These thoughts always interrupt my paper writing

So, it's here. That dreaded season for retail employees everywhere: Christmas. I realized today that I haven't always hated the Christmas season, just since I worked at Hallmark. (Digression: how is it that Hallmark is perhaps THE Christmas store, but ever since I've been an employee there, I've never gotten a real Christmas with my family? I'm not bitter or anything, but it seems that if corporate Hallmark is going to try to make Christmas perfect for everyone, they might consider their employees in that. I'm so getting fired.) Okay, that was a larger digression than I'd planned. So it's Christmas-time, even though Thanksgiving isn't until this Thursday, it's Christmas. I've even started buying gifts already, which is something I NEVER do until at least 4 days before. I've been thinking (about everything but my history paper) about the commercialism of Christmas, and at the risk of sounding like one of those "damn college hippies" I'm going to say I don't like it. I guess being behind the scenes for the so-called magic of Christmas (a bonafide Hallmark employee-motivation slogan, there, folks) I'm disillusioned. I see how marketed everything is, how pre-packaged Christmas has begun. I'll really try not to get into the trite CHRIST-mas argument, because I know I hate it as much as everyone else does, but even the church markets Christmas. No better time to get back into church! Let's make our Christmas service enjoyable so they'll come back for more! If we can sell them on Christmas, we can sell them on Easter, and then on church membership! et cetera and so on. (Father, forgive my cyn-icism.) So it's true, I'm a bitter, jaded soul, who probably needs to quit hanging out with the Grinch to bake some sugar cookies.

I'm not doing Christmas this year. Well, I am doing Christmas, for other people. But not for me. If you're family, or if I like you, you might get a present from me. But I'm going to say this, and I want everyone to take me seriously when I do: I don't want any presents. If you insist on spending money on me at all, I insist as much as possible without being rude, that you put that money towards a charitable donation. Something in my soul doesn't rest easy on Christmas morning when I sit in a comfortable 76* living room under a Christmas tree decorated with electric lights drinking English imported Lady Grey tea wearing comfy pj's opening presents that are yet more things I've convinced myself I need and really don't. In short, less dramatic prose: I feel guilty knowing there are impoverished kids all over the world (and in America, too, my friends) who not only don't have presents Christmas morning, they may or may not even have food to eat that day.

I realize I should be doing more than just requesting that my potential gifts be replaced with charitable donations, but consider this step one. Step two: Who likes working at soup kitchens? A better question, Who wants to go with me to the soup kitchen?

After already posing this proposition at work today, and it a) not being received very well by those that had already bought/planned my gift and b)not being received very well by those that really enjoy giving tangible 'just for you and not Malaysian kids' gifts I realize that some of you guys are not comfortable with this idea. And I respect that, I understand, I feel I'm being terribly rude just by suggesting it. But let me say in my (ever so humble) defense, that I will appreciate you guys giving money to charity just as much as I appreciate foil-wrapped gifts. And even better, whatever people you're helping out appreciate it, too.

Go with me on this one. Considert it a "damn college hippie" experiment. My immediate family did a "charity swap" with my uncle's immediate family last Christmas, and as a collective, we'd never felt so good about gift-giving before. That sounds cheesy, I know, but realizing that our financial gift increased two-fold over what it would have bought here was just an amazing thought. $20 buys clean water for a village for a month in Africa. In America, $20 buys a CD and some string. If you're comfortable and willing to give up the normal American Christmas tradition of swapping wrapping paper and whatszits, please do it. It will mean so much.

Please?

Need some help picking a charity?

International (look for links titled "Gift Catalog"):

• World Vision (probably my favorite organization, they do a lot of really good work)
• Samaritan's Purse

National

• Habitat for Humanity
• Girls, Inc.

Local

• Golden Harvest / Soup Kitchen
• Augusta Urban Ministries
• Ronald McDonald House (I've worked with these guys doing some copy-editing stuff, they're really nice!)

Okay, most of these have international, national, AND local chapters. Do some research, pick one out that you connect to, that you think I (or whoever else you're donating for!) would appreciate, and go for it! It's really a good feeling.

and still the dead have voices

I'm reading the speeches of MLK for a term paper, and in going through them, I think there's a lot we still haven't learned.

The following is an excerpt from "Paul's Letter to American Christians," which Dr. King gave as a sermon to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He basically wrote a letter, from Paul (of the Bible) to Americans in then contemporary 1956 America. All emphasis is mine.

