Ben Camino's Ironic Advent Meditation 2019 #4: the problem with waiting

the problem with waiting (after George Herbert)

 

the problem with waiting is the problem of misplaced focus
as in
why am i waiting for that which I know not except by 
promise (which is to say, by possibility but not yet, if ever, presence)

when a perfectly fine right now  right here 
presents itself to my
eyes and heart and guts and soul and Soul
on this road which I refuse to see as 
simply a process or pilgrimage

but instead a chance to bite creation itself on the very backside
of being
or, put another way, 
to give myself fully to this now rather than pray for that then

I mean to give up crying (or bellyaching, as the kind giant put it) for the ghost of all I need that may not ever anyway be
and to hold tight and wrestle all night with the angel/demon of the pathless midnight desert

and then, like an apogean voice sent down from nowhere but stuck forever in some Seventeenth Century devotional lyric,
I am addressed, possessed, known well, washed clean of all my wallowing excuses, 
and invited to hold the hand of Love
all the forever way down the endless path 
to nothing but

Ben Camino's Ironic Advent 2019 #3: The Devil's Backbone and Cranberry Bliss

Ben Camino's Ironic Advent 2019 #3: 

The Devil's Backbone and Cranberry Bliss

The Devil's Backbone is real brothers and sisters. I know, I know, every state, probably every county, has some crazy upanddown and twistyturny road identified with the body of the Prince of Darkness, but I'm talking about the real one. The one that I drive almost every day. The one that leads to my office. The one that has me dodging deer most of the year and skidding on ice  the rest of it. THE Devil's Backbone. 

Above is a wonderful picture of it. And it might look like this tomorrow. There's been a little snow today, and maybe there will be more tonight. But I don't have a good picture of how it looks today. Not one that I can share with you. Except in words. Still, the picture I saw while driving today and the picture that made my ribs ache all day is the one that led me to meditatin' on what I thought would become my Ironic Advent Meditation for this this third day of Advent in the Year of Our Lord 2019.

Also Cranberry Bliss. 

I got moving late today after standing in line for most of what felt like a century at the Verizon store. That's right, after absurdly using a T-Mobile phone in an area that basically has no T-Mobile signal for six years or so (I'm stubborn that way), I'm finally switching. I feel a little shaky. All these messages. Slow down. 

Anyway, or anyways as my daughter Jennifer (and most of the rest of Ben Camino's friends, conveniently named Jennifer) always says sometimes, I was worn out before I even started from the mind-numbing experience of a contemporary cell phone store. Do they still call them cell phones? Regardless, my new one is a real smart phone. I guess. Really I'm not sure what "smart phone" means. But mine must be smart because every time I try to write algorithm (something I do quite often actually), it corrects it to Agamemnon. Smart ass phone, I call it. 

He's back to the thing he does with italics, I can hear all the Jennifer's whining. 

So, weary already from the drudgery of day 337 in the 2,019th year give or take a few since the nativity of the baby who the songs say makes everything shiny and bright, I zipped up, over, and around THE Devil's Backbone. This needs theme music to play every time I say that phrase. And I did what I often do on that road. I look around. And I ponder. 

In autumn, it's an easy ponder. In fact, it's most just a gut reaction and may not even rise to the ponder level. Kind of like Wordsworth his first time at Tintern Abbey (do yourself a favor and read it; it's the best). If all of this part of Indiana were as hilly and windy and eccentric as this here little road hardly wide enough for two Souls much less two pickups, you Yankees and Texans and Californicators would be paying the big bucks to stay in our yet-unbuilt hillside resorts just to gaze (and perhaps ponder) at the brilliant colors of our autumns. And probably ski in our winters. But . . . no. 

Indeed, the colors we have. Color-wise our autumns are pretty great. But we are generally as flat as flat can be around here. Like my soul (not to be confused with my Soul) much of the time. Maybe that's why I like THE Devil's Backbone (theme music). Yes, yes, there's some thrill involved. And there's the fun memory of always honking on the rise before one of those narrow ridges. I asked my dad once why he did that (and in South Texas, the roads were even straighter and the hills were even . . . not hills), and he said it was to warn a potential driver on the other side who might not be able to see that you were coming but who might be drifting a bit. I've done it ever since. And I never don't do it without thinking of that dear giant, my father. I especially like to honk with someone else in the car so I can tell them about him. 

