the gift of a story

The year I turned eight was a complicated year. There were conflicts and ructions and strange goings-on in my family, and underneath the surface I wasn't a happy girl. There's a photo of me on my birthday, kneeling beside the coffee table laid out with my birthday presents. I was wearing one of them, a new flannelet nightie, but the best present of all was a small, burgundy book, a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

In a year of complications and unhappiness, that book was one of the best gifts I could have been given. I read those stories over and over. My favourite was "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and in reading that story I dreamt I was one of them. I dreamt of escaping to another world, a world where I was beautiful and free. I still love that story. It speaks to me of a world beyond what I know, of possibilities yet-to-be-imagined. It satisfies the longing still in me to be beautiful and free.

Stories have been doing that very thing since the beginning. Stories teach us, comfort us, prepare us for the future, explain the past, and hold the threads of family and society together. Stories leave a legacy long after government policy has been phased out and scientific research is disproved. Stories live lives of their own, far beyond the lives of the story-tellers. A good story can comfort grief, facilitate healing, and soften tragedy. Every culture and age has its own stories. Every family and community has them. We live off stories.

And yet when it comes to the Christmas Story, we say "oh it's just a story." Somehow the insistence from Christians that we read this story as gospel makes us recoil in distaste. We reject the facts, and in doing so, reject the story. I'm a Christian who reads this story as more truth than fable, yet I read it with an open mind. In my reading I'm aware that some of the details may have been lost or changed in its two thousand years of re-telling, but for me, this story is not in the details.

I hate the commercialism of Christmas. I tried really hard this month to keep the Christmas Story at the forefront of our minds. For us, celebrating Advent was the perfect way to take our focus off presents and shopping and stuff and keep our hearts turned towards the baby at the centre of it all. I've written a fair bit about Advent in the last few weeks, and if you didn't get it then, now you know why. Advent was our panacea for greed and consumption. It saved me from despairing over plastic and shopping malls.

Advent gave us our most special moment of all, on Christmas Eve, when Mary and Joseph finally reached the end of their long journey and arrived at the stable. Baby Jesus was brought out of his hiding place and the Holy Family was united. We lit five candles. We danced and sang to"O Come all ye Faithful". Our hearts were bursting. The Christmas Story was a gift to us this Christmas, far better than all the gifts, as lovely as they were, that came on Christmas Day.

You don't have to be a card-carrying Christian to enjoy the gift of the Christmas Story.  You might be uncomfortable with a literal reading but that doesn't mean you need to reject any reading at all. This is a story that has been celebrated, remembered, and re-told for two thousand years. It's a story that gives us hope, inspires us to give, and connects us with the divine. In this age where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is only widening, and when we face news of tragedy and disaster on a daily basis, we need all the hope we can get.

In light of this, Santa just doesn't cut it. I'm not anti-Santa, and Santa is not banished from our house, but if our narrative-diet at Christmas was Santa and only Santa, we would be desperately lacking. Santa is the sweets and chocolate of Christmas. Treats taste good and are lots of fun, and for children who are fortunate enough to receive them they are anticipated with excitement. But they don't last. The same goes for many of the presents unwrapped on Christmas Day.

I'm sitting here writing this on the day after Boxing Day and by now the excitement of Christmas and new things has waned. Adults everywhere are regretting their over-indulgences and avoiding their bank statements, and children are in that tired, irritable post-Christmas funk, disappointed with broken toys and whining for more chocolate. That one anticipated day went all too quickly.

But the story remains. The story doesn't get boring and it can't be broken. It doesn't plunder our bank accounts, require weeks of late-night shopping, or cause stress and traffic jams. It doesn't trigger family bickering, engender competition, or result in inevitable disappointment.

I had one other special moment this Christmas. It was last week as I was madly trying to get our Christmas shopping done. As a result of a seemingly random series of events I ended up in the middle of a busy mall, standing outside The Warehouse, face to face with a ChildFund table laid out with packs advertising children who needed sponsoring.

