Christmas Traditions

Kind of interesting. Traditions at Christmas are like playing telephone through the years. I look back - my parents go to church every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They start Christmas around the 19th of December. Epiphany is when the tree comes down. They open gifts on Christmas Eve. They talk about their parents - my father is the son of a Lutheran minister. You don't say preacher when you are Lutheran - you say minister - or pastor. Their lives were spent in the church on Christmas. My mother used to wake up on Christmas morning and her living room was transformed by Christmas decorations and a tree.....that was the Christmas surprise - the tree. I still have some of the decorations from her tree as a child. My grandmother Karol told me one time that she put out shoes for Saint Nicholas when she was little and looked forward to an orange in December.


My family celebrated Advent - we did that with our children - and now my grandchildren know Advent and its meaning better than I. This is good. I am beginning to learn the value of tradition. Also the value of creating tradition. Like taking part of the past and making a future..or the future sitting in the past's lap and enjoying the now of Christmas.

This Christmas morning, Bill and I relished in the traditions of our family....and noticed our children and their wives are making some of their own. Like playing telephone....we look forward to enjoying the outcome---- at each home --- as babies are born, toddlers are taught, children participate, teens are coaxed to remember, young adults want to go back, and married couples create their own from the pieces whispered in their hearts years ago.

My baby Ebbie

Christmas photos

Starting Over

A week has passed – Opie’s memory forever stays in a corner of my heart…but the empty hole was too big. I knew that at Christmas I would have a long two+ week break and wouldn’t have another for a year. So despite the fact that it was hard I decided to get another baby. Not a poodle…..all I would say is you are not Opie.

Probably the loss was even more poignant because this is our first Christmas without Bill’s parents. Both died this year…so even more so we need some cheer in the house.

So I got a mini-schnauzer. She’s very calm and sweet gentle feminine personality. Her first night she slept all night right next to me on her pillow. She has been a wonderful boost for Buster. I awoke in the night and saw them sleeping nose-to-nose. Her name is Ebbie.

Jon and Sarah went with me to look at her. I was sure that I would reject even the wiles of a puppy – but I was wrong! She wiggled and squiggled her way home to the Bucklew household.

Not much else I have going on – can’t wait to be home for two weeks.!

Introducing Ebbie - the heart-warmer

breath

Ancient philosophy views breath as the silver cord that holds the body and the spirit together. When the breath of a living creature exhales its last, the soul is freed from the body to find its way to the afterlife. The philosophy is not so unfounded in Scriptural truth.

Right away in Genesis 1:30 we see that God defines creatures as those that have the breath of life – these are the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground. In just a few short verses we learn what the breath of life does. Genesis 2:7 says we become living.

My little Opie gave up his breath today. He was five years old. My loyal, loving little man – all 5 and a half pounds of him – snippy bark, gray dimming little eyes and all. God has him in his hand. Job 12:10 “In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” Later Job says it is the breath of the Almighty that actually gives life.

In this way man and animal are the same. Ecclesiastes 3:19 “Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal.” We all live and die by the silver cord of the breath of God.

So here is what I surmise. Man and animal have the same breath of God in them. When God inhales his breath returns to him. Man’s soul is released to eternity, man’s breath returns to God, man’s body returns to the earth. The soul-less animal’s breath returns to God, his body to the earth. Then God – the giver of life exhales – a long deep breath…the earth brings forth life in the design of himself – the Maker of everything. The man’s soul is created; the baby is born and breathes – a testimony to the life-giving nature of the Almighty. The animal is born ready to give to man and earth a breathing living part of God as designed for its kind – a puppy, a kitty, a lion, an eagle to demonstrate to all that exists the true and multi-faceted nature of the one and only God.

So we experience little Opies in our lives. A part of God that touches us as none other can. And when breath is gone – we wait. We wait to experience His presence in our grief and loss of his breath in our lives. We wait to experience his exhaling nature again.