Immigration Just Won't Go Away

spira arts / flickr

Back in early December I wrote a piece about immigration and linked it with no room in the inn when Jesus was born. On Christmas Eve this article was published in The Greenville News (SC). I had several positive responses to what  said--but one reader was not so happy with what I had to say. I include his email to me and my respond. I have left his name out on purpose.

The Letter to me...

"Roger Lovette’s column asking us to make room for all of the illegal immigrants in this country is instructional, but for exactly the opposite reasons he argues. He exposes the failure of liberalism (or “Progressivism” as they now call it). Does he literally follow his own advice, giving illegals “his room”? If not, he is a hypocrite and guilty of more NIMBY behavior. But even if he does, he does not realize that doing such a thing hurts the very people he is trying to help!  

Of course immigrants are welcome here, but in an orderly fashion that ensures their own well being and fairness to all. But to do it in the reckless way Obama allows just condemns these people to poverty, legal problems, dissolved families and increased debt and security problems for our country. It is very instructional to note that infant Jesus and Mary and Joseph’s dilemma was caused by a government edict (travelling for the census) that was imposed on the people without regard for their own well being, much less practicality. Jesus’s plight did not improve until he returned to Nazareth, with his parents, and where his father had a job and could support his family. Government can not legislate prosperity. It must be created. "

My response:

"Thanks for reading and responding,________. A couple of things...I don't like labels--liberals or conservatives, etc. I am both liberal and conservative depends on the issue. No room in the inn for means that we make room for the desperate and the frightened and the needy. We're not talking about drug dealers, etc. Criminals. To treat those looking for a safer place which America promises to be--is what I think the Judeo-Christian heritage is all about. It takes 13 years for an undocumented person to get citizenship--and then it is costly--which is one of the reasons so many are still undocumented. I know some of these people and I see them all the time.   The spirit of Jesus is to be kind and humane to everybody. I make a special effort when I see these folk to smile and be civil...what a terrible thing to be in a strange land and to be treated less than welcoming.  

This immigration thing is an enormous problem. We do know that Congress has done very little to respond to one of the hurting problems we face on immigration. We will probably never agree--but isn't this the American way--we can disagree and any issue and still be friends. I think one of the problems is that we all need to turn down the rhetoric and listen to one another. I have read your letter carefully...and I take you seriously. I do hope you will keep reading whatever I write in the paper. May this new year be good to you and yours. Roger Lovette "

                                             --RogerLovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Christmas Hope is More than a Bird with Feathers

photo by h.kopp delaney / flickr

If Christmas is anything it is hope. I love Emily Dickinson--but hope is much, much more than even the feathered bird she envisioned. Unfortunately for many of us today hope is a bucket with a hole in it. I think this is certainly true of the United States today. My prayer is that we can all rediscover hope. The President... Mr. McConnell.. Mr. Boehner... Harry Reid...Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin--though that really is a stretch. Speaking of stretches maybe I also ought to include Ted Cruz. I would throw in immigrants, scared and frightened this holy season. Those without a job and many wasting away in some nursing home. I'd leave nobody out--which means I would also include all the churches where the poor preachers are hanging on by their fingernails hoping they can endure all the pleas for praise bands and blue-jeaned preachers that say "Dude" constantly.  But more I would corral up all the atheists and say they need, like the rest of us some sealer to put in their hope buckets too. The whole wide crazy, crazy world. Even the "Dude" preachers too.

Want to read a splendid article check out Jim Wallis and what he has to say this Christmas Eve about hope. I recommend this hopeful piece to all. God bless us all. And--good luck with the bucket.

                                                  --RogerLovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Christmas--Remembering the Stable

I really can't say Christmas better than this. "On one night of all nights Christ did it, coming down the stairs of heaven with a child in his arms."

                                                     --Paul Scherer, Love is a Spendthrift

Prayer

"Almighty God, who now in thy Son art ever ready to bestow upon us thy very life, give us grace so to receive thy gift that we may bear in our own hearts that immemorial pain which is thy yearning for all humankind. Through him that is born Jesus, the Christ and our Lord. Amen."

--Paul Scherer

--RogerLovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Christmas--Where's the Star?

High up on our Christmas tree, near the top, if you look closely you may see it. If you don’t squint your eyes and look carefully you’ll probably miss it entirely. I’m talking about the star.

It may be the tiniest ornament on the tree. The little star is probably an inch and a half in diameter. The star was made in the church kitchen by a little girl and her Sunday school teacher over forty years ago in Southside Virginia.

