Christingle Service: A Mathematical Translation

Watering Can, a non-Christian guest writer, has written a mathematical analysis of a Christingle service that she attended earlier in the week.

A: [O+LW+S(1+2+3+4)]/JB
or
B: O(3S x 4) + LWJB
or
C: (O + 4S + DC)JB

O = orange (6)
LW = light of the world aka DC = dripping candle to most of us (3)
JB = Jesus’ blood (5)
S = season (4)

It’s no good trying to translate these things into algebra. Arguably, the letters, numbers and signs are extraordinary unfeeling. Also because if you give them a value (yes, the number in brackets at the end) you get different results for each equation.

A: [6+3+4(1+2+3+4)]/5
= (13 x 10)/5
= 130/5
= 26

B: 6({3x4} x 4) + (3 x 5)
= 6(12 x 4) + 15
= (6 x 48) + 15
= 288 + 15
= 303

C: (6 + {4 x 4} + 3) x 5
= (6 + 16 + 3) x 5
= 25 x 5
= 125

But don’t Christingle services produce different results for different people? Some people in the room may be moved to tears, others listening and caught somewhere in thought and some may be completely indifferent. You could also make your own equation whether you had actually been to a service or not. On a more practical note, which values should be assigned to the letters?! I don’t know. I had a reason for some of mine, others I didn’t. Did that affect the result? Absolutely! But then, are those numbers ever going to actually mean anything? Probably not. Does it matter that the result of C is JB cubed? Does it matter that the answer for B has LW on both sides of the zero? Does it matter that A might as well have been JBS + O? Of course not! It’s hard enough trying to translate such occasions into words and using language to describe things, as pebles has already explored.

Though take a look at a Christingle object. Only a handful of numbers there. 1 candle. 1 flame. 4 cocktail sticks. 4 something-or-others on top. 1 orange. So orange is the earth. Hmm. Only one earth. All the more reason for us to look after it. So candle is Jesus. Hmm. Only one ‘Lamb of God.’ All that suffering on one being. So flame is the light of the world. Probably Jesus again. But there are many flames. Who is the light of the world? Who could be, if they tried?

Looking for God Beyond Language

Words, spoken and written are used to communicate; we use them to connect to one another. With out them it can be difficult to learn about another person, to get to know them, to relate to them. We use them to help us learn about the world around us, the collective observations of the human race recorded, remembered and spread in words. Sometimes it seems that although they open up so much information to us words can also stunt our ability to learn, relate and understand in other ways. We are so reliant on them.

I often find in a lot of churches that learning about God is very restricted to words. The pastor gets up and teaches people about God. It’s a useful thing and a good thing to learn about God in this way, another person’s knowledge is sheared with you to add on to what you already know. My parents both find this way very good. I never have. Often I sit and do my best to focus on the words, but my understanding is next to nothing, the preacher might as well have been speaking a foreign language because I understand little.

I have learnt a lot about God though words. The Bible, prayer and discussions with people who explain things in ways that I understand have taught me much. But words are not the only way. A lot of people learn about God thought music or symbols. For them maybe the music time in church is the way they learn more about God, for others maybe it's the symbols that we sometimes find around churches that teach them the most. For others maybe looking at the world around them teaches them the most. Maybe it’s all of these ways and more.

No matter what way a person learns about God, words are used the most. Perhaps that is what has created the idea of some people that without the words, the Bible, and the teachings of our churches and parents there would not be Christianity. A troublesome idea I have come across put forward by some people is that we only believe in God because of what we are told and taught. But God never has and never will be restricted by words. He created them, but he is not dependent on them, he does not need them to communicate with us. They are simply one of many tools.

God transcends words. A child not yet able to use or understand words is not unreachable by God. God can communicate just fine with them if he wants to. A person who finds language hard to understand and express with does not need words to understand God. Perhaps a person will not be able to read the Bible, perhaps they cannot understand the words of a pastor, perhaps the music in church can overwhelm them and cause a person to shut down, and perhaps they still know God. Before I could talk and before I could organise understanding form those around me I understood that God was real, I understood he was present. It was a very simple concept to me.

