It hasn’t hit me yet. The Christmas spirit that is.

In the past few years I’ve just been a slow starter, a man going through the motions of preparing and doing this and that until one day it hits me. Until then it’s just business, a kind of detached working through task upon task while the clock ticks away.

Now it’s hard to say what will be the trigger this year. Sometimes its a song. Other times its something I see. Once in a while I will be just sitting there by myself and it arrives. Who knows? But one thing is certain. Right now there is nothing, like someone from Mars seeing everything for the first time and not having a clue as to what’s happening and no particular curiousity about it at all.

The truth is right now I mostly want everything to get done and over with and the sooner the better. My day will be December 26th, the Feast of the Most Tranquil Sleep, when all that lies between me and my happiness is a pillow. That all being said it should be noted that I’m not some Scrooge with a primordial loathing of this time. I’m really a guy for whom this time is mostly about work and a kind of exhaustion based game of chicken with December 25th. The magic and holiness and grace of this time has not left but finds, over the years, more clever places to hide with a correspondingly harder task of seeking. Right now not even Nat King Cole’s Christmas CD, usually a fairly effective unearther of the holiday spirit, works.

It’ll come, though, maybe only when I’m driving back from LaCrosse on Christmas morning. Maybe sooner. I don’t know. Until then I’ll just work and wait.

Christmas is coming but it doesn’t feel at all like that time of year, at least how I remember it. It’s an angry time in the world, a time of power, of ambition, of people each seeking the most for themselves without regard for the other and no moral problem with the idea of violence as the means.

At times I feel the anger as well. I even participate in it. From the thoughts that run through my mind when I see crazy things and people on the TV to the words that sometimes slip out of my mouth when the traffic runs foul I swim in this crazed sea and find myself struggling just to stay afloat. There are moments when I would relish being dictator of the world for just one day with the power to set the world in my image and secure harsh justice by the power of my word.

Some of that is natural, the world seems crazy and sane people will think insane thoughts just to have some sense of order in their world, some sense of being secure and in control of the ride. People voted Hitler into power and there are still folks who have sentimental thoughts about Stalin. Although most of me is repulsed to the core by the thought of it I can see, in that dark angry part of me, why that would make sense to a generation feeling lost and out of control and willing to take the risk of totalitarian rule to make it all go away. I suppose it could happen here as well, why should we be immune to the seductions of such ideas?

And though I sometimes come close to the edge I do not want to give in to the will to power, the angry mind, the treating of the other as an object of my will, to hate, and the rampaging emotions of our times. I am aware of these days and part of me wants to run away and hide and another part wants to engage the game by the rules that seem to be presently in play but the end of both is futility.

There is another way, a way often drowned out by the voices of a sad and broken world but still the way things must be if we are not to extinguish ourselves. It is the way of the child of Bethlehem, the One who came into this world to bring light and peace and a taste of heaven here and its fullness in the time to come. Some feeble poor number of us have to hold out for it, as tainted as we are, and risk being called naive, idealistic, or insane. Some few lights need to shine like candles in a great dark wind and take the risk of being snuffed out as the cost of knowing what light is, even for a moment.

What a task for imperfect people, for sinners, to assume yet how much more is its undertaking required when the world seem so crazy and the order of things struggles like a wounded animal. But to know this is to understand Christmas, the time of nativity, in its most basic and primal truth and the hope of the angel’s song on that long ago night.

Here is the story of a judge’s order to cover a cross deemed “offensive” (Christians know that the cross has always been “offensive in its own way 1 Corinthians 1:23-24) with a video about the action below.

Jesus said “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33 RSV)

This is why I don’t believe I’ve watched a major network TV program, including news, start to finish in years.

The History Channel, of course, is another story. BTW Genghis Khan died on my birthday and knowing that makes me…what? I shudder to think.

My wife and I are contemplating travel to Canada this summer for the Archdiocesan Convention in Montreal and the topic of passports came up.

More than a decade ago I had family living in northern Minnesota minutes away from the border, so close, in fact that they often went to Winnipeg for shopping. In those days all you needed to do was hold up your bucket as you passed north and Canadian customs knew you were going to pick blueberries and waved you on through. You could wave “hi” on the way back as long as our customs didn’t think you were smuggling in Cuban cigars.

That seems like a long time ago. Probably was.

Of all the things I miss about these times those kinds of things, a more trusting gentle way, seem to cause the most melancholy. Now we’re screened in, screened through, screened out, and travel with documents and permits and the threat of search and detainment if we miss some detail. There will probably never again be a time when you can take a joy ride into Canada like I did when I was in college or be waved across any border with a berry bucket as your credentials.

I know its necessary. I know, too, that others (like the victims of 9-11) have been inconvenienced beyond my imagination and so I have little about which to complain. But the fact I can’t hardly cash a check anymore, have to pre-pay for gasoline when the sun goes down, and now may need a passport just to cross into Canada, kills me not in one big fireball but rather by hundreds of little needles each taking a drop of blood. One by one they are inconsequential, together they can be fatal.

I guess if people don’t have honesty in and of themselves they will make a law to enforce it. If people aren’t going to allow morality, honesty, and trust be part of thier lives there will be a regulation to that effect. I’ve not changed but at least now I’ll have the paperwork to prove it.

For the most part this is a gloomy time of year but I do like it when the leaves fall and I can see where the birds nests have been hidden.

What can I say?

A quick trip around the blogosphere is all it takes to get a taste of the level of complaint around the world.

There can be a value to that. There are things that need to be exposed and the democratization of the media represented by the blogosphere means that people who are actually expert in thier fields, and not just pretty faces, get exposure for thier thoughts in a way the larger media would never allow. But sometimes its just about complaints.

At times I fall in to that trap. Something rubs me the wrong way and I want to gripe and have the tools to do it. Even if no one in particular is paying attention I still have the emotional satisfaction. There needs, though, to be more from me and from anyone else who occasionally taps out a paragraph or two on the web. We need solutions.

Part of what I hope to do (we have such grandiose plans when we start blogs!) is to point to one solution. I remain convinced over the years that the transformation of family, culture, and world, begins with the continuing transformation of the person. I believe, as well, that Jesus Christ presents the model to which humanity should aspire and if we wish to truly evolve as a species we have that example to measure our progress.

At times I have told my parish I would be a Christian even if there was no heaven, no life to come, simply because the way of life is one that makes for human contentment. And I think sometimes we in the Church speak too much about the life to come and too little about how following Christ makes for human happiness, a balanced life, even a physically healthier life. How many people have literally killed themselves in the endless chase for whatever the latest thing the world says is important when the rest they seek, for thier soul, thier body, thier mind, could be found in the way of Christ?

It’s not about immunnity from the realities and problems of the world but perspective, a clear view even in our weaknesses of what really matters. A life with Jesus life and teachings at its core brings a kind of knowledge that allows all things to find thier true setting, thier optimal environment, thier real paradigm so the person who embraces them, embraces Him, becomes fully alive and as they grow in it all more and more human in the best sense of that word.

Therein lies, I believe, the single solution to the human question and I presume I will always struggle towards it.

A note of thanks to the person who was visitor number 700 to this blog.

It’s been a priviledge to write for you all.