Of Christmas and How it Comes

It's hot in East Africa
press down, weighty
hot

The clouds billow up
and plod along the horizon
rumbling

(empty threats)

And I
I don't feel like
putting up
this spindly
branch called
tree

I am saddened
by recollections
of Christmas babies
and boys with
gleaming faces
taking it all in

Still
we decorate

(perhaps a tad too somberly)

But in the quiet
morning

Bare feet on
cool tile

I am greeted
by our evening's work

So simple
our selections
so home-made

And joy
breaks in

Unannounced
suddenly present

Oh, dear truth
endlessly modest and
unassuming

You stand there
in the stillness

This
this is the
mystery

Christ
dwells
in
me

Emmanuel

-lisa, 11 December, 2011

Moments

A friend asked me about the moments that made my holiday. That's a nice question that helps me savor things.

So, here's my list in random order...

Moonrise-- We sat outside in the warmth and watched the moon come up on as many nights as possible. It was captivating each time.

Table art-- The photo above shows the mosaic table we made in the days leading up to Christmas. It was fun to break tiles and put them back together and see the ocean colors appear as a new puzzle that we get to keep.

Cinnamon rolls-- Byron's Christmas Morning cinnamon rolls are legendary in our family. Jesse made them for us this year and Byron proclaimed them the best ever. I get a sugar headache just thinking about them :-)

Thirst--Unknowingly, Jesse and I each gave the other Mary Oliver's volume of poetry, "Thirst." We both love it but neither of us owned it. Now we both do. I liked mornings at the beach when we read our favorites to each other.

Fragrant gifts-- Byron carved 4 wooden kitchen spoons for me from Olorian collected off the forest floor in Loita. Olorian is African Olive and is precious to the Maasai. Loita is precious to me and the smell of Olorian makes me happy. Also, the spoons are beautiful.

Feasting-- I loved the moment Liz tasted the freshly grilled marinated meat that Byron had prepared for us Christmas Day and the way her eyes got big and it looked like she had just fallen in love. I loved looking around and seeing friends, old and new, celebrating Jesus together.

Creatures of extraordinary beauty--The Carmine Bee Eater on the branch above our camp... The dark blue and deep gold crab Jesse found in the mangroves... Crazy colors just casually carried by these!

Starry night--We walked long on a dark and quiet beach, lit only by stars. Without a moon, the brilliance of the canopy above us was nuts. The tide had risen and the usually shallow crossing at the mouth of the river required that we wade chest deep in warm, salty water. I liked that it was 2 o'clock in the morning on the first day of the new year and we were drenched in powerful beauty.

Conversations-- Around tables, by fires, by the waves, in cars, in the kitchen, and wherever else they unfolded, they made me rich.

All the little moments string together and give us more to weave with.

What were some of your favorite moments from your holidays?

Welcoming Jesus

I happily agreed to write a piece for 24-7 Prayer's website. Having been given the freedom to write anything that reflects how we experience Christmas here in Tanzania, I ended up writing about my frustrations over silly things and how they've helped give me back a needed perspective.

You can find my piece, "Welcoming Jesus," HERE
It doesn't say "By Lisa Borden" at the top but you'll know it by the title.

Enjoy :-)

Christmas in Review (The God who Gives a Damn)

So much brokeness all around.

Can I begin to understand the new air raids between Israel and Palestine?

I can't.

My Tanzanian colleague, Philemon, lost his dad this morning. He was about 58 and riding his bicycle when an out-of-control taxi van hit and killed him.

If hurts me to think about their loss, how do they feel?

Last week, a depressed guy in LA dressed up as Santa and took a handgun to a party at his ex-in-laws and killed 9 people.

Shootings become "common" and that only compounds our sorrow.

The current economic disaster reveals a broken system and a habitual effort to satiate our souls with more.

Money and stuff. They don't actually heal our hearts.

The people of Zimbabwe are starving slowly. They are dying of cholera in the face of a leader who says there is nothing wrong.

We wait and wonder how long it can go on.

Creation is sick.. so sick. God made systems that heal themselves and honestly, she IS trying. The coral reef is showing healthy signs of life after the damage of the big tsunami. But, God bless her, she can't heal herself when we injure her continually and deeply.

Wars drag on. Rape is a weapon. It's not even rare anymore.

I feel like throwing up.

But, in this welling pain, I remember a stable. I remember a baby.

A friend of mine is a hospital chaplain. He recently stood with parents who had just lost their 25 year old daughter to a massive stroke. In the face of the loss, the mom wondered why she felt so torn up inside when it was a simple matter of the universe taking back her daughter. There was oneness. Why should it hurt?

She answered her own question. "Frankly," she said, "I don't think the universe gives a damn."

A baby was born to bridge the divide; to reach out through our pain and lead us home.

This Christmas, I am aware of much pain.

This Christmas, I am thankful for a baby who came to let me know that there is a way through it.

I'm thankful, this Christmas, for Hope. I'm thankful for Joy. I'm thankful for a redeeming, restoring, renewing, celebrating God.

These things are living gifts that come quietly from The God Who Gives a Damn.

Christmas Eve

It's a warm and somewhat humid afternoon here in Tanzania and we are looking forward to our evening together.

Christmas Eve. So nice!

