12 - 2008 | unobtrusive lucidity

Still Not There

It’s interesting to browse back over last year’s posts around Christmas time. We forget, after all, and its good to have those reminders, those marker events, if you will. It’s intriguing to me that many of the same topics going on in my head a year ago are going on in my head again over the last couple of weeks. Perhaps it should be disturbing…indicative in some way that I’ve stagnated, haven’t moved forward. Maybe that’s true. Or, maybe it’s sinking into me on a much deeper level. I’m hoping for the latter.

Christmas is going to be very different for us this year, as we won’t be traveling for the first time since we’ve been married. Not being around family (we will be, but not of the same quantity) is a great deal of the holiday to me. This year, we’ve even had snow in Virginia, which is quite unusual at this early date. Still, though, I’m barely in any sense of “Christmas spirit.” I’m managing a bit now because I’m listening to the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’m still in a room without decorations, however. No tree, no lights, not yet. I’m very slow to move into the spirit of the season, whatever that spirit is.

I was last year, as well.

I think there’s good reason, though, because the season has become so…perverse. I’ve read posts from other Christian bloggers lately saying things to the same effect, specifically one today referencing the same Black Friday nightmare of which I wrote in my last post. That just began the season so horribly for me. And I’m so guilty of the very materialistic perversion that distresses me. Karen and I and my parents went shopping on the afternoon of Black Friday. I was a bit excited over some early gifts they bought us. Hopefully I was more excited over the quality family time…the dinner together, the helping them (a bit too late) decide what to order at Starbucks. Later, I was hooked by a nifty little cause called Advent Conspiracy. I think they have it right. So, I’m trying to (to use their phraseology) spend less, give more (not material gifts), and worship fully in doing so. I’m trying. I’m trying to get my little brain around this Incarnation, this performance that God did for us to show us truth. Cosmic might wrapped up in an infant. I know, I know, people brought Him gifts, but this gift thing…that’s not what this is about.

I think my dissatisfaction with capitalist materialism is a divine discontent. Hopefully, I will be more in the elusive Christmas spirit when next I post. Or, perhaps it will be a better thing if I’m not. Then I’ll be focused on what’s important. This is a season of love, redemption, and second chances. Perhaps in buying less and living more simply this year, I can redeem this a bit.

Stay warm.

The Trampling of Ethics

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, ever since originally hearing about the Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death in a 5 a.m. Black Friday rush for bargains last weekend. The more I’ve considered writing about it, the more I find myself unable to contain my loathing for what I’ve read in the news accounts.

I’ll spare you linking to the numerous stories about the incident, but it was this one that really made my stomach turn as I re-read it this evening. Some words and phrases stand out to me in the story:

“This incident was avoidable.” Ya think???

“How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner?” Since when did shopping require security???

“It rises to a level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart.” By Wal-Mart??? How about us??

That’s right, us. All of us. This man didn’t die because a specific group of people acquired a mob mentality and charged the doors of a department store. That’s just a symptom of a larger problem. This man died because we worship our stuff. Because we’re so frantic for a deal, because our money controls us, not the other way around. Because we’re puppets to this disgusting, materialistic monstrosity that capitalism has made out of Christmas. Because we value a deal on a new blender more than we value the life of a man.

That’s why we encourage huge crowds charging stores at a ridiculous hour of the morning for great deals on the latest trends (to which we’re also slaves) in the name of saving money. The news is more about the numbers that retailers made on Black Friday than on Thanksgiving, than on what we supposedly celebrated over the weekend. I wonder what Mr. Damour was thankful for on Thursday? I wonder what dreams he never had the chance to realize because of a mob of people anxious to out-run each other to the electronics section for a new toy took those from him?

I don’t hear the holidays reported as the holidays this year. I hear everything connected to our precious economy, and it makes me sick. Because there’s so much more to life than what’s in our bank accounts. There’s so much more to life than the type of home we have or the car in its driveway. So much more.

There was so much more to Mr. Damour’s life. But our culture’s emphasis on material wealth and the importance of money took that away from him. Yet we question why Wal-Mart didn’t take more precautions, instead of questioning why the crowd was in such a frenzy to begin with.

I guess last Friday really was black, after all. So much for cultural priorities.

Rewind

A myriad of possible posts have floated through my food-distracted-brain over the Thanksgiving weekend, none of which seemed to materialize here as my family time was much more important. So, I guess it’s that family time that becomes the post that is eventually written.

This Thanksgiving was spent with my parents. I hadn’t seen them in about a year, so Mom, as predicted, produced a banquet worthy of royalty for just the four of us. As Karen and I were married while in grad school, not everything from our previous lives as singles made it from the places we moved from to attend grad school. My parents have been holding a great deal of stuff, and we clear a little more of it out each time we visit. This time around, though, Karen became involved in the memorabilia from my very early life.

I’ve always had this problem with the past. I prefer not to dwell on it. I think that part of the reason is that I tend to be extremely hard on myself for the mistakes made, and permit them to obscure the wonderful, formative memories that abound from those years. My wife loves the past: she thrives when delving into old library collections, journals, and history. This trip was her venture into my childhood as she and my mother bonded anew while perusing photo albums I had long since forgotten about. Everything from my middle- and high-school music “careers,” to super hero costumes worn for Halloween, to fiction born late in high school. Her discoveries were punctuated by my occasional irritability that trickled down from feeling at times overwhelmed by the past (a feeling I’m not used to), and at times violated as certain memories were discussed that I preferred not to discuss. That irritability tended to move into a speechless bemusement as great memories re-entered the picture for me.

Everyone has skeletons, and I’ve always preferred mine stay tucked safely away in the closet of my past. The problem is, I discovered this weekend, that I have a lot of wonderful things in that same proverbial closet, things which I have allowed to stay boxed up and gathering dust in order to maintain the secrecy of a few little skeletons that don’t seem that big after all when exposed to some daylight.

When we got up yesterday to prepare for our trip home, we read Psalm 136. The mistakes I’ve made at various points in my life seemed very subdued, and replaced (or perhaps redeemed?) by the realization that I had a wonderful childhood.

I’ve had an amazing past.

Now, my today is so much better informed. Perhaps, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, a sense of holism has made its way into me. In either case, I made a lot of peace this weekend. And the amazing past revealed in old photos and on old pages this weekend propels me into a much more possible future.