Dear Eighteen-Year-Old-Me

This was part of a suggested exercise in response to a piece called "Letter to My 18-Year-Old Self" by Brita James, published in baristanet.com guru Debbie Galant's Mid-Century Modern blog on medium.com

Dear 18-Year-Old Me:

Greetings from the Future! I realize that I (45-Year-Old You) am still not on speaking terms with 16-Year-Old-Me for not lifting weights instead of taking gym class whenever you had the chance. For the record, we’re still thudding three miles around the track everyday trying to get rid of that Burger King sandwich you just ate.

However, since New Jersey is in the midst of celebrating Pride, I’m feeling benevolent. I realize you don’t yet know what that is, sheltered little Catholic School graduate that you are. But someday you will not only come to terms with the way you feel about some of the guys you know, but there will be guys who feel the same way back, and you will no longer think you are some kind of alien species with crossed wires.

Speaking of which, not three months ago, two of those boys in your high school class, who weren’t always the nicest to you, manned up and apologized for the way that they acted, completely unbidden. I know it’s hard to believe now, but 45-Year-Old-You wasn’t even overwhelmed with surprise at this development. People change and grow, and — if you have any kind of conscience at all — it seems to be human nature to carry around those little hurts that you cause, like pebbles in your shoes. Redemption — when you find it — can feel be a relief, and 45-Year-Old-You was actually glad to be a part of that exchange.


We’re not supposed to give spoilers, but you’ve seemed kind of in the dumps lately, so I’ll throw you one. Breathe a word of it and I’ll deny everything, mind you, but listen: Right now, in a house not that far from your freshman dorm room with the roommates you’re afraid of, a ten-year-old boy is growing up fast. Years from now, when you’re both what you currently consider ancient (don’t think I didn’t hear that!), he will cross your path and catch your eye. In a church, no less. Yes, I know a church just told you to take a hike, but God won’t give up on you just because that nun did, and when it’s time, you’ll grudgingly come around.

A few years after that (I should warn you, they keep going by faster, like some crazy carnival ride) you and he will be the proud uncles of nine (count them, nine) beautiful and intelligent nieces and nephews, and each of your families will treat you like there’s nothing wrong with you being together. Because there isn’t.

So hang in there, 18-Year-Old Me. The best is yet to be.

Knowing what you do now, what would you tell your eighteen-year-old-self? Keep the party going by replying to Brita's original letter, and/or using the hashtag #Dear18YOMe.

More Than a Handsome Face: Model/Singer Kerry Degman Draws Eyes to Military Suicide Prevention

It is not every day that someone you once admired (or envied) on a purely aesthetic level fleshes out to be a real person who not only responds graciously to fans, but devotes a considerable amount of his time and energy helping others.

I’m speaking of Kerry Degman, who has since 2007 plied the wares of Abercrombie & Fitch, Braun shavers, and other products, but has more recently demonstrated formidable chops as a country singer, and put both good genes and musical talent to work to raise money and attention for the issue of military suicide.

A few years ago, I commented on something he posted on social media, not really expecting a response, but ended up having a fulfilling, if sporadic, exchange about spirituality and other matters that continues to this day. A recent interview reveals a young man who remains thoughtful and grounded despite being a household face, if not always name (yet).

Degman’s solo debut Red Light, available on iTunes and other outlets, features a cover of the John Denver classic "Take Me Home, Country Roads", but is mostly original material, including the title track, the nostalgic "Home-Grown Tomatoes" and the infectious (pun fully intended) “Stuck In Your Head” (video below):

The album also features a track called “Pray for a Soldier in Pain” which Degman wrote after learning some troubling statistics about suicide among both active duty military and veterans: The Department of Defense reported there were over 100 active duty and reservists who took their own lives in the first quarter of 2014 alone, and veterans kill themselves at a staggering rate of 22 per day.

Degman and Columbus Blue Jackets’ forward Cam Atkinson are the public face of a new (as of this past Friday) nonprofit organization, the Force Network Fund, which promotes public awareness of this issue and funnels donations to thirteen established charities who care for soldiers, veterans, first-response personnel, and their families.

