Susiej

We delivered a food basket to the families from the local community house. My children, like most, didn’t understand poverty after all, they can’t have soda whenever they want it, (milk builds strong bones) and hamburgers from McDonalds are hard to come by. (I think it’s my aversion to hydrogenated oils.) To them –they knew about poverty first-hand.
The family we visited was kind, and their two children were delightful. Our children and theirs saw no differentiation between economic levels. As we left the apartment, my four year old said, “They’re not poor. I saw a bag of chips. To me, his comment was really a wish: They are just like us. Tell me the bag of chips means they are OK.
I wanted to tell him that everyone does have enough to eat. But instead, I offered awareness. I was grateful the food-basket organizers provided me with a handout, “The Hidden Rules and Values of Poverty” based on the book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty. I learned that this poverty, generational, as opposed to situational poverty is perpetuated by a set of values, based on immediate gratification. The author explained that she arranged for a homeless man to have a room and a small refrigerator. A week later he sold the refrigerator so that he could buy a bus ticket to visit his Mother. He didn’t understand the value of focusing on the future by being able to store food.

The following questions from the handout helped my children see poverty in a new way.
Do you know which grocery stores’ garbage bins can be easily accessed for thrown away food?

Do you know how to use a knife as scissors?
This last question was interesting — people in poverty rarely have access to tools don’t think ahead and say, I have some extra cash, I think I’ll buy scissors; or a screwdriver.

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Santa did make it to every house yesterday, and despite all the whining and naughtiness at my house, he came to ours too. But how?
Live Science found Santa expert Larry Silverberg, a noted U.S. engineer and self-described “rocket scientist.” He believes that Santa has made scientific breakthroughs that “the rest of humanity can only dream of.”
How does Santa know what to bring? Using an underground antenna, he collects brain wave signals, similar to the way signals come through a cell phone.
How does he get to every house? Look at Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, and see that space and time are bendable. So Santa uses this knowledge to wrap his sleigh and 8 reindeer in a relativity cloud, where time stands still. Santa also shrinks and expands the cloud so he can fit through the chimney.
Silverberg’s team at NCSU performed detailed calculations using this relativity model. “We found that in six months, a fleet of 750 sleighs could get to all of the homes on Earth, traveling an average of 84 mph in the relativity cloud,” he said. “Of course, outside the cloud, all that happens on Christmas Eve.”
And my favorite, “ Santa uses sophisticated nanotechnology to build toys and other presents in a flash, right there on the family living-room floor,” Silverberg said.
And you saw that happen at your house, didn’t you. I saw it too. Think back to Christmas Eve. The kids finally went to bed, and you had to pull all the presents out of their hiding spots, some of them still needed to be wrapped. Worse, some still needed to be built. (Love that shrink-wrapped packaging!!) Nothing short of a miracle allowed that to get done before dawn on Christmas morning. And then think back to all of those choices you had to make about what presents to buy for all of those loved ones on your list. Only Love can bring communication so clear. And we’ll do it again next year, the same way.

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Christmas Begins
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with the flocks,
then the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal those broken in spirit,
to feed the hungry,
to release the oppressed,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among all peoples,
to make a little music with the heart…
And to radiate the Light of Christ,
every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say.
Then the work of Christmas begins.

by Howard Thurman, adapted

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If you haven’t been there yet, check out the Norad site, which uses satelite to capture pictures of Santa as he travels on Christmas Eve. You can check him each hour, (don’t forget to hit the refresh button) and see him as he travels to China, Russia, England, New York and makes it back to the North Pole. When we see that Santa is crossing the Atlantic, the boys in my house and ready to jump in bed so they can be sure to be asleep before he arrives. How do they do it? This is directly from the Norad site:
“NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa Cams and jet fighter aircraft. Detecting Santa all starts with the NORAD radar system called the North Warning System. The moment our radar tells us that Santa has lifted off, we use our second mode of detection, the same satellites that we use in providing warning of possible missile launches aimed at North America. The satellites have infrared sensors, meaning they can detect heat. Rudolph’s nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch. The satellites can detect Rudolph’s bright red nose with practically no problem.”

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A gift for me.
Real Irish Guinness Cake from my Irish friend.

The Winter Solstice happened early this morning at 00:22 Universal Time on December 21, 2006. It happens the same time for everyone, although our clocks say different things. How do I translate Universal Time to my time?

The solstice is unique among days of the year — the time of the longest night and the shortest day. The dark triumphs but only briefly. For the solstice is also a turning point. From now on (until the summer solstice), the nights grow shorter and the days grow longer, the dark wanes and the Sun waxes in power.

December 25th was the date of the winter solstice in the calendar Julius Caesar devised for Rome in 46BC. Today the winter solstice usually occurs on December 21st. Although Caesar used a 365 1/4 day year, a year is actually a little shorter, and this made the solstice occur a little earlier over the years. There was a discrepancy of 1 day in 128 years.

In the early Church, some church leaders opposed the idea of a birth celebration, and there is no date of Jesus’ birth in the Bible. Origen (c.185-c.254) preached that it would be wrong to honor Christ in the same way Pharaoh and Herod were honored. Birthdays were for pagan gods. Christ’s birth, if observed at all, was usually lumped in with Epiphany (January 6), one of the church’s earliest established feasts.

Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the empire’s favored religion, sometime around 300 AD. However, Roman pagans celebrated Saturnalia that celebrated Natalis Solis Invincti, or “Birthday of the Invincible Sun God,” on the winter solstice. They were celebrating the Sun’s victory over the battle of night and day.

Constantine set the date of Jesus’ birth to December 25 in an attempt to eclipse Natalis Solis Invincti. A mid-fourth century church theologian later wrote “We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who made it.”

Both the Sun worshipers and the Christians saw the solstice/birthday as a transition from darkness to light. Christ conquered the darkness, as did the Sun. The theme was similar, and the traditions of one blended well with the other.

Winter Solstice and Scared Sites
Maeshowe is known as one of Scottland’s greatest pre-historic monuments and is perfectly aligned with the sunset of Winter Solstice Day. As the midwinter sun slips below the horizon, its last rays shine directly through Maeshowe’s entrance passage to illuminate the rear wall of the central chamber. One other place shares this phenomenon is Newgrange in Ireland.
You can learn more and see pictures and live video at these sites:
Orkney Jar
Maeshow
Newgrange

All of them, at the same time
Today also marks the first day of holiday break for all four boys. I’m a little nervous. They’re getting along pretty well, but I think they were born to hit, jump, scream, yell and tease. I’m imagining how our day will go, and that’s quite different from reality. I know this after 11 years of mothering, but I still create these unrealistic fantasies of how smoothly life will be when we’re all home. This causes frustration. I compensate for this by cleaning and straightening up. As if I believe that a clean, tidy, orderly house will make everyone calm. I think it does, but getting to that clean state takes me all day. I do start with a clean house every morning. But after a few minutes of them wandering around in the morning, it’s pretty much a tornado zone. I must make peace with this. Somehow. It’s amazing what a good book can do to draw them in. I think the real trick though, is seeing their own light, and getting out of their way so they can shine. I’ll try to remember that today, on this day of Natalis Solis Invincti.

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Here we have the wooden nativity set and the Coca-Cola trucks mixed up with the wooden pieces of Noah’s ark.
“Did the zebras come to visit baby Jesus?’ Let’s put Noah beside Mary. No, maybe we should put Mary in the ark, and leave Noah and the shepherds with baby Jesus.”

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