And a sword will pierce your own soul

Originally posted Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 1:40am

I must say, last semester was quite stressful and discouraging in several ways. I had many doubts about my future, and I wasn't sure if I was on right path to do what I really wanted to do in life. Consequently I had a difficult time choosing classes for next semester, particularly after all the classes filled up. Thankfully, it's Christmas break, and I have the opportunity to do a bit of soul-searching. I need to reconnect with my core values and key beliefs, my global vision for the new economy, and my corporate philosophy. I need to figure out what I really want to do. Perhaps I will achieve clarity and discover that I really want only three things in life: to live with Diego, continue painting, and belong to the Communist Party. Now, dear reader, you may be wondering, "Aren't you confusing yourself with the twentieth-century Mexican artist Frida Kahlo?" And my immediate reaction is no, I am not, because I don't have a unibrow, but you know what, dear reader? Maybe I am. But is that so wrong? And really, isn't that the point of being in college anyway? To find yourself, discover who you really are? Or maybe the point is to get a degree or something stupid like that. I'm not sure.

At the end of finals week I was delayed overnight in the Chicago airport because of the weather. The best part about that experience is that I got to see an ad featuring my favorite swimmer, Michael Phelps, talking about how Chicago should host the 2016 Olympics, let's see, about 16,000 times. On the plus side, I did get to see an awesome Tuvan throat-singing band called Alash Ensemble in concert the next day.

Last week I watched a Mongolian docudrama called "The Story of the Weeping Camel." Now, it was not actually a Christmas movie, but I did get to witness the birth of a camel, and not some fake-o animatronic camel either; this was for realsies. And isn't that what Christmas is all about, anyway? Stuff being born?
In the film the mother camel, Ingen Temee, refuses to nurse the baby camel, Botok. Without milk, Botok will die, but the Mongolian people appear to have this beautiful system where whenever there's a problem with an animal, they sing and play music to it to straighten it out. I have no idea how or why that would be effective, but apparently it is. Maybe the music actually doesn't do anything, but they just trick the animal into thinking it does.

The Christmas season goes on at my house. We still have our tree and our decorations up, and we haven't exchanged presents yet. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about Christmas. For one thing, it's sort of a made-up holiday. Of course, almost all holidays are. President's Day, for example, is mostly about sales at car dealerships. Or take New Year's. Let's have a holiday where we'll all get together and party it up for no other reason than that December is turning into January. Or how about this: we can do the same exact thing EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT and call it Next Week's Eve.
It turns out a lot of people already celebrate that holiday. Some of them even start celebrating on Thursday.

Now, don't get me wrong, the birth of Christ is an incredibly important event, and that is what Christmas is supposed to be about. In fact, one of the reasons I feel ambivalent about Christmas is that it's so secularized. I read somewhere that 96% of Americans celebrate Christmas, and if reports that some Americans cannot locate Canada on a map are true, then there are probably a few Americans who have never heard of Christmas, so there is a very small number of people who willingly choose not to celebrate it. The other reason is that Christmas has become a cultural obsession, and it's completely out of control. It influences the food we eat, the stories we tell, the music we listen to, the decorations we put up, and the sweaters we wear. It makes us be nice to other people for no particular reason, just because it's Christmas, but what I want to is this: when does that moment come when everyone subconsciously thinks to themselves, "If it were still Christmas I would cut you a break, but it's not Christmas anymore, so screw you"? In reality, the Christmas celebration has gotten to be over a month long, and I just don't think there's any rational reason to spend one twelfth of our existence meditating on the birth of Christ, much less eating fruitcake and talking about reindeer and Santa Claus.
Listen, I know the birth of Christ is SUPER important, and it should be amazing to us that God became a man, that God entered into His own creation in order to redeem that creation. But frankly, most churches never even use the word "incarnation," and I think their discussion of Christmas ends up being trite a lot of times. There are so many other important theological issues and events in Christ's life we could think about. For example, eight days after the birth of Christ, the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the circumcision of Christ.

Now, I was making a few Christmas cards the other day, and I ran out of envelopes. I don't know where I would have found replacements of the right size for the different cards I had, but fortunately I just happened to have an infinite roll of brown paper lying around, so problem solved. Really the only problem with wrapping your Christmas cards with an infinite roll of brown paper is that it takes forever.

Q: Tim, if I receive something in the mail from you, how will I know if it came in a regular white envelope or if it was wrapped in brown paper?
A: You'll just know.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Yes.

Up to this point I have scarcely made any jokes about substance abuse, which I really think are something that my readership has come to expect. And with that being said, I would just like to rectify that situation by wondering aloud, as it were, about what the people of Illinois were collectively smoking when they elected Rod Blagojevich as governor. Honestly, I don't know anything about his politics, but I've heard him address the media concerning all of these corruption charges and how he won't resign from his post even though everyone hates him, and the one thought that has hit me is that this guy really needs attention. Maybe that's what this whole mess is all about. Maybe all of the profanity-laced discussions caught on tape in the governor's office were really just a cry for help.

Luke 2:21
On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived.

Luke 2:34-35
34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."