"Let me rush on to say something about the church. Americans, I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They tell me that in America you have written within Protestantism more than two hundred and fifty six denominations. The tragedy is not so much that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body of Christ. You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor an Episcopalian. God is bigger than all our denominations. If you are to be true witnesses for Christ, you must come to see that in America.

"But I must not stop with a criticism of Protestantism. I am disturbed about Roman Catholicism. This church stands before the world with its pomp and power, insisting that is possesses the only truth. It incorporates an arrogance that becomes a dangerous spiritual arrogance. It stands with its noble Pope who somehow rises to the miraculous heights of infallibility when he speaks "ex cathedra." But I am disturbed about a person or an institution that claims infallibility in this world. I am disturbed about any church that refuses to cooperate with other churches under the pretense that it is the only true church. I must emphasize the fact that God is not Roman Catholic, and that the boundless sweep of his revelation cannot be limited to the Vatican. Roman Catholicism must do a great deal to mend its ways.

"There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday Morning to sing "All Hail the Power of Jesus Name" and "Dear Lord and Father of All Mankind," you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is."

This was November 4, 1956. How is it that almost exactly 50 years later we've still the same faults?

I'm obviously not in it for the Benjamins.

I was thinking just now about how nice it would be to have a lot of money. It seems that with a lot of money, you can do a lot of things, fix a lot of problems, and when I think about my financial situation (poor, in college, and in debt), having a lot of money is really, really desirable. If I had a lot of money, I could pay off my credit card debt, and not worry about next month's electric bill. If I had a lot of money, I could study abroad and pay for grad school. If I had a lot of money I could go out and buy a lot of superfluous things that I don't really need, like every album Letters to Cleo ever released, and new jeans, and a good translation of Neruda. If I had a lot of money, I could fly to Europe to stand in front of the Louvre and meet a banjo playing Zeppelin fan and his Gardener girlfriend, and I could have curtains for my living room and I could afford to eat out on my lunch breaks.

I'll be starting a new job soon, and they'll be paying me more than I'm making now. I don't know how much more yet, but more, and even a little bit of an increase gets me thinking about how much easier my life will be because my checking account is a little further away from overdraw.
And my life may, in fact, get a little better when I've got more to live off of every two weeks than a few pence and some pocket lint. But will my life truly be better? Better because I can finally afford a comfy pair of matching pajamas, or a cute shirt to go out in, or new sticky note flags, or even a large pepperoni pizza for delivery?

If there's one thing working and making my own money has taught me, it's that the more I have, the more I want. It's easy to swipe my credit card when I already have a big bill to pay. It's easy to keep adding five more dollars here and ten there when I've got to go to the store anyway. If I'm buying a gift, it's so easy to throw in a little something extra for myself.
I'm so ready to make sure I am taken care of; how often am I that generous with other people?
I sponsor a Hope Child that lives in near-poverty in a village in India. He gets $30 a month from me, and sometimes, World Vision sends me a request to send a little extra to help out his village. I throw away the letter telling myself that I can't afford any extras that week. That Friday, I'll go to Roly Poly on my 30, buy a top on sale after work, and go to the bar with friends that night. In seven hours, I've spent the $30 that might have helped feed Seigin Khongsai for a whole month.

Buying things for yourself isn't bad, but people in our own country are starving, children are violated and abused, the homeless are forgotten, the lonely neglected, and the lost ignored. Should I not help those people at least as much as I help myself?

I'm in college, I work retail, and I have no great skill to speak of. I don't make much, but should I not be willing to share what I have? If I say I love people, and that I want to be compassionate towards humanity, shouldn't that be followed with some action? Some giving of myself and gifts to people who need it more than I?

Just some thoughts, but I think I might actually want that good translation of Neruda.

"Much is required from those whom much is given,
and much more is required from those to whom much more is given."
Luke 12:48b

"To those who use well what they have been given,
even more will be given,
and they will have an abundance.
But from those that are unfaithful,
even what little they have will be taken away."
Matthew 25:29

Beholding

So it's obvious that I have something to procrastinate, because I'm thinking about everything else, and even have at least a few things that relate to something else because I'm here...

Although I admit that those "100 Shocking, Cosmo-tested Sex Tips" are just too intriguing to pass by(seriously, guys, how many ways can you reinvent sex?), I generally stay away from fashion mags. Actually, all magazines, with the exception of National Geographic and some of the more amatuer arts mags that are entirely too expensive for people to buy. I'm not hating on magazines, I'd just rather buy a book and not have some high-paid editor's opinion shoved down my throat in a glossy-paged format. Recently, the store in which I work (proper grammar sometimes sounds ridiculously stodgy) issued their own magazine, and although it's not quite as bad as a lot of the fluff passing for publication now, it's still the same old manage your house, cook pretty meals, decorate for the season, be a good friend, love your kids, pretend you're not absolutely exhausted from trying to be perfect kind of stuff.

