The Heart of Christmas

I remember the first Christmas that I was a parent. It was 1982. I bought How the Grinch Stole Christmas that year and read it repeatedly to my 8 month old son, not so much for his sake as for mine. Like the Grinch at the end of the story my heart was growing to expanded dimensions that I had never before experienced. Until I became a parent, I didn't know I could feel so much love in my heart. I cried more that Christmas season than any other, tears of joy, tears of feeling my heart being stretched to a new size, tears of a love too deep for words. There is something about the vulnerability of a child, especially of an infant, that allows us, or perhaps demands us, to experience our own vulnerability. The infant has no defenses, no pretenses, and no place to hide. It is utterly dependent on others for its existence.

I still tear up a lot at Christmas. It's an emotional time of year for most of us with tears of grief for loved ones no longer with us, and tears of joy for the love of friends and family.

As we continue our twelve days of celebrating Christmas, the celebration of the Word made flesh and entering the world, it is worth noting that the Word chose to enter the world not as an armed warrior, but as a disarming infant.

May this disarming infant be a reminder to us of our own vulnerability and may it be an invitation to put down our defenses and pretenses, to allow our hearts to grow a few sizes larger this year. May it be a reminder that we, too, are completely dependent upon one another, and upon the Word made flesh, for our very existence.

A Continued Merry Christmas to all of you from Living Compass.

Receiving Gifts

Have you ever had the experience of being hurt by how someone responded to a gift that you had given him or her? Perhaps this person opened your gift, looked at it and realized it was not what he or she wanted, quickly putting it aside and never showing interest in it again. Such a reaction would understandably be painful for any gift giver. If we are honest, we have probably each been on both sides of this gift-exchanging scenario. It is easy to build up expectations about a gift we want to receive and then be disappointed when what we open is not the gift we had in mind. While it true that "It is more blessed to give, than to receive" (Acts 20:35), it is also true that one of the real blessings and gifts we can give to others is to be a good receiver of gifts, appreciating the other person's effort and intent to bring happiness.

As you receive gifts this Christmas, take the opportunity to practice being a good receiver. Show genuine interest in the gift and be curious about how or why the giver chose this gift for you. Receiving a gift this way will mean so much to the giver and ultimately to you as well. It will be as much of a gift for them as the gift they have given you is for you.

Extending this idea of receiving gifts, why not practice becoming more intentional about receiving the non-material gifts that you have been given as well? Your friends, each member of your family, your colleagues, and your neighbors are all gifts that you have been given by God. What if you were to think this coming week about each person in your life as a gift you are receiving from God, as if they contained a spark of God's divinity within them? How would you treat them then?

It is all too easy to receive a gift, whether a material gift or the gift of someone's presence in our lives, in a mindless manner. In both cases, if we are not careful, we may not give adequate attention to the gift or we may take it for granted, hurting the giver in the process.

Whatever gifts we have may or may not be given this Christmas, we all have been given the most important gift of all, the birth of Jesus, the birth of the Word made flesh. As with all gifts, this gift needs to be opened and received with mindfulness and loving attention. To do otherwise would hurt God, the giver of this and all gifts, as well as diminish the full potential for transformation of our lives that this gift offers.

Each week this wellness column focuses on the choices we can make to be well and to whole. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, it is a time to not just on our choices, but on the most important choice of all, the choice that God has made to become fully incarnate in our lives. Making room in the inn of our own hearts to receive this gift from God with gratitude and appreciation is the true foundation for all wellness and wholeness.

**This is the last weekly column before Christmas, and so our Living Compass team would like to wish each of you a most wonderful and Holy Christmas.

Our Journey Toward Christmas

There are many compasses we can use to guide our lives, a fact that is especially clear this time of year. The compass of the dominant culture and its emphasis on the "Christmas Machine" has a strong pull right now, inviting us to both do and buy more. This same compass also encourages us to make strive to make this Christmas the "best Christmas ever!" I don't even know what that might mean, but I certainly know that approaching anything with that kind of pressure and expectation is the surest way to ruin it. Imagine you were going to have some friends over for an evening of dinner and fun. Now imagine that your goal was to make sure that this would be the best dinner gathering with friends ever! Again, I am not sure quite what that would even mean, but I do know that approaching any occasion with this mindset will most likely heighten the anxiety which could then ruin rather than enhance the experience. Christmas is a hard time of year for many people. Holidays like Christmas are markers and reminders of losses and past gatherings that we have experienced in our lives. A loved one who has always been with us to celebrate Christmas is not with us this year. Someone has died since last Christmas, or a relationship has ended, or a dear friend or family member has moved away. This might be a Christmas where we are all alone, or one where financial difficulties are magnified and greatly limit our ability to celebrate, as we would like to. This might be a Christmas overshadowed by significant health issues, either for ourselves or someone we love.

As we remember how difficult this time of year can be for many people, we clearly see how dangerous and in fact painful a mindset of "make it the best Christmas ever" or trying to create the "perfect" Christmas can be. So if the mindset and compass of the dominant culture prove to unhelpful and stressful, what compass might we use instead to guide our decisions and our experiences as we approach the celebration of Christmas?

