Minnesota weather, part 1

Words I had never heard before moving to Minnesota:

"soft frost" -- a frost that comes in late spring in which the temperature remains at or near freezing; a frost that will not kill plants; as contrasted to a hard frost, which will destroy your kid's science project if it involves living things and is left outside

"snizzle" -- snow-drizzle, minute flakes of actual snow that drift down at random moments during a winter day;  at times a predecessor to an actual snowfall, at times just window dressing; not related to Snoop-dog or rap culture in any way

Words I have learned to appreciate in a whole new way since moving to Minnesota: 

"sublimation" -- a scientific term which means the process of snow or ice turning directly into water vapor; the reason we have had fog for the last three days

"freezing fog" -- a preponderance of water vapor in the air (see above) when the temperature falls to or below freezing, which then coats every surface with a thin veneer of invisible ice; often causing octogenarians to wear spikes on the bottom of their shoes, freezing fog is none the less appreciated for the beautiful effect it has on otherwise bare trees.   

"wuthering" -- a term originally from the moors of England (See The Secret Garden), the sound of the wind taking on nearly human tones when it reaches a certain velocity;  tones may include moaning, chattering, and giggling;  I heard all three in our first big blizzard earlier this month.  

"blizzard" -- a combination of high wind and abundant snowfall, often with temperatures well below freezing;  note: the presence of actual snowfall from clouds is not required;  you can also have a blizzard if you have enough wind and enough snow on the ground to obscure the road as you are driving on it or to obscure buildings less than a block away.  Blizzards will commonly last more than one day. 

Santa Clause, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Christmas

The back porch after the first big snowstorm of the year

It still looks like Christmas here in Minnesota, if by Christmas one means snow, but the New Year is well launched, and we have lives to live and decisions to make.   One of the biggest questions that Christians ask themselves is “How do I know the Will of God and follow the Will of God for my everyday life.  This could be related to any aspect of our Christian walk: career, finances, Christian witness, raising kids.  A large portion of our lives is not specifically dictated by Scripture, and yet we are supposed to live our whole lives to the glory of God.  So how do we do that?  I could go on about this ad nauseum (of the making of books, there is no end), but instead I suggest that we practice, with something relatively inconsequential.  Let’s find God’s will for this year’s Christmas.  And let’s start now, at the end of January, because some of us have shopping to  get to.  

According to the research of Tanya Gulevich, who has compiled the impressive Encyclopedia of Christmas, the first “Feast of the Nativity” was scheduled on December 25 in 336 A.D. (C.E.) to give new Christians something to celebrate in the midst of the raucous Roman holidays to Saturn (Saturnalia, December 23), Sol/Mithros (December 25), and the Roman New Year.   The feasting, the greens, the candles and lights, the upside-down social festivals that were so popular in the Middle Ages, and gift giving and special gifts to the poor were already a big part of the culture of the day.  Similar ideas that we now count as Christmassy were encountered as Christianity moved north: the Yule log, eggnog, and winter fairies who came into one’s house and left blessings behind if there was a plate of food or a pot of ale.  And the church, being ever industrious in finding ways to show Christ to the world, took those things over in a “Let us show you what you should really be celebrating.  Take this instead,” sort of way.  

People got on board with Christmas as they became Christians, and they exercised their natural human tendency to celebrate the Light of the World in the light of their newfound faith. That's a good thing.  However, as countries became dominantly Christian, people simply celebrated their winter holidays under the guise of Christmas whether Christ was important to them or not.  And Jesus became an excuse for some very unchristian behaviors like drunkenness and everything that goes with it.   At its best, Christmas is an invasion of divine joy into party that was only earthly before. At its worst, Christmas is all the human tendencies to gluttony, drunkenness, and superstition white-washed with the name of Jesus and passed off as something religious. 

Christmas as we see it today is the way Christmas has always been: a mishmash of people who have deep religious convictions, people who like to have a good time, people who just want some time off, and people who want to make money off of all of them.  It’s not fundamentally Christian in the sense that it doesn’t come from the church or from the Scriptures, but it is fundamentally human.  Human nature has a tendency to celebrate, and anyone reading into the history of Christmas (as I am at the moment) is going to find a lot of human nature wrapped up in threads of the divine.  

