Thoughts Happen

The oddest Christmas party I was ever at

One December day in the age of Terence Trent D’Arby and Swing Out Sister, I picked up the cordless phone at my friend Larry’s place (not his real name) and dialed the number on the ecru invitation card in front of me. Larry stood close by, shifting his weight and fidgeting. 

A man’s voice answered. 

“Hi,” I said. “We got the invitation to the Christmas party you left on the windshield and wanted to let you know that we can come.”  

The voice on the other end sounded a little surprised. “Is this the apartment with the cute little guy with the blonde hair?” he said. 

“Yeah. That’s my friend Larry.”

“Well, okay, we’ll see you then.”

I hung up. Larry’s normally fair complexion looked a bit paler than usual.  

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. For some reason that I can’t recall, Larry was convinced that the handwritten invitation he’d found on his windshield was to a gay Christmas party in his apartment complex. And based on my phone conversation, I thought he was probably right.  

Larry was cute, in a preppy kind of way, little — about 5'-7", and a homophobe. 

I knew him not that well — only as an acquaintance, but had jumped on his offer to live rent-free at his Mission Valley apartment for a few weeks before I found my own place. He never, ever tried anything with me, and just seemed to be a nice professional guy who liked the company. His homophobia was never mean spirited, but he made it known that he did not like gays.

He wore khakis, deck shoes and button-down oxfords or polo shirts in yellow, mint green or pink, or if the occasion lent itself, a two-piece navy suit and tie, and was as fastidious in other aspects of his life as he was in his appearance — he made custom mixes of alterna-pop, naming them in alphabetical order according to a featured song (“'Absolute,’ is for ‘Absolute Beginners,’” he explained). 

I once proclaimed him as “the straightest person I know,” but I was too naive at the time to see that Larry was so far in the closet he was practically in Narnia.  

He showed me the invitation when I got back from work that day, wondering what he should do. He didn’t want to be rude, but he really, really did not want to go to that party alone. “Come with me,” he pleaded, and asked me to make the call to RSVP.   

And so, at the designated hour, we headed over. We entered into an apartment done in shades of cream set off by tasteful red Christmas decorations and holiday lighting. A group of about a dozen people were settled in the living room/dining room area around tables spread with hors d’oeuvres, eggnog and drinks. 

We were the only mixed-gender couple in the place. 

We stuck out like pugs at a cat show. But for once I wasn’t the most awkward person in the room. That would have been either Larry or our host, I’m not sure which. However I didn’t have anything invested in this situation, so I gamely struck up a conversation with the couple across from us while nursing a White Russian. Larry and I hung around for about half an hour before politely excusing ourselves. “Oh. My. God,” he said as we headed back to his apartment.

Several months later, in the spring, I ran into Larry and a guy I didn’t know shopping at Target. He’d grown a blonde moustache and was wearing a tank top over shorts and flip-flops. We had a few minutes of forced small-talk before each going on our way. 

That was the last time I ever saw him.

Merry Christmas, Larry

Photo courtesy TraCataldo via Creative Commons

Give a Gift in Honor of Someone - Alternative Gifts International

How wonderful it is that nobody has to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." — Anne Frank

My family enjoyed Thanksgiving weekend with some close friends, and while we did bring a laptop, I didn't use it. I admit to checking email on my phone, but it seemed more important to enjoy our friends than to spend time updating the blog, so there was no post last Wednesday, and Saturday Morning Surf was postponed to Sunday.

But I didn't want another week to go by without letting you know about Alternative Gifts International, seeing as the gift-giving season is upon us. 

A gift you select from AGI is given in honor of your recipient to a carefully screened charity that address one of a myriad of social and environmental issues around the world. Gift levels range from $3 to provide groceries for one person for one day to feed hungry and homeless people in the U.S. and Canada to $240 for a year's worth of participation for one Haitian family in the Model Communities project which protects children in extreme poverty so they aren't sent away to slavery. 

When I first found out about Alternative Gifts, I loved the idea, but felt a little funny about giving them to my family — we were pretty used to doing things the traditional way. So instead I started by putting some alternative gifts on my own wish list, so people could get me something from AGI if they wanted. I always feel like Santa Claus when I open an AGI gift because not only am I getting a surprise, I know I am helping someone else, and that feels really cool. 

