Christmas Tide!

Merry Christ's Mass!

Christ Amidst the Chaos - via LovetoBeCatholic.com

Here's Christ Amidst the Chaos via LoveToBeCatholic.com -- I'll be switching to posting my videos from them, but needed to keep the YouTube posts up as others have linked to them.

Eleventh Day of Christmas

January 5
Realization of self leads to the choice to be taken, blessed, broken and shared – by our Beloved spouse, our family, our work, our ministry, ourselves. This is the eleventh gift of Christmas – the penetrating mirror that shows us ourselves as only a harrowing journey can upon reflection from the warm safety of a welcoming inn. Having lost ourselves, we find ourselves and realize there is safety only in abandonment. We come to realize we are holy fools striving to live out our unique aspect of divinity. We learn to laugh at ourselves and make merry, for as goofy as we are, we are cherished and loved and have a divine expression to whisper loudly through the living of our lives. Merry Christmas, fools!
Patrick

Tenth Day of Christmas

January 4
Having entered the land of despair, embraced it, placed it at the foot of the cross, witnessed it and ourselves transformed so that we see others as God intended them to be, set our priorities through right relationship discovered through grit and sabbath we become more and more capable of experiencing delight in the world around us. The everyday ordinary somehow becomes the holy extraordinary. Rather, we recognize the holy extraordinary as having always been there. This is the incarnation. Emmanuel, God is with us. This is the tenth gift of Christmas – seeing wonderment in all about us. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Ninth Day of Christmas

January 3
Sabbath. A day of rest. The key to creating and maintaining right relationship. One day a week set aside for nothing other than entering into relationship with those closest to us. It makes no difference that we’re busy and have no time for a whole day without anything scheduled – we don’t have time not to. Here’s why. When one day is set aside with nothing planned, the purpose and proper proportion of the doings of the rest of the week become clear. Not right away. Over time. Get out your calendars right now. Decide on a day of the week that works for you. Cross it through for the next three months, rescheduling or canceling anything in the way. Live it for three months – discover what it is. Keep it sacred and the rest of your week will become sacred also. This is the ninth gift of Christmas and the key to right relationship. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Eighth Day of Christmas

January 2
Having emerged from the depths of despair, we yearn to help others. Yet afore we can minister outward we must first and always see to our primary vocation – marriage. Our first responsibility is always to our Beloved spouse and our children. Our Beloved spouse and the love we share (children, in part) are the eighth gift of Christmas. Our work and ministry mean nothing if they create ministerial widows, widowers, and orphans. Only by seeking the depths of right relationship with our Beloved can we have any idea what it ought to look like in serving others. There is a hierarchy of service: Spouse and family, work, then ministry. Right relationship must be seen to in that order of priority. Society tends to fall short in its support of these priorities and they must be fought for, as is required, for right relationship. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Seventh Day of Christmas

January 1
I’m not convinced we ever truly leave the land of despair once we’ve been there. But the very fact that we’ve been there prepares us to minister to others. For it was someone else who showed us the way out. We couldn’t find it on our own. They found us and just by being with us they gave us hope. They walked with us through the carnage, acknowledged the horror of it all and yet still had that spark about them, unquenchable. They somehow knew victory was already won, that life is stronger than death, and hope conquers despair. And they gave that spark to us afore they departed. They showed us the power of community. We do not journey alone. They showed us the power of hope. They showed us how to see with God’s eyes. For what in despair appears naught but caked mud and clotted blood is, in reality, the embodiment of God infused into all of creation and just slightly covered by our inhumanity. Our humanity awaits underneath. And despair no longer holds any power over us. The seventh gift of Christmas is seeing all creation, particularly all people, as what God created them to be rather than just what they’ve thus far chosen to be. Merry Christmas!

Sixth Day of Christmas

December 31
Whatever caused us to enter despair, the specific circumstances which gave us our ticket beyond the comfortable and known, something is certain – we feel helpless, and rightly so, in the face of such atrocity. How can we possibly go on? How can we ever see beauty in the world again? What we have seen has revealed to us just how tainted the world really is. We are right. We cannot stand alone in the face of such injustice. No one asks us to, except our own false ego. Here, at our realization of helplessness against the tide, is where we give up. We die. Rather, our false self dies and we are left with the person God created us to be. Sounds so simple, so “Oh, I’ve done that now, let’s move on.” It’s not. It’s painful and cyclical as we spiral ever upward and deepward on our journey. And every time it reminds us more fully how much we need the cross. The cross is our sixth gift of Christmas, for at its feet we place our failings and inadequacy and they are transubstantiated into gifts of community and hope. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Fifth Day of Christmas

