A quarter of a mile up the road from our house, the woods begin.  On a hot summer day, we grab our water bottles and sweaters, and head out.  Within five minutes we’ve left the city behind, with its noise, its traffic, its suffocating heat.  We follow the dirt path that meanders through the firs, the jasmine, and the wild blackberry bushes, the only sound that of the gurgling stream, and birds calling to each other.

The deeper in we go, the cooler it gets.  We don our sweaters and button them up.  The kids race up ahead, my son gathering salmonberries, naming ferns and mushrooms, my daughter picking wildflowers she presents to me, or down to the stream looking for salamanders.  They jump from one rock to another, wanting to be the first to get to the opposite shore.  I watch, my heart in my throat, and caution them.  My husband laughs and tells me to relax.  He goes to join them, a protective hand hovering above the little one.

Finally we arrive at remains of the old Stone House.  This is our turning point.  Husband and I sit on a log, quench our thirst, and the little ones prepare to put on a show.  The old stone structure is their castle, the forest their kingdom, their dad and I, their subjects.

On our way back down, I offer up a little prayer of gratitude.  For my beautiful family, for the magic of childhood, for the trees, and the flowers, and the sun, and the air we breath.  I am amazed and moved to tears.  It is in the midst of nature that I feel closest to God.

early christmas morn

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.  It was taken with my iPhone rather than with a good quality camera, because a good quality camera does not offer the convenience of an iPhone.  Or fit in my back pocket.  And also, since it was around 3:00am on Christmas morn, it’s probably a good thing that it isn’t too clear.

Christmas Eve day dawned foggy and cold.  I awoke before the darkness lifted though, as I was in charge of the family lunch and the house was a mess from the previous day’s baking with my mom, sister, and husband.  The kitchen was a nightmare, with pans piled on every surface!

I cooked and cleaned and washed and laundered and set the table, and before long everyone arrived, laden with goodies.  We sat and ate and talked and laughed and ate and drank some more.  The lunch stretched into the dinner hour.  Noticing the lateness and marveling at how quickly time passes, we put a stop to all the fun and festivities and prepared ourselves for church. On Christmas Eve we always go to church.

And, oh how beautiful it was!  The brass band blew away on their trombones, their tubas and their horns.  The one hundred person choir performed O Holy Night and Handel’s Messiah, and it truly felt as though the angels of heaven descended on earth with their tidings of great joy.  My spine was tingling and my hair stood on end, from the beauty of it all.

After church we hurried home and changed into comfortable clothing.  It was time to make our rounds to the Christmas Eve parties already in session.  We didn’t linger long for we wanted to be at the party where traditional carols and carolers would be.  And so we went to my friend’s beautiful estate high up in the wooded hills.  The food was amazing and in abundance.  The company awesome!  Even Santa paid a visit, handing out bonbons to the wide-eyed children.  There we stayed caroling and listening to visiting carolers, eating, socializing, and telling stories until 4:30 Christmas morning.

The kids who had been playing with the other 20 or so children, fell asleep the moment we put them in the car.  And we did too, just as soon as we brushed our teeth and tumbled in bed, 15 minutes later.

my darling babies on Christmas Day

Christmas Day was quiet.  We got up around noon, opened our presents, and had our breakfast.  We read, watched movies and took long naps.  The skies were beautiful and blue, sunshine streaming brightly, but we just ventured out for a little bit as the wind was quick and sharp.  At night we read in front of the fire and fell asleep in a pile on the bed, the kids tucked in between us.

And so today, this second day of Christmas we celebrated some more, and tomorrow and the next we will too.  The presents that most children would receive on just one day are spread out until the twelfth night (January 5th), the eve of Epiphany.  On the 6th, on that Three King’s Day, we will have a special cake, wearing silver and gold (foil) crowns, searching in the richness of the cake for the King’s ring.

Then the season will conclude.  Our hearts will be lighter, our spirits richer, our bodies probably fatter.  But who cares?  Lent isn’t too far off.