Since then my family has absorbed them into our tradition, and we do a combination of regular and alternative gifts. They are great for the hard-to-buy-for and people who don't really want more stuff. 

AGI also started a pre-paid gift card option this year, where you select the gift amount you want to give, but the recipient gets to decide which cause the money goes to. Each charity address one of the following eight categories: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger; Achieve  Universal Primary Education; Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women; Reduce Child Mortality; Improve Maternal Health; Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases; Ensure Environmental Sustainability; and Global Partnership for Development.

Alternative Gifts International was inspired by the Anne Frank quote above. We really can start improving the world right now. 

via www.alternativegifts.org

In every Saturday Morning Surf I highlight a link that I think is worth sharing. I hope you find them intriguing and thought provoking. Please leave your comments here or on the Thoughts Happen Facebook page.

Epiphany in Music

I love to sing. But sometimes I forget that. Daughter said she wanted to go to the Epiphany Eve Carol Sing at our church, so we went together, but I ended up enjoying it at least as much as she did, and not only because of the cookies and cider afterwards.

Epiphany eve, sometimes called Twelfth Night, marks the official end of the Christmas season. Epiphany is the day the Three Wise Men, or Magi arrived to visit the baby Jesus, and falls on the 12th day after Christmas, January 6. (You knew those songs about the Twelve Days of Christmas and We Three Kings went together, right?)

The service was billed as the last opportunity to sing favorite Christmas carols. I love singing Christmas carols. It’s true. I love their familiar tunes and cadences and the continuity they bring to the years. Over time I learned the alto harmony to many of them, and I love singing next to my sister and mom on Christmas Eve, trading off melody and harmony, hearing our three voices weave in with the rest of the congregation. But there’s just one problem; there’s never enough of them.

To get in all the traditional favorites and still leave enough time for the rest of the service, we usually only get to sing at most one or two verses of the same carols every time. I feel like I’m just getting warmed up and we are off "Angels We Have Heard on High" and on to "Joy to the World".

But the Carol Sing was perfect—it could have been called the “All Carols All the Time” service. We called out requests, and while we still didn’t sing every verse, we got to sing more than just one from each carol. We even did a few I had never heard before: “When Christmas Morn is Dawning” and “Jesus, Our Brother, Kind and Good.” We stumbled through the Spanish verse of “Fum, Fum, Fum” and all got to sing the solo parts of “Oh, Holy Night.” At the end we lit candles just like we do on Christmas Eve and sang all the verses (including one in German) of “Silent Night.”

I tipped my unlit candle into Daughter’s flame and realized I was happy. I had my daughter next to me, wonderful music all around, and I had remembered again how much I love to sing.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattwright/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Not-So-Perfect Christmas

 My mantra for my personal life this year has been, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough.” While that’s a hard concept for a recovering perfectionist to wrap her head around, it’s stood me in good stead when I’ve remembered to apply it. I’m thinking of it particularly this year as we get ready to host Christmas for my family. This isn’t the first time our home has been Holiday Home Base, so I’m a little more relaxed about it than previous years. I don’t feel I have anything to prove as a hostess, and my main concern is that everyone is comfortable, well-fed, and enjoys each other’s company. To keep my goal in mind I find it helps to acknowledge the ways our Christmas will be not-so-perfect, and then let them go.

• The house is not spotless, but it’s clean enough
• Our meals will not be gourmet feasts, but I’m accommodating both a high-protein and a vegetarian diet with tasty yet healthy food
• The Moravian Star is still in its box, and we’ve gone another year without outside lights, but the house is reasonably decorated and the tree looks beautiful
• We do not have any plans for holiday festivities, but we’ll have plenty of puzzles and reading material at home
• Not everyone is as healthy as they could be, but it looks like we’ll all be together for another year, and for that I am truly grateful.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of that Perfect Christmas ideal, especially so if you're spending the holiday away from family or without a special loved one. But, to paraphrase yoga instructor Cyndi Lee, “While your Christmas will never be perfect, at the same time, it already is.” 

 I know this is a busy (understatement) time of year, but I’d be interested to hear comments about how your Christmas was “good enough,” this year. 

