Last year my husband and I celebrated our first Christmas with our infant daughter. She couldn’t understand the holiday, of course, but that didn’t stop us from discussing Advent calendars, wreaths, and Jesse Trees in depth, continuing a friendly argument about Santa Claus that has been going on since our engagement.
Citing our childhood experiences as rationale, we hashed out the significance of the Incarnation in the form of felt, cardboard calendars filled with chocolate, and a fat man driven around by reindeer.
Christmas in my youth meant festive cooking and fellowship. My mom made Greek kourabiedes, baklava, and pecan pie with nuts from my grandparents’ trees. My dad roasted beef or pork, carefully basting it with the au jus so that it melted on our tongues.
We never ate alone. Our guests ranged from Chinese engineering students, elderly couples without family, to lonely conspiracy theorists. Every year my parents took a census of the lonely and invited tablefuls to eat with us.
But one year we had only a single guest at our table. I’ll call him Jim. Full essay
Interesting
Amen to Sue’s comment. The only thing I would add is the irony of this author savoring the flesh of adolescent animals “melting on her tongue” but annoyed and ambivalent over the presence of a “child molester” sharing her table.
I always found it funny about churches. They preach forgiveness and without sin there would be no use for a church but yet those with sin still cast all the stones.
1 Timothy 1:15-16 “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.”
These are the only verses that ever struck a chorde with me when I still went to church.
I found the most accepting church was the Latter Day Saints. A part of being able to be baptised was that you had to complete your sentence and probation/parole so that you can’t play jailhouse Christian(only goes to church/believe in god while in jail)
Anyway. Point is that people should practise what they preach. All these ultra conservatives should quit pushing for stricter and tougher laws and learn to forgive
https://www.facebook.com/bestthings.us/videos/512063339167479/
This is a good video
It’s good you found a church that would accept you. Much of the time I had more of a racial issue with churches. Namely I lived in some pretty racist places. In Michigan there churches didn’t generally accept “chinks” as they called me. And in NY the Asian churches wouldn’t accept me without a large donation because I was half White.
I’m not much of a fan of churches anymore and have been put off because many of them I have tried to go to with a “good community” were only for those who could afford to put a hundred in the plate when it passed around. One even read out loud how much everyone had donated that month.
I made friends with one pastor and we became lifting partners. He hated preaching at the church because most of the people there just showed up to show they were better than other people. So instead of going to the church that man built we’d work out in an iron palace and debate belief.
I know not all are bad but so many people make them bad.