How to Help

If you are in a position to help financially, please check out Kerry's page (http://joinstarling.com/kerry). There are give-aways and prizes for various contribution levels.

Beyond donations, everyone can help get the word out about FNF and the issue of military/veteran suicide. Degman has a call out to other artists to cover “Soldier in Pain” and repost with the hashtag #sing2serve. Atkinson is challenging other professional athletes, fans, and friends to take and post a patriotic “selfie” on Instagram, tag @camatkinson and use the hashtag #americam.

And of course if you or someone you encounter is experiencing suicidal thoughts, get help! A national hotline 800–273–8255 is one of many resources available.

Grace... Eventually?

“Grace is having a commitment to—or acceptance
of—being ineffective and foolish.”
- ANNE LAMOTT  
Ugh, I swore up and down that I was not going to write about this.

As I was winding down last night, I caught wind that a favorite author of mine had apparently used her Twitter account to express fatigue with the very public gender transition of an individual once known for athletic prowess but now in the common consciousness principally through association with a media accident I refer to, collectively, as “the K Hole”. You may gather from this moniker what you will any insight about my attitude towards same.

This was problematic for me, not because of her disdain for the media circus which has ensued, but because — by not respecting that individual’s choice to adopt a change of pronoun through the omission of one letter — my author suggested an uncharacteristic callousness toward the gender identity issue as a whole that shines a new, somewhat distressed lens on her writings about grace and compassion.

I don’t know what drove that; it may have been the fact that this individual has overshared TMI about plans to Keep It and assure us (did I seem worried?) that there would be no accompanying change in sexual orientation. Or maybe it was the plasticine Photo Spread, or possibly the unwavering support for people and institutions which do their best to keep others on that same road of transition, who do not share the same safety net of money and prestige, in places of poverty and violence. 

Or maybe my author was just plain tired.  Anybody who reads her stuff knows she makes no claim to be perfect. She has been candid about some pretty self-destructive choices along the way, and the ongoing struggle to surrender control, be present, and generally see past others’ warts (and her own) to the God-loved person inside who really is trying hir hardest. She wasn’t issued a manual on how to respond to a seemingly camera-hungry public figure who has suddenly stood our perceptions on their collective ear. 

Similarly, no such manual exists for undergoing profound identity change, post middle-age, while bearing media scrutiny and a lifetime’s assumptions about gender and sexuality on your back, many of them obtained in the oh-so-forward-leaning world of athletics.  

That said, having this experience does not magically make one above reproach. Narcissism is still narcissism, and publicly voting against one’s own interests (or those of the people who share your gender identity but don’t share your privilege) is still going to earn you criticism. On the flip, if you set yourself up as a coach for others to find kindness and mercy, and then say something completely tone-deaf, you can expect to be called out on it. Possibly by your own kid.

What I know… what we fought for… is that this individual has the right to explore these things, maybe mess up, shape-shift, and sort out how to be seen and known. We can wish it didn’t have to unfold in lurid detail in the tabloids, and we don’t have to attach any bravery or heroics that aren’t warranted (try this as a poor, inner-city person of color and get back to me!).  But how we respond to who one person becomes should be based on hir choices alone, and not reflect our understanding, or path to one, of what it means to have or change a gender identity.

The next Tweet in my feed, offering a completely unrelated story about Afghanistan, began with a quote:

“Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world”

THE REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

So that’s where we are: bitter and beautiful, trying to live with each other, getting it horribly wrong sometimes. Everyone we encounter has something to teach us; it’s harder with some than others to know what that is, but — in those cases — it seems to be something we need to know about ourselves.

Touring a Ghost Ship

I'm generally not someone who would encourage trespassing or other illegal behavior, but I could not resist watching the video footage an "urban explorer"  captured aboard the salvaged wreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, which is currently being stripped of its fittings in Genoa in preparation for scrapping.

An unknown individual, who identified himself on social media as "AdHoc" snuck aboard the ship at night sometime earlier this year and walked around filming and taking still photos of what he saw.

