Christmas 2014

Each year I try to publish a Christmas Missive for friends around the world.  This year the idea never really came.  I liked these ideas from NPR and decided to share them this year.

 The Magic of Christmas Goes Beyond Religion

For our next entry on this little blogging adventure I will re-post something I sent out before Thanksgiving last Fall.

On this Wednesday before our Thanksgiving Holiday, I am thankful for aches and pains which remind me how great it is to be mostly strong and healthy and give me compassion for those who truly suffer.

I am thankful to be able to pay taxes, for each time I do I am reminded that I have earnings and assets and the ability to pay.

I am thankful for high prices and bills to pay which help me know I actually can pay my own way in this world, unlike so many who cannot meet even their real and basic needs.

I am thankful for cold weather, especially when I stand around a warming fire with a great cup of coffee and know that I will be toasty warm and cozy tonight and every night, rather than cold and hungry.

I am grateful for the chaos and confusion of life and love and home and family, for because of these things I know what real peace is.

I am grateful for being overweight rather than hungry.

I'm grateful for sadness which helps me see the bright and moments as so much better.

I'm grateful for tears which make laughter seem sweeter and enable smiles to be even brighter.

I am thankful for losses which make memories more precious.

I am thankful for grief which reminds me how wonderful it is to love and be loved.

I'm grateful for education which humbles me and reminds me how little I really know.

I'm grateful for trips abroad which help me realize how really, really blessed we are in this country.

I am thrilled with work which leaves me tired and sore and helps me rest well and awake feeling refreshed.

I am thankful for all those who said "No" to me.  Because of them I am doing it myself.

I am thankful for all the difficult people in my life for they have shown me exactly who I do not want to be.

I am thankful for all the poor choices I have made because they have led me to where I am, and I cannot think of a better place to be.

Maybe most of all, I am thankful for grace, which looks beyond my faults and sees my possibilities, which frees me from myself, my mistakes, and my shame; which raises me up to help me see.

How does the Bible influence us today?

Recently I spent some time on the golf course with someone I deeply respect and love.  The golf course was rather quiet that morning, and as so often happens our conversation turned towards spiritual things.  On the sixth tee we stopped and chatted for awhile, not really resolving anything but promising to go deeper later.  The next morning these questions arrived in my email Inbox:

My first question is how do you think the Bible came to be.? What part do you think

 God played and how did he play that part?

How do you think we can best use the Bible today?

I spent a little time thinking and followed up with this reply:

      Let me give you a "short" answer to your questions.  The Bible "came to be" in several distinct parts.  What we know as the Old Testament was largely in place by the time of Jesus.  It was developed through long years, at least hundreds, of discussions among rabbis, and its development continues even today.  Generally speaking there are three parts, Torah (Law), what we know as Pentateuch or Genesis through Deuteronomy; Prophets (major and minor); and other writings (mostly history).  Mainstream Jews never understood even their own scripture the way today's fundamentalists (Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc.) do.  Early Jews saw their own scriptures as guidelines for reasonable men to discuss and implement, not strictly as lists of what to and not to do.

      My understanding of how the New Testament came to be is well described in "Zealot" by Azlan.  The early church, over its first 400+ years of development created the scriptures to meet its own needs.  So, for the first 400 or so years of Christianity there was no widely accepted Bible.  There were only widely circulated writings from various leaders in the early church -- Gospels, letters, other writings.  Early councils of the Catholic and Orthodox churches (Trent??  I can't remember)  sorted through the most widely circulated writings and determined which they thought were best suited for use in the liturgy of the early church.  They based their findings on many things including politics of the day, but stated that they looked for a connection to eyewitnesses to the events described, a general agreement with the accepted ideas about the church, and the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

      When the Roman Catholic church became a world power, the Bible ceased to play a major role in Christianity for 1200 years or so.  Only with the Protestant Reformation did the Bible again assume a strategic role in Christianity.  Even then it was not extremely well known or well circulated until a couple of things developed -- first, the ability to print it in a cost-effective way, and second, a public well educated enough to at least read it if not understand it.  When did those two things happen?  In the US my guess is late 19th century, sometime after the Civil War -- give or take 50 years.

      So, only in the last 150-200 years or so has the Bible played a major, perhaps even dominant, role in Christianity.  Even now, the Bible really plays the major role only in evangelical Christianity.  Evangelical Christians are still a small percentage of the worldwide church.  And fundamentalist-leaning evangelicals may be a minority of evangelicals.

      What happened before the last 150-200 years?  Most people couldn't read, so they relied on the educated clergy both Protestant and Catholic to tell them what to believe about God and how to live their lives in relation to God.  Even in the Great Awakenings of the US and Europe, the vast majority of people were illiterate and forced to rely on clergy.  In the last 150 or so years things have drastically changed.  People are more educated, but probably still not theologically trained well enough to begin to understand the Bible.  My advanced degrees are in Theology and I am well aware how deficient my  history, culture, and literature education is when it comes to being able to thoroughly understand the Bible.

      In answering "How the Bible came to be" I'm also answering "how we can best use the Bible in our lives today" and "what part God played in that." 

