Rachel Spangler's Blog, page 14

25 Songs of Christmas – Silent Night

The Birth of Jesus. Luke 2:2-20 (NIV)

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child,  and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

25 Songs of Christmas – Oh Holy Night

This is my favorite song for one of my favorite night of the year.  I think the lyrics speak for themselves.

25 Songs of Christmas – Still, Still, Still

Done with the shopping, done with the traveling, done with the cookies, done with the manuscript, and done with the wrapping gifts.  Now is the time when I have nothing left to do that’s quite so pressing as preparing the way of the Lord.

25 Songs of Christmas – Celebrate Me Home

Today we travel.  It’s a long drive.  And those of you who follow my writing have likely realized that going “home” is always a complicated thing for me.  It’s never just easy to go back.  I think a lot of LGBT people get that.  Even with supportive friends and family like I have there a difference between who I was and who I am that doesn’t always translate. There’s an unavoidable awkwardness in going back.  And yet, as hard as it can be, I keep making the trip because, for me, it’s better than the alternative.

I’m one of the lucky ones.  When it comes to going back to my roots there’s enough love to overcome the awkwardness and usually more good than bad.  And that’s how family should be.  Not perfect, not pristine, not always clean and polite, but the people who want beside you in the big moments.

So, whether you’re headed back to where you come from, or staying put someplace you’ve built for your self, with family of birth, family of association, or family of choice, I hope you get to be “home” however you define it this holiday season.

25 Songs of Christmas – Go Where I Send Thee

Happy Solstice.  Aside from actual Christmas Eve/Day, this is my favorite part of the holiday season.  It’s a reminder that here in the longest night of the year, so many people of faith choose to celebrate the return of the light.  Hanukkah, Solstice, Diwali, Christmas, we all choose to turn from dark to light.  It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

This year has been a sort to turning toward the light for our family.  We had a couple years of really awesome, beautiful light. Then 2014 was really dark.  It was hard on so many levels, and we hoped it was an anomaly, some weird blip on our life-long radar.  Hoping for something like that was probably a bit like believing this darkest night of the year will just be the end of darkness and tomorrow we’ll all be back to gloriously long summer days.  It doesn’t work that way.  The light will return slowly, about a minute a day.  One minute out of 1,440 in a day.  It won’t even really be noticeable at first, and lot of other factors like clouds and terrain will make it even harder to see at first.

2015 has been like that for us.  Not a sudden burst of light, but a slow turn toward it.  Some days it seemed a clear linear path.  Others the clouds moved in and made things seems darker than they were.  It honestly wasn’t until I sat down to make our annual end of the year video that I remembered all the good things this year brought with it.  No, it wasn’t everything we hoped it to be. There were still some dark patches, but when you look at it all together wth a little dab of hope, it’s possible to see the light returning bit by bit.

 

25 Songs of Christmas – Belleau Wood

I posted this once a few years ago on a website and a bunch of people got into arguments in the comments about who could kicks who’s ass.  Army vs. Marines. USA vs England vs. Germany. War stories completely drowned out the message of the song. “Here’s hoping we both learn to see us find a better way.”

I wondered how people could get it so damn wrong.  And then I remembered the war story in the song and I thought, this right here is how we keep ending up on battle fields in the first place.  All this talk of heaven and hell gets swept behind the talk of who is bigger, who is better, who has it right, and who deserves to have any rights at all. I got so disheartened I took the song down.

It doesn’t matter who won what battle or what war.  What matters is that we don’t learn.  We can could and look each other in the eye one minute and then the very next “The Devil’s clock struck midnight and the skies lit up again.”  The skies always light up again.  It starts in comment sections and on the campaign trail and then in congress until it ends with bullets and bloodshed.

I understand people are scared.  I’m scared, too. I have more fear right now than I’ve probably ever had, but this song (And the poem before it) reminds me that those answers we rush to, the ones we’ve always rushed to, the scapegoating, the the violence, the shutting ourselves off, and the dehumanizing of who ever they tell us our enemy du jour might be always lead us right back here.

But for just one fleeting moment the answers seemed so clear…

I’m trying again.  I’m sharing again. Because at Christmas I am supposed to have hope and faith. I am reminded that peace comes in the most unusual forms and in the most surprising places. I believe God can still work miracles. And especially this year, as I focus on the idea of Emmanuel, God with us, I am trying to echo the sentiment, “Heaven’s not behind the clouds, it’s just beyond the fear.  No, Heaven’s not beyond the clouds it’s for us to find it here.”

http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=821276

25 Songs of Christmas – Strange Way To Save

I am reposting a blog for the first time ever, but I read it today when looking for this song and it still fits.  I found that interesting.  Also, it’s late in the day and while I’ve thought of this a lot I haven’t come up with anything to say that fits more than this.  So here it is.  Last year’s blog again:

In keeping with the theme of trying to identify with the Christmas story, in all its facets, (especially the ones that go beyond the similar Christmas card scenes of glowing light and golden hay) I offer up to you a Christian contemporary standard: A Strange Way to Save the World.