To someone who is somewhat familiar with passenger ships, it was eerie to see the spaces and shapes associated with a relaxed time at sea, now peeling and muddy and piled with garbage, having been "raised from the dead" last September in a pretty amazing feat of engineering that cost over $1 billion US (so far).

The Costa Concordia was cruising off the coast of Tuscany on the night of January 13th, 2012 when she struck a rock and began taking on water through a 230-foot gash in her hull.  In a rather grievous violation of maritime law, no abandon ship order was given for over an hour, by which time she had begun to heel over and drifted closer to shore. She eventually came to rest off the village of Giglio, which allowed some people to actually swim ashore.

Given how badly the evacuation was managed, it is somewhat amazing that of the 3,229 passengers and 1,023 crew members on board, only 32 died.  This was the largest passenger ship ever lost in peacetime, and her commander, Francesco Schettino, has been convicted of manslaughter based on his actions before and after the collision, which included having his girlfriend (neither a paying passenger nor a crew member) on board and in the wheelhouse at the time of the accident, and abandoning the ship himself before all the passengers were evacuated.  Australian journalist Phillip Knightley described the incident as the "most significant event in modern maritime history" because "every single safety procedure designed to make sea travel safe failed miserably."

The cruise line Costa Crociere S. p. A., is one of the brands owned by Carnival Corporation and the Concordia was built from the same plans as their Carnival Splendor.  Governing bodies and industry groups on both sides of the Atlantic reviewed and tightened safety procedures in the wake of the wreck, including that large vessels are expected to stay two miles from ecologically sensitive coastlines and that boat drills must be conducted before leaving port.

Running On Empty

This post was actually begun on the Feast of Christ the King, but needed to wait til now to be shared.
 
MY FRIEND MICHAEL SAYS THAT THE CHURCH WILL SUCK YOU DRY IF YOU LET IT. By that he means, if you don’t allow yourself say “no” sometimes, you will find yourself on every committee and guild, and have guilt pangs if you ever have to leave before the last dish is washed and the last chair is stacked, despite the insistence of the EMTs carrying your stretcher towards the ambulance. There is a truthism that if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. The church seems to have taken this very seriously, maybe because it works. For them. For a while. But then what?

I read an article recently called “The Rise of the Dones”. Basically, the Dones are the people above. They have volunteered at the soup kitchen and taught Sunday School and stuffed envelopes and sat through all three liturgical cycles five or twenty times and heard seemingly every possible take on the readings from the pulpit. They grow tired of feeling that no how matter how much they do, it is never enough. Up your pledge, stay on vestry one more year, miss your TV show or your kid's game for that meeting. So, they bolt.

A dear clergy friend from whom I sought counsel told me it was totally okay that my partner and I left our church because it wasn't working out with the new rector. As she put it, we were not being fed. Her assumption, and ours, was that we would look around, find someplace else, and feel fed again. And we tried. We went to about twelve places with no expectations, and landed on one where the rector was everything his counterpart was not. We did our best to adapt to the way things were done differently, and struggled to fit in, until he abruptly left six months later. We stuck it out for another six months or so, and finally drifted away. Well, my partner drifted; I walked out in the middle of a service and never went back. That was over  a year ago, and I have not gone to church regularly in all that time. It is no-one's fault; it's just how things are right now.

Separately from, but related to that, I have concluded all but one of the ministries in which I am involved.  If you read my previous post "Hurt People Hurt People" you know as much about that as I do.

Am I a "done"? I don't know, but -- as my friend Matthew says -- I can sure see it from where I live.

I don’t want be a Done. It’s not that I don’t miss it. Sometimes I do, but it’s hard for me to articulate whether I miss something I actually had, or am pining for a kind of community that I have yet to find, or create.

