Month: December 2018

Trying to Make Rhyme and Reason Out of The Christmas Season

Trying to Make Rhyme and Reason Out of the Christmas Season

by Jane Tawel

December 23, 2018

 

We worship the Genie we call Santa Claus

Or  honor a building or practice some laws.

We call this religion and true Christmas season;

Or come up with competing fiestas or reasons.

We give gifts to loved ones and eat ’til we pop

And think we are doing our best if we shop.

We claim it is all about Jesus and yet

The fact He was Jewish we’d rather forget.

And all of the immigrants who’d like to be saved,

We keep locked in prisons while walls are being raised.

Our children are dying by their own hands or ours,

And we have the nerve to preach “wisemen” and stars?

Well, maybe that’s why kids prefer “holiday”

Instead of the old news of babes born in hay.

If this is the time we celebrate birth,

We’d best know that God came to save the whole earth.

And that means if we want to lay down a claim

That “Christ-Mass” is about the Name of all Names,

We must take down our idols and elves off the shelf.

We need to become like the Christ-child Himself.

If you are still worshiping power or greed,

Then humble yourself,

Be bruised like God’s Reed.

And if you have never experienced real love

Forget about Christmas and seek the true God.

For God will become anything your soul craves,

After all, He once chose to become a small babe.

Because our God loves us He came down to save,

And took for Himself our own death and the grave.

And that is what Christmas should be all about,

And why those who love Jesus should sing with a shout:

“Fear not, for a God does exist who is Love

And wants all of His children in His Kingdom Above.”

 

The phrase “Merry Christmas” seems often abused,

So I would prefer to give truly Good News:

God loves our small planet and each molecule

That He has created and that over He rules.

The God of all ages has appeared large and small

And this season we worship the smallest of all.

So let’s in the New Year all try to find

A heart like a baby’s both needy and kind.

Let’s need love from others in the same way we share

The love of All Love, the God-child who dared;

Who came down to our level and brought us Truth’s Light;

Messiah, The Chosen, King of David’s Birthright.

May the new day before us remind us, we too

Can live every day reborn and renewed.

Just as God longs to heal each worldly cell,

He desires that all souls may know true Noel.

We pray that in our hearts, each of us will strive

To let God-love transform us and eternally live.

May we seek every season, love that grows in each heart,

No matter our culture, religion, or part.

For every day’s holy if we humbly will listen,

For the soft voice of Jehovah and the True Word of Christ-mass.

May Each Day of the New Year Bring You and Yours Those Things that will Remain–

Faith, Hope, and Love,

Jane

*********This can be a tough time of the year for some people. Did you know that if you text 741741 when you are feeling depressed or suicidal, a crisis worker will text you back immediately and continue to text with you? Many people don’t like talking on the phone and would be more comfortable texting. It’s a FREE service to ANYONE – teens, adults, etc. – who lives in the U.S. It’s run by The Crisis Text Line.
….
If you prefer to talk to someone, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 800-273-8255

Hebrew-Names22

A Recipe for A True Taste of Christmas

A Recipe for  A True Taste of Christmas

By Jane Tawel

December 11, 2018

 

First, get poor. Literally. Wonder not only where your next meal will come, but be shunned by any group of so -called safety net groups. Be outcast by your religious institution for being sinful and “unclean”; and be considered an illegal alien by the country you have grown up in.

 

Next make sure if you are not yourself currently in labor with an expected child, that you are the spouse of a very pregnant woman. Decide to relocate with no job, no insurance and with no health care,  no doctor, and no Douala around. If you can’t manage being pregnant or the spouse of someone pregnant by Christmas time, then, make sure you are really, really, really sick with something that could easily kill you and that makes it hard to walk or talk or even focus on anything other than how you feel physically which is in pain, afraid, and, well, in pain and afraid.  Oh, and make sure you are of an ethnic religion that the entire world is prejudiced against.  Like Jewish, maybe? Then…

 

Take a 90 mile  (157 kilometer) trip by foot. In worn sandals or barefoot. On dusty dangerous dirt roads. Make sure as you travel (remember, very pregnant or very ill) that you are dependent on the kindness of strangers for the food and water you need on the 90 mile trip. Make sure that even if you arrive after about a week’s walk, that you have no where to stay and that you know no one when you arrive at your final destination.  If you do arrive that is, considering the violence in the country in which you are currently living, where not only criminals and terrorists abound but even those who are meant to uphold the law have become lawless.  I mean the police / soldiers, governors / senators, and priests / rabbis. Those lawless ones who can demand any thing of you or from you since you have no rights.