Also Cranberry Bliss. 

So my soul was deadish, as was the landscape. And by dead, I mean, leafless without the lovely cover of white you can see in the picture above or the swath of color you can see in the photo below. I swear to you dear reader, we had some winds last Wednesday (and believe me I remember the exact day, because I was up in the air in a small airplane thinking I maybe wasn't going to make it this time) that did a real number on the remaining autumn leaves on The Devil's Backbone (theme music). And pretty much anywhere else around here. 

Also, the sky was a perfect pale grey. So pale that I spelled gray grey. There was sun somewhere, but not on the Devil's Backbone. And the grass that was visible (as in, not covered in dead leaves) was the palest green imaginable. So pale that I was tempted to spell green graan. 

It was numbing. It was lovely, pale, empty. It was gloom, swaddled with the end of all things. The world was sere. Like my soul. My God, sere is a beautiful word. Thank you Lord for Old English. 

That's not as sad as I know it might sound to some of you. After all, Ben Camino is still going to somehow twistyturn this thing around to be about Advent. That's something to stay alive for, isn't it? Well, isn't it? 

In truth (or at least, in language, and those are pretty much the same in my soul), Advent, for me, has always been like a trip up and down and twistyturnyaround like my drives on this dangerous, seemingly dead, road. I go with the turns and with the gloom and with the emptiness, I honk the horn of warning for people who very probably are not there but who might be drifting if they are there, and I remember my loves, and sometimes, more than I let on, feel the goodness of still being on the road. Still moving forwards (and up and down and twistyturny). And still remembering my dear giant father (may he rest in peace). And headed towards a place where I fit and where, I hope, I will be welcomed. 

Of course, I might have been really depressed and not thought about any of this if I weren't carrying with me in my Soul, the gift that so many long for and depend on to keep their hope alive, to give them joy, and to remind them of the goodness that this season promises. That's right, sitting on the seat next to me, I had my Benedictine Breviary, with the Advent prayers for the today. And, obviously, a beautiful Cranberry Bliss bar from the Gas City Starbucks. For a friend. Because even The Devil's Backbone, even on the deadest day in recorded history (I know, so dramatic), can be just another high (and low and twistyturny) way to bliss. 

Ironic Advent meditations often plow my soul (and perhaps yours, dear reader). Some of them have been traumatic to remember and to write. People often asked me, "are you OK?" This was as it should be. I hope that you will agree with me, though, that to be fallow is not to be shallow, despite the linguistic similarity. I let my soul and Soul relax today into the sere gloom of The Devil's Backbone. Trusting, or maybe hoping is a better word, that memories of my father, the pale grey sky, good work to do, friends, my smartass phone, a gift on the way, and Cranberry Bliss (or Goo) matter in a world where everything matters. Thanks for taking the drive with me.  

Ben Camino's Ironic Advent 2019 #2: Liar, Lunatic, Lord of all, or Lion, or Leprechaun.

Lewis's Liar, Lunatic, Lord of all, 

or Lion, or Leprechaun.

 

Thomas Aquinas? Really?

C. S. Lewis famously once argued that, if one was going to be logical (while at the same time rhetorically privileging the letter L), one was liable to admit, upon pain of losing one's last little claim to living, that "Lord of all" was the only laudable line from the list above to apply to the Lamb of God. To say otherwise, labels one as a little less than the angels, and more like a Lollard or, likely enough, a lover of Lucifer. 

I may be wrong about that. But, there, I've finally said it. I disagree with the Trilemma. I needed that last sentence just to free from the L-shaped vacuum my rhetoric had fallen into. Free at last. 

I am not, like some contemporary apologists for Christianity, against the use of logic. I just see some other options. Jesus might have been wrong and not been a madman. For example. We have a word for that. It's "wrong." But it doesn't start with L. 

