Merry Christmas

What Can I give Him
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would give Him a lamb.
If I were a wise man
I would do my part.
What can I give Him?
Give Him my heart.

One of the most beloved Christmas stories is the legend of the Christmas Rose. It is the story of a poor girl named Madelon. Seeing others bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the little child, she was saddened that she had nothing to give. She went out in search of a flower to pick, but, alas, it was winter, and no flowers were to be found. As she dropped down and began crying, an angel appeared. From Madelon’s tears sprung a blush blooming with white roses. The greatest gift given to the Christ child that day was not gold, frankincense, nor myrrh. It was those beautiful Christmas Roses.

I see this tale as a story about vocation. It is relevant whether it is the Christmas season or not, and whether one is a religious believer or not. Vocation is more than just a job. Your job can be a vocation, but it is not necessarily. Your vocation is what you are called to do. It is what you are to give back to others.

One of Jesus’s parables is the one about the talents. Jesus tells of a rich man who gives talents, or money, to three men. He gave one 5 talents, one 3, and the last, 1. The man who received 1 talent went and buried his money in a hole. The one who received 2 talents invested his money and made another 2 talents. The one who started with 5 invested and likewise doubled his money. The three men returned to their master and told him how they did. The master was pleased with the two who made more money. He was angry at the man who did nothing with his 1 talent. He took it from him and gave it the man with 10 talents. “To everyone who has, more will be given; but from the one who has not, even that will be taken away.”

Conservatives love to use this story to “show” how Jesus loved Capitalism. But, that is a misreading of the story. The message is that we each have different “talents,” so to speak. God has given each of us different gifts. Some of us are smart, some handsome, some not. But, no matter how big or small, we all have gifts, and we are all called to use them to help others. This is what vocation means. The priesthood is what we often think of when we hear ‘vocation,’ and that definitely is a great vocation. Yet, we all have a vocation in life. We are all called to share our gifts. And, sometimes the smallest gift is greatest, like the Christmas Rose.

Cell Phones

As the years pass, we create ever more technology to connect ourselves to one another. There was the telephone, then pagers, now email, instant messenger, and cell phones. Yet, the irony is that often we are distracted from the people who are actually present to us because we are always so busy talking to the people who are not with us, whether it is being interrupted during dinner to answer a cell phone call, or letting the words of our roommates go in one ear and out the other as we are focused on the IM conversation in front of us on the computer. We create these technologies because we live in a world that forces us to spread out and move far away from our roots, guilting us into believing that we need to create ways to stay in touch with those we have chosen to move away from. And, it is these very technologies we choose to use that instill in us a guilt over our inability to be fully present to those who are physically present to us.

We even come up excuses such as "this is not my fault" or "I am normally not the type to do this" when our email and cell phones pull us away from those who are really there, as if it is the technology's fault and not our own.

Okay, I confess, these are not all my own ideas. These are thoughts that popped in my head after reading an article from the journal First Things. I have listed below the article itself, since it explains what I wish to say far better than I could, along with a few other inciteful comments. (oh, and here is the link itself: http://www.firstthings.com)

