Honoring the tradition

Was at the sprawling Lotus Market near Chengdu's North Train Station yesterday, which has no Lotuses to speak of, but darn near everything else.  I was looking for a new Christmas tree, which I found in a remote forest clearing market stall next to 3-D Buddha posters; chopped down with my hatchet bargained down with the vendor from 60 RMB down to 45, hauled home through the drifting snow crowds of people and electric motorcycles; and sawed the trunk down took it out of its cardboard box so that I could fit it into the stand. 

Then I sat on the couch for 45 minutes, untangling snarled masses of Christmas lights and trying to figure out which bulbs were broken so that I could get the darn things to work, while the rest of the family dug stuff out of boxes and decorated the rest of the house.  Some traditions are universal, after all...

gifts and silence

Merry Christmas, everyone! More technically, happy Boxing day, but being as it's still Christmas in a few other parts of the world, I guess I can still post this...

Buried in our hard drive somewhere, in the midst of our 18.2 days worth of music on iTunes (seriously, how did people live in Other Places before we had computers?) are 20 to 30 albums worth of Christmas music that I've had playing in rotation on our laptop when the thought crosses my mind that yes, maybe it would be good for our kids to recognize the fact that, yes, "Silent Night" is actually about the story of Christmas. (Or, as Ysa put it, "Daddy! This song is a Jesus song too!")

Also in the mix is Bruce Cockburn's rendering of "O, Little Town of Bethlehem", a carol that I'd previously exiled to the category of "incredibly schlocky and overly sentimental songs that I put up with anyway, because after all, it is Christmas." I mean, come on, I've lived in a Little Town, and - "how still we see the lie"?? Little towns are still because they're BORING BORING BORING, folks!! And, come on, what baby has a "deep and dreamless sleep" ? In a manger? In a town packed with drunken partying census-takers? Seriously, folks...

But then after all the sentimental setting in the song, verse three sneaks up:

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.

If you're just skimming along this blog before you check out your emails and the weather report and the traffic before you head off to work, stop for a bit. Now read those lines again, especially the first two. (Feel free to make any substitutions in the last two lines, depending on your ideas of God's gender, views of the afterlife, religious persuasion or lack thereof.) I was wanting to do some more explaining about how amazing they are, but then it wouldn't be silent, would it?

Merry Christmas!

Christmas time's a comin'...

...though this photo might explain why it's a teeny bit harder to get into the Christmas spirit here. Foggy, damp, and quite chilly in the morning, though sometimes the sun burns through by mid-afternoon. Though you might get the impression from the blog that I've been around all the while, most of what you've been reading lately was (gasp!) posted in advance, back in early December when I had a bit more time.

I've been out of town the last two weekends. First, on more a business trip to the town of Guang'an in Eastern Sichuan, where I got a chance to observe a few projects that my organization, MCC, is sponsoring there, in order to write about them for our American and Canadian publications in the next couple of months. Then, last weekend, a winter retreat for all of us to Beijing, which meant a chance to get together with colleagues, share thoughts and inspiration, and yes, even a quick afternoon trip to the Great Wall. Both short trips were eventful in their own ways, and you may hear more if time permits.

In the meantime, I'm wrapping up finals in all of my classes, filling out rubrics and plowing through student notebooks. The big news is that we're also preparing for a big trip - to Indonesia and Thailand! Thailand, because that's where our organization holds its winter training sessions, and Indonesia because we have the chance to visit some MCC friends there as well. All lots of work and disruptions to our routines, balanced out, of course, by the fact that we are incredibly fortunate to be able to do what we're doing.

Oh, and then Christmas is coming up in the midst of all this. So yeah, things have been a bit busy as of late. Because we'll be traveling, we're not going huge on the presents this year, but we want to make sure we don't ignore Christmas, either. I've been reading Dr. Suess's How the Grinch Stole Christmas to a couple of my classes that have finished with their finals, which, in addition to the pleasure of reading the phrase "Cindy-Lou Who, who was no more than two" to my students, has been a gentle reminder to not get too Grinchy myself...