I am being fed, through recitation of the Daily Office (boy howdy, those lenten psalms are rough, but apropos) and the Church of the Internet.  You can attend morning prayer online with a group and find wisdom and beauty from all quarters in music and writing.  The prophetic Jennifer Thorson wrote an absolutely brilliant sermon for Christ the King:

“The Rich and Powerful of today are not listening to Scripture any more than the Kings and Queens of the past who claimed that their leadership was a Divine Right. Earthly rulers may push and shove to get their way, they may see themselves as God-like, but the God of our scripture is a Shepherd King with dirt under his nails instead of blood on his hands, and the earthly powers are mere sheep, just as the exiled Israelites of Ezekiel’s time were sheep, just as you and I and the poorest of our brothers and sisters are sheep.”

I do go to actual church sometimes. During a trip to North Carolina, I visited a parish I helped my friends find and join a few years ago. They had a guest preacher (Jeffrey Pugh, Ph.D.) , and his take on the Gospel parable of the unprepared bridesmaids was to use the lack of oil as a metaphor for contemporary fatigue, confusion and despair:

“Immersed in a world that seems bereft of hope or promise, we still wait for the Not Yet. We wait for deliverance from empire that grinds us all down by its incessant demand for more power. We exist in the middle of a world where any lie is told to gain control over others, and wealth is used by an oligarchy to oppress those who do not have the ability to fight back. We await in the darkness of billions of dollars spent on weapons of destruction, and of political propaganda to maintain control, and it keeps us all -- especially the rich and the powerful and those who benefit from this -- in a great darkness that leaves us feeling our way along a long dark tunnel of any light. We are exhausted, and our light has gone out.”

A few weeks later, two friends and I “did church” of a different sort, driving 2 1/2 hours to Lancaster, Pa., to hear author Anne Lamott speak. Her voice resonates with me the strongest, here in the tunnel, because she makes no pretense of being any better at it than I am. Completely forthright about her own fractured upbringing, struggles with addiction, and “teeny control issues” she told us that God fully expects us to be messy, and grouchy, and selfish sometimes. That was a relief to hear, because I don't even have her dissonance-inducing compulsion to be perfect. But listening to her tell of her friends and family members, followed by the stories some of the other audience members shared, I couldn’t help but feel like a little bit of a jackass. Yes, our church experience got screwed up, but nobody died, or even stole my sticker collection. And I am surrounded by loving and talented people who give tremendously of themselves.

So maybe I need to shut the hell up. I can be fed, if I take the time to look and listen. And more importantly, I can make sure that others are. Pugh and Lamott had similar answers, on the theme of Don’t Become Part of the Problem. She suggested treating yourself to TV and m&m's for a few days, but ultimately, find someone to talk to. Or sit with a kid and make angels out of coffee filters. Her congregation of 32 people operates on the thinnest and most frayed of shoestrings, but she describes it as a place of unspeakable joy, and I believe her. I pray that I will have that feeling about church again someday.

Pugh says, “Christ returns to every heart that makes room for forgiveness and grace. The second coming happens every single day we choose to make peace instead of war; every moment when we extend mercy to those in need. It is not the constant watching that is the heart of faith; it is the preparation for the long haul. I can manage being kind for fifteen minutes in a day... but a lifetime?”

I guess we can find out.

After the Fire, the Fire Still Burns

Phillips Brooks - Bishop & Preacher (1893)

Those in our area could not miss the headline earlier this week of a five-alarm fire that destroyed much of an apartment complex known as Avalon at Edgewater. If you've been around a while, you may remember that the same complex burned in 2000 as construction neared completion.

I'm not really wild about the trend toward wood frame construction for high-density housing like this.  With over 400 apartments in a city block, that's a lot of stoves, candles, extension cords, heaters, potentially careless smokers, etc., in a small area.  The building is still relatively new, but what happens when wiring and other material is 30, 40, 50 years old?  It is not as if it is cheap to live there, either; I saw mention of rents upwards of $3,000 a month.  We're getting two similar complexes in our town (one by the same developers) and I expressed concern to town officials that we may be exposed to similar risks.

On Thursday the Newark Star Ledger reported that a worker's blowtorch accidentally started the blaze, and that the crew called and spoke to their supervisor for 15 minutes before dialing 9-1-1, thus critically delaying firefighters' response.  This reminded me of another fire, which took place right across the river at Pier 88 in the Passenger Ship Terminal, seventy-three years ago this coming February 8th.