December 20, 2005
Joseph Bottum writes:
There was a woman screaming on Park Avenue yesterday morning, flecks of furious saliva spraying from her twisted mouth as she raged into her cell phone, “It’s not my fault.” Over and over, like the high-pitched squeal of a power saw cutting brick: It’s not my fault and a run of foul names, then It’s not my fault and another run of names. It’s not my fault, you (blank). It’s not my fault, you (blank)ing (blank). It’s…not…my…fault, not my fault, you evil (blank).
I don’t know, maybe, whatever it was, it really wasn’t her fault. But the cell phone and the make-up, her dark purse, her blue coat, her warm leather gloves—the accoutrements of sanity around that raging face of public madness—made her seem guilty, somehow. Guilty of something, down to the bone. The man at the Salvation Army kettle kept his tense back turned against her, as he rang his Christmas bell. The passing crowds fixed their eyes at uncomfortable angles and hurried by. A child stared in anxious fear, till his mother began chattering about breakfast, over-bright and over-loud as she tugged him around the corner. I saw the screaming woman for a moment framed by the giant candy canes and white Christmas garlands in the window of the storefront behind her. Then the traffic light changed, and I crossed the street away from her. It’s not my fault, you evil (blank). It’s…not…my…fault.
Is twice a warning or only a coincidence? For I heard the phrase again yesterday, in the bank’s vestibule after work, among the automatic teller machines. New York is still one of the world’s great Christmas towns. Too dirty for too long to clean up well just for the holidays, Manhattan still makes a brave show for the season. Every shop window dresses up its mannequins in Christmas clothes, and every apartment building’s railing wears its strings of lights and tinsel. There in the bank, while I checked my balance, a man was talking on his cell phone, one foot up on the window sill, as the Christmas shoppers hurried past outside, their arms full of packages.
“It’s not my fault,” he said. “I’m just the kind of person who has to keep after things.” What is it about self-justification that always makes it seem so false? About that phrase “I’m the kind of person…” that always makes it sound like a lie? He was smoothly dressed in loafers and slacks, a nice overcoat, and seemingly indifferent to the fact that the people at the ATMs could overhear him. With the effortless patter of a story told many times before—with that sort of smooth charm, in fact, that always grates in my ear with falseness—he launched into a long story about how he didn’t really want to sue them, whoever they were, but then he was the kind of person who needed to see that he got his rights, and it wasn’t his fault that they had messed everything up.
It’s not my fault—the cry we’ve made every day since Cain was born. Down somewhere in the heart, there’s always an awareness of just how wrong the world is, how fallen and broken and incomplete. This is the guilty knowledge, the failure of innocence, against which we snarl and fight: It’s just the way things are; it’s not my fault. What would genuine innocence look like, if it ever came into the world? I know the answer I am called to believe: like a child born in a cattle shed. But to understand why that is an answer, to see it clearly, we are also compelled to know our guilt for the world, to feel it all the way to the bottom.
I sometimes wonder to whom all the city’s cell-phone talkers are speaking. People all around them, thousands and thousands—there, that angry balding man slamming past in his stained parka, and there, that coatless woman with the deliberately unfocused stare smokers wear as they stand with their arms crossed outside restaurants, and there, that tired-looking girl in the sweater trying to stop a taxi, and there, and there, and there—an endless stream of presence, and still they shout or murmur on the street, pouring secrets and imprecations into their clenched phones and throat microphones. Talking to the ones who aren’t there. Communing blankly in their trances, like charlatans with a crystal ball. Like mediums calling the dead.
I emptied my pockets on the way home: another Salvation Army kettle, a drunk man on the sidewalk with a hand-lettered sign I couldn’t read, a woman rattling change in a paper cup. I hate the city, all tarted up in its tawdry Christmas clothes. Mewing us together on its streets, it forces us to see the human stain. It forces us to know. It’s not my fault, I muttered as I blew on my cold hands. May God have mercy on us all. It’s…not…my…fault.

Southwest Airlines--the best way to fly!!

This year is the first of my “adult” life, and as such, I often find myself reminiscing. I think about things such as, “what was I doing this time last year?” I think we do this every time we change our routine and start something new. My first year of college, each month, I would be thinking about what I was doing at that particular time of year back in high school. In the fall, I’d think about football, the winter, basketball, and the spring, baseball, prom, and the coming summer, and so on. My first year of grad school, I thought about college, and what would be going on at St. Michael’s without me. These reminiscing experiences were nice, because I knew that St. Mike’s would never be the same without me, but also kind of sad, because life moves on, and St. Michael’s will continue like it always have, and I will soon be forgotten there.

This year, I think back to what life was like at grad school. December is always finals month, I know that I would have been cramming for exams, and making flight plans with my favorite airline, Southwest. You know, Southwest, where everybody flies first class (and by first class, I mean coach). Unlike most airlines, Southwest does not have assigned seats. It is a cattle-call and a free for all. It goes without saying that there is no movie shown and no food served, save peanuts and soda.

Southwest is not a total free for all, though. Depending on how early you arrive at the airport, you will receive an A, B, or C on your boarding pass. After all the special needs people get seated first, they begin boarding people in lines, beginning with A. Personally, I prefer to be in the B group so I can choose who I wish to sit next to. True, if you are in A, you can sit first, and usually get an open seat. But, then you have no control over who sits next to you, and it will end up being the smelly guy who farts too much, or the old guy who can’t stop coughing up flem. Getting stuck in C is not good either, because then there are only a handful of seats left, and you get stuck sitting next to someone with a two-ticket ass. Talk about no breathing room. B is best, because there are only a handful of people already seated, and you get to choose who you wish to sit next to. You just have to try to not be too obvious about the fact that you are planning on sitting next to the attractive female.