Recharging & Reconnecting…

Please note: We’lll be taking the rest of the year as well as January off from blogging.  Want to spend more time with the fam and recharge the ‘ole batteries.  Meanwhile, we’re always open to ideas and feedback, hearing what your interests are.  So feel free to comment.

Thanks for reading.  We’ll look forward to reconnecting in February, 2012!

Merry-lleluia…

A Christmas favorite – any time of the year:

Christmas Classics

Back by popular demand…

Christmas is a great time for festivity, family, food, and … well you know.   Snuggled into the family room or den, part of the delight of this season of celebration is family togetherness.  And when “the weather outside is frightful,” what better time than to break out some of  those ‘ole Christmas movies?

So, stir up some steaming mugs of hot chocolate or apple cider.  Fill a bowl of freshly popped popcorn and gather ’round with your loved ones to re-watch some of the best.  Here, in no particular order, are our favorite Christmas-themed movies:

It’s A Wonderful Life. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without George and Mary Bailey, Bedford Falls, Zuzu and Clarence Odbody, A.S. II.  ( One caveat: Around here, the one and  only *official, authorized” version of this Frank Capra classic is the B&W version.)

The Christmas Box. 1995. Based on the wonderful novella by best-selling author Richard Paul Evans. The touching story of a widow and the young Evans family who moves in with her.  Together they discover the first gift of Christmas and the depths of God’s love.  Wonderful performances by Richard Thomas as Richard Evans and Maureen O’Hara as wealthy widow Mary Parkin.  Don’t miss this one! (Bring Kleenex.)

White Christmas. 1954.  Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby as a song-and-dance team that hits the big time after WWII.  They meet Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen – the Sisters act, famously- and hilariously – echoed by Kaye and Crosby later in the movie.  The foursome wind up in a snowless Vermont inn at Christmastime and hatch a plan to help their former general who’s down on his luck.  A little thin on plot, but great Irving Berlin tunes.  Nobody sings the title tune like ‘ole Bing.  A classic.

The Homecoming: A Christmas Story. 1971.  Okay, okay.  We can’t stand the mother and father they recruited for this made-for-TV movie set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia during the Depression, but it’s still a good story about a large family awaiting their Daddy’s long overdue homecoming on Christmas Eve.   The movie pilot that launched The Waltons.  “G’night John-Boy.”

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. 1958.  Ingrid Bergman as Gladys Aylward, British missionary who “wasn’t qualified for service to China.”   Undeterred, Gladys follows God’s call to China and saves one hundred orphans from the invading Japanese – and then some.  (Also read the biography.)  Shows how God can use one person who won’t take “No” for an answer.  (Not a “Christmas movie” per se, but a brief story about The Birth is included.)

Scrooge. 1970. We’ve seen every production of A Christmas Carol ever cranked out – from Reginald Owen and Alastair Sim to George C. Scott to Mr. Magoo and The Muppets.  This musical version starring Albert Finney as the cantankerous old curmudgeon is our favorite.

A Thousand Men and a  Baby. 1997.  Never heard of it?  Well, now you have.  Solid performances by Richard Thomas and Gerald McRaney in this remarkable, heart-warming story about the crew of a U.S. aircraft who adopts an abandoned Korean/American baby.  Based on a true story.  One of our favorites.  (Bring Kleenex.)

Little House on the Prairie: The Christmas They Never Forgot.

For the Younger Ones:

A Charlie Brown Christmas. 1965.  An oldie but a goodie.  Linus’ response to Charlie’s, “Can anyone tell me what Christmas is all about?” is worth the view alone.  Doesn’t get much better than this.

The Little Drummer Boy.  1968.  Hard to find, but wonderful.  We meet Aaron the drummer boy and journey with him to Bethlehem on that Night of nights.  Poignant and heartfelt.  A claymation production.

The Littlest Angel.  1969.  Delightful animated  story of a little shepherd boy’s difficulties in adjusting to heaven.  Imaginative musing on how the Star of Bethlehem may have “originated.”  Based on the book by Charles Tazewell.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Forget the Jim Carrey version, which has the appeal of a plate of canned spinach.  The original 1966 version can’t be beat:

That’s the abbreviated list.  What are your favorites?