Every year, without fail she breezes into the house with her own two daughters. After lugging in suitcases, pillows and presents she always moves toward the Christmas tree in the corner. She asks the same question year after year. “Where’s the star?” Christmas would not be Christmas without that star. I used to think it was a foolish request hanging on to that old homemade star. But I have changed my mind.

We all need some ties to back there. We need some stack pole of remembering that sends us back, back toward yesterday and the past and our roots. What’s your star? Probably not a paste ornament. What is it that calls you back to what used to be with a tug and a pull that is almost magic? I have a buddy who keeps high on a shelf an old threadbare teddy bear. Some of the stuffing is missing and one eye has been lost. His Daddy bought it for him at the fair one time. They stood there looking at the wonderful stuffed animals and he pointed and his Daddy shook his head. The little boy burst into tears and snubbed and snubbed. Finally the Father sighed took out his billfold and handed the clerk the money. His Daddy has been dead for more than thirty years, yet that teddy bare are one of his most precious possessions.

 I have another friend, long gone now, that kept an old pouch of chewing tobacco pinned to the bookcase behind his desk.  He told me he grew up in this little tiny cotton mill village and smoke breaks were few and far between. Almost everybody then chewed tobacco in the mill.  The man has written a score of books. He taught hundreds of students. And he always kept a pouch of chewing tobacco as a reminder of how far he had come and how grateful he was. 

Several years ago I stopped by to see the old black lady that we would now call a Nanny. She kept my brother and me for years and loved us fiercely. As I started to leave she told me she wanted to show me something. She opened a dresser drawer and pulled out something wrapped in tissue paper. She unfolded the yellowing paper and held up a slip. “Miz Ruth give me this slip. She always give me the nicest presents.” She had never worn the slip but she kept it and remembered.

Christmas is a time for stirring memories.
"Silver Bells"
"Silent Night"
"Santa Claus is Coming to Town"
"I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas"
"O Come All Ye Faithful"

But this season is much, much more. The faces loom up before us. Names of those long dead get mixed up with fun-filled times from our crowded pasts. Christmas is a remembering time.

Some of us hang the symbols of our memories on a Christmas tree. Some pack them away in tissue paper. Some place these momentoes carefully in a jewelry box and open it up from time to time and just smile. Some of us just keep our treasures tucked away in our hearts.

“Where’s the star?” Good question. Unpack it gently. Hang it high in your own special way. And remember. Remember Remember.

(This one of my favorite stories and Christmas articles. It was first printed in The Birmingham News (AL) but I have included it in my blog writings almost every Christmas.)

                                       --RogerLovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Arts Under Attack--at Christmas??

photo by Randy Robertson / flickr

The headline in our local paper read:

   “Cost of Arts Funding Cuts”

Just think what this will mean...

 more money for Benghazi investigations...

 more money to sue the president...

 more money to bring home the boys and girls in boxes...

 more money for tax breaks for millionaires...

 more money to dismantle health care for all...

 more money for drones...

 more money for planes and tanks we won’t use...

 more money for Homeland Security...

  

 

Just think what it will mean...

 no Christmas celebrations on PBS...

 no luxury items like The Messiah...

 no art programs for kids in poor counties...

 no Arts Commissions...

 no Symphonies...

 no theatres...

 no gatherings on Main Streets for Arts fairs...

 no “Best Christmas Ever” in local communities...

 no bands for football games...

 no Christmas wreaths lining the streets...

 no imagination and creativity...

 no new books for libraries...

 no scholarships for the gifted in arts.

T.S. Eliot may have had it right:

“And the wind will say:

 ‘Here were decent godless people

  Their only monument the asphalt road

  And a thousand lost golf balls.’”

   --T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock

photo by John 'K' / flickr


--RogerLovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

(You might want to read Paul Hyde's telling article in The Greenville News about proposed cuts in the arts.)

  

The Centerpiece of Christmas

Slowly we discovered them like treasures from another time. In big dusty boxes not wrapped in swaddling clothes—but in old yellowing newspaper, which, if we had a mind to would take us back to all those places we have lived. Papers from Owensboro, Danville (VA) The Georgetown (KY).... the Clemson (SC) paper...somewhere along the way the New York Times and the Commercial Appeal in Memphis and in Birmingham, The News. Long after we are gone someone will riffle through these sagging boxes and spread out some of the old crumbling newspapers and say: “Look at this. Isn’t this funny.”

