Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Winter travel across the world

Snowflakes dusted the front walk during the night but no significant accumulation. Our ride to the airport shows up in good time and we’re off, checked in, and through security in record time. At the gate we connect with the four others heading to the same conference.

Then we sit.

Snow in Chicago has delayed the plane coming to take us back to Chicago. Snow showers blast the outside windows, but by the time we take off, there still is a mere skim of sweeping snow on the runways.

Not so Chicago. Landing we see a thick layer on the ground and the runway is rather slippery. We’re in a little regional jet so we are secure, but we still skitter some slowing down. Our dock is still filled with a 747 headed somewhere, and we wait on the tarmac for another lengthy spell before we’re allowed to dock. The takeoff runway is lined with planes waiting their turn.

When the plane stops, we unload, but have to wait on the jetway for our carry-on bags that wouldn’t fit in the little overhead bins. Snow blows sideways onto us. Bags finally in hand we dash up into the terminal and down ten gates arriving just as our names are called as the last two passengers on the plane to Hong Kong. Doors secured, the plane still waits another hour plus for de-icing and clearance to depart. At about ten thousand feet we break into sunlight and the winter is left behind.

The flight is textbook: crowded, long, and wearisome, but totally normal. Arriving in Hong Kong, later than expected, we meet our ride and head outside to the parking lot and a waiting van. The familiar smell of Hong Kong overtakes us – a mixture of tropical vegetation, even in winter, sea air mixed with a hint of diesel fuel. Definitely Hong Kong,

Arriving at the downtown hotel, we check in quickly and head out onto the streets. No arrival in Hong Kong is complete without a nighttime walk up Nathan Road. This time we head for McDonalds and a quick snack. Who would have thought that McDonalds could sell noodle soup with a poached egg and cheese in it? Only in Hong Kong.

A brisk walk is what we need to settle down for the night. It’s chillier than our usual visits and ski jackets feel good. There’s a damp fog brewing and light rain. Snow is left behind and we settle into the bone chilling raw of south China winter.

Definitely Hong Kong.



Thursday, December 24, 2009

Don't take my Christmas

(Posted once a year!)

No, I am sorry, but you cannot have my Christmas. It is not available for comment or optional changes. Somewhere in the last 35 years of my life my Christmas has been slowly taken away, piece by piece.

I want it back.

My Christmas is a deeply spiritual experience. It is a time to stop and reflect on the stillness and silence of winter nights. To breathe certain scents and listen to particular types of music. It may come wrapped in cold snow or the clear midnight sky of the tropics. It is warm, homey and totally mine. I share it freely with family and friends, but it is not for sale.

It’s not about nostalgia or traditions though both are part of Christmas, but about the stark realization that God wrapped His only Son in flesh and laid him in the arms of a common peasant couple in Bethlehem. And because of that birth, Christmas exists, and I am able to see God face to face in the person of Jesus Christ. The wood of the manger was a shadow of the cross to come; salvation was wrapped in cloth, enveloped in the tender softness of a little child.

I will not be sending Happy Holiday cards, or Seasons Greetings, because they cheapen and diminish the intense wonder of why Christmas was or is ever celebrated. Santa is welcome to enrich the festivities, as long as he too bows at the manger, worships the Child and remembers his roots in St. Nicholas.

Excuse me if the crèche and angels and shepherds and wise men offend you. I am more offended by a general malaise in society that tells me none of these are or should be part of the “holidays.” If you take away the foundation of Christmas, there simply is nothing left to celebrate.

If I took away Hanukkah or Kwanza or Ramadan, I would be severely chastised for not being pluralistically sensitive. Fine, anyone who wants to celebrate those holidays is welcome to do so. In fact, I will celebrate with them, but don’t tell me I cannot celebrate Christmas as I choose.

I will continue to put out my little Nativity and touch the wooden pieces with warm memories and wonder. I will sing and play carols that speak, not of holidays, Santa and elves, but of the Christ child. I will read the Christmas story again and again from Matthew and Luke, Isaiah and Micah. The words of scripture will echo back into my corporate memory of candlelit services and bells and organ. I will meditate on the drama and glory of it all. I will bask in the blaze of angel brightness. My Christmas will be flagrantly Christian.

I will sit in solitude beside my tree and reflect on the deep green of life, the red of blood shed for my salvation and the pure white light of a soul cleansed from sin.