The SS Normandie, luxurious flagship of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, took shelter in New York when World War 2 began. Her crew remained on board until December 1941, when she was seized by the U.S. Navy and renamed the USS Lafayette, vessel AP-53.

Workers using blowtorches to remove iron handrails in the ship's cavernous first-class lounge accidentally ignited a stack of life preservers, which were full of a very flammable substance called Kapok.  They attempted to extinguish the fire, but the ship's sophisticated sprinkler system had been abandoned by the Navy and they quickly discovered that the fittings did not match American hoses.

The fire spread rapidly; the Normandie boasted numerous large public spaces (the First Class restaurant was longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles) which unfortunately acted  like a giant chimney. The FDNY used every means at its disposal to pour water on the ship, and she soon began a dangerous list away from the pier.  Her Russian-born designer Vladimir Yourkevitch arrived at the scene and attempted to provide expertise that would have possibly saved her, but he was ignored.  In the middle of the night, like a suffering whale that beaches itself, the beautiful ship fell on her side in the muck.

Burned-out wreck of the USS Lafayette (ex-Normandie) lies on her side at New York's Pier 88
PHOTO CREDIT: James Vaughan. Used under Creative Commons License. Some rights reserved.

She would remain there for a year, an embarrassing waste.  The Navy considered re-purposing her as an aircraft carrier, but the damage was found to be too extensive and they focused on other priorities.  She was scrapped at Port Newark after the war's end.  Luckily, much of her interior fittings had been removed and stored before the disaster, and can be seen in places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Our Lady of Lebanon (the Maronite Catholic Cathedral in Brooklyn), and the Chicago Hilton.

Like the Avalon fire, her loss was ruled an accident, and--also similarly--the response immediately after it began played heavily into the outcome.  The design of passenger ships has changed significantly since then; the SS United States, launched 12 years later, had almost no wood on board, and both she and the SS France employed large amounts of asbestos, which was also subsequently ruled to be hazardous.  Large spaces like those aboard Normandie now have to be subdivided by fire-suppressing bulkheads and doors.

But, on land, are similar precautions being taken?  Hopefully we will not have to wait 73 years for a lesson from the Avalon fire to be learned.

40 Symptoms of the 40s Gay Man

PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Ter Haar
Used via Creative Commons
Some rights reserved

So, a friend posted this list of forty sucky things that a 40-year-old woman experiences, and it got a chuckle.  I thought it would be funny to compare my own list, much of which overlaps.  It will be funnier if you read that list first, as they sort of line up.  Sort of.

