Christmas and Fulfillment

Santa wants You to do your Duty. From Blake Huggins

Happy Christmastime, everybody! Now that Thanksgiving's over, you can put up your lights and listen to obnoxious music without drawing the ire of Holiday Celebration Time Period Purists like myself.

Good post by Rod Dreher this morning, "Media, Black Friday and the Last Shopper," in which he, besides detailing the media's complicity in creating a consumption free-for-all after Thanksgiving, relates this sad comment on the state of the American Shopper Psyche:

Carr's ending is a jolt, suggesting a consumerist version of Nietzsche's Last Man:

Even consumption may have limits. Mr. Cohen said that in his 32 years interviewing consumers in malls during the holiday season, he had never heard what he did this year. "People really have no idea what they want," he said.

They don't even want anything. They want to want. Our popular culture, driven by news and entertainment media, and advertising, has stimulated their appetites, such that all they know now is appetite. I don't know whether it's more pathetic or frightening. Maybe it's frightening because it's pathetic: the Last Shopper.

Is this what the Consumerist Experience has come down to? Originally, man could view his possessions as a blessing, a means towards seeing Someone greater, but then we elevated material goods as an end themselves.

The act of consumption has become an end itself.

Now, apparently, our alienation has increased by another order: the goods themselves are meaningless¹, and the act of consumption has become an end itself. The Urge to Appropriate has become so generalized and ingrained that it has become our prime motivation. All we know how to do is abate the need, at least temporarily. This bears striking similarity to my current course material in medical school.

Addiction.

Consider for contrast this video my church just played yesterday from the Advent Conspiracy:

Interesting opportunity and needed wake-up call. We would be wise to remember Paul's words in Phillippians:

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

How often does our culture do the opposite? Whether in want or wealth, we are consumed with bitterness and envy. and as the fading economy forces us to live with less materially, what will we do relationally?

A friend of mine had a blurb on her GChat away message asking if it was ok to start up a Christmas Countdown. I say yes. We have 25 days. A brief amount of time. What will we do to commemorate the season? What will we do to heal the wounds of the mad pursuit? Will we:

• call up friends we have neglected, whether due to indifference in the face of a crowded schedule, or avoidance in the wake of old conflict?
• show concern to those we'd otherwise ignore, as if one could merit our love (how often others have cared for us, when we were insolent or ignorant)?²
• give money, when we'd rather keep money?
• cleanse our hearts so we could love guests amidst their messy lives, rather than cleansing our homes for fear guests wouldn't love us amidst our messy lives?³
• look for ways to bear another's suffering?⁴

Ostentatious verbiage to "put Christ back in Christmas" does little.⁵ We, and those around us, are best served by putting Christ back in our hearts.

Footnotes:

1. You want meaningless? Check this out. Wrong on so many levels. Kids do not need to make numerous copies of their artwork--even if it looks like a Jackson Pollock, it doesn't mean you can sell the prints for decor. Plus, why are we giving kids "adult"-like toys? Why are we accelerating childhood into miniature adulthood, replete with office supplies to match? Next they'll be wanting cell phones. Oh, wait... I had to use cups and string.

2. Matt 18:21-35

3. Luke 10:38-42

4. Mother Teresa said:

Once they came to a door and no one answered. The woman had been dead for 5 days and no one knew - except the odor in the hallway. So many people are known for the number on their door. The worst disease today is not leprosy; it is being unwanted, being left out, being forgotten. The greatest scourge is to forget the next person, to be so sufficated with the that we have no time for the lonely Jesus - even a person in our own family that needs us. Maybe if I had not picked up that one dying person on the street, I would not have picked up the thousands. We must think ONE, ONE. That is the way to begin.

5. I appreciate their sentiment, but no one else does, and that is precisely the reason institutionalized drives like this fail. In other words, there is a diseconomy of scale to cultural change: the bigger an entity, the less effective it is, primarily because "sentiment" is the first thing expunged from a petition. Emotion, care, and concern cannot be communicated via an organization, and an intimate and living interpersonal connection is absolutely necessary if hearts and minds will ever be changed. This is not to say that individual people cannot create that connection as members of a group, but the focus should be on the organization's resources reinforcing the message of love already communicated through the person. (Organizational resources are why larger organizations may have economies of scale (bigger equals better) in regards to financial concerns, but cultural change must be local). Too often, the member becomes subservient to the group, a nameless, faceless amoeba of mission statements and donation requests.