After this past Christmas season, I was thoroughly prepared to go Grinchy on the modern practice of Christmas.  There are so many problems with it.    Christmas is too big, too noisy, too expensive, too wasteful for the common good.  It’s an excuse to spend too much, eat too much, and do too much, and really, it has very little to do with the event that we are supposedly celebrating.  Santa Claus is not really Saint Nicholas, and we don't give presents because Jesus is God's gift to us.  We give them because we love our kids and because it's expected of us.  We all know that really, but we like to pretend that all of the hullabaloo has it's roots in something deeper. And contrary to what the nostalgia hounds out there would have us believe, it doesn't get more profound as we look back in time.   And yet however much I would like to wave my Puritan card and say, “No more.  This is nothing but a distraction from where our hearts should be,” God has insisted that I give Christmas another look.  

When the Apostle Paul was writing to the Ancient church (well before Christmas was a thing), the Roman Christians asked him a question about how they should be celebrating the Sabbath.  Now Sabbath, rest, trusting the work of God instead of your own work to take care of you, is a big deal in the Old Testament, but Paul gives the Romans a very open-ended answer: 

"One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike.  Each of them should be fully convinced in [his] own mind.  Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord.  Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God." ~Romans 14:5

The crucial element is the Lord.  He is the difference between religious and secular.  There rest is all a matter of conscience.  Gratitude to Him is the mark of that new light and life that is supposedly at the heart of Christmas.  So as long as our decisions regarding Christmas are marked by faith and gratitude, we have the freedom to celebrate or not celebrate Christmas however we want.  

There is no "right" way to "do" Christmas, as often there is not a "right" way to do most of the things in our lives.  We are not obligated to celebrate Christmas according to any tradition.  We are not obligated to support Christmas at all if we don't see fit.  And neither are non-believers obligated to celebrate Christmas like us.  The most righteous, recycling, Bible-swinging, Advent fasting, no-Christmas-music-until-December-25th-ing fundamentalist is not more right than the woman who buys $100 worth of wrapping paper every year (He might be more environmentally friendly, but that's a blog for another day.)  This is not a holy day unless it’s holy in the minds and hearts of the people celebrating it.  

God's Christmas gift to me this year was freedom from judgment on the subject of Christmas.  God has no desire to condemn our Christmas.  I think He likes to watch us celebrate.  More than that, He likes to be with us as we celebrate.  Certainly, there are a great many parts of the Christmas season that gladden His heart.  But, like all things in life, God wants to use Christmas to draw us up into His heart.  And that is true for everything we do.  There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.  As long as God is holy to us, as long as we make our choices in faith and gratitude, we will make holy choices.  Holy choices glorify God.  

Glory to God in the Highest. 
That's what we're going for.  

Christmas resolutions

January 9

It’s the second week of January.  The thermometer said -4 degrees F, and I’m told this is normal for this time of year.  Snow in bushels should be coming soon.  School is back in session.  “Tax information” is beginning to show up in our mailbox. The Boo has just finished her first basketball tournament of the year (3 losses, but fundamentals improved noticeably).  And we are getting used to writing 2020 whenever we have to sign something.  I don’t know; that last seemed to come pretty naturally this time.  Maybe the repetition makes it easier.  

Fact is, I’d like to spend a little more time basking in the light of Christmas before I move into 2020.  That this year is a presidential election year, with all the attending chaos, is only one of my reasons.  I felt a little cheated by the Christmas season this year, and not just because it was short.  A lot of people have lamented the shortness to me.   For some reason, Christmas seemed more vacuous to me than it has previously.  (Great word, vacuous.  It conjures up echoes of echoes.)

I can’t blame this emptiness on being separated from my family for the third year in a row.  And I don’t think the stress of planning Advent and Christmas while Seth was being ordained and installed was the only culprit either.  This is something I’ve been feeling for a while now.  Christmas is not what it’s supposed to be anymore.  

So what is Christmas supposed to be?  Isn’t there anyone who can tell me what  Christmas is all about?  

Sure, Charlie Brown.  I can tell you:  Peace on earth and good will to men on whom His favor rests.  

Okay, so what does that mean?  

Well, peace is a multi-faceted idea.  I am far from the first Christian blogger to bring up the word shalom, but that’s what we’re going for here.  Rest, balance, provision, security, sustainability, comfort.  Sitting at the window and watching the weather roll in, but knowing that you and yours are well taken care of, so you can enjoy the beauty of the storm.  The satisfaction of a meal well made, a job well done, a rest well earned along with the joy of knowing that there will be a tomorrow.  “God’s in heaven, all’s right with the world.”  