 Wishing you a very Merry Not-So-Perfect Christmas, -Louise

Photo courtesy  of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumpyjames/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

What's Your Story?

I love, love, love StoryCorps. That’s the oral history project started in 2003 and probably most well known through its weekly podcasts on NPR and the compilation book and CD, “Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.”

StoryCorps provides permanent and mobile recording studios around the country where people reserve a spot to interview someone they know for a 40-minute session and come away with a broadcast-quality recording. The recording also goes into the archive of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. 

Most people interview a family member or someone who is an important part of their lives. The results, which are excerpted for the podcast, are gems. Two cousins reminisce about the daunting Miss Devine who took them to Sunday School, a hospital worker tells her friend how she prays over every surgical instrument pack she assembles for patients awaiting surgery, and a garrulous old man talks about how he met his wife of 75 years.

 I rarely make it through a podcast without getting choked up, and I dare you to make it through Chloe Smith recently interviewing Willie Jefferson, the custodian at her school, without getting a little teary. (Scroll down the Listen page to find Chloe's interview podcast, "Custodian of Grace"). I think what gets me is the privilege I feel at witnessing people's willingness to open themselves to each other. There must be something about the intimacy of the recording booth that lets people be more relaxed about asking and answering questions about their lives.

There are several people I wish I had had the opportunity to interview, one of whom is my grandmother on my mother’s side. I would ask her what it was like to move her three children all the way to Japan by herself when my grandfather was stationed there after WWII. I would ask her how she started drawing and painting, and what she thought of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

My grandmother isn’t around anymore, but my parents are, as well as many of my other relatives. I recently toted a video camera to my folks’ house to record some information about where key papers are kept, but also snapped it on any time a family story came up. I was so glad I did that I’m going to do it again while we’re all together this Thanksgiving weekend.

Families traditionally being together over Thanksgiving is why StoryCorps has designated the day after Thanksgiving, November 27, as National Day of Listening. Even if no tapes or cameras are rolling, asking the important people in our lives to tell us their story and really listening to them is one of the greatest ways to show our love.

The Tenth Day of Christmas

I thought I knew what to expect when we headed out to Christmas Eve service at the Lutheran church near my sister’s new house in Sacramento. There was just one service that night, at five o’clock, so it would be a small congregation, maybe an older crowd that doesn’t do much driving at night. 

Not wanting to jostle for a seat at the last minute, we arrived about fifteen minutes early, and immediately our group of seven almost doubled the population in the sanctuary. Hoo boy. Lutherans have a reputation for not wanting to stick out, but that’s hard to do when the guests outnumber the parishioners. Fortunately it filled up more as five o’clock approached, until there were about 70 people. The place could easily have fit at least triple that number. 

Instead of pews there were hotel banquet-hall style padded chairs arranged in two columns of about six rows each on either side of a center aisle, with lots of room to spare. The room was big and boxy, with a high ceiling that accentuated the cavernous feeling. 

Before the service, projection screens showed a Christmas slide show interspersed with announcements for a Sacramento Kings charity event and a men’s fellowship breakfast that aimed for inclusive but sounded a bit pleading—“All men are invited to the fellowship breakfast. Everyone is welcome. Bring your friends. Bring your sons. (please).” 

Okay, that is not an exact quote, but I could sense the imploring undercurrent. I figured that this was probably an older, struggling congregation that, like a lot of churches, is trying to find ways to stay viable. I felt a little uncomfortable—I didn’t want any desperation to rub off on me.

I glanced through the bulletin and was relieved to see all the standard stuff. Christmas hymns, call and response readings, prayer, communion, the Christmas Message and for the finale, a candlelight “Silent Night.” Yup. Been there, done that, familiar with the routine.  

An older pastor conducted most of the service, but when the time came for the Christmas Message, the vicar, a white-robed young man with close-cropped auburn hair and a neatly trimmed beard came to the front. (A vicar is sort of an apprentice pastor—not, as I previously thought, someone who presides over a small village church in England like a character in a P.G. Wodehouse story.)  

