Christmas trees at the mall or in other public spaces are often massive.  I’m not gonna Google it, but I’m certain they come out of a warehouse, pre-decorated with giant, tastefully color-schemed ornaments distributed all over them with factory precision. These trees look depressing.  Does anybody care about them?  Is anybody’s heart in them? I admit, I’m ignorant of the stories that might live in these mall trees.  But what can be symbolized by these massive plastic mall trees that look decent from afar, but are oh so hollow and lifeless up close?

Then, there’s my Christmas tree at home.  Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, we put up the tree and decorate our house for Advent, Christmas, and (more recently) Kwanzaa. I wouldn’t say that it’s always “fun”. It takes hours and involves a lot of annoying things like moving furniture, hauling boxes out of the dirty garage, fixing lights that don’t work, replacing melted candles, vacuuming and dusting, trying to get my not-so-young daughters to get off their asses and help!  But it is VITAL that this ritual takes place.  The result is a Christmas tree that, to me, looks great both from afar AND up close. 

It truly takes hope, peace, love, and joy to decorate for the holidays! By painstakingly decorating, we literally infuse our tree and our home with all of the hope, peace, joy and love that we desperately need during the holiday season. We have put our hearts and souls into this ritual for as long as I can remember: it’s part of our heritage. The tree, the nativity scene, the Christmas village (which didn’t get assembled this year), the Advent wreath, the kinara, the outdoor decor, and almost every single ornament has a story. Even the management of these objects becomes part of the process, as things sometimes get broken or lose their meaning. Getting rid of these things is hard, but necessary.  It takes care and discernment to figure out what to keep, what to discard, and what to replace from year to year.

Like the mall trees, I wonder what aspects of our world and of our lives might be symbolized by our own ritual around the Christmas tree and other decor in our homes. This annual practice brings together so many aspects of what make our family and our lives unique. We need this ritual in our homes because it is our culture, even our legacy, embodying all of the things that make this season special.

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When you arrive for the Stanley King Counseling Institute at the Brooks School in North Andover, MA in June, you have no idea where you’re going. There’s no signage and no one to greet you or direct you. It’s raining, and the campus is so vast that when you finally do find the library, you’re soaked.

Exploring

The next day, the sun comes out and you see so much natural beauty and such vastness of natural space that you gasp audibly. As the days go by, you take every chance you get to go for a walk. Maybe the goal is just to see if there’s any way to identify the boundary between where the campus ends and where something else begins. You never find the boundary.

⬅ One particular day, you find a pond with ducks in it. You experiment with the panorama setting on your phone camera. 

One night, the moon is so full, and the sky is as deeply blue as it ever has been, and the clouds are alive and glowing. It’s not possible to capture the splendor of this night in pictures.

Chapel

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One day, you find the campus chapel. It’s an Episcopal chapel, it’s early morning, and no one is there. So you go on a self-guided tour and have your own fabulously customized private church service in the sanctuary, complete with singing, dancing, prayer, and a postlude.

And you have the best time, and you feel fully alive and grateful for every single blessing. You find some woods, so you pray and give thanks there, too.

Portsmouth

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After some particularly lovely and brutally exhausting sessions at the institute, you go on an excursion to Portsmouth with your new friends and colleagues.

There, you drink the local IPA and buy lobster pants which you promptly put on when you get back to your room.

Boston

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There’s a talent show, some tearful goodbyes, and promises to keep in touch. Then once you’re shuttled away from the campus, you wisely arrange to spend an extra night in Boston so you can catch your breath before the long flight home. 

And you have absolutely no regrets. Never having been there before, you decide you adore this city, but you can’t bring yourself to spend $22.00 on a hot buttered lobster roll.

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So it’s off to the bar at Ned Devine’s for a couple of spicy pineapple margaritas and a steak and cheese sandwich that doesn’t disappoint.

Three lessons learned about deep listening

1. We can’t listen deeply if we don’t check our own agenda at the door.
    
2. There is SO MUCH never-ending work to be done, in order to listen and understand who we are and how much we need each other. And this work is the hardest, most vulnerable work we can possibly do.
    
3. When we get it right, the world and all its people become so precious. Our faith, hope, and love deepen. And our gratitude is overwhelming. 

May 25 is my birthday! I just turned 40!! And now, in no particular order, here are 10 songs I’m dancing to, with a glass of Riesling in one hand and a corn dog in the other:

1.    Moves Like Jagger – Maroon 52.    Attention – Charlie Puth 3.    Staying Alive – Bee Gees 4.    Lots of Drops of Brandy – The Chieftains 5.    Vogue – Madonna 6.    Despacito  – Justin Bieber/ Luis Fonsi/Daddy Yankee 7.    Wanna Be Startin Somethin – Michael Jackson 8.    He Shall Purify – Handel/Quincy Jones  9.    Gangnam Style – PSY 10.  Miss You Much – Janet Jackson

We had a great summer of stay-cationing with lots of videogaming and trampolining at home. We also went to the mall and visited Grandparents in Manhattan Beach.

My daughter Felicity turned 12 this month! She is my happy hope! I’m proud of Felicity for being accepted into the California School of Arts – San Gabriel Valley to study musical theater. Both she and her younger sister started at new schools last week.

I start back teaching at Harvard Westlake next week. Plus, this Sunday is my last Sunday as music director at Unitarian Universalist Church of Santa Monica. My first Sunday at Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church Pasadena is September 9.

The first 4-6 weeks of the school/church year are notoriously stressful for our family, as I’m sure it is for most families. This year is no exception, but new settings add an element of hope to things.

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