http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/patty
Dear Friends,
I know you have all been watching the news as I have, anguishing over the unfathomed losses in Haiti from the recent devestating earthquake. If you've been wondering what you can do, wonder no more! I have set up a fundraising page on the Mercy Corps site you can use to donate whatever amount you can. For now I've set a goal of $1000, but if I near that soon, I will raise the goal.
If anyone would like to match whatever amount I can raise, please let me know and I will publicize it here.
Simply aching for those families,
Patty
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Now it can be Christmas
I just realized I had forgotten to post this here, so I'm sharing it late for those who haven't seen it on Facebook. As it happened, I never made those cookies. But I will simply make twice as many next year.
Patty
We used to bake cookies with Mom at Christmas time, then take the plates to neighbor friends' families. It wasn't Christmas till we did that. Spritz or Press cookies, and Refrigerator Roll Dough Sugar Cookies, out of the old Betty Crocker cookbook that they re-released a few years back. (I bought one for my daughter, but she doesn't use it because it's old fashioned - oi!).
We helped Mom decorate them by lightly pressing colored sugars on them after she painted them with egg whites. Our fingers turned Christmas colors! We listened to Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Boston Pops and Perry Como, and the Robert Shaw Chorale, and a recording of carols called something like "Santa's Christmas Elves Sing Carols" that had songs like "Oh Come, Little Children" and "Up On the Housetop Reindeer Pause", which I did not hear for decades until recently.... I still turn on those records at least once in the Christmas season, usually Christmas Eve day while I bake (though I've lost the Santa's Elves one and have never seen it anywhere else). I will be baking later today (I hope!), and it will finally really be Christmas.
There are times during the season when I say, "Now it's Christmas!" Each one of these times is when something I used to do, hear, smell, taste comes back to me in reality. Baking cookies is one of the most sacred of these memories, maybe because it was passed down from our mother, and I even have her cookie cutters now because she doesn't do it anymore. The Christmas music is a given - without it there is no Christmas. I start in about October 1st, or even earlier, as I did this year because it hadn't rained in so long, when it did come back it was like Christmas in So. Cal. Christmas music is the backdrop for everything Christmas.
Then ought to come Christmas card writing, but we haven't been able to do that at the right time since the kids were born almost 19 years ago. I don't multi-task, which is evident to anyone entering our humble domicile. Stuff is strewn from one end to the other. To make a plan and follow it was the realm of youthful freedom, never to be experienced again until empty-nest time. Not that I'm looking forward to that..... How will there ever be Christmas without expectant voices and people bounding out of bed at 6:00 am on Christmas morning? Well, I'll leave that for a future time. This is about now.
Then present choosing.... oh boy. First I have to settle the bank account, then I have to settle the billed accounts, then I have to settle my conscience. Then I have to find a way to communicate with the absent and absent-minded professor of the family as to what he thinks we should give the kids this year. And plan and execute distance Christmas giving for relatives and beloved friends far away - if there is money for it. But that's all part of the game of Christmas time. Often about now I start making gifts because I can afford that and they mean so much more than store bought anyway, only to forget about a half-made afghan or set of place mats in the run up to the Big Day. Eventually I realize it was silly of me to imagine I could ever finish that handmade item in time to mail it anyway, and go out and buy something.
Then it's time to think of inviting people to our annual Musical New Year's Eve Party. Only it was really time about three months ago, because people seem to have made their New Year's Eve plans by October 1st already every year, so two people show up. But I can try, can't I? Sure!
Along about December 1st I realize I haven't got anything ordered online for anybody, and start stressing about it because I only remember what it is I want to order when I'm driving the car, which is no place to turn on the laptop and start choosing gifts I can afford from companies that can ship by Christmas. The police are taking a dim view of things like that these days, for some reason. So I remember around 1:00 am when I wake up to go to the bathroom, and can't get back to sleep till 5:00 am, which means I don't wake up till about 7:30 am, just in time to push my son into the car and recklessly drive him to the high school and shove him out the door on the corner because I refuse to sit in that long line of cars, which means he'll be late anyway. Yes, early December is a very interesting time of the Christmas season. But the choir is gearing up to it's big shebang, and that makes it more Christmas yet.
