merry christmas

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!

Oh night divine, the night when Christ was born;

O night, O Holy Night, O night divine!

Truly he taught us to love one another,

His law is love and his Gospel is peace.

Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

Let all within us praise his holy name.

Merry Christmas!

(images from the National Gallery, December 20, 2008)

commonplace

"Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative."

Norman Rockwell

Have you ever stopped and looked at a Norman Rockwell print? I hadn't until recently. I have memories of a glass cabinet at my grandma's house in Pennsylvania where my Grandpa Russell displayed plates with Rockwell prints and old Saturday Evening Post magazines. I wasn't too interested in them as a kid and don't remember ever stopping to look at them. I wish I had.

In November my dad and I went to the opening of the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Chrysler. My expectations were low. To be quite honest I enjoy scoffing at cartoonish art and prefer the ornate style of Italian Renaissance art -- this is art that is both thought provoking in deeply spiritual ways and also breathtakingly beautiful with delicate, lacy gold details. There is this room in the Louvre, you go up the stairs towards the Winged Victory and then you turn right and go through this corridor lined with incredible Giotto pieces and frescoes and then you enter into this mesmorizing Italian Renaissance room. Each time I find myself in that room I feel small and simple, in awe of the ability of beauty to communicate true, eternal things.

So Dad and I went to see Norman Rockwell and I was taken aback by his work. So simple, yet incredibly communicative and stylized. Commonplace and yet not the least bit trite or cliche. I couldn't quite put my finger on what drew me into the exhibit. Was it his depiction of faces? The way he uses the face as a means of evocating emotion? Certainly that was something I've been thinking about often these past weeks. The paintings recalled faces from deep in my memory -- loved ones, children in need, leaders of our countries. But that didn't seem like the thing that was drawing me in. We enjoyed the exhibit for an hour or so and then decided our ability to appreciate it was saturated and we exited although we had not seen one room in the back was the exhibit.

Tonight we went back to the museum. I was feeling slightly off-kilter, loose ends left undone from work pulled for my attention. The nagging feeling that days are just flying by without acknowledgement as busyness has crept in and pauses and rest and opportunities to notice beauty have been pushed out. The weather was warm, not at all Christmas-like and I have yet to really feel settled into the holidays. These thoughts swirled in my mind as I walked into the Chrysler. The atmostphere inside is always warm and inviting, but this evening felt especially so. The most beautiful evergreen roping glowing with white twinkle lights was draped down the staircases and a tree formed from gorgeous red pointsettas was set to the side in the main room. The wonderfully simply, elegant decorations felt comforting and reorienting. Dad went to get two glasses of wine and we sat and talk and kept saying how pretty the museum looked. We finished our wine and headed into the Rockwell exhibit, into that back room that we had left unexplored during the previous visit.

The room is painted a vibrant yellow and each wall holds a portion of Rockwell's 353 magazine covers. Some of the covers are from actual magazines, mailed to subscribers. They sit in simple frames and they hold still shots of wonderfully American, wonderfully human moments. A girl holding up her prom dress looking in a mirror, a family saying grace before dinner, a young girl self-scrutinizing as a beauty magazine lay open on her lap. I started thinking about these shared moments, about the ways that the magazine images conjured memories from my own life. The anticipation of Christmas as a child, the joys of summer, long car rides torturing my little brother on our way to my grandparents house. It was such a neat experience to walk around this room, to see framed moments and memories and to see things I have not yet experienced which I look forward to. I'm learning slowly that the commonplace is not necessarily cliche, but instead that it is shared experiences and moments. And, I'm learning that a great deal of joy comes from these simple, ordinary moments.

So, may your Christmas season be filled with wonderful, ordinary moments. And may you find great joy and great awe and wonder in each of them.


Ok fine, and may it also be filled with a few beautifully ornate and grand moments as well.

(images via www.normanrockwell.com and nrm.org)

oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree!

We're kicking off our fun old fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols.

Clark W. Griswold, A Christmas Vacation

Ryan called me indian giver scrooge the week before Thanksgiving because I refused to get a Christmas tree before Turkey Day. He asked if we could have two trees in the house and I said sure. He took my response to mean that we could go get the trees immediately. I reminded him that we would not have any trees until after Thanksgiving. I wouldn't compromise. I wouldn't hear anything of an evergreen in the house before November 27th. He thought I was just being scrooge, but the truth of the matter was that a co-worker told me that her grandfather has a Christmas tree farm in Williamsburg and I had made arrangements to go the Saturday after Thanksgiving to cut down our very first Christmas tree. So on Saturday we drove to Williamsburg to get the tree! Ryan was very excited and as soon as we arrived at the farm he hopped out of the car and started surveying the grounds...


