Random Holiday Pics

Lutheran Hymn Revival: For Clara Mary Evangelina

Lutheran Hymn Revival: For Clara Mary Evangelina: For Jon and Emily, but most especially for our new sister in Christ, the holy and righteous Clara, washed in the water with the Word. Mayb...

Do OR Done?

In the sermon for Christmas Day Divine Service, along with many other cultural meanings for Christmas time, I consider "A Christmas Carol" in passing:
And while stories made into movies like Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas  Carol" are religiously watched  year and year out, and may even be worthwhile and noble in terms of a moral message and virtuous living, none of these things are the reason for and true meaning of Christmas.

Truth be told, I enjoy watching this book adaptation each year. And I also realize the version I watch is no where near as good (or Christian image filled) as the Dicken's orginal. But I have always had some sort of uneasiness in my stomach by the end of watching it. 

So I did a little Googling on the topic and found the following blog post. I thought it worth passing on to all 13 subscribers to ForgivenOlsons. 

Happy last few days of Advent!

J

The Meaning of Christmas: Comparing Dickens and Handel

The past week has been full of memories for me and my family. On Sunday afternoon we traveled to the Navy Academy chapel in Annapolis to hear Handel’s Messiah performed. The chapel is stunning and the performance was beautiful. On Wednesday night we traveled to D.C. to Ford’s Theater to see a performance of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Ford’s is very small and intimate and the play was incredibly well acted. The empty president’s box elevated above the stage is a reminder that lends further eeriness to Dickens’ haunted intentions.

Both experiences will live long in my memory.

But while I was sitting in Ford’s theater I was struck by the contrasting Christmas messages between Dickens and Handel.

I’ll begin with Dickens.

Dickens

For Dickens, Christmas is about getting unshackled from materialism to appreciate all the blessed relationships we’ve been given. That’s a very good message. And in my attempt to further discover Dickens’ understanding of the meaning of Christmas, I was led to his short book,The Life of Our Lord. He wrote it not primarily to be published but to be read by his children each Christmas, thus giving us a glimpse into the urgency of its annual, seasonal message. The book is Dickens’ retelling of Christ’s birth, life, death on the cross, and resurrection. And quite frankly, most of it is very good.

Yet here is the final paragraph of the book, the punch line, the meaning of Christmas – the meaning of the cross and all of Christianity – in summary:

Remember! — It is Christianity To Do Good always — even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbour as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them Do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful, and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them, or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to shew that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in Peace.

For Dickens, the value of Christmas, and the Savior’s life and work it appears to me, is its ability to produce in us moral reform, enabling us to becoming better, do better, and ultimately to appease God, pleasing him with our moral reforms and effecting his forgiveness for our sins so that we can die in peace. You can hear all these theological assumptions echoing in A Christmas Carol, even into the final paragraph where we are assured that Scrooge “lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards.” Personal reform was the main point.

Handel

Then there is Handel’s Messiah. Here are some selected lyrics, which are passages drawn directly from the KJV Bible. Hardly any commentary is needed:

Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. [John 1:29]

He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: He hid not His face from shame and spitting. [Isaiah 53:3, 50:6]

Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows! He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him. And with His stripes we are healed. [Isaiah 53:4-5]

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way. And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. [Isaiah 53:6]

He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of Thy people was He stricken. [Isaiah 53:8]

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body yet, in my flesh shall I see God. For now is Christ risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep. [Job 19:25 and 1 Corinthians 15:20]

Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. [1 Corinthians 15:21]

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. [1 Corinthians 15:22]

O death, where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. [1 Corinthians 15:55-57]

If God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us. [Romans 8:31-34]

And then it all closes with this magnificent scene of eternal, angelic worship:

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory and blessing. Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. Amen. [Revelation 5:12-14]

So beautiful!

I’m grateful Handel closed with yet another reference to the finished work of Christ. His entire message is soaked with the substitutionary blood of Christ. Jesus was born to die in our place, and died to be raised from the dead, and was raised to guarantee our bodily resurrection. In Handel’s work our eternal hope gets firmly placed on the shoulders of the Christ-child born in Bethlehem. Messiah is a magnificent work.

Contrast

I don’t know much about the life of Dickens, but clearly he was no mere deist. He pressed his children to see the importance of Christ’s incarnation, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, and even the persecution of the early church. He seems to have a high regard for Scripture, and for this I am thankful. But it also seems that he boils down the meaning of Christmas to say little more than that Christ is our moral pattern to help us live Christianly.

