Christmas Trees
The smell of pine needles on the floor–left behind on the rug, the wood floor, when the tree was pulled through the door, turned, twisted, trying to find the best looking side, and screwed into the Christmas Tree Stand.
On the Eve of December my roommate and his fiance found a tree of smaller stature, perfectly cone-shaped, and weaved white lights through the green limbs. With all the lights off in the house except for those hugging the tree, Christmas has officially begun, the Advent Calendar hung. This is the time of year that I wonder what I am doing on the East Coast. When I miss the familial faces I no longer see.
If we are to believe what the Bible says, there was a baby born of God, who grew into a man and said lots of inspiring things and in the end died for the world. Many of his followers wrote down what he said, what they saw, what God told them too…some of which when read now, in present context, doesn’t make much sense coming from a God that would say all people are equal in the eyes of God. Such as 1 Timothy 2, which more or less seems to classify women as second class citizens in the eyes of the Church and Christianity. It makes me wonder how much poetic license was taken taken by the author who gripped the reed as he wrote the words. It makes me wonder what God really thought about women back then, and if God’s mind could have been changed as it was in the Old Testament when a prophet pleaded to save a people.
We are told that every word in the Bible is ordained by God. Interpreted by men throughout the ages. I guess I am not sure that I can believe that every word in the Bible was written without bias or contextual influence.
The hardest thing for me, at times like this, at Christmas times, is being surrounded by people at work, loving, good, people, who are Gay and Christian, who lead choirs, who are getting doctorates in Worship, and being told that they won’t be in heaven because of something that they believe is not a choice–their sexuality.
They have Christmas Trees, they have needles on their floors, memories of Christmas that flood their minds when they hear those songs that sing of holly and jolly and ho ho ho’s. I don’t think it’s right, but I don’t think drugs or porn or stealing or fighting is right either…it just seems more complicated, more convoluted, than I wish it would be. I guess, no matter what you believe, or know not what to believe, there is only one thing to do, one thing that the little baby that was born with the wisemen around and the cows and the angels and the star would want us to do, which is love. And the rest will take care of itself.
Because there are trees to be decorated and nog to be egged.
kevinthomas
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