Just like in Christmas Vacation, our tree practically had a spotlight shining on it...look at the glow!

and look at the glee on Ryan's face when he found "The One"
The only remaining question was whether it would fit into our house..."Oh yea, I'm sure it will fit...it's not even that big..."

So we notified the proprietor that we had found our tree and he handed Ryan a saw to cut it down.

Ryan and dear old Mr. Bradshaw loading the tree in the tractor:

And there it is in the big green truck ready to go home! We were nervous that our tree was too small, that it might look too scrawny or small in our home. Upon getting it inside we realized that we had chosen a tree that was just as tall as it was wide. I mean, this is a fat albert of a tree. We set the tree in the middle of the front window where Ryan's grandparents always put their tree, but it stuck halfway out into our living room. We moved it to the side of the room, in a little alcove where we usually have two chairs and a small table. It fills the space perfectly! Note Ryan's astonishment at the breadth of the tree...

We were excited to have the tree up in time for the little leftovers party that we were having the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And we were excited for Greg Sceviour to be home!

More to come on the finished product...

the thanksgiving television

I woke up this morning at 7am a bit perturbed to find that my husband was gone. "Where has he gone?" I thought to myself. Oh, I know! He is making me a Thanksgiving breakfast with the delcious pumpkin pancake mix we picked up at the Fresh Market. No, no we have no eggs or milk. Upon being reminded of the fact that we really didn't have any breakfast food in the house I turned over and went back to sleep, feeling confident that Ryan could fend for himself just fine whatever he was doing.


Around 8:30 I was awakened by Ryan, jumping up and down with excitement and begging me to get out of bed and see his new television. The one he had been at Kmart waiting for since 4:30am. I sighed, said I'll see it in a minute and fell back asleep. Thirty minutes later Ryan was back and literally dragged me out of bed because I was missing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. His little Christmas-lover heart simply could not have that. I stumbled into the den in a sleepy stooper to behold our new, gigantic television.




The process of getting the television was fairly amusing. Ryan has been dropping hints for sometime that we really should get a new tv, to which I consistently respond, "Ryan, we have a huge television that works fine." With Black Friday just around the corner, he upped his antics. This culminated with him pulling the "But we would have so much more space if the tv hung on the wall." (Actually not true, the speakers and dvd player and whatever else you need to have a functioning tv still has to sit on a stand under the tv.) So anyways, somewhere in the midst of my not really protesting or objecting, I conceded and off he went to Kmart. (See: This) And then he gloated all morning as we ate potato chips and an apple for breakfast and watched the parade.



As I write, he is watching a James Bond movie smirking and so proud of himself for finding a good deal on his tv. Oh excuse me, our tv, as he likes to point out.

thankfulness : mom + the turkey wagon

Today I am grateful for my mom who has cooked a delicious and nutritious Thanksgiving dinner for as many years as I can remember. I am also thankful that when I came home from college last year, slightly skittish around meat after taking a nutrition class that ended up being an exposé on the horrors of CAFOs, that my mom drove all the way out to Pungo to find a locally raised, hormone-free turkey. Thanks mom.

So this year the trip to find the local, cage free Thanksgiving bird was a family affair. Ryan, James, my mom and I piled into the mini-van and made the drive out to Flanagan farm this afternoon. The turkey's met their maker around 10am and by 1pm they were ready to be picked up. The turkeys were spread out on several tables in a very rustic little shed right behind the Flanagan's home.

We picked what we deemed an appropriately sized bird, put it on the check out counter, paid and put it in a garbage bag (of course). I felt like such a child, but I couldn't help but sneak around behind the shed to see the turkeys still roaming around in the land of the living. There they were in all their glory, at least until Christmas rolls around...we took bets on which one might be on our Christmas dinner table.
Ok, so maybe this is gross or disturbing, but honestly it made me feel much less freaked out than the shrink wrapped, identical blue and yellow plastic covered fowl that line grocery shelves. So here is to Barbara Kingsolver and a local turkey for Thanksgiving! And here's to my wonderful mom who always works so hard to make sure that her babies are fed healthy and delicious meals.

thankfulness : community

Freely you have received, freely give.

