Christmas in a Non-Christian culture

Christmas in a Non-Christian culture

As Christmas fast approaches it seems that everyone is swept up in the celebration of a holiday that for the majority of us holds little, or for some, no meaning at all.

Everyone is more than happy to have time off but if questioned about whether the birth of Jesus actually meant anything to them, I suspect that the answer would be no.

So why do we celebrate Christmas – if we remove Jesus are we really just celebrating the existence of some guy called St Nicholas who purportedly made wooden toys and distributed them around his village?

Of course that story has grown into a man on a sleigh with magic reindeer who can fly around the world at more than the speed of light giving toys to everyone and fitting his not so athletic frame down people’s chimneys!

Not to sound like scrooge but it really isn’t much better than superstition.

A friend of mine made the observation that regardless of people’s religious views department stores still play Christmas carols on loop for the month of December and surprisingly we hum along or in some cases even mouth the words.

So at this time of the year when we all put up Christmas trees and the like – I wonder whether we have lost sight of our duplicity. We turn our backs on Christ but are happy to indulge in the by-products of a day celebrating his birth.

Some of us will even watch The Nativity with our very own Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. Statistically more of us will attend church on Christmas Day than any other day of the year – even Easter. So what drives us to this religious (?) fervour?

Are we just caught up in it all or do we truly believe that something momentous happened that causes us to celebrate Christmas.

For me I am looking forward to my favourite Christmas pastime which isn’t eating but watching yet another rerun of Merry Christmas Mr Bean!

Merry Christmas to you all and have a great holiday.

Facebook – Social networking or a public nuisance?

Now let us start by stating that Facebook is a great networking tool – after all I have enjoyed catching up with old Friends, distant friends and surprisingly people I see most days; what a strange phenomenon!

But why is it so successful? Is it that we can have a quick polite conversation with people we don’t really like – keeping enough contact with them that we feel like we are being a good friend without really having to engage them because in reality they drive us crazy?

Is it that we can say things on facebook that we would never dare to say in person?

How many of us have become friend collectors – adding people that we wouldn’t recognise in the street or even know if they happened to serve us in a shop?

Of course there are the other more attractive features of Facebook like being able to join groups with people we have never met before but share the same interests as ourselves such as the “addicted to Doctor who’ group.

Then there are of course the annoying things about Facebook, like the time I managed to ‘hug’ everybody between 3-5 times when I was trying to hug one person only once!

Or the posts to individual walls that all of a sudden appear on everyone’s wall, in fact I noticed that my first post about this group appeared on one person’s wall as coming from not me but another friend!

And what started off as a bit of ‘forwarding Fun’ has mutated into the curse of “Mortimer the travelling bear’, Vampires, slayers, Zombies and other numerous invitations to add seemingly useless applications!

The only application of much use is undoubtedly the StarWars one but then again I am a little biased.

The other day someone inquired of me how to delete friends without them knowing, ah parting is such sweet sorrow as they say – how do you write someone off without them knowing – well apparently you can and they won’t even know!

So as I write this post I know that throughout the facebook world my name is being deleted en masse and thankfully I will be blissfully unaware – not that I am worried because rejection has no part to play in my life but I must end with a warning to you all – if I find out you have deleted me you will be suddenly overrun with doctor who bobbleheads and invitations to join the “I grew up in Thames’ group.

Have a great facebook day and see you next week.

Who cares!?!?

So… I am waiting in line to order my coffee this morning – quite a long line I must add, as there is only one person serving, typical!; when helpful retail assistant opens up a new counter - “can I help anyone?”

Why is it always the person near the back of the line who rushes over? After all they have been waiting the shortest period of time whilst those of us who have done the time end up waiting longer.

To make matters worse the person from the back of the line is on a first name basis with the retail assistant, hmm… so it is all about who you know – of course he orders coffee as well so I end up having to wait for his coffee too!

Doing my best unimpressed look I hope to make him feel uncomfortable about his ignorant, selfish behaviour – but alas he probably doesn’t even care.

What really impresses me is when in a similar situation the retail assistant has the nous to say – “actually sir that man was next in line” There is a certain victory one can take when the rude person is so tactfully put in their place.

However from my extensive experience as a consumer I wonder if the attitude of who cares has crossed over the counter to the retailer themselves ; they certainly don’t seem to be too worried about customer service anymore, or am I just getting old and cranky?

I admit I also have the ‘who cares’ attitude when it comes to buying things,

1. Who cares about what you did last weekend – stop chatting to the other assistant and serve me!

2. who cares about all the other things you are trying to sell me – I only came here for the newspaper!

3. who cares about your opinion, whether it looks good or not, I know you are just trying to sell me the item regardless of my terrible sense of fashion!

Of course I have a solution for all of us when it comes to this frustration and it doesn’t involve making customer service courses compulsory for shop assistants (although that wouldn’t be a bad idea!)

