I have a passion for Christmas. Not the decorations (although I do cherish every single last scrap of decor I have made, been given, or painstakingly saved to purchase myself over the years) but the whole spirit behind the thing that is Christmas. There are many who say that Christians should look rather to Easter to love and have as the highest of the Evangelical high holidays but the truth for me is that there is no Easter without Christmas, and that baby who was born fully knowing the "Easter Story." So I decorate on November 15th (yep, it's a "thing" around these parts) and I have multiple ways to help my family prepare for the BIG DAY. Possibly my favorite part of all the trappings is the library.
I've been collecting Christmas-ish books for a number of years and every year, they get wrapped so that one by one, my children can unwrap a book and have it read. I have a copy of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It was given to Em by dear friends for her first Christmas. I secretly place this one early on so the kids can listen over and over to it because I treasure the story.
Scroooge. Ebenezer Scrooge.
There's no story without him and his horrible taste in life choices. He's this rather awful, slightly vile and pitiable character not a stitch of him endearing. There's no part where I want to pick him up and carry him around in my back pocket the way I do my grandmother or my kids' old teacher or Atticus Finch. Maybe it's because the warning he is constantly repeating is to carpe diem and unfetter ourselves from the chains we make in this life. A bit morbid and depressing sometimes to think every drive through Starbucks, every slice of chocolate cake, every pair of shoes, every moment of anger is forging something within my soul. A chain of accountability of my time, my resources, my health and my personal attachment to stuff. Way too heavy for every day.
Funny how one thought can lead immediately to another. Ebenezer Scrooge and his story is overlaid by my perspective of Ebenezer Stones inextricably. I cannot think of one without the other. You can go to the Old Testament/Torah and look up the context, but basically Samuel marked a place between Point A and Point B when God came to his aide in a very real, very profound way. He wanted to mark the spot, have a sacred remembrance and celebration of exactly what God did for him at a specific moment. Like the slight indentation in the grass on the exact spot I married. A symbol in itself, but also an exact locator of that moment, that physical space and time when something truly divine happened. Something big. Something real. Something tangible and worth celebrating year after year, generation to generation.
I have many Ebenezer Stones, and a good many have been laid in the last two years marking our exodus from Point A, that place I called home, the land of milk and honey that fed my soul and my spirit in a way I only just now starting to have words for, to Point B. I'll tell you when we get to Point B, because I'm not there yet. But marking that path is achingly important to me, remembering things that have been lost but also things that have been gained. Either way, the journey is sacred. Scrooge's warning that "no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused" rings loudly in each tombstone of death. Things lost- friends, favorite haunts, school, holidays, our dog. Ebenezer Scrooge, doomed and fated by choice, and Ebenezer, joyful celebration, aide in time of trouble. They are two separate. They are one. They are my reminder that making a sacred space, whether in a desert or a homeland, is important work.
So often I find my soul groans to be... Be more. Be less. Be present. Be a part of. Be separated from. Be in community and be solitary. Ebenezer and Ebenezer. I'm beginning to think that it's not one or the other, sacred or crotchety old miser. It's not coexistence and it's not "either or." I used to believe the old adage that says you can't have joy without sorrow. These days I'm leaning more towards the idea that it's the tension between the two, the effort of wrestling down the sorrow and the effort of soaring to high heights. Because the effort is something that you do, something not to be grasped but something to act within, act upon, sit and wallowed in.
As I type, my children are playing 'Native American' and they are now covered head to toe in bits of branches, dirt, sand and filth. They are sublime. Not because I love cleaning up their messes, Lord knows that's not the truth. And not because I love cleaning them up after they've already been bathed (my poor water bill!). They are sublime because in the process, the effort of getting dirty, they became slightly better friends, they learned from each other, they did the work that creates siblings. A sublimely holy and sacred act.
Somehow, this new blog has become an Ebenezer Stone, something worth celebrating, something good and lovely. I've already had (and am sure to have more) Ebenezer Scrooge things here. Posts that are sad and regretful, of "opportunity misused." But please be assured of this: this space, this little corner of bloggerworld is my little slice of heavenly musings, things that make me remember it's Ebenezer AND Ebenezer, a sublimely holy and sacred act.
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