Jesus also might have been a liar but for what he hoped and thought was some higher good, whatever that might be. I don't think this is true. But it seems to me that we would not think too badly of this man from Galilee if he was saying something he knew not to be totally accurate for the purposes, let's say, of alleviating a bit of the sum total of human suffering. 

Maybe I think that most people think differently about lying (especially in exceptional circumstances)than perhaps Lewis did. Bonhoeffer lied every day about the fact that he was a double-agent and was actually a collaborator in a plot to overthrow Hitler's Nazi regime. And, if I understand it right, he lied doubly -- to the Nazis about his efforts against the government and to people who (previously) respected him about why he was working for the devil. 

Even if this isn't the most accurate description of Bonhoeffer's deceptions, I don't think I would judge him as a "bad man" (except in his own theological terms as a fallen human being) because of them. 

Of course, there is another, more plausible argument against the argument. It is that the records are not as reliable as Lewis seems to assume they are. I believe he did assume that they were reliable, and I don't fault him for that. It just needs to be foregrounded more thoroughly in the argument (which it is, usually, by the apologists for his apologetic).

But I come not to bury Lewis, I come to praise him. C. S. Lewis is one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite (dead) human beings, and a man not only of great wisdom but great imagination. My point is that even as a friend and yes, something like a disciple, of Lewis, I don't necessarily agree with everything he wrote about anything, including the Incarnation of the Son of God. 

Which brings me to Monday of the First Week of Advent, 2019. And that's the Year of Our Lord 2019. Although it might not be technically accurate, that's still a really large number. Of years. Since that incarnation. If that's what it was. 

And here I am. And here you are. And yet . .  . and yet, some of us aren't going anywhere. We refuse to budge. Despite all those years. Despite the fact that those who claim His name and Lordship have been, are, and  will be (one assumes) A MESS. Including me in that group, of course. You too. Sorry. 

I sometimes feel like Peter, the fisherman not the High King of Narnia, who really was a piece of work, as they say, but held on to one thing (until he couldn't one night in the high priest's courtyard). Where else am I going to go? You have the word's of eternal life. 

I don't know Hebrew well enough to know if Jesus strung "L's" together to make his words more rhetorically effective. Come to think of it, I guess he actually spoke Aramaic. Come to think of it, I guess we actually just have a Greek translation of what he said in Aramaic. Come to think of it, there is much about which I am unsure. 

Sometimes I guess I am unsure why I am still following the "man from Galilee" as that pretty bad pop country Jesus hit of the 70s put it. But I know I am. And I know I intend to. And I know I need to. 

Ironic Advent has always meant for me that I feel called to spend my time wisely (like the wise not foolish virgins, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, like my (dead) friends from the last two thousand years, and yes, probably , like C. S. Lewis) preparing for a coming King . . . who has already come. 

And that's what I'm trying to do. That's why I try to focus my mind and heart and imagination and stomach and, yes, even my . . . skepticism (one of my strong points) towards the story, the tradition, the culture, the practices, and the (dead) people of Advent. 

I continue to believe that the world is charged, even when I'm not plugged in properly. And I'm still looking for the plug (it need not be three-pronged) that fits my navel and completes the circuit. I get the glimmerings which get me to trembling about the great mystery of power and love. Then I get some glimpses of the love. From a child being carried by a parent on the way up to communion. From a sister who would do anything for her family, for my family. From a son who held me tight when my own brother was passing into the mystery. From a friend who trusts me when I don't trust myself. 

I'm on a good road. Good for me. You've got yours. If you are stopping for that beat up guy by the side of the road, sharing your bread and wine, and getting a little weepy when the choir starts singing "O Come O Come Emmanuel," you are reminding me to get my ass back on track. Thanks for that. 

On Friday, I'm part of a little gathering inspired by C. S. Lewis at which we will talk about the difference between "Xmas" and Christmas. The biggest difference I can think of is that Advent is the road to get to where the goodness is. So I'm here. Check back with me in 23 days to see how I'm doing. Or in 2029, for that matter. If I'm here, I intend to be here.  Peace. 

It's time for prayer:

O God + come to my assistance, 
O Lord, make haste to help me.  

