Alice and I took a shuttle from the airport to the hotel when we were in LA last week. Our driver was a fascinating gentleman who loved to talk. He told us a lot about the LA/Anaheim area and about the local night life. He also knew a lot about the traffic laws and was good at predicting the times and distances to different milestones along our journey.

Like many Californians, he wasn’t originally from the LA area. He grew up in Chicago and has a lot of family in Pennsylvania. He was trying to make ends meet while he finished up his doctorate in music. He told us he only has to take one more class and finish a symphony before he is done and can start teaching.

While we were driving, he described how he and his friends are always on the look-out for celebrities and movie sets. He told us someone famous had been seen in downtown Disney after their golf game the day before. He also mentioned that he sometimes frequented a bar owned by Johnny Depp and would see him there. The driver and his friends like to visit a local second-hand clothing store that specializes in designer apparel that has been worn once by actors for a film shoot and discarded. He casually mentioned that there were some recent arrivals from a science fiction movie set after a quick phone call to a friend. He has a shirt that was worn once by Tom Cruise. They are about the same size he says.

Our driver and his friends lived expectantly. They expected to see, experience, and maybe even own a small part of the celebrity mystic. This reminds me of the description of Joseph from The Message translation of Mark 15. It describes Joseph as “one who lived expectantly, on the lookout for the kingdom of God.”

Should we live our lives the same way, always expecting the kingdom of God to be revealed and experienced? What do you think?

Two weekends ago, Alice and I took a trip over the Santa Cruz mountains to RSV trees to find a Christmas tree. We could have just stopped at a street side vendor, but I thought it would be a lot more fun to make a trip out of it. You get to cut your own tree down when you go to RSV trees. When you get out of the car, you are greeted with a saw and a map. All of the trees cost the same. Check out their web site for more details.

It was a lot of fun. We walked most of the farm before we finally found a tree that we really liked. Alice held it up while I cut it down.

We also got to enjoy some marshmallows by the fire while we were there and Alice built a wreath. They have a wreath making station. You pay $5 and you can build a wreath with whatever you find on the property. Alice did an amazing job. Here is a picture of the wreath she made after we put it up on our front door.

The woman who was helping us was impressed with Alice’s first wreath. The picture probably doesn’t do it justice. She spent some time asking around for the best advice from the other families that were building wreaths. I think it paid off. It smells great too. Fresh.

The trip was a lot of fun. We are thinking that it might become a tradition.

Alice and I were also asking the question “Does a Christmas tree have anything to do with the baby Jesus?” I think there likely is a connection between Christmas trees and pagan festivals. I don’t think that means we can’t celebrate Christmas with a tree though. See also the wikipedia entry for Yule and the connection to Christmas.

Perhaps the celebration of Christmas around the time of the Winter solstice was an attempt at contextualizing by early Christians. I wonder how they went through the process of deciding what to encourage and what to discourage from the local culture and the established traditions. It seems that at the time, the Pope was open to recasting the pagan rituals as a way to subvert them. It makes you wonder what really is ‘Christian’ and what is cultural. In this country it seems that one might think that consumerism is part of celebrating Christmas. While the act of gift giving and remembering a greater gift is good, it seems that we have taken a good thing and taken it to a whole other level. Maybe the ritual has been recast yet again in a different direction.

The idea that God did some similar recasting with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices raises some interesting questions (see the Yule entry and the connection to modern Christmas). I’m think specifically of the practice of sacrifice as an atonement for sin. Was God working through a long process of redeeming our inclination towards ritual violence by forever siding with the victim through Jesus? Does God really approve the practice of ritual sacrifice? I desire mercy and not sacrifice he says. If not, why would he enter into it through the law and ultimately in Jesus?

Maybe God was slowly recasting ritual sacrifice in an act of love meant to transcend violence once and for all. Maybe the birth and death of Jesus wasn’t about atonement for sin but identification with the victim and the redemption of murderers by enduring the violence. Maybe God was putting an end to all mythologies of violence once and for all. This brings new meaning for me to the peacemakers being sons of God.

For more info on this idea, see Was Christ Just Another Scapegoat and the wiki entry for Rene Girard.

Maybe Friday is a good day to reflect on the thoughts of the last week. Or maybe Friday is just lazy and I’m reluctant to be productive on some of the things I know I need to get done. Here are some thoughts from the past week.

Wedding planning is in full effect. Planning and preparing for a wedding is crazy. A friend recently told me that him and his wife didn’t know what to do with themselves after they got back from the honeymoon. I’m looking forward to that space.

### Work thoughts
Large public companies are generally focused on three things: profits, returning value to the shareholders, and their customers. As an employee of a large company, your role and tenure at the company are for the most part controlled by people you don’t know and forces you can’t possibly comprehend. My experience has been that large companies sometimes behave like empires– they attempt to define reality for everyone involved and sometimes they loose the ability to distinguish between the world they are creating and the one they are trying to manipulate. Maybe I’m cynical… If you think so, show me a public company who’s primary focus is something other than profits.

### Dorothy Day
I was struck by an commentary I was reading about Dorothy Day. Here is the summary that he put together about her philosophy on insolvable social problems.
> To change your life, change the way you process experience. To change the way you process experience change the way you live. We don’t think our way into a new life, we live our way into new thoughts.
I thought this was a fascinating insight that also applies to formation. The quote comes from Robert Inchausti’s book Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise.

### Advocacy
Finally, Alice and I have been trying to think through how we can be advocates for family, friends, or those who are in need as we make the transition to a married couple and care for each other. We were both struck by the language that Jesus used in Matt 25 in the parable about the sheep and the goats. It seem like Jesus was taking things very personally when he says “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Maybe as advocates we should take it personally when those for whom we are advocating are not cared for or treated with dignity.