So...Christmas anyone???

Yep, been there did that.
Its usually amusing and always kinda sad to me to see the way that different people act around Christmas. For instance, I'm watching a movie right now about a group of terrorists who have taken a building hostage and are working to open the vault. The tech guy (who's name is ironically Theo) is talking to the boss guy, the tech guy says "This last one is gonna take a miracle." To which the boss replies "Its Christmas Theo! It's the time of miracles, so be of good cheer!!!" There's the people who give at Christmas because you're supposed to, the people who give because other's are giving or other's are watching. There's the people who give new unwrapped toys to Toys for Tots and the ones who write the annual charity check (just in time for taxes). There's the people who work the soup kitchen on Christmas afternoon and the ones who attend the special Christmas service whether its Christmas or not because "that's what good Christians do."
Believe it or not, I do know all that "Jesus is the reason for the season stuff." I also know that perfectly pagan institutions do marvelous amazing things for people around Christmas time. And yet...
I've seen families with nothing merry and content because they're together; and families with everything whine and moan because they (usually some 14 year old) didn't get the newest iphone or the car. I've also seen perfectly well meaning families somewhere in the middle who understand the 'reason for the season' and wish only to be together and celebrate with each other but who get caught up in the rest of it, the peripherals, the extras. The presents and the meals and the driving and the people and the smiles and hugs and the food and the presents and who gets what from whom and and and and and...
It makes me sad that they (the infamous 'they') have taken our holiday and made it materialistic and horrid and now they won't even let us say 'Merry Christmas'. I mean really.
Of course I can't find it now but there was an email that went around a while ago about "If they want my Christmas" and it talked about how if we can't say Merry Christmas anymore than I want things like all the stores open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the post office open extra extra. I (OF COURSE) can't find it, but it was pretty stinkin amazing and if any of you have it I would LOVE to get it again.

My God Is Disconcerting

My God is disconcerting:
He is close to me, and He is transcendent,
He is gentle, and He is violent,
He is eternal, and He is ever born anew.
He has created us for happiness and nourishes us on pain.
He blesses what many people fear,
He loves what so many despise.
He asks for what seems impossible.
He came to bring war, and He is peaceful.
He is God, and he is man,
He is One, and He is three.
He curses the unjust, yet tolerates injustice,
He is the Almighty Father, yet He allows pain and sorrow.
He demands that we conquer the world, that we live in it,
that we love everything human, yet He wants us to think about the next world.
He asks all of us to be saints,
yet He chose as the head of His Church the apostle who denied Him.
He prefers the weak and the poor, yet it is they who go on suffering the most.
He engraves His law on the conscience of every man, yet He founded a church whose magisterium may create more than a few conflicts with this interior voice of conscience.
He is always present, yet no one sees His face.
Whoever loves his neighbor loves Him, yet He is still one God.
He is our whole life, yet He has no name. The closer you get to Him, the more you love Him and the less you understand Him.
He is freedom, yet He came to obey. He is love, yet hell exists.
He exalted matrimony to such a point that He made it a sacrament and the image of His union with His church, yet He and His mother were virgins.
He is at the heart of human history, and not even a hair falls from our heads without His permission, yet millions of men go on feeling that the world is empty of Him and that He really is superfluous.
He is at once both joy and sorrow.
He is holy, but was a friend of sinners.
He was a virgin, yet He allowed Himself to be touched and loved by prostitutes.
He cried out against the rich, yet He used to dine with them.
My disconcerting God is difficult for the man who wants to take His full measure, for those who wish to impose their logic on Him.
But my God goes beyond all logic and all means of measurement.
My God is marvelous and ineffable, unique and disconcerting.
He is being and movement.
He is what was, what is and what will be.

He is everything, yet nothing is Him.
My disconcerting God is He in whom one believes without seeing, whom one loves without touching, in whom one hopes without understanding, and whom one possesses without deserving.