Ironic Advent 2019 #1: Advent by the Hour(s)

Advent by the Hour(s)

This is not my first rodeo, pardner. I mean, this isn't my first Advent, brethren and cistern. I mean, I grew up Catholic so I not only have sung "O Come O Come Emmanuel" more than most people, but I can still remember singing it in Latin. 

And it's not that surprising that it looks pretty much the same as it has since . . . the 4th Century or so, especially when it comes to the readings, the songs, and the pumpkin spice candles which have been all the rage since the good old days in ancient Antioch. 

But I must admit that even in my relatively faithful Catholic family -- we "Oh Come Ye'd" as much as pretty much anyone else in Our Lady of Mercy parish under the not-so-smiling Irish eyes of the nuns whose names I've forgotten and Father Kennedy whose name I remember because he was NOT assasinated and because, unlike the nuns, he was over at the house once a week for drinks and poker with my father and some other friends at our all-electric ranch style on South Ohio Street in Mercedes, Texas (right across the street from the zealous Methodists who didn't drink or gamble with their pastor) -- things still sometimes got a little blurry. As in, we put up the tree just after Thanksgiving and I'm not sure I knew that the twelfth day of Christmas was in January. 

I suppose that, like those zealous Methodists across the streets, my forward-looking Catholic family was eager to "fit in" with the culture around them. And, after all, how could that be bad when the whole point was the birth of Jesus? The problem, for both us and those Methodists who had wandered far from their method (if not baby Jesus), was that when we allowed local merchants, radio stations, Santa Claus (the Macy's variety), and, most diabolically, the pumpkin spice industy (not to mention the insidious introduction of the phrase "Happy Holidays"* into the food supply) to set our December agenda, the result was not a new improved liturgy but good old-fashioned spiritual lethargy (disguised as frenetic Christmas cheer). 

Where was I? This year things will be different. I WILL HONOR CHRISTMAS AND TRY TO KEEP IT ALL THE YEAR. No, wait. That's Scrooge from Dickens's Christmas Carol, and he, even post-conversion, might even be part of the problem rather than the solution. Try again. This year things will be different. In truth, I should say: this year things have already been different and I aim to keep them that way. Because this year, I started praying the Hours.

"The Hours?" you say. Yes. Praying the traditional prayers and doing the traditional readings and singing the traditional hymns (with some slight adjustments every millenia or so) at the traditional times of the day (see my last parenthetic remark). The kind of thing that we used to call a breviary when I was at Saint Anthony's Catholic in San Antonio.  And the kind of thing that's been done, especially, in monasteries pretty much since there have been monasteries. 

I may write more about this specifically this Advent, and I will certainly be riffing on some of the things in the readings as I move through the season, but for now I will be as practical as Ben Camino ever is (not very and often). When I asked him how to start doing this kind of practice, my former high school teacher, Father Michael Levy, suggested that I get the Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary (published by the Liturgical Press in Collegeville, Minnesota). I bought one from the Antichrist, I mean Amazon.com. But NOT on Black Friday. Then I bought another one for a friend. Then two more. 

I try to pray Lauds (Morning Prayer) and Vespers (Evening Prayer) every day. Often I stay awake to do Compline (Late night Prayer). And sometimes do some others. One tip, if you are texting a friend about it, find another name for the noon prayer time, which is traditionally called Sext. We settled on Sixth (what it means after all). 

Sorry this isn't funnier. Or edgier. Or gloomier. In fact, here's a little secret. This is freakin' December 1. It' cold, gloomy, and raw. And so am I. For a number of reasons that I'm not getting into right now. One though is this: six years ago on this day, I posted a rather dark (and I hope beautiful) piece titled "This Advent Darkness" a few days after my baby brother's death and burial. In truth, I'm grieving more things than I can name. And when I'm not, the glooms still settles in. 

But praying the hours, a real liturgical practice (not to be confused with a playlist) lifts me into another world. Not a more ethereal one. Nothing "spiritual" in the gassy sense. But a practical, anchored, even mundane religious practice NOT made up by me but rooted in the long walk in the same direction of some folks (most of them people of good will, I believe) who had their own gloom to deal with. They just called it acedia. 