It was such a contrast to the crazy bustle of the store I'd come out of, and took me so completely by surprise, that I started crying! The girl managing the table was surprised and concerned. I tried to wipe back the tears, embarrassed, but really I just wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for all the people so busy in their Christmas shopping that they walked past this stand without even seeing it. I wanted to cry for all the children whose faces were in front of me, desperate to be noticed. I wanted to cry for myself, that I so often let overwhelming need paralyse me from doing anything.

Then my dear sister turned up unexpectedly beside me, again by a seemingly random series of events. I was so relieved to see her that I wrapped my arms around her.  I explained myself tearfully, and we laughed. Then between the two of us we sponsored three children. Three girls who live so far from the greed and excess I've witnessed in the last few weeks, and for whom life from now on will be just that little bit easier.

Santa has got nothing for those girls. Those girls and millions of other children like them are outsiders to the world of Santa. But the Christmas Story is different. The Christmas Story is about a baby who grew up to be a man who noticed the needy and made friends with outsiders. The Christmas Story, however you read it, inspires compassion and charity. It celebrates the wonder of life and the hope of redemption. This is what we need, more than new things and over-full stomachs. We need a gift that satisfies our inner longings, a gift that won't wear out or be easily forgotten. We need a story.

Butterflies and Caterpillars

We met some homeschooling friends at West Lynn Gardens this morning. This is a large and beautiful community Garden with a Butterfly House. Today the Butterfly house was full of Monarch Butterflies. They were feasting on the nectar in the flowers of the bush in the photos above. They swayed gently on their delicate legs as they drank. We haven't been to this garden since we had Isobella's fifth birthday there last year, so the girls were delighted to finally go again.  They got to watch one of the volunteers water the plants and talk about the butterflies, and they had a great time hunting chrysalises. It was lovely.

What those photos don't show you though is that the rest of the day went from bad to worse. By the time I finally got the girls into bed (at ten to ten this evening!) it had well and truly become "one of those days." It was hot and humid, which always makes me grumpy. The heat saps my energy and makes everything seem like hard work.  Paddy had to go to work tonight, and even though he did as much as he could to help me get dinner ready and clean up the kitchen before he left, I was not looking forward to feeding the kids and putting them to bed on my own. Sure, I do it often, but something about today made me feel a bit sorry for myself.

I tried really hard to start the evening off well. I lit the advent candles and put on our youtube Christmas playlist. We were all singing and the girls were dancing around the lounge to one of our new favourite carols; "In the Bleak Mid-Winter". (Thanks Melanie!) Greer especially loves it, and she was dancing with a blissful look on her face when she said to me "Oh I wish we could go to a church like this and then I could sing with a book like I was at a recital!" Priceless! (Follow the link and you'll see what I mean - the girls are fascinated with choir boys at the moment!)

Then I was outside bringing in the washing when Abigail flashed past me carrying something. I only registered enough to think "she's got something" and "I should know what that something is." But I had nearly finished bringing in the washing so I kept going. Next thing I heard a loud clatter and an almighty wail. I ran inside to find her standing in front of the open door of the freezer, a cereal bowl broken at her feet, and her big toe covered in blood. She was well and truly yelling.

Suffice to say that that was the point at which things seriously started to go down hill. And things proceeded to go down hill for the next two hours. The lowest point (or highest, depending on which way you look at it) was when Greer was in time out for the umpteenth time and yelling at the top of her voice "nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. That's it then. I'm moving out!"

By that time I'd got to the point where all I could do was laugh. Abigail, toe finally forgotten, was riding around on her trike, grinning and oblivious to the chaos, and Isobella, in true form, was taking half an hour to brush her hair. I had used that tone of voice which is the closest thing to yelling without actually yelling so many times that I was starting to get sick of the sound of it. And by then it was well after nine in the evening.