The choir does its big shebang. Sometimes I have the privilege of singing a solo, which makes it so much more special for me. I almost feel professional when I can do that. I don't do the solos I used to, that made it Christmas for my husband years ago. He used to say, "It's not Christmas until you sing that," but these old, neglected vocal chords just can't negotiate the high G in "Gesu Bambino" anymore, nor the building tessatura of "O Holy Night", especially at 11:45 pm with candles breathing all my oxygen. That used to make it Christmas. There's a lovely, young soprano who can do it quite easily now, so I let her. But it's not quite Christmas.
There used to be several other things that made it Christmas for me. One of them was caroling to the shut-ins. But in our enlightened stage of being as a Christian society (I'm talking about the Church here), Christmas caroling has been relegated to the trash heap along with Christmas parties, which used to follow the caroling, at least in my experience. It simply amazes me that a church with at least 1500 members cannot get up a caroling party to minister to our sick and aging members, and others, sometime in December. I think this will have to be a duty of mine in coming years, since others don't seem to be interested in creating that avenue of ministry. But I digress. Enough maybe to say it simply can't be Christmas completely without that activity somewhere in the calendar, preferably close to Christmas itself.
There's the tree, of course. Getting the tree was always a family activity. It was especially cherished because it was something Dad did too, and in fact we never did it without him because he was the guy strong enough to carry it, and knew just what kind of tree was healthy, etc. He drove us all around town, hitting every Scout or Lions' Club lot and the grocery and department stores' too. We sang carols all the way. We didn't have to get a tree the first time, or the second time, or even the third. We had to find the perfect tree, that all of us agreed on. Boy, that was hard! But it was good, because this time with my family, riding around town seeing the lights and city street decorations most cities don't use anymore, and singing carols was a precious heaven to me. I miss it. It's not thoroughly Christmas without it.
Often we combined tree hunting with our yearly trip to Hastings Ranch, without which Christmas simply could not come. If you don't know Hastings Ranch, you're not a Southern Californian. Ask one, they'll tell you how each street in the neighborhood was decked out in themes: Candy Cane Lane, Santa Claus Avenue, Christmas Tree Street, etc. You thought you'd been transported to the North Pole, except for the temperature! For us kids it was heaven, truly enchanting, completely escapist. When we entered the development, all arguings ceased, we broke out in song, and all joined in with one voice: "O come all ye faithful!" or "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, falalalala, la-la, la la!" or "We three kings of orient are, bearing gifts we've traversed afar..." And we pretended we were the Three Kings, traversing afar through Santa's winter wonderland. Our parents were never so happy with us. The enchantment included the lights of the valley below. Yes, it was a fairytale I've never seen anywhere else. Nothing can equal Hastings Ranch at Christmas!
Then there's wrapping and putting the presents under the tree, and baking the cookies with Mom, school presentations: with one voice each First Lutheran School class recited a portion of the Christmas Story from Luke 2, until by 8th grade we had learned the entire thing: "
But I had learned the entire thing by the second year, I think, as we listened to each other rehearsing several times before we performed it on the last day of school (or was it in church the Sunday following?). Does anyone teach children this way anymore? It's very effective, and not thoroughly Christmas without it, which is why Charlie Brown Christmas is so beloved of people our age, I guess. Another of the things that make it truly Christmas is that little cartoon. Check it out.
These childhood memories make my Christmas. Our lives are founded on memories. That's why when you take a bull-dozer and flatten a piece of property - houses, trees, fences, driveways, ivy, trash heap full of rats, three-car garage packed full of an old woman's memories, and every blade of grass that ever was on that property - you murder a vital part of a human's soul. Yet, miraculously, that part of that soul is not dead, not gone, not forgotten. It's kept alive by memories of those trees, that house, those rats in the ivy-covered trash heap, that walnut tree we used to climb every day against our mother's fearful wishes for our safety. And the music inside that house lives in that soul, and the music of the voices of that family dances in that heart, and it's Christmas wherever she is at Christmas time, because she carries those memories wherever she goes.