So now,  when I get to the part that says something like "Let us pray for the coming of the kingdom as Jesus taught US: Our Father . . . . " -- I feel like I'm committed and connected to all those folks, most of whom (like almost all the great people who have ever lived) are dead. 

Let's stay friends. Or at least, interlocutors. I hope you burn some candles this Advent. And give some alms. And stand on the top of a mountain (please check the weather report first) or at the edge of the ocean or just under the marvelous stars that remind me always that something glitters beyond the gloom. By all means, take a break to watch a Charly Brown Christmas which always airs about two weeks before Christmas. Heck, if you can find it, even check out Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing the "Little Drummer Boy" on YouTube. And I especially hope you read the best Advent meditations you could ever find: mine. 

But most of all, I hope you get yourself a copy of Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary (or something like) and literally get out of yourself. Imagine a structured prayer life when you may pray all day without ever asking for anything (else) for you specifically.   

Dear reader. I'm going to repeat some stuff here. Sort of like what happens in the Hours. I hope you keep reading Ben Camino's Ironic Advent Meditations for as long as he keeps churning them out, which I assume will be for as long as Starbucks keeps producing Christmas blend. They will be challenging, critical, funny, warm and fuzzy (not very often though), and even pumpkin spicy (NEVER). They will be aimed, as always at believers, near believers, former believers, non believers, wannabelievers, and people who just want to savor the mystery as Calvin once said to Hobbes or Hobbes to Calvin. I like the mystery, and I want to savor it with you. 

But, if I may, I suggest something else for you. I keep seeing people asking "what do you suggest for Advent reading?? And "I've never 'done' Advent before, what do you suggest?" The responses usually are collections of pithy collectible quotations and passages from poets, favorite authors, questionable religious figures, and the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (OK, I haven't really seen that one yet, but I was going to suggest it just to see what happened if I did). 

Don't get me wrong. Some of these even contain pieces by authors who are friends of mine and/or who are some of my favorite writers. Sometimes both. But that's pretty much like reading Ben Camino, only not as interesting. 

And, obviously, I am interested in interesting things. But I'm more interested in figuring out what I should be interested in and fitting my mind, tuning my heart, giving my life, to that. I suggest you try praying the Hours. In no time at all, you'll know the difference between Lectionary Years A and C, Week 2 and 4, First Vespers and Second Vespers, Terce and None, and, of course, Sext and Sixth. 

*About Happy Holidays, give it a rest. I'm joking. 

ben camino's bloody mess: prelude to something maybe (11.30.19)

ben camino's bloody mess

prelude to something maybe: november 30, 2019

This is not a business. This is not a blog. It's a bloody mess of post-Ignatian existentialist anti-spiritual liturgical meditation. 

I invite you to join Ben on his pilgrimage through the horror, the horror of contemporary "Beauty Advent Calendars" (marketed by Cosmopolitan), "Advent: The Drinking Game (made up by some friends of mine in Chicago), Amazon.com, and "Two-Minute Advent: For Those Too Busy to Think, Feel, Read, or Chant." 

But mostly, I invite you to reconsider. Everything. To eat locusts and wild honey. To walk down a pitch black boardwalk at midnight towards what might the ocean and might be the answer to the question you've never been able to frame (or, obviously, might be the abyss). And to have a baby. Or at least wait for one. Or take care of one. 

This world is charged with something wild and lonely and lovely and disruptive. Let's attend. Let's intend. Let's try NOT to get out of the way of the mysterious power and love we hope and dream and sometimes tremble about. There is bread enough for all of us. Wine enough. Salt water splashed on our faces by a friend, a reminder that we are not alone. 

Meet Ben Camino here on December 1, the first day of Advent 2019. Every day? Most days? Well, more likely some days, a meditation (some new, some old, some the obvious product of a gallon or so of Christmas Blend) will be posted at this site for your reading pleasure. 

OK, in truth, this isn't for your pleasure. What, fellow pilgrim, you expect even Advent to feed your hedonism? So just read, sell all that you have, give to the poor, fast from craft beer, and spend some serious time looking up into the gloom (which may or may not be hiding something amazing). You might even see some glimmerings of . . . things that glimmer. Orion on the horizon. Just above what might be the sea. Might, I said. 

