as "normal" as it gets for me - is "on hold." My definitions of what's important, what's essential, are being rewritten. Again. 

Okay God. I'm listening. This is me ... waiting.

Refuge

The sun's heat baked into my skin as I trudged up the steep mud driveway.  I could smell wild roses in full bloom in the ditches, could hear the distant song of crickets, could see to the right, more and more of the barn - first the roof, then the walls - as I got closer to the top of the hill.  At the top of the hill and to my left stood the old farmhouse.  

But what caught my eye first - and every time without fail - were the soft brown eyes of my friend Princess as she trotted toward me from the barn.  Princess was a dog - a yellow Labrador and border collie mix, most likely, with a few other things thrown in.  Nobody had purebred animals in this backwater community.  Her doggie grin welcomed me; her liquid brown eyes sparkled in excitement.

She turned, knowing I'd follow her, and trotted to the barn.  I'd never seen a dog before or since climb the built-in ladder to the hayloft, but she could.  She led me slowly over to a spot about twenty feet or so from the edge of the loft, well away from the place where anyone could fall off and get hurt.  She gingerly circled a spot in the floor where a pile of puppies lay sleeping, tangled and nestled up in each other's bodies.  She laid down and looked up at me, eyes ever expressive.  It was like she was saying, "These are my babies. Aren't they something?"  I'd pet them for at least ten minutes - this part I didn't want to rush.  In fact, I didn't want to rush ANY part of this... this refuge from my usual world.  

I'd gotten permission to walk up and go visit this place - with the understanding that I be back at a certain time.  There was so much to see there, that it would be a few hours before I was expected back. 

Reluctantly, I climbed out of the hay loft and made my way out of the barn and toward the house, dodging free-range chickens and their chicks bunched around them as I crossed the yard. Prince, the old retired guard dog, a Keeshond - Shepherd mix, wagged his tail at me from the side porch.  I turned and headed toward the back porch entrance.  I could have gone in the side where Prince was, but he was resting, and I wanted to see what was in the back hallway.  

Got this picture of cuteness HERE

There was usually a cardboard box half-way up the forty-foot hallway, which was a gigantic mud-room in today's terms.  In the box I would invariably find a litter of kittens and their mother.  I could visit with them for a little while too.  The animals soothed my soul.  They never asked anything from me but my presence. I needed that.  

After the kittens had gone to sleep - I got up and tip-toed toward the door that led to the kitchen.  The oil stove was on one wall and the wood stove - pressed into service for larger crowds - was to my right as I came in the door.  I could smell wood ash, galvanized steel (buckets), and something delectable that made me close my eyes in bliss. 

Gram was there.  She was making a pan of new-potato hash: these days I guess people call them hash browned potatoes.  My favorite.  

"You must be hungry.  Why don't you wash up and we'll sit and have a bite to eat."  It was more of a statement than a question.  Nobody dared turn down Gram's new-potato hash, made in an iron skillet with boiled new potatoes, and chopped fine using a "hash can" - an old tomato sauce can with one end open and honed sharp around the circular edge, and a hole in the top to let out steam, placed there by the kind of can openers you open a can of apple juice with.  The rhythmic "chock, chock, chock, chock, chock [pause] tap-tap-tap" of Gram chopping the potatoes and then tapping them out of the can is so vivid I can almost still hear it.  She served the steaming hot hash on a fluted old china plate and placed it on the table. I pulled a fork out of a cup of clean utensils on the table.

I'd sit and tuck into my food, and Gram would just talk about everything and nothing to me - as if I mattered.  Nothing she said was ever a criticism of me or of anyone else, as I recall.  I remember feeling as though I wanted to be there, to stay there.  It was so different from the home life I knew.  I offered to help her with the dishes and she accepted.  But it didn't feel like a chore. It was another way to interact with her, to experience the atmosphere that was this house, this refuge away from feeling like I was nothing.

I knew to stay out of her husband's way of course - he was that crotchety and mean, so I usually visited when he was away at work - but often Gram would give me the run of the house and let me play in the tiny upstairs bedrooms -there must have been about six of them - and peek through the rails in the banister into the parlor, where she would have a quilt set up in the frames ... or perhaps a card table for games with the neighbors later that evening.  

At the foot of the stairs, right beside a large black and white reproduction of a print of Queen Victoria, sat a large table on which was the biggest birdcage I'd ever seen with finches - at least four finches in it. Heep, heeeep, they would call to each other in thin, reedy voices.  I could listen to them and feel my muscles relax.  

When it was finally time to go, I would linger on the walk home - back to the normal world where there were expectations, and nothing I did pleased her - away from this one where Gram reigned with grace and gentleness.

I knew I would be back.  Again and again.

Bouncing back

The past while, I've been struggling with a few physical symptoms (sore throat, coughing, sniffles) that have sapped my physical strength and left me running on empty, especially near the middle of the afternoon and the end of the day. 

