Lynne Baab

Upside Down Christmas

Monday December 22 2014

The other day I posted some words focused on what I’ve learned about the incarnation from celebrating seven Advent/Christmas seasons in New Zealand. A few days before that, Dave came home from a doctor’s appointment bearing a Christmas newsletter from the doctor’s office. In it were the words to a New Zealand Christmas carol by Shirley Murray, one of New Zealand’s most prolific contemporary hymn writers. The words do such a great job capturing the flavor of Christmas in the southern hemisphere. When I was looking around online to be sure I had the right words to the hymn, I found a lot of mentions of the hymn in connection with Australia, and clearly the words fit pretty well for that setting. But I want you to know this carol originated here in New Zealand! And I recently received a message on Facebook from a man in Argentina who liked my recent post and wrote, "Someday it would be great to compile a blog/book of church calendar reflections/meditations from a Southern Hem perspective." Yes, indeed. Those of us in the Southern Hemisphere have to think about new (and exciting) connections between the physical world around us, and the incarnation of Jesus, who came to bring life to all people in all places.

Carol our Christmas, an upside-down Christmas:
snow is not falling and trees are not bare.
Carol the summer, and welcome the Christ Child,
warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air.

Sing of the gold and the green and the sparkle,
water and river and lure of the beach.
Sing in the happiness of open spaces,
sing a nativity summer can reach!

Shepherds and musterers* move over hillside,
finding, not angels, but sheep to be shorn;
Wise ones make journeys, whatever the season,
searching for signs of the truth to be born.

Rightside-up Christmas belongs to the universe,
made in the moment a woman gives birth;
Hope is the Jesus gift, love is the offering,
everywhere, anywhere, here on the earth.

(*musterers are ranch hands who round up livestock. The photo is my lovely husband, Dave, in Dunedin's Botanic Garden in December. If you'd like to receive email updates when I post on this blog, go to "subscribe" in the right hand column.)

Bringing my whole self to the manger

Saturday December 20 2014

(On her Godspace blog, Christine Sine has an Advent series this year answering the questions: Who do I want to bring to the manger? Who might otherwise be excluded? Here's what I wrote in response to her invitation. The photo is my husband, Dave, on a Christmas hike in Dunedin, New Zealand, on the top of Flagstaff, 666 meters or 2185 feet.)

Who do I want to bring to the manger this Christmas? Who might otherwise be excluded or ignored? Here’s my somewhat odd answer: my body.

Of course, my body isn’t actually separate from myself, but sometimes it feels like it is. Part of that comes from the Christian emphasis on spiritual things. Our redemption in Christ often seems to be more focused on our souls and spirits rather than on our bodies. Another part of my sense of separation from my body comes from my struggles with weight my whole life, which have often contributed to a view of my body as a bit of an enemy rather than as a beloved part of myself.

My conviction that Advent and Christmas are a good time to focus on the significance of our bodies in God’s grand story comes from living in the Southern Hemisphere for the past few years. This Advent is my seventh in New Zealand.

I come from Seattle, where Advent evenings are pitch dark before 5 pm. Here in Dunedin during December, there is still light in the sky at 10 pm. In New Zealand, the red and green colors of Christmas take new forms: strawberries, local zucchini and red peppers cooked together, and lettuce from our garden paired with bright red tomatoes. These are healthy, light foods. Favorite activities of New Zealanders during Advent and Christmas include walking on beaches and hiking in the mountains, sailing and surfing, gardening and strolling among the roses in the Botanic Garden. Here, our physical bodies are not smothered in heavy sweaters and down coats during Advent and Christmas. Bodies seem alive and real this time of year, nurtured by healthy food and lots of physical activity.

At first, a Christmas season full of long, sunny days seemed very weird indeed. I know people in Florida experience sunshine at Christmas, but I seldom had. I missed the candles in the dark evenings, and all that imagery of Jesus as the light shining in the darkness. I missed that sense of hunkering down inside with delicious smells of cooking in the background and green and red decorations in the house. Now the red and green show up in healthy foods, and we focus on the beauty of the light outside and all the growing things we can see from our window even in the evening.