Sufjan is playing in our living room. Yes, we've been spinning the discs of the Sufjan Stevens "Songs for Christmas" cd. I blogged 2 years ago about this album and how much it pretty much saved my Christmas of 2006 :-)

We've also been listening to a mix of stuff that the boys brought home. They keep putting Tallest Man on Earth on and asking me how I like it. I like it a lot. Sounds quite a lot like my Irish friend, Brian Houston. The boys tell me that this is because Tallest and Brian both sound like Bob Dylan. Ok.

When the boys arrived safely on Monday afternoon, we officially had all we needed/wanted for Christmas. We are content and joyful and that's a rich thing.

I've posted a photo of one of Heather's wrapped gifts to highlight, as I did last year, my recycled wrap. I love using up everything we have on hand as we wrap our little presents. This year we didn't have so many plastic bags and I've been SUCH a good girl about remembering to carry my own bags to the shops. But we've used all we did have, as well as the pretty picture pages from an old calendar and other such things.

That reminds me that Jesse is reading "Serve God: Save the Planet" by J. Matthew Sleeth. He says it's really good so now I want to read it after him.

This post is just meandering around so I will close for now with wishes that this Holiday will be meaningful and sweet for all.

xx

Post-Christmas Happiness

We had a simple, charming Christmas here in East Africa. The Russell family, Tait, her friend Adam and my parents (of course) were here with the 6 of us for Christmas dinner. It was the normal fare: plump chickens standing in for turkey, dressing (with chunks of mango inside), mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn casserole, one GIANT fresh fruit salad, banana cake and pumpkin pies with whipped cream. We scored on having the Grandma here to make the pies :-)

I took a nap in the early afternoon on the 26th and slept a deep, drugged kind of sleep. Honestly, I slept like only a mom who has just pulled off a Christmas can sleep :-) But I can't let it go unnoticed that Byron did the lion's share of the cooking. What a guy. He's better at ordering the kids around than I am and they made that mound of potatoes that needed peeling into pretty quick work. After my Boxing Day nap, I got up and made birthday cake because the 26th is Colin's birthday!

Well, I will post another little photo journal some time in the days ahead. For now, here are the babies all together.

Recycled Wrap

I thought you might like to see my recycled wrapping paper. I've done this before because I feel so bad about all that paper being used when I have other things that will do. Even though I use baskets and my Trader Joe's bags at the shops and the market, I do end up with overflow at times that requires I bring home plastic bags. So this year we have a lot of blue plastic grocery bags on our gifts under the tree. They are double bagged so you can't see through them and tied off with a ribbon made from whatever I have on hand. Some have the tops chopped off (like the package in the photo) and some still have handle tops sprouting out above. (That way I can use them again when I return to the market.)

You might not agree, but I think they look cute :-)

Joy Creeps In

I can't remember a holiday season when I've been less prepared than I am right now. It's the goofiest thing to have Christmas right around the corner and me be like, "Uh, what day is this?"

Between the lack of recognition that Christmas is really just about here, and the busyness of all that has been going on, I am supremely disorganized in every way.

And yet...

Today I ran around town with Byron, dashing, well, not actually DASHING since traffic was ridiculous, but sort of charging in a sluggish way from one thing to the next.

And in the heat of the heavy after-a-huge-thunderstorm weather, in the bumpiness of the muddy potholes and in the crush of vendors and hawkers mobbing our car windows constantly, in it all I just felt this crazy, creeping joy.

Joy because I love being alone (even in the middle of this city) with Byron. Joy because our Christmas gifts are so simple and unglamorous. Joy because we can open our home to Tait, the lovely Peace Corps volunteer that our family has adopted. Joy because Peter and Tammy are still smiling even though the delays in fixing up their new rental mean that they are moving in tomorrow, not 2 weeks ago like they would have liked. Joy because my parents are just so darn easy to please and they enjoy the smallest things truly. Joy because the sound of the rain on our roof all night is a magical, mysterious melody to me.

And JOY because Christmas isn't a fairy tale.

"The myth that is true," as C.S. Lewis calls the story of Christ. It's just too good!

Feeling My Way Toward Christmas

Sitting on this lantern-lit porch, I hear the crickets making a racket in cool foliage around the edges of our garden. I hear two, maybe three different kinds of song-making insects. One is sharp, like a high squeak. The other is more melodious in a froggy kind of way. And I just can't tell if I'm hearing a third one or not.

We spent many Christmas seasons in Kenya where the fragrant fruit and flowers announced the goodness of the time of year. I grew accustomed to summery celebrations and sunscreen applications before we gathered as believers to sing and dance in an open place.

Moving to Europe meant that Christmas was no longer accompanied by flowers and plates piled high in mango. We learned to peel the shells off hot chestnuts, fresh from the coal fires in carts that stood on cold corners of grey streets. We made new traditions: coffee and pastry after dark in Sintra with the Uhlers, (where the twinkly white lights made it look like a scene from Disneyland's best attempt to create a quaint Old World charm, only it was better and it was REAL,) and wintery breakfasts with the Dempsey family.

Now the slapping cold of the damp Portuguese winter seems far away and my ability to comprehend that Christmas is coming seems farther away still.

Transition takes time-- this is certainty.

And so is this: the Christ-child was born in a manger to bring hope to a very needy world. Though my heart is slow to awaken to the celebration this year, there is no doubt that the truth of it still stands.