And then I remembered something the volunteer at the Butterfly House had said in passing this morning. "Big caterpillars make big and strong butterflies." I'd had that comment in the back of my mind all day. You see, I could say that today was about the heat, or about the busy-ness of Christmas, or about my general tiredness, but actually today was all about the season of life I am in. I could wish Paddy could move up to a shift where he didn't have to work strange hours, I could wish we had a flash new house with air-conditioning. I could wish my kids were older and put themselves to bed, or that Abigail wasn't at that age where I feel like my main role in life is to keep her alive. I could wish the house was tidier, that Greer was more compliant, or that the girls slept in separate bedrooms so that I could send them off for a quiet wind-down time alone in the evenings.

I could have spent all day and all evening wishing for a million things to be different, but that would have been wishing away the season of life I am in. Really, I'm just like one of those caterpillars at the Butterfly House. I'm itching to fly with every fibre of my being. I can't wait to start weaving that cocoon. I can hang upside down like I was born to do it... but I want to be a big strong butterfly, so I need to keep eating. We saw some fat caterpillars today. I mean, fat really is the word for it. They were gorgeous, and so enormous in comparison with the teeny tiny newly-hatched ones, that they looked completely different.

Today was average. I cried. I got fed-up. I was very ordinary. But I did a lot of eating. In fact, I'm sure I'm fatter now than I was when I woke up this morning. I'm becoming one fat caterpillar.

Fourth Sunday in Advent

The girls dressed up as angels this morning, getting ready for our church Christmas Service.

All of the children sang two Christmas songs as part of the service.

There was party food and fun for them afterwards!

Paddy's mum Mary gave up Mass to be with us - lovely.

I conquered one of my fears this afternoon and tried a recipe from one of those blogs that leaves me feeling wide-eyed and inadequate. This is Peppermint Bark, just before I cut it. I'd call mine the slightly deconstructed/lazy version ;)  It is very yummy, although as you might notice when I took the photo it was sweating already - today was so humid. I'm too scared to take this out of the fridge now, not sure how I'm going to get it to Paddy's sisters' place an hour away on Christmas Day! Mmm... maybe this is a better gift for a winter Christmas?!!

This is where the Christmas Tree would be if I could be bothered getting it down. So far, no one has complained about its absence. The girls have set up their own manger scene complete with attending animals and three presents labelled appropriately. We were given a paper tree which is on top of the fire and is getting decorated randomly. Our kids' bible is open at the Christmas Story on the music stand. This is all their own doing, and better than a tree, if you ask me. (Mostly because the tree is going to require a lot of baby-training to stop Abigail pulling it down on top of herself!!) 

The girls read Christmas stories listening to Melanie's favourite Christmas songs.

We lit candles and talked about the special day which is so near.

And now I'm going to do the dishes.

Remembering Don

Four years ago today my step-dad Don passed away. It's been a while since I thought of him with a stab of grief, but I've realised there is one thing I am really sad about. I'm sad that he never got to see this blog. I know he would have been chuffed about it, and very happy that I was writing. But more than that, I'm sad that I don't get to write about him here, in the present tense.

I would have loved writing about him here.

Don was not a stand-out character. He was the kind of person you could easily miss in a crowd of people. He was quiet and unassuming. He was happy to be in the background. He loved to help, he was a willing dishwasher and an able cook, and for most of his marriage to Mum he took his fair share of the house-cleaning load. In his last few months of life he lost much of his strength, but I remember going around to their place a week or so before he died, and he'd just cleaned the windows. He was tired from the effort, but it was important for him to do it, he wanted to help.

He was an auto-electrician by trade, so he was a tinkerer and a fixer. He always had some sort of workshop set up at home. He loved to read. He loved cats. When he and Mum got married he was fifty, and had lived with his mother for most of his life. He took a while to adjust to having a family, and I remember in those first couple of years he would often talk to the cat, even when he couldn't talk to any of us.

Don didn't find it easy to understand my sister and I, the selfish and at times surly teenagers that we were. But he slowly and steadily won our hearts. He was reliable, generous, kind, gentle and often thoughtful. And those were the qualities that remained as he grew older, despite the stroke he suffered in his late sixties. Those were the qualities that made him the loveliest Grandad, a role which brought him so much joy. He wasn't the kind of Grandad that could run around or play rough and tumble, but he was his happiest with a baby on his lap, and always ready to give a cuddle or read a story.