But Christmas - Christ Mass - comes to me most certainly only on Christmas Eve, only when, all alone, I've put away the choir music or solos and my black folder into my slot in the choir room, I don my coat and singers' scarf against whatever weather is out there by 12:30 am on December 25th, I hold my keys in my right hand, put my left hand in my wool coat pocket, and walk across the frosty asphalt to my waiting car, under the starry host of heaven, and look up and breathe in the "ruach" of the One that hovered over the face of the waters at Creation.
Crisp and clear comes the angel song, "Gloria in excelsis deo, et in terra pax!" For me alone, Christ is born, in the middle of a frozen night, in a frozen time when people's hearts are hard against Him, and my life before is dead, and my hopes for the future doubtful.... for me all alone in a frosty night, Christ is born, free gift of a loving Father God; free with no attachments, not deserved, no payback expected - just free: Christ, the Messiah, Savior of the world - for me.
I drive home, in silence or listening to a previously recorded St. Olaf Choir on NPR, pondering in my heart as I negotiate stop lights and freeway and avoid possibly inebriated fellow revelers, still looking for or perhaps carrying home this very same Gift. I come in quietly, ready to play Santa to a sleeping household. I finish my final duty of Christmas, then sit for a few moments in front of the tree, pondering the One represented in that tiny, ceramic figure in the ceramic hay and manger in the little wooden, moss-covered stable under my tree.
Then it is Christmas indeed. Leave the cookies and the lights and the carols and the shopping and the greetings. Leave the work still to be done, the worries and the hopes. Leave the noise and bustle and the loneliness and longings: It is Christmas in my heart. It is Christmas for the world. Mine to give freely away as It was given to me.
And now it is Christmas for you as I give to you what I've received. Please accept my Gift to you, that comes with love from the Father. It's for you, just you alone, after all. You, in the midst of all others, receive the One come down for you.
Merry Christmas to you all, and may you experience today whatever makes it Christmas finally for you, in your heart.
We helped Mom decorate them by lightly pressing colored sugars on them after she painted them with egg whites. Our fingers turned Christmas colors! We listened to Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Boston Pops and Perry Como, and the Robert Shaw Chorale, and a recording of carols called something like "Santa's Christmas Elves Sing Carols" that had songs like "Oh Come, Little Children" and "Up On the Housetop Reindeer Pause", which I did not hear for decades until recently.... I still turn on those records at least once in the Christmas season, usually Christmas Eve day while I bake (though I've lost the Santa's Elves one and have never seen it anywhere else). I will be baking later today (I hope!), and it will finally really be Christmas.
There are times during the season when I say, "Now it's Christmas!" Each one of these times is when something I used to do, hear, smell, taste comes back to me in reality. Baking cookies is one of the most sacred of these memories, maybe because it was passed down from our mother, and I even have her cookie cutters now because she doesn't do it anymore. The Christmas music is a given - without it there is no Christmas. I start in about October 1st, or even earlier, as I did this year because it hadn't rained in so long, when it did come back it was like Christmas in So. Cal. Christmas music is the backdrop for everything Christmas.
Then ought to come Christmas card writing, but we haven't been able to do that at the right time since the kids were born almost 19 years ago. I don't multi-task, which is evident to anyone entering our humble domicile. Stuff is strewn from one end to the other. To make a plan and follow it was the realm of youthful freedom, never to be experienced again until empty-nest time. Not that I'm looking forward to that..... How will there ever be Christmas without expectant voices and people bounding out of bed at 6:00 am on Christmas morning? Well, I'll leave that for a future time. This is about now.
Then present choosing.... oh boy. First I have to settle the bank account, then I have to settle the billed accounts, then I have to settle my conscience. Then I have to find a way to communicate with the absent and absent-minded professor of the family as to what he thinks we should give the kids this year. And plan and execute distance Christmas giving for relatives and beloved friends far away - if there is money for it. But that's all part of the game of Christmas time. Often about now I start making gifts because I can afford that and they mean so much more than store bought anyway, only to forget about a half-made afghan or set of place mats in the run up to the Big Day. Eventually I realize it was silly of me to imagine I could ever finish that handmade item in time to mail it anyway, and go out and buy something.
