It was not my New Year’s Resolution to make Hani’s cinnamon rolls every two weeks, like clockwork, but that has been the rhythm of life for the past month, and there are much worse ways to spend a hibernation season. I’ll keep this up ‘til the crocus blooms.
Someone explain to me how it’s legal that Baptism of the Lord comes the day after Epiphany. They should be a week apart! After Advent, there should be a whole Theophany season, from Christmas to Three Kings to Baptism to Cana. Then you’ll have just enough time to pack the manger back in its boxes before Lent starts.
Imagine your cool older cousins as your six-year-old self.
And I think that’s how Jesus saw John the Baptist. The Baptist goes off and joins the very granola-crunchy desert-dwellers: the Essenes, living in a cave called Qumran on a slope in the desert past Bethlehem overlooking the Dead Sea. And that must have made waves in the family gossip chain. The Essenes name means the pious (it is sometimes replaced in Medieval texts with the “hasidim” - the Hebrew word for “the pious ones.") or the doers of the Torah. That’s a pretty pointed name in a religion where everybody is ostensibly a doer of the Torah. The logical question people are supposed to ask if you introduce yourself in a group of followers of the Torah as “Hi, I’m a follower of the Torah,” is Oh. Well, what am I doing then?
It’s a name designed to spark that question.
And then John began preaching out in the wilderness, gaining such notoriety that the king himself was intrigued. I’m sure the local Nazareth gossips would come into the shop and ask the family about their rather eclectic cousin. A real religious zealot, stirring something up.
And Jesus must have heard the stories, and something stirred inside of him. Maybe he longed for a long time to join John in his community out in the desert—a more pure search for God. Maybe he felt a little bit Essene himself. He did love his Birkenstocks, after all.
But, of course, his father (whom he looked nothing like!) was aging and couldn’t keep up with farm work and carpentry, and so he stayed to help.
But something called him toward John. And then John started pouring water over followers’ heads, earning him his famous nickname—the Baptizer.
And so he went out to the desert to follow John and when he got there John said that he was to baptize him! What did all that mean?
We don’t give the Gospel credit for the way it subverts all our expectations. Terrifying.
When babies shriek on planes or at Mass, I just can’t help but feel they’re making the noise out loud that we so often feel in our heads. We are all overstimulated in our world of screens and neon and children maybe most of all.
Jesus had good boundaries. He knew who was a friend and who wasn’t. He knew who was a follower and who wasn’t. People love to talk about Jesus is inclusive, but I think the word we’re looking for is invitational. All are welcome and, in fact, sought out. But not everyone RSVPs yes.
You know who does not have good boundaries? Lorelai Gilmore. That is the first of her many differences from the Son of God. I have just started watching the peak Y2K-era Gilmore Girls for the first time, and it is much cheaper than therapy, thank you very much, so I am consuming it with extreme abandon. The first season feels very stilted, maybe because each character speaks like a “Talk of the Town” column in The New Yorker or because you don’t see Lorelai’s relationship with Rory as a reaction to and a rebuke of Emily until the tail end of the season. And once you feel something very real happening underneath the eternal jazz hands of the dialogue, you’re hooked.
Also, Dean can waste away in Doose’s Market for all eternity for all I care. Jess for life.
James said no one was coming to his Monday afternoon open houses anymore. James, everyone who came last year (at least most everyone) has gotten housed, I said. So that’s kind of a success. But I guess the point of Christianity or the Catholic Worker is not to get people housed or “help people” but to open your life up to others. To build relationships. And that’s how you can actually transform anything—because relationships are outside the system that need to stay in the business of helping others and need to have others who are separate from and unlike the self to help. But if you’re in the business of relationships you can’t put yourself out of business.
The power went out last night—it was a dark and stormy night—and although it was only out for two and a half hours, I never want to be without power and a Practical Magiz-size supply of candles again. When the power shuddered on finally, it felt as miraculous as Edison’s first glowing filament. Once I finally had houselights, I ventured out into the dark, and walked up to close the gate at the top of the driveway. The storm had finally passed over Carolina into the Atlantic. A few straggler clouds blotted the horizon, but the sky was deep-cleaned indigo and Orion shone brighter than I’ve seen it in days.