 

Since you are treated like an animal, decide to have your baby in a sheep shed. At least it is out of the elements and will be safe from the wild dogs. If you can not manage a pregnancy in a sheep shed, this Christmas, and have opted to merely be super, super sick to recreate the true experience, then simply leave your medications behind and after your 90 mile walk, find a little cage at the southern border of your country and snuggle in with all the other outcast, unwanted folks. This will help you feel like the parents of the Christ child felt on the day we celebrate his birth.

 

And as you contemplate this recipe for preparation of a true Christmas, remember that the angels, and kings , the God as Father and miracles  –they are all part of a story that people told long after the Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph had to tell Jesus about the night He was born.  That night, Mary and Joseph were just happy to be alive and that their kid was alive.

 

And as you prepare your recipes for a true Christmas, remember that Jesus loved being alive, just like we do. And that He didn’t want to die, just like we don’t.  But that He believed that only in His death, could He have eternal life with God, just like we can.

 

So celebrate Christmas and celebrate the fact that today, you are alive.  And being alive can  feel like nothing or it can be every thing. And being alive means you can make choices today.

The recipe for my Christmas celebration should be the same as every day.  Will I choose the ingredients for my life that the Jewish Messiah did? That the Jewish parents of Jesus did?  Will I choose to walk the long, lonely, painful road not just to Bethlehem but to Calvary? Will I find joy in a sheep manger as easily as I find joy around a hearth with my well-fed and well-cared for loved ones? Will I be willing to care little for my own comforts in comparison to my great thirst to know and love Jehovah, the Lord? Will I look at others as my brothers and sisters on a planet we have mutually wrecked while mutually mutilating each other, body and soul, and try to heal rather than grab more before it all runs out? Will I believe that there is a future day of celebration when Jesus is the ruler of all humans – a ruler who serves as we serve Him? An eternal dawn where the planet is no longer just one big sheep shed and that the recipe for eternal peace, love and joy will be finally re-made by The Chef who created it in the first place?

Will I who claim the road to Calvary, take The Christ’s first baby steps on the road to Bethlehem?

What meals and snack ideas do I have for eating and making for others while traveling Life’s road? Jesus’ idea for a good meal on the road, was His body and blood. Messiah knew in His heart the truth of this Hebrew recipe: “Oh, taste and see that The Lord is good! Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)

 

 

A Recipe/ Psalm for a Judeo-Christian Holiday

By Jane Tawel

Dear Creator,

First fill my cup with thirst.

May my hands kneed love in need of You.

Spice up my heart with passion for Your Word.

And let the Oil of my faith in Your Covenant

Never run out.

May a small teaspoon be the only portion

Of my earthly gain

So that my eternal fill will

Be only eaten in Your Forever

Feast of Body and Blood.

May I never turn away from my table

 strangers and sojourners; and

Just as You have always fed

Both the good and bad

With sunshine and rain;

May I not stand in judgement

Over the meals that others make;

But instead look to the small

Morsel of my own small self.

May no matter how many times

I eat of You;

Or how much I am served of

Your words and Your Word,

May I hunger only more;

May I thirst only more deeply

For Your Approval,

For Your Love.

May I receive at Your mighty hands–Hands

That created all the ingredients and recipes for all  living things—

A wee little Christmas star—

One star out of the billions of stars that rate the universal Creations—

May I get a little half star,

rating my life today

As worthy of You.

Please, Oh Lord of All,

Messiah, Christ-child,

God of the Ages,

I humbly offer today,

A morsel – an offering of my life,

Of my small snack of a soul.

May you multiply the ingredients of my life today,

As You always do increase

Our silly little

fish and loaves.

 

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