Joy Slips In Unnoticed

This very nearly made me cry the first time I saw it. From the creative minds at Improv Everywhere. Merry Christmas from Loud Time.


Guerilla Handbell Strikeforce

Have You Heard the Word?

As promised, what follows is the key to the 2009 "Year of the Beatles" Zimmerman Christmas letter. To recap: 50 Beatles references—plus two extra credit selections. Pencils down, people . . .

1. Do you want to know a secret? Do You Want to Know a Secret?
2. “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead” Two of Us
3. Tell me what you see! Tell Me What You See
4. A splendid time is guaranteed for all . . . Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
5. Happy ever after in the marketplace? Ob-la-di Ob-la-da
6. It’s all too much for me to take . . . all the world’s a birthday cake. It’s All Too Much
7. She became a legend of the silver screen. Honey Pie
8. “They’re gonna make a big star out of me!” Act Naturally
9. It felt a little like she was leaving home (bye, bye). She’s Leaving Home
10. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! She Loves You
11. “I wanna hold your hand.” I Wanna Hold Your Hand
12. “Keep your hands to yourself!” I’m Down
13. “It’s getting better all the time!” Getting Better
14. He’s been traveling here, there and everywhere. Here, There and Everywhere
15. Some days it seems he’s gone halfway across the universe. Across the Universe
EXTRA CREDIT!!! He is developing a fab new style. "Fab 4" or When We Was Fab (George Harrison)
16. “Dear Sir or Madam, could you read my book?” Paperback Writer
17. “Don’t bother me.” Don’t Bother Me
18. Soon we’ll be away from here; step on the gas. You Never Give Me Your Money
19. The world going by your window. I’m Only Sleeping
20. I should have known better. Should Have Known Better
21. Like pigs from a gun. I Am the Walrus
22. “We can work it out!” We Can Work It Out
23. Dig it! Dig It
24. Though we ran and hid our heads, we both got sick and wondered if we might as well be dead. Rain
25. La la la, la la la la la. From Me to You
26. She’d love you to. Love You To
27. In a strange (very strange) turn of events ... Penny Lane
28. Boys—what a bundle of joy! Boys
29. Your voice is soothing, but the. words aren’t clear. I’m Looking Through You
30. Paperback writer Dave ... Paperback Writer
31. I’m so proud to know that she is mine. Good Day Sunshine
32. Dave would post to Twitter and Facebook every little thing he does. Every Little Thing
33. He ... seems to think “Everybody’s trying to be my baby.” Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby
34. “I’m a loser.” I’m a Loser
35. I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in to stop my mind from wondering where it will go . . . Fixing a Hole
36. All it needs is love ... All You Need Is Love
37. But we decided to let it be. Let It Be
38. Christ, you know it ain’t easy; you know how hard it can be. Ballad of John and Yoko
39. Tomorrow never knows ... Tomorrow Never Knows
40. Get back, Loretta! Your mama’s waiting for you. Get Back
41. We ran for our lives ... Run for Your Life
42. Dave wakes up every day to Lacey shouting “Good morning! Good morning!” Good Morning, Good Morning
43. ... And gets home every afternoon to find Lucy at the door, clutching forks and knives to eat the fish medley. Little Piggies
44. It helps that there’s a place where we can go ... There’s a Place
45. You say it’s your birthday? It’s my birthday too, yeah! Birthday
46. I guess you could say we get by with a little help from our friends. With a Little Help from My Friends
47. We do appreciate your being ‘round. Help!
48. All you need is love; love is all you need. All You Need Is Love
EXTRA CREDIT!!! Happy Christmas! Happy Christmas (War Is Over)
49. Here comes the Son! Here Comes the Sun
50. Love, love, love. All You Need Is Love

That's it! If you hit If you got more than the bold, italicized headings, we'll call you a fan. If you got thirty or more, you may want to see your doctor about treatment options for Beatlemania. Hope you have enjoyed the show! Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band (Reprise)

Joy to the World

No more let sin or sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground.

He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

A blessed Christmas to all my Loud Time friends.

Deck the Halls with Faux Endorsements

I wouldn't presume at this point in the presidential campaign to know for certain who I think would be best to lead our country for the next four years. But I've been seeing so much of these people on the news lately that it seems to be high time that I take what little I know of the candidates and make a preliminary endorsement for Barack Obama. {I'm still working on my endorsement for the Republican party.)

As you'll see below, this is about as uninformed an endorsement as one can manage, and really I must confess my reason for endorsing Barack, beyond his general appeal both as a champion of fresh thinking in Washington and as a candidate who recalls for me the idealistic innocence of early 1960s political activism: I have an idea for a theme song for him, and I hope by endorsing his candidacy I can convince him to run with my theme song.