Handel, Alaskan-Style

A Christmas Story: ‘Isabella’s Torch’

Reading with Norman Naas was like snagging a front row seat at a command performance.  He didn’t just like books.  He devoured  them.  Ate them up with a spoon.  If it came to a choice between  dinner and another chapter, you may not see Norm until after  dessert.  Or the next morning.

I took full advantage of my Uncle Norm’s love of literature whenever the Naas clan came to visit.  Norm believed in reading aloud before  reading aloud was cool.  He put heart and soul into every page,  bringing characters to life with different vocalizations, gestures and facial features.   Realizing this, I’d climb into his lap, laded to the chin with books.  Bass voice booming, Norman and I bounded into  Treasure Island and Camelot, explored Neverland with the Lost  Boys, roared with Aslan, and jumped into chalk pavement paintings  with Mary, Burt, and the Banks children.  We shared many summer  hours with Stuart Little, Black Beauty, a word-spinning spider, an  Indian in a cupboard, an old yeller dog, the March and Ingalls  families.  So many others.

It was November of 1960-something.  I was in the second grade. Mom bought me a book I couldn’t figure out.  “It’s a Christmas book,” she explained.  “The holidays will be here soon.”  I could read the  words just fine, but they were song lyrics and I couldn’t read music. Figuring that Uncle Norm was omniscient in all matters bookish, I  pulled on his sleeve one morning when the troops were visiting for Thanksgiving.

“Can you read this to me, please?”  I thrust the dark blue book into his hands. “It’s a singing book.  I don’t know how it goes.” My uncle and I retreated into the living room, plopped onto the sofa and opened Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella.  He paged through, “ooing and ahhing” at scenes depicting a young girl with a torch, the Holy family, a stable and lots of stars. “Oh, this is a good one!” Uncle Norm declared.  He always said that.  To a world-class bibliophile like Norman Naas, every book I offered was “a good one.”

“Let’s give it a try, shall we?” he leaned back, perched his black-rimmed glasses atop his nose, cleared his throat and began to sing:

Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabella!
Bring a torch, to the stable run
Christ is born. Tell the folk of the village
Jesus is born and Mary’s calling.
Ah! Ah! beautiful is the Mother!
Ah! Ah! beautiful is her child.

A sixteenth century French Christmas carol, Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella urges visitors to the stable to keep their voices low so as not to disturb the dreams of the newborn Babe.  I’m told that some French children still dress up as shepherds and milkmaids and carry torches and candles to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve while singing the carol.  The doleful tune has also been recorded by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, Joan Baez, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Mannheim Steamroller, among others.

Uncle Norm and I never recorded Bring a Torch, but it seems we sang it every holiday season for years.  It was “our song.” I don’t know what happened to that book, but my uncle passed away years ago.  I think of him often, especially when prowling the stacks of the local library.  The literary lights he lit still blaze beacon-bright.

Just as my uncle “brought a torch” to illuminate the wonderful world of books, so has the Divine Author written the greatest Book of all.  Its pages reflect the Light of the world and the true story of a Father whose love for you and me is so pure and deep that it became Emmanuel, God with us.  His story, The Great Story, became flesh, walked among us, and was nailed to a cross so those who believe would never walk in darkness.

So when cherry-cheeked winds scrub autumnal skies and November ignites the hills, I sometimes catch myself humming. Isabella’s torch is lit. Memories of my Uncle Norm shine like  alpenglow at sunset. Jesus is born.  And the Greatest Story ever told calls me Home.

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December Decisions

“Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

In the lane, snow is glistening…”

Whether you’re snowed in or working on your tan, December’s here and that means CHRISTMAS!  YESSSS!!!  Here are the recommended titles for this month’s read along.  (I probably missed a bunch.  Chime in if you don’t see your favorites here.)

I may include a follow-up post on my best picks for Christmas movies.  Stay tuned and happy reading.  See you in January!

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans.  I’ve read and re-read this book every year since it first came out in 1993.  A modern day classic.  (Check out my Side Bar under Richard Paul Evans for more.)