All of the patterns that fill up the world, so perfect and beautiful and all tell me about God. It is like the grass and the sky and everything is covered in words about God, but not words like you hear or read. God is everywhere, he fills up the world. For me the patterns in the world, the symbols in a church, the way rain looks as it falls, my niece, and these things teach me the most about God.

I wrote most of this last night. My brain was very clear. The less stressed my head feels the better I can write. My brain is not clear now. It feels muddled and stressed and tiered. One of my favourite saints is St Bernadette she had trouble with talking also. Sometimes my brain scrambles, and sometimes my words go. Talking and words are difficult for me and for her. But God is the same forever.

A Mother's Love

I am greatly missing Sammie at the moment. As she is currently in foster care, I am only able to see her for 2 hours a week. Although I value every moment I can have with her, it does mean that in many ways I feel I do not know her as I used to. It is a strange feeling of loss - Sammie is still well and alive, but I have very little input into her life. There is one thing that will always remain though, and that is my love for Sammie.

Mary knew what it was like to lose a child. Because of this, I feel a connection with her. Losing Sammie to foster care and possibly adoption is not the same as what happened to Jesus, but it still hurts. Also, I take comfort in Mary also being both mine and Sammie's mother. There are many things I talk to her about- mostly about Sammie and what things are going on with her. Knowing she is there and that she loves me brings comfort while I go through this scary time.

I love Sammie more than anyone else on Earth, and would do anything for her. I hope to have her back soon, but if not, with the help of both God and Mary I will be able to cope. Soon will be the celebration of both Jesus' and Sammie's birth (she was born on 26th December) and I hope that I will be able to celebrate both of these days with her. If not, I just hope Sammie knows that whatever happens, I love her as only a mother can.

The wonder of my being

Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you', and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'”

Today Danni and I went on a retreat called 'An Advent Journey with Mary', given by an elderly Carmelite friar from Ireland. Mary is Danni's focus for Awake the Dawn, not mine, so I am entering her territory in writing about the retreat. (This is rarely a sensible move to make - the last time such a thing happened, as I was finning through a coral lagoon twenty-eight metres down in the Red Sea, an indignant moray eel shot out of its hole to register a pointed complaint.) What I want to write about here is self-knowledge, the kind of self-knowledge that Mary possessed so absolutely.

St Teresa of Avila, the Carmelite reformer and mystic, realised that when she was at her closest to God she was at her closest to Teresa. We are accustomed to seeing God as a separate entity, the Almighty enthroned in the sky. If we could only understand that "this God is not 'out there', but intimately present to me, in the blood pulse of my life," as the Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows puts it in her book To Believe in Jesus, sinful behaviour would no longer seem so attractive. We would recognise it for what it is - self-strangulation. Anything that cuts you off from God cuts you off from yourself. You go against who you are, and that's the pain of it.

This was a kind of pain that Mary never experienced, as God preserved her from sin from the moment of her conception. The freedom and self-knowledge that resulted from this gift of God is made clear in the story of Bernadette Soubirous, a saint who has special meaning for Pebles as she almost certainly had autism. Among other things, Bernadette struggled notably with speech and language. When told by a teacher that she was too stupid to learn anything, Bernadette replied, "I know how to love God." Yet it's unlikely that this French peasant child from a desperately poor family, who grew up gnawing on candlewax to satisfy her hunger pangs and was practically illiterate, would ever have been recognised for her God-love if she hadn't received visions of the Virgin Mary in the filthy grotto of Massabielle. She was fourteen years old at the time.

Mary (or Aquero, as Bernadette called her) made no prophecies. She didn't make a bare rosebush flower when the bishop asked for this to happen as proof of the visions' authenticity. She spoke very little during the apparitions themselves. She did, however, reveal her identity to Bernadette in the child's own dialect: "Que seroy era Immaculada Concepciou."

