Since I was a kid growing up in Illinois, I've always loved it when it snows. There's something great about a "random holiday" that frees you from the routine and justifies a couple of hours of laughing, sledding and trying to restore bloodflow to your frozen extremities. And it looks like my girls have inherited my love of hurtling down a snow-covered hill...now they watch the countryside out the van window saying things like, "now that would be a fun hill to sled on!"
Last Friday, we had to put Maggie, our eight-year-old boxer to sleep. Our girls wanted to invite over the neighbors for a memorial service, so we had everyone over for dinner and then gathered in the living room. Of course, Maggie wasn't going to the vet until the next day, so she was there to hear her own eulogy spoken by Eliza and her friends: "Maggie was a good dog...sob...she played with me...sniff...she liked to go fetch her bone...sob...she smelled kind of funny, but she was really a good dog." It was more emotional than I thought it would be, to here the earnest praises of a bunch of four, five and six year olds. It got me thinking that maybe we do it all wrong; what would it be like if we could hear what is said at our own funerals?
Seven years. That's how long it took me to complete the next step of my theological education. Bill Clinton was President. No one had ever heard of an iPod. 9/11 was just another day in September. And I had no children. That's how the world looked when I first enrolled for classes and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. But I never felt called away from full-time ministry to just go to school. And I think my experience was greatly enhanced by the reality that I was able to both question what I was taught and put it into practice in real-time. Of course, Hurricane Katrina slowed the process a bit as well. But it was great to celebrate this past weekend with my family, my parents, my brother and the Aaron Bryant crew as well.
So this weekend I did something I vowed never to do…put up Christmas lights on the outside of our house. I’ve always thought they looked a little too redneck unless done really, really well. And doing things well requires time and money, both of which seem to be scarce around this time of the year. Who needs another chore, anyway? And then there’s the frustration of getting the cheap things to work properly – I struggle enough with the lights for the tree, I don’t need another 200 yards of cords to hang myself with, quite literally. Sure, everyone remembers Clark Griswold’s triumphant “Hallelujah” moment in Christmas Vacation. But what happens next, when they all go out again? It’s a cussing-and-screaming-and-embarassing-kick-the-plastic-yard-Santa rage for the ages. That’s just what I need to celebrate the birth of the Messiah: one more expensive, gaudy, time-sucking, cheesy, and labor-intensive “holiday tradition.” Don’t even try to go there with the “symbolism” of the light – a simple candle lit in a window or at a midnight mass sufficed for hundreds and hundreds of years before Wal-Mart tried to drown us all in cheap plastic indoor/outdoor madness.
Fact: My brother Ben is hilarious. And he may actually get free swag out of this picture, and apparently, you can too if you are brave enough to get your picture taken with a real, live clown.
OK, for all of you who ask, this isn't really a picture of me. It's Guy Patterson, from the movie, "That Thing You Do," and people say I remind them of him, even though I don't play the drums and I don't flirt with Liv Tyler. But I'm pretty sure Guy didn't have a great wife, 3 amazing little girls, and I definately know he wasn't something called a Minister to Emerging Generations.