The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell.  A delightful short story about heaven’s littlest angel who’s not quite “angelic,” but close to the heart of God.

  The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry.

Another favorite seasonal read.  Jim and Della, one dollar and eighty-seven cents and it’s Christmas Eve.  Told in O. Henry’s matchless short-story style, a heart-warming tale of giving, receiving, and sacrifice.

The Homecoming by Earl Hamner.  A warm, richly worded story about a Depression-era family in the Blue Ridge Mtns. of Virginia awaiting their Daddy’s arrival home on Christmas Eve.  The seed that grew into TV’s “The Waltons.”

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.

The author began writing his “little carol” in October, 1843 and finished it by the end of November in time to be published for Christmas. Feuding with his publishers, Dickens financed the publishing of the book himself, ordering lavish binding, gilt edging, and hand-colored illustrations and then setting the price at 5 shillings so that everyone could afford it. This combination resulted in disappointingly low profits despite high sales. In the first few days of its release the book sold six thousand copies and its popularity continued to grow. The first and best of his Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol has become a Christmas tradition and easily Dickens’ best known book.

  “The Greatest Gift” is a 1943 short story written by Philip Van Doren Stern which became the basis for the film It’s a Wonderful Life.  Need I say more?

The Little Drummer Boy, By Henry Onorati, Kristina Rodanas, Harry Simeone, Katherine Davis.  A  classic story of the encounter between a poor boy and the baby Jesus embodies the true spirit of Christmas.

Silent Night: A Christmas Carol is Born, by Maureen Breet Hooper.  The story of how the Christmas carol “Silent Night” was created.  Beautifully illustrated.  A great book for read-alouds with the kids – don’t forget to break out your singing voices and some hot chocolate, too!

   ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore.  It just wouldn’t be Christmas without this seasonal standard.

  Christmas Every Day by William Dean Howell.  The title says it all.  Another classic.

The Gospel According to Saint Luke.  The four Gospels can be divided into various categories.  These are Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are known collectively as the Snyoptics.  Of the three Synoptic gospels, only Matthew and Luke include the Nativity stories.  Of these two, Doctor Luke’s account is perhaps the most beloved and best-known, with its focus on the King of Heaven being born in a humble manger.

***

 

“… May your days be merry and bright…

I’ve been watching White Christmas every Christmas season for like, uh… fifty years?  So much so that I have most of the dialogue down word-for word.  Can’t help it.  Sure, the movie is a bit thin on plot and somewhat sappy in places, but it just isn’t Christmas without Bob Wallace, Phil Davis, and Betty and Judy Haynes in a snowless Vermont.  Besides, nobody sings the title tune like ‘ole Bing.  Remember this?

 

I Was Born in a Library

I was born in a library.

Not really.  But I could’ve been.

Books prominently populate my earliest memories.  Lots and lots of books.  Enough to fill a library several times over.

I remember snuggling into Dad’s lap as he read aloud about a brown monkey and a man in a yellow hat.  I remember Mom reading and re-reading a perennial favorite, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.  Also stories about a runaway bunny. Ferdinand the bull.  Green eggs and ham.  A secret garden.  A spider weaving webbed words.  Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Cinderella, Aesop and Dorothy Gale.  So many others.

As far as “learning to read” goes, it seems I was born reading.   I suppose I received academic instruction at some point.  I just don’t recall being “taught” to read.  In fact, I can’t remember ever not reading.  It’s like not breathing.

Weekly visits to the library with Mom added fuel to my bookish fire. I’ve long thought of the library as my “home away from home.”  Many are the cozy hours and golden afternoons spent browsing the library stacks, meandering in and out of Dickens, Bronte, Dinesen and Evans.  Finding new books or a new author is like unearthing buried treasure.   To this day I prefer a good book – or even a mediocre one – to any other media. I am never as well content as when behind the pages of a good book.

Innings and Acts

Whenever I’m sitting down, I feel compelled to be reading something.  Anything.  Even the back of a cereal box.  I bring books to baseball games, to the chagrin of my kids.  I tell them I read between innings.  And I do.  I bring a book to the dentist’s office, board meetings, ballet rehearsals.  If I anticipate a line at the post office, grocery store or bank, I bring a book.  Shoot, I usually bring a book even if I don’t anticipate a line.  I’ve also been known to read between acts at the opera and until the house lights dim at the theatre.  An apt epitaph might be: “So many books, so little time…”

Like I said, not reading is like not breathing.