I was flipping through it one day while NOT helping mean customers, and I saw a quote they pulled from Jessica Alba, who is pretty darn gorgeous. Anyway, the quote was something like this: "People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you're the beholder." Or something. Granted, she's absolutely stunning, so it's easier for her to say that than the woman who constantly struggles with weight, hormones, or 3 kids. But still. I have to agree.

We spend so much time making ourselves beautiful--talking to the ladies mostly here, but you gents do it, too--that we've become obsessed with how we look. Are we skinny enough, is our hair styled well, are our clothes cool, et cetera and so on. I'm starting to go down a lecturing path I'm sure I've been on at least once before, saying that we need to consider where we get our standards of beauty, and that we need to be cautious of how much stock we put in the opinions of others, but that's really not what I meant to say. (So shut up and say it already, Ashley.)

Why do we spend so much time on trying to be beautiful, rather than spend our time on trying to see beauty? I would hazard a guess that we expend far too much energy in trying to be beautiful, in trying to make sure that everyone around us sees just how darn beautiful we are. We're exhausted with all of that. We're always trying to be better at something, usually because we want people to think better of us, and that's not always bad, but it does leave us lacking. And tired. And blind to all the other beauty in the world. Think about it--the last thing you want when you're tired and irritated and frustrated with the world is somebody hanging on your shoulder saying "Look. Just look at how beautiful that is. Just look." If we're always so busy trying to be beautiful, and so tired because there is no way we can possibly do it, we're going to miss so much of the beauty that is already there, waiting for us to see it.

Beauty is easy; it doesn't have to be holed up in the Louvre, or in a 5-minute sunset (that I always seem to miss), or in a heavy volume poety that doesn't make sense until the 17th time you read it. Beauty is everywhere, in things, in people, in a moment in time, it's in you, ready to be seen. Seeing beauty is simple, it's refreshing, and it reminds me how absolutely small I am. It's also terrifying. Because seeing true beauty reminds us that we're small, it makes us feel so ugly in comparison. But I think it's worth it, not because I'm a masochist for self-loathing, but because seeing just how beautiful everything else is, we see the things that are beautiful in ourselves. Yes, beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, so behold, without hesitation, behold.

or, as someone much smarter than I said,

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."

--Anne Frank, from her diary

knock first, and wipe your feet

As of late, I've been doing a lot of this growing up thing I've heard so much about. It's strange really, realizing that I'm technically competent enough to live on my own. Moving out wasn't as tough as I thought it was going to be. The actual physical process of hauling my stuff around was valiantly handled by my dad, brother, and brawny friends. Unpacking and setting up my own place wasn't that difficult either. The bills haven't started rolling in yet, but I don't think I'm being too bold as to say that I've got that fairly well managed either.

I've been out on my own for a week and half now, it feels like hours. I've cooked and cleaned and organized and done all the domestic things. (I'm a terrible cook, a decent cleaner, and I'll organize a sock drawer if I've time enough.) But I wonder what's up next? I suppose that the grandiose dream of being on your own isn't all that grand after all. What does one do when she has a 570 sq. feet apartment all to herself? This girl alphabetizes cds and kicks back a Killians in her pajamas.

I was worried about feeling completely helpless on my own, but I also worried about the opposite extreme--feeling so self-confident that I don't see my mistakes and faults. Strangely, it seems I've found my middle ground. I won't say that I'm perfectly comfortable in my hobbit hole off Walton Way, but I'm definitely enjoying it. I no longer feel like too much for one space. I don't feel like I'm getting in anyone's way, and I don't feel cramped and run over by other people. I've got room to breathe (even if I haven't totally gotten that "other person" smell out of my closets).

Stop by sometime. You'll probably walk in on me in my underwear, wondering just what I should do with myself now that I'm on my own. I think I'll start with that gallon of milk that expires tomorrow.

knock first, and wipe your feet

As of late, I've been doing a lot of this growing up thing I've heard so much about. It's strange really, realizing that I'm technically competent enough to live on my own. Moving out wasn't as tough as I thought it was going to be. The actual physical process of hauling my stuff around was valiantly handled by my dad, brother, and brawny friends. Unpacking and setting up my own place wasn't that difficult either. The bills haven't started rolling in yet, but I don't think I'm being too bold as to say that I've got that fairly well managed either.

