MERRY CHRISTMAS

Jill and I are preparing to head home to Ohio on Christmas Eve for my family’s Christmas celebration. It’ll be good to get away for a few days and relax.

I had a funny experience today regarding Christmas that I thought I’d share with you. Do you ever feel the pressure to keep Christmas sacred? You know keep the “Christ” in “Christmas” and all of that. As a pastor, I’m certainly trying to do my best to celebrate Advent and prepare my heart for the coming of our Lord on Christmas. In that spirit Jill and I asked for a Nativity Scene this Christmas to refocus our otherwise pagan Christmas décor, and Jill’s parents got us one. It’s one of those Willow Tree ones. We really like it.

Anyway, I thought we were doing the “Christian” thing until I walked by it and saw that we set it up in-between two giant snowmen. You remember the story: the shepherds, the wise-men, the two enormous snowmen that Joseph built while waiting for Mary to deliver…I guess we just can’t win.

Hope ya’ll have a very merry Christmas!

Celebrities to the Rescue

Oh my gosh, I just watched the first two minutes of the most ridiculous television event ever. It was the “Celebrity Skifest” on CBS. Apparently this event was designed to raise awareness and money to help save the world’s water. That’s right, a bunch of celebrities skiing to save the world’s water. Does this make any sense to anyone else?

What was even more absurd than the event itself was its introduction. It featured a number of B-list actors and a skier who made brief statements about the importance and necessity of “saving the water.” Apparently global warming is causing the world’s water supply to dry up. Doogi Houser opened the segment by talking about the dangers of greenhouse gasses and the potential of our planet running out of water (without really connecting these two thoughts in any logical way). Then the guy who helped create Seinfeld said, “We need to make sure we all have good water…full of oxygen.” Next was some lady who asked, “If we don’t protect our water, how will the fish continue to swim and spawn?” Another said, “Water is our most precious resource, it’s so much more precious than gasoline." Finally, the skier said, “The world’s water supply is in danger…So, what can I do? I can ski.” Praise the Lord for that brave skier, I was really starting to get worried!

How are we supposed to take any of this seriously? I actually thought I was watching some absurd SNL skit, but these celebs were as serious as a heart-attack. They truly believe that global warming is going to wipeout the world’s water supply, and even more crazy than that, they actually seem to think their ridiculous ski event is going to make a difference. What’s next, a celebrity billiards tournament to help prevent the earth from losing its supply of dirt? Because without dirt, we’ll have no place to plant crops…I think it’s a pretty serious potential problem, and I’m sure we can figure out some way to tie into the whole global warming issue.

A Meditation on Meditation

Sorry for not posting in a while. I’ve just been really busy at the church, trying to get a bunch of stuff done before Christmas, and my blog has been low on my priority list. When I do get the chance to blog, it seems that I’ve only been posting on movies. It’s probably because I spend most of my time consumed with the work and issues of the church that movies become my one escape and therefore an easy thing to write about.

The latest film that I would recommend is entitled “Into Great Silence.” It’s a documentary filmed at The Grande Chartreuse Monastery which is somewhere in Europe (I think France). It is a foreign film, but you will hardly know it when you watch it since there are all of about 10 words spoken in this two hour long film. Yeah, it’s over two hours long with hardly any action or dialogue, and I found myself being pretty bored at times. But, I think that was one of the points the film was trying to make: that the lives of these godly men are so quiet, simple, and beautiful that it is even hard for a modern viewer to watch them for two hours, let alone imagine entering into that kind of life with them! Day in and day out these monks silently pray and experience the depths of God’s presence. The film forces the viewer to be still and to think about life in a monastery. I couldn’t help but think that these silent and holy men know much more about God than I may ever know in this lifetime. It made me want to meet them and learn from them, but at the same time I thought, “I could never live like that; I’d go crazy.” God may not have called me to the vocation of meditation, but I am glad that there some holy people out there like these monks who are silently praying for us and living in such purity that I know that God hears their prayers.