Do they have holidays in heaven? I like to imagine that you do, that up in the picture of my mind of heaven, the place is plastered with enough christmas lights, garlands and ornament laden trees that even the major department stores would be jealous.
Christmas just hasn't been the same around here since you've been gone. The first year or two, we barely celebrated at all. It took so much effort to get into the spirit and put up a tree, and no one's heart was really in it, but four years in, it's gotten better.
The last couple of years, it's all been very last-minute. The tree went up a day or so before Christmas, and Dad and I were up until about 3 or 4 am Christmas eve finishing wrapping and such.
We did a lot better this year though! Gifts were all bought by about the 21st, and though we were still wrapping Christmas eve, we were done by about 7 or 8 Pm! It's a new record I think!
The most memorable gift this year, is actually one you gave me.
Do you remember when you were in the hospital, and I started knitting a blanket for you? I was so new to knitting back then, that i never did finish it in time to give it to you, or for you to see it finished, but knowing that you had picked out the yarn, I had to finish it. It's been sitting here for four years now, I'd make panels of it, not like it, rip it all apart, and start over.
Having knitting to work on during the countless bus rides to and from the hospital to see you, and to work on waiting in waiting rooms and at your bed side, was very...cathartic for me. It helped me work through a lot of fear, and anxiety, and gave me something to focus on...something I could bring to show you the progress I'd made every day I came to visit, and get your opinion on it.
When you died, it got set aside for a really long time. I couldn't look at it or pick it up for weeks, months, maybe years even, because it made me think so much of you. As I worked through my grief though, bit by bit, it became a goal to finish it, in memory of you. I set down the knitting needles though, and picked up a crochet hook, instead, and it's been one of the best things I've ever done, and it's all because of you.
I eventually settled on a pattern called the "Drop in the pond". I thought it fitting because of your love of water, and since the three colours you'd chosen were shades of blue, it just seemed to fit. Well, after countless hours, and much blood sweat and tears, I finished it.
It's funny how, working on it, gave me closure. In a sense, I think, every stitch was a moment for me to work through my grief more and more, because when I put the final stitch in, I felt different. Sure, I felt good because I'd created something pretty cool, and I felt relief that it was done (It was big and heavy by the final round!) but I felt too like...like maybe I'd finally had a chance to properly say goodbye, silly as that might sound.
That blanket was always intended as a gift for you though, and now that it was done, I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. I could have kept it for myself, and a big part of me really really wanted to...but I kind of felt like it needed to bring comfort to someone else, and so this Christmas I gave it to dad, from the both of us, accompanied by a letter.
He loves it.
So, though it's like, four years late, I hope there's a way you can look down here and see it, and it makes you smile, too.
As much as Christmas is a time of giving, and family, and love, it's a time of reflection, too. I find as I get older I'm a hell of a lot sappier than I ever used to be, and I've spent the last few weeks in the build up to Christmas getting emotional thinking about days and years gone by, and some of the Christmas' from our past.
I remember the year when you were really little, and we went to see Santa, and how you howled like a banshee. Man could you scream!
I remember the year you gave me the chicken pox. Thanks for that, by the way. Jerk.
I remember Christmas eves spent singing with the choir and looking down at you in the pews. Christmas pageants we did together when we were small, that damn Christmas shoes song you loved so much that turns me into a sobbing mess. I still can't listen to it, by the way. I remember the year we went into "Secret Spy" mode and tried to snoop out presents early, and even found a couple. A lot of good memories of Christmas time, and so many of them include you.
Do you remember the tradition we started as teenagers of our special gift exchange with each other? It got to a point when we both hit our teenage years where people would only get us "Grown up" gifts, and deep down, being the big kids at heart we both were, there were still toys we wanted, so we made a pact to get a toy for each other every year? Remember that? It's one of my most treasured memories. I love that no matter how old you got, you stayed young at heart.
Christmas time brings me to something I've been struggling with a lot lately though.
You and I have had several talks on religion over the years. Heck, between choir practices and sunday performances, we spent an awful lot of time in church growing up. God's been something I've struggled with a lot over the years. Even before you died, he's always been a kind of...one of those things I've really struggled with for just about as long as I can remember.
It's not that I don't believe in him, because I do. I've always felt that there is something, or someone, a higher power than humans up there. Personally? In my minds eye I see God as a kind of father figure. A big bushy beard, kind of like Santa, with a twinkle in his eye, and an aura of Love, light and kindness, and it's left me so confused and conflicted so long, when I see how others view him, and how he's described and depicted.
Some feel that he's this force to be feared, this...being who's all about punishing and condemning you to hell if you screw up. Others see him as someone who's just given up and doesn't give two hoots about the people of the world. Neither of those feel right to me.
And then I look at church, and religion which I've come to realize is much different from faith and spirituality, and it kinda terrifies me. Hell, I was watching a video the other day, of this group who performed a Christmas Carol in an empty sanctuary (After getting permission from that specific church, of course). It was absolutely beautiful! And yet, I looked in the comments ( I should so know better by now than to read comment sections of anything online...) And there was this massive debate where certain "Christians" were more concerned with the fact that one of the singers was wearing a cowboy hat in a church, than anything else. They went on to say how wrong it was, and how disrespectful it was, and just exploded! And as I was reading this, I'm thinking to myself...does God really care? I mean...If I remember the lessons from Sunday school right, Jesus cared more about people showing up to church, about believing, and about worshiping God, than what they were wearing, and I have to believe that God would be the same way.
I think that's where most of my conflicted feelings and confusing surrounding God and religion have come from most. Christians. Weird, right? It's the people who proclaim to be so "in the know" about all of this, that kinda make me want to flee from it.
