To Consume or Be Consumed, That is the Question!

What a bizarre time this is; the Christmas season.Never is there a period of such polar opposites as there are at this time of year.

All around us we are bombarded with the imperative to consume, collect, gobble, and grasp. There are lines of impatient, honking, beeping, cranky souls snaking through the shops and malls all around us. Incredible pressure is laid on people to find this or that gift for this or that niece or nephew, cousin or coworker. It can bring out the absolute worst in people. I watched a woman in her 50s sitting in her car with her elderly mother curse out a car behind her for honking at her… one honk. And it was one of those friendly little honks too. Grandma just kinda slid deeper into her seat, clutching her purse.Then comes Sunday, and we roll off to Church and hear just the opposite. “It is better to give than to receive” – “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” – “wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.”

The radio plays as we whiz through the thousands of cars in the parking lot, like vultures looking for an open space… “Away in a manger, no crib for his bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.”We drive home flustered, past little glowing, plastic nativity scenes of a man and a woman kneeling in the snow, gazing down at a little plastic Child. A whole plastic, glowing mob of souls gathers round the Babe; kings and shepherds, the rich and the poor (and occasionally a big plastic Snowman or the Grinch, which is a whole other story).

What do we make of all this? What is this all about?

Yesterday I was out shopping and trying to stay focused, trying to recall what we are moving towards in these next couple of days. Standing in a massive snake of a line at Borders, with Mr. Cranky Pants on his cell phone behind me, a youth in angst blurting “Merry (expletive) Christmas” to my left, as only a youth in angst can do, I prayed for a great awakening.I prayed it would all vanish and we could all find ourselves kneeling in that cold cave in that backwater town of Bethlehem. Unplugged, unknown, and alone…. looking down at a very poor couple who had to find a place to rest their newborn baby… and the only “space” they could find was a feeding trough for animals in a stable.Scandalous. That would make the news, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that stop us in our tracks?

We’re told to be good consumers, to boost this failing economy. But this consumption of things will no more help our country than it will satisfy our souls. Someone else has come with a better plan for our salvation. He lays in a manger (the word means “to eat”) and he is born in Bethlehem, which means literally “house of bread.”And he looks at us all, racing about stuffing our stockings and stuffing our trunks with things. And he says, “Take and eat, take and drink; this is my Body, given up for you.”

We are invited to consume, to eat and by eating become one with the Love that has become our Food.This is the Love that truly satisfies! This is the Feast of Christmas!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Flashback Episode: The ICLAs are Coming! The ICLAs are coming!

(Originally posted in December 2006.)

Well friends, Christmas fever has once again gripped the nation, and it’s hotter than a string of big bulbed Christmas lights from the 70’s! I think you’ll agree with me in noting that THIS Christmas is going to be bigger, bolder, and brassier than ever! Why? Because of INFLATABLE CHRISTMAS LAWN ART!! (The aforementioned oddities will hitherto be referred to as ICLA’s)

Now I don’t know if the ICLA’s have invaded neighborhoods west of the Mississippi yet, or even across the sea (any reports?) but let me tell YOU…. they are crawling all over the mid-eastern seaboard. Maybe they came from Sweden? IKEA? ICLA? Whatever the case may be, these massive Christmas mutants are taking over! Picture Godzilla with a wreath around his neck! Big, puffy pieces of plastic in yuletide shapes. We’ve got Santas, Frostys, Elves, and Reindeer…. even the Grinch gets a spot on the lawn!

Sure, they seem kinda cute, but don’t be fooled America! Remember the story of the Trojan Horse! Some of these Christmas creatures are bigger than the houses they are “decorating.” I’m not kidding. I saw one peeking into the third story of a south Philly rowhome, and he looked HUNGRY.

Thankfully ICLA’s can easily be unplugged, or tackled by a 9 year old (which is hilarious to watch). But imagine if these things were intelligent! Think about it, America, for two seconds!