I'm not really sure if it's just overuse of the vocal cords (lots more singing last Sunday than I've been used to) or if there was a bacterial thing going on, or if it was a virus.  But I've been fighting it for almost a week.  Hm. Sounds viral.  Anyway, I've been looking after myself as much as possible and the symptoms seem to be improving (more or less). In the meantime I wait. Get enough sleep. Take vitamins.  Drink liquids.  Eat soup.  Sighhhh.

It probably shouldn't surprise me that it takes as long as it does to "bounce back" from something as small as a virus.  I've been "bouncing back" from all kinds of things (big and small) in the last few years and every time, it amazes me that the simplest things can sometimes be the hardest to experience.  Real emotions for example.  It took me a long while to admit to myself that I even had them. Then even longer to experience them and not hold back just to be "nice."  I'd been "nicing" myself to an early grave, clamping down on them and not letting them out when they so desperately needed to be let out!!

When my life gets out of balance, when I am letting people walk over me or I am trying to run their lives, that's when I get worn out, super-tired, and extremely irritable.  It's very stressful to be on either end of that spectrum.  If I'm letting people walk all over me, the stress is from resenting the fact that they don't even take me seriously, they don't care how I feel, like that.  If I'm trying to manipulate the situation and control the outcome, then I have assumed a burden that is not mine to bear: that of the controller of all things (hm, I guess that would be God!!) This is extremely stressful, and it's how I lived my life before He taught me how to let go.  

Letting go allows me to bounce back sooner.  It gives me more stretchability. It helps me to grow, to learn, to develop.  

I could learn to live with that.

Distance - not speed

I was talking to a buddy of mine just in the last couple of days about his desire to do a bit more walking.  He was berating himself - because he has arthritis - for not being able to hoof along like he used to.  That's when I imparted some of the knowledge I have learned on the subject:  "In walking, it's not how fast you go, it's how far you go."  True.  (Hm, maybe that's the reason people start jogging, to go farther in less time.  But it's hard on the knees!  I think my friend is better off walking...)  

Source: (from Google Images) is
http://www.southwaterfront.com/health_and_wellness/winter-healthy-talk-walk/

For those of us who are unable to jog (heck, I am lucky if I can waddle!) the trick to walking is making the time to go as far as you can comfortably go.  Every step is about three feet (well, for shorter people like me, that's two feet).  So walking a mile, whether it takes ten minutes or thirty, still uses up the same amount of calories.  And as long as the heart gets elevated up to a certain percent above normal (which can be accomplished by swinging the arms when you walk instead of walking faster) then it will do just as much good.  

It's the same with developing and maintaining a relationship with God and with oneself (and eventually with others, as the first two get more healthy).  The magic wand, the divine Zap ... very rarely happens.  Usually it's slow and steady - and if you look at today compared to yesterday, it would be easy to get discouraged simply by virtue of the fact that you haven't covered that much distance since yesterday.  Compare it to a year ago, or two, or three years - and there you have your measuring stick.  

It's a journey of millimeters, day by day, hour by hour, sometimes even minute by minute.  You hardly know a change is happening - but it happens nonetheless. One step at a time.  Sometimes the last thing you want to do is take another step.  But it's the next right thing - and somehow the strength is there because felt or not, God is right there empowering you.  And when you get to a place where you can rest a bit - and THEN look back - the distance from the starting point is absolutely amazing.  

And it leads to the next step, this time with a smidge more confidence. And then the next.  

God is very near.

A Gentle Giant

This is a photo we have hanging in our home.  It was taken around 1985 I guess.  I apologize in advance for the quality of the photo as it appears here, because I took a picture of the portrait with my cell phone and from quite up close.

I pass by this photo at least four times a day, as many as a dozen times a day some days.

This is my mom and dad.  The photo was taken after Dad's heart attack in 1984 but before his stroke in 1989. It was a wonderful time for him and me.  A rift that had been there since I was six years old was repaired and our relationship restored shortly after the heart attack.  

Dad almost never criticized me.  He believed in me.  He believed in almost everyone.  He wanted to help, to make someone's life easier. And he hated confrontation of any kind.  I believe it grieved him terribly that Mom chose to discipline (I use a euphemism here) as she did.  Especially me, being the only girl and him - well, he'd always been taught that you never hit a girl or make her cry. Ever.  Even if she's asking for it. He loved us - and he loved Mom.  Looking back I can understand he was just as afraid of her anger as we - well, as I was.  And he was so caught up in the cardinal rule of that generation: "What will the neighbors think?" I can see now that he felt trapped and not permitted to say anything to her.  All that is water under the bridge; I've forgiven him for not stepping in and stopping what he suspected was wrong but which the culture said was perfectly fine. 

