WEEKLY COMMENTARY: How Do The Four Sundays of ADVENT Prepare Us For Christmas?

Last Sunday (November 27) was the first of four Sundays when we celebrate ADVENT. I remembered from my youth that ADVENT comes every year at about this time, but there are so many special days in our church calendar, I usually was not sure why or what we were celebrating.  I did figure out that it had something to do with the birth of Jesus.

What is the purpose of ADVENT, and why do we celebrate ADVENT on four consecutive Sundays?

Basically, the purpose of ADVENT is to "set the stage" for Christmas, when we will go all out in celebrating God's entry into human lives ---- the birth of Jesus.

How does ADVENT "set the stage" for Christmas?

Pastor Mark Roberts, in a recent issue of The Presbyterian Outlook, offers an answer:

ADVENT emphases dimensions of our relationship with God that we sometimes neglect.  As Pastor Roberts says, "In ADVENT we feel what it was like for the children of Israel in their longing for a Savior.  We also get in touch with our yearning for a future in which the coming of the Lord will establish justice, wipe away every tear and bring the fullness of God's peace.  In ADVENT worship, we pay attention to the experience of waiting for God, rather than just rushing on to the next religious activity.

ADVENT also can help us resist the cultural tug to secularize the Christmas season. We often feel torn between the secular and the religious dimensions of Christmas. ADVENT helps us to focus assertively on God during the weeks before Christmas. This is better preparation for celebrating Christmas, than trying merely to avoid secular attractions.

Through such reflection we are reminded of just how much we need a Shepherd to watch over us, a Savior to forgive us, and a Redeemer to deliver us.  Thus, ADVENT can help prepare us for a truer and more heart-felt celebration of Christmas.

In today's secular culture, pursuing these facets of ADVENT is not a simple task ---- it takes focused-time and re-enforcement.

So, during ADVENT worship next week, look for the ADVENT wreath with its four large candles, at the front of our Sanctuary.  The candles symbolize our search for HOPE, LOVE, JOY and PEACE.  They are all lighted on Christmas Eve in our joyful greeting to the baby Jesus.

If we are truly focused, ADVENT can be a present opportunity to deepen our relationship with God.  This enriches our worship experience at Christmas time, and long thereafter.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this winter at CPC.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: What Does Thanksgiving Day Celebrate?

In 1621, the Pilgrims celebrated after their first harvest in the New World, and some Americans call this the "First Thanksgiving."  Wikipedia tells us that the first Thanksgiving feast was held at the Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, lasted three days, and was attended by 53 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans.

It was already an established practice in Europe to hold feasts celebrating such blessings as a military victory, the end of a drought, or a successful harvest.  For some, it was probably seen as a religious event, for others it was perhaps a time to let off steam and "party."

One of the guests at the Pilgrim's feast was Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who resided with the Wampanoag Tribe,  He had taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn, and served as an interpreter for them.  Squanto had learned English while being taken around Europe as a curiosity, and during travels in England.  In addition, the Wampanoag leader Massasoit donated food stores to the fledgling colony during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient.

The Pilgrims held another Thanksgiving celebration on July 30, 1623, after a long and nearly catastrophic drought ended with a refreshing 14-day rain, and assured a large harvest.  This 1623 Thanksgiving was significant because the order to recognize the event was from the Plymouth Colony's Governor William Bradford (a civil authority) and not from the church, making it likely to be the first civil recognition of Thanksgiving in New England.

"In the years following," Wikipedia continues, "irregular Thanksgivings continued after favorable events, and days of fasting  after unfavorable ones.  In the Plymouth tradition, a Thanksgiving Day was primarily a church observance, rather than a feast day.  But such Thanksgiving days would be a civil observation linked to the religious one, as in 1623.  Gradually, an annual Thanksgiving after the harvest, developed in the mid-17th century.  This did not occur on any set day or necessarily on the same day in the different colonies in America."

Then, in the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November, 1863, "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficial Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."  Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually throughout the United States.

But in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the traditional celebration date from the last Thursday in November.  In 1939, November had five Thursdays (instead of the usual four), and Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving Day rather than the last one.  With the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell merchandise before Christmas, helping the economy recover from the Depression.