Now this is just my conspiracy theory; it’s one among thousands, granted. But I believe the ICLA’s are actually filled with a mind-altering gas that has been created by none other than the BIGGIEMAN! (click for previous post on America’s most fiendish foe!)

That’s right! Unbeknownst to the Jones’, their “front yard Frosty” is really puffed up with a deadly toxin that seeps out into the neighborhood, hypnotizing us all into thinking that BIGGER is always better. What happens next? Open your eyes America! Do you remember these gargantuan Grinchs five years ago? Were there any super-sized Santas on your street even four years ago? And look at us now. I feel like a hobbit sometimes just walking to the deli. And some of these ICLA’s, especially the reindeer, their eyes just seem to follow you! IT’S DOWNRIGHT CREEPY!

Here’s My Battle Plan…

Let’s form a resistance movement! We’ll call ourselves the POPCIOWAMWOODs! (which of course stands for People Only Putting Candles In Our Windows And Maybe Wreaths On Our Doors).

We’ll show that BIGGIEMAN! Bigger is sometimes better, but smaller and simpler is best. After all, that’s how He came into the world, isn’t it?

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Let Freedom Bling?

I was in the city yesterday, waiting to pick up the Mrs. and sitting outside of Independence Hall. Fitting, eh? Today this historically rich city of Philadelphia will be booming and blasting with fireworks and all shimmery with swirling “glow in the dark” necklaces for kids, and cheesy fries. Lots of cheesy fries. It’s gonna be big! Bigger than all of us! It’s America’s Birthday!

We all like BIG. I think in a positive sense it reminds us that we’re small. We discover that we’re part of a BIGGER picture; that the World isn’t just our little brush stroke of a life in one corner of the painting. We play a part in a big Glorious Canvas and are members of one BIG human family. This puts all of our “little” problems into perspective. Or at least it should.

But when BIG becomes quantifiable in the amount of stuff we gather, rather than qualifiable in the measure of love we receive or give, then we’ve got problems. This is a BIG deal. The freedom we celebrate today is the freedom to choose one of these paths. A life, family, country, or world will rise and fall, thrive or thwart their destiny if it chooses poorly.

Ah Freedom…. it’s the unique and inviolable gift that makes humans human. We can choose. We can move. We can be heroic or demonic – selfless, or selfish. We can be super-human by cooperation and abandonment to the Divine Grace that flows from Jesus, or we can reject Him and hence slip into being sub-human, never “awakening” to our divine potential, our promise of sharing in the divine nature. The mystery of mysteries is that God took this tremendous risk in creating us this way! He knew we could fall. But so that we might RISE… God Himself took the risk of creating us free.

The question on a day like today is, in the words of William Wallace, “What will you do with your freedom?” Amass a bunch of stuff, build a bigger nest? Use our freedom for “bling” or let that freedom ring?

Freedom is not our license to have it all. Freedom is the calling to give it all.

And thank God our ancestors did just that.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Good Talk and the Goal of Art

One of my favorite Christmas traditions, after a short night of sleep, staying up into the wee hours with my wife’s family in NY state, nestled in that warm house in the cold, quiet of Montgomery, are my late morning talks with my father-in-law.

It’s St. Stephen’s Day, December 26, and like clockwork, I go for coffee and donuts (vanilla iced with sprinkles for the womenfolk) and make it back just as he stirs (the ladies won’t be up for another hour). Then the talk begins, slow and rambling at first, like a rain stream. Then a clear path is cut by a strong river of serious thought, as we sip our coffee and look out on Eager Road.

Our topics string together like a strand of lights, the classic bulbs, big, bright, and heavy-laden. Then we sit back and watch the glow before the Christmas tree, from the couches in the living room. Our thoughts launch out and hover in the air – on music, books, theology, faith, the world as it is… as it was…. as it should be.