Matthew 10:8

I have never bought into the concept of community until very recently. A rather negative experience with it in college put the last nail in the coffin on my view of whether or not community -- a living, breathing group of people who care about one another and give their lives away for one another -- could be something real, or at least something I experience.

Over the past year or so the Lord has been slowly moving, changing my perspective, allowing me to forgive and move past hurt into the beauty of what giving life away and living life with others can be like.

Last weekend in the Outer Banks I was brought to tears hearing this group of high school students sing a song that I completely associate with my senior year of high school. That year was the first time that my relationship with God moved from outside the confines of a building and into the world. It was in the context of relationships with middle school girls from church. Girls from different life circumstances, girls who didn't know or care about who Jesus is and girls who taught me more of the Lord than I could've imagined as a senior in high school. At the end of a weekend retreat I remember looking around and seeing this group of middle school students singing their hearts out and thinking "this is it, this is what I want my life to be about." I was tired from staying up all night, it had snowed and I had been pelted with snowballs. But in the midst of that I thought this is what I want to be about -- loving the people around me, walking through life with them and together wrestling with who God is and what that means right here and right now.

I am so grateful for that opportunity. So grateful that Adam, the head of student ministry at our church, would trust me to step into that leadership opportunity as a stuck up Christian school kid who thought she understood so much, but in reality had missed the point.

Tonight I talked to the group of high school kids who were sitting in the same place where I spent so many a Sunday night. I got to tell them that life, real Life, the kind that just makes us stop and say "This is it! This is what life is all about," is essentially a life that is given away. A life that knows the gift of grace, the gift of love freely given and cannot help but let that same love flow through it.

I had the chance to spend this past week reflecting and gathering thoughts for the talk. My heart was moved to profound gratefulness. I am so grateful that the Lord refused to let me keep my small understanding of who he is and instead brought me into the understanding that my life, somehow in some small way, is relevant and usable in his work in the world. And so thankful that he has slowly taught me that real Life is found in giving life away. He is still working through my cynicism, reminding me again and again that he is not keeping score, that he is not angry, that my failures and inabilities don't endlessly frustrate him. And instead I am learning to listen to the God that says, "Freely you have received, freely give." Freely. I am starting to understand the freedom that comes in Christ, the glorious freedom of grace and the way that it overflows into giving. There is no foot stomping from heaven, no acting out of guilt or obligation, just infinite freedom.

What a wonderful season of life this is. It was so humbling to stop and note the ways that the Lord has been teaching me more of his heart over the past 5 years. What a comfort to know that that same God continues to reveal himself to high school students through that same song on high school retreats and continues to reveal himself to me. The unexpected twist in this is that almost without knowing my views of community have been reworked and redeemed. In the midst of coming back to Virginia Beach and getting involved again in student ministries a group of people has come together and tonight after I spoke I almost had to chuckle to myself realizing that community was staring me right in face, protesting that it is possible to care for and give our lives away for one another. So today's thank you is to Bling Branch and Adam and for the people that have refused to let my own cynicism get in the way of knowing community and knowing who the Lord is.

thankfulness

Gratitude...goes beyond "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

Henri Nouwen

On Thursday nights I lead a small group of freshman girls. Tonight we were talking about Thanksgiving and what living in thankfulness looks like. I really love what Nouwen says above about gratitude -- that we can move from it being a spontaneous response to circumstances to a lived discipline. I told the girls that this week I wanted to take time each day to acknowledge someone (or perhaps something) that I am grateful for in an effort to begin to cultivate this discipline of gratitude.

Together our small group made thankfulness boards with clippings from magazines and words and writing to help remind us to contemplate the things we are grateful for.

So this week before Thanksgiving I want to start acknowledging and celebrating the people and things that I so deeply appreciate and care about. There are so many, but here's to 7...The first being these high school girls. I've been thinking a lot lately about what a gift it is to have the chance to be involved in these girls lives. We spent this past weekend in the Outer Banks. There were incredibly honest, vulnerable conversations. There were tears, there was a great deal of laughter. There were three words repeated ad nauseam: special, awkward and random. Oh, high school girls. But I love them, regardless of their inability to use more than three adjectives. And I am so grateful for what they teach me, for their zeal for living and experiencing life. I am so often so impressed by their lives -- what they have gone through and learned, what they have experienced and processed. It is a gift to be with them, it is a gift to be together in this season of life and it is a gift to walk with them as we wrestle with who God is and what he has for us as his beloved.

housewarming

The house has been warmed! We had a lovely little gathering on Saturday evening with family and friends. The week preceding was filled with (starting and) finishing home improvement projects to have everything just right for the weekend. Our parents and, of course, Grandma Peg pulled through for us -- we definitely would not have been able to get everything done without them.