By contrast, for Handel, the birth of the Savior marks the beginning of the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies. As that eternal plan begins to unfold on earth, Christ must be born, he must die a bloody death, and he must defeat the grave because we are desperate and helpless sinners. The entire salvific purposes of God begin to unfold in the Incarnation, in the birth of Christ.

For Dickens, Christmas is a reminder that we are all Scrooges, self-centered ungrateful nobs who yet have some hope of appeasing God through our personal reform.

For Handel, Christmas reminds us that we are all sinners, we are “in Adam,” and for that we are helpless to stop God’s righteous judgment towards our sin. Yet there is One who has paid the price to quench God’s wrath on our behalf.

In both A Christmas Carol and Messiah, all our warm and tranquil Hallmark Christmas sentimentality gets blasted by cold reality. Death is coming for us all, and the grave is approaching quickly.

Dickens wants people to die in peace.

Handel wants people raised from the dead.

Dickens’ hope is rooted in the future — in the finished work of moral reform necessary in our lives.

Handel’s hope is rooted in the past — the full and complete work of Christ on our behalf.

Dickens’ message is “do.”

Handel’s message is “done.”

Dickens’ work is good for what it is, a seasonal, warmhearted morality tale. For that I find it agreeable and commendable. But Handel’s work comprehends the scope of the hope-giving and guilt-freeing meaning of Christmas. For that I find eternal comfort, and hope for my ongoing battle against my inner self-centered, thankless Scrooge.

C's First Week Review

Now that C's passed her first week outside the womb (actually, she's just reached Day 11, but it's close enough to a week. Hey, I'm postpartum), I can decisively say this:

• Third babies are much easier than the first.
• Girls rock.
• Parents of third babies are much more laid-back. 
• Sleeping infants on your chest are the best thing ever. 
• Girls rock.
• I can't really remember anything about the first six weeks after P was born, other than the baptism. And also that we watched John Adams in its entirety in one day. I think. That's what new parent sleep deprivation can do. But C has eaten like a champ and slept like a champ, so I'm actually spoiled; we're only up two or three times at night!
• People who cook, clean, and/or watch/play with/take care of other children in the first week postpartum deserve special privileges in heaven.
• Ditto the last one.
• Ditto the one before the last one.
• Girls rock.

C is Home!

 C's coming home outfit

 Unpacking C

 E & C

 C & T

 T & S

17 pics of this by S

Brotherly love for Little Sister

And Then There were 3!

E with our beautiful children (boys laughing at the photographer!) 

We are so pleased to announce the arrival of our lovely daughter C, born at 10:39 p.m. on December 7. After just over ten hours of labor, our "little" girl showed her face--and the rest--to the world, all 8 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 3/4 inches of her. She was baptized into Christ's death and resurrection at just after 12:30 a.m. on December 8.

Bigger than her two brothers at birth, C has been a great blessing to our family already! We look forward to many smiley times, God willing, in the coming weeks, months, and years. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers!

Brothers, Together

It's been so fun in the last few weeks to see how P and S have grown and changed toward each other. They've always played well together (other than the typical "You take my toy when I want it and I'll sit on you"); now that S is learning new words every day, though, their relationship has progressed to actual conversations between them. Few things are as heart-warming for Mommy to hear than P going down the hall saying, "Do you want to play with this truck, S?" and S saying, "Yes. Tanks." :) I tried to capture one of their exchanges here, and it didn't quite work (you can hear P say, "Can I come in?" and S say, "Yeah," which is about it), but you might get a feel for what we increasingly hear every day.

And in other S linguistic news: his latest amazing comment has been "Christmas tree. Fall down. Naughty." You can probably guess why he's said that.

P.S. FYI: These videos seem to only work in Safari or Google Chrome, and not in Internet Explorer.

Dancing Shoes and The Nutcracker

About a month ago, while I was going through basement boxes, I found my pointe shoes. Pointe shoes, for the uninitiated, are the fabric, leather, and glue-constructed, box-toed shoes that older ballet dancers wear that enable them to dance, literally, on the tops of their toes. I took a picture for posterity's sake.

I'd kept these old, worn shoes, I suppose, as sort of relics of a cherished time. I'd left sticky notes on the undersides of a few:


"First Pair--
9 years old
June Conn School of Dance"

"1996 Nutcracker
Baker School
Martzipan & Flower
(Later, Mom chalaced [sic] these & another pair 3 times! They shrunk!)"