Here's a rather obvious idea. Why not truly make the meaning of Christmas your guiding compass this time of year? The compass of Christmas points in a very different direction than does the compass of the dominant culture. Specifically, it points the way towards Christmas by reminding us that:

• Presence is more important than presents.
• The best gifts cannot be purchased at a store.
• The Light is stronger than any darkness or sadness we may be experiencing at this time.
• Spending time with or making things for friends and family is a holy gift.
• Caroling with and for others is a gift for the soul as is the gift of visiting someone who is alone.
• Giving a gift of time or money to a local cause or charity can mean more than any material gift we might buy.
• The vulnerability of sharing with others any sadness we are experiencing creates an experience of love and intimacy, which is, of course, the heart of what Christmas is all about.
• Listening, loving, and caring are the greatest gifts we can share.
• The most important thing to keep in mind this season is not just what we do or give to one another, but is that we have been given the greatest gift of all, the gift of Love by God.

If you find yourself feeling stressed this time of year, take a moment to assess which compass is truly influencing your mindset and choices. As with any journey, the compass we use to guide our way everyday makes all the difference as to where we end up. If we choose wisely these next few weeks, our journeys toward Christmas are much more likely to be full of authentic joy, peace, and love.

A Time to Prepare

The following is an excerpt from "Living Well through Advent 2014," I wrote for Living Compass and Morehouse Publishing.  You can order a copy of this booklet through the Resources section of our website.

We had some friends over for dinner recently--nothing fancy, just a casual gathering. We made a spicy vegetarian chili and even asked our guests to help with the preparations while we caught up with each other's lives.  They were happy to grab a paring knife and help us trim the numerous vegetables that were going into the large pot on the stove and to help us prepare our salad. Preparing a part of the meal together ended up being a big part of the fun of our evening together.

It is also true that part of the delight of Advent comes from preparing together, preparing together with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, for the upcoming feast of God's Incarnation.  Preparation, both communally and individually, is the essence of Advent. Just as a gardener needs to prepare the soil before the seeds are planted, or a friend prepares to have friends over for a meal we also need to prepare for Christmas. We need to prepare our hearts to be more open to receiving the seeds of God's life-giving Word.  Isaiah's words ring clear in both the Old Testament and Gospel readings today, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" (Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:3).

So how might we approach this preparation? One way to approach it is to reflect on the root meaning of the word prepare. This word has two components. "Pre," of course, means before, which speaks to preparing as being something we do before or in anticipation of something that will be happening soon. "Pare" means to trim, or to cut. Think of the paring knives you have in your kitchen or the knives that we and our friends used to trim the vegetables that were part of our recent dinner together.

It is not uncommon for someone in a state of post-Christmas exhaustion to reflect back and wish they had done things differently.  Such reflections are, in a sense, an act of “post-paring.”  The person is looking back and wishing they had made different choices, and often that includes wishing that had done less, that they had done a better job paring down certain activities or expectations.  Of course it is impossible to post-pare, but it is indeed possible, and in fact desirable, to pre-pare.  While there may be many things we find ourselves preparing for this time of year, both Isaiah and John the Baptist remind us that the most important prep work we are doing is preparing the way of the Lord.

Throughout the upcoming week we will invite you to reflect upon what you might want to pare, what you might want to trim out of your life in these coming weeks.  Think of something that you might choose to let go of  so as to allow more room, more time and energy for preparing for Jesus' birth. In our Living Compass Faith & Wellness ministry we talk about how we first get a “whisper”, a feeling that something just isn't right, from God when we are not living our lives in alignment with God's desires for us. Sometimes the whisper is in regard to something we need to trim or pare from our lives, something we need to do less of in our lives.  Only when we take the time to be quiet, working to seek out and listen to the voice of the one crying in the wilderness, paying attention to God's whisper can we then repent, and make new choices, choices that will more fully prepare for us the way of the Lord.

Are You Full Yet?

As  each of us enjoyed our Thanksgiving meals this year, we probably paused  a few times to consider whether we should have one more bite, thinking  to ourselves, "am I full yet?"  If you ignored this question, or kept on  eating in spite of your answer, you no doubt paid a consequence for  it.  Instead of enjoying your Thanksgiving you probably ended up  uncomfortable and tired.Now we each have another chance to ask the same  question, "am I full yet?"  We will each answer this question numerous  times over the next three and half weeks as we prepare to celebrate  Christmas.  The pressure to overindulge this time of year is  immense.  It is easy to say "yes" to so many internal and external  expectations that we  do not realize the cumulative effect of our  decisions, until we are relieved that Christmas is over.  The paradox is  that all of this fullness leaves us feeling empty, as if all we did was  eat dessert after dessert, somehow missing the main course. So if trying to be so  full runs the risk of leaving us feeling empty, perhaps we might try a  different approach this year.  We might practice saying "no" to the  expectations that we put on ourselves and allow others to put on us.  In  doing this we say "yes" to our need for quiet, rest and deeper  connections with the people we love most.  In doing this we may discover  the other side of the paradox:  emptying our lives of some things will  help us to feel full. There is another essential reason to practice letting  go of the pressure of expectations this holiday season.  God has a  way of showing up in our lives in the most surprising and unexpected  ways.  If our lives are overly full, there is no room for such  surprises. Remember that in the story of Christmas the inn was full the night that Love was born.  Intentionally emptying our lives of  busyness, creates openings for Love to enter our lives and our  relationships anew this year, making room for the main course of the  season.