A big thanks to all of you for your good wishes and advice. I am feeling lots better, although I don’t want to give up all the sweet loving attention and pampering that had been coming my way, yet I fear I must for they are predicting snow and even possibly an ice storm, for which I should get our cozy nest ready, and the pantry stocked up.

I’ve been thinking of writing something Christmassy because I have a collection of magical Christmas memories all waiting to be dusted off and brought into the spotlight. Shiny, glittery, and bright. Just like Christmas itself. My thoughts, however, linger on one of the local news stories, and try as I might, I cannot shake off the need to write a bit about it. Added on to all that, is a comment made by a friend yesterday morning about all the horrible things done in the name of religion, and it got me to thinking.

Is there one thing which causes more damage to a group of people than religious indoctrination? I doubt it. History is witness enough. Yet it seems that we don’t learn and allow ourselves to fall prey to it again and again. For those who come from one culture into another, it is only natural to seek out those who share the same traditions and speak the same language. Something familiar in the vast sea of unfamiliarity. Something that smells like home. And even if one doesn’t share the same ideals and wishes to be more socially liberal, there are all sorts of cultural barriers which must first be understood in order to be overcome. So one gravitates to what’s familiar.

Playing guilt like a violin, such churches were and are dictatorships really, imposing tyranny in the name of Christianity, while demanding blind faith and calling it, trust in God.  I know this to be true.  For a brief period in time it had been part of my reality.

I was watching yesterday how these parents of seven children were standing before the judge, defending their actions of whipping the backs of their teenage children until they were a bloody mess, asserting that the Bible demanded that the rod not be spared. And for what? Because their daughters had dared cut their hair when the church demanded that the hair stay long. I felt like crying for their children, and I felt like crying for them. Because while I know that monsters exist, I also know that these two adults have been so brainwashed that there was no reasoning with them. An intervention is needed. Perhaps prison will do the trick. Perhaps the complete separation from the claws of their cult is needed to bring them out of their stupor. Because they actually believe that God wants them to act thus.  Which reminds me of this great quote from Donald Miller:

The scary thing about religion is that people actually believe God is who they think He is. They have Him all figured out, mapped out. A bunch of Catholics think of him in one way, and a bunch of Baptists in another. The list goes on and on; and it makes me wonder if God created us in His image or if we created Him in ours.

Listening to the judge and watching his face, I knew that he felt the same thing. How does one reason with the unreasonable? I do not know. But it is worth a thought, for it is truly frightening to be prey to someone’s fanaticism.

I grew up in a Christian home, within a churchgoing family.  Proverbs chapter 31 verses 10 to 31: The Wife of Noble Character, was a popular choice at weddings as it served as a reminder for the bride where the essence of her femininity lay.  There was a time in my life where I could recite the passage by heart, so often had I heard it.  It is a beautiful piece that serves as the epilogue for wise King Solomon’s book of Proverbs.

While at church yesterday, I observed the women in the congregation and the reading came to mind.  These women have taken those words to heart.  They are the wives of noble character.  They are real and honest.  They are resilient, resourceful, faithful and wise. 

As loving mothers and wives, trustworthy friends, successful owners and partners in businesses, little escapes their notice.  There is strength in their arms for their tasks, generosity in their outstretched palms for those in need, words of encouragement upon their lips for the suffering. They know that feeding the soul is as important as feeding the body. There is nothing spoiled about them.  Whatever they have, they have earned.

There is a strong fiber within their graciousness.  The women of my mother’s generation have endured a lot.  They speak with conviction, and all too often they are right.  Their moral code does not waiver.  They understand that it is our hearts that weigh us down, yet they go forward, loving through it all.   

Their lamp does not go out at night.  Praying over their loved ones, they invoke blessings over their children.  Their households are safe havens, their kitchens warm.  They are teachers and nurturers and lovers.  And I wish to be like them.  