      Today I use the Bible as a way of understanding how some people from hundreds (thousands) of years ago understood God, and how their ideas about God grew and evolved.  It is a guide rather than a pronouncement.  I take it all very seriously, but relatively little of it literally.  How was God involved in its creation?  God was involved in the lives of those people who for generations told these stories orally, then later wrote them down, then later collected them, edited them, and eventually printed and distributed these collections of stories, sermons, chronologies, songs, prayers, and struggles.  How was God involved?  Though those responsible for the creation and popularization of the Bible may have been quite spiritual and mystical, chances are good they're more like me and you.  How was God involved in their lives?  Probably the same as he is involved in your life and mine -- helping us muddle through some very real struggles and loving us all the while, helping us hope for the best for ourselves by doing our best for others.

     Let me tell you about my friend Paul.  He works for Cokesbury, or whatever the Methodist Publishing house is called these days.  He is an editor.  He spent five years working on a contemporary English version of the Bible that is extremely well done.  How do I know Paul?  Well, he makes bamboo fly rods as a hobby, plays golf, and lives a normal life.  We have fished together and told each other horror stories about our churches.  He's probably not all that different from one of those early council members who first determined which writings of the OT and today's new testament are canonical.

A friend came across this old Payne 102 in really bad shape.  Some folks offered him ridiculously low prices for it. I offered a fair price and he readily accepted.  There was only a single tip, with no bag or tube.  Here are a few before and after pictures showing what can be done with a rod nearly destroyed.






The original stripper guide was tied at the end of the cotton twine pictured above.






After stripping away all the old varnish these black spots were quite prominent.  With a little care and some serious time, I made some improvements.  Each one of those spots was bleached with oxalic acid on a Q-tip.  If I remember correctly, most of them were bleached 11-13 times.

See below for the way the rod looks today, including the extra tip I made for it.
 


The second tip was made a little lighter, and signed "H. Boyd" so that when I am no longer around there will be no doubt this tip is a replacement.






The original Spanish Cedar reel seat filler was salvaged by gently stripping the old finish with alcohol.  Some stains were then bleached away.  Seven coats of varnish were hand rubbed in, even under the uplocking hood of the seat.

The brown thread is original Belding Corticelli #5115, finished with shellac to help it keep its color.  The yellow thread is called "Parakeet" if I remember correctly.  Five light coats of shellac were applied, then the wraps were coated three times with McCloskey's Man O War spar varnish.  The entire rod then received three good coats of the Man O War.





The purple highlights at the winding check and ferrules are more brilliant than they appear in these photos.

Christmas Missive 2012

Writing the missive almost feels like a burden this year. I wonder if I have anything worth saying in light of all that's going on and my disgust at how some are reacting. I remember one of my seminary professors telling the story of a courageous preacher who stood in the pulpit one Sunday and announced "God has nothing to say to you today." But I'm not so courageous, nor so convinced I know what God is, or is not, saying. Sharing light-hearted Christmas cheer only a few days after the horrors at Newtown Connecticut would feel selfish, as though denying the horror of what happened and the many inane responses in light of such tragic evil. Our hearts ache with those parents and families who are suffering so deeply and so senselessly right now. In the story of Christmas, God invaded the world in the person of a little child. God has not left us to ourselves. That God seeks to influence humanity is the heart of the Christmas story. It is the story of light coming into darkness, God showing us the way, driving the darkness away. The Christmas story reminds us that evil will not prevail, but be overcome by the good. With the hymn writer, I want to cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus. Come." We have sought to prepare our hearts for your coming throughout this Advent season. We eagerly await your arrival in our hearts and in our world. Come.

While considering the 2011 Christmas missive for the past few weeks, three little words have been tumbling through my mind. "Do something different... something different... do something different." Two phrases have been tumbling around along with those words: Attributed to Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Attributed to Zig Ziglar: "If you do what you have always done you will get what you have always gotten." Neither attribution is really clear.

I'd like my one chance to impact some of you this year to be radically different. Rather than console you with words of warmth and peace, I'd like to issue a challenge to you and yours this year. That challenge, stated simply, is "Make things different."

What does that mean?

Be cheerful rather than just talking about good cheer.

Be peacemakers instead of offering a glancing acquiescence towards the prince of peace.

Actually be good when you hear the words "goodwill towards men."

Warm someone who is cold rather than roasting chestnuts over an open fire.

Feed someone who is hungry in addition to feasting with your family.

Forgive someone who doesn't deserve it.

Be honest even when it costs you personally.

Swallow your pride and make yourself vulnerable. Let someone else help you.

Love someone with all your heart who can never return your love.

Be different. Do something different. Make things different around you. Christians believe that God did something radically different in the coming of the Christ. With the babe of Bethlehem God declared that he would no longer relate to humanity through laws and prophets, priests and sacrifices, but would relate to them as one person to another, that His reign is here and now, and that no matter what we do to Him, He is still going to love us. That's different. That's Christmas.

Keeping Christmas

Keeping Christmas
Henry Van Dyke

It is a good thing to observe Christmas day. The mere marking of times and seasons, when men agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom. It helps one to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life. It reminds a man to set his own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity. . .

"But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.

"Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that your fellow men are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to know that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness -- are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

"Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open -- are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

"Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world -- stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death -- and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas.

"And if you keep it for a day, why not always? But you can never keep it alone."