And good will is desiring the best possible outcome for everybody, and acting toward it, because will always involves at least the intention of doing something.    

Look back on your holiday.  Was something lacking?  I’ve already expressed that something was lacking in mine. Did your holiday do anything to make peace and good will happen?  Did it do anything to injure the peace and good will?  Were peace and good will at the heart of it?  

Let’s do a mental exercise: tell me what you think of when you think of Christmas.  I can tell you what I think of: car commercials.  They’re so common, they’re becoming indistinguishable.  And Star Wars premieres, though with the sliding success of their latest, that should be over for a while.  Shopping, of course, and deciding if we were going to have a real tree.   There’s nothing inherently sinful in any of these things, even Star Wars, but I think we can agree that they don’t advance the Christmas spirit that we’d like to see.  

And then on the religious front, I think about Christmas carols and candlelight services and getting all the decorations up in church.  We had a new nativity scene this year.  It’s gorgeous, but it’s huge (all the way from the pulpit to the organ), and it kind of illustrates my point. It’s a beautiful thing, an essentially Christmassy thing (you can’t get much more Christmassy than the Holy Family in Renaissance form with gold trim), but is it doing what Christmas is supposed to do?  It could be.  Did we ask?  

  

Simply put, Christmas, along with many other holidays, seems to be getting more and more inwardly focused. We are encouraged to explosive extravagance.   Maybe that’s Pinterest’s fault.  Maybe it’s the greeting card and ornament industry’s influence, but Christmas has gotten too cute and too bright for its own good.  It’s all festivity, a lot of it is shallow festivity, and we are losing the peace on earth and good will toward men.  Then, in the process, we are expanding our waists, hurting our budgets, and inducing anxiety in our children by giving them too many things.  Crazy, huh?  What exactly are we trying to accomplish with all this?  

 I really think that a lot of people are looking to celebrate Christmas differently.  I see the headlines as I scroll through Facebook. Even beyond the usual “15 Best Gifts for Your Techie Friends,” I see “It’s okay to not feel the festivity.”  “Connecting with the Peace of Christmas.”  “How to have a sustainable Christmas.”  “We know what’s missing from your holiday season.”   So I know that people are feeling this discrepancy, but if they’re anything like me, I don’t think they know what to do.  

This isn’t just a call to put Christ back in Christmas because I’m pretty sure most of my audience have Him there, somewhere.  It’s more of a reflection on where Christ is in our Christmas, and what HIs presence is doing.    What is essential to Him showing Himself, and what is just distraction?  If China hacked the Internet so none of your presents arrived,  or everyone at your house came down with a mild stomach flu (like we did this year), or the aging VCR ate your only copy of It’s a Wonderful Life, or Grandma’s fudge recipe was declared taboo for your lactose intolerant relatives,  could you still have Christmas?  And what would it do?  

Why is this relevant in January?  Well there are some of us who are trying to lose the Christmas weight and pay off the Christmas debt.  Those good reasons to start thinking about what Christmas is supposed to be doing and how we can reevaluate our approach.  But also, I think some delayed waiting and reflecting might be good for us.  I don’t know about you, but my Advent season is full.  Between making Christmas happen at home and helping Christmas happen at church, I don’t have a lot of time to reflect on what is actually valuable in Christmas and make that show up in the celebration of it.  It takes time to make habits;  it takes powerful reasons to change habits, and right now, all I know for certain is that I’d really like to make a change.  

So for the next twelve months, interspersed with news and bits of Lady Julian, I’m going to be researching and reflecting on Christmas.  All things Christmas. I welcome feedback: questions, counter arguments, suggestions.

Hey, Merry Christmas, Everybody.  

I hope you are all as far along in your Christmas preparations as you would like to be.  I think we are.  In fact, this year might be the most Christmas prepared that I have ever been in my adult life.  That's a strange feeling.  

But it's been an unsettling year, so why should Christmas be any different?  

At the beginning of this year, we were living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Annika was in fifth grade, playing basketball, playing in band and singing in choir, going to GEMS with some of her classmates, and being her quirky artistic self.  Seth was beginning his last semester at Calvin Theological Seminary, and getting ready to be a pastor.  I was teaching part time at Lake Michigan Academy and getting ready to be a pastor's wife.  

There were a few notable things at the beginning of the year.  

• The biggest ice storm in 30 year hit Grand Rapids that February, closing school for a week and a half. 
•  Annika turned 11.
•  Seth graduated from seminary.  