December 30
Despair comes when the mind can no longer martial into order and sense the absurd grotesqueness about it. When the mind does thus feel, as it is doomed to, for it was never designed to grasp the infinite, it is the heart that must come to our aid. While the mind’s gift is the ordering of chaos, collecting of knowledge and setting into expression and memory our experiences, it is the heart that embraces the infinite, enters the mystical. The heart needs no understanding; it sees what is beyond understanding and knowing. It accepts the mystery and enters into the experience and shows us more than we’ve ever imagined existed. Then the mind’s simple job is to somehow interact with the ungraspable and inexpressible and find expression for it. Herein lies our hope when despair swallows us down – the heart is the fifth gift of Christmas for it helps us explore the land of darkness and despair and find Jesus there, ministering to those abandoned and lost, including ourselves. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Fourth Day of Christmas

Fourth Day of Christmas – December 29
At some point in our journey we each enter into the depths of despair because of humanity’s lack of humanity. We’ve only to briefly examine our history as a Church or a nation to see the hypocrisy. Or perhaps we find it closer to home. If we are to become fully human we have to enter into this despair. Not just see it intellectually, not merely acknowledge our inhumanity. We have to, at some point, experience it so personally that we intimately feel both its victim and perpetrator. We have to lose sight of hope. This is the fourth gift of Christmas – despair at humanity’s inhumanity to humanity. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Third Day of Christmas

December 28
If everyone is due the same core dignity I am, why don’t others treat them with dignity? Why don’t they treat themselves with dignity? Why don’t I? Do I even treat myself with the dignity I deserve as a unique expression of God? No. Jesus and Mary are the only people who treated themselves and every person they met with the dignity they deserved. This is how we are to act if we wish to live up to our humanity. This is the third gift of Christmas, Jesus and Mary have shown us how to do what we didn’t realize we needed to do, let alone believed possible, to become fully human – the golden rule. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Second Day of Christmas

December 27
The reality that I am a unique expression of God means I have an irremovable holiness – dignity. I am irreplaceable and because of this I deserve to be treated in certain ways. So does everyone else. It is not easy to realize the depth of my value, but when I do there is an incredible “A-ha!” Now I have to expand my view to see that every person I meet has the same depth of value for the exact same reason I do – their uniqueness as an expression of God. God’s ironic grin is impressive – our uniqueness binds us together as possessing the same core dignity. This is the second gift of Christmas; everyone’s uniqueness makes them just as valuable as I am. So much for my big head. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

First Day of Christmas

December 26
Did God really need to enter the world? Clearly not. Omnipotence leaves all options open. So why take the hardest road to redemption? Why not the scrap heap for humanity followed by the drawing board? A second edition would seem the way to go. But it wasn’t. Each of us is a unique expression of God – not expressed again ever or anywhere. Each of us contains a piece of God unique and irreplaceable. Each of us has the capacity through grace to choose to live out our unique divinity just as Jesus did. God chose to enter the world as one of us to show us our true potential, no matter the cost. Our divinely human potential is the first gift of Christmas. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Merry ChristmasTide

Christmas Day – December 25

Today begins the Christmas Tide. Tomorrow is the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas. You might think it was today. Not so I say. Today is Christmas – all twelve days in one go. Beginning tomorrow, we get to unwrap them, savor them, and be challenged by them. The gift of this series is exactly that, we get to celebrate the whole season of Christmas, which goes through Epiphany on January 6. There is one letter per day for you to read aloud together some sacred time each morning of Christmas. On these I must insist: together, aloud, in the morning. My prayer for us is that we may enter into a deeper, broader experience and understanding of Christmas. But that all begins tomorrow. Today is Christmas, a day of wondrous enchantment and gift. Experience and enjoy! Merry Christmas!

Note: I wrote this series on the ChristmasTide for the deacon candidate couples who were in formation when I became disabled and could no longer be part of their formation team. Enjoy.

Love and Blessings for a very Merry ChristmasTide!
Patrick

How do You Celebrate Christ's Mass?

What? Christmas lasts more than one day? You mean there really are 12 days of Christmas? All the way through Epiphany? Wow! It sure is grand to be Catholic! Grin.

Our family, and many of those we know, struggle with how to live Advent as real preparation for Christmas, and Christmas as a time of celebration and feasting for 12 whole days. The purpose of this post is to share ideas about how to celebrate Christmas -- the full season long.

