The Gospel of Bono

In all the talk about how Bono may not be able to play the guitar again, the media has (shocker!) been missing all he says about Christmas. It's a pretty good way to start off the year.

At this time of year some people are reminded of the poetic as well as the historic truth that is the birth of Jesus. The Christmas story has a crazy good plot with an even crazier premise - the idea goes, if there is a force of love and logic behind the universe, then how amazing would it be if that incomprehensible power chose to express itself as a child born in shit and straw poverty.... 

But back to the Christmas story that still brings me to my knees - which is a good place for me lest I harm myself or others. Christmas is not a time for me to overthink about this child, so vulnerable, who would grow so strong... to teach us all how vulnerability is the route to strength and, by example, show us how to love and serve. 

To me this is not a fairy tale but a challenge. I preach what I need to hear... 

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Longish

Christmas - The Greatest Eucatastrophe

Eucatastrophe: a sudden joyous turn in a dark tale—the happy ending "a piercing glimpse of joy...that for a moment...rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through."

“The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—particularly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of creation.

The Dean's Watch Review/Quotes

Sometimes you run into a book that has to be savored. The Dean's Watch, by Elizabeth Goudge, is such a book. I told my dad, on finishing it, that she must have been a person who deeply loved the beauty of creation. She loved it so much, that when she describes the world, you can feel the joy pulsing just beneath the skin of the words. Like all artists, the creation process is a deeply important part of her view of God, and is intrinsic to the theology of The Dean's Watch.

The setting is a remote mid-nineteenth-century town in England and its grand cathedral. The cathedral Dean, Adam Ayscough, holds a deep love for his parishioners and townspeople, but he is held captive by an irrational shyness and intimidating manner. The Dean and Isaac Peabody, an obscure watchmaker who does not think he or God have anything in common, strike up an unlikely friendship. This leads to an unusual spiritual awakening that touches the entire community.

Elizabeth Goudge's books are hard to find, but well worth the search. The book is, in essence, a small story, about small people, but is contrasted against the majestic looming symbol of the Cathedral which is the city which is faith itself. Goudge has great talent in taking the most unsavory characters and finding something likable - even lovable - about them, furthering the novel's primary theme: Christian charity, to love even the unlovely.

My only complaint about the book would be that it is slowly paced, and sometimes tedious. Pressed by work, I don't have the time to review more fully, but even better, I chose some of the choice quotes.

Merry Christmas to everybody - and a Happy New Year to the WORLD!

I'm a big fan of A Christmas Carol (we did a podcast on it last week), and my favorite version is easily George C. Scott's. Partly, it's because of this song:

The past of man is cold as ice:
He would not mend his ways.
He strove for silver in his heart
And gold in all his days.
His reason weak, his anger sharp,
And sorrow all his pay,
He went to church but once a year,
And that was Christmas Day.

 So grant us all a change of heart,
Rejoice for Mary’s son;
Pray, Peace on earth to all mankind,
God bless us everyone!
 The present man is full of flame:
He rushes here and there.
He turns away the orphan child,
The widow in her chair.
He takes from them he merely meets,
Forgets how brief his stay,
And stands a-jingling of his coins
In church on Christmas Day.

 So grant us all a change of heart,
Rejoice for Mary’s son;
Pray, Peace on earth to all mankind,
God bless us everyone!

The man to come we do not know:
May he make peace on earth,
And live the glory of the Word,
The message of the birth,
And gather all the children in
To banish their dismay,
Lift up his heart among the bells
In church on Christmas Day.

So grant us all a change of heart,
Rejoice for Mary’s son;
Pray, Peace on earth to all mankind,
God bless us everyone!

Merry Christmas - and may you keep it in your heart all the year,
Longish

The Other Stocking, by G.K. Chesterton

(Thought this was rather appropriate for the holidays, so here's a guest post from our friend Mr. Chesterton)

What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it. It happened in this way.

As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation. I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. I had not even been good–far from it.
...

And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed toward me. What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still.

I have merely extended the idea.

Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.

Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers, now, I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea.

Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill.

Merry Christmas,
Longish