Every candidate since 1992, when Bill Clinton wouldn't shut up about "thinking about tomorrow," has needed a theme song, whether they knew it or not. In some cases they've needed a whole theme mix-tape; one could argue that President Bush's i-Pod has been exposed to greater scrutiny than his department of defense. Hillary Clinton made a big deal out of her choice of theme song earlier this year, and I can't for the life of me remember what it was. That's OK, though, because the i-Pod has changed how we think about music. In the era of shuffle, a candidate needs to keep people guessing about what song best characterizes his or her campaign. It needs to be creative, poignant, memorizable and yet forgettable.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I offer Senator Obama in his quest for the White House: an eminently forgettable yet easily memorizable song for the moment, to keep everyone's thoughts on him even as we prepare our hearts for Christmas. You'll sing this song to the tune of "The Little Drummer Boy." I hope it enhances your holiday experience even as it makes you more politically conscious.

"Come," they told me (Barack Obama)
"Our future president" (Barack Obama)
As tall as the Sears Tower (Barack Obama)
He wants to fight the power (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Shall I vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs?

His professorial tone (Barack Obama)
His sixties retro suits (Barack Obama)
From Oprah feeling love (Barack Obama)
He towers all above (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Shall we vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs?

Sure, he's far too young (Barack Obama)
And dangerously thin (Barack Obama)
A junior senator (Barack Obama)
Campaigned when he was four (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Still, I'd vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs.

His veiled comparisons (Barack Obama)
To Martin Luther King (Barack Obama)
He's more like JFK (Barack Obama)
With fewer sandwiches (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Sure, I'll vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs.

PS: I'm still undecided as far as the Republicans go, but here's where I'm leaning:

Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee Ole!
Oh what fun it is to say the president's last name--Hey!

Overheard at Lunch

Ah, youth. I heard one eight-year-old (?) kid explaining one of the great mysteries of childhood to another eight-year-old (?) kid today. It's a bittersweet moment, I suppose, when you're suddenly pulled from the naive innocence of early childhood into a more worldly wise, perhaps less enchanted age. There are new enchantments yet to be discovered, of course, but for this one eight-year-old (?), today may have marked the end of his innocence.

"Have you ever heard of an atomic wedgie? They do it to dorks at camp . . ."

Yes, son, I'm afraid they do . . .

Incarnation . . . Immanuel

Jesus is our childhood's pattern;
day by day, like us he grew;
he was little, weak, and helpless,
tears and smiles like us he knew;
and he feeleth for our sadness,
and he shareth in our gladness.
--Cecil Frances Alexander “Once in Royal David’s City,” verse 3

We all live off his generous bounty,
gift after gift after gift.
We got the basics from Moses,
and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
This endless knowing and understanding—
all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
No one has ever seen God,
not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
who exists at the very heart of the Father,
has made him plain as day.
--John 1:16-18, The Message

And our eyes at last shall see him,
through his own redeeming love;
for that chlid so dear and gentle
is our Lord in heaven above;
and he leads his children on
to the place where he is gone.
--Cecil Frances Alexander “Once in Royal David’s City,” verse 4

The Gospel According to Mary, Part Four: Emulating Mary

Mary, the mother of Jesus, lived a hero’s journey. She’s surely not alone; many biblical characters can comfortably bear Joseph Campbell’s template. But Mary has proven her heroism. As such, we cannot simply venerate her; we ought to emulate her.

Mary’s heroism is linked to her self-identification as the Lord’s servant. In response to the herald angel she embraces her calling and lives it out in possibly its most challenging way. She attends to Jesus throughout his life, all the while letting Jesus go his own way. She stores up in her heart words and deeds that will over time come to change the course of history. She never leaves her life’s station, in the peasant class of a nation under bondage, but she transcends it nonetheless by enduring trial after trial and standing firm in her attentiveness to her son, her Lord.

Mary’s heroism is not simply a model for us; it’s an invitation. A simple life, we learn from Mary, is no excuse for the abdication of a heroic calling. Mary could be a hero where she was or where the Spirit led her: in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in Egypt, at the foot of a cross. Mary could be a hero when she was unmarried and pregnant, when her son was embarrassing her, scaring her, breaking her heart.

Our hero’s journey as followers of Christ, as the family of God, will involve this kind of mother’s love, this kind of servant’s devotion. We are called upon to attend to Jesus, to do what needs doing in his service. We are called upon to store up Jesus in our hearts, to acknowledge and remember what he’s promised, what he’s done for us and for others. We are called to stand with Jesus, not drawing our swords but braving the stones thrown at him, attending to him even on the cross. Mary’s son is our son; Mary’s God is our God.