Then it's time to think of inviting people to our annual Musical New Year's Eve Party. Only it was really time about three months ago, because people seem to have made their New Year's Eve plans by October 1st already every year, so two people show up. But I can try, can't I? Sure!
Along about December 1st I realize I haven't got anything ordered online for anybody, and start stressing about it because I only remember what it is I want to order when I'm driving the car, which is no place to turn on the laptop and start choosing gifts I can afford from companies that can ship by Christmas. The police are taking a dim view of things like that these days, for some reason. So I remember around 1:00 am when I wake up to go to the bathroom, and can't get back to sleep till 5:00 am, which means I don't wake up till about 7:30 am, just in time to push my son into the car and recklessly drive him to the high school and shove him out the door on the corner because I refuse to sit in that long line of cars, which means he'll be late anyway. Yes, early December is a very interesting time of the Christmas season. But the choir is gearing up to it's big shebang, and that makes it more Christmas yet.
The choir does its big shebang. Sometimes I have the privilege of singing a solo, which makes it so much more special for me. I almost feel professional when I can do that. I don't do the solos I used to, that made it Christmas for my husband years ago. He used to say, "It's not Christmas until you sing that," but these old, neglected vocal chords just can't negotiate the high G in "Gesu Bambino" anymore, nor the building tessatura of "O Holy Night", especially at 11:45 pm with candles breathing all my oxygen. That used to make it Christmas. There's a lovely, young soprano who can do it quite easily now, so I let her. But it's not quite Christmas.
There used to be several other things that made it Christmas for me. One of them was caroling to the shut-ins. But in our enlightened stage of being as a Christian society (I'm talking about the Church here), Christmas caroling has been relegated to the trash heap along with Christmas parties, which used to follow the caroling, at least in my experience. It simply amazes me that a church with at least 1500 members cannot get up a caroling party to minister to our sick and aging members, and others, sometime in December. I think this will have to be a duty of mine in coming years, since others don't seem to be interested in creating that avenue of ministry. But I digress. Enough maybe to say it simply can't be Christmas completely without that activity somewhere in the calendar, preferably close to Christmas itself.
There's the tree, of course. Getting the tree was always a family activity. It was especially cherished because it was something Dad did too, and in fact we never did it without him because he was the guy strong enough to carry it, and knew just what kind of tree was healthy, etc. He drove us all around town, hitting every Scout or Lions' Club lot and the grocery and department stores' too. We sang carols all the way. We didn't have to get a tree the first time, or the second time, or even the third. We had to find the perfect tree, that all of us agreed on. Boy, that was hard! But it was good, because this time with my family, riding around town seeing the lights and city street decorations most cities don't use anymore, and singing carols was a precious heaven to me. I miss it. It's not thoroughly Christmas without it.
Often we combined tree hunting with our yearly trip to Hastings Ranch, without which Christmas simply could not come. If you don't know Hastings Ranch, you're not a Southern Californian. Ask one, they'll tell you how each street in the neighborhood was decked out in themes: Candy Cane Lane, Santa Claus Avenue, Christmas Tree Street, etc. You thought you'd been transported to the North Pole, except for the temperature! For us kids it was heaven, truly enchanting, completely escapist. When we entered the development, all arguings ceased, we broke out in song, and all joined in with one voice: "O come all ye faithful!" or "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, falalalala, la-la, la la!" or "We three kings of orient are, bearing gifts we've traversed afar..." And we pretended we were the Three Kings, traversing afar through Santa's winter wonderland. Our parents were never so happy with us. The enchantment included the lights of the valley below. Yes, it was a fairytale I've never seen anywhere else. Nothing can equal Hastings Ranch at Christmas!
Then there's wrapping and putting the presents under the tree, and baking the cookies with Mom, school presentations: with one voice each First Lutheran School class recited a portion of the Christmas Story from Luke 2, until by 8th grade we had learned the entire thing: "
1And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
2(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
3And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
4And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
5To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
6And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
7And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
8And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
9And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
10And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
11For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
15And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
16And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
17And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
18And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
19But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
20And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.