But I got diverted. For what really mattered as I dug through those boxes were the tiny little figures that I found deeply nestled in those dust-covered containers. There were the wonderful carvings of the Holy Family from Oberammergau. Mary, Joseph, the little baby perfectly carved and painted, one sheep and I think one shepherd. These figures were costly—and so we had to leave the rest of the Holy Family in Germany. Then there is one of my favorites. Years ago I visited San Antonio and saw this wonderful nativity set that some native in Mexico had fashioned. It was primitive but beautiful. The characters were all white trimmed in silver. But we got busy, never went back to the shop—and came home without the set. Months later I told my friend who was moving that way about that Nativity set and how I wished I had bought it.  The next Christmas there arrived a package at our house. Opening up the box there they were—the figures I had seen in the store window in Texas. Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, a Wise Man or two—a sheep and a goat—two angels—and at the center of it all a baby the size of my thumb. Made out of plaster of paris. Tiny halos around the heads of Mary and Joseph and the two angels. I carefully arrange them in a barn—with a tiny star on top.

There is another set from Switzerland. On a wooden platform there are the tiniest nativity figures you could imagine. There is also a paper foldout that we picked up somewhere in Europe. Opening it up—there they are—the holy family and animals and kings and shepherds and even an angel.

But my all-time favorite is those figures that come from our first church and first Christmas we were married. We picked them up at K-Mart. And I remember asking my wife, “Are these tacky?” And she said , “Maybe. Get them anyway.” So every year they too come out of some box and are carefully unwrapped. There is Mary with a hole in her back where our son played Captain Marvel with her as she sailed through the air. There is a Shepherd and a King. Where’s Joseph? We lost him somewhere along the way. Jesus and his manger were wrapped, not in swaddling clothes but in a foldout page of the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer. Jesus, of course is the centerpiece but showing the wear and tear of the years. One time our little Dachshund got hold of   Jesus’ foot and one toe is missing—but the rest of him is intact.

Why do we, year after year, go through the same motions? Dig the boxes out; carefully unwrap the holy family over and over. The history of our family’s life can be seen

in those tiny figures and in the newspaper in which they are wrapped. Why do we keep doing this?

Robert McAfee Brown once told that every Christmas his family came home from all over the country. And every Christmas Eve he said they gathered around a tiny crèche of Mary and Joseph and a baby and others, too. And he said: We do this to remember this is the centerpiece of it all—quiet, peaceful, loving, faithful. Outside our doors, he said is a wild, cold crazy world. But around the manger we remember we are not alone really. We remember that the light really did—and does—shine in the darkness and nothing—no thing can put it out. Maybe this is why, all over our house you will bump into Mary and Joseph and a baby.  

                                        --RogerLovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

I'm Dreaming of a Real Christmas

photo by Randy Wright

By this time of the year most of us have inundated by Christmas stuff. Shopping...cards...decorations. I see these houses with so many lights and do-dads that you can hardly get in the front door. I don’t think even Santa will be able to navigate through all those lights. Christmas is not presents nor cakes nor chestnuts roasting on an open fire or even family members coming from all over. Christmas is no even church services where we all go to enormous lengths to say: Ta-Dah to this holy time. I love all these things...but they aren’t the real Christmas.

Christmas is mystery at its heart. An angel coming to a sixteen-year-old girl. A virgin of all people. A baby born in a barn to poor peasants. In Bethlehem? Shepherds having their lives turned inside out. Wise Men from Iraq or Afghanistan standing that windy starry night open-mouthed at what they saw. It’s leaving that tired woman wiping that counter at the Waffle House a hundred dollar bill. It’s standing by a piano in a nursing home and having a little tiny woman who knows nobody or even where she is—singing clear and sure every word of Silent Night. Christmas is mystery—never predictable. It is out of our control and the wonder of it all just sneaks up on us.

It really is a partridge in a pear tree... and two turtledoves... and three French hens... and golden rings... and swans...and jumping ladies and lords. Crazy stuff.

Once in the Christmas doldrums I told a counselor I was having a hard time with this season. He told me we expect too much and when we don’t get the big OK...whatever that is...we are just disappointed yet another time and we shuffle toward yet another year with little wonder. Same old. Same old. The wise man told me to take one small moment and build my whole Christmas around that. Forget all the frantic stuff.  He told me to keep your eyes open that the real Christmas might find me instead of the reverse.

I thought it was strange advice until Christmas Eve, standing in the balcony of a crowded candle-lit church—my sermon in hand and hoping none of the candles lining the pews would topple over or catch fire to someone’s sleeve, worry that the Advent candles might not all burn—it all faded away. Out of the silence a little boy in a choir robe moved down the long aisle quietly singing: “This little light of mine...” And Christmas came. At the center of it all was God.

So let us keep our eyes wide open. Let us be surprised by the tiniest and most important of things. Discovering mystery—however it comes—now that is Christmas.

                                   
                                                     --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com