I have come to see the new pattern as a gift, a part of my growth in bringing my whole self, including my body, to Christ in worship and submission. When we think of the incarnation, we remember that Jesus took on flesh in order to redeem us. He didn’t want to redeem just our souls and spirits. Our bodies are an integral part of our selves, and therefore an integral part of our redemption. I celebrate that reality much more profoundly at Advent in the Southern Hemisphere than I ever did up north.

As I walk among the December roses, I remember that God made those gorgeous blooms, just like God made my body, soul and spirit. At this time of celebrating the incarnation, remembering the beauty of creation helps remind me why the incarnation was necessary. Truly I long to return to the purity of what God made, before all that beauty was marred by sin. Truly my whole self – body, soul and spirit – is broken and needs redemption in Jesus.

Yes, this year I want to bring my body to the manger, to bow in worship and surrender, giving my whole self to Jesus.

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Letting go of agendas as we listen

Saturday December 6 2014

Eleven years ago our son came to us asking advice about whether we thought he should marry his girlfriend of three years. They were both 23, and he felt that was too young to get married. My husband and I agreed with that assessment, but we also agreed with him that this lovely young woman was just about the best thing that had ever happened to him.

After our son talked through the pros and cons of getting married, I said: “Yes, you’re both too young to get married, and yes, she’s an absolutely wonderful person. You have a tough decision to make.” For the first time as a parent, I genuinely did not have an opinion about what he should do. Previously, I struggled and prayed about whether or not to voice my opinion. This time, I truly didn’t know what he should do.

I’ve looked back on that moment many times. The quality of my listening changed when I realized I genuinely didn’t have an opinion, and that I genuinely wanted to support him in whatever he decided to do. Yes, I would pray for guidance for him, but it was his (and her) big decision to make, not mine.

In the past three years I’ve been researching, teaching, speaking and writing about listening. I have come to believe that many of the same listening skills and listening obstacles apply both to listening to people and listening to God. One of the biggest obstacles comes from having an agenda while listening.

That agenda might be our certainty that we know what another person should do or believe, which I so frequently experienced as a mother of teenagers. My kids would talk about something they wanted to do, and I could see so clearly it wasn’t a good idea, and my struggle in the conversation was to find wisdom. What was the best way to influence them?

(These are the opening paragraphs of an article that was recently published in Refresh Journal of Contemplative Spirituality. Read the rest of the article here. If you'd like to receive email updates when I post something on this blog, sign up under "subscribe" in the right colum of this webpage.)

Five myths about friendship today

Tuesday December 2 2014

Last week I wrote about imaginary friends, and this week I’m continuing the friendship theme. The Washington Post has a wonderful “five myths” series: Five Myths about Ebola, Five Myths about Billionaries, etc. So I wrote a similar post based on what I learned in dozens of interviews of people age 12 to 85 for my book, Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual Age.

Myth: The biggest friendship challenges of our time come from the many impersonal ways to communicate.

I heard three major friendship challenges expressed over and over in interviews: mobility, busyness and new ways to communicate. Many people see the new ways to communicate as helpful aids in the light of all the mobility and busyness, even while being concerned about them.

Myth: Younger people don’t value face-to-face contact with their friends.

Almost everyone I interviewed, across the span of ages, affirmed that they prefer to see their friends face-to-face. Many people said they view electronic communication as a way to stay in touch with friends, so that in face-to-face encounters, they can begin from a point of connection rather than having to catch up on all the details of life.

Myth: Younger people are oblivious to the way they are impacted by the new communication technologies.

Teenagers and young adults talked to me about going on Facebook fasts and leaving online gaming communities. They talked about their longing that their relationships not be impersonal and technology-driven, and about not wanting to be mindless consumers of information about people. They talked about all the things they do to try to be faithful to their friends. The careful thinking about healthy relationships I heard was inspiring and uplifting.