His faith in me, his love for me, came through even after I got to be six years old and was "too big" to sit in his lap - my choice, not his.  I never fully appreciated his support or his caring at the time.  Like the day he took me fishing.  I was about 10.  We went to the lake and got in the boat, then he rowed it out to the reeds where the trout would be feeding.  We'd taken along some worms.  He baited my hook for me, taught me how to cast, how to know when a fish was nibbling versus biting, and how to set the hook in the fish's mouth so it couldn't escape.  He talked me through my first catch - a lovely, 16-inch-long lake trout, the largest one we caught that day.  When we got home, I held my fish up high and yelled to Mom, "Look Mom!  I caught the biggest fish!!"  He never said a word to correct me. What a guy.

When I was a teenager, he gave me space - which I mistook for aloofness, for a lack of caring. It wasn't.  He so longed for me to let him just hug me.  Once God showed me that after his heart attack, there was a miracle of restoration in our relationship and I was able to enjoy his company, especially in those years between 1984 and 1989.  At the time I knew it was a great gift from God, but until he had his stroke in '89 and eventually died of brain cancer in '93, I had no idea how much of a gift it really was.

I feel his presence when my husband asks me to thread a screw into its place because, as he puts it, "You can see with your fingers. I can't."  Thankfully, the children have both inherited that trait.  They never got to know him; my oldest was four when he died.

I hear him when I watch my youngest tap her foot in impatience when we are getting ready to go somewhere.  She blurts out, "So are you ready or what?" and I remember my father out in the car when I was growing up, tooting the horn every so often until we came out of the house to go to town.  It makes me grin.   

And I can still hear his deep bass voice, chuckling right along with me. 

Like a Little Child

"Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." 
     - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

A few weeks ago I accompanied my hubby to a music practice. Someone was late and the person in charge asked a friend of mine, who had her first baby this year, to fill in for her. So she brought her baby to me to hold it while she went up on stage.

It had been a very long time since I'd held a baby that age - around 6 or 7 months old - it had been many years. I sat her straddling one of my legs, facing away from me so she could see her mom, and leaning her back against me. The little girl and I just enjoyed the music together. She could not speak and I chose not to as well. Yet we communicated. Every once in a while she would look up at me and then back up to the stage. It's like she was saying, "This is fun. I like this. Thank you for letting me watch everything." She demanded nothing. All I provided was a safe place for her to be while she enjoyed that moment. Lived in the present. No regrets, no worries.

I've thought about it since. I believe that babies are much more intelligent than we give them credit for being. They have a way of cutting through all the façades we adults put up; it is one reason why they are able to turn most adults into blithering idiots in the space of two minutes. They have, I believe, a vital connection with the Almighty, but since they don't have the power of speech yet, they can't communicate that to the grown-ups. Jesus knew that little children had life nailed and He said that unless we became like them, we couldn't enter into His kingship over us - His kingdom.

There is a sense of wonder, a newness, a thirst to learn, an inherent trust in the present moment, that characterizes a young baby. I think that this is what Jesus was talking about. We tend to complicate things so much. We get concerned, fret about the most unimportant things. We beat ourselves up over the mistakes of the past. We wonder about the future, about whether people like us or not, about whether we're playing by the rules and doing what's expected of us. Babies don't do that. They just are. Period.

I've found myself wanting to soak in those unspoken lessons from them, to sit at their feet if you prefer that analogy, and open my heart to the voice of the Spirit, draining away all the extraneous, and focusing on the most important thing: relationship with Him. (I saw a video clip earlier today and the person who was talking, was wearing a T-shirt that said, "It's against my relationship to have a religion." I like that.)

I wonder what life could be like if we lived in the moment, in relationship with Him, not trying to impress anyone or influence anyone. If we truly opened our innermost selves to Him with no masks, no façades, no games.

I just wonder.

Keep it Simple

I love Google Images!  This was at :
http://photos.igougo.com/pictures-photos-p173536
-Dutch_Windmill.html

My dad had a poster stuck to the wall of our old living room when I was in my late teens.

I never forgot it.

It was part of our daily lives.

It was a photo of a Dutch windmill, with one simple caption.

"To be simple is to be great."

Dad's simple faith was an inspiration to me. He only had a grade 2 education, and supplemented it to grade 4 when he was in the army in the mid-40's.

The flowery language of the King James Version of the Bible was beyond his scope a lot of times, but I remember seeing him poring over the texts, wearing his black-rimmed glasses. He didn't understand a lot of it, but he read it anyway. He wanted to get to know this God who had saved him from himself.

And his simple generosity of spirit was an example for all of us to aspire to. He opened his home or his workshop to anyone who really needed his help, often repairing this or that little thing free of charge.

He was a great man. He was great because he was uncluttered by sophistication and pretension. He was what he was. That's all... nothing more, nothing less.

Remembering his simplicity makes me wonder why we have to complicate things so much. Argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Fret about who did what to whom. Go around and around in circles, chasing our tails.

The old Gaither song comes back to me again: "Loving God, loving each other...."

That's keeping it simple.