December 22: Closer to God, Christmas Perfection, Poet of the Week, Joseph Brodsky, "Star of the Nativity," Abusing Your Elf

Then, and this perked Ives' interest:  "The question we must ask of ourselves is how we can learn to see that which will allow us entry.  That state of mind, closer to God, becomes us.  That is all."

Ives searches for this state his whole life.  He gets a glimpse of it once, in a mystical vision.  The world becomes a shimmering landscape of goodness and love.  Ives walks around dazed by the sight, unable to comprehend all the beauty surrounding him.

Christmas is not about perfection.  This year has taught me that fact over and over and over.  There's really no such thing as a Currier & Ives holiday with horse-drawn sleighs and carolers and starry nights.  There's only been one perfect Christmas, and even that one was full of desperation and animal crap.  In the end, everyone has to settle on Christmas for a barn instead of a hotel with room service.

Last night, I spent five hours finishing my Christmas poem.  I was planning on doing a blog post and wrapping presents and baking Christmas cookies, too.  I had to settle.  Tonight and tomorrow, I have music rehearsals and Christmas potlucks and last-minute gift shopping.  I have been a church musician for 30 years, and December has always been the definition of insanity.  Being pulled in five thousand directions at once.   There's an ancient Greek work I learned in graduate school.  It's "sparagmos."  It means to rend or tear apart a living being.  If that isn't the perfect description of this time of year, I don't know what is.

Tonight, on my way home from work, I stopped by the cemetery to visit my sister's grave.  I did it to remind myself of what is really important.  I know that, if my sister were given the opportunity to celebrate one last Christmas, she wouldn't worry about the new Star Wars movie or making pecan pies or practicing "Mary Did You Know?" or buying the latest iPhone.  No.  She would play Minecraft with my son.  Take my sister with Down Syndrome to McDonald's for lunch.  Bake sugar cookies with my daughter.

I have Christmas presents to wrap now.  My artichoke dip is in the oven baking.  Choir/band practice tomorrow night.  Christmas is upon me, in all its messy chaos.

Saint Marty can almost hear the angel choir singing.

The Poet of the Week...

Star of the Nativity

by:  Joseph Brodsky

In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than

to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain,

a child was born in a cave in order to save the world;

it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart.

To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast, the steam

out of the ox’s nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior—the team

of Magi, their presents heaped by the door, ajar.

He was but a dot, and a dot was the star.

Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray

clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away—

from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end—the star

was looking into the cave. And that was the Father’s stare.

Abusing your elf...

October 3: Closer to God, Brokenness, Lisa Russ Spaar, "Rapunzel's Braid," Confessions of Saint Marty

Then, and this perked Ives' interest:  "The question we must ask of ourselves is how we can learn to see that which will allow us entry.  That state of mind, closer to God, becomes us.  That is all."

Ives attends a lecture given by a mystic named A. I. Explixa.  Ives has attended dozens of similar talks, searching for an explanation for a vision he had following a near-death experience.  He doesn't find a whole lot of answers to his questions at these presentations.  Yet, when Explixa makes the above comment, Ives somehow senses a connection with Explixa's words.  Ives comes to believe that he was granted a glimpse of the world as seen through God's eyes.

I don't understand God's mind.  On a superficial level, I get the whole idea of loving your enemies, helping the outcasts, praying all the time, laying down your life for somebody.  I was raised on all of those maxims, and I try to follow them.

But there's a whole lot that escapes me.  Like war and terrorism and genocide.  Or breast cancer and world hunger and lymphoma of the brain.  Don't get me started on Donald Trump.  I just don't understand why God allows the world to be afflicted by these terrible things.  What does humankind gain from events like the 9-11 attacks or the Holocaust?

Generally, I try to stay away from posing questions in this blog.  I'm a firm believer that, if a writer asks a question. he or she better damn well know the answer.  Tonight, however, I have no answer to that question.

Theologians would say that God didn't create or foster the brokenness of the world.  The human race is responsible for creating the mess.  Conflict in the Middle East, that's us.  Ditto the Rwandan genocide and George W. Bush presidency.  We did all of that.  It's in how we respond to these things that God comes into play.

For example, just two days ago, there was another school shooting in the United States.  A terrible loss of life.  Now, God didn't put the guns in Chris Harper-Mercer's hands.  God didn't tell him to go to that college campus and kill people.  So, where is God in this tragedy?

I don't know.  Perhaps there will be some political miracle in Washington, D. C.  Republicans and Democrats will stop pointing fingers and debating the meaning of the Second Amendment.  They will come together, say "enough is enough," and enact sensible legislation that will keep guns away from people like Chris Harper-Mercer.   They will place greater value on human life rather than political agenda.  That would be a God thing, I think.

I want to believe that, deep down, people are really good.  I want to see the Christ (or Buddha or Muhammad) in everybody.  God is unknowable, and tragedy exists everywhere.  Yet, there is also grace available.  God answers prayers.  We're just too damn impatient and strong-willed to accept His answers most of the time.  Human beings want to play God, not listen to Him.

Lisa Russ Spaar's poem for today is about a kind of grace, I think.  How an act of destruction can search for meaning, become a bird's nest.  How an old song can disappear, and a new poem emerge.  It's all in how you look at it.

Saint Marty doesn't understand God, but Saint Marty trusts Him.  That's half the battle.

Rapunzel's Braid

by:  Lisa Russ Spaar

Long after it lost its girl,
the wind kept heaving its gifts
of fragrance and leaves
and gritty drifts of snow into the tower;
the tower itself roared like an empty shell.
The birds she'd tamed returned
and returned to the sill, the room,
picking each abandoned thing
to palest hull and meal.
At first, the severed braid
writhed on the cold flags.
Like all dying things, it burned
as fiercely as possible
for attention among the torn leaves,
the rain pooled on the floor
in mirrors of the sky's taunting anarchy.
By the time the mice and squirrels and birds
began to pull it apart, its burnished river
had faded into dull snakeskin,
a slipped noose.  Still, for years afterwards,
it sought her out, strands helplessly
carried into the uplifted arms
and empty trunks of trees, into nests,
into pastures studded with animal droppings,
its song as thin as a line of ink,
its penned name fading, fading, then gone.

 Confessions of Saint Marty