A Merry Little Christmas Reflection

Writing about a day helps me put it to rest, and it seems fitting that a day like Christmas ought to be finished well, if nothing else.  

Last Christmas I drove around Shoreline and Edmonds for a few hours, making the occasional phone call but otherwise being morose over my family's inability to celebrate the way I wanted. (Sidenote: holidays come with expectations on steroids.  An ordinary family dinner becomes The Family Dinner in which one must be jolly, eat a crapload of pie and turkey and enjoy general goodwill, or else you are that family, the dysfunctional one that pushes potatoes around their plates and makes awkward conversation to cover up the sound of cutlery scraping porcelain.  For this reason I like the concept of a "merry little christmas".  Little.  Not extravagant.  Low expectations, like making it through the day without slamming the door, or getting every family member to play a game of Hearts for at least 20 minutes.)  

After ending my gas-wasting foolishness, I flopped on my bed and turned out the lights, stewing in my solitude until my Dad knocked on the door to join my vigil and find out why I ditched the house and left my sister in panicky oblivion.   

This Christmas bookmarks a year of change.  For one thing, my family was actually jolly without very much prodding at all.  And we did play many many games of Hearts and no doors were slammed.  Change.  Since last Christmas I have been to South Africa, graduated from college, moved out of Spokane and back again, then out again and on to Seattle.  It all seems like the hokey-pokey, actually.  I have begun a job and then quit.  I spent 3 months living with a professor and his family.  Friends have scattered to Houston, North Carolina, Denver, Bend, and Latin America.  Dear ones have known sorrow, upheaval, and bewilderment.  For most, the change has crystalized into wisdom, and forced transformation out of comfortable and maybe unhealthy ruts.  

So I am glad to note the last year's changes, and open my arms to the ones coming.  At least we can count on everything changing.  It is oxymoronic to find rootedness in shifting sand, but there is humbling hope in knowing the future will surprise.  

To conclude, the following is a gem from Marilynne Robinson's Home: 

He laughed.  "Well, it's a good house."

The house embodied for him the general blessedness of his life, which was manifest, really indisputable.  And which he never failed to acknowledge, especially when it stood over against particular sorrow.  

Also, I am insane

A list of things I don't know: 

1) What city I will live in when January comes 

2) If I will be accepted by the schools to which I am applying 

3) If I will even want to GO to the schools to which I am applying 

4) Whether I will be any of the things I imagine I want to be

5) What I will do tomorrow

6) If America will remain the protected bubble it has heretofore been 

or

6b) If there is war and terror waiting for us as there is for Mumbai, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Palestine, the Congo...

7) If my sister will make it till next month.  Or tomorrow. 

8) What I want 

9) What I need

10) What I will wear (tomorrow that is, for now I am covered)

I am pretty sure that most of those "I don't knows" fall into the maxims, "do not worry about your life..." or "do not worry about your body", that our Lord spoke to some grubby bunch of Palestinians 2000 years ago.  Hard to see why it applies to a 21st century, 22 year old American woman.  Except that the questions remain more or less the same: what will I eat? what will I drink? what will happen to me?  will I be ok? more than ok, will I really live?  and what, Lord, what do I matter anyway?  

I matter more than a sparrow, apparently, more than a lily of the field, although given what I see in the filth of humanity, perhaps a little bird or flower deserves more kindness than a person.  Apparently I ought not be anxious.  Still.  How painful it is not to worry when the life to come stretches like a blank canvas, unrolling in wide, white swaths of nothingness?  

I do not SEE how I shall be taken care of, in fact, I see more clearly how I shall be left out to dry.  

But (what an important and very small word) because of Who issues the command I am called to wait in hope for what is to come.  Not, I think, that what is to come is all sunshine and white-picket fences.   In fact, I bet it will be hard.  Oh, even awful, perhaps horrific too.  Wherein does the hope lie, then?  Not in the things to come, necessarily, though along with the horrific there will probably be beauty too-- it is a statistical likelihood.  No.  Not in those things.  Nor in myself.  Oh God, not in myself.  But Him, He who has bound this world and Himself by the beams of a cross and a covenant of blood.  

Teach me to see You, Lord, with eyes that perceive the Unseen, for I am poor and needy and have nothing but You.  

Things I know: 

1) I will make a pot of coffee tomorrow morning

2) My bed looks real inviting and warm right now 

3) I like the slippers I am wearing because they are snug on my feet 

4) Tonight, I am going to be ok