It really is so much fun to really feel settled in. Please do come for a visit!

president elect

"Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope."

President Elect Barack Obama

Our office has had a recent upgrade -- two eight foot television screens. This means that I now watch CNN for eight hours a day. Needless to say I had become more than slightly cynical in the days (weeks) leading up to the election. An office email came around first thing on Tuesday morning listing the the freebies that one could get with an "I Voted" sticker, so after work I headed to the poll.

My polling station was a little church where I was greeted by several overzealous elderly people who seemed absolutely ecstatic that I had come out to vote. There was only one other voter in the building. That made the poll station volunteer to voter ratio about 12:1. The lady that greeted me was especially excited because she assumed that it was my first time voting and practically begged me to let her give me a tutorial on the touch screen voting system. I assured her that I could navigate through voting by myself, but she wouldn't have it. On the practice ballot I told her I would like to select Thomas Jefferson for President because I went to UVa and she giggled, I think just thrilled that I realized the list of choices were former Presidents. After being certain to show me the large font option, my ever helpful poll lady deemed me ready to cast my ballot. And so I did.

Ryan and Ruthie had accompanied me to the poll because afterwards we wanted to be sure to pick up all the free treats that we had so patriotically earned. First stop on our circuit tour of voter goodies: Krispy Kreme. We thought since we had voted and done our patriotic duty we had really earned the right to eat dessert before dinner.

Next we headed to Chick fil A where we had heard rumors that they were no longer giving out free sandwiches. The rumors were true and after a brief ethical dilemma about whether we should pay for sandwiches after being scammed into coming to Chick fil A for the free ones, we caved and ordered 3.

The last stop was starbucks, just a few feet from Chick fil A. I think I only ended up taking a few sips of the beverage, but I felt compelled to pick one up because it was free.

We headed home and Ryan and I got to work fixing up things around the house in preparation for our housewarming party this weekend. We had the news on in the tv room and heard the results coming in so very quickly. I couldn't believe it when we heard McCain start speaking and conceding the win to Obama. I thought his speech was quite good. We continued on with our painting. I think it was sometime around 11 pm when the reality of what was going on hit us -- we were patching walls and painting trim as our nation elected it's first black President. What a historic, moving thing. Ryan and I bounced this idea back and forth, really letting it sink in and continually thinking about how this night would be in history textbooks and college lectures and all over the world represented as a symbol of hope, of reconciliation, of the greatness of a nation whose image has become so tarnished these past years. We stopped painting at midnight to hear President Elect Barack Obama. I was moved by his speech. His mannerisms seemed heavy, somber, burdened and yet his words were hopeful.

I have no idea how the next four years will go. But on Tuesday night we made a rule for our home: No cynicism until proven wrong. Forty-five years ago our country was fighting over whether or not to let black and white children attend the same schools. Tuesday night we witnessed a black man being chosen to lead our nation. I have reservations and concerns -- I don't think that Obama's election in itself solves problems or erases hate, I'm nervous about who he will choose to replace Supreme Court Justices, I'm anxious at the policies he will enact, but for now I want to acknowledge and celebrate our nation. I want to believe that there is hope, I want to support it and work towards it -- not just for our country, but for our world. I'd like to think that this election was part of that process -- perhaps not for policies chosen, but for the symbolism that hope is a real thing, that conflict and hate can be overcome and that we as people in our everyday lives have the ability to admit mistakes and make choices that bring about reconciliation and instill hope.

isolated but relevant

Have you ever thought about how isolated our American experience is? How few people in the world do the things that we do or live the way that we live?

I found this link the other day and was reminded: http://www.globalrichlist.com/

I haven’t really been able to stop thinking about it. These are funny times too – the economic crisis, the Presidential election and Thanksgiving quickly approaching. I’ve been feeling so pulled back and forth – grateful for the life I’m able to live in America, but not wanting to vote. Thankful for so many things in life, yet so many times unwilling to let any of that thankfulness overflow into giving. And perpetually frustrated by American Acquisition Influenza – our right to have cable television, our right to drive new SUVs, our right to low gas prices, our right to you name it – as I run into Target to grab a great new dark nail polish that I’ve been eyeing.

