Green Wisdom December 18, 2008

Let me first begin by saying that I love Christmas time. And not necessarily the day of Christmas itself, but really more I enjoy the month leading up to it.

Two very important things defined my Christmas preparations when I was growing up. First, my mom and I would watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Second, there was The Muppet Christmas Carol. Even today, my mom and I live for the Tuesday night before the week of Christmas when that little round-headed kid who wants so dearly to kick that football will learn the true meaning of Christmas (and of life).

Tonight, however, I saw this new special Muppet Christmas movie and I started thinking back to when I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol, an adaptation of the classic written by Charles Dickens. It is fantastic.

Kermit the Frog is my hero. He seems to have the most gentle soul. He is just a big green ball of wisdom, teaching us all the things we need to know to navigate this life with grace, and he makes us laugh while he’s at it. He even wrote a book in 2006, Before You Leap: A Frog’s-Eye View of Life’s Greatest Lessons. I have not read the book myself, but I plan to make it a point to do so. Meanwhile, I found this clip from the movie that just completely warms my heart and gets me in the Christmas spirit.

 

Grocery shopping with Grandma November 16, 2008

A couple of days ago I took my grandmother to the grocery store. I learn something new every time I spend time with this woman and I doubt she has any idea that she is teaching me.

She has the heart and soul of a true child. Hers is the kind of soul tarnished only by the wisdom of her 83 years. Otherwise, it is completely new and full of life. The night before, she had just been released from the hospital after about a week of tests and she could not have been more thrilled to get out. She has been admitted several times in the past few years due to her heart, but I swear it beats stronger and lighter each time she comes home. Each time she threatens to escape her eighth floor hospital room and start walking home, and that is funny because she is actually serious.

Everytime I visit her or speak to her I watch her in amazement and hope that I can grow up to have half the wisdom she has. Her past is interesting, because she grew up on a farm in rural Nebraska where she had little time to be a child because she was too busy working and taking care of all her siblings. She did not get the chance to go to high school because of the work she had to do. The woman I see now is one who has not allowed herself to be hardened by this loss of a childhood. Instead, she has embraced the opportunity to regain it now in her later years.

And maybe that’s better. She has done a lot of living and seen a lot of things, and now she is more ready than ever to embrace the little things in this life. What strikes me most is her faith. She is a strong Catholic and always has been, and her almost blind, unceasing faith in the Lord is like that of a child. It is innocent and completely without obstacle, and it is not that she is gullible. She has faced many trials in this life and had many more chances than any of us to give up on the Lord.

I am definitely not one to encourage blind acceptance of beliefs, I absolutely advocate questioning everything so that you know what you really think and make your beliefs your own. That being said, once we get over the questioning, we have to adopt something. We have to stand for something. And that cannot be done by just proclaiming your identity as a believer, it has to be pursued and backed by the enthusiasm and fervor that we all showed as children towards something. Likely, much of the enthusiasm of our pasts was directed towards our future. Our project now must be to direct it toward our present.