Each holiday has its own character and its own image.  Our American 4th of July is about sun, noise, grilling, healthy flesh.  The image of Thanksgiving is a good appetite and the stuffed extended family lolling about afterwards, desultorily playing at games.  Christmas is unusual–it has two main images

The first theme is the happy, domestic one.  It’s the family gathered around the  tree.  Lights are dim.  There’s probably a fire and a fireplace.  People are happy and smiling.

The other image is the spiritual feeling of the clear, cold night sky with the remote and beautiful stars.  Christmas spirituality is the spirituality of looking up at the night sky when everything is still.

Our normal image of the birth of Jesus combines the two.  We see the cozy stable, warmly and dimly lit by a lamp, with the small family gathered in around, and the animals gathered in, and the shepherds and such.  Then around them the night and the stars, especially the one bright star.

Easter is a morning holiday.  Christmas is perhaps more about Christmas Eve than Christmas morning. Certainly there are more rituals associated with Christmas Eve then there are our Christmas morning. Christmas Eve is when the candles are lit, when the children act out the nativity, when we dig dirt to fill our paper bags for luminarias, when we set up the stockings and put out milk for Santa.

The other night holiday is spooky.  Christmas Eve isn’t.   But the night, the clear, cold night, still takes the holiday out of the ordinary.

Sunrise and sunset are great for casual glancing enjoyment in passing. But if you really look at them they seem to demand something more. You see that there is a glory about them that approaches the transcendent.  You want to have an appreciation that is worthy of the site. You want to commune. And you can’t.  If you try–when I try–frustration results.

For many people, Christmas is a pretty frustrating holiday.  I love Christmas, personally, but I understand the frustration.  Christmas isn’t only a time to have a shindy.  There is a spiritual element there, a grandeur, and it demands that you reach out for it, and your reaching always never quite succeeds.  You never fully commune.

Today I told my family that I had had a dream.  When they were grown, I said, and I and their mother were gone, I dreamed that on Christmas Eve when all was quiet and still, when the only light was from the tree and the dying fire, I would be permitted to return.  I would be permitted to sit by the tree and remember when they were young.  Perhaps, I told them, if they briefly awoke they might hear the sound of rocking, and know that the old ties were still there.

The truth is that I already spend part of Christmas Eve night that way.  After the children are all gone to bed and I’ve finished wrapping and bustling, I usually sit by the dying fire for awhile.  I contemplate the lights, and think of Christmases that have gone, and the Christmases to come when my children will be grown.  My wife says I puzzle her.  For someone who loves Christmas so much, she says, I can get remarkably melancholic about it.

Remembering old days, my childhood days and my children’s, that will not come again, is part of the melancholy.  Another part is my inability to fully penetrate into the heart of Christmas.  I have never fully gone inside.

But I keep trying.  Because there is a voice that whispers.  It promises that someday I will be at the very manger, and all the old Christmases will be one.

(Trigger Warning for…everything)

SCENARIO 1:

Terrorist: Let everyone on this list of political prisoners free by midnight Friday or I will blow myself up in a public place and kill innocent bystanders.

Society: We don’t negotiate with terrorists!

SCENARIO 2:

Abused wife: He says if I ever leave him, he’ll kill himself, and I believe him.

Society: Girlfriend, you cannot let him blackmail you into spending your whole life with an abuser just because he says he’ll kill himself. He’s accountable for his own decisions, and you need to do what’s right for you and your kids.

SCENARIO 3:

LGBT Activists and Fellow-Travelers: If you don’t change your whole belief system to accommodate every conceivable sexual orientation and paraphilia, teenagers will kill themselves and their blood will be on your hands!

Society: Sounds serious, you’d better give them what they’re asking for unless you want kids to kill themselves. (more…)

One of the great modern sin complexes goes by the name of authenticity.
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I recently watched an episode of “The Jim Gaffigan Show” with a bit of dialogue that perfectly encapsulated a thought that’s been bouncing around my head for a while. For those who aren’t familiar with Jim Gaffigan, he’s a “clean” but still very famous comedian who is basically a stereotypical Irish-American Catholic dad from the post-War era; his wife is more devout than he is, but he still is fully supportive of raising his kids as Catholics, with all that entails. He plays himself on the show, which is based on his real life.

In this episode, Jim’s wife invites their local parish priest, a gregarious young man from Africa named Father Nicholas, to go to Jim’s next stand-up, without asking Jim first. Jim hates the idea because he’s convinced that having a priest in the audience will kill the mood, but he gives in and takes Father Nicholas anyway. Right before they walk into the comedy club, they have the following exchange: (more…)

In the grove in the evening, the lion heard a great racket from a father robin and his brood and went to investigate.

“Friend Robin,” the lion said, “why do you make a fuss?”

“Look at this nest, O Lion. All my work on it is ruined.” The nest was a ring of thorns the robin had woven to keep the young away from the edge. But in the middle of the ring at the bottom of the nest there was little. The pine needles and other such stuff the robin put here had mostly fallen away.

“Do not fret, friend Robin,” the lion said. “As I walked here, I saw several empty nests. I will lead you to one. Then it will be as if your mistake never happened.”

“O Lion,” the robin replied, “what a piteous state would be mine if all my work for my brood were meaningless. I cannot bear that they go to another nest as if all my work had never happened.”