Then came summer.  We commenced fixing up the house, packing up the stuff, and getting ready to move.  

• A cousin from California offered to buy our house.  He is now attending seminary. 
• I taught a short summer school course.
• Seth completed a CPE (clinical pastoral experience -- sort of like an intern for chaplains) at Pine Rest Mental Health Center. 
• We sorted all of our belongings and began disposing of the superfluous ones (why do we have so much stuff?)
• Annika spent lots of time trying to get cat Volpix to walk on a leash in anticipation of moving.  That didn't happen.  

Once Seth was done with his internship in mid-August, we loaded up a moving van with the help of our church friends, and then we camped our way west across the country.  The cat made a break for it at the first rest stop and didn't come back.  She was discovered a month later and brought to a local vet until a neighbor could claim her.  

  We stopped for a week at the Wisconsin Dells, which I had never seen, and we spent a week in Iowa with Seth's grandfather and my sister.  We spent an afternoon in Chandler, Minnesota, meeting the town that we now call home.  We stopped in with my Uncle Jack and Aunt Ev in western Montana.  And we did a lot of driving.  This was our second cross-country trip in two years.  I'll be honest: Northern Michigan is lovely, but it doesn't compare to the Olympic coast.  South Dakota and Wyoming are beautiful, but they are long. Mountains are always a welcome sight, but they make for long days of driving.  And that's just a lot of driving.  

We spent about a month going back and forth between my parents' house in Washington and Seth's family in Oregon.  We moved a lot of boxes in and out of storage. (Why do we have so much stuff?) And in that time   

• We accepted a call from Chandler Reformed Church.
• We traveled to Canada for the first time to visit my sister and brother-in-law and their kids.
• We gave the tent trailer back to my in-laws, and I don't miss it a bit.  

October found us moving cross country yet again.  We loaded up all the belongings once more and set out in some of the worst October weather we've ever seen.  It was a tense week.  I don't want to do that again.  But we got here, moved in, settled all the paperwork, and now, just before Christmas

• Seth is an ordained, installed minister of the Word and Sacrement.
• Annika is in sixth grade, playing basketball, playing in the band and singing in the choir, and being her quirky, artistic self. 
• I am doing a little substitute teaching, but mostly I am focusing on getting to know the community and being a pastor's wife.  Also, you will notice, I blog a lot more.  

That's our year in a nutshell.  

Some thoughts on Will-Finding pt. 1

 “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” ~Ephesians 3:20-21

It occurs to me that after encouraging people to test themselves by seeking God’s will, I should really say something about finding God’s will.  This is a little tricky.  Most of what I have to say on the subject has been said before.  God is reliable.  If you ask, He will answer.  If you are looking and listening, God will tell you.  Even if you are being incredibly obtuse about seeing His signs, if you are honestly looking, He will make sure you find them. 

I will post more on seeking God’s will next time, but for now, let me throw out this question:  have you sought God's will and waited for God's will and then passed on God's will because it didn't seem possible? If you have, you would not be alone.   

Let me give you an example:  

When Seth first got his call to ministry, we began earnestly seeking God’s will in several ways:

1. We had asked godly friends who had been through seminary if Seth should continue to work full time and study full time as well. 
2. We had fasted and prayed and asked others to pray for us while we tried to figure out what kind of ministry Seth should go into. (He’ll tell you himself that he did not want to be a preacher in a church. More on that later.) 
3. We spent time listening and reading Scripture and recalling Scripture. 
4. And we interpreted the signs God gave us in circumstances. 

The leading that we received was clear: full time seminary and full time work were not conducive to a healthy family or faith life, especially not when one works in the electronic industry, which can suddenly demand  60 to 80 hours a week without warning.  So based on what we understood, we decided that Seth would quit his job as soon as I found full time teaching work. Obedient, right? Yes.  Sacrificial too? I thought so. And God led us to that point, right?  Yes.  That’s what we asked for.     

Note the words “based on what we understood.”  A lot of times in our efforts to follow God, we are well meaning, but we are not understanding because our scope is not big enough.  Human beings, like it or not, are limited by time and space and limited experiences.  Seth and I had been raised to believe that God does supply, but we had not experienced the many ways He could supply.  We anticipated that He would provide work for me.  I had been maintaining my teaching certificate.  I had been developing a reputation as an excellent substitute.  Naturally the next thing that should happen is that I should get a full time teaching job so that Seth could devote himself to pursuing God’s calling.      