I am the Immaculate Conception. I am the Immaculate Conception. Bernadette ran to the house of the local priest who had demanded to know the apparition's name, repeating the unfamiliar phrase under her breath to prevent herself from forgetting it. At the presbytery, the priest tried to adjust the odd phraseology. Surely the woman had said "I am Mary Immaculate" or something along those lines? But Bernadette remained firm. I am the Immaculate Conception. This was what she had heard, and this was what she maintained.

Mary's words to St Bernadette Soubirous, the girl to whom Pebles refers as 'the one everybody thought was stupid', are pregnant with knowledge of God and knowledge of the self. This is why the apparitions of Lourdes resonate with me in a way that the apparitions of Fatima cannot. Mary's simple statement of being, given in reply to the priest's demand for her name, reminds me of God's answer to Moses in similar circumstances: "I am."

This intensely personal knowledge of yourself, this assurance of your place in the universe, grows deeper as you grow closer to God. This is why the psalmist was able to write, "I praise You for the wonder of my being." But how many of us view our being as something wondrous? How many of us can sing those words from the psalm and really mean the song?

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains,
at the huge waves of the sea,
at the long courses of rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars -
and they pass by themselves without wondering.
- St Augustine

If we really want to prepare a place for God in our lives, we must not pass ourselves by. We must remember God's reply to Moses, making it the basis of our preparation and our understanding - an understanding that was personified by Mary.

Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you', and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'”

Searching for God

The Journey of the Magi

I was supposed to blog on Tuesday but couldn't, due to falling asleep for fourteen hours straight after a tiring day at the nursery. (I woke up looking like an electrified hedgehog early the next morning.) I still haven't finished my post. However, in the meantime, enjoy this poem by T.S Eliot, which is related to my personal theme for Awake the Dawn:



The Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Book of Esther

For this, my first blog entry, I am going to focus on the themes of obedience and respect within the first few chapters of the Book of Esther. This relates, not so much to Advent, but to a more generalised Faith area – the whole book is about Purim, the closest thing many Jews have to advent, and I am going to put a modern / Quaker theme on it. This is because I am a Quaker, and I feel that advent and Christmas are no longer purely Christian, but are celebrated by many faiths.

Still, to start on my real entry, I have been studying the book of Esther in Bible study, and have become quite fond of the characters.

To begin, I will give a brief overview of what happens in the first few chapters, I will then pick up on the themes, and look at their appropriateness in Biblical times and relate that to what is appropriate nowadays.

There was a king – King Ahsuerus, who ruled over a very large area, from India to Ethiopia, and he had his capital in Susa. There, he chose to hold a banquet that would last for 180 days, and give him a chance to show off his wealth. On the seventh day, the King, who was slightly drunk, demanded that his wife, Queen Vashti come, all dressed in finery, for him to show all these people. She refused, and the King's wise men dictated that she should never appear again before the King. This was not just due to her misdemeanor, but also due to the fact that if the Queen could disobey her husband, there was a fear that all women might follow suit. Following that, he needed a new wife, and so all the beautiful young girls were found and brought to the palace, there to be paraded in front of the king. They were made part of the King's harem, but one in particular, Esther, soon caught his eye. Esther was in fact a Jew, but her guardian, another Jew – Mordecai, had demanded that she tell nobody she was Jewish, and she kept his secret. After a year of preparation, she was shown to the King, who crowned her his new wife, and held a banquet to celebrate her.

There are a few major of the themes of obedience here – firstly that the King ordered his first wife – Queen Vashti, to show herself, and she refused, and secondly that he could demand any woman he chose to be his wife.