At seventy-four, he died young. It was clear, just before he died, that he would have given anything to live just that bit longer. He would have been thrilled to see his eldest granddaughter start school, and he would have been over the moon to be adding two new grandchildren to his brood. He was a devoted husband, right to the end. But his heart had been through a lot. Three heart attacks, two quadruple heart by-passes and a stroke. We used to joke about how much he got out of the public health system, but the fact was that he got a lot out of his life. He lived out every last ounce of life in him.

I'd give anything for him to walk in the door now, to sit down next to me on the couch and talk. I'd be so happy to hear about the latest book he was reading, what the cat had been up to, or the plans he had for the coming week. I know he'd ask me how I was, genuinely, and then listen. I'd give anything to hear him laugh.

You've probably got someone like Don in your life. He might be your own dad or step-dad, an old friend or neighbour. Don't miss the treasure that he is. Listen to him, take care of him, but more than anything, enjoy him.  Make sure he knows how precious he is to you. In fact, today, even if only to humour me, enjoy all the people you love. Make sure they know how much they mean to you. I'll be doing just that, because it seems to me to be the best way I know of remembering Don.

trees, advent, and rain

Seven in the morning and it's raining right now, for the first time in weeks. I just went out onto the deck in my dressing gown and moved the girls' bikes under the eaves. I'd be quite happy to be out walking in this rain. It has been so humid. The garden is very dry. Our friends who have a farm are worried about drought. I hope this rain stays with us for a while, and I hope it's raining other places too, not just here on this suburban street with the cars driving up and down the road on the way to work. I love watching the rain.

I especially love watching the rain coming down over all the green I see from here. I've been thinking about trees lately, because a week or so ago our neighbours had several trees majorly trimmed and a couple cut down. We were sad and happy at the same time. We lost a beautiful Pohutukawa that was just outside our kitchen window. We loved watching the birds come to suck the nectar out of the gorgeous red blooms, and we loved how it hid the neighbours' roof from view. Now we can see their roof clearly. We like our neighbours a lot, but a roof just a roof, if you know what I mean, it's certainly not a tree.

But the view from here at our dining table is so much better now. The trees on the boundary between them and us were pretty overgrown, and they blocked out a fair bit of our outlook. Now sitting here I can see all the way around. A wide view over our street and up to the houses and bush on the ridge above us. We have more view out the back too. Whereas before there was a thick flank of leaves blocking the sky, now there are open spaces, openness we can see through past the High School next door out to far off into the distance.

This is something I love. I love views from high places. I love seeing forever. I love looking out over layers, seeing past our neighbours to the houses and trees beyond. It does my soul good. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's something about perspective. And right now perspective is exactly what I need.  It's amazing what we humans can withstand if we have some perspective. It might be simply knowing that the season we are in has an end date, or it might be knowing that what we are doing is a job that will be finished... eventually. Or it might be knowing that there are other, more serious things going on beyond our own small world, and that we are not alone. Or it might be an other-worldly perspective we need, a somehow knowing that what we are going through will one day be a blink, not even a blink, when viewed from that unimaginable eternity. I don't know which of those perspectives I need most, but I'll take any of them. And right now, looking out at the grey rain drizzling down over green trees is good for my soul.

Actually, now I think about it, Advent is all about perspective. Advent is a reminder, if we let it be, that there is something, or someone, at the end of all our waiting. For all our longing for something better than we have, for that feeling we just can't shake that there must be more, for all our dissatisfactions and frustrations, all our cynicism and disbelief, Advent tells us there is something we are waiting for, something worth hoping for.

