Teaching Truth From TV

I have been thinking...and thinking..."pondering" is the biblical, meditative, and intellectual word that goes with thinking. "Brain Frying" is the less than intellectual, meditative or reflective way of saying where I've arrived.
My head is clouded over with way too many thoughts...thinking at times strains my mind and gets me bound up in a franctic search for just the right way to think.
OK..so what's it all about?
Teaching...specifically teaching at my church once a month in 2006.
I hit upon an idea that I'm going to flesh out here...not necessarily because it will complete the circle and make it all come together, but perhaps some of you will help me think.
I'm thinking about teaching a series of messages from TV themes.
Let's start with "Lost". A story of a group of people whose airplane crashes and they find themselves on an island. That has potential. Are we a bunch of people who don't know where we are, don't know how or if we will ever be discovered, and therefore don't know whether to build with the future in mind, or whether to "hunker down" and just make what we have work?
The "Amazing Race". A group of people all racing around the world trying to survive each round so that they can advance to the million dollar payoff. It makes me wonder what it takes to get people to venture out of the safe confines of the west to really see the world. Mostly though I think of the idea of "running the race so as to win the prize" that Paul talks about.
"CSI" -- big show (#1 in all polls). I've watched it a few times. It's birthed several "CSI" offshoots....Miami, New York, Navy...all of them based on the idea of solving the mysteries of death. It speaks loudly of our need to solve the problems of evil...in their case it's all scientific, but there is enough to let us realize that science can solve the problem of evil.
"America's Home Makeover" -- a really feel good show about how needy people go from rags to riches in terms of their homes. I love watching people get a new home...wished it could happen to every poor family in the world. It's a weekly show on "grace"...we get what we don't deserve, and way beyond our imagination.
I don't watch a lot of TV. I watch "Lost" with Linda, and as well, "The Amazing Race". The only other weekly regular is "West Wing"...which I can't quite figure out yet how to make into a teaching theme.
I suppose ESPN should factor into this somehow, don't you? NCAA football, NFL football, some basketball (March madness), a little baseball (mainly during playoffs), but definitely should be a part of life somehow. At least my sons will agree!

Boxing Day and My English daughter

It's "Boxing Day" - December 26th, the day after Christmas. For most Americans there is no celebration of Boxing Day. It is likely to get a curious "huh?" if we were to even mention it as a day. Also called "St. Stephen's Day", it is the second Christmas day in most of Europe, as well as our neighbors to the north -- that would be Canada.
It might have originated as a part of the Christmas celebration for the poor...mainly when business owners gave their workers Christmas bonuses in the form of fruits and goodies in boxes. It was, in England, a practice for workers to carry boxes to their employers on the day after Christmas where then employers would put coins in the box as year end gifts -- sort of end of the year bonuses. Another English tradition has it that the poor often worked on Christmas day and so the day after Christmas was their day to open boxes given to them by their Lords and hence was their Christmas celebration.
Interestingly, it was also a part of tradition that the Church often broke open their boxes in which people had given alms to the poor on this day after Christmas so that the coins to be distributed to the poor.
Americans celebrate boxing day with old-fashioned consumerism (don't we celebrate everything that way?).
It is the busiest "return merchandise" day of the year. The stores that sold a booty of pre-holiday merchandise throw open the doors to welcome a ton of it back and to hopefully sell out a whole lot more of discounted stuff in hopes that they can clear out their merchandise.

Well...regardless of what the purpose is, it is MY day to reflect upon my English daughter - Lindsay. I quite like the English. I have been to England quite a few times, dating back to my first trip in 1992. Little did I know that my trips to England would result in my daughter, Lindsay, meeting a Brit - Peter Osborne -- and the two of them getting married -- about 16 months ago. Last Christmas Lindsay and Peter came to the states -- what I call "home" -- even though it is not their home. Their home is in Bristol, England, or to be exact in "Almondsbury", which seems to be a very small village on a busy thoroughfare between Bristol and Thornbury. I loved having them here last year for our Christmas family celebration. I even made it a point to wish them a "Happy Boxing Day" -- which I had no idea of whether that was an appropriate greeting for that day or not.
This Christmas I had to settle for Lindsay and Peter via a webcam and the internet. Don't get me wrong, I loved seeing them on the web cam as they celebrated Christmas with us live through cyber-space. I am happy that I could see her face and watch her and Peter laugh a bit with us. The "us" was the rest of the family -- Kelly and Greg, from Chicago; Chris and Sarah, from Madison; Andrew, from right here at home; and of course Linda and I. We had gathered on Christmas eve day to celebrate: translated that means eat a lot of food, play games, watch some football -- ok, a lot of football, and have fun. We decided we'd open presents at night and so at 7:00 p.m. our time, 1:00 a.m. Christmas Day, Peter and Lindsay's time, we met online. The web cam worked wonderfully...and I loved every minute of it.
I had forgotten how beautiful Lindsay looks. I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have been surprised either at how much I wanted to reach across the web right into their living room, just so I could hold her for a few minutes and tell her that I loved her and missed her. I suppose that is what Dads are suppose to do; but I felt it ever so deeply that evening.
What I want to do is just let her know how much I love her and miss her...more than I can say even in a blog.

SO...Happy Boxing Day honey. I feel poor without you here. I love you and miss you, but I am also happy for you and Peter. The English, as far as I'm concerned, get a beautiful boxing day present.

Joy to the World

It's a Tuesday evening and I'm at my Ministry Internship class. My compadre', Joe, is waxing eloquently on the Ministry Management Tool. While he teaches, I am thinking, pondering if you will, the Advent season we're in -- this season of Joy.
Yes, it's one of the older Christmas hymns of the Church...
"Joy to the World,
the Lord has come,
Let earth receive her king."
What precipitated my pondering was a result of what I will be teaching in a couple of hours from now in my class -- the early 20th Century of Church History, and more specifically, among other things, the life of C.S. Lewis. It was while re-reading some of Lewis' background and his writings that I once again ran across this theme of "joy"...namely, in "Surprised by Joy". From early moments in Lewis' life he had known moments of what he called joy; meaning, very precisely, a sweet aching of sensing -- and in that moment longing for -- a reality of life, light and beauty beyond ordinary experience. These aching moments of life were things that he believed were common and a person searching for them could discover them with frequency.
Joy...surprised by Joy.
Every Advent I'm surprised by the joy of pondering the incarnation of our Lord. It is a "joyous" season for me...fulll of light, full of life, full of beauty. The decorations, the carols, even the cheesy holiday films like "It's a Wonderful Life" all add up for me as a season of joy.
I think I'm a product of this from my childhood. I don't have lots of fond memories of growing up, but I have lots of joyous memories of Christmas. It wasn't because there were lots of presents...we weren't that well to do to have lots of gifts. But, it was a season of surprise, and a happy time in our household...a time of family, food and fun...the stuff of what Community is made of. So, I carried that into my adulthood and sought to replicate some of that in our own family life. We made it a fun season, and the fact that it was surrounded by a greater family time, music, celebration, and real reflection on the incarnation served over and over again to lead me to moments of JOY.
That is what provoked me as I prepared for this evening...something settled over me in my memories and I smiled...a warm joyous feeling settled in. I have pictures in my head of family time...of early morning times of pondering the incarnation, of music, of my "Christmas village", of cookies, sleds, snow, of Kelly, Chris, Lindsay, Andy and Linda that flood over my soul in ways that leave me feeling full of Joy. I only wished that this season lasted all year long...I don't have any excuse for why it doesn't...just a realization that it doesn't, and I wished it would. Still, right now, for this season...even though my family is somewhat scattered and I only have the memories...I am filled with Joy.