Merry Christmas to all!

25 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by michael schinker in Christmas, Christmas Carol, Christmas Day, Jesus Christ, Messiah, Prophecy

Of all the scripture verses quoted today concerning the birth of Christ, I especially like the passage celebrated so enthusiastically in a segment of Handel’s spirited composition of The Messiah. It’s from Isaiah 9:6-7

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; 
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom, 
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness 
From then on and forevermore. 
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.”

That child has been born to us, the Son of God is given – the babe in a manger over 2,000 years ago. But the rest of the prophecy is yet to come, and I can hardly wait. The “government on His shoulders” is a vivid metaphor to describe how this fallen, broken and lost world needs the rule and reign of One who is unaffected by politics, greed, or selfish agendas.

Heaven and earth collide so sweetly and softly in precious baby Jesus, but a day is coming when the collision will be a violent explosion of the wrath of God against wickedness and all those who oppose His authority. It’s a given. “The zeal of the Lord will accomplish this” is a promise. And so heaven and earth will ultimately be one. God’s version of justice and righteousness will triumph forever, from the literal throne of David. The Prince of Peace whose birth we celebrate today will bring the dawning of a new day full of light and joy, shining from the glory of Himself. This makes my Christmas Day doubly special. How ‘bout you?

‘Twas the night before . . . ?

24 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by michael schinker in Christmas, Holidays, Jesus Christ

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Christmas eve. Such a meaningful couple of hours in the lives of Christians all around the world. Many of us will instinctively recall the words and pictures of Clement Moore’s 1823 account of the legendary red-suited, right jolly old elf’s arrival upon a moonlight drenched rooftop with “a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.”

It’s a night for midnight Mass, for bell choirs, candles and expressions of “Peace on earth, good will to men” to friend and stranger alike. It’s a time for family traditions, sharing with relatives come to town for holiday cheer and the making of memories for young and old alike. The presents are wrapped, under the tree, shaken once or twice to guess the possible contents. Eggnog and poinsettias abound. Churches are full, at least for one hour out of the year. The neighborhood is aglow with over-lighted scenes of mangers and snowmen.

And yet, some will struggle with finding joy this night. Some are in hospice. There are sons and daughters unselfishly serving our country in far flung places around the world, alone with a heart longing to be home for the holidays. The poor, the desperate, the homeless. We know they are out there, without access to that banquet table full of life’s blessings we so often take for granted.

This is what I want for Christmas, and what I wish for you: can we somehow all join hands and hearts together, all of us, united in a common bond of a humanity so in need of hope, in need of rescue from darkness and most of all, from ourselves? Can we just leave behind our busyness and come together in one humble spirit, at Bethlehem, where it all started? To see the love of God expressed in a baby’s flesh – Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus. His proper Hebrew name Yeshua means “salvation.” That quite simply expresses exactly who He is and why He came – to save sinners like me. This precious newborn babe, wrapped up in swaddling clothes, held so sweetly in His loving mother’s arms would ultimately breathe His last, held to the arms of the cross by the sins of the world, naked and forsaken by all. What a gift! The first gift of Christmas is Christ Himself.

Our best Christmas yet can be realized this very night, this silent and holy night, so I say let us adore Him,
O come let us adore Him,
O come let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord!

My Holiday Obsession

22 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by michael schinker in Christmas, Holidays, Obsessions

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I admit I have dealt with my share of personal addictions throughout my adult life, principally smoking, a struggle that went on for 40 plus years. I enjoyed it. Never really wanted to quit, until compelled by the Holy Spirit who gently nudged me into a release from bondage and into a healthier lifestyle a little more than eight years ago. My perennial problem now seems to be with certain accoutrements embellishing the holiday season, e.g. wrapping paper and greeting cards.

Shocking and embarrassing, yes I admit it. No, I haven’t shared this in group therapy. I don’t know if there is a group to address this particular psychological urge. My family is aware of the situation. My wife, the designated intervention specialist, instinctively grabs onto my coat as we walk past the displays at Hallmark or Super Target, tugging me away from certain temptation.

For weeks the shelves and bins are full of paper rolls, stuffed full. Different lengths and widths. Metric and standard measurements. Cheap, easily torn paper and the expensive kind with lines on the inside so you know exactly where to cut; shiny foils, and some with sparkle in the designs. So attractive, it’s blatant Christmastime eye candy. And almost irresistible. Then there’s the greeting card isle. Box after box of gleaming, glittering options for expressing one’s best holiday wishes to anyone, or from anyone – even the cat. The scenes on the cards are so inviting. A comfy home all aglow in the gently falling evening snow, lamppost decorated with ivy and holly. Huge Christmas tree in the window, lit and adorned with treasured family ornaments. A happy snowman in the front yard, dressed up just like Frosty. The card’s message set in a fancy reflective gold metallic script.

Oh. Hand on my chest, I’m gasping, and a bit choked up. I’ll take a dozen boxes.

And each box usually has 12 to 18 cards with an appropriate number of envelopes plus one, because they know you’re going to mess up on at least one address. In reality, I don’t have more than a few friends and relatives to whom I might mail a card, even if I could actually settle on just one particular style. Probably why I haven’t sent any out for years.