Over the years, a number of traditions have grown up around Thanksgiving, that have no relationship to the event's early religious and civil intention.  For most Americans who celebrate with a Thanksgiving feast, a roasted turkey is the center of attraction on the dinner table.  Perhaps it was back in the era of President Harry Truman when the annual practice began for the President to "pardon" a live turkey, who would thus escape "capital punishment" and thereafter live out it's days on a nearby, peaceful farm.

In addition, many high school and college football teams will play their final games of the season on Thanksgiving Day or on the days immediately following.  This is facilitated by the common practice of employers to give workers as much as a four-day weekend.  Also, for many children, the big event of the weekend will be the annual Thanksgiving Day parade televised from New York City ---- but with much more emphasis on entertainment than on thankfulness for the year's bounty. 

For many religiously-inclined Americans, the annual Thanksgiving celebration reminds us once again to thank God for the rich bounty we find in our lives, whether material or spiritual.  But many of us do say such prayers of thanks throughout the year.  So, for such folks, perhaps the really unique gift of Thanksgiving is the strong sense of community with others, which it fosters.

The "community" around the Thanksgiving dinner table may be family, neighbors or just good friends ---- but, at this time of year we make a real effort to be there, even if we need to fly from a distant place.  Young and old gather.  The aroma and food delicacies create relaxed conversation and sweet recollections of people and times from the past.  In our very mobile and digitized America, has Thanksgiving Day reinvented itself yet again ---- morphing into an annual, not-to-be-missed day of COMMUNITY?

Perhaps not ---- think about the first Thanksgiving in 1621.  The Native American guests outnumbered the Pilgrims nearly two to one.  The Pilgrims were not just celebrating a good harvest and thanking God for their bounty ---- they were also recognizing that community with others had truly enriched their lives.

Isn't that also true for us today?  While the expression of thankfulness for our many blessings has not changed, it seems appropriate to also acknowledge the continuing gift of community with others.  After all, the Pilgrims recognized this blessing from the very beginning!

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage your pursuit of person spiritual growth this fall at CPC.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Surprises In Being The Care-Giver For Aging Parents

If you have raised children, you might think that taking care of children and taking care of parents are vastly different.  The first involves gradually introducing someone to the larger world.  The second, helping someone disengage from the world.  With children, we expect it will take time to care for them.  With parents, we are surprised by how much time it may take.

Also the challenges seem almost reversed.  Parents of children are badgered not to be "helicopter parents," hovering over their kids and not allowing them to make mistakes. But children of aging parents are told to hover more ---- step up, provide support, offer distraction.  Hounded not to be "helicopter parents" to our kids, we're now challenged to be "tugboat children" to our parents, steering them through narrowing waters.

Perhaps the most basic thing we do both for our kids and our parents, is to keep them safe.  It's important to consider interviewing at the end of their shifts other care- givers who help the family.  Many day-to-day responsibilities involve simply the repetitive tasks of getting the "patient" dressed, fed, medicated and bathed.  But a daily brief review with care-givers may catch a physical health problem while it can be easily managed.

However, sometimes protecting parents means not telling them everything.  The single hardest thing for Alzheimer's care-givers to learn may be that they can't always be honest with the patient.  When they tell you something you know to be false, your instinct is to correct them.  "Sorry, Mom, Dad has been dead for 20 years."  But care-givers learn that the only way to handle these moments probably is to conform to the patient's understanding of the world.  "Yes, Mom, Dad must have enjoyed that visit with the grand kids."

Another issue is that both children and older parents need help managing money. Careful review of a parent's bills may reveal savings they overlooked because they perpetuated spending habits of earlier days, which are no longer necessary.  Of course, this can also lead to some awkward conversations, while we gently make the case that they no longer need to be purchasing certain items.  Someone suggested a "financial driver's license" for older Americans to prove their financial competence. In effect, one is saying, "You are allowed to drive your own decisions, Mom and Dad, but only if one of your kids is with you in the car."

Help in managing money often starts in the area of regularly paying the bills, making timely bank deposits of interest and dividend checks, and generally keeping complete and accurate checkbook records.  It is normal for aging parents to become forgetful.  Care-givers need to find a way to monitor these important, but routine, tasks without offending the senior citizen involved ---- a person who probably had successfully managed such things for decades.  Find ways to monitor bank balances without second-guessing every transaction, and do it regularly.  The penalties for financial "drift" can be painful.