This morning we strayed into talk of classic films, Orson Welles, and Gregory Peck, Paul Scofield and their work. “When a person gives themselves so completely to their passion, be it art, film, etc., what happens to their heart? Can you lose yourself in a negative sense? Where does the personality go when you have not given yourself to another person, but to a performance?”

I mentioned a thought of Michelangelo’s I had once read years ago: “Painting and sculpture can never satisfy the soul attuned to the Divine.” It could be said for any of the arts.

We wondered about so many actors and actresses, musicians, and artists, brilliant in their work, whose personal lives often seem to be fractured. There is a sadness that often surfaces in their interviews and in talk shows. Is it because they have given their hearts away to a thing – a craft, cause, creation – before they even knew what their hearts were made for? I think we can lose ourselves in our own creations and in doing so forget the Creator. But what’s the line, the distinction that must be made? Can both be done?

I remember sitting on the edge of a decision once, back in the early 90’s. I was wrapping up my associates degree in visual arts. A choice had to be made: give myself to this art completely, or turn in the road, to who knows where?

I felt it in the heart, this choice. It was like standing on the edge of a precipice, feeling the rush of adrenaline. Feeling almost it seemed, hands willing to grasp my heart, and others waiting to hold it. That was a key distinction.

I chose to withdraw from that fall into the life of an artist, at least the life I was seeing lived by the contemporaries around me. Something seemed off. In the immortal words of Han Solo, I had “a really bad feeling” about it, as though living as an artist (in the secular mold) would have to mean living for art’s sake alone. As though I’d lose myself to this amorphous “spirit of art” and the self would be forsaken. I had studied the modern masters and seen it myself… in Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin.

“Painting and sculpture can never satisfy the soul attuned to the Divine.”

We so often trace the image, sketch the shadows cast by the Hand of God, and become enamored with it. But we’re made for more. I think the total gift of self is meant for a Person, not a pop culture, or a “philosophy.” The path to God (and to our truest selves) is indeed a path of self-giving. The leap of Jesus was the greatest self-emptying the world has ever known, but He did it for us, for men and women, for each individual heart that beats in the human race.

In his giving, Michelangelo gave us so much. In the moving, living, work and sweat of artists, poets, actors, and writers, we get great glimmers of truth and beauty. But we must never stop there. We’ve got to keep reaching out, yearning for that Face the reflection of which even now seems so overwhelming to our senses.

“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late have I loved you! And behold, you were within, and I abroad, and there I searched for you; I was deformed, plunging amid those fair forms, which you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Things held me far from you – things which, if they were not in you, were not at all. You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed and shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors and I drew in breath – and I pant for you. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

– St. Augustine, Confessions

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

The Christmas House

Do you get all goosey when you see Inflatable Christmas Lawn Art? Does the glow of lights on an otherwise drab house set your heart pumping? Do you find yourself driving the long way home from work in the winter just to catch some extra yuletide wattage? Well we’ve got the house for you! Getting there is a real journey, but for those intoxicated by Christmas lights and 6 foot Frostys, you can’t beat the “CHRISTMAS HOUSE.”

It’s nestled, oddly enough, on a dark street in a quiet little town called Washingtonville, NY. The house to the left has a porchlight and a wreath, the neighbor to the right is cloaked in shadowy shrubs. But it would take a city of Wal-Marts to beat out the brightness of the CHRISTMAS HOUSE!

And that’s just the outside of the house… Every room inside is loaded to the gills with Christmas doodads and whatzits. Classic stuff too; trains, little villages, a hall of thematic trees like the Irish Tree, the Sports Tree, the Penguin Tree, and… the Creepy Singing Tree Which Has Lips and Big Eyes (my personal favorite. I’m not going to explain it to you. Just go! You’ll find it downstairs and to the right. Or should I say, it will find you!)

Yesterday, before heading home from NY, my wife, myself, and a bunch of the family made a pilgrimage to this mecca of music and lights. It’s open from December 20 to the 30th, from 7pm to 9pm, so time is running out if you want to make the trip!