But I had learned the entire thing by the second year, I think, as we listened to each other rehearsing several times before we performed it on the last day of school (or was it in church the Sunday following?). Does anyone teach children this way anymore? It's very effective, and not thoroughly Christmas without it, which is why Charlie Brown Christmas is so beloved of people our age, I guess. Another of the things that make it truly Christmas is that little cartoon. Check it out.
These childhood memories make my Christmas. Our lives are founded on memories. That's why when you take a bull-dozer and flatten a piece of property - houses, trees, fences, driveways, ivy, trash heap full of rats, three-car garage packed full of an old woman's memories, and every blade of grass that ever was on that property - you murder a vital part of a human's soul. Yet, miraculously, that part of that soul is not dead, not gone, not forgotten. It's kept alive by memories of those trees, that house, those rats in the ivy-covered trash heap, that walnut tree we used to climb every day against our mother's fearful wishes for our safety. And the music inside that house lives in that soul, and the music of the voices of that family dances in that heart, and it's Christmas wherever she is at Christmas time, because she carries those memories wherever she goes.
But Christmas - Christ Mass - comes to me most certainly only on Christmas Eve, only when, all alone, I've put away the choir music or solos and my black folder into my slot in the choir room, I don my coat and singers' scarf against whatever weather is out there by 12:30 am on December 25th, I hold my keys in my right hand, put my left hand in my wool coat pocket, and walk across the frosty asphalt to my waiting car, under the starry host of heaven, and look up and breathe in the "ruach" of the One that hovered over the face of the waters at Creation.
Crisp and clear comes the angel song, "Gloria in excelsis deo, et in terra pax!" For me alone, Christ is born, in the middle of a frozen night, in a frozen time when people's hearts are hard against Him, and my life before is dead, and my hopes for the future doubtful.... for me all alone in a frosty night, Christ is born, free gift of a loving Father God; free with no attachments, not deserved, no payback expected - just free: Christ, the Messiah, Savior of the world - for me.
I drive home, in silence or listening to a previously recorded St. Olaf Choir on NPR, pondering in my heart as I negotiate stop lights and freeway and avoid possibly inebriated fellow revelers, still looking for or perhaps carrying home this very same Gift. I come in quietly, ready to play Santa to a sleeping household. I finish my final duty of Christmas, then sit for a few moments in front of the tree, pondering the One represented in that tiny, ceramic figure in the ceramic hay and manger in the little wooden, moss-covered stable under my tree.
Then it is Christmas indeed. Leave the cookies and the lights and the carols and the shopping and the greetings. Leave the work still to be done, the worries and the hopes. Leave the noise and bustle and the loneliness and longings: It is Christmas in my heart. It is Christmas for the world. Mine to give freely away as It was given to me.
And now it is Christmas for you as I give to you what I've received. Please accept my Gift to you, that comes with love from the Father. It's for you, just you alone, after all. You, in the midst of all others, receive the One come down for you.
Merry Christmas to you all, and may you experience today whatever makes it Christmas finally for you, in your heart.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Christmas Reflections
Like the light in my daughter's eyes when she suddenly sees her own humor in a word, and her ponytails dance in curls, and her laughter skips in leaps, awakening the sleeping child inside her mother. It defies any camera, and this author's pen.
The lights themselves blur and blend in the camera's eye, not like the blur and definition on my floor, but something like the blur and run in the water I suddenly find in these human eyes, remembering a tiny tot's joy.
The shadows on my floor are clearer than the light, making sticks and branches out of far tinier needles, well-defined. They are in exact contrast to their counterparts in the tree, where lights are bright and dark needles blur.
Is that like Heaven?
Do angels and saints shine sharply bright in Heaven, only to blur on earth? Do the sharp pains of earth blur and soften in Heaven when we come there at last? Do the great, shining, good things of God in Heaven show up here on earth simply as rather ineffectual mirrors of Him, while the deep, dark, stabbing shadows of the evil one stand out in high definition here, focusing our attention on them instead of that great, good God?
But the scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadows,
Keeping watch above His own.
Amen! May your New Year be filled with the sure knowledge of God standing within your shadows, keeping watch over you and yours.
Simply,
Patty
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