“Then you will have your brood sleep in this nest?” the lion asked.

“No,” said the robin, “they would fall. It is not fair to them to suffer for my mistakes.”

“And you see no way for the nest to be repaired?” the lion asked.

“Oh no,” said the robin, “I built it wrong from the start.”

Then the king of beasts took the ring of thorns and placed it on his own head. “Let your brood nest in my mane, walled in by you’ve the ring you made.”

Someone must bear the consequences.

His Majesty has continued to ruminate on crime and punishment.

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The most powerful image of covenant in the scriptures for me is the image of marriage. Israel, we are told, is like the (often faithless) spouse of God.

A marriage is a relationship that is defined by reciprocal promises, but it isn’t just defined by reciprocal promises. It is also defined by love, passion, and what I think of as habits of affection. We often think of love as a kind of Dionysian force that assaults us, but married love is more than simply Dionysian. It is also agricultural, something that one treasures, cultivates, and seeks to protect. I think it suggestive that in English “husband” can denote both a spouse and a farmer.

-thus Nate Oman.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, my poppets, I was thinking on the same subject this morning.  (more…)

While once trying to explain to a non-Mormon friend why missionaries had such a strict dress code, I talked about showing respect for others, about norms of economic equality between rich and poor missionaries, but none of it seemed to register. Finally I said, “Look, becoming a missionary is like joining the Army. They have a collective goal, and everything is focused on that goal, to the point where things that you might otherwise find bothersome really don’t matter. If you are so concerned about individuality that you resent having to wear a uniform, then you are probably out of place there.” That made sense to him.

That sparked a years-long reflection on my part about how many aspects of Christianity in general, and Mormonism in particular, make more sense if you remember the words of the hymn, “We are all enlisted ’til the conflict is o’er.” As I’ll explain in more detail below, points of doctrine or Church history that might be troubling and confusing become less so when one realizes that we are in a spiritual war.

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His Majesty has been awfully quiet lately, but I could feeeeel the sourness swelling within him.

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One of the hard teachings of the LDS church is that God will accommodate the weaknesses of his people. One standard example of this is Samuel ordaining Saul as king for Israel, and another is that the higher priesthood was withdrawn with Moses, leaving ministry only through the Aaronic priesthood. One can imagine being taught the gospel by the ancient apostles, embracing it and teaching it to one’s children, but ultimately unable to pass the blessings of the priesthood on to further posterity, not because of any lack of desire or seeking for them, but because the priesthood has been withdrawn from the earth until times of restoration.

This pattern allows one to fully accept the authority of the LDS church’s president to enact changes in the church’s ministry, and to believe him a prophet acting as God has directed him, and to still wonder if a given change is a good change, a further unrolling of gospel fullness, or a necessary change due to the latter-day saints’ weakness in a fallen world, much to be lamented as we correctly submit to it.

I happened to notice a piece in the local paper about two Virginia cousins playing on the state champion high school baseball team who have decided on Brigham Young University as their college (link). It’s interesting in what it says about family ties and the place of BYU as part of those ties for some families.

Just before Matt Favero pulled the trigger on his college commitment Wednesday afternoon, the Madison rising senior pitcher had to make one call.

On the other end was Pete Nielsen, his cousin and fellow Warhawks rising senior. The two had played baseball together their whole life, and with Nielsen having narrowed his own recruitment to Brigham Young and Virginia, Favero thought his close relative would be interested to hear his college choice.

“I called him and said, ‘Hey Pete, I’m about to commit to BYU,’” Favero said. “I think maybe he was waiting for me to do it; I don’t know.”

In some ways, Favero was right. Even after watching Virginia hoist its first College World Series, Nielsen still felt a stronger tug on his heartstrings from BYU, the same school for which his father, Mike, once suited up and where both his and Favero’s older brothers currently play.

“When Matt told me he was committing to BYU, I was like, ‘Sweet,’” Nielsen said.

Even the Washington Post sports section is running a piece on the sweetness of Mormon life?

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The tragic vision of Mormon Christianity has four dimensions.

The first tragedy is that growth can only come through suffering and death.

The second tragedy is that free will means people can choose with finality to reject God and damn themselves.

The third tragedy is the tragedy that those we love can only grow through suffering and death and sometimes choose not to grow. Love holds us hostage to them, and it has to, or else it wouldn’t be love.

The fourth tragedy is that people miss out on growth that they are capable of, because they refuse to take the steps that would get them there. And perhaps nothing can be done about this.

That fourth tragedy deserves a little explanation. (more…)

Elder Christofferson once preached that the aim of the gospel is to draw down “perfect justice and infinite mercy” from heaven. The phrase stuck with me. Perfect justice and infinite mercy.  Infinite mercy, sure.  But who among us struts so cockily that he wants perfect justice?  Who among the wise can know that he is more sinned against than sinning?  None.

But the truly wise know, even the justice that condemns you is joyful.

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So, Elder M. Russell Ballard, one of the LDS church’s apostles, was in Santa Fe yesterday for the installation of the Catholic church’s new archbishop (link), which stirs up various thoughts. (more…)

Mrs. MC: Did you tell our son that he could head-butt Jerome [a boy in his preschool class]?

MC: No.

Mrs. MC: Why does he think you told him that? (more…)