Myth: Facebook always nurtures impersonal friendships.

Teenagers talked about staying in constant contact with their friends on Facebook as a way to show love. People of all ages talked about reconnecting with old friends through Facebook, being able to pray for friends because of news posted on Facebook and being able to give and receive support through Facebook. Others talked about their frustrations with Facebook, saying that it’s too easy to be superficial in your relationships if you rely on Facebook too much. I heard about a wide variety of friendship experiences from people who use Facebook, and some of those patterns seemed to have many healthy components.

Myth: Your age will determine the forms of communication you are comfortable with.

I did hear generational patterns in the way people talked about communication with friends, but I was also surprised by the variation within generations. For example, consider two people in their mid-thirties. One of them told me that she loves to write and receive long emails from friends. The other thirty-something won’t read more than the first three sentences of an email. People ranging in age from teenagers to sixties use Facebook and texting enthusiastically, and other people across that same age range told me they hate Facebook and texting (yes, including teenagers!). One real challenge with friendships today is that in any circle of friends at any age, there will be wide variation in the forms of communication people use. I think this is one of the biggest friendship challenges of our time that is not being discussed very much.

(If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up in the right hand column of this webpage under “subscribe.” This post originally appeared on the Thoughtful Christian blog, Gathering Voices.)

Imaginary friends

Sunday November 23 2014

When I was three years old we lived in a neighborhood with very few children, so I created my own friend. My imaginary friend played with me and my Raggedy Andy doll every day. We drank tea together at the little table my parents bought for me. My imaginary friend got me through that year. When I was four and we moved to a new place, I jumped into friendships with real life children.

Characters in well loved novels function like imaginary friends in my life today. After a busy work day, I like nothing better than to curl up with a familiar novel. It feels like being with friends in a non-demanding way. I know what the characters will say and do. I enjoy spending time with them.

I truly believe I don’t use novels as a way to escape from real relationships. When I’m tired, I simply don’t have the energy to meet up with friends, phone them, write them an email or check on Facebook to find out what they’ve been doing. The familiar characters in novels meet some of the same needs that would be met by getting together with a friend.

I was wondering if this was a little bit crazy when I heard some people talking about the television show West Wing.

“Those people are like my friends,” one person said. “I love to play a DVD of the show before I go to bed at night to have a little time with those people.”

Someone else said, “After that show was cancelled, I found I missed spending time with those characters.”

A few weeks later, I was reading A Memoir of Jane Austen, written in 1870 by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh. He writes about some of the favorite characters in the Jane Austen novels, “who have been admitted as familiar guests to the firesides of so many families, and are known there as individually and intimately as if they were living neighbours.”

There’s a lot of black and white thinking about friendships these days, perhaps precipitated by the rise in social networking. I am continually amazed at the polarized views about Facebook that I hear. People seem to view it as all bad or all good. Why can’t we have a more nuanced approach?

The same applies, in a smaller way, to the question of imaginary friends. Some people will probably read the first six paragraphs of this post and decide that I must be wildly neurotic. And they may wonder if I have any real-life friends at all.

If I spent all my free time with familiar characters in novels, I would worry. If I expected all my real-life friendships to mirror the friendships in the TV show Friends or the friendships in novels, I would be treating my friends unfairly. But I don’t. I spend time with familiar characters in novels when I’m too tired to communicate with living human beings. Sometimes I learn things about friendship from novels, which is a nice bonus. And when I’m not reading, I do my best to love my real-life friends as much as I can and as often as I can.

When I did the interviews for my book on friendship, Friending, I heard so many polarized views about friendship today. In the book I have advocated for friendship practices centered on the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13, which mirrors the character of Jesus. Whether we’re talking about imaginary friends or Facebook use, our criteria for evaluation ought to be the characteristics of love modeled after Jesus Christ which requires some careful reflection, analysis and prayer. 

(If you'd like to get an email notice when I post on this blog, sign up under "subscribe" in the right hand column. This post originally appeared on The Thoughtful Christian blog, Gathering Voices.)