still no decorated tree.

I have been working extra hard this year at this Christmas thing. I've dipped chocolates, baked gingerbread houses, and Elf'd myself. I've been playing Christmas tunes on Pandora and dutifully finished shopping.

I would flat out say 'I'm not feeling it', except clearly I am feeling something. Just can't quite put my finger on what it is. And why my non-decorated but lit up tree should come to symbolize my mood this year is beyond me. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. It's weird, I just want it to be bare this year. Still, every time I look at it I think of my mother. What must she think. This was a woman who took infinite pains with her Christmas trees, using a new theme to decorate every year. I have boxes of her ornaments sitting in the garage.

I did set up my jumbo Nativity, though. It sits atop my old piano. Yup. Not on my grand piano but on the piano I grew up practicing and playing on and the one we are storing for Meghan. It just seemed fitting to put it there.

Larry, mr. taskmaster since Thanksgiving, has been collecting old family photos and scanning them in. He’s admirably making a digital history for which we’ll all thank him one day. But looking at them, coupled with the time of year, makes me, well, a little reflective.


”Experience again the full range of emotion memories invoke. Let them play a nostalgic melody on the strings of your heart. Remember the warmth..., the comfort of kindness, the closeness of family. Think about the Christ Child in Bethlehem’s manger and the nearness of God. Blink back the tears, if need be, and swallow past the fist sized lump in your throat, but don’t quench the memories. They are a part of your history, part of the web of experience which God has woven into the tapestry of your personhood.”

Richard Exley

MoSop's music video. Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTfoOgCubF4&feature=player_embedded#

And then in Sunday School today we watched this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLWYgMmFET4&feature=related