1. I have no clue what's on MTV. Do we get MTV? I can’t find the remote.
2. Gay shelf life is a thing.  Bars and parties that seem fun in the constant promos they send... yay Netflix!
3. My entry in “movember” or any other facial-hair trend will be gray/white and thus put on ten years.  What works for Anderson Cooper makes me look like an aging owl during molting season.
4. Should we fool around or watch a mo… zzzz
5. The beer I drank on Super Bowl Sunday is still inside me somewhere.
6. Wake up with that “but it’s a good hurt” feeling, like you did a heavy workout the day before… but you didn’t.
7. Doctor’s appointment beginning to resemble a bad encounter with the TSA.
8. Not that I'd leave my job and family to become a rich guy's houseboy and live on his yacht, but it was nice when that was at least a remote possibility.
9. Going shirtless in public is seeming more and more like an aggressive act.
10. The "me" in my head gets hit on by the “me” in the mirror... and shot down
11. Mark Wahlberg still has that body. I, on the other hand...
12. If I strolled across a college campus, people would ask I was lost or possibly tell security about the homeless-looking old guy
13. The only place I get carded is the airport. Bonus: car insurance keeps dropping
14. The mall, once my place of employment and the social epicenter, is like a visit to another, hostile planet. Any clothing that appeals to me is “too young for you” and doesn’t come in my size. Have actually purchased clothes at Costco. Does it have a drawstring or elastic waist? Take four of them.
15. Random hairs. Wherever they feel like. Try and stop ‘em.
16. I still like new music and go see it live, but people assume I’m there to clean up afterwards.
17. Everything I wore in high school is probably somewhere in the house. If the hipsters want it, they can come find it.
18. Whole TV series have been created, cancelled and become “classics” and I still haven’t heard of them. Where’s the remote?
19. My employer will be paying my Medicare Part B someday and I actually understand what that means.
20. I would not know Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, or any of these people “you’re supposed to like” if I tripped on them. Whatever happened to Cher and Madonna?
21. Christmas, which used to start after Thanksgiving, now starts before Halloween. I think in our lifetimes, next Christmas will start before this Christmas.
22. All the Abercrombie & Fitch went to the church thrift shop a while back. “Tell your son thank you for us!” Um, yeah, sure will.
23. Have you seen my glasses?  $300 designer frames once every two years has morphed into a new $18 pair of readers from the drug store every few weeks because I keep losing or breaking them.
24. Now that everybody has unlimited talk time, all my phone conversations are conference calls for work.
25. All the concerts, clubs, and clothes I used to scrimp for are more within the budget, and yet I’m usually home on Saturday night and fine with that… mostly.
26. If I was to flirt with the cable guy, police would probably be called. I just want the remote.
27. If a good-looking, 21-year-old guy is friendly to me, he is trying to sell something.
28. Naked pictures? I’d rather have Stacy’s Naked Pita Chips… with hummus please!
29. I’m tempted to put tape over the front camera on my phone to avoid an accidental “selfie"
30. Sagging your pants is not a fashion or political statement, it means your gut is pushing them down! Forget your suspenders again, grandpa?
31. Touching my toes is easy… I’m already sitting down!
32. When we go on a date in a classy restaurant, the mood is broken when I use the flashlight on my phone to read the menu. Left my glasses in the car.
33. Impulsively buy vitamins, take them for three days, find the expired jar a year later.  Can't read the label anyway.
34. A dog used to be a social accessory, so you could meet guys while walking/running him in a park. That rarely happens when you push him out on the back deck in your sweatpants and slippers.
35. Every new exercise, eating, or other good behavior is going to happen “starting on Monday”.
36. Post-bar at the diner, with the attendant flirting and gossip, has morphed into brunch at the diner with everybody looking at their phones.
37. Instead of open bar, we look for BYOB and show up with Costco wine.
38. Birthday party went from all-night in the city to … could we just forget about it please?
39. I have nine pairs of $#@*(#@( glasses, where the #$@*#$@(*#@( are they?
40. In my head, I am “dude” or “bro”. To the world I am “sir”. Can’t “sir” be my dad for just a little longer, please?

Sleep in Heavenly Peace?

Lillian Thrasher - Missionary to Egypt (1961) 

  HEARD TELL, PERHAPS APOCRYPHAL, SOME YEARS AGO OF A SERMON given--if memory serves me--by our former bishop, the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong. His Grace began by drawing a Johari window-style diagram, with four unlabeled panes, on an easel pad and asked the congregants to rattle off things they knew about the Christmas story ("laid in a manger" "three wise men" "answering the census", etc.) which he proceeded to put in one of the boxes without comment.

 When he was satisfied, he labeled the boxes "Matthew" "Luke" "John" and "Hallmark". Guess which one had the most in it?

The sermon was intended to educate us about what we know, vs. what we think we know about the birth of Christ. As I have embarked as an adult on a more informed understanding of my faith, I have discovered that much of the "givens" with which I had grown up are not scriptural in origin, and even the ones that are still find themselves subject to nuances of interpretation. For example, nowhere in Scripture does it say there were three wise men, but yet we "know" this and we even "know" their names.

Shine on, Surfer Jesus

A lot of my early faith experiences were surrounded by imagery that --although we kidded around about it during my formative years in Roman Catholic youth groups and campus ministries--undoubtedly had an effect on how I "saw" the people and places in these stories.  For the most part they were depicted as photogenic Caucasians, generally Nordic-looking (Jesus) or Slavic (Mary), spotlessly clean and groomed, and always with a white dinner plate inexplicably fixed to the back of their heads.  As a child I wondered is it strapped on, or is it just hovering behind them, like the Good Witch Glinda's transporter bubble?