The issue is even more disturbing when I confess that we already have enough wrap on hand at home to wallpaper the entire house inside and out at least a couple of times. We have grownup wrap, with designs both modern and old-fashioned, diagonal stripes and poinsettias rolling off ad infinitum. We have kid specific wrap with Jolly Old St. Nick and tree pattern stencils in every color, gingerbread men, candy canes and probably even sugar plums dancing off the sheet.

I must say that I have done relatively well so far this year. I did nab a couple rolls at the craft store a few days ago, my wife not being on hand for restraint. They were 60% off. Who could resist? Just need to get through the next few days, then we can pack up the hoard and forget about it until next August, when holiday decor gradually begins to emerge restocked in the retail world and we start all over again!

The Winter Solstice

21 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by michael schinker in Celtic Christmas, December, Solstice, Stonehenge, winter

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Today in our northern hemisphere we observe the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night. On the calendar it’s the first day of winter and one of the oldest known holidays in human history. Historians claim that solstice celebrations go back for millennia, back to a time of our most primitive fears and dark superstitions, when the sun or its absence played a major role in forming the basis of many early cultures and religions. Everyone knows, for example, that the monoliths of Stonehenge were supposedly erected to monitor the cycle of the seasons, especially to frame the first rays of an austere winter’s sun.

I won’t actually see the sun this afternoon, dipping as low as it can go, hugging the frozen bare-boned horizon. The sky is a blanket of stratus cloud gloom. Looks like gray granite, and feels just as heavy. Nonetheless, I’m enjoying a collection of Celtic Christmas tunes. The 2-cd case describes the music as a “medley of relaxing and festive melodies.” And it is truly so, featuring harp, violin, guitar, cello and an occasional Irish flute, punctuated by whistles and of course, the bagpipe. The sound is so mellow I could easily sit here next to the fire with a mug full of blended orange cinnamon tea all afternoon. I’ve had enough of Bing’s White Christmas and José’s Feliz Navidad blaring out of the car radio since the day after Thanksgiving. Right now I need simple. I need consolation and assurance that as the sun enters Sagittarius it will begin to climb again, upward towards the promise of yet another spring.

Listening to an instrumental version of the centuries old God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, I know that if it were sung, I would hear the encouraging lyric “Let nothing you dismay.” I will take that advice to heart today, laying aside my cares and trials that in the big picture really don’t at all affect the mechanics or outcome of the universe. Whether I am here or not, Old Sol, according to astrophysicists in the know, will continue to fuse hydrogen atoms into an unimaginable amount of energy every second, burning bright for another five billion years. I, however, am not very certain about what will even happen to me tomorrow.

Frozen Art

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by michael schinker in December, poem, winter

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Wrote these lines a few months ago, in the heat of summer. Don’t know why I thought about it then.

My mother introduced me to Jack Frost
one early evening in a long ago December
as we huddled together in the dark
next to a living room window,
the cold from outside finding its way inside
chilling our almost cheek-to-cheek faces.
Those were the days way before
our phobia with R-factors and insulation.
(I mean, we had lead and asbestos everywhere.)

Smiling, she pointed to Jack’s artful bouquet of frozen ferns
etched with such delicate grace on a thin pane of glass.
The frost was silvery white until the headlamps from passing cars
momentarily tinted the designs with rainbow rich
purples and magentas and yellows.

Inside my four-year-old head,
the magic made perfect sense,
feeding a tender imagination before reason and education
would dispel sprites and faeries and innocence and
all thoughts that anything might be possible.

And so we gazed through that brittle canvass,
silently waiting for Pops to come home from work.
The corner streetlight seemed so alone out there,
a mysterious glowing globe of amber
straining with every possible watt to penetrate
the long hours of yet another bitter winter’s night.

On Being Particular

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by michael schinker in Uncategorized

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What good is a dull pencil anyway? It’s like a dull mind. Half there, and half not. But I really must have a sharp point. And I can’t do the sharpening the old fashioned way, whittling away at it with a pocketknife. I’d probably cut my thumb open. Then what? No writing at all? Those $1.99 plastic grammar school mini-sharpeners from Walgreen’s that can’t even hone a broken crayon won’t work either. No, I need a precision point, one crafted by the fancy electric pencil sharpener at the office. I even like the aroma of wood being chewed away as the lead point is perfectly polished down to a pin prick. Sometimes I just admire it for a moment, my freshly sharpened pencil, now ready for action on the page. Ironically, the point usually breaks off with its first impression onto paper.

It doesn’t bother me at all to underline phrases and sentences in a book, even in my Bible. Some witty or creative expression that may need my attention quickly at a later date. Recently, I have identified poems I especially favor in a collection of Good Poems, American Places, selected by A Prairie Home Companion’s Garrison Keillor, with a crude “x” next to the title. I must confess, however, that most of the marks have been rendered with –– yes, a rather dull pencil. It was the only one I could find, hiding all alone there among the rubber bands and paper clips and ballpoint pens that must’ve multiplied over time in the darkness of that kitchen junk drawer. Lesson learned. Apparently sometimes it’s okay to work with a dull pencil, or even a dull mind. Just get the job done.