"I'm bored."  When I was young, I was expected to have hobbies and sports, and thus be able to entertain myself.  Now, parents ask us to entertain them.  As people age, generally their social circles shrink, and while this allows older people to focus more on those they really care about, it also increases the burden on their children. Anyone who cares for parents is constantly sending along recommendations for entertainment, just as we do with kids.  "I think you would like this book."  "Should we play a game of cards?"  Happily, these activity suggestions may help.  Studies show that learning new skills, being creative, or even reminiscing, makes "patients" happier ---- and often makes their care-giver happier, too.

For some aging parents, various forms of art activities might become a passion that is discovered only later in life.  For seniors whose worlds are often shrinking, the arts may cause new worlds to open.  Just attempting something creative with an oil, acrylic or watercolor paintbrush, or simply drawing, can bring increased self-esteem and feelings of accomplishment.

Some seniors have dedicated many decades of their earlier life to earning a living, and never felt they could afford to explore non-remunerative creative outlets.  Now, they can be encouraged to embrace new and positive aspects of their personal identity, for fun ---- not worrying about profit.

One of the most important safety tasks is to fully understand the instructions of the aging parent's doctor, and then ensure that those instructions are carried out timely, accurately and fully.  Forgetful, aging parents will forget to take their evening pills, or will eat foods that disagree with them.   However, there are low-key ways to monitor this.  For example, a pill box with compartments for each day (or morning, noon and night) show immediately if prescribed pills have indeed been taken while the care-giver may have been otherwise occupied.

Those families and friends who are caring for aging parents understand the upside-down emotions of taking care of someone who once took care of them.  We may think of life as moving in one direction, from dependence to independence.  We might also expect that our parent is moving in a single direction, too ---- eventually, from adulthood to childhood.  But, both of these simplistic notions are wrong.  The teaching and learning in life always moves in two directions at once, because all along a great amount of what parents learn is taught by their children, whether the children be youth or adults, and the children should continue to be learning from and engaged with their aging parents.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this fall at CPC.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: When Facts Do Not Change A Strongly-Held Belief

Moral attitudes are especially difficult to change because the attached emotions may largely define who we are.  Certain beliefs are so important to us that they become part of how we define our identity.

Take, for example, a story about Dr. Ignaz Semmelwies.  A bulletin board exhibit, entitled "The History of Hand Washing," once on display at Overlook Hospital, illustrates how difficult it can be to change strongly-held beliefs.

Dr. Semmelwies was the Chief Resident in surgery at the Vienna General Hospital in 1847.  At the time, the theory of diseases was highly influenced by ideas of an imbalance of the basic "four humors" in the body, for which the main treatment was blood lettings.

At the Vienna General Hospital, there were two OBGYN clinics.  Clinic #1 was a broad-ranging teaching service for medical students.  Clinic #2 was exclusively for the instruction of midwives.  At the time, the staff were quite puzzled about a consistent difference in the mortality rates of the two clinics.

A good friend of Dr. Semmelwies died after accidentally being poked with a student's scalpel while performing a post mortem exam.  The autopsy of the deceased friend showed a pathology similar to that of women in Clinic #1 who were dying of puerperal fever.  The latter is an infection of a woman's placenta following delivery or abortion, sometimes causing death by the infection passing into the bloodstream.

Dr. Semmelwies proposed that there could be a connection between cadaver contamination and the puerperal fever.  He concluded that he and the medical students carried "cadaverous particles" on their hands from the autopsy room to the patients in OBGYN Clinic # 1, causing puerperal fever and the higher incidence of patient deaths than in Clinic #2.  He believed this explained why the student midwives in Clinic #2 (who were not engaged in autopsies and had no contact with the corpses) saw almost no mortality.

Dr. Semmelwies instituted a policy of using a solution of calcium hypochlorite for washing hands between autopsy work and the examination of patients in Clinic #1. Mortality rates then dropped dramatically in Clinic #1.

Regardless of these facts, many doctors in Vienna were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands.  They felt that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.  As a result, Dr. Semmelwies' ideas were rejected by the medical community.  Perfectly reasonable hand-washing proposals were ridiculed and rejected by Dr. Semmelwies' contemporaries in the 1840's.  The ideas of Dr. Semmelwies were in conflict with established opinions, regardless of being consistent with scientific facts.

It was years after his death that Dr. Semmelwies' handwashing requirement earned widespread acceptance, when Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease. Pasteur's experiments demonstrated that organisms such as bacteria were responsible for souring wine, beer and even milk.  Today, the process he invented for removing bacteria by boiling and then cooling a liquid (pasteurization) is not in dispute, but it took decades for acceptance.  Today, Dr, Semmelwies is recognized in medical circles as a pioneer in antiseptic policy.