I've been out on my own for a week and half now, it feels like hours. I've cooked and cleaned and organized and done all the domestic things. (I'm a terrible cook, a decent cleaner, and I'll organize a sock drawer if I've time enough.) But I wonder what's up next? I suppose that the grandiose dream of being on your own isn't all that grand after all. What does one do when she has a 570 sq. feet apartment all to herself? This girl alphabetizes cds and kicks back a Killians in her pajamas.

I was worried about feeling completely helpless on my own, but I also worried about the opposite extreme--feeling so self-confident that I don't see my mistakes and faults. Strangely, it seems I've found my middle ground. I won't say that I'm perfectly comfortable in my hobbit hole off Walton Way, but I'm definitely enjoying it. I no longer feel like too much for one space. I don't feel like I'm getting in anyone's way, and I don't feel cramped and run over by other people. I've got room to breathe (even if I haven't totally gotten that "other person" smell out of my closets).

Stop by sometime. You'll probably walk in on me in my underwear, wondering just what I should do with myself now that I'm on my own. I think I'll start with that gallon of milk that expires tomorrow.

love as thy wish to be loved

Sometimes I feel that I am insufficient for other people. This is by no means a permanent feeling, but I do sometimes slip into moments of mild self-loathing and feel so completely "less" than everyone else. I look at where people are going to school, who they are interning with, what awards and scholarships and degrees they've received, how much weight they've lost, how happy they are in their relationships with their parents, boyfriends, siblings, how satisfied they are in their salaries and workplace, and I just think "I don't have that. I'm not good enough for that." When people share with me the hurts and stresses in their life, I don't know what to say, I don't know how to offer comfort to them, I feel wholly insufficient to be there for them. When people tell me about the wonderful things happening to them, I don't know how to be excited with them, I feel, again, insufficient.

I don't know what to say, I don't know how to act, I don't know how to be smarter, I don't know how to get a better job or get into grad school, I don't know how to be a better person. There is so much that I am not. There is so much in myself that I draw comparisons with other people, and it almost always leaves me feeling a heavy sense of inadequacy. No one wants to be inadequate.

When did I learn to compare myself to others? When did I learn that I need to be as good or better as someone else to have value and worth? Who taught me that?

I know that as a whole, our society is highly comparative. Women are bombarded with ads featuring sexy, skinny, flawless underwear models just as men are thrust into a world of hyper-masculine, muscled, sexually charged jean guys. Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey are role models, the janitors that clean their offices are not. Yale is better than Georgia State is better than ASU is better than Aiken Tech. Size 2 is better than size 16; normal is better than abnormal. But amid the conclusions being drawn about people in the mass of people called society, where in all of that did I learn to make those conclusions applicable to myself? I have no conscious memory of saying to myself, "this is the time to start realizing that the blond haired skinny girl is better than you," but it happened around 6th grade or so. I realized quite gradually that I was a "dork" and "fat" and "unstylish" and "unpopular." And in middle school, when you are those things, it means you are unloved. But I'm not in middle school anymore. I don't have people whispering behind my back, pointing at my shoes. I'm not even in high school anymore, with boys looking right through me to the girl with a prettier profile.

And yet I'm still drawing conclusions. I still feel that I need to be more of something, and less of something else to be considered worthy of the love that other people can give to me. Why do I and countless scores of other people feel that the evaluations other people hold of us carries any substantial weight at all? I'm not saying that the opinions of other people are devoid of value, I'm saying that they shouldn't be the foundation of my own sense of self-worth. When I see that someone is doing better at a better university than I am, I shouldn't feel like my own personal value has decreased at all. I shouldn't feel like less of a person when someone more beautiful walks by. I shouldn't feel like I should have to change at all when I talk with someone who has a better paying job than I have.

You would think that when I am feeling so completely inadequate for the world that an otherworldly, indiscriminatory, complete love would be undeniably attractive to me. But instead I've found that when I can't love myself, I can't accept the love that others offer me, even the overwhelming love that Christ offers me. How illogical is it that I should disregard the warmth of love that people offer to me daily in favor of lonely hours of self-doubt? The proverbial "Golden Rule" (also Matthew 7:12) says that we should treat other people as we wish to be treated; I see that also as we should love as we wish to be loved. I also see that as a rule of reciprocity--I can only be loved as well as I love. The first step in finding a pure, holy kind of love is to love people without filters. Love them wholly, for who they are. Love myself, for who I am, not what I am not.