Last Sunday, Ben and I went to Target to go shopping for a Christmas project my family has undertaken. I know we were completely crazy to go shopping on a weekend in December, but let's just say I had a stack of papers to grade and I was looking for *any* excuse not to start that task. But when this project lead us to the toy and children's clothing, it was an eye opening experience. At one point, I turned to Ben and said, "Is this just a preview of what our lives might be like in a few years?" To which Ben responded, "How do you feel about Judaism?" I had two thoughts simultaneously, "But then you have *eight* nights of presents" and "Don't tempt me." And since Ben has a Jewish name and since one of the older gentlemen he works with is so adamant that "Benji" must be Jewish that Ben almost asked for the High Holy Days off, really, it wouldn't be a stretch.
And then there is the Lauren F. Winner factor. If there is any living writer I would stalk (and I seriously considered doing so when she lived in Charlottesville and I lived in Staunton), it would be Lauren Winner. Winner's memoir Girl Meets God charts her journey from reform Judaism, to Orthodox Judaism, to the Episcopal church. Personally, I think the book should be sub-titled 1001 Insights into Ann's Soul. What I love most about her is that she has no apologies for being both Christian and an intellectual - an existence which isn't always looked on kindly by either the academy or some Christians. Winner also finds wonderful ways to marry her Jewish background with her Christian faith; she sees the deep and rich Jewish traditions as a background for her Christian existence. Take, for example, the way she talks about the incarnation:
In my more pompous moments, I describe myself, my Christianity, as radically incarnational. The Incarnation, that God took flesh, is the whole reason I am not an Orthodox Jew. The Incarnation is the whole reason I am not lighting the menorah at this time of the year. I am a Christian because being a Christian gives me a picture of God to talk to during all these moments where, without the picture, I would forget that God exists. My old professor can’t imagine how it can possibly be true that God became man, he can’t imagine how I can possibly make sense of it, but I no longer know how to make sense of God, or anything else for that matter, without it.
Here’s the thing about God. He is so big and so perfect that we can’t really understand Him. We can’t possess Him, or apprehend Him. Moses learned this when he climbed up Mount Sinai and saw that the radiance of God’s face would burn him up should he gaze upon it directly . But God so wants to be in a relationship with us that He makes himself small, smaller than He really is, smaller and more humble than his infinite, perfect self, so that we might be able to get to Him, a little bit.
Being born a human was not the first time God made Himself small so that we could have access to Him. First He shrunk himself when he revealed the Torah at Mount Sinai. He shrunk Himself into tiny Hebrew words, man’s finite language, so that we might get to Him that way. Then He shrunk Himself again, down to the size of a baby, down into a manger of finiteness.
-Lauren F. Winner, Girl Meets God, pp. 73-74
As I was writing my advent entry, I found myself thinking about Hanukkah. The whole festival celebrates that the lights kept burning when they weren't suppose to. The festival speaks so directly to all the ideas about light and dark I've been thinking about this season. And I was tempted, not for the first time, to buy a menorah to set alongside our creche.
Then last week, I was listening again to Barenaked Ladies Holiday album and feel in love with their song "Hanukkah Blessings."
This YouTube version of the song includes a translation of the Hebrew prayer in the song which is something like:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to kindle the Chanukah lights. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who performed miracles for our forefathers in those days, at this moment.
My favorite part of this prayer is that while it remembers the past miracle, it acknowledges that God is still making those miracles happen for us. Just as with Winner's piece, we see that we are part of a long and developing relationship with God.
It might seem like a stretch that I find resonance with a Hanukkah song (sung by Barenaked Ladies of all people). But there's a thread in this song about what it is like for a Jewish individual to face the onslaught of Christmas shopping, commercials, programs, and music every year. And really, even for many Christians all this "Christmas" activity has gotten overwhelming. Although it is "our" holiday at the center of all the hoopla this time of year, it is really just our holiday as it is appropriated by our commercial culture. So in many ways, I feel just like the Jew in the song who is bombarded by all this activity that has nothing to do with what he or she believes in. For me, too, it is good to be reminded that we are lucky because we have "lights so that we can see." It's good to remember that we celebrate because God has showed us again and again over time that He cares for us and wants to provide us with a world of light so that we might pass that light onto all those we meet.
So during this festival Hanukkah and the winter solstice, I wish you all blessings. My your lights continue to burn, granting peace to you, your loved ones, and all the strangers you may meet.
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