Embers

This latest post stems from a couple of things I've read recently. Please read this completely before you continue:


"Can You Call Me Back Later?"
by Michael Brendan Dougherty
of Surfeited with Dainties

†††

Cliche is a poison to the witness of the church. I suppose that some cliche is inevitable in any group. And further, there is some comfort in the familiar, in words that have roots, that have a heritage, that are not some modish novelty. But when the words of a rich heritage are hollowed out by time and careless overuse, they degrade into cliche. They are all form, shape, and contour, but no substance. Divorced from the truth they once bore, our words evoke little more than sweet memories. Meanwhile, the advertisements beckon, the magazines expose, and the televisions screech. The brothers and sisters of our abused generation, enticed by the offer of the 'good life' attained by unending consumption (of clothes, degrees, furniture, sexual partners, beer), cling to the hope of tomorrow's new thing, or, if hope is lost, sink into despair. Most probably suffer from a mix of both--the vague uneasiness that a deeper richness is attainable, but the uncertainty of where to look. Perhaps if only they swallow hard, clench their teeth, and look beyond the horizon for sunrise, this present gloomy fog will pass. Only a bright light can pierce the darkness. If the best we can offer is a well-rehearsed line, they won't listen. They've seen the ads. They know a slick slogan when they hear one.

I told him that “the Lord put this on my heart for him.” He seemed to take that
to heart, even though I was trying to relieve my conscience of him.

Christ told us about letting light shine before others, and the perils of keeping it hidden. Don't our hackneyed tokens of love, our half-hearted consolations, re-entomb the risen Christ? Don't we all light lamps and hide them under bowls? "Look at the great deeds I've done for you, Lord! I've saved the oil! I've trimmed the wick!" But we let the light fade and slowly extinguish. The sweet smoke may please us like the burnt offerings of old, but the cooling embers' glow leaves us all in darkness. We are the new Pharisees, sacrificing our friends at the altar, and asking of God if it has appeased his anger with us. Has the conscience been cleared? The tongue drips love, but the heart is still.

I barely had enough money to feed myself. How could I protect him from abuse at
work or home?

Is that it? Are we really that different than so many people we are trying to help? Do we, too, with gritted teeth and clenched jaw, wait out the same storm they do? When we see the tension and pain in others' lives, are we plagued by the tension of our own doubt, fear, and callousness? When we peer at another's creased face, does it, like a mirror, reflect our own weakness and inabilities? A tongue that knows not what to say? Eyes that want to look away?

†††

At this point, take a break from my post here. The two blogs I have been keeping up with during my Lenten otherwise-fast from the "blogosphere" are David Kuo's J-Walking, and Anne Jackson's Flowerdust, who both have, with about a dozen other bloggers, travelled to Uganda to work for a few weeks in the slums. Read David's first encounter here before continuing:

"Snapshots"
by David Kuo
of J-Walking

...I watched her and watched her... left right there... alone on her dirty
blanket, surrounded by circumstances that aspire to be called squalid...

One may throw up his hands in futility. What good is caring when so little can be done? Why bare one's soul, only to have it pierced by the tatters of anothers' wounds--wounds that we have no idea how to heal? Is heartache the price of love? Perhaps it is more than that--that such heartache is not the tradeoff, but the definition of love--brothers of brokenness.

Still, we recoil. Is it narcissism? The desire that, if one is healed, we would be the healer? That we would cast out the spirits? And if we cannot, don't we leave the recalcitrant demoniacs, for fear that we would have to face our own need and brokenness too? "My name is Legion, for we are many." Do we avert our eyes from those of Legion, because he may tell us he possesses us, too? The creased faces of our friends may mirror not only our hearts, but our souls.

Perhaps this is why the Lord tells us we must die to ourselves through His grace. Nothing else can break through our own brokenness and lead us to true love. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." We may aspire to that, but it is vanity. Christ is the healer, the one who died in our place. We can only offer so much less:

Dearest friend, I cannot fix your brokenness. I can not bind the wounds.

But I cannot do nothing.

I cannot die for you, but at least I will die with you, for I cannot live knowing the dead sleep alone.

When Christ told us to let our light shine, he did not command us to light the whole world, but merely to light the house. That's the best we can do. And perhaps, together, room by room, house by house, we can build that city on the hill, rising above the slums and squalor, a beacon in the night. Perhaps we can remind others--and ourselves--that though the sky is darkened and the storm clouds loom, the Morningstar will soon return, ushering in the day that never ends, when all wounds are healed.

†††

Two men huddle underneath the lights in an empty parking lot. The snow swirls along the ground, sparkling a pale, sickly green underneath the halogen lights, making the night seem even colder than normal. The two men spoke briefly, with whispering wind muffling their words.

The taller man waved goodbye, and started for his car, and the other stepped back to collecting his grocery carts. It was cold out, and the tall man was busy with more than enough troubles, but something stopped him after a step or two. The wind carried the smoke of freshly-split pine. He looked across the street, where a small house was filled with the glow of firelight. He looked back at the man with the shopping carts.

"Oh man, bet that would be nice!"

The other looked up from his carts, and flashed a brief grin.

"Yeah." His breath wafted in the air, like something burned in his chest. He stared a moment, and looked back at his cart. "Well, I'll be seein ya."

"Yeah. Bye, John."