In those days, whilst the punishment meted upon Queen Vashti was severe, it would not have been seen as unreasonable, because it would have been seen as very bad if all women were able to leave the control of their men, and so a severe punishment had to be selected. Also, as the King, he could easily have got any wife he chose, due to the prestige attached to him. Nowadays, both of these would have been shown as inappropriate. The first example would have been, because in those days, the premise was that men were essentially better than women, whereas nowadays, the premise is that men and women are equal. The second would be also wrong, because it negates any women's emotions, but at the same time is more acceptable, because if someone with the same level of fame, a rock star, or Prince, for instance, chose someone they wanted to marry, the chances would be that they would indeed marry. So why were womens rights so minimized in the beginning of the book? At that time, they were an unknown concept, and a man would have a harem of wives – a large group of women there to service his every needs. Nowadays, with equal rights therefore, does the story lose it's relevance? I personally do not think so. This is because the story could easily be written as a leader of a gang, and his girlfriends, easily re-written to recapture a high level of point and relevance. None of this is fixed, and the book of Esther is real enough still, that we can take points from it, whilst remembering the mistakes made. Nowadays, womens rights are seen as almost a certainty, that everyone has a right to, but we often forget, in our liberal Christian society, that it is not, and has never been that simple. In some religions, women are still a separate, or less significant class, seen as housewives, whereas at other extremes, there are religions that worship Mother Earth, or a female God. To people following some religions, especially stricter groups within said religions, women still have to live as a lesser group. In some countries, a man still has the right to marry many wives. Yet who are we to judge these age old traditions? Who are we to press for women's rights in countries where the women may prefer not to have rights? Who are we to fight for the freedom of Muslim women from the veil, when the women may want to wear the veil? Who are we to demand rights for people, when demanding those rights infringes on their beliefs?

Whilst everyone has a basic human right to food, water, shelter, people are not getting these, whilst the West attempts to impose it's democracy and views on countries that work effectively already, with their own systems. This made me think about Palestine and Israel, and how the West has firmly imposed it's own justice upon it, to disastrous effect. Or Iraq, which was invaded in an attempt to give it democracy, and instead the infrastructure of the country has been destroyed. We choose to present the countries as pitiful, and desperate for Western wisdom, this countries that have their age old ways of working. “This is the Western way, we speak up for you who have no voice, and give you what we know you always wanted.”

Advent: Hunting for God and Company

[This entry was written by our first guest (and non-Christian) blogger, who would like to be known as Watering Can.]

Advent means waiting for something to come. Now there’s a thought. What can we possibly be waiting for? God, perhaps?

Is God...
a) Already here and will always be here
b) About to come...we’re still waiting for Him
c) Here but we’re remembering how we waited for Him...re-waiting
d) Up there, down here, everywhere, watching our every move and we are waiting for Him to somehow intervene for us?
e) Waiting for Him to come again i.e. at the end of the world
f) Inside us, so we’re waiting to discover Him (but then is He hiding from us?)
g) Not here at all.

Am I waiting for your answer? Are you even paying attention? I might not be, if I were reading this. I know just what I’d be waiting for...Christmas presents, pocket money, maybe a new and inspirational idea, some event I’d be looking forward to or for all of the homework to end so I could take a breather. No, I’m not waiting for your answer because it may or may not have been a rhetorical question. Your business, so you can do what you like with your answer. Though it might be an idea to think about the meaning behind what it was. Maybe it’s linked to your religion, or maybe you have a completely different answer.

But I’m straying from the point. Advent. What do you think of when you hear that word? I always think of advent calendars. Arguably, that answer is justified because they’re everywhere, with their chocolate or traditional goodness, rearing their animated, colourful, rectangular heads a good month before they should really be there. If you believe in Jesus, then you’ll probably agree that He/he did not come down in September, October or early November. I’m guessing here when I say Advent is a month where you’re supposed to think about stuff before Christmas (no, not making your Christmas lists, though you’ll be doing that too unless you want to be dashing around as soon as the 20th December comes around) but about a lot of other things.

So, Jesus is coming! You’ve got a month. What are you going to do?! Perhaps for some it will be like an inspection. So then you’ll be cleaning yourself up, tidying your room, being especially nice to everyone, maybe getting your gold necklace ready to give up, thinking about how it is more blessed to give than receive and anything else that makes you look like someone who should definitely go on the good list. Maybe we’re not doing that, but we’re thinking. First of all, it will be a reminder: “Hello there! Jesus came down this time years and years ago. He’s there, watching you.” How does that make you feel? Afraid? Composed? If you’re a sinner then you know no one’s going to throw stones at you. But a few gentle words in your ear might make you feel just as bad.