According to the Overlook Hospital exhibit, "Semmelwies Reflex" is a term applied today to a certain type of human behavior characterized by reflex-like rejection of new knowledge when it contradicts entrenched norms, beliefs or paradigms.

When the subject of climate change comes up in conversation today, some people deny the scientific findings which other people have accepted as true. Likewise, if we think humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time, can we accept as fact the theory of Evolution?  To believe in Evolution requires some rejection of Biblical teaching, which in turn could cause some believers to fear that they are compromising their personal belief system.  Furthermore, some might fear that such rejection of Bible teaching could alienate them from their particular group and its values, like their church denomination or political party.  Many times such doubters just feel their identity and sense of self are being challenged by the new information.

We tend to side with people who share our identity ---- even when their "facts" disagree with ours. Calling someone a "flip-flopper" is a way of calling them morally suspect, as if those who change their minds are in some way being unfaithful to their group.

However, people change their minds all the time.  But, when the stakes are high, achieving that change of mind may be hard to do.  That's why just marshaling data and making rational arguments often will not work.

Whether you are changing your own mind or someone else's, the key often is emotional, persuasive storytelling.  Stories are more powerful than data because they allow individuals to identify emotionally with ideas and the people they might otherwise see as "outsiders."

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage in you some spiritual growth this fall.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: "Pride Goeth Before. . . A Fall" (Proverbs 16:18)

At a youth soccer game several years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing one of my grandsons score two goals.  He was not as big in size as some of the boys, but he was high in energy and used his head on the field.  I was very proud of him.

On the way home, we were talking.  I praised him for his soccer performance that afternoon, and then I felt the need to add an editorial about always trying to do one's best --- to take pride and pleasure in stretching our capabilities through practice and hard work.  I told him it made me proud of him, as I watched him grow into a superior athlete.

I shared those feelings freely, and he seemed to appreciate the praise.  I also wanted him to recognize that he has coordination and strength, and he must decide whether it is not too soon to train himself to employ those gifts well.  Then, I said, he would someday be proud that he had pushed himself in a direction that others would praise, but that best of all would be the self-satisfaction of overcoming many challenges and times of discouragement, to finally feel he was fulfilling his promise.

Later, I realized I had been urging him to take PRIDE in the development of his God-given gifts.  Then I recalled that the Bible seems to have nothing but negative things to say about PRIDE.  In fact, sometimes PRIDE is called the "seventh sin."  So, if the Bible has a "black-and-white" view of PRIDE ---- pretty much black, is there no middle ground?

It seems to me that PRIDE-under-control might have some net value.  

Apparently people get into difficulty with their PRIDE if it becomes an inflated sense of their status or accomplishments.  In other words, as St. Augustine put it:  "the love of one's own excellence."  Thus, the opposite of PRIDE would be either humility or guilt.  If we have a "healthy" sense of PRIDE, perhaps it rests somewhere between humility and the love of our own excellence.

The Bible says God has made us capable of achievement, but that there is an attitude that arises naturally with achievement "that is not of the Father, but of the world."  To have victory over PRIDE, therefore, is to excel and achieve without giving a place to this sinful worldly attitude.  In this way, suggests the Bible, it is similar to our being a STEWARD over the gifts of God.  It is not the acquisition of success, the Bible seems to suggest ---- it is our mental attitude that counts.  Rather than merely the attainment of success itself, it is the attitude of our heart toward the acquisition that matters.  Thus we avoid the PRIDE of secular life and live in humble reliance upon God.

If we were to abandon some of our PRIDE as being too much of a good thing, would we lose too much of the emotion that can facilitate our attaining greater success in the use of the gifts given by God?  After all, PRIDE is an emotion that can help trigger and sustain focused effort to make the best use of our gifts from God.  By suppressing PRIDE, wouldn't we lose the pleasant, sometimes exhilarating emotion that energizes us positively in meeting personal goals?

The awful irony is that the very vigor with which we supress PRIDE in ourselves will induce a hidden PRIDE in that very effort.  Will we not be proud of our attempts to get rid of PRIDE?  Is it possible to fully escape the "PRIDE of life"?

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage some spiritual growth for you this fall.

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