A Post for Christmas Eve

I suppose as the title implies I ought to write about things that somewhat have to do with the holiday. Maybe.

My iPod which froze yesterday is now unfrozen. This has happened before, and like before, yesterday I just let it die, and then set it back in its charger dock and it was fine. Must be a bug or something...

I went to (my) church today. It's been awhile since I've been 1) to any church and 2) to my home church (of which I am a member). I find it difficult to "rate" church nowadays as if it's some kind of experienced, a product to be consumed. Actually, I guess I shouldn't say I find it difficult to rate, since I tend to be hyper-critical about everything, but I am very uncomfortable about rating something that is so tied to the spiritual. There was nothing that made me want to leave, which is good, as this has happened several times in the past. I was surprised at the lack of traditional Christmas songs, but the music was all right. Nothing terribly complex in the lyric department, and nothing outstanding in the melody department, although some moving stuff (we do Gospel tunes and hymns at my church, which is AME, btw). The musicians are good though, so I guess that makes up for that. I liked the Scripture readings. Among other passages, we read Hebrews 10:5-10 and Micah 5:2-5a, the second of the two which I found especially moving (although, I would recommend reading both as they are especially apt for this season).

The sermon was done by a visiting pastor from a Baptist church in Tampa. The pastor was a friend of head pastor. He seemed apt at preaching and he preached on two verses: Luke 2:11-12. He talked about the sign of Jesus' birth as a sign of the Gospel. It was almost postmodern (hee hee)! I only had a couple of quibbles with his sermon. One was linguistic, because (and I think it was just a slip) he said something was Greek word for sign, and it isnt'. Two, he made a distinction between the sign itself and Jesus' birth, saying the sign was more important than the real thing (the birth). I kind of see them as one in the same (is that me being postmodern, I wonder?) and inseparable. I mean that Jesus' birth was the sign and was important in itself. I don't know, I just feel like the incarnation is a big deal. I should mention that he made a distinction between the baby Jesus and the man Jesus in that the baby Jesus didn't do anything while its the man Jesus that turned the world upside down. While I agree that it is the adult Jesus that we focus on, I do feel that the incarnation itself is important, even though I can't quite articulate why right now. Although maybe he was saying that the playing out of the incarnation (that is the acting out of Jesus' total divinity and total humanity) was more important than simply the incarnation itself and I think I would agree with that. But I still don't see how the sign and Jesus' birth ("the real thing") are different or separable. Because it seemed to me he was arguing Jesus' birth was the sign. Anyway...

Regardless, I guess it stirred some thought and that mattered. There were also a LOT of people at church today. We almost couldn't fit everybody in the sanctuary, and we have a pretty large sanctuary. Of course it was a combined service (we usually have two services, and today we just had one), but there were a lot people out of town. But the tithe and offering procession today went on forever and ever today! (I'm assuming if you go to or have been to black church, you know what this is, but if you don't have this experience, for the offering, everyone in the church marches up to the altar to give whatever they've come prepared to give, and then afterwards the ushers march up usually in some kind of special formation with some kind of special step or what have you.)

But after all that... I kind of feel like I want to start going to church again regularly. It's more of a feeling of something I feel like doing than...I don't know. I have this idea that church is a performance, but not in a negative way but in a very positive way, and I have this tug to be a part of that. I feel like it's us acting out the invisible in a very explicit manner, or at least I feel like it ought to be.

Of course, that means several other things for me as well, so that might make finding a place to go still difficult.

Well, a happy Christmas to all who wish to have one. (Did I mention the visiting pastor said that without Christmas there would be no holidays? I guess he forgot that Chanukah has been celebrated for a lot longer than Christmas...)

Ironies abound

Yesterday I went to see Almodovar--he's a Spanish director--movie. It was really good, and although it was at its base two intertwined love triangles, it was better than a majority of the crap pumped out of the West Coast at any given point of time nowadays. It made me think, to say the least.

But really this post starts, or my point in bringing this up is that I went with some people who speak Spanish fairly fluently and so we spoke Spanish all the way there (and there) and on the way back (with Radiohead in the background, hehe, but I promise I didn't pick it, even if I enjoyed it!). Now except for a couple of points on 795 when I hit those spells of mental fatigue that one hits--I was the one driving--I understood everything and participated, but admittedly, it takes a lot more work than speaking in English. And here's my point. I talked less, listened more, and was much more careful that what I said was really what I meant. Which I guess makes sense, but in the language that I'm most comfortable in (I don't have many choices, here) it's weird how I can be very careless, not really making sure that everything I say is what I really mean.

In fact as of late, I find that I say a lot of things that I'm really not sure I mean. Or sometimes I say things and right afterwards I'm really don't know where they come from. Or after saying smoething I will stop and really question what I say and end up not buying it at all. In fact nowadays there's just a lot I don't buy. But of course once you say something, you're like held to it, and everything you say is pieced together, used to glue some kind of dripping, popsicle stick figure of you that has to keep having more sticks added to it so it won't collapse, or one taken away from here and added there--more glue! more glue!

Or maybe I'm confusing metaphors here. Maybe that's what we do with our picture of God. And be sure that our understanding of God is not the same as who God is. And btw, a lot of what I'm thinking/not buying/skeptical of what I once may have been saying has had to do with God, though not everything. A lot of it has to do with other people, life, etc. Personal realizations, etc.

I was having a conversation this past week about God and why people's experience of God are so different, and I said there are two possibilities: either God manifests Himself (I personally mean nothing by using the reflexive masculine pronoun) differently to every person or we've all got it wrong. Of course, right? In my nice black-and-white dichotomous way. Being the positive person I am, at the time I said that I tend to believe the latter--we've all got it wrong, except of course then that is slightly problematic, especially if I truly believe God is trying to build relationships with His people. Sooo... I've modified my view, though it's still too simplistic probably, that we've all have different understandings of God, but they're incomplete. And it's when we think that our understanding is complete that I think we've got it wrong. And if God is so infinite, I think that He probably does manifest Himself different to different people. (Of course I think certain views of God are wrong like, I don't know, God being evil or something like that.)

So, yeah, maybe I need to just shut up and listen I say as I post a ridiculously long blog.