Something for my frikkin blog, or, Christmas story with coffee and huevos

Fanny tells me it's time "to post something on your frikkin blog."

My apologies for the extended absence from blogging activity. All compositional energies of late have been absorbed by my correspondence with said lovely girl, by revisions to the Seamonster story, and, of course, by poetry. I'd been trying nonetheless to get something together for Christmas, but the damn essay/post kept falling apart. And then the tragedy in Asia showed up on msnbc.com, and the whole essay turned to ashes, or worse. Everything I was going to say seemed suddenly naive and sentimental (side note: I'm going to permit myself a third allusion to Fanny just to note that she said everything that needs to be said about this tragedy in her most recent post). I almost decided against posting it--as of last night I had determined not to--but have changed my mind yet again. Perhaps there's still something of value or relevance in this old wineskin.

Christmas is a subject best approached obliquely. There's probably no other season or subject in the Christian universe so over-preached, over-written, over-talked. Blame it on the moneychangers ever-rampant in the temple of the season. As Dylan observed, "Money doesn't talk--it swears." If this is true (and I wouldn't be quoting it if I didn't think it were), then Advent, at least as celebrated in the stores and on the airwaves of the western world, is not the sort of place one should take small children. Blame it too on the way the world has of intruding on the sentimental cordon we place around certain times of the year. Death doesn't let out for the holidays like public school.

That's not to say Christmas doesn't need to be preached, written, talked about. There's this curious law of physics that the darkness and sharpness of a shadow vary directly in proportion to the nearness and brightness of the light source that casts it, and I wonder if this isn't true of the moral and spiritual realms as well. It's just a question of finding a way to penetrate through the crass, unholy penumbra to the truth of the season. Hence the necessary obliquity.

In that vein, I want to relate a story I've been unable to dislodge from my head for the past month. You can call it a Christmas story if you want.

It's a story I heard back in August in Santa Fe, eating Sunday morning breakfast with friends. We'd congregated there for the weekend to take in opera, beer, Indian ruins, and as much good food as possible. The story came after we'd finished off our huevos rancheros and were "cooling our coffee," as the old folks I grew up around refer to good conversation.

For some reason or other we were talking about church, and about how hard it is to find a good one. Ross, one of the perpetrators of the weekend, lives out in Los Angeles and has had little luck finding a place to worship (as of August, at least). Somehow the conversation turned to preachers, and to what we like in a preacher. Humility and vulnerability scored big. It reminded Ross of a story a former preacher told in a sermon. It's been awhile (plus I'm adding a bit to make it read better), so this may not be entirely accurate, but it's close on all the important stuff.

The sermon was on Revelation. Teaching on Revelation is a tricky prospect; it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to figure out when all this crazy shit is gonna go down, of getting caught up in the imagery and missing the point. In the last chapter of the book Jesus makes the statement, "I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star" (22:16). Morning Star is an allusion that usually gets lost on us modern folk, but it would have carried a great deal of resonance for the early church. The Morning Star is the planet Venus, which in certain seasons rises just before the sun and is the brightest object in the sky (with the exception of the moon). Venus' appearance is a sign that dawn is near.

In the middle of explaining all this the preacher suddenly launched into a reminiscence. A few years earlier he'd been suffering from a crippling depression. One night he found himself driving alone through the desert in Southern California, figuring out how best to crash his car into something that would kill him. At this point, of course, the congregation was pretty much quiet and hanging on his every word. It isn't every Sunday you hear your pastor talking about his suicidal urges. He'd decided that his death would be the best thing for everyone around him--family, friends, congregation, and if he ran off the road into a bridge abutment or something it would look like a simple car accident. There was no reason not to.

Except for this statement of Christ's: I am the bright Morning Star. Dawn is coming. Maybe a little abstract, maybe even a little naive, but it got him home.

I've posted about the Kingdom of God before. The Kingdom shows up in strange ways. In some sense it's still waiting to happen; it's the world made new, where swords get beaten into plowshares and the lion lays down with the lamb and all that other Biblical stuff. In another sense it arrived two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. The Kingdom also becomes reality now, whenever love and mercy trump fear and control, the evils of this present darkness. And we wait for it, too, in our own hearts--the peace of God that transcends all understanding (Phil 4:7), and the virtues that come by his Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. That's a long list, of course, so you can refer to them collectively as "freedom."

And this is Christmas. The true light that gives light to every man has come into the world. Emmanuel--God with us, crying over everything we cry over--come to take our sin and suffering on Himself.

I could probably ramble on about this at greater length, but I promised obliquity and I intend to deliver. Besides, I'm running out of time. About to head up to Austin to drink beer and ring in the 2005 with Jonathan, who has been so long without a post as to make this blog look practically effusive. So I'll let it go with a blessing: may the peace of God guard your hearts and minds during the coming year. May it be a good one.

# posted by Daniel at 8:48 PM.

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Poem

SUMMER NIGHT PSALM

Sayer,
          my whole tongue thirsts
for your mouth's wet words, my body pants
beneath the sheets, shifts,
twists them into damp ropes. I rise

for water by the hour,
count the hands from the sweltering
kitchen clock, return to bed, night's breath
warm, rich as blood. I would sleep uncovered

in a long field of twitching grass,
covered with your wind, with your green dark,
shadows quivering across my skin. I wait for the spoken,
the word of sunrise, fumble at words

that are shadows themselves, invisible
against the larger night. Even now
your words are stars,
they nail the darkness in its place

above this house. They're chips of ice--
I fetch them from the steaming freezer light.
They melt against my chest, head,
against my throat. I dry my face

with this thin white shirt, wait for morning
at the window. I would be the smallest sheep
asleep in green pastures. I would be nothing
but a name on your tongue.

(2004)

# posted by Daniel at 11:12 AM.

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