When Enough Is Perfect

Two days and I'm not done.

I've expected this, coming home so close to Christmas.  As much as got done last August, and as much as I've simplified things, by now it just seems like there's not enough time for everything on my list.

I confess I woke up a little grumpy.

This year it's been harder than normal to push back the frenzy and give priority to the soul.  When I get Christmas 'right' all that frenzy stuff is done by December 1st and I have 25 days to observe my own kind of Advent, in reflection and prayer and receiving and giving love and grace.  It's what has marked the Christmas season for me for these past number of empty-nesting years, and I've grown to deeply, eagerly anticipate it.

But my meditations this year have been quite different.  The whole season has been quite different.  It started for me half a world away.  I decorated two trees, the first one while smacking at mosquitoes, the second one while stoking the fire.  I've sung carols in two languages.  I've had noodles for Christmas dinner; the turkey is yet to come.  I roasted sticky rice in bamboo, not chestnuts, on an open fire.  I've stuffed 26 plus 8 stockings.  Rudolph has delighted my little girl May sitting under the dining shelter, and my big boy Harvest while driving in the van.

Two major Christmas productions have energized the season for me.  One took place in a Buddhist village with 400 people eating noodles and singing carols and receiving gifts of love from their Christian friends who want to make sure they know about Jesus.  The other, about to happen, will likely see the same amount of people, engaging in an 8 year run of one of Highview's best offerings of the arts, and for the same reason.  Because we want to make sure people know about Jesus.

Simply, Jesus.

To defy my grumpy spirit, I deliberately choose Steve Bell's Descent to slide into the CD player as I drive to the pool this morning.  It's one of those 'oh yeah' kind of songs that has a way of clearing out the self-noise so I can see His face again.  I've mentioned this song before, probably, but it bears repeating, which I did in the van in the dark with an almost-full, very large moon hanging low and beautiful in the still-night sky, as if pulling the van along, as if pulling my soul along.

And just like that, it was all good.

It's so good that I got to spend part of Christmas with a family I normally miss (and to be honest still am missing) painfully this time of year.  So good that I got to come home to a family that has loved me anyways through a lot of anyways kinds of times.  So good that I am here to worship together with a beloved community who somehow lets me serve alongside them in the wild adventure that Christmas launched in the first place.

Thai has a two word phrase "paw di".  It can mean 'perfect', as in 'exactly the way it should be'.  It can also mean, quite ironically to my perfectionist mind, 'enough', as in 'I don't need anything more.'

And I think this will be a 'paw di' kind of Christmas.  And in two days we will mark again the total abandonment of divinity for the humility of humanity.  The Christ Child Who was and is perfect.

Who was and is so very enough.



**"Descent" link takes you to a reading of the original poem by Malcolm Guite.  Can't find a way to actually post the song, sorry
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