We'll get to the theory a little later. As for the pictures, wanted a picture that related to what I was blogging about, but instead settled on something silly. Under the image search "Fail", are some pretty crazy funny pics, if you want a good laugh and a waste of time. I selected two. The kid for obvious reasons. The cat because he looks like my cat Jeremy, who, being a ninja cat could get himself into a predicament as such. And cats are weird in general. I won't get into that.
I actually wanted to take a moment to comment on Christmas. I feel as though I blogged about this last year, but I will do it again nonetheless. I have grown into quite a scrooge when it comes to Christmas. I have trouble with Christmas music, most folks love the 15 Christmas carols that get sung for a month and a half every year. I on the other hand do not. I like a few of them, sort of and I have redone a few of them in pretty cool ways that help, but I still struggle through getting into the 'Christmas Spirit'. Some of this is the commercialization of Christmas, stores go crazy, black Friday. . .yeah, someone actually died. Radio stations. . .crazy, decorating house with outside lights. . . crazy, TV shows/ movies. . . crazy, all sorts of hype about the 'spirit of Christmas' which basically is giving stuff. I do recognize the cool part in bringing families together, but I struggle with the giving part. Some of this stems from my own propensity to stink at giving people I love, specifically, but not limited to, my wife good gifts. I always sort of feel like the sweater that I pick out will do justice in conveying the amount of love and gratitude I feel. This gets magnified by the pressure that a gift giving holiday (which includes valentine's day, birthdays insert other days that consist of consumer pressure to purchase a great gift.) I don't have a problem with giving, but the consumerism. Does that make sense?
Now with that laying a subtle groundwork for my struggle with Christmas, Christmas has never been a not busy or stressful time. Salvo people can shout an amen. Pageants, Santa Claus, traffic, Christmas eve candle light services, the living Christmas tree, lots of busy and then there is this huge push to be more busy in order to have the greatest family Christmas. I immediately think of National Lampoon's Christmas vacation, which is an awesome part of Christmas. All of this really was hit on the head for me the other day. I was coming home from my parents house on thanksgiving, flipping through the radio station and stumbled upon Christian radio. . . bad idea. The speaker was reading off a list of "naughty and nice" stores to spend money at during the Christmas season. Listing naughty stores being the ones who say 'happy holidays' instead of 'merry Christmas'. . . and the nice ones were the vice versa. Are you flipping kidding me? Ok church, when you go out to spend lots of money, buying lots of stuff your family doesn't need in the name of Santa . . . (as I think the percentage is small for people on black Friday pushing for the best price on the x box 9000 in the name of Jesus. . . did I already say that someone died?) . . . make sure you do it at stores that only recognize your worldview, we want to make sure that we don't intermingle with anyone who believes differently. Needless to say, I was a bit honked and I am still working through why.
Also on the subject of Christmas, as a worship leader, I am called to usher the people of God to the foot of his throne and put the praises of God on their lips on a regular basis. I have such a hard time at Christmas with the songs, not just because I get a bit sick of them, but because I feel like they come so close to pointing towards the secularization of the Jesus story. When I hear 'Joy to the world' I think of kettles, stores, Santa, gifts and then through sheer force of will, come back to Jesus. THat may just be my own deal. But I am going to leave that for now in order to not write forever as I still wanted to address something else.
The ten theory.
I was talking with Mike (my pastor) about holidays and how we always want to get it right and we always want, especially the family time to be a '10'. And he said something sort of on the fly, along the lines of. . ."If it is going to be a ten, it is just going to happen naturally. If you try for it, you might get an eight." The more I think about this, the more I think this is book worthy. It applies to everything. You always know when someone is trying too hard. I've got to think through it more, but I think that is some of my issue at Christmas. You try so hard, you miss it lots of times. I am going to look at this more for sure, so this is just a preview I guess. Anyone think of where else this theory could apply?
IN other news. I have decided that I am old. Despite the evidence in the graying of my beard, I have held onto some hopes of stying hip. But I just got into a text conversation with one of the youth. It took me like 3 minutes to send him a one word answer, and by the time I had watched the phone confirm that the message had gone through, closed the phone and set it down, he sent back a full paragraph follow up response. The dude basically copied the dictionary in 8 seconds. I guess the iphone now has telepathic text response or something. This paragraph was just bonus by the way.
And last but not least a quote:
"It's got a cop motor: a 440 cubic inch plant. It's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas."