I am going to utterly butcher this quote I should have memorized, but C.S. once said that unlike other parables, the salvation story doesn’t make good logical sense to most people.  He went on to talk about how that actually bolstered his faith, because if the salvation story had been a perfectly convenient fit for all men, he would have thought it was likely to have been invented solely by men.  A man-made salvation, though likely easier, wouldn’t actually be very Godlike at all, because God is complex and magnificent and supreme beyond our understanding.  The salvation story hardly has to make complete sense to humans in its entirely; it’s rather more important that it makes sense to God, in God’s entirety, as that is who is ultimately offering the salvation.

I always think of that quote, or my vague memory of it, when I hear this song.  How many times have I looked at the circumstances around Christ’s birth and thought, “that doesn’t make any sense”? It was too long ago. Too far from the seat of power. His community unprepared. His scope too small, or in the words of Andrew Llyod Webber, “If you’d come today, you could have saved a whole nation. Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication.”

Such a strange way to save the word. Such a backward time in such a strange land. Why then? Why them? And yet, the story has gotten out pretty well, has it not? Two thousand years later, are we not still brought together by the story? Do we not still sing songs and gather in houses of worship to hear of the night love came down.

I don’t know about you, but asking those questions about the Christmas story always leads me to wonder about all the other times I have asked them about my own life. How many times have I asked God, “Why me? I’m just an ordinary person. Why now? There’s so much more to be done. Why here? Surely you have such better platforms at your disposal. Surely there is always a better place, some better way, some better time, and most of all some better person. It doesn’t make sense to me. But am I really one to second guess what angels have to say?

For whatever reason, God uses some strange ways to save the world, ways that don’t always make sense to the smallness that is our understanding of the infinite wisdom. And yet, those ways are not so high, so grandly removed from our humanity that even the lowliest of shepherds cannot play a big part. If God managed to offer the gift of salvation to the entire world though a carpenter, an ordinary girl, a tiny town, an even tinier baby, who is it say he can’t also work miracles through each an every one of us?

25 Songs of Christmas – Joseph’s Lullaby

I saw Star Wars last night, and I’m not giving an spoilers here, but I am emotionally spent. This morning I talked to Jackson about the movie as best I could. I tried to prepare him without making too many assumption or revealing things that are his to learn in his own time.  He made the decision that he wasn’t ready yet. I am both sad and relieved.  I want him to experience all the things, and yet I also want to protect him as long as I can. Sometimes the hardest part of being a parent is balancing those two impulses.

It was just one little conversation.  One decision among millions, but it’s left me thinking about the nature of parenthood, which lead me right back to the Christmas story. I believe Jesus was both fully God and fully human.  I believe He was begotten of the living, loving creator and of a human being. I believe He was both the origin and the product of every kind of love possible. I think of a God above, a God incarnate, a mother of birth and an earthly father of choice.  I think of that common desire to experience the fullness of humanity and the fears that comes from fully understanding what that fullness entrails.  It brings it all so much closer to home.

That’s essence of parenthood, the essence of love itself, and love is the essence of salvation.

Today’s song is called Joseph’s Lullaby.  Here are the lyrics.

Go to sleep my Son

This manger for your bed

You have a long road before You

Rest Your little head

Can You feel the weight of Your glory?

Do You understand the price?

Or does the Father guard Your heart for now

So You can sleep tonight?

Go to sleep my Son

Go and chase Your dreams

This world can wait for one more moment

Go and sleep in peace

I believe the glory of Heaven

Is lying in my arms tonight

But Lord, I ask that He for just this moment

Simply be my child

Go to sleep my child

Baby close your eyes

Soon enough you’ll save the day but for now dear child of mine

Oh my, Jesus sleep tight.

25 Songs of Christmas – Come and Worship

I am not a fan of the Santa/holly/sexy christmas songs.  I don’t really listen to Christmas on the radio for this reason.  I like the old Christmas hymns.  I like thinking about people several hundred years in the past facing the same problems and insecurities I face.  I like knowing they overcame them by looking the same places I am now.  God with us.

That being said, I don’t just listen to the old arrangements.  I like when people use the ancient themes to and breathe new life in to them.  I like the musical reminders that not only is God still with us, God is still speaking to us, and through us.  I like knowing that an unchanging God is still willing and able to do new things to show us love.

Today’s song offers one such reminder. Come and Worship is a Hymn that’s 200 years old, and yet Bebo Norman has used it to put a very modern arrangement together.  I quite enjoy the result.

