``During the next week, families will gather. Most likely for a festive dinner – often turkey and trimmings. Perhaps just for gift giving. But they’ll want to get together.
The ritual is reflected in the songs of the season. “I’ll be home for Christmas.” “There’s no place like home for the holidays.” Other songs evoke nostalgic images: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, sleigh bells ringing, stockings hung by the chimney with care….
Satirists love to skewer the sentimentality of Christmas rituals. Families sit “in old stone circles,” wrote the Irish poet W.R. Rodgers, cracking open “the tinned milk of human kindness.”
Because, to be honest about it, not all Christmas gatherings are harmonious. Some families are, and will always be, dysfunctional. Members dread getting together. They know old wounds will be torn open, old scars exposed, old grievances rekindled.
And some have no one to get together with.
Intuitive compulsion
So why our inner compulsion to gather? Why not just go to Mexico and stay away from everyone?
I could equally well ask, why do we flock to mass concerts when we could hear the music -- whether rock or classical -- better on a stereo at home?
Why do we attend international conventions?
Why do we go to class reunions, to reminisce with classmates who have become strangers?
Why do we pay big bucks to see sports events in person, instead of watching on TV – with instant analysis and replays?
And why do many of us still gather in congregations on Sunday mornings, when we could equally well offer prayers in private, or read inspiring messages in a comfortable armchair?
I suggest it has something to do with synchronizing our energies.
There’s a huge difference between a crowd standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to change, and a crowd marching down that same street to support a cause. In the first, each person radiates energy randomly; in the second, collective energy focusses on a common goal.
It’s the difference between a candle flame and a laser beam.
Survival of the most cooperative
For two centuries, evolution was understood as the survival of the fittest. Life was competition. Brutal. Ruthless.
Biologists now argue that evolution really reflects the survival of the most cooperative. Instead of consuming each other, the most successful cells worked together. Together, they could do more than they could do alone.
Our bodies exemplify this process. Every cell contains my DNA. But some cells digest food; some provide muscle power; some pump nourishment to other cells.
And a few little gray cells think about what all the other cells are doing.
In a massed concert, at a sports event, and yes, even in an unruly mob, we re-enact that evolutionary truth. We feel we belong to something larger than ourselves.
We find ourselves in sync with other people.
You can feel it when it happens. At a concert. At a mass rally. Sometimes, at a worship service.
It doesn’t always happen. You can’t schedule it, although a few people manage to manipulate it.
But intuitively, we yearn for that possibility. And so we gather with families, with friends. Hopeful. That we will again feel that sense of the many becoming one.
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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
A few people expressed appreciation for last week’s column about the White Helmets in Syria. I’ll include just two samples.
Laurna Tallman wrote, “Thank you for opening our hearts to this incredible message of love and hope. We now know for whom else to pray.”
And Isabel Gibson wondered about how to help them: “Maybe we should start a crowd-funding site for the White Helmets, to raise the $1 million they would have received with the Nobel Peace Prize.”
The subject of Christmas trees, two weeks ago, doesn’t want to go away.
Margaret Carr’s reminiscence about an ungainly Christmas tree prompted Bob Stoddard to share his own experience: “For many years, my wife Sally and I purposely decorated a non-evergreen for Christmas. Sometimes it was a limb that I had trimmed from our maple tree and sometimes we would remove from our year a volunteer sprout that had reached an appropriate height. Each year our three young children adorned each of our ‘Charlie Brown’ trees with homemade decorations.”
David Gilchrist had some thoughts about trees: “I was appalled at the waste in ‘clear cutting’ when I worked in a BC logging camp back in the late 1940s. But there is a different side to the Christmas trees. In New Zealand there is fantastic tree planting program. I no longer remember the exact figures: so many an acre, a certain distance apart. Much closer together than the space could accommodate at their maturity. After a certain time (I think it was two or three years), they are culled, leaving the strongest and straightest. Then there is another culling (I think at 7 years or so); by this time they are a perfect size for Christmas trees. The ones that are removed are donated (I think, if I remember right -- it’s 20+ years ago!) to service clubs like Rotary, Kiwanis, etc., who then sell them door to door in early December.
“I seem to remember a third culling before the final harvesting, and then replanting. But you get the picture. Nothing is wasted; but people can enjoy the traditional tree.”
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PSALM PARAPHRASES
The Revised Common Lectionary suggests a range of readings for the First Sunday after Christmas (and even more if you celebrate it as The Epiphany). But there are two references to Psalm 8, so that’s what I’m going with. Although it seems a shade sacrilegious even to attempt a paraphrase of such an inspired psalm.
My God, my God,
how wonderful you are!
There is nothing like you in the whole earth.
I look up to the skies, and I see you there;
Babies and infants open their mouths, and I hear them cry your name.
You have an aura that silences your enemies,
it keeps your opponents disarmed.
I look out into the universe, the infinite distances of creation,
sparkling with scattered diamonds,
and I feel so insignificant.
Why should you even notice me?
Why should you care about a mere mortal?
Yet you chose me to be your partner;
you have shared the secrets of the universe with me.
You have made me responsible for everything I see;
the whole world lies open before me --
the rocks and trees,
the birds and bees,
everything that exists in this wonderful world.
My God, my God, how wonderful you are!
For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.
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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
• Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
• Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
• Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
• Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
• Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net
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TECHNICAL STUFF
If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.
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My webpage is up and running again – thanks to Wayne Irwin and ChurchWeb Canada. You can now access current columns and about five years of archives at http://quixotic.ca
I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca
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