So we’re waiting for Jesus. We’ve got bright, flashing lights on our Christmas trees, we might have some Santa ideas floating around (who is Father Christmas anyway? How come he didn’t have a Gospel?!), we’ve got nativity scenes up, we might have a couple of angels flexing their wings around the house, not to mention a few paper chains or snow globes. Everything certainly looks very pretty. We’d get top marks for the state of our houses. But what about ourselves? Indeed, how have we been behaving all year long? Have we been naughty or nice? Both. It’s not as if we’re going to have a tutorial with Jesus (unless we are great at prayer) but it makes us wonder about ourselves at least. This was the day that Jesus came down supposedly to bear all of our sins for us – as a little, innocent baby born in a stable who had an appointment with three intelligent kings bearing gifts they’ve lugged all the way from wherever they came from in pursuit of a star that showed us the light of the world. Did He/he know then that he was going to be bleeding on a cross wearing a thorn crown in front of a crowd of people? Was He/he lingering in an agonising wait for his fate or to return to His/his Father?

Of course we should celebrate His/his birthday! He’s the big saviour, after all. Now there’s another thought. How do you find a present appropriate for Jesus Christ? What do I think? Give Him/him your time. It’s the best thing you’ve got. What is Jesus going to do with a pair of socks or a bunch of chocolate coins? So is that it? Is He/he waiting for you as much as you are waiting for Him/him? What did the beginning of His/his life on Earth actually mean? As far as I can see, time for Him/him to grow up, get to know us, start teacher-preacher training and having the opportunity to talk to us as a man. As far as prophecies are concerned, we were all waiting for the Messiah. And some of us reckon we got Him.

Yet, is waiting really something we should celebrate?! Those torturing moments where something good is in front of us and we can’t get it yet. It’s not in the league of want-it-can’t-have-it but it’s still at least annoying. But it is something to celebrate. It’s knowing that the thing is there that counts. Just knowing that there is something very good ahead of us gives us the motivation to carry on. It makes a certain, amazing, formula of excitement. It makes us happy. Waiting can be the best time ever, and the best thing is that it builds. Every second is one second closer to the incentive. So Christmas Eve and morning are going to be the most exhilarating. The bad news is that it crashes out after whatever-it-is has happened. We should make the most of it. So – guess what – we’ve got Advent where we can wait to our heart’s content.

There are two things that might go wrong though. After it’s all over and Jesus has arrived in all His/his glory...the words ‘now what?’ hang in the air unspoken, like deflated balloons or the empty packet of sweets. What we forget is that Jesus is not a toy and He/he is not going to run out of batteries. Nor, if you believe in Him/him, will he get any less fun. So let’s think about Who/who exactly we’re waiting for and what you can do with Him/him.

So it’s about getting ready to be a Christian. This is the guy you’ll be following for the rest of your life. Taking up your cross and following Him/him. (Aren’t you thinking by now that this is a bit miserable for an Advent blog? I know it is. I eased you in with the festive stuff and the Christmas euphoria but now we’re getting spiritual now.) You know there’s all this stuff about searching so hard for God that you forget to knock at His door. Is this the best approach to take? Is sincere prayer the way to go? Probably. You could do little things like lighting a candle or saying your own prayer (I don’t know what you believe about Jesus but considering that you washed up here then you’re interested – I know some religions accept Jesus and some don’t but whatever) or you could just look at various Advent traditions. I’m not here to talk about them because I don’t know any but you could make up your own or just spend five minutes thinking about what this season actually means.

Or we could take a personal look at it. What are you waiting for? Yes, you. Anything non-materialistic will do, because it’s just about thinking for the minute. What is it about it that makes it attractive? Have you been waiting a long time? Is it difficult to find? Is it an element you don’t feel you’ve really explored or given enough time to think about? Is it something you want that someone else has already found the secret to? Or do you have no idea what you’re waiting for? Peace? Love? Spiritual fulfilment? A sense of belonging? Some idea of worth? A place to escape? Comfort? A new idea or ambition?What does this season mean to you, if anything? What are you waiting for? Get up and go.