Birth of Christ Eve

Yep,
It's Christmas Eve.

This morning,
Sam and I remembered that the Puppy Chow we made huge quantities of is really still cereal at heart. Crispix (TM)(R) to be exact, which is an especially wonderful cereal. Cereal is a breakfast food.
By this reasoning, we discovered the equivalent to Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs.

We observed this preparation for Christmas by picking 3 buckets of field corn after driving the (affectionately-termed) tan truck up the hill out back and hacking down an unsuspecting bristly evergreen. It's a smallish, wield-able tree, as is one of the branches that came with it. My brothers and I took some time to claim territory 'for Christmas' by stabbing the stump into the ground and re-enacting that flag scene from Iwo Jima, effectively accomplishing blasphemy and anti-Patriotism/Political Correctness, all in one go.

Mom's putting lights on it right now. The lights are one of my favorite parts. I would've been good with hanging a bundle of christmas lights in that corner of the living room. If fireflies came in different colors...
You genetic engineers out there. You can put firefly genes into tobacco and bacteria to make it glow? Put some Christmas light genes back into the fireflies.

And Mr. Ehren, wherever you are, I guess in the Christmas spirit, I will forgive you for throwing away my carefully cultured dish of glowing bacteria from Biotech class.
Perhaps it's for the best.
I probably would have kept it until it evolved.


I ran into a friend from high school today while grocery shopping. I verbally 'yoinked' a bag of apples out of the back of a stocker's cart since he was blocking me from reaching the apples that he'd already stocked. He turned to the girl stocking with him, amused, and said 'She used my line!' As I walked away, the girl's face went from general amusement to something confusing. 'Tracy?' she said.

Some baiting degree of familiarity drew me to actually stop and walk back. Shoot. I'm terrible with names. We learned about this in psychology class actually. There's two aspects of recognizing a face. One results in the feeling of familiarity. The other is being able to identify details. If any either of those is lacking, it makes things confusingly difficult. I am generally better with the first than the second. I have been known to be completely confused after very good friends of mine do something like shave their beard. So basically, my chances of recognizing her were as close to zero as you can get.

But I did it. I knew her hair was different. Everybody's hair is different when you haven't seen them for at least three years. My theory is that I recognize people based on the space between their eyes and eyebrows. I stalled for time by moving forward, refusing to look at the name tag on her shirt. For a second, I was back in the hallway, on the ramp outside my high school's theater. Standing on the hand railing, leaning over the top of the ramp, I was talking to...
-name tag check for confirmation- yes!
Brigid

I'd only talked with her a couple times during high school, but we were on good terms. She's the first person I've randomly run into since coming home for break. We started comparing what we'd been up to and who we'd seen around
... and somehow made our way into topics of relationships and fighting to regain the ability to trust other human beings - we were a little island of strength and encouragement in the middle of a grocery store - when my Dad tapped me on the shoulder and told me to go get Eric.

"I, .. uh, found the apples." I said.

I tried to find her later to hand off my email address, since it occurred to me that she probably didn't have my school email and might not be trackable be on facebook. But she'd finished stocking peppers and disappeared. So I left a note with the guy that I'd yoinked the apples from. Hopefully it will make it to her.

I don't know why we'd contact each other, or what we'd email about.
But I am realizing more that at this point in my life, I am separating from the people I grew up with and we are all going off in different directions. I feel responsible to take care of what connections I do have. Especially since I think human connections are some of the most important and valuable things in this world.

People and God.
When either of these are lost or separated,
...
The destruction is incredible.






One day before, and it's finally starting to feel like Christmas
Just in time, I suppose, though really, never too late.

It means many things:
It's pretty lights, family, connection, culturally-induced enthusiasm, an island of encouragement, strength amid weakness, brokenness trying desperately to hope,
a world not forgotten. Oh yeah. love.
And God is good.


And my brother has just programmed his messenger program to greet him with "Welcome, Almighty" when he signs on. No,.. he's changing it to 'You are the model of perfection."

I think I will find a candle and go sing with God somewhere.
Since our church is no more and I suspect we will not attend a candlelight service tonight.

Thank God for friends and family
Thank God for Jesus
God with us
Immanuel