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30
Jan
2023
Thursday January 5, 2022
So here we are – 12th Night, 2023, the end of the fabled Twelve Days of Christmas.
Originally, 12th Night referred to the arrival of the Three Wise Men – although the Bible never says there were three – from the East.
My mother’s British traditions considered it bad luck to leave Christmas decorations up after 12th Night. In an eruption of winter energy, we took down all the tinsel and tinkles, the glass balls and nativity scenes, and packed them away for the next Christmas.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Incarnation, 12th night
24
Dec
2022
Christmas Eve, 2022
Christmas and Easter sometimes remind me of the Bobbsey twins. They’re inextricably bound together, Can’t get along without each other. And yet they’re constantly competing with each other.
Briefly put, the Incarnation argues that God – whoever or whatever God is – became a human being in Jesus, the baby born in Bethlehem. The Resurrection claims that that same baby, some 30 years later, triumphed over death and will never die again.
Both focus on the uniqueness of the event. This only happened once, we declare. The rule –we commonly assume – is that God is “out there” somewhere. Or perhaps “up there”. But certainly different from us. Not mortal flesh-and-blood.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: resurrection, Christmas, Incarnation
20
Feb
Thursday February 17, 2022
Editorial note: I’m feeling mentally lethargic these days, so rather than try to write about an entirely new subject, I thought it worth repeating last year’s column about “Pink Shirt Day,” which is coming up next Wednesday
Anti-Bullying Day started in Canada. I’m proud of that fact, as proud as an apologetic Canadian can be about anything.
Two teenagers in Nova Scotia, David Shepherd and Travis Price, objected to another student being ridiculed for wearing a pink shirt on the first day of school. So they bought 50 pink shirts and handed them out to other students, to wear in solidarity with the bullying victim.
Because their act coincided with the school year, Nova Scotia first set Anti-Bullying Day in September. The day moved around a little, as other provinces climbed on the bandwagon. The government of Canada now defines the last Wednesday of February as Anti-Bullying Day.
So when I took the dog out for her morning walk yesterday, I was wearing a pink T-shirt.
Tags: bullying, Incarnation, Pink Shirt Day
28
2021
Thursday December 23, 2021
I call myself a Christian (though I’m sure some would consider me a humanist at best, an atheist at worst). Certainly, I come from a Christian tradition. And Christian tradition has asserted, for centuries, that God was born as a human baby. We call him Jesus. Other cultures call him Jesu, or Yeshua, or some name that I don’t know.
Think about the sheer audacity of that claim. God became human! God didn’t just pretend to become human. God didn’t put on a human mask and go around in disguise. God became a human. A very specific historical human.
The Incarnation makes my faith much simpler. If I want to know what God is like, I need only look at Jesus.
Tags: God, Christmas, Jesus, Incarnation