Tis the Season

This time of year I am in Thanksgiving/Advent/Christmas mode.

It’s one week until Thanksgiving Day and while I am finishing my Thanksgiving shopping and decorating my Thanksgiving tree and wrapping Thanksgiving presents and addressing Thanksgiving cards (read facetiously), my head is full of thoughts about Advent and Christmastide.

The observance of the Advent season began somewhere near the end of the fourth century. It was a period of 40 days leading up to Christmas and was a time of fasting and prayer. Now it lasts about four weeks and is intended to be a time of reflection and preparation for Christians. This year, the first Sunday in Advent is November 27, making it a season of 29 days until Christmas Day.

For the past 10 years I have edited an Advent devotional booklet for my home church, First United Methodist in Beebe. This means that throughout the Thanksgiving week I am collecting, writing, editing, formatting, copying and stapling.

Members and friends of Beebe FUMC write short devotionals to be included in the book. These can be either poetry or prose and often are Christmas memories or insights about a particular scripture. The writings are then assigned to a certain day, one reading for each day in Advent.

Though this is a busy time for me, I enjoy it and look forward to reading my friends’ thoughts about this blessed time of year.

You will hear more about this as the season progresses.

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The Time Traveler’s Wife

I don’t really ‘do’ the para-normal genre, but I thought that on the weekend when we all did a bit of time travelling (and gained an hour) the review of this movie would be appropriate.

Since this film was released in 2009 I have heard many mixed reviews ranging from ‘a beautiful love story’ (a fellow writer), to ‘I can’t believe I wasted a date night on this,’ (a co-worker mom of three).  I just had to put it in my Netflix queue and spend a Sunday night watching it to see for myself.

The title of course tells you a lot. Henry, played by Eric Bana, is a Chicago librarian who has a gene that causes him to travel back or forward in time. He can’t control his exits and entrances, but seems to have a little aura before he takes off.  (He also must have a job that allows him to drop out of sight for unknown periods of time.  We might suggest a large electronics store where the employees do the same sort of disappearing act.)

One day in the library Henry meets Clare, played by Rachel McAdams (from The Notebook).  She knows him already because she met him when she was a child and he an old man. But he doesn’t remember meeting her because he hasn’t done it yet.  Are you keeping up with this?

She knows about his life and loves him anyway. They marry and she tries to adjust to his unusual comings and goings.  His travels are rather dangerous because, having no control, he may land in a public place totally nude.  Clothes don’t travel through time — a false premise we have been led to believe from watching the Back to the Future series.

Okay, it’s not a bad movie if you are good at suspending disbelief.  This screenplay was taken from the 2004 best seller written by Audrey Niffenegger.   She is a visual artist and writer who lives in Chicago. Find out more about her work at audreyniffenegger.com.

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An Uncommon Crusade by Caron Guillo

Author Caron Guillo says An Uncommon Crusade is a work of fiction based on a mix of fact and legend.

The setting for this story is the Children’s Crusade of 1212, when thousands of children were released by their parents to follow 12-year-old Nicholas of Cologne on a crusade to Jerusalem. The group is largely dependent on the generosity of the townspeople as they travel through small hamlets and larger cities preparing to cross the Alps.

Illness, accidents and other misfortunes plague the group as it makes its arduous trek through the mountains. When they reach Genoa, the crusade fails and the story continues  to follow the three main characters.  Hugo, Simon and Elizabeth, teens who each have their own reasons for following Nicholas: searching for faith, forgiveness, or adventure.

As with most quests, there is much heartache along the way as the friends are separated by death, slavery and tragic circumstances. Though this is not marketed as a historical novel (the genre is Christian fiction) the extensive research that went into the writing of this novel makes it ring true to this particular period of history.

Caron Guillo is a former world history teacher from Texas, who became interested in the Children’s Crusades and chose this setting for her book.  She has crafted a story that is gripping and emotional.

I met Caron at an event introducing this book, so I have one of the early editions. Since that day, An Uncommon Crusade has won the 2011 Next Generation Indie Award for Religious Fiction and received a new cover design. This novel is available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.  Read more about Caron Guillo at her website www.caronguillo.com

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Do not go gentle …

This week it was my turn to teach the Sunday School class I attend.  We have been studying the wisdom literature this quarter and the reading for the day was Ecclesiastes 12:1-7.  Not exactly uplifting scripture for someone facing another birthday in a few days.

This section begins with the familiar, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth…”  Most of us have heard that read. Usually the speaker pauses at that point to admonish teenagers to get serious about their spiritual lives.

Speakers stop there because the rest of the passage is a downer. “…before the days of trouble come … when you say ‘I have no pleasure in them.’  … (when) strong men are bent … when one is afraid of heights and terrors in the road … the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails…”  And on and on.  The writer of Ecclesiastes (Solomon maybe) did not view old age as the golden  years.

This literature (Adult Bible Studies, Cokesbury, The United Methodist Publishing House) is written for all adult classes past college and one of the questions suggested for discussion was, “How do you view old age?” I had to answer for myself and the other women in the room, “Up close.”

My advice to myself  — and to anyone else who has reached their biblical allotment of three score and ten — is to take the counsel the curmudgeonly writer of Ecclesiastes gives to the young and use it for  yourself.

To paraphrase from chapter 11:9-10, “Rejoice, senior, that you have attained the age of wisdom, and let your heart cheer you in these days of reflection. Follow the inclination of your heart, pursue those ambitions put on the back burner. Banish anxiety from your minds; don’t worry about being old. Youth is rather over-rated anyway.”

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Do We Really Need TMI?

From “In the News” column, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, September 30, 2011:

“Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president who had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pelvic region, followed by chemotherapy, said his latest medical checks have been stellar but declined to say what kind of cancer he was diagnosed with, telling reporters: ‘What do you want me to tell you? —I’m not going to gratify you. A malignant tumor. What more do you all want? — They extracted it.'”

I can’t remember agreeing with Mr. Chavez before but when I read this I said, “You go, Hugo!” The international media has become just too nosy. Here in the United States, the Freedom of Information Act is used, not so much as what it was intended for as to delve into things that are just none of our business.

Are we better off knowing all the gruesome details? Do we need to hear Michael Jackson’s slurred speech during his last hours? Do we really still wonder if Elvis and James Dean are dead?  Does anyone realize how old they would be if they were alive?

Christians are admonished to choose carefully what we spend our time and energy on.  “Finally, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. Philippians 4:8 NIV (Italics mine).

I find listening to news reports a stumbling block to thinking positive thoughts.

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