No …. The answer is buy online! No people to deal with, no queues, no pushy salesmen, no talk about what you and the boyfriend did last weekend, just a credit card and a website – surely this is the epitome of shopping as it should be.

So as I contemplate the rest of the day I rest assured that everyone is going to get presents off websites for Christmas this year – bye for now I’m off to ‘trademe!’

HIlls NZ Golf Open 2007

As an amateur (very amateur) golfer I look forward to watching some of the Hills NZ golf open over the next few days. NZ’s greatest hope is again Michael Campbell winner of the 2005 US open but like most sport in our country at the moment I don’t think many would rate his chances. He has been the absolute model of inconsistency for most of his career and probably more so since winning the US open.

Golf they say is a real mental game - you can read that one of two ways let’s go with the sensible way today. So is it the mental agility that Campbell lacks – he has a psychologist as do many other professional sportsmen and women today but can they really instil confidence in your swing or your putting?

Even the greatest golfers seem to have ‘off’ days’- how many times have we seen Phil Mickelson lose a tournament with an awful shot or maybe two or three awful shots?

And then there’s Tiger the enigma of world sport – does he ever have an off day? Of course it’s just that his off days are the equivalent of a good round for other golfers. There is something to be said for natural talent obviously but I suspect we can’t escape the dreaded P word – practice.

Even Michael Campbell admitted it on TV , that perhaps he had enjoyed the US open win a little too much – but it isn’t all his fault – we put him up there, asked him to every social event under the sun and encouraged him to be involved in all sorts of things.

Of course that’s my excuse too, too many social events – that’s why I didn’t get an invite to the tournament after all my best round is a 54! Let’s not mention that is for 9 holes!

No I’m afraid that when it all boils down to it, if you don’t put the hard yards in you won’t make the yards off the tee. Shame really I could be such a great golfer…not!

Transcendent Worship

Of late I have been listening to David Quinlan, a Portuguese worship leader on youtube. A friend of mine put me on to him. All of the lyrics are in Portuguese and my attempts to find a translation haven’t been entirely fruitful shall we say.

One of his songs in particular appeals, ‘abraca me’ – meaning ‘embrace me’.

Despite not knowing what the rest of the song actually says there is no doubt that this man is using his gifts to worship God. It gives you one of those ‘shiver’ sensations – the knowledge that there is something about it.

To put it in ‘christianese, there is an anointing on it.

That got me thinking that true worship is really transcendent – no not spooky new-age transcendence but transcendent in that it crosses barriers, barriers of language, style etc.

I don’t know what David Quinlan is singing about per se but I do know that he is worshiping God and something about it draws me to worship him (God that is) as well.

I think it is testament to what Jesus meant when he talked about the church being more than just a local congregation – as one we all worship the same God despite all those human variables like style that seem to be what we get hung up on – funny that.

The touch of the holy spirit on a song has no regard for whether it fits what we like or should I say how we like to worship.

The verse about ‘worshipping him in spirit and in truth’ comes to mind – perhaps this is what it meant? Just a thought – but for now if you are interested have a look at the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akds2ltYIx0

Flying a plane for the first time

First Time Flying…

For my 30^th Birthday my wife surprised me by organising a flying lesson.

As with any new endeavour there is a certain amount of trepidation, that knowledge that you really don’t know what you are doing and the ramifications of that, when flying a plane, could be disastrous.

The pilot who took me up can’t have been any older than me but it figures that he did know what he was doing. He ran me through the basic controls before we left the ground but after take-off the controls were all mine!

So off we went flying towards the Mount and up the Papamoa coastline – given the fact that he took the above picture he obviously wasn’t too worried about my flying. As the time of the lesson drew to a close he again took over and landed the plane. Apparently landing and taking off are the hardest parts to master.

I think that too, is the way of life in general, especially when it comes to ministry. When we are starting off we live in that trepidation that we don’t know everything – and for the most part that feeling is always there to some degree – sometimes worse at times than others but thankfully we have people and God to help us, to explain the basic controls. And like flying he also lets us fly by ourselves. When we finally come to landing he has that sorted as well, his destination is already set for us.

People say that staying in the ministry for the long haul is a difficult prospect, in fact the statistics aren’t too flash, so how do we keep on flying.

To continue with our plane analogy , we need to be continually refuelling – it’s a little hard to refuel in midair when you are in a cessna but what if you had one of those jets that can fly behind a refuelling plane like you see in that movies, now that would work.

I think that maybe we need to take time to refuel sometimes, serious intentional time – fatigue only leads to pilot error and lets face it you won’t fly far on an empty tank.

This morning John Watson spoke to the interns and gave this bit of advice. If you wish your arrows to keep hitting the mark then you have to loosen the string on the bow at times otherwise it will eventually break because of the continued tension.

Something for us all to think about.

plane
Originally uploaded by doctornemoidian