The CHRISTMAS HOUSE: It’s mind-boggling, it’s sensory overload, it’s Christmas on steroids! The Palmer family will greet you, dressed all in North Pole attire. And donations are gratefully accepted to help offset the electric bill, which I would guess is somewhere between $139,082 a day!

PS – the CHRISTMAS HOUSE happens to be a beautiful family tradition for many in the area and beyond, dedicated to the memory of Christopher Palmer, who LOVED Christmas like craaaaazy, as you’ll see. Check out a rough little snatch of video I took below…

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

When You Gotta Go….

I was perusing through a closet for something the other day and found an old sketchbook of mine from art school. This is a cartoon I did around Christmas, circa 1990! I call it “When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go.”

I suppose it was a remnant of one of my deepest childhood questions on the plausibility of Santa and his ability to make it round the globe without a pit stop. Other thoughts considered the possibility of built-in plumbing on the sleigh, but I won’t bore you with those blueprints…

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

White Christmas

Oh you just can’t beat Bing Crosby’s voice in this classic…. it’s like butta’!!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

An O’Henry Christmas – Review

“The poorer you are the more Christmas does for you.”
– O.P.

The little stage in Lansdowne’s 20th Century Club is intimate; a theater in the round, and all of us gather ’round a cluster of crates and a barrel lit within with faux fire. But the real warmth comes from the characters that soon appear; Marguerite, Agnes, Fran, Grover, Hal, Dinty, Guido the cop, and finally, the master storyteller – O.P. In their rags and wrinkled suits, they are the poor, and it’s Christmas Eve, and this is where they’ll hold their vigil. It’s Howard Burman’s play, “An O. Henry Christmas,” playing this weekend and next in Lansdowne, PA (details following).

On a railroad spur, on the tattered fringes of New York City, 1893, a group of homeless souls carrying nothing but their own mental baggage, have clustered about this fire seeking its heat for their bodies and, perhaps subconsciously, some warmth for their souls. Suddenly, a stranger appears. In an exchange for food, “O.P.” offers to entertain with a series of cryptic yet charming tales, each taking flesh in the characters gathered about the fire. The stories are some classic gems of author O. Henry, including “The Last Leaf” and “The Gift of the Magi.” Grace pours out in the telling, and somehow by the end of that cold night, a new fire burns in each person’s heart.
The actors are well cast, the laughs come steadily, and yet surrounding it all, and in fact in the middle of it all, burns a powerful message. It’s voiced in the words of O.P. and then made flesh in the character of Marguerite. O.P. whispers to Dinty, the cynical, literally “starving” artist who sees nothing but misery in life, “You’ve got a choice you know. You can choose to see the flower or the manure in which it’s growing.”

This philosophy, these hopeful stories, these little acts of kindness performed by the homeless players (more and more willingly as the night goes on!), are taken in all the while like a slow and steady drip from a heavenly IV into the dying veins of Marguerite. She is a woman of the streets, who now lies quietly on an old mattress, dying a slow death of her own choosing. We meet her early on, but she, like us, is a silent witness, for the most part, to the events of the night. She has lost the will to live and has projected her very last hours onto an old dying vine. With every veined leaf that falls, more life seeps from her own. We watch as the tales of O.P. and the enthusiasm of her friends try valiantly to cut the webs of her melancholy like swords. But this play holds a two-edged sword, and we are soberly reminded that real love comes at a price.

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An O’Henry Christmas” opens at Celebration Theater on November 30th. Jack Roe as “O.P” spins a tale to down-and-out travelers Amanda Williamson and Rebecca Donaghy in Celebration Theater’s “An O’Henry Christmas”.

The show runs through December 16 in Lansdowne at the 20th Century Club on 84 S. Lansdowne Avenue.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Snapshots

Happy Memorial Day Weekend 2007! Hope yours was safe and swell (let’s bring that word back into vogue!) Here’s a few snapshots of our time up in NY state…

+ babysitting for Peter and Ali, watching little Aileen and Michaela at the house Peter built in the woods. Singing Michaela to sleep to the sound of the crickets “sleep sleep…. sleep sleep.”