Even today when I search Youtube to hear some of the music that evokes that time for me, the videos (often lovingly if amateurishly produced by the faithful) show Jesus tall and chiseled, his grin perfect and his blond highlights catching the sun off the Galilee, looking for all the world like he might have just left his surfboard on the beach.

This does of course not fit with even the assumptions we can safely make in absence of facts.  Icelandair did not serve Tel Aviv in the time these stories described, and nothing we've been able to find suggests Jesus worked as an Abercrombie & Fitch greeter prior to his public ministry. The Holy Family and Jesus' subsequent followers were in--all likelihood--short (by today's standards), olive-skinned, hairy, and frequently wont of a bath.

This was all brought to mind recently by a wonderful article by Joe Kay about holiday manger scenes, where he asks why these characters are all portrayed as serene and picture-perfect (and, inexplicably, Norwegian) despite what little we know about the journey they took, the conditions in which they lived, the money they didn't have?  I won't try to paraphrase what Mr. Kay says, because frankly I can't improve upon it:

"If our manger scenes were realistic, Mary would be recovering from a painful labor full of sweat and blood, with a look on her face that’s anything but serene. And Joseph — wouldn’t he be a nervous wreck, too? His hand too shaky to hold a lantern?

And about that newborn. Shouldn’t he be red-faced and screaming? Eyes clenched closed and wisps of hair stuck to the top of a head that‘s still odd-shaped from all the squeezing?

Instead, we’ve sanitized and romanticized it. We’ve removed all the blood and sweat and tears and pain and goo. It’s no longer something real. We’ve left out all the messy parts. The oh-my-God-what-now parts. The I’m-screaming-as-loud-as-I-can-because-it-really-hurts parts. The oh-crap-I’ve-stepped-in-the-animal-droppings parts. The real parts."

Nativity scene at St. George's Church, Kobanya, Budapest, Hungary
PHOTO CREDIT: András Fülöp Used under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved

Since we have artistic control of how we "see" them, why do choose to make them look perfect and unflustered when we know this was not the case? Why--as we struggle to make this more than a season of spending money we don’t have to buy people, some of whom we don’t even like, gifts they don’t need; eating and drinking too much and then feeling guilty--do we give the heroes of this story supernatural powers they didn’t have (endless energy, patience, WetNaps...) and make them less like us? 

I think it is a shame that the canonical Gospels don't include the argument after Joseph refused to ask for directions and the donkey ended up circling Bethlehem for 45 minutes with his left signal on, or the talking-to Jesus got when the bus had to go all the way back to Jerusalem because he was still at the temple, wowing 'em with his mad parable skillz.  We set ourselves up for disappointment when we fall for the notion that everybody else's Christmas looks like the families in TV ads, with nobody arguing or making hard choices about how to afford it all.

As for me and my house, we’d prefer a savior who chuckles and nods knowingly when we vacuum around the piles of clutter, or "phone in" the office potluck by putting something from the deli in our own Corningware. That is the God who may wince a little when we are short-tempered or selfish, but has been there and gets it. This is a time of year when many of us are faced, more than any other time, with the urge to curl up in a ball, mid-gift wrap or bike-assembly, and cry a little. That is a God I could call on in my darkest hour and expect to be understood, and Kay seems to agree:

"We acknowledge our brokenness, and God responds with a kiss on our sweaty faces and goo-covered foreheads. Reminds us that even though we make mistakes and bad choices, we ourselves are never a mistake or a bad choice. Instead, we are always a chosen miracle. And when we feel totally broken, that’s when we’re the most beloved."

If your sugarplums are all color-coordinated and your family beach photo with the Santa hats came out perfectly on the first try, more power to you. Go ahead and carve your nativity figures out of cream cheese just like Martha taught you.  We, the Chaos Muppets, may need to tape a sheep's leg back on or bring in the Power Ranger understudy for one of the shepherds, but each will nonetheless be a familiar home to the Savior when he comes.

May God bless us, every one.