competitive

we got into a bit of a christmas email greeting competition this year. one guy elfed himself (see my version by clicking on the picture above) and just about every department got on the bandwagon trying to outdo everyone else's greetings.

i'm part of the 'latin quarter', the group of us in my call center that books packages for latin america. we all sit in the same area away from everyone else, and maybe that's a good thing. anyway, one of our ranks made the card below. notice they used the picture of me on halloween in my 80's girl makeup.

merry christmas!

another christmas come and gone, and before it's even cold in its grave here i am blogging about it. This year was much more memorable than most, with near-death experiences, buried hatchets and much, much more.

my christmas weekend started friday with my getting off work early...at 3pm. my sister and i had been planning to hang out that night, but we moved it to saturday so we could each have a veg-out night before the busy weekend. saturday was alot of running around and sunday was church, followed by the annual christmas eve rock salt crusted prime rib dinner at rachie's.

today was dinner at my aunt and uncle's, which included their two children, my two sisters, my brother-in-law, two nieces, two nephews, grammy and me. it was really fun and we laughed alot - sometimes at and sometimes with. the highlights of this holiday were...


dinner at rachie's with people who were living on the streets this time last year.

getting a new pair of pajamas.

sleeping in.

seeing my nieces and nephews.

people enjoying being together that have not been interested in communicating for several months.

seeing mom breathe again after she got a whole grape tomato lodged in her throat and was starting to turn purple at the dinner table.

laughing afterward until we couldn't breathe at how dad mechanically continued to eat mashed potatoes with a look of panic on his face while my uncle gave my mom the Heimlich maneuver and my aunt called 911.

listening to my nearly-four-year-old niece sing 'barbie girl' in its entirety.

being reminded of how much God has done in my life in the last 5 years to get me to the place where spending a full weekend with friends and family made me more happy than exhausted, with no hint of overwhelm.

merry christmas, everyone.

festive?

got this christmas card at work from one of our suppliers. be ready to laugh and cringe simultaneously. watch every one (i dare you!) and then tell me which one you found most disturbingly hilarious.

holidays

How about this food for thought? The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary. You can find the original transcript on his website here.

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.

If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don' t feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

mystery

i've been thinking lately about the concept of the hidden things of God. there are many things about God we will never know until we are on the other side of eternity, but that does not change the fact that the hidden things of God are meant to be searched out and known. i've decided that God is not a God of secrets, he is a God of mystery...and there is a vast difference between the two.

one of my favorite things to do is watch documentaries, preferably of archaeological, anthropological or historical nature. over thanksgiving weekend i watched loads of television, and among the many things i saw were two different documentaries. one was about the books that made it into the bible, and some books that didn't. the other was relating to the theories in the da vinci code. the thing that struck me was the claim that so many groups, brotherhoods and sects guarded these various secrets, and the "alternative" gospels that tell "untold" stories of the life of Jesus. it all seemed so laughable to me.

secrets are beliefs (weather true or imagined) which are inherently the catalyst for control and manipulation. secrets are hidden from input, correction, guidance or demystification. they are the dark damp cave where things grow that would not survive in the open light of disclosure.

the claims of these various sects, or of these so called lost books of the bible, to have secrets about God that have never been revealed to anyone else in all of history strikes me as ridiculous. Jehovah God, King of the universe, who delights in making Himself so approachable as to give His Son to become a man and interact with us for an entire (if brief) lifetime! this is the God who keeps deep, dark secrets that don't have any bearing on salvation, our relationship with Him or how we live our lives? i just don't buy it.

the emotions of secrets are seldom good. shame, anger, pain, fear, lust, hatred and envy are the ones that come to mind immediately. throughout history we see that wherever secrets are held, people are held captive by them. civilizations have fallen over secrets, and sadly even the church throughout history has manipulated and dictated from the power-base of secrets. looking closer to home we can see that those who seek freedom in their personal lives will inevitably find that comes only with disclosure of things that they don't want anyone to know about them, their life, their family or their choices. interesting, isn't it?

but mystery! what joy to seek for something that will bring us to wisdom, understanding and a broader perspective. to seek something out for the pure excitement of knowing and understanding it. mystery is that which is meant to be sought out, meant to be illuminated. it is a knowledge beyond our own, meant to be attained by searching out truth from sources outside of ourselves, and revealing a broader perspective than one previously had on a matter. mystery is meant to be resolved with disclosure, it is created to be a catalyst for illumination and deeper understanding. the feelings that are connected to mystery are anticipation, eagerness, excitement, desire, joy, awe and even trust.

now think about that in regard to Father God. so many see Him as a God of secrets, when really He is a God of mystery. the emotions of secrets - the anger, shame, fear and resentment - are applied to God because it seems that He is trying to control us with what He knows and we don't. when we see Him as a God of mystery we find ourselves living instead in a place of trust in His revelation of Himself. we find ourselves excited, eager, and full of joy at what we find when we seek Him out, and we find ourselves in awe at the extent of what we see when our perspective is broadened by the wisdom He gives us in the process.

secrets search for the cover of darkness. mystery craves the light.

anyone else have thoughts on this?