I like to use the creative process (I'll cover that in more detail in a future post) to help with strategic visioning. It's how I figure out what I want for lunch and how to orchestrate social and theological revolutions (surprisingly, I'm not kidding). Grin. Anyway, we start by naming what we want to create:

Christmas Tide Vision
A Christmas Tide celebration feast with family and friends which starts sundown Christmas Eve and goes solid tilt through Epiphany.

Of course there are a few things which we have to be aware of because our culture make realizing that grand vision a real challenge:

Current Reality as it Relates to Christmas Tide

• The commercialization of Christmas, which now begins just after St. Valentines Day. Sardonic grin.
• People seem to think Christmas begins December 1st. When is the season of Christmas parties? Nearly all are in Advent, before the feast has begun. When do the Christmas treats arrive in the workplace? Yup. Same schedule. Actually bring in Christmas treats during Christmastide and be accused of bringing in your leftovers (before I was disabled, I tried this, so I know!). And lots of folks have somehow come to believe the 12 days of Christmas refer to the 12 days leading up the Christmas rather than the 12 days after Christmas. We've had a struggle trying to convert our daughter's 12 chained countdown made as a school craft to being used during Christmas rather than before.
• Want to cut a Christmas tree in the National Forest Christmas Eve? Nope. Illegal. Have to do it by the second weekend in December.
• Christmas ends for most people at midnight, December 25. New Years is a separate and almost entirely secular celebration without any attempt to link it with the Christmas season.

But this is not supposed to be a gripe and groan session (hard to tell, aye?). Sometimes, howver, that's what current reality as it relates to our vision is. Now the questions becomes, how are we going to make this Christmas Tide 2-week Celebration happen?! Here's how we celebrate, starting with Advent. Much of what we do comes from a variety of German and Scottish family traditions as well as the marvilous book "To Dance with God" by Gertrud Nelson).

Advent

Christmas Eve
Breakfast: German: fresh baked pretzels and meat and cheese pretzle roll.
Decorate for Christmas: we do this as a family (because of my disability we don't have enough hands otherwise) -- Adding bows to greenery, Christmas decorations throughout the house, ornimants onto the tree.

Christmas Eve Dinner: Brats, red cabbage, potatoe salad and other German fare.
Kris Kringle brings the presents durring story time away from the Christmas room (family room), which is left dark.

La Posada: Krist Kindle bell calls us to gather for the La Posada. One of the lassies is Mary, and she is given baby Jesus to carry in her "belly" (looks recarkably like a pocket, while she, Joseph, the donkey, and the angel go seeking a place to spend the night. After the inn keeper of the first two stops refuses them, the third offers them the manger. The Christmas tree lights go up and we sing "Joy to the World" as Mary puts baby Jesus in the manger and Mary and Joseph arrive at the stable (reverse this).

Carols, Presents, Christmas Mass: More Christmas carols are sung. Then we break out the Christmas cookies. Then we open one or two presents each and its play time for the lassies to enjoy their new gifts. Barbara and the lassies go to afternoon, evening, or Christmas morning Mass, depending on what works best that year (I can't go because of my brain injury).

Christmas Day
After getting up: sing more Christmas carols (we do this each day before opening the presents for that day). Stockings were filled by Krist Kindle yesterday and are pilfered through now.
Scottish breakfast: porrage with cream, honey, and Scotch, black pudding, sausage, bacon, eggs, grapefruit etc... The rest of the day is a family day, with a walk, games, stories, etc... With a simple dinner so we don't have to cook that evening (feast foods happen throughout the season, but this frees Christmas day of the burden of extensive food prep.

Each Day of Christmas
Early morning: sing carols (and move the wise men, who began their journey Christmas Eve -- they arrive on Epiphany) and open a present (sometimes we all get one, sometimes it is a family present). This helps the feast last, helps each gift be more fully appreciated, and helps the focus of Christmas be Jesus, love, and relationship.

Feast foods, time off from work (as much as possible), gathering with family and friends (we try to not do this much during Advent)

In addition we add some thing on specific days:

New Years Eve - Holy Family - Family Reconciliation Service (I post more about this later), and typical New Years Eve things (we celebrate New Years on Scottish time so it's not a late night for lassies or brain injured.)

Epiphany: Wise men arrive to "We Three Kings" via procession through the house, Special presents saved for last day of Christmas Tide (sometimes related to travel), home blessing with "20 C+M+B 07" written over the inside of our main door (for Casper, Melkiar, and Baltazhar).

After Epipahny: clean up. Sing O Tannembaum, dance around the tree one last time, take everthing down in cleaning up for entering into ordinary time.

How do you join in the celebration of Christmas Tide? Use "comments" to share your traditions!

Merry Christ's Mass!
Patrick