What has life been like? Way too much to say on that subject. But it has been a kick.

Let’s see… Izzie will be starting per-school in a few weeks. Caleb will be a freshman. Bekah is finish driver’s education this week. (By the way, they are now living in Auburn.) Robyn is now a nurse. Oh, and I am going back to school.

We now have four cats, two gerbils, a bunch of fish, and a dog on the way.

We are also in the process of buying a house – this one – the parsonage.

So we’ve been busy.  Hence the lack of anything of any import going on to my website. I have been making the occasional snarky comment on Facebook, but that really doesn’t count now does it.

I guess I will post a bit more soon.

It’s Christmas Day and I’m still not sure I have totally figured it all out. At the Christmas Eve service last night, I commented that I really didn’t miss much of the Christmas traditions that I had skipped. I had bought a few gifts for Bekah and Caleb, but not much more than that. I certainly didn’t miss that. I had avoided Christmas music for the most part. I really didn’t miss that (though I do have to admit that I kind of missed performing Christmas music, but that’s a whole other story). I think what I missed most was having Bekah and Caleb around.

Robyn and I spent almost the whole day at home. (We ended up going to my in-laws for a little bit in the evening to drop off a couple of things.) It was a spectacular day. Izzie had some gifts to open, which we did after coffee and hot biscuits in the morning. For lunch, we ate fresh fruit and hot cocoa while we played Rummy. Honestly, we didn’t do much at all, but we did it together. It only could have been better if Bekah and Caleb were home with us.

But I think the greatest moment that I had and the one that celebrated Christmas most for me was after the Christmas Eve service. Before the service began, I was in the kitchen at the church preparing for the service. I planned on serving hot cocoa and cookies during the service as a treat and I was boiling water. As I sat there by myself, a knock came on the back door. I opened it to find one of the neighborhood boys standing there holding a pellet gun. He asked if it would be okay for him and his friends to use the church property to run around a little and have a game of “tag”. (He assured me that the pellets they were using to “tag” each other didn’t hurt and that there would be no damage to the church or the property. His yard was just too small to have any sort of fun.) I told him that we had a bunch of people coming for service at 7:00 and that it would be okay as long as they didn’t get in the way or scare anyone. With that, off he ran.

The service went off okay and I didn’t hear anything more from them until later. Once the service was over, there were just a few of us left in the sanctuary. I was talking with this last group as we all walked toward the doors to leave, when I saw the four boys from earlier come running up on the church steps wielding their weapons and yelling at one another. In a flash, they were gone again enjoying their time together. I said goodbye to my last group and turned to say something to my wife when the four boys came up on the porch again.

At this, I opened the front door of the church and yelled “Hey”! All four boys stopped and looked at me. Then the one that I had spoken to earlier dejectedly said, “Okay, we’ll get going”. At this, I stopped them all again and announced that we had leftover cookies and hot cocoa that needed to be used up and that they should come in and get some before I threw it away.

They stayed for an hour.

I think what I learned this year is that what is sorely missing for me is a true sense of community. Traditionally, Christmas has been about friends, family, and community. If you were to look at all of the hoopla surrounding Christmas today for evidence of its meaning, you’d think it was about gifts, copious amounts of decorations, food, and political correctness.

Even well-meaning Christians have gotten in the way. The meaning of Christmas has gotten lost, at times, in the story of Christmas. Some mix up the beginning of the story with the end of the story and spend far too much time looking at the miracle of Christ’s birth rather than understanding the magnitude of the fact that Christ was born at all. In other words, for some it is as important that Christ be born “without sin” (whatever that means) as it is that he was born at all. In other words, even Christ’s birth had everything to do with setting up his death.

Why can’t it be a simple story with a simple message? Christ was born! End of part one. What does the rest of the story tell us? We have tried so hard to attach such meaning to every part of Christ’s life. Maybe that is because we are all trying so hard to find meaning in our own.

I don’t know if this grand experiment that I’ve called my Swiss Christmas is going to have any long term repercussions. (My brother wished me a Merry Swiss-mas on Sunday.) It’s too early to tell. I don’t know what I’ll bring in to next year’s celebration, if anything. But I do know that something has changed inside of me. The search for meaning in the things that I do and that I ask others to do has only begun. And it will never end.

I’m only starting to realize the full extent of the radical message that Christ delivered that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It is here and it is now. And as I start to live that message out in my life even more, I hope I have more opportunities to encounter people in new and different ways whether that be in having hot cocoa and cookies during worship, or inviting kids in to enjoy them afterwards.

As most of you know, I work another job on top of my duties as pastor of this Church. I have the distinct privilege of being with a company which works with parents that are in the process of reunifying with their children after they have been taken into custody by the State of Maine. It is mentally trying work, but it can be very rewarding at the same time. Seeing children leave our care and go back home to live with their biological parents after as much as two years away is an incredible thing to witness.

Unfortunately, I have seen the other side, too.

I have worked as a Family Visit Supervisor for almost one and a half years now. In that time, I have taken part in five “goodbye” visits where the children have been removed from the home permanently because the parents have been unable to recover from their mistakes and problems. Those visits are very difficult, even when you know deep down that it is probably for the best. One mother broke down and sobbed uncontrollably as I drove away with her two young children in my car. Another one couldn’t handle the pain and simply asked that I take away her infant son back to the adoptive home very early in the final visit. Still another father welled up with tears as he gave his three-year-old daughter a picture of himself and asked her to “always remember” him.

As I said, it can be a mentally difficult job.

Whenever I do these visits, I always struggle for words to say to ease their pain. Most often, the kids are not the ones that are hurting at that moment. It’s the parents. The parents understand the enormity of the moment. They understand that these “goodbyes” don’t lead to another “hello”, at least not for a very long while. I still haven’t found anything that I can say that would seem to make it any easier or give them a sense of hope. But I have found that an empathetic smile, a touch on the arm, or a simple look into their eyes has a way of calming them. For a pain that is so obviously beyond words, it only makes sense that words cannot contain a sense of hope.

I think that is what makes Jesus’ statements in the Garden of Gethsemane so profound for me. Jesus knew that the most difficult moment in his life was coming, and he simply wanted someone to be there with him. He wasn’t looking for anyone to say anything. He didn’t want someone else to do it for him or share the pain. He wasn’t looking for anyone to do anything, except maybe God. He was simply looking for someone to be there with him and care enough to not fall asleep. And he couldn’t even get that. He faced all of the pain of the cross completely and totally alone.

As I’ve said many times, we live in a world that is losing hope. But I think more than that, we live in a world that is losing “touch”. We can talk and debate and communicate and argue all day long, but we seem to be losing our sense of community. As our understanding of the world gets larger through the use of technology and media, our strong personal relationships seem to be suffering. As we are bombarded with images from across the globe, we struggle to know our neighbors, our friends, and our families.

Jesus would say that we have fallen asleep.

Is that an alarm clock that I hear?!