13 December 2007

A not-so-merry Christmas

by Ann Fontaine, 2007

The constant barrage of Merry Christmas! and non-stop carols of happiness contrast with the feelings of many people at this time of year. For those suffering from the recent or impending death of loved ones and for those whose families are in crisis it can be a very isolated and dreary time. Every greeting and every song reminds the grief-stricken of how unhappy life is at this moment.

Many churches have begun to recognize that Festivals of Lessons and Carols, celebrations of Christmas, and children’s pageants do not meet everyone’s needs. To fill this gap churches offer a Blue Christmas service, a Service of Solace or Longest Night. People who are not having a very merry Christmas and friends who support them are invited to come and sit with one another in a liturgy that speaks of the love of God for the grieving.

Many of the worshipers who gathered for our Service of Solace at St. John’s in Jackson Hole, Wyoming during the week before Christmas did not have a church home. Christmas vacationers who came to ski or snowmobile were attracted to the silence and space apart from their days on the mountain. We offered a variety of music and silence interspersed with readings from Scripture and prayers of solace and hope. Each person was encouraged to bring readings to share, photos or objects of remembrance 

Sitting together in the warm log church in the midst of the deep star spangled dark of the Rocky Mountains we gained a greater knowledge of the One who loves us in sorrow and joy. We learned that even strangers can share life and love. We discovered we are not alone.

A closing prayer from Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace:

O God of all seasons and senses,
grant us the sense of your timing
to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the seasons.

In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of endings;
children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying,
grieving over,
grudges over,
blaming over,
excuses over.

O God, grant us a sense of your timing.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born—
something right and just and different,
a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love—
in the fullness of your time.

O God, grant us the sense of your timing.

Liturgies for a Service of Solace, Longest Night or Blue Christmas can be found at The Text this Week Online: Resources for the Season of Advent.

Compassionate Friends is a resource for those whose children (of any age) have died.

Many hospice organizations offer bereavement groups at all times of the year.

03 July 2007

A for Effort

3 July 2007

When I was a youngster I had very little tolerance for criticism of other’s endeavors.  Whether it was a school play, a book, or a Hollywood movie, if I heard any critical comments of a work I felt required to defend it– regardless of whether I liked it, simply because someone had made the effort to bring it forth.

I don’t have a good memory for specifics and cannot recall a particular piece that I defended on principle rather than merit, but I do have a very strong sense of what I felt like when hearing criticism of someone else’s work.  The odd thing is, I have no memory at all, specific or otherwise, of how I responded to critiques of my own work. I know I received such critiques– I still have the paper that I wrote for a high school composition class where I received an 'A' for content and an 'F' for spelling and grammar.*

However, I now see a clear connection between my need to defend the works of others and my own struggles to be creative.  I over-empathized with strangers because, while I wanted my work to be the best, I knew that I had a tendency to put assignments off and crank them out at the last minute (as many teenagers are prone to do).   By doing it at the last minute, I virtually assured that it would not be as good as it could be regardless of how much heart and soul I into it.

Over the years I have worked on my writing and on learning to critique the writings of others (with the particular goal of giving constructive feedback).  As my ability to spot plot holes and inconsistencies in a text grew, my willingness to excuse shoddy or inconsistent work shrank.  

This intolerance on my part also stems from twenty additional years of experience with various storytelling media.  In addition to developing my own specific preferences, I learned that my time is a limited resource, and that just because someone made it, doesn’t mean it is either well-executed or worthy of my time.  I can now discern, within the first chapter of a novel, whether it is well written enough to be worth the effort of reading it.  

When I was younger, I would read anything that came into my hands. I wasted a lot of time defending works that probably weren’t that good, on behalf of people I had never met, and who may not have put much effort into their work.  It took time to learn what was creative and what was derivative.  I also did not fully grasp that a work should be able to stand on its own once created.  In my hypersensitive-teenaged-state, I perceived an attack on the work to be an attack on the creator.

Now that I am older and more experienced, I am more picky.  I have certain standards that I use to judge what I am willing to read and what goes into the recycle bin.  However, I do miss the exciting sense of novelty and freshness that I enjoyed as a younger reader.  Then, there were no tropes or cliches because I hadn’t encountered as many variations on the same themes as I have now. 

Seeing writers riff off each other over time is exciting and reminds me that one of the benefits of experience– I get more of the jokes.  I exchange novelty for understanding– which is no bad thing.  I don’t award “A’s” for effort any longer.  I award good and interesting work with my time and attention– two things that are in limited supply and worth more than any letter grade.
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* I wrote it long hand the night before, I was pretty pleased with the “A” and not terribly surprised by the “F”– this was before spell checkers.  Also, I still firmly believed that good grammar and spelling were unnecessary– people should ‘just understand’ what I wrote.  While I still make errors in both spelling and grammar, it is not because I do not try to correct them.

27 April 2007

Open Hands

27 April 2007

I’ve been taken by street con men twice, to my knowledge.  There may have been other times when I just didn’t realize what was going on but two times now I have given money to strangers in trouble and then found incontrovertible evidence that they had lied to me about their needs.  That hasn’t stopped me from responding to people in need, but it had made me think about the nature of generosity and being open handed with what I have.

I had though of writing on this topic a while back, not long after giving money to someone and then not really being sure that they needed the money.  I thought all the way home about what I had done and what I would do if I ever found out that the person had duped me.

Then, just a few days ago, I ran into the same person, with the exact same story– only this time he approached my husband.  I recognized him and gave my husband a heads up and then sat back and listened as the man made his pitch.  It was word-for-word the same story he had given me many months ago, on the same street.  It was interesting to be ‘along for the ride’ as it were.  My husband, normally a generous man himself, gently deflected the man requesting funds and we were on our way.

Do I feel bad about having been taken in the first time?  Yes, a little.  No one likes to be made a fool of or outwitted.  In my conversations with my husband and in my own meditations on the subject I have decided that I would rather err on the side of generosity.  I would rather be a fool than lose an opportunity to help someone in need.  If this means that the occasional con-man get to feel smug, so be it.

For all my conflicted feelings about religion, one of the cores of my faith is that those with enough should share with those who are lacking.  The rich are rich and the poor are poor not because some god has decided to reward one group and punish another but because luck and chance and free will are active in our lives.  Opportunity comes to some, disaster to others and no one gets to choose when or where the wheel will turn.  Currently, I am one of the fortunate ones but I take to heart the idea that, even though God won’t turn on me, fate might, and one day I might be the one with the open hand asking for help. 


I don’t expect the world to keep a total of my good deeds and have them count on my behalf should the worst happen.  The world doesn’t work like that.  I just believe that what we have should be shared as best as we can manage.   It is imperfect, but it is the best that I can do..