Like Mary we are given the ultimate boon and asked to carry it. Our otherwise normal life is changed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. As another sort of theotokos, our own hero’s journey thus awaits us, propelled by the strength that the Lord gives us. Like Mary, we may endure many things and see no superficial change to our life’s condition, but one thing will definitely change: we will cross a threshold, we will no longer be satisfied with life on the shelf. We’ll be too busy living a life that others can emulate.

***

Merry Christmas from Loud Time. This season may you bear Jesus wherever he wants to take you.

The Gospel According to Mary, Part Four: The Shadow of Death, the Ultimate Boon

We've been exploring over the past few weeks the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus. We've looked at the gospel through her eyes and looked at her life through the filter of the hero's journey, made popular by Joseph Campbell and his many disciples, among them George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars. The hero's journey is a template that helpfully organizes most epic adventures, and Mary's experience is no different. Perhaps, in a way, neither is our own experience.

Mary's joy over Jesus' birth is interrupted by the prophecy of Simeon, who warns her that one day he will suffer and she will be devastated. The entire telling of her story and his sits in the shadow of this prophecy, but life must go on, and it does for them both. Last week we saw Jesus enter public ministry, and saw the personal and social trials and travails that this move created for his mother. This week we both their hero's journeys fulfilled in very different ways. But the path necessarily takes them through the shadow of death.

I'm currently reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison, which include a great deal of correspondence between him and his parents. Bonhoeffer's imprisonment led eventually to his death; I don't yet know what ultimately happened to his parents, but along the way their own life was shaped by his persecution. So it is with us; at Christmas we are reminded that Jesus bound himself to us to live in solidarity with the trials of the human experience, but we're also reminded that when we bind ourselves to him--for our own benefit--we are necessarily binding ourselves to his passion.

This week, think about the moments of hardship that have defined your life in various ways. Think of how a mother bears her children not only during pregnancy but during all the hardships that they endure. Think of how in many ways God is like a mother, bearing with us and carrying us through the "many dangers, toils and snares" that enter our lives through our acts of nobility and through our acts of foolishness. Think of the words of the prophet Isaiah: "Surely he has borne our iniquities." Embrace and celebrate the mother-love of God this week.

***

Jesus has pulled away from his family as he has brought together his followers; Mary no longer has a guaranteed audience with her son. This separation relegates Mary to the background for much of the remainder of the Gospels, until we reach Jesus’ passion, where Mary resurfaces at the foot of the cross. She watches her son die a horrid death; you might say that a sword has pierced her heart.

It’s here—in the moment of her greatest trial—that Mary encounters in her own son the divine ruler of the world. Jesus is revealed—the gospel is revealed—in his passion. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Jesus is God and God is dead.

Mary mourns the death of her son while simultaneously mourning the death of her God. And then she encounters her risen Son, her risen Lord. All along she attends to him, treasuring up in her heart the things she has seen and heard and felt even as she prepares the spices and perfumes for her son’s proper burial. Her risen Son orders her and her company to return to Jerusalem, and then her God—her Son—is exalted to the highest heaven.

Soon thereafter Mary and her company are given the ultimate boon: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. With Jesus’ story and God’s law now written on her heart, Mary takes this treasure and returns to the normal world—still under Roman occupation, still rigidly segregated by class, but now no longer held in bondage to sin and death. She is free, but life is different.

The Gospel According to Mary, Part Two: The Hero's Journey

I'm not so classy as to actually keep current with the Advent calendar, so you'll notice that I missed the first Sunday of Advent with my post about the gospel according to Mary. Better late than never, I suppose. Today's post introduces the concept of the hero's journey and begins to explore how Mary's experience rivals the great epics of history. Read with care . . .

* * *

The hero’s journey is a mythic template made popular by Joseph Campbell in his book from the mid-twentieth century The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell’s analysis of classical myth structures was influential during the writing of the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings, and served as a veritable style guide for George Lucas as he wrote the epic Star Wars. But Campbell’s research reaches not only forward but far backward; the hero’s journey can be consistently applied with only minor adjustments to all sorts of myths from all sorts of cultures. It can even be seen in the stories of major characters in the Bible. Campbell had the sheer moxie to apply the hero’s journey to Jesus Christ; I’m inclined to do the same with his mother.