At church on Sunday I had the privelege of sharing some thoughts about Advent, and these were my words:

"Advent didn’t mean much to me until a year ago. And even then, my understanding was limited. This year somehow I’m starting to get it. Advent as the season, the five precious Sundays, the time of waiting expectantly, of preparing our homes and preparing our hearts. And Advent as a mirror into the future. Showing us that the waiting and preparing we do now, in this one tiny moment of now, is a reflection of the waiting and preparing we will do all our lives, in waiting for the greatest, most holy, most unimaginable Advent to come. The Advent we are all yearning for, groaning for even, as Romans 8 reminds us.

That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. (Romans 8:18-25 The Message)

And so the obvious question now is simple. What are we waiting for? Last week we were given an image, a glimpse of what we are waiting for in the sense of the great Advent to come. But we don’t always know what we are waiting for in the now either. Are waiting for the craziness to be over? Are we waiting to eat turkey and open presents? Are we waiting for our summer holiday? And yet we know that is not what Christmas means to us. We know that it’s Jesus we are waiting for. We are waiting to celebrate his arrival. God’s arrival. That mind-blowing moment when our very creator and sustainer bursts onto the stage of our world and into our homes and hearts, as a baby. We are waiting for a baby!

This is how Catholic author and blogger Amy Welborn describes it.

“How can you prepare for that?

...The only way we can - the way that we’ve been given, the way that we live in a finite world aching for the infinite.
…Prepare to hold a baby.
Not in a closed room but in one with the windows and doors flung wide open so the mystery of God and His rising collapsing binding loosening transformed and transforming creation courses through and becomes the place you live with the One who made it all and made you to live there.
…Prepare to hold a baby.”

Most of us know about preparing for a baby. If we haven’t done it ourselves we’ve seen others around us planning, purchasing, gathering together all the paraphanalia that seems to go with a newborn. And we’ve caught their expectation, we’ve witnessed their growing excitement. And when that baby is due, when it’s “any day now” we don’t need to hear words to know how that pregnant woman is feeling. We can see it in her tired eyes, and in the unbelieveable hugeness of her aching, stretched belly. We think, she can’t possibly get any bigger, that baby has to come!

And even if you haven’t held a newborn of your own in your arms, you’ve seen one, you’ve held one awkwardly not sure if you might break it, you’ve held it in wonder, looking down at the tiniest nose and darkest eyes and been amazed that there in this bundle of warm skin, is an entire person.

And so it was with Jesus. Mary held her baby. And in her baby, in that tiny, fragile bundle of skin, was God.

What are we waiting for?

We are waiting for a baby."

And today I remind myself that. I give myself that perspective. There is so much more to my life than what I can see with my own eyes. This one moment I am in will pass. There is something coming that is better, more perfect, more beautiful than anything I can imagine... something worth waiting for, worth hoping in. I watch the rain still persisting down, softening the hard and cracked ground, and I feel it raining inside me, softening my heart, turning all my dry despondency into hope.

advent update

Things are pretty busy around here. We had a wedding last weekend, the girls were flower girls and I was a bridesmaid, and it was wonderful (more about that to come.) This weekend we have friends coming over for a BBQ, and so in between the two events I'm trying to get the house in order, finish all the big jobs we started when we thought we might be putting the house on the market (like putting mulch on the garden and cleaning the windows!) and do a bit of Christmas shopping. I don't want the rest of this month too feel so busy, and yet it is all good and important.

And then, in the midst of all that, it's Advent, and we are trying not to lose sight of it. Our Advent calendar gets opened pretty much every other day, and the girls are loving that. We've got the nativity scene Paddy's mum gave us on the piano. Mary and Joseph are making their long journey up and down the piles of books on top of the piano towards the stable. The figures get moved around every now and then by little fingers, but we're trying to stick to a "only on Advent Sundays" rule for re-arranging the scene owing to their break-ability. It kind of works. The stable has already been decorated with pink ribbon, as you can see, which when you are a six-year old girl, is entirely appropriate. We have a stocking "for Jesus" which holds the notes of gratitude we are writing and which will be opened and read sometime on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. (I can't remember where I got that idea from.) We've got a small pile of Christmas story books in the lounge and we've been reading them at bedtime.