Instead of beginning in the familiar Christmas Eve way with angels, shepherds, Mary and Joseph and the manger, he started to describe the Last Supper—Jesus taking the Passover meal with his disciples. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who was a little surprised. Umm ... aren’t you in the wrong holiday? Maybe he grabbed an Easter sermon out of his folder in the church office by mistake. He’d gotten my attention, though, as I wondered where this was going.

He talked about how nobody sharing that meal had expected things to turn out the way they did, and they certainly had no idea what was to unfold in the coming days. “This isn’t what we expect to hear about on Christmas, is it?” he said. No, it certainly wasn’t turning out like any Christmas Eve sermon I’d ever heard before. 

He went on to describe how the prophets had told of a savior, but no one expected him to come as a child. “How often is our experience of God limited by our human expectations?” he asked.

Whoa. 

All of a sudden the Christmas Eve sermon was starting to seem very relevant to me. When was the last time that happened? 

I mean, call it God or call it Life, the same applies. How often have my own expectations of life limited my capacity to just experience it as it is?

The holidays are a prime example. My family gets together and does things pretty much the same way we always have, everyone behaves in the same way they always have, and I know how it will turn out. 

We go to Christmas Eve service with all the predictable elements and hear the same story we have heard for years—yes, yes, there was no room at the inn, uh huh, and they laid the baby in a manger and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, hmmm, hmmm. 

All the tradition is certainly nice but it can numb me out to the fact that I’m friggin’ alive, and that the people around me, instead of being predictable patterns of packaged behavior, are actually one-of-a-kind bundles of mystery and wonder, and isn’t that miracle enough? 

As the vicar concluded the sermon and the service wound down, my mind spiraled in and out, excitedly grabbing bits of the quoted scripture and weaving them in with scraps of Alan Watts, walking meditation instruction and random snippets from my life—it had been a long time since I had felt inspired by a Christmas Eve service.  I felt aware of the humanity around me and was appreciative to be part of it. 

The service concluded after the candlelight “Silent Night,” and after a moment’s hesitation I walked up to say hello to the young vicar, to tell him I enjoyed his sermon. This modest church that I thought I had pegged even before I walked in the door gave me an opportunity to reconnect to the everyday extraordinariness of my own experience, and a bit of connection seemed appropriate.

The Gift of Waiting

A small, smooth river rock with the word “wait” written on it sits in a dish on my vanity. A woman I know gave it to me during Advent a few years ago. Most days it attracts little notice, nestled among some glass pebbles, shells and other stones I’ve accumulated. But this time of year I start thinking more about waiting and its role in my life, and the fullness of that single word becomes more apparent. 

In the Christian tradition, Advent is the time of waiting, symbolizing the anticipation of the arrival of the Christ child. Any parent who has gone through nine months of pregnancy—or waited for an adoption to go through—can empathize with the need to wait. 

And like a child counting down the days until Christmas, our waiting is not so hard when fruition is in our sights. But sometimes the outcome is not so certain, and questions about what the future will bring linger on our hearts. 

Will we find a partner to love, or find love again after a loss? Will our parent come home from the hospital? Will we be able to have another child? Will we ever completely recover from an illness or injury? Will a child lost to addiction ever find peace? 

Sometimes there are no answers to our questions—just more waiting. It can be so, so difficult when we have done all we can do and must simply wait. It is during these times, when the waiting seems most unbearable, that how we choose to wait comes to define us. 

We can let the waiting feed our anger, resentment and bitterness, or we can instead choose to let it nourish our patience and openness, softening us up instead of hardening us. 

In her book "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times," Pema Chodron describes patience as one of six transcendent actions that give space to our situation, that open things up and let them breathe. When we encourage patience in ourselves, she writes, we don’t just gut it out, but in any situation we can instead “chew it, smell it, look at it, and open ourselves to seeing what’s there.” Patience is not something we either have or don’t have, but rather it is a journey. Chodron writes, “The journey of patience involves relaxing, opening to what’s happening, experiencing a sense of wonder.” 

When the outcome is the most uncertain is when we have the opportunity for the path we choose to be the most fruitful. Can we be with the uncertainty of the waiting and not close down? Can we aspire to develop an abiding patience with the precious mystery of life? Can we experience not knowing how things will turn out as the extraordinary gift that it is? 

If we can, then the true gift of waiting is not what we were waiting for, but who we have become in the process.