I kept only one of my first pair, and I obviously was proud of the fact that by the time I performed in my last Nutcracker, I had to rotate pairs to get the best wear out of them, and even then my mom added a clear shellac to the shank to preserve their life. (All pointe shoes wear out after extensive use, and shellacking them can keep the shanks--the part that extends across the bottom of the foot--and the box--the flat part that dancers stand upon when in full relevé--from weakening more quickly. Evidently the shellac also ended up shrinking the fabric on my shoes, too.)

So with my shoes in mind, and in this the season of The Nutcracker, I'm indulging in a little walk down memory lane as I remember with fondness my years in ballet and the many productions in which I participated. A little history: when my family lived in southeastern Kentucky in the late 1980s, my sister and I, then first or second graders, began taking ballet lessons from dancers with the Lexington Ballet who would drive to our rural area once a week. We'd meet in an upstairs room above the fire station. I can still remember sitting in a circle with a bunch of little girls, my feet palm to palm, so to speak, gently flapping my knees, trying to be flexible enough to get them to touch the floor. The teacher would ask us what stickers we imagined we had on our heels. I dimly remember talking about butterflies and rainbows and fairies on mine. The incongruity of our setting belied the fine instruction we received; in retrospect, my parents and I were prepared only for classical, extremely high-quality ballet instruction after that.

We went to a production of Cinderella in Lexington at some point, and I will never forget how entranced I was--the music, the costumes, the loveliness. I wanted to be a dancer after that. Angelina Ballerina was a favorite (new back then!) book, as was one I found a few years later at our local library called A Very Young Dancer. That book, more than anything, made me want to visit New York, see Balanchine's production, and participate myself in The Nutcracker (but probably not at the New York City Ballet). Interestingly, this recent article on A Very Young Dancer includes this tidbit: “As a girl from Kentucky,” Ms. Whelan said, “this book literally opened the door to my fascination with New York City, ballet and Balanchine." That's how I reacted, too.

We moved several times, and I was blessed to take lessons for about seven years, including at the now-closed Lancaster Ballet and a short stint at BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. I participated in countless Nutcrackers, in nearly every divertissement in the second act. My favorite was dancing as a Flower in The Waltz of the Flowers.  By the time I finished junior high school, though, I realized that I didn't want to be a professional dancer, and other interests--singing, mostly--were crowding out my time. I had to stop abruptly when I was fifteen due to continuing knee problems, and at the time, though I'd already decided I'd want to stop eventually, the rift between my pre-ballet life and my post-ballet life was stark. In some ways I had to figure out what made me unique outside of that ballet descriptor. (As a side note, Stephanie's experience after A Very Young Dancer was sad but common, I think. So many dancers don't "make it." I'm thankful  that my memories are good.)

 It truly seems like another life to me when I think about it now. At my peak participation, I attended three three-hour classes a week, from six until nine o'clock at night. (My wonderful parents were, needless to say, extremely supportive.) The slightly pungent air of big, open studios; the piano accompaniment keeping time and moving us; the feel of the wood or steel barre under fingers; the laughter of camaraderie between aching dancers; the tiny, quiet, authoritative ballet mistresses showing us movements that we learned instantly--tiny moments, snapshots in my mind, are what I remember now. I learned countless lessons from my time as a young dancer--an appreciation for beautiful music, for performance, for precision, for the effort seeming effortlessness requires. For smiling through pain. For how transformative and--I don't like this word, but it fits here--empowering dancing can be for children, even awkward teenagers (boys and girls). If my children ever express an interest in dance, particularly ballet, I hope we can provide that experience for them.

Lots of sweat, pain, and joy in these shoes.

So back to The Nutcracker. Over our first Thanksgiving of our married life, Papa and I--who were living in Connecticut at the time--went to New York City for the weekend. We saw the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, walked the streets of downtown (but decided against the three hour wait to get to the top of the Empire State Building), did some shopping, ate a 9 p.m. Thanksgiving feast at the Waldorf-Astoria (because we figured this would never happen again), and generally had a great time. Papa, in all of his kindness, agreed that the one show we would see was George Balanchine's The Nutcracker performed by the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. What a great guy. This had been a dream of mine, obviously, since childhood. And it was magic. Though I have no pictures of that visit, I have the 50th anniversary commemorative book of Balanchine's production (which was the season we saw it). And when I pulled it out the other day, I couldn't stop smiling. I hope you all can see a local production sometime, particularly if it's a traditional staging. So happy, happy visions of sugarplums!