For you newbies, here is a link to one of Ben's earlier Ironic Advent Meditations. Once you are into the Ben Camino universe, you can access all the meditations by the handy little links in the margins. Or you can download the app. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I don't have a microwave, I sure don't have an app. But I sure as hell have sand on my shoes. 

Here's that link: http://bencaminosoul.blogspot.com/2013/12/ironic-advent-meditation-2-this-advent.html

Guest Meditation (by Joe Martyn Ricke): Memories of the Fall (2001)

Memories of the Fall (2001)

It was just after 7.50 on the morning of September 11th, and I was ducking out of my office to teach an 8.00 A. M. World Literature class. My office door at Taylor University opened directly to the desk of our secretary, Rhonda Gretillat, without whom nothing. Rhonda usually had her radio on and usually kept us informed. I was, as usual, rushing off to class, so it took me a minute really to tune in to what she was trying to tell me.
  
“One of the World Trade Centers has just exploded in New York City.” Rhonda knew that I used to live in New York, that I love New York, and that, like most [former] New Yorkers, I am often talking about New York. Stunned and foggy, I didn’t mention the news at all in that early morning class. I didn’t want to freak out or freak out the students only to discover later that World War III had turned out really to be just an electrical fire. 
  
Like a lot of people around the world, my colleagues and I spent much of the rest of that day around radios and televisions for further news. I remember the absolute despair and disgust (a literal “sinking feeling”) that came, first, when we heard that the second tower had been hit and, later, when we heard the incredible news that a tower had collapsed.  I thought, selfishly, of one of my favorite spots on earth.  Just off the shore of lower Manhattan, riding back at night towards the city on the Staten Island ferry, with the proud Towers dominating the skyline.  The bright vision, the beautiful world of my youth, gone. 
  
But the day wasn’t over. I had to teach again. As a professor in a Christian college, I thought that I should try to relate the events of the day to some larger picture, some ultimate story within which it could be framed (at least) if not understood. 

I wanted to help my students connect our experience with the lives and concerns of other people who have faced and still are facing similar horrors. Some people experience 9/11 every day. To them it’s just called . . . life.

So when I came back to my afternoon World Literature class, I came with the words of C. S. Lewis from a talk he gave to Oxford students during World War II, called “Learning in War Time.” Lewis, who had seen World War I from trench-level and was now trying to teach his students during another great war, points out that if human beings had stopped teaching and studying every time the level of human suffering reached something like crisis proportions (whether a World War or a world-changing terrorist attack), we simply would have shut down all our schools a long time ago. 

Moreover, if we could really see things as they are, we would realize, as the scriptures and Christian traditions teach, that the world is always at war, that a battle is always pitched, and that we are always living in crisis time. How dare we stop living (learning, marrying, building and cultivating culture) when an external, physical conflict touches our lives, if, as our religion teaches, every single day a dangerous, terrible (and terror full) conflict rages all around (and, more importantly, within) us?

Then, having asked their permission, I went on to talk about World Literature.  Specifically, we discussed the amazing fact that, when he finally arrived at the destination of his great Odyssey (his homeland of Ithaca), the great Odysseus, conqueror of Troy, Cyclops, and pretty much all the known world, was, not very heroically, fast asleep.

Maybe, I thought afterwards, September 11th was a great personal and communal “wake-up call.” Not in the jingoistic sense that Americans now will be sure to remember that they really are the center of the universe and everybody else better be careful or we will kick their non-American butts (one version often heard on popular radio programs). But a call to wake up to our lives, to our journeys (our Odysseys), to our homes (both here and in our ultimate Ithaca). To the great and awful responsibility we have of living in this dangerous, beautiful world. To remember that every time we wake up, or every time we walk out of our office door on the way to class, some miracles and some tragedies are not just waiting to happen. They are happening. People are suffering. Some people are sacrificing everything for a greater cause, for the good of their fellow creatures.  Some people are finding ultimate meaning even on the brink of despair and, yes, death. People are, to put it mildly, reordering their priorities.