Don’t even think about taking my Christmas. This is not a once a year celebration. I do not put Christ back into Christmas. I simply recognize that if I deeply love my Lord, He is the foundation of every day of the year. Christmas is not a holiday. It is my life.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Longhorns

091215

The Longhorns

The Longhorns live in a field just a stone’s throw from my home, a large meadow tucked in the middle of Midwest suburbia. Over the years I’ve watched them in all seasons. Right now they are shaggy and the snow sticks to their coarse coats as they huddle against the wind. In the spring the grass is a riot of green and calves bounce around the field. Summer mornings the light streams across the herd, catching their horns with gold. Autumn brings rusty colors to the field, and they are almost invisible.

I’ve never quite figured out why a herd of Longhorn cattle live in my neighborhood. There is a tiny farm tucked back in there, off a main road, and evidently the farmer likes cattle. Longhorns seem like an anachronism, a whisper of days long gone past. Today’s cattle usually have their horns docked early, but these old beasts carry the full rack and use them to prod each other around the field. Ugly, ungainly, wild, and beautiful.

In almost 30 years, I’ve passed them again and again, often several times in a day. I feel like they are friends. Not close friends, but at least good neighbors.

I’m going to miss the Longhorns.

Today as I drove by, there was a “for sale” sign posted at the road edge of the field. I see it as a sign of the end. End of an era, end of a way of life, end of the little rural patch of life stuck in the middle of suburbia. Forty years ago this entire part of the Midwest was farmland. Even thirty years ago, when we moved here, only one fourth of the township was settled. Now there are no working farms left. Subdivisions cover the landscape.

But the Longhorns have held on, or the man who owns them has held on to his meadow. Maybe he can’t hold on to it any longer. Times are tough and land is gold. But the economy stinks and who is going to buy that meadow right now?

I’m hoping that no one wants it but the Longhorns.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

A Michigan Christmas

It seems to me that Christmas in Michigan, 2009, is a little dark. Typically the residential streets are alight with decorations and color, and somehow, the neighborhood is a bit sober this year. Perhaps the fact that unemployment is higher here than anywhere else in the nation is taking a toll. And perhaps it's the empty houses where the residents have fled for jobs elsewhere.

I remember moving here three decades ago when bumper stickers said, "Last one to leave Michigan, turn out the lights."

Did someone already turn out the lights around here? Or maybe they just left and didn't pay the electric bill, like all the foreclosure homes around here where angry owners have trashed the house before they fled.

Seems like a general malaise is in place. Gloom and doom. Maybe it's just me, but I think Michigan is skipping Christmas this year.

That could be a good thing. In fact, it would be a retro celebration. The first Christmas was a pretty sober one too. Taxes, imposed by the Romans, had everyone scrambling. Oppression was daily reality in Judea. I'm sure Joseph and Mary weren't at all thrilled to be ordered by the Emperor to take a long trip when she was expecting a baby. We sing blithely of "the babe in Bethlehem" and forget that Bethlehem was the last place Jesus' parents wanted to be right then.

The accommodations were pretty grim. The first visitors probably smelled like sheep and the great out-of-doors, and no recent baths. Yes, there were angels and bright lights, but that faded after the shepherds went to town, and no one but the shepherds seems to have noticed it. No one cared that another baby was born for a long while -- not till the wise men came and asked Herod where they could find "The one born king of the Jews." Now that raised a rumpus.

In fact, it was such an uproar that Mary and Joseph made yet another journey, a long one to Egypt, and they stayed there in exile till Herod died.

They didn't face foreclosure, but they faced grinding poverty. They didn't lose their jobs; they left the job behind in Nazareth. They were lonely, young, and probably frightened. They didn't ask to raise the son of God and they didn't get a choice in the assignment.

Yet, I don't read of their complaints. Mary kept all these things in her heart and pondered them. Joseph got his marching orders, twice, from angelic visitors in dreams, but he did what he was told. They managed to get to the temple and present their child as they were supposed to do, and they got the blessings of Simeon and Anna. They just went on living, one step at a time. And God richly blessed them. In fact, because of their obedience, we celebrate Christmas.

I can do without the lights and bustle and shopping. Give me quiet, carols, friends and family. I'm warmed and fed and well. In the midst of a sober Michigan Christmas, life is actually very good -- because God is good.