A Grand Adventure

I recently embarked upon a grand reading adventure that, while unplanned, has proven a vast delight.  I’m re-reading some of my favorite titles from childhood.  I’ve haven’t travelled between the covers of some of my grade school favorites for forty years or more.  They are somehow welcoming.  Calling me home.  Even after all these years, plots and characters rise to greet me like long lost friends.  A chapter or two and I am home.

The Finest

I’ve long maintained that some of the finest writing in all literature is Children’s Literature.  Any writer who can grab and keep a child’s attention for an entire story is doing something right.  And so “home” these days includes wild ponies and round-ups of Misty of Chincoteague.  Prairie fires, rampaging grasshoppers, scarlet fever, and Christmas candy in the Little House books.  Walter Farley’s Black Stallion series.  Aslan and Narnia.  Black Beauty.  Peter and Wendy.

I’ve gathered them around me now, so many favorites from years past.    You’d think the stories would all be fuzzy, gray.  They’re not!  They’re as rich and vibrant and glowing as they were when I first creased their pages.  Still captivating.  Still delicious.  I feel that while I may have forgotten these stories, they have not forgotten me.  When I open their covers and dive into their patient pages, I find they’ve been waiting for me.  Dear friends welcoming me back.

It feels like coming “home.”  Know what I mean?

“Susan” and Something Else

Susan (pseudonym) stood in the strong summer sunshine, arms crossed and brow furrowed.  There it was again, the ubiquitous “four hundred pound gorilla” that everyone knows about but no one wants to acknowledge: Why we left the IC (institutional church).  Susan is an acquaintance from our former “brick and mortar” church.  I was attempting to respond to the usual question she posed, “Where do you go to church now?”  Hence the crossed arms and furrowed brow.

Warning sirens sounded in my head.  Familiar with Susan’s loquacious track record, I knew that every word I said to her would be broadcast to the whole world the moment my back was turned.  So I breathed a silent prayer and dove in.

If you’re reading this post, chances are that you already know some of the reasons we left the IC and embraced the simple or “organic” church model instead, so I’ll not bore you death with an encore.  What I want to bring up here is Susan’s response: crossed arms.  Chin down, wandering eyes.  Lips pressed together in a firm, grim line of disapproval.  I smiled and waited for the predictable line of questioning, the peppering that usually comes from a querulous combination of misunderstanding, misinformation and knee-jerk defensiveness:

- Who’s your pastor?

- Who mans the pulpit?

- Who leads worship?

- Are you doing ministry?

- Are you preaching the Word?

- What about money?

And so on.  “Funny,” I thought, “I could ask you the same thing.”

Is it Really?

Susan’s questions were predicated upon the assumption – one we do not share – that the biblical model for “church” is church as an institution. If most or all of the above are taken care of by the pastor (because that’s what we pay ‘em for), that’s “church.”

But is it really?  Is the biblical model focused on buildings, hierarchies, salaries and infrastructure – or something else?

When I gently suggested “something else” to Susan and steered her toward some key scriptures, she shut down and walked away.  This made me wonder again: Is the IC model so fragile and brittle that it can’t stand up to scrutiny?  And if so, is it a worthy model? Further: If the four-walls-and-a-steeple, programs-and-paid-staff, Sunday-morning-go-to-meeting, put-my-happy-face-on model embraced by so many believers as “church” is truly The Biblical Model, why shut down or shy away from honest questions?  Why the defensiveness?  The rolling eyes?  The snide put-downs of those who choose another path, one much closer to the New Testament model?

Love or Lockstep?

Is church about love or “lock-step-itis”?  More pointedly, is it about being God-focused, grounded in Scripture, empowered by the Holy Spirit, spiritual transformation serving Jesus and others, walking with God and passing on a vibrant, compelling faith to the next generation, or something else?

***

Join us next time for something a little different, I Was Born in a Library.