There was a video recently that a teenager posted, where he'd secretly filmed the conversation he had with his parents, when he came out to them as being gay. In it, once he confided in them, they were verbally and physically abusive, and by the end of it had kicked him out of their house and essentially disowned him.
Would God, the father of all of us, want one of his children to be abandoned and condemned by the earthly parents he entrusted them to, because of something like sexuality?
Would God really care about that in the grand scheme of things? "Thou shalt not be a homo" isn't in the ten commandments, I don't think...
If, and I will never claim to be any kind of expert here, the Ten Commandments are supposed to be the laws we live by, laws that show us how to love, laws that show us what sin is, then shouldn't other things, especially the really insignificant things, like cowboy hats in church and who a person chooses to love, be things that aren't such a big deal? I don't know...I just...I just feel like the God I think I know, the God I want to believe in and follow and Love, is not the God that so many outspoken Christians declare him to be, and it leaves me so conflicted.
So I guess then, I need to look in the bible itself, for my answers on this...and, I'll get into my views on the bible itself in a minute, but in the bible it says:
1 John 4:8
8 He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.
Okay, see, I can get behind that. "God is Love." That's how I understand him to be, and:
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."So loved the world". There's that love word again.
Ephesians 2:4 - But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,Rich in Mercy, and again it talks about how he loves us.
That's the God I know. That's the God I want to believe in, and give my life to.
I'm likely doing what I hate most though, when people pick and choose certain passages from the bible to prove their point, disregarding everything else in it. So I think, my new year's resolution is going to have to be to get to know him better. To do my own research, form my own opinions, and see what he's got to say.
But then...the issue is, the bible was written hundreds (Thousands?) of years ago, by man. And I have a bit of an issue with that. We know from experience, that the victor, or the richest man, is the one who documents history. That history books were written by the guy who won the war, not the one who lost it, or by the one who had the most money to hire scribes to write it all out, based on his or her opinion...it isn't exactly an impartial telling of the facts. The bible was written by men, and has been translated countless times in dozens of languages, and each time it changes the meaning to the text, just a little bit. Hell, when you read different versions of it, it can mean different things...even taking the same passages from the King James version and the New International version, can put a different spin on the same passages. So then what?
I think, it's the closest "instruction manual" or book of answers that I'm going to find, and it's been an awful long time since I've cracked it open and read it, let alone really studied it, so it will have to do, but I feel like it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, too.
I had a kind of epiphany today though, about this whole God dilemma, that I wanted to share with you. I know this letter's kind of gotten on the ridiculously wordy side, but it HAS been a while since I've written to you, so you're just gonna have to bear with me.
I feel like, God is love. He created us out of love, and has given us free will out of love. Sometimes, he's able to interfere in our lives and help miracles happen, and sometimes he isn't. (There are several billion or so of us, after all, and it's kinda hard to keep tabs on everyone's day to day life.)
So, for the sake of visualization, God is like a big pillar candle. Quietly burning brightly, providing warmth and light, and inviting us to him, to share in those things, with his love.
But God's not a flashlight. What do I mean by this? As a candle flame, he's soft, and gentle, and warm and inviting. He stands there shining his light for us to see and come to, but he isn't invasive. He doesn't sit there and sweep around like the beam of a flashlight, getting into our eyes and blinding us. He isn't invasive or demanding or confrontational like that, and it's a good thing!
If he were like a flashlight, those of us like me who are light sensitive would be pretty darn ticked off at him for shinning in our eyes and setting off migraines, and people who are blind would be left in the...well...in the dark, because they couldn't see his light. Flashlights don't give off warmth, afterall.
But as a candle flame, he can stand sentry and wait for us to come to him. The soft glow of his flame makes it so the light sensitive aren't hurt by him, and the blind can cup their hands around him to feel his warmth, and know him in that way. Which is pretty awesome, when you think about it!
And see, I think that we, the humans on earth, are sort of in two categories. You've got your tapers, and your mirrors.
The tapers, are the people who are able to share his message. Those who sing his praises, those who preach, those who minister and do good in the community, those who can write about him to share his message and his love with others.
They are the taper candle of the world. They dip into his flame, and take a little bit of it and carry his light into the world. And because it's a flame, they aren't "Taking anything away" they're just spreading it, because by dipping into his flame they aren't making his light weaker in any way. It's not like if he was a pie, and they cut out a slice, taking some of it away, and making the whole weaker.
And the rest of us? We're mirrors. Some people aren't meant to be preachers, or sing, or write, but we are meant to live in his light, and share it too. So, like mirrors, we pass his love and light around in our daily lives, and are a reflection of him. Some mirrors got tarnished along the way, and some aren't reflecting him like they should be, but we all have the ability to. If you've ever seen a candle flame in a mirror, you'll know that it's beautiful, and that it helps to make the light brighter, and to spread it further. Being a mirror is totally not a bad thing.
I definitely don't think I'm ready to be a taper anytime soon, but I want to be a good mirror. And I think in order to feel like I am, and to feel like I don't need polishing, I need to do my research, and really study and learn.
Maybe it's the spirit of Christmas getting me all sappy, though I know that this is something that I've wanted for a long time, to understand as best as any of us can.
I hope that Christmas in heaven is as beautiful as I imagine. Have you gotten to meet God, up there? Does it even work that way? What about angels?
I wish you could answer some of these and so many other questions I have about life, the world, and the great beyond...
For now though, I can only wish you Merry Christmas, tell you that I Love and miss you, and leave you with this, my favourite bible passage for Christmastime.
Luke 2:14
14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Until next time, Kid. And I'll try and not wait so long between letters.
Love you.
Bear
