Buechner's Gift of Christmas Imagery

Some good friends gave me a book by Frederick Buechner entitled "Beyond Words." It is a sort of dictionary on themes, occasions, people... I was searching my bookshelf for something to read during my holiday travels and I decided to read the entry for "Christmas."

It has been a few months since I have cracked the cover on this particular book. And every time I do, I find that it is an excellent decision. Every thing I have read in this book is brilliant and insightful and at least 75% of the time the things I read in this book change my life.

Last night was one such incident. Buechner's words on Christmas were like none I had ever heard. A relief from the constant loop of carols on all the radio stations, relief from the bumper-to-bumper traffic in the Target parking lot, even relief from the pious rituals that I had been a part of since childhood. Here is an excerpt:

Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event is indeed--as a matter of cold, hard fact--all its cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God...who for us and for our salvation," as the Nicene Creed puts it, "came down from heaven."

"Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed." This image literally made me exclaim aloud, "Whoa!" in my living room. This is something I can wrap my mind around. In fact, this image is something that my mind will not let go of. Heaven and incarnation and angels by the manger are more difficult to grasp, but "a skull you could crush one-handed" is vivid and real to me.

It makes me think of Annie Dillard's essay "Living Like Weasels." She locks eyes with a weasel in the woods and writes this of the encounter: "It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into the black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep our skulls."

Apparently brain and skull imagery is very tangible for me and stays with me. I read Dillard's essay for the first time in high school and it hasn't left me since. I feel that the same will be true of Buechner's take on the Christmas story.

Handy Dandy

Yesterday I really was going to work. Honest. I had this time set aside and I was going to buckle down and get to writing my painfully boring educationally informative articles for Remilon. But I couldn't stop looking around my apartment at all the things that needed to be done. So, I decided to take matters into my own handy hands and here's what happened:

1. I installed a new doorknob on our inner door so that it will latch and keep out the frigid entryway air.
2. I hung our smoke detector. Sounds easy, right? But look at the size of the instructions for the smoke detector compared to the size of the instructions for the doorknob installation! Good grief. I absolutely did not read them. I wrote my own: Insert battery, push test button, nail onto wall.

3. The main event: I installed the handles on our cupboards that I have been going crazy without! We have been wedging our fingers on the sides of the drawers for months now to pry them open and I had just had enough. So, I did it!

Before:
During:
After:
Tada! I am super proud and so relieved to have them done. If you can't tell by my crazy drill-face. :)

The Bluest of Skies and the Grayest of Pigeons

This morning I walked to a new coffee shop to try to get some work done. And, as you can see, I ended up blogging instead. It's just that the sky was so perfectly blue and the pigeons so perfectly perched and gray that I had to write about it. I could tell it was one of those burst into song in a Disney movie sort of mornings--which is rare because I am SO not the morning person. But the sun was shining and the little brown sparrow-type birds were chirping and fluttering about and it was enough to make even me appreciative of rising early.

It's cold in Chicago, that's true. I nearly froze my fingers off trying to text during my morning stroll. And I had to grab onto people's fences a few times when I slipped on the icy sidewalks. (I think I'm going to carry rock salt in my purse and leave a trail of it on my normal walking routes...) But the sun is shining so it all seems much less brutal. It's nothing compared to months of gray and grueling Michigan winter misery. At least, not yet. Granted, we've only had winter weather for approximately one full week. But I'm hopeful. (Morning happiness? Winter optimism? Who is this girl?) It is warm and dry at the Knockbox Cafe and time for another dose of "isn't humanity beautiful?"

I was walking into the coffee shop and there was someone behind me so I held the door for him and then stood off to the side deciding what to get while he ordered. I soon learned that his name was Miguel and he had a deep and abiding love for grilled cheese sandwiches. He ordered about 6 things to go and kept saying things like "throw some of this in there. add some applesauce. how much are chips?" and then turned to me and said "what are you ordering?" I said I was looking at the zucchini walnut bread so he said "I'll buy her bread thing" to the barista. I was a little caught off guard and said "thanks so much!"

He said I was welcome and stuck out his hand for a shake. "I'm Miguel" he said "but you can call me Mickey." I introduced myself as well and he started talking about how there isn't enough kindness in the world and how he tries to be kind because otherwise "it's all just wickedness." He saw a man in a wheelchair asking for money and it made him sick that no one even looked at him. I wholeheartedly agreed and said "I know! I mean, even if you don't have anything to give him, how about a little acknowledgment that we're all human." Mickey replied "Yeah, you'd think human beings would be nicer to each other."

The barista brought out his sandwich, etc. and I said, "Mickey, it was nice to meet you. Thanks again." And chose the seat in the place that looked like it might have the most productive energy. Mickey walked out with a "take care" and I sat down, encouraged by our interaction and thankful for my breakfast.

It's just so gorgeous in here today! I think I'll be coming to this place more often. Ok, enough gushing. Off to work now... Pictures of my 2nd annual "first big snow" walk coming soon.