+ eating chips and watching Planet Earth with the father-in-law. Those snow leopards are awesome!

+ sleeping at the lakehouse, sitting on the dock before the cool, clear water, watching the sky moods reflecting in its watery face

+ Pentecost Sunday at the little country church, which is really a kind of gym. Standing room only, and Jesus in our midst

+ breakfast at Benny’s in Wurtsboro with the relations. Teaching Taylor and Travis the drawing game on the placemats (great homefries, by the way!)

+ laughing at Friday’s, that huge mojito, popping into Barnes & Nobles for the Pope’s new book, and Tolkien’s too!

+ the town parade, and little Hanna waving. And for the troop of bagpipers, blasting their shrill cries through that sleepy mountain town

+ sunburn and windburn

+ spotting orioles today in the trees

+ bald eagles sweeping over the island, swirling over our cameras

+ the kids making mud castles, swimming and splashing on the edge of Yankee Lake

+ ambrosia with cherries

+ for my wife and her tenderness, her attentiveness in everything, and for the way she holds those little babies, her nieces, Aileen and Rebecca.

+ for the desires we have for a family of our own, which only grow stronger day by day.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

My Frosty Can Beat Up Your Frosty… Any Day!

Well friends, Christmas fever has once again gripped the nation, and it’s hotter than a string of big bulbed Christmas lights from the 70’s! I think you’ll agree with me in noting that THIS Christmas is going to be bigger, bolder, and brassier than ever! Why? Because of INFLATABLE CHRISTMAS LAWN ART!! (The aforementioned oddities will hitherto be referred to as ICLA’s)

Now I don’t know if the ICLA’s have invaded neighborhoods west of the Mississippi yet, or even across the sea (any reports?) but let me tell YOU…. they are crawling all over the mid-eastern seaboard. Maybe they came from Sweden? IKEA? ICLA? Whatever the case may be, these massive Christmas mutants are taking over! Picture Godzilla with a wreath around his neck! Big, puffy pieces of plastic in yuletide shapes. We’ve got Santas, Frostys, Elves, and Reindeer…. even the Grinch gets a spot on the lawn!

Sure, they seem kinda cute, but don’t be fooled America! Remember the story of the Trojan Horse! Some of these Christmas creatures are bigger than the houses they are “decorating.” I’m not kidding. I saw one peeking into the third story of a south Philly rowhome, and he looked HUNGRY.

Thankfully ICLA’s can easily be unplugged, or tackled by a 9 year old (which is hilarious to watch). But imagine if these things were intelligent! Think about it, America, for two seconds!

Now this is just my conspiracy theory; it’s one among thousands, granted. But I believe the ICLA’s are actually filled with a mind-altering gas that has been created by none other than the BIGGIEMAN! (click for previous post on America’s most fiendish foe!)

That’s right! Unbeknownst to the Kravitz’s, their “front yard Frosty” is really puffed up with a deadly toxin that seeps out into the neighborhood, hypnotizing us all into thinking that BIGGER is always better. What happens next? Open your eyes America! Do you remember these gargantuan Grinchs five years ago? Were there any super-sized Santas on your street even four years ago? And look at us now. I feel like a hobbit sometimes just walking to the deli. And some of these ICLA’s, especially the reindeer, their eyes just seem to follow you! IT’S DOWNRIGHT CREEPY!

Here’s My Battle Plan…

Let’s form a resistance movement! We’ll call ourselves the POPCIOWAMWOODs! (which of course stands for People Only Putting Candles In Our Windows And Maybe Wreaths On Our Doors).

We’ll show that BIGGIEMAN! Bigger is sometimes better, but smaller and simpler is best. Afterall, that’s how He came into the world, isn’t it?

______________________________________

Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org