Far As the Curse is Found: Finding Home 2.5
Merry Christmas Eve, friends! I just wanted to pop into your inbox to say hello and Merry Christmas, wherever you find yourself in the world today, and wish you peace and joy in the coming year. I'll keep the introductions short because we all have Christmassing to do. :) Tomorrow I have a piece on joy going up at The Rabbit Room, but here's a little early preview just for you. Also stick around for the usual links and lists!
When I was a child, it was so much easier to answer if a grown-up asked, “What do you want for Christmas?” I’m old enough to remember when there was no event like getting the Sears Wish Book in the mail and spending hours poring through the pages, my sister and I circling our desires in the thin, glossy pages, staged photo shoots of broadly smiling children and the coveted toys of the moment.
Growing up complicates things. If you believe the ad industry, a grown-up Christmas list is more likely to show off diamond rings, the latest smartphone, a Lexus with a giant red bow. But what if the things we want are mostly signposts aimed at our desires?
Do we want the ring, or the rock-solid assurance that someone loves us?
Do we want the phone, or something to signal how productive, competent, and needed we are?
Do we want the car, or the status symbol, the independence to go anywhere?
Do we want the things, or do we want to fill up some lack, to find something wrong in our lives and make it right?
It feels a little cliche to say that the things we want most can’t be wrapped up and left under the tree, and yet the older I get, the more true it feels. Imagine me, asking you, “Seriously…what do you want for Christmas?”
For a loved one with depression to feel joy again? For the cancer diagnosis to be reversed? A guarantee that you’ll make the rent this month, or scrape together enough money and time off to go home, or just to look at the news one day without feeling hopeless, to end one old year with the satisfaction that it was, indeed, for the whole world, a good year?
No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
Here we are, at the end of Advent. We have spent the last four weeks gathering our hope, lighting a new candle each Sunday, singing in the face of the longest nights of the year. We celebrate this season of remembering every year, because even though the Christ child came—yes, he came, in a fragile body like ours to show us what God is like, and that is no small miracle—even for all the things Jesus has made right, we are still well aware that we’re living in the wait.
Every year, I find myself resonating more and more with the sometimes forgotten third verse of “Joy to the World.” I suppose thoughts of sorrow, thorns, and curses don’t exactly drum up holiday cheer, but something in me resonates when I hear those words. They capture the soul of Advent, the waiting, the intense anticipation for reversal. They hint at a story too good to be true.
Jesus has come to make many things right. I believe he did. I believe he still is and that we’re invited to be part of it.
But in another Advent season, the wait can be so hard sometimes.
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found
Far as the curse is found. Maybe farther. Hope, renewal, joy, flooding across the nearly-dead earth to drown the weeds. Sometimes, I can almost feel it.
The first great curse is that we toil, surviving by sweat and tears and waging battle against thorns and drought and disease. Of course the beauty is there, but our joys and sustenance are tempered by futility, the sense that we can never do enough, or be enough, or win.
But take heart, because the memory of Paradise sustains us, and the hope for renewal leads the way from winter’s bitter sting to spring’s gentle rain. The reversal has begun, and with heaven and nature we can sing.
Joy to the weary, broken, beautiful world.
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THINGS I WROTE IN DECEMBER
Thankful to the kind folks at Foundling House for hosting my new poem "Holy Secret." I've been lingering over the stories of Elizabeth and Mary a bit this season, and this was one of the results.
If you're looking for some slightly different Christmas music, check out my brief intro to Folk Hymnal's Incarnation Songs over at The Rabbit Room!
5 THINGS I LOVED IN DECEMBER
1) When your friend has a new poetry book! I've been jokingly calling Shigé Clark our poetry padawan (even though Chris was doing most the helping with Lulu formatting and stuff), and now her first published book is out in the world! Shigé is part of The Rabbit Room community / The Poetry Pub on Facebook, and I'm totally celebrating this milestone with her. Check out her blog at Poetic Utterings and get your own copy of The Beauty of People!
2) Revisiting 2018 albums for year-end lists: Specifically The New Respects' Before the Sun Goes Down, Sandra McCracken's Songs from the Valley, Joy Ike's Bigger than Your Box, and Vocal Few's Grand Pre. Sheesh, making lists is hard. (And I just sent mine off to UTR Media, so keep an eye out for their Best of 2018 podcasts and blogs really soon!)
3) My Spotify Premium trial: 3 months for 99 cents, yo. This has made #2 a heckuva lot easier.
4) Also, The Rabbit Room's super weird, moody, totally awesome Advent Playlist on Spotify! If you're still not quite ready for full-on jolly, go ahead and give this a listen during Christmastide. I won't tell. :)
5) Our weird Christmas tradition of rewatching all The Office holiday episodes. Always a good time watching the awkwardness unfold. And today at The Rabbit Room, Chris expands on the surprising things the Dunder Mifflin crew can teach us about Christmas... in all its beauty an
Thanks, as always, for making a little space in your inbox for me! If you know someone who might enjoy this, please feel free to forward this letter along, and invite them to sign up! And may you have a wonderful Christmas... whether you've been impish or admirable this year. ;)
~Jen
jenroseyokel.com