And then once in a while I see something like this and it brings me back to reality: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7692396.stm

Slavery was ruled illegal 5 years ago in Nigeria. Five years ago. And this woman is still fighting for her freedom.

This life I lead is so isolated, we really do share it with just a few percent of the world. My prayer today is that somewhere in the midst of feeling conflicted and confused, that thankfulness would begin to flow into giving and my sense of having a right to all kinds of things and experiences would subside into quiet gratitude. And that my isolated life here would somehow be connected with and relevant to women and people like Hadijatou Mani in Nigeria.

kitchen tales

Have you ever eaten baby food? No, I mean since you were a toddler, have you ever tried it? Well, neither had Ryan and I until last night.

We both hang out with high school girls and boys, respectively, on Thursday nights. It had been rather hectic evening, scrambling to get home from work, grab dinner and scurry to small group. We got home around 10pm. The night before Ryan had said that he really wants to sit down and watch a little television together at night and this concept, although totally foreign to me, is something that I decided I should try. My effort at quality television time lasted all of seven minutes. I think I was still feeling a little wound up and just couldn't sit still. And I kept thinking of these sweet potatoes that I had purchased a while back. (I couldn't recall exactly how long ago...) Hmmm, I thought to myself, I have got to use those sweet potatoes.

I pried Ryan off the couch to inspect the spuds and check for any sign whatsoever of decay. I am more than slightly paranoid about using food that is bad. He assured me they were safe, so I went to town peeling and slicing and dicing the sweet potatoes. I decided to make a savory sweet potato chowder in honor of my celebration of the deliciousness of Fall.

My first hint should've been the old sweet potatoes. My second hint should've been that the recipe instructed you to puree a perfectly good looking soup into baby food slop. My third hint should've been that nothing smelled aromatic and delicious at any point while I was cooking. But, being the self-disciplined individual that I am, I kept moving ever onward.

Just after midnight the soup had been pureed and was ready for consumption, at least until we tasted it. Ryan had assumed his position back on the couch in front of the television. I dipped my spoon in the soup and had my first taste. I honestly gagged. I summoned Ryan from the tv room and demanded that he try the soup. He smelled the simmering caldron and refused. I pulled the "I'm your wife and I've been slaving in kitchen" card and he conceded. He took a tiny sip and gagged just as I predicted. We proceeded to have a really good laugh.

Ryan noted that this was my first failed kitchen attempt which he really would not have been able to choke down for dinner. Luckily, it was midnight and neither of us was hungry so it didn't really matter. The ironic point of this story is that I got the darn baby food vomit recipe from an e-newsletter from "The Nest." Not familiar with it? The Nest is the newlywed version of The Knot. As in http://www.theknot.com/, the overwhelming, nausea inducing mecca of wedding planning. Blast you The Knot for sending me nothing but To-Do lists and emails about rhinestone bachelorette paraphanalia and fake Tiffany bracelets bridesmaids gifts for the past year. And blast you The Nest for tricking me into checking off "Cook a Meal Too Disgusting For Your Husband To Choke Down" from my newlywed checklist that I'm sure you emailed to me the day after my wedding.

raleigh

We spent this past weekend in Raleigh watching James play in a baseball tournament. The weather was beautiful, sunny and in the high 70s. What a treat to spend a whole Saturday outside.

We arrived in Raleigh Friday evening and called Megan, a trustworthy Wolfpack alum for a restaurant recommendation. We were so glad we did! We ate at the Village Draft House in a really neat little downtown area of Raleigh. They had over 100 beers on tap and the bartender was kind enough to let us sample a few of them.

In the process I discovered a new Fall favorite: Cottonwood Pumpkin Spice Ale. It is the beer version of a Pumpkin Spice Latte. If you find yourself at a restaurant that has this beer, you simply must try it. The other fabulous thing about this draft house is that hardly anything on the menu is more than $8. Maybe it's because we just got back from Europe where we were getting torn to pieces by the euro, but gosh this place seemed like such a bargain.

In summary: If you find yourself in Raleigh, go to the Village Draft House and order the Cottonwood Pumpkin Spice Ale. And if you aren't, apparently you can purchase it at Total Wine.