A final note. Just around September 11th, my friend Twyla Lee told me about an alternate route to Upland from my home in Huntington.  Instead of driving to I-69 and fighting the Indy traffic through the relative “sameness” of the Interstate landscape, she said I should try taking Country Road 300 W (which later becomes State 5), going past the lovely Huntington Landfill, the little towns of Lancaster and Van Buren, Eastbrook High School, and some incredible barns. “It’s all two lane farm roads, but it’s about five miles shorter,” she told me.

Dear reader, to the degree I know what it is to love anyting, I  fell in love with every inch of that stretch of country road the mornings and afternoons after September 11, 2001. I can’t describe how comforting and reassuring it was through that horrible time to drive past school buses on their way to Lancaster Elementary and Eastbrook High or to get stuck on that winding rural road behind combines and tractors bringing in last fall’s good harvest. "God and the farmers are back on speaking terms," I remember saying to my wife after seeing so many good people bringing in their sheaves one day. 

Thanks to that 8 A.M. class, I even was privileged  to see the early morning sun rising above the old landfill and the Lancaster cemetery day after day after day.  The old barns, the little dying farm towns, the corn stubble which glistened with dew every morning and shone like gold in the late afternoon sun—these bright things will forever be connected to the dark memories of that autumn.

I don’t think I’m making this up; but we all seemed to be waving like neighbors to each other those days, giving the thumbs up instead of the more offensive digital gesture I usually get from other drivers. In slight, almost invisible, ways, we were doing significant healing work. Even rolling down the windows and talking to strangers about things I knew nothing about--like harvesting soybeans or the Eastbrook football team—took on a deeper meaning.

Sometimes people in these parts are labeled as narrow-minded. Perhaps a bit stuck in the mud. More than a little old-fashioned. Those things looked a lot different to me during the autumn of 2001. Through that hard fall, it felt good to be in the heartland.

Ben Camino's Ironic Advent Meditation 2018 #5: St. Nicholas Day and Meaty Theology

Ironic Advent Meditation 2018 #5: 

St. Nicholas Day and Meaty Theology*

Cue Garrison Keillor, reading with his heavy-lunged NPR'd woebegone smoker's voice:

"And this is the feast day of St. Nicholas, who, on a mission caring for the hungry during a terrible famine, discovered that a nasty butcher had murdered and slaughtered three theological students who had asked him for hospitality
(after the butcher had said to them, truthfully but ironically, "I'd like to have you for dinner").

The cherry-nosed saint exposed the butcher and his wife--who had disposed of the three guests by baking them into meat pies--and resurrected the terribly thankful clerks from their doughy coffins.

Jolly Old St. Nicholas was reported to have left coal (considered inedible even in the quaint mythical country in which these tales always take place) in the stockings of the still-hungry butcher and his wife. Ever since then, small meat pies in the shape of theological students are found in the shoes of children and eaten in the saint's honor during the first week of Advent. Especially, for some reason, in this specific part of Germany (it is said that there is only one true vegetarian in the entire region, and even then, it is rumored that this vegetarian theologian doesn't realize that there is fish in the dressing of Caesar Salads). 

Yet, despite the passage of more than seventeen centuries (not to mention the formulation of the Nicene Creed), famine endures.
 
And bloody butchers, their wives, and all who are sick and tired of theology and hungry to eat truth lament their loss.

Be well, do good work, and . . . O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

*Alas Ben Camino is suffering from a serious case of Adventitis tendinitis in his rotator cuff. But fear not, oh ye, fearful of . . . being baked into meat pies. Most days, he plans to post something to disrupt your pine scented Advent even if it's not entirely new. This meaty meditation was first posted on Saint Nicholas Day in 2012, back when Garrison Keillor references made sense. It was part therefore of the original run of Ironic Advent Meditations (ooooh aaaaah). Those were never added to the blog, but instead were simply written and posted on Zuckerbook day by day for friends. Thanks to some excavation work, now you have it, whether you want it or not. You can find three other St. Nicholas Day meditations on the blog: St. Nicholas Punch and St. Nicholas: Heresy Hunter. They, too, are rather tasty.