Get Her Words Out

You're the Tops. . .

Or I am, or something.

This was my year to get tops for Christmas:  2 sweaters, 2 blouses and 2 hoodies.

They're all really nice, even if the hoodies are several sizes too big.  (no matter how huge I may appear, I am not a 6X.)

It's kind of weird not getting any books or toys for Christmas, but at least I have some fun things to wear.

Mary

The text for today was Mary going to visit Elizabeth and it made me think of a couple of things I wrote a while back.  The first is excerpts from a series of letters that Mary might have written, the second is a "monologue fragment" inspired by the Annunciation.

Letters:

Mom & Dad

I can't explain why, but I'm going to stay with Elizabeth....
I don't know for how long....

I love you.

XXXOOOXXX

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Elizabeth loves having me here, I am going to stay 'til she has her baby.

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I have something to tell you...
But it's okay because...
I just don't know what to say to Joseph.

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I hate to leave here just before Elizabeth has her baby, but I have to see Joseph face to face.

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Elizabeth,

I know that he is beautiful.  And I'm glad to hear that Z can talk again!
Joseph is so good.  I should have had more faith in him.  And in God!

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I hate the idea of so long a trip when I am so pregnant.  I'm huge! And so uncomfortable!
I just don't know how I'll make it to Bethlehem.

Monologue Fragment:

Where's my Angel?  We were reading about the Annunciation the other day and that's what I wanna know:  where's my Angel?  Where's the person to tell me that I'm favored of God?  Where's the person to tell me that I matter? To call me, "Jennifer Samuels, favored of God." It said in the story that Mary was perplexed.  I know I would be if someone came and talked to me like that, but no one ever does and no one ever will.

I just wanna be special to someone or at least have someone tell me that I'm not invisible.  I mean, that was the only reason I did it with Mark.  So I would be special to him, so I could be more than just the plain girl in the third row.  But now he never talks to me anymore, he'll hardly even look at me.

I used to dream so much, "Jennifer Samuels, head cheerleader," or, "Jennifer Samuels, homecoming queen."  But now none of that will ever be, I'll just be, " Jennifer Samuels, high school dropout," and, "Jennifer Samuels, teenage mother."

Mary got her Angel, where's mine?

Snow!

We got more snow in the last day or so than I have seen in the last 12 years combined.

Of course I spent those 12 years living in Alabama and Georgia, but still we got a lot of snow here.

There are some shots of my poor buried truck that I took with my phone in a new photo album in the right hand side bar.  I'm going to have to dig it out eventually.

Update:  The next day, and the truck has actually moved.  Here's proof and a couple of pics of where it was:

Narrative v. Prophets

I guess this is going to be my "Bah. . . humbug" moment, but I've decided that, at least this year, I really don't have much interest in the Nativity Story.  At least not as much interest as I have in the prophets.

We (my mother and I) went what amounted to a choir concert with some readings (they called it a "Candlelight Vespers Service") at the First Congregational here last week and it was lovely, they had two children's choirs, a big youth choir, a small adult choir and the chamber orchestra from the high school down the street.  They all did a great job, the music was very good, I don't have anything bad to say about the event itself.

It was the readings that struck me, though.  They started with the standard Christmas stuff from Isaiah, then moved on to the birth narrative in Luke 2 and then to the Epiphany story in Matthew.

I was really surprised by my reaction when the man started to read Luke 2, I wanted to stand up and yell, "no, go back to the prophets!"

While the birth narrative is beautiful, I feel like it's been overdone and so co-opted by the culture that it has lost something vital.*  There doesn't seem to be anything there to convict us or to surprise us anymore, not only do we all know every little detail of the story, we all know that we know every little detail of the story so there is no need to really hear it anymore.

The prophets on the other hand seem to me to be alive and electrifying, they have new things to say to us, more so, I think, than the same old Christmas stories that we have heard all our lives.

So I guess I'm going to have a good old-fashioned Old Testament Christmas this year.

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* On a similar note, I have been struggling with the idea of nativity scenes this year, I guess I don't understand them anymore.   I understand that they began when people couldn't read and they needed the statuettes to remind them of the various parts of the story, but what are they for now?  I can see admiring them for their artistic merit, but as the Cavalcade of Bad Nativities demonstrates there are a huge number of them out there with no artistic merit at all.  So what are they for?  Are they supposed to be evangelical tools?  Or What?

Verbs and Nouns

I’ve had several opportunities lately to go see plays, people always think that since I spent 17 years working in the theater I must love going to plays.  And sure, there are a number of things that I would love to go see, but for the most part, I’m far more interested in theater as a verb than I am in theater as a noun.

I love doing theater, building shows, running shows, striking shows.  Theater is an activity for me, an activity where I work hard to produce something for someone else, for the audience.  What’s important is not the thing that is created but that the thing is created and that I had something to do with it.

I was watching QVC sell Junior’s Cheesecakes this afternoon, and it struck me that I feel the same way about food and baking.  Cheesecakes are wonderful things but I would rather spend my time making one than eating one.

Over the eight years that I worked at my last job before seminary, I probably baked more than 150 birthday cakes for my friends and co-workers.  I enjoyed the time and effort making the cakes more than I ever enjoyed eating them.  Most of the time, I have little or no interest in eating the things I have made; again, the work of making the thing, the verbing of it, means more to me than the object itself, the noun of it.

As I have thought about this, I’ve realized I have the same feelings about worship and the church.  I want worship to be a verb, something I do, more than something I just watch or experience.  I want to be involved in the planning and execution of the worship service, and even when I can’t do that, I want worship that is designed to make the people in the pews an active part of the service.

I don’t know what all this says about me.  I’m sure some Meyers-Briggs person will say, “that’s because you’re a PQRS,” or whatever those letters that are supposed to tell us everything about ourselves are.  (I’ve never gotten the same set of letters twice, so I’ve never taken it very seriously.)  But it’s something to think about as I look for a job.

An ongoing series