Shouldn’t church be, to quote Anne Lamott, “a kind of spiritual chemotherapy?” When one leaves from there shouldn’t one feel renewed and invigorated?  Ready to tackle if not the world, at least one’s immediate problems? I believe so. And so many times it is.  Yet, it also isn’t.  I went to church a few Sundays ago, for the first time in a long time, and despite the sermon, the songs that never fail to beg for my tears, the many faces of friends I haven’t seen in a while, I left dejected and almost wishing that I hadn’t gone.

Growing up in the church community I did was not an easy task.  Not just because people talked and everyone knew what everyone else was doing (and being rather judgmental while they were at it), or because it was so suffocatingly patriarchical, but also because church was the only acceptable social interaction allowed to the children of it’s members. Mothers marketed their daughters to the ‘good boys’ from the ‘good families’ by accentuating their daughters assets. And daughters learned from a young age where their strength lay. Regardless of the finesse about it, the Sunday service was a parade. A test of the ‘at home’ finishing school, if you will.  Very few girls lacked that subtle sexiness.  That certain way of walking, certain way of smiling.  That enjoyment of being feminine. Yes, respectable and dignified, it is church we are talking about after all, yet nonetheless.

I left soon after I got married.  For too long I had one foot in and one foot out, weighing, deciding.  Whatever spiritual connection I had experienced on Sunday was gone by Monday morning.  I figured that I had outgrown it.  It was time to move on.  Sure I missed the people, my friends, my family. Their little idiosyncrasies.  But I didn’t want to raise my children there and become a victim of indifference.  And I kept asking myself why and when had that awareness of propriety that had existed for a place of worship been replaced?  Was it just generational?  Or cultural?  Or both?

Here is the conundrum, not just for this generation of young girls and their mothers, but for the church leaders as well, and I cannot ask this enough: Are we at fault when our daughters come to us with problems in their marriage? When we ourselves have issues we can’t resolve? Shouldn’t we hold ourselves accountable if not to each other, then to a higher power?  To God?

There’s plenty of sexual baggage in just being a woman. Our reputations have been tarnished for centuries by mere acts, miniscule in comparison.  Let church be our safe harbor.  Our place to worship our God.  Give Him the honor and respect He deserves. And let’s show our children that that’s what we do in His house.

I did say a while ago that I will not let myself be tricked into what I’m about to do. I suppose I did not realize the level of misunderstanding others have about my political and christian beliefs, and how quickly tempers would flare on a day as important as this one has been. So in an attempt to answer everyone’s emails and texts, I am resorting to this blog. After all is said, I hope you all have your answers and we can move on to another topic.

To a large extent, we are all products of our upbringing.  Our beliefs have been passed down from our parents to us and they have become our truths. Some of us take it all in without blinking and some of us question things. It’s in our nature. I belong to the category of those questioning.  Not because, as some suggest, I’m opposed to running with the herd.  Rather because I have tried too long to run with it, fully aware that the herd was running in the wrong direction.  

I was disenchanted for quite a while and sick of myself for doing what many considered the proper thing: avoiding the greater truth at all costs. I didn’t want my future to become my past, over before I had a chance to do anything about it. Paulo Coelho says in The Pilgrimage: “Only the person who listens to the sounds of the moment is able to make the right decisions. We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.”  

I had decided that I did not wish to be blinded by justifications of power and interest any longer.  The getting and the having, a relentless claim of one thing over another.  I couldn’t see what it had to do with being a christian.  And it definitely did not make me a better person.

I realize that many of you are well versed in the popular theology of the day. I don’t have any claims on most of that.  With the exception of this: why is there a need to promote a prosperity theology?  Isn’t this secular pay-off for our faith in complete conflict with the teachings of Jesus?  So many seem to confuse right wing politics and an economic theory with what Jesus actually expects, which is so clearly outlined in St. Matthew chapter 5.

Throughout the last administration we had been fed on hatred and paranoia.  The real Jesus has been silenced.  And people who should have known better inhaled it because the ones in power called themselves Christians.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.-John 3:16

It is an astounding truth: God embodied Himself into one like us, so that we may comprehend His love.  

Matthew 22:38-39, Luke 6:31

(Bet you all didn’t think I had it in me, but I know my Bible!)