It's a Mess! It is that messy time of year. A shuffle of Christmas letters cover the bedroom floor, envelopes waiting for addresses (why do you move? It is so inconvenient for me!) and photos waiting to be stuffed. A massive invasion of snowmen are mustering in the kitchen and the family room, waiting for their annual assignments. It is one big mess. Meanwhile, the Swedish Tomten have arrived and skirmishes are breaking out as they jockey for space. What a mess. The turkeys are still retreating and the extra boats are heading for harbor and all this stuff has covered the kitchen table so we couldn't eat on it if we wanted to. It is that messy time of year. What is the purpose of all this fuss? Advent. Advent means "coming." Jesus is coming. Something is happening, or getting ready to happen and it is worth all the fuss. Jesus, alas, is still in the box, the wise men are wandering, the shepherds are shuffling after their sheep and Mary and Joseph have bogged down en route. But Jesus is coming, that's what this season, pre-Christmas is called. And it suggests a sense of preparation. Now it is tempting for me to be pre-occupied with Tomten and snowmen and berries and Julbokken. If I'm honest, I'm aware that it is messy in my soul, my spirit. Dare I hope? Again? Will something happen? Something good? Could it be that Christmas will be about hope and heart, about trust and commitment this year? Will I find new faith? Will that be my gift from the baby? Stir up your power and come, O One who is All, come and stir us to new hope.

Bunnies and rainbows

I am looking forward to the future. I don't expect it to be bunnies and rainbows. In fact, I expect lots of hard work, hair-raising hard work. For all of us. I expect, however, that my gay friends will be getting married in Maine and Maryland and Washington. I expect that Pell Grants and other means of financial aid (otherwise not known as free stuff but earned stuff) will assist my daughter and others attending college. I expect that the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe v. Wade and that the immigrants I know will be welcome. It is a tone, besides a bunch of facts, that pleases me from the Obama administration. And, come to think of it, maybe like Obamacare, a term he and we have come to embrace, as a good thing and a fitting moniker to honor the one who made it happen. Maybe like that, I'm not so offended by the epithet that Obama is the President of Free Stuff. Except it isn't free. Nothing, as they say, is free. But Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. My family has had to make use, at one time or another, in one generation or another, of all those generous programs and some before them. My great-grandfather only got to America because his brother gave him the money for the trip. And then got him set up. How many of us can say the same, must admit the same? We are the benefactors of others' largesse. If being a liberal labels me as a giver of Free Stuff, then count me in. I'm glad to share. That is the tone I like in my liberal friends. They all feel that way. "How can I help?" We are the givers of FREE STUFF. Let it roll.