The hero’s journey involves several stages broadly interpreted:

v Normal life is interrupted by
v a herald, whose call to adventure is met by
v refusal of the call, which elicits
v supernatural aid. Our hero then must pass through
v the first threshold, which is crossed in such a way that it
v appears to be death. Our hero must then
v endure trials before encountering
v the divine ruler of the world in
v the shadow of death, which must be endured. Our hero is then given
v the ultimate boon, and
v ordered to return.
v Life is now free but different.

The Gospels begin before Mary is pregnant; we meet Mary before we meet her Son. We learn of Jesus’ dedication at the temple not from the eight-day-old Jesus but from his mother, and we learn from her that Simeon and Anna called Jesus Messiah. We also learn from her that Simeon prophesied pain for her; her hero’s journey didn’t end with Jesus’ birth. She has a much bigger story to tell—a hero’s journey to fulfill.

The case for Mary’s heroic journey begins in her meager origins. She describes her life as a “humble state” (Luke 1:48). She is about to embark on a very normal married life among the peasant class of a kingdom under occupation when she is visited by a herald angel. “You are highly favored!” the angel cries. “The Lord is with you!”

Mary is “greatly troubled,” unable to fathom the possibility that she will carry to term, will raise as her child, “the Son of God.” But the herald reassures her, granting her the supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit and reminding her that “nothing is impossible with God.” Mary concedes and embarks on her first of many trials: the crossing of the first threshold.

The pregnancy of an unwed woman is still scandalous today, but not nearly so much as in first-century Palestine. Her betrothed receives a vision so that, rather than abandon her, he chooses to join her fellowship. She is given the support and the blessing of loved ones and strangers until her child’s birth, when she and her family must flee the wrath of an evil king. Our hero and her child escape the king’s killing spree and are presumed dead as they pass the first threshold, crossing alive into Egypt and entering into a long journey fraught with peril.

The Gospel According to Mary, Part One

Right outside my church this summer was a thirty-five-foot tall statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I think it was made of metal.

The Mary outside my church was actually in the parking lot of the church next door. She’s known as Our Lady of the Millennium, and has been traveling across the country as a source of comfort and encouragement to Catholics throughout the United States. It’s an odd thought, taking comfort in a giant woman made of metal, but I've been prepared for such a phenomenon by DC Comics, which offers a similar option to comic book geeks everywhere in Natasha Irons, the super-sized super-powered Steel.

That’s different, though; Natasha is a hero; Mary is . . . well, what exactly is Mary?

I grew up Roman Catholic and became, through a circuitous route, a Presbyterian. Mary, as such, has played various roles for me, from near-divine coredemptrix to mere human vessel. I’ve alternately prayed to her and written her off. I’m tempted to compromise by calling Mary a saint and moving on, but the problem with saints is that they’re too easily placed on a shelf and forgotten. We venerate saints like Mary; meanwhile, we emulate heroes like Steel.

Steel, for all her heroics, is not a human being. She’s a commodity--manufactured, built to suit. By emulating a hero like Steel we simply congratulate ourselves for our moral sophistication and creativity. Meanwhile, up on the shelf sit saints made of flesh and bone and blood, offering by their lives a model of how life is best to be lived. So more recently I’ve taken to thinking of Mary not as a saint so much as a hero, and the chronicle of her hero’s journey as being her particular gospel.

I like to think of a gospel fundamentally as good news. The term good news implies the existence of a sender and a receiver; whether it’s news or not is determined by the bearer, and whether it’s good or not is determined by the hearer. If the news is ultimately deemed good, then the hearer will be inclined to think of the bearer as something of a hero.

As we read the Gospels we typically focus on Jesus, which is as it should be. But the very normal human life of the Son of God is an article of Christian faith, and so the very normal human family of God is important to his story. Throughout the stories of Jesus we see Mary pass through many noteworthy experiences, all of which, we’re told, she “treasured up . . . in her heart,” and ultimately passed along to the writers of the New Testament, hearers of the story she was bearing. Simply carrying the gospel, you might say, set Mary on something of a hero’s journey.

So this year during Advent I'll be reflecting on Mary as theotokos--"God-bearer"--as a way of preparing myself for the epic adventure introduced in the Christmas story. Along the way I'll be looking not for Mary the near-divine coredemptrix or the mere human vessel, and not even for Mary the saint per se, but rather the flesh-and-blood Mary who lived a life I can model my own after--a Mary I can emulate, a Mary I can call hero.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful . . .

But the audio is worse. Check out this atrocity found by Burnside Writers Collective, and the very interesting exercise in redaction criticism that accompanies it. It'll get you in the holiday spirit while simultaneously turning your stomach--impressive!