Long story short: I did not get a full time teaching job.  And Seth got fired.  

    To sum up, at this point we were willing, we were listening, and we were anticipating, and we were confused.  We plunged ourselves more deeply into the job market. Was this our fault?  Not really.  Our life experience up to this point had taught us that God provides work, and thus he provides everything else we need. Moving forward with no job felt insane. However, God had lessons that he wanted to teach us.  Specifically, He wanted to teach us that everything we need comes from Him, and we do not need to depend on human institutions.  We needed to be weaned off the idea that security meant a full time job and health insurance.   And because we were willing, listening, and anticipating, we were ready for those lessons to begin.  For the next two years, we worked as substitute teachers and never failed to pay a bill.  Those two years were plenty anxious, especially at first, but God came through one day at a time.

Do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear. The nations run after such things, but your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 

How many of us, being faced with the will of God, reject it (at least at first) because it doesn’t match with what we believe about other things.  You’re not going to perceive God’s will if you aren’t willing to let go of a lot of preconceptions, such as your notions of security.  When the Apostle Paul says, “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,” he means that literally.  We have no idea what God can do with the circumstances that He lays in front of us.  When we say and mean, “Thy will be done,” we are opening a whole new horizon in front of ourselves.  Look at Jacob; look at Mary; look at Jeremiah; look at Paul.  Could any of them have anticipated what “Thy will be done” would do to their lives?  

I think more often than not that this is the part where faithful Christians stumble.  We urgently seek God’s will, but when it’s revealed, we can’t cope with it.  So often, God’s will isn’t just for our obedience; it’s also for our expansion to move further into our destiny as Sons and Daughters of God.  In our case, God’s will was not only to pursue ordination; it was also to learn to rest completely on God for the provision of our daily needs.  

Now, it would be nice to say that these two years really pounded this lesson home, and we never doubted God’s provision again.  (because that’s just like human nature.  <Snort>)  When I said obtuse earlier, I was speaking strictly from a been there/done that perspective.   I can’t count the number of times that Seth and I said to each other, “I just want an itinerary. I just want to know the next couple of steps or the way over this obstacle” or that we reacted with fear and frustration until God made His answer very plain.    If you read the Bible, you know that this is one of those primary points where humanity really struggles,  and we really struggled too.  

• Seth got offered another job, and we fretted over whether he should accept it. After we decided to decline (see above), the company informed us that they had cut the position anyway.
•  
• Our unemployment insurance kept getting hung up and delayed, until finally Seth decided to just focus on school and let God provide as He would. Then the insurance, the G.I. benefits, and the possibility of Seth working as a substitute teacher as well fell into place in the space of a week. 
• 
  
• I was overlooked for full time jobs. Well, it turned out we were moving. 
• 
  
• We watched the Grand Rapids housing market from a distance fruitlessly for six months. The weekend that we got to Grand Rapids, the perfect house went on the market, two blocks away from an excellent church, ten minutes from the seminary, five minutes from my work. Because houses sell for a lot more in Oregon, we could pay cash. 
• 
  
• Seth missed out on a necessary internship our first summer there, so he was available to take a pastoral internship which turned his calling toward preaching and parish ministry and paid a much-needed stipend.

None of these were what we were anticipating, and it was only slowly that we learned to stop reacting in frustration and to see these “disappointments” as redirections and expansion and the shaping of God’s will.  By the time we were actually seeking Seth’s first full time position, worry had gotten a lot weaker and trust had gotten a lot stronger. We were more open to the possibilities of wherever God might take us. We still had moments of panic and frustration, sometimes on a daily basis, but there was a certainty underneath them that hadn't been there before.

    Now, I’d like you to notice two things here:

1. These all took time. All of our fretting took place in the waiting. Two weeks to hear back from a job interview. A semester before we could begin to relocate. Three years before we could seek a call. I think a lot of our disappointment in hearing God’s will comes from our expectation that something miraculous (and convenient) is going to be revealed immediately, and we can hop right into doing. God develops us in stages, and only He knows what kind of development we need. Walking forward step by tiny step and adjusting to the new view at each step takes time.   
2. If you are serious about doing God’s will, then you never really get a respite from the attitude of looking and listening. There is no point where it just falls into place, and He reveals the whole plan in front of you, and you can relax and take it from there. There were times when Paul didn’t even know which port to sail for next. We get the plan piece by piece, but He always gives us enough to let us know that we are still in His hands.