Christmas 2009

Just thought I'd put our annual Christmas newsletter--minus the names--up here.

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No news is good news, right?

Or so they say. But when you’re writing an annual newsletter, it makes for a very short one, unless I follow the example of seemingly all backs-of-DVD-covers and books do these days:

“The family had a stupendous year, making spectacular mountains out of hilariously small molehills! You’ll gasp at every leaf they rake, every trip they take, and cry with them over the lack of a proper ending to the year!” But if I did that, you’d read everything we wrote from then on with the same jaundiced and skeptical eye with which we read the aforementioned movie blurbs.

’Cause we didn’t have a stupendous year. Oh, it was pleasant enough, and a few memorable things did happen, such as our son getting engaged and then getting deployed to Iraq, where he is now as is his fiancée, and our other son and his wife buying their own place, and our daughter becoming a teenager, and my dad coming out to visit, and seeing my high school best friend for the first time in 10+ years (last year I saw another one; her place should be written up as a vacation destination!), and taking a trip to El Paso to see our son and his fiancée before they left. But even then it all fits in one paragraph.

Our year was more filled with what we read, what we learned from what we read, what projects we completed around the house; things that may look boring to an observer or reader of a newsletter, but are actually quite exciting inside. But they still don’t really work in an annual missive.

But, you know, it’s just as well, isn’t it, since we would rather you think about Christmas than us, and about a tree of another kind as well as a Christmas tree, a crown of thorns as well as a crowning birth, and the gift He offers all of us; the best present ever.

Struck again

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and higher life.

A.W. Tozer (no surprise)

An Old Toss-Up

I’m much better at reading than writing. I absorb things deeply, and when it comes time to putting those thoughts forth to others, I stumble and babble. My realizations come in one-sentence impacts; how does one tie:

The other day I was listening to a song I’d heard dozens of times before, one that contained the lyrics, “We’ve broken the law........but He paid our debts.” A trite-looking phrase when seen baldly slapped down on a page without context, but suddenly and forcibly the words struck me, “We’ve broken the law.” I, Miss Always-Go-The-Speed-Limit, one who has never even been tempted to steal anything (and have been given ample opportunities to do so), has broken the law. I’m a lawbreaker. Me, broken the law.

to:

A stuffed blue bear named Mark, a testimony of encouragement we’ve not been the recipients of in our past.

One doesn’t have to tie things together, of course, but neither does one want to exclusively churn out one-liners. Fortunately, on a blog, one can toss up short thoughts and have still them part of the whole. I think.

A family effort

I finally, finally found the right ending to a book I finished about two years ago. I've written at least three different ones, and hadn't liked any. But thanks to a brainstorming session on a drive home, my husband, the brilliant man, came up with the perfect one!

Ahhhhhhh. It's like a birth, really. And it's funny how, when you're writing, you know something works, and when something doesn't.

I entitled it "a family effort" because without the input of each one, I'd have about a one-page short story...

Thirst?

In his book, "Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes", Kenneth E. Bailey talks about a trek of his in the Sahara during which he (and the others with him) ran out of water:

"As I staggered on, my mind turned to this verse* and I knew that I had never sought righteousness with the same single-minded passion that I now gave to the quest for water.

Wow.

He continues,

"But Jesus does not say, "Blessed are those who live righteously and maintain a righteous lifestyle." Rather He affirms, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness."

Again, wow. I had to stop reading; I'm still taking it in.



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*Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Strings

As much as I love reading movie reviews, because they feed me and correct me, they also make me scuttle away backwards like a crab from ever attempting to write anything again, ever. They see so much I never see and make me feel like a complete nitwit when it comes to writing. They're review movies, not writing reviews, true, but it is pretty much the same thing: The content; what is said, and done.
I had to laugh just now, though, at the irony of what I just said, considering what I did was to write about how scared I get of writing.

Not the usual quote source

The result is an academic life permeated by vanity, wherein truth-seeking is subordinate to the task of drawing attention to oneself, to what...one knows.

Thomas Hibbs wrote that, in the middle of a review. It caught me, and then I had to read it a few more times. Makes one examine oneself.

On Culture

A trivial subject; a movie, one that I wouldn't normally mention seeing even though it was cute and had quite charming acting and is one I'll watch again. It was "Penelope", and there was a line near the end of it that...how do I put this? This one line was so very telling that it was almost jarring. It should have kicked the whole movie onto a deeper level, but didn't, and was perhaps the more telling because of that. Oh, rubbish. There was just this great line in the movie that really made a point. Not a blog-worthy way to put it, but I can't get it. Yet.

On to another cultural item: Hair trends. There's a hairstyle going around (I never know what these cuts are called; I didn't know a mullet was called a mullet until long, long after it died an exaggerated death) that started out cute, the way most do. (Remember Dorothy Hammill's? She was a doll.) This one is the one that is short at the nape of the neck and is supposed to gracefully graduate to a longer length around the jawline. And it did, for a while.

But it's not enough anymore. No, now if you get this haircut you cannot merely copy, you must surpass. It's at the point now where the back is chopped as close to the scalp as a young boy's and swooped to an almost blunt jawline which leaves the recipient with something very, very akin to doggy ears.

They do; they look like dogs ears to me and they flap as ones when the person walks along. Why do people not see this? Or that they have muffin tops? Or that their delicate nose ring looks like a new zit??

Just call me a sourpuss, I guess.