Emmanuel, God with us.  Then. Now. Always.

25 Songs of Christmas (and Star Wars) – Believe

Here in the Spangler house Christmas is a big deal.  And on an only slightly lesser scale, so is Star Wars. So, this year we are counting down to two holidays. I know that many of you who find me to be a model of Christian faith (look again) probably find this blog topic sacrilegious, but please bear with me. This is a blog about the capacity for belief.

As we prepare for Christmas and Star Wars Day, I find myself fighting the same quiet concerns for both my wife and my son. You see, Jackson still believes in Santa and elves and reindeer. Every morning he runs downstairs to look for Chippy, his elf. He is constantly amused and impressed.  He writes letters to Santa. He finds magic and miracles everywhere. I know this isn’t part of our primary belief system, but I want to nurture it for so many reasons. I want to keep him young and hopeful as long as I can, even if it’s just something silly like Santa, because I know this won’t last forever. He is the child of sarcastic academics. We value reason, thought, and overanalyzing. And once he begins to doubt and suspect and look for logic instead of magic, it will change him. Maybe for the better. Perhaps we need more logic, but belief, true belief, takes a kind of skill and even discipline we might all benefit from. I know it’s a little thing, for a little boy, but want it to last a little longer.

I think this is a common emotion for a lot of parents. The less common but completely related impulse this year has to do with my oft jaded wife.  Somewhat out of character for her, Susie is so excited for Star Wars she is practically rocking and beeping like R2-D2. I am excited too. Sometimes I even get a shiver of anticipation, but she is constantly buzzing. And I’ve come to realize she is more excited than I am. Which doesn’t seem right. I am the obsessive in this family; she is the stoic one. She is a fan, and I am  a freak. We lovingly call her the “dream killer” because she brings caution and logic to every wild idea I have. We balance each other out, usually. So why should she bring an almost childlike joy to the table about Star Wars while I am more analytical? And then I remembered: The prequels.

I awaited them for years. I counted down. I drank the Kool-Aid. I saw Episode I opening night. And at first I thought, “Yay! That was Star Wars,” but then I had to deal with the slow discontent and silent dissatisfaction as though I’d waited my whole life for ice cream and gotten frozen yogurt.  The prequel was similar at first glance, and I guess in some ways good, but not really what I wanted. What could I do? Take the frozen yogurt and be happy I had anything at all, or hold out, clinging to my memories of my first love? Susie never had that experience. She watched the prequels later under the guise of “These aren’t real Star Wars, but you should at least know the story.” She didn’t feel the betrayal of being promised one thing and getting another. In this way, she is the younger, more purely believing of us. She can just completely give herself over to the mania, while a small part of me whispers, “Remember Episode II,” every time I get too worked up.

I wish I didn’t. I want to believe, too. Aside from The Force being an allegory for the Holy Spirit (that’s another blog) it’s just fun to believe, to hope, to anticipate. I love watching my normally skeptical wife grow giddy at the prospect of something purely joyful. It’s contagious and it builds on itself and it taps into a deeper desire or human need to believe. To Hope. To have faith.

The world destroys faith slowly. It’s rarely the big blows like war or famine that undo us. It’s the little things like learning Santa isn’t real, at least not in the way we wanted him to be. It’s revealing our childhood heroes to be human creations. It’s being disappointed in so many small ways we start to view Syrian refugees the same way we view prequels. We look for the worst. We make caustic comments to hide our fears. We view the world through jaded lenses because we think that if we don’t set our expectations too high we might not be so let down. Those little losses chip away at our ability to believe fully in anything any more, and it’s easy to think that once we start down the path to the dark side, forever will it dominate our destiny.

But does it have to?  What if belief is like a muscle? What if we can rebuild it in the same way we allowed it to atrophy, slowly, in small, gradual steps. What if we could start this Christmas with Elves on shelves?  What if Santa could be real for one more year? What if JJ Abrams doesn’t screw this up? Then, from there, might we hope for the best in our neighbors or even, with more practice, look for the good in human nature. It may still be a long way from there to the belief in a loving God, but when trying to climb a ladder of that magnitude, might every rung matter?

I find myself hoping for Susie’s capability to believe almost as much as I wish for Jackson’s to continue. I know that it probably sounds like a silly wish with so many other, bigger problems in the world right now, but I truly believe my ability to still hope for something silly is tied to my ability to believe in something serious.

So if you are still struggling with those larger concepts, what if you started small this season? What if you let yourself listen for sleigh bells? Could you play Santa yourself for a few hours? Could you just go into something with unguarded hope? Even something as small as a movie?

Go ahead, give it a try, and then another, and then another.

And may the force be with you.