I'd thought we might light candles at dinner time. I read about a family who have a candle-lit dinner every evening during Advent, which I thought was a lovely idea, until I remembered that we are in day-light savings here, and it doesn't get dark until 9pm! So we've had candles at dinner times on Advent Sundays,  but that's all.  I really understand Christmas in winter now. It's nothing to do with snow! It's the fact that you can have candle-light dinners. Light means so much more when it is dark all around. I've been wondering why we love light. Candles, Christmas lights, Christmas light displays.... we love them. Is it because they sparkle and glitter? Or is it because there is something inherently satisfying about seeing light in the midst of darkness? I have to admit that for the first time I've been a bit jealous of those of you who get Christmas in winter. It's so easy to celebrate light when it's winter. Light in winter is warm, hopeful and a longed-for refuge from the cold darkness all around.

Then yesterday I was sitting on our bed working on some thoughts for the Advent talk at church on Sunday. I looked from our bed out over the deck and onto the garden. It was late afternoon and the deck was half in shade. The other half, the half the drying rack filled with washing was on, was in full sunlight. Out in the garden the trees were swishing and swaying in the wind, lit up, glowing in their new green. At the end of the garden, underneath the huge pine tree that hangs over our back fence, were the spidery lines and patches of shade and dappled light where the sunlight hit the trees and spread itself out. Everywhere I looked I saw a story of light and dark, of dark and light. And I realised that light in the midst of darkness isn't the only story to celebrate. Christmas in summer is another story completely, and just as special. We get the sun at its best. We get to see trees glowing green, and intense blue skies. This is the light we celebrate. Blinding, glorious. The light of the world.

to read with your cup of tea

Here are a few interesting tid-bits I've read and enjoyed over the last couple of weeks. I thought you might like something to read with your Saturday morning cup of tea!

"A Life Beyond Reason" is a very moving story of a father's experience caring for his highly disabled son August.

"Right Intention vs Simple Intention" is a simple but meaningful take on doing the "right thing."

This is Betty Duffy's beautifully written account of an interesting experience she witnessed during Eucharist - a story in its own right.

Here is Erica Jong's editorial "Mother Madness" and her daughter's response "Growing up with Ma Jong"  I know I've linked these already in those posts about mothering I wrote, but they are interesting.... so if you haven't read them already, go on.

Enjoy your day!

we went to the ballet

We went to the ballet and two girls came home dreaming of dancers and dresses. Just like I remember doing at their age.

The ballet was The Nutcracker. A wonderful first experience of the ballet for those two lucky girls. They sat enthralled through the entire performance, mostly still and mostly quiet, (which I thought was good enough!) They loved Clara, and loved to hate her naughty brother. They were captivated by seeing children their age dancing on stage. It's a beautiful ballet, perfect for children. And the cast from the Royal New Zealand Ballet did a very good job of entertaining the grown-ups too, oh yes. The three patients in dressing gowns and dancing on crutches were genuinely hilarious, and Sir Jon Trimmer stole the show as the hurrumphy large-bossomed Matron. I laughed and laughed!

It was also a lovely escape, a treat to be able to suspend our disbelief and enter a world where tiny snow flakes fall on ballerinas in perfect tutus, and hospital beds float suspended above swathes of blue. We need as much of this as we can get, us grown-ups. We don't dream as easily as our children, tied to our calendars and cell-phones and self-importance as we are. And we aren't so easily mistaken about what is real and what is not. Four-year-old Greer kept asking if the dancers were "real people," yet at the final curtain she was one of the first people to start clapping.  She knew, instinctively, that the story had come to an end.

So we bundled ourselves out into the city at night. Surrounded by people walking and talking and going places. I remember how this feels to a child. Like realising that another world exists, outside, after bedtime. This is the world where anything can happen. Where shop lights and street lights shine against the dark sky. Where cold water and cakes quench thirst and fill tired, hungry tummies. They are dreaming it all right now in their beds, in the heavy sleep of exhaustion. Living it all again, this time with themselves as protaganist and star - dancing, floating, applauded.