Yoga on Christmas Eve

The yoga teacher checking students in hunches over the desk, trying her best to be cordial and efficient while Clean Eating Lady is dominating. "I had steel cut oats. Dried cherries. Coconut oil," Clean Eating Lady itemizes.

"Okay, coconut oil. So you just melted it down?" Yoga teacher is trying her best to do the job she's paid to do while feigning interest in the breakfast lives of yogis.

I feel bad for interrupting Oatmeal 101 but that feeling lasts for 0.4 seconds.

"Hi, my husband and I are not checked in yet."

"Okay, are you in the system?"

"We are," I say.

Clean Eater is going to combust if she does not finish the ingredients. "And then I added agave."

"Oh, agave, so that was your sweet," says Yoga teacher.

I can't stop laughing. I've been laughing all day.

I finished "Gone Girl" this afternoon and found it mildly overrated, but it did suspend a good mystery.

But not like the mystery of what Clean Eating Lady put in her oatmeal. We were all waiting with bated breath to find out what her sweet was.

Agave. That's what.

Why Christmas is, inherently, nostalgic

The kids and I weren't aware we started a ritual last week, but it was the beginnings of something worthwhile. Basically all you do is come home from school and work and go to the freezer and take out the Slow-Churned Edy's Chocolate ice cream and eat as much as you can stand while talking about your day at the kitchen table. You do this every day, at first because it's cold outside and oddly the most comforting thing is a bowl full of chocolate ice cream, with requisite chocolatey mustaches to boot.

In order to continue the ritual, you have to buy more of the freezer food of the gods. No other flavor or variety will do. You can still sit and talk about big ideas and bellyache about petty people, but something will be missing. Graham crackers and milk do not cut it.

***

My friend Lisa picked me up from the airport today. I knew we didn't have any ice cream at home so I made asked her to take me to Frogurtland so we could dish, literally and figuratively. It was like I was homesick for chocolate ice cream.

***

My uncle Bob died last week and it was the kind of awful terrible unfathomably unfair thing, in spite of having lived a very full and happy life. Just the way he went. Parkinson's Disease is a total crap way to go, the slow lumbering suffering and total awareness of the dismantling of everything over which you once had control.

I'm not into the theology of our loved ones smiling down on us. Not yet. I'm into the theology that we weren't made for any of this. We were made for a better world. Every ache and acute feeling of separation in this world is a reminder that we were made for wholeness and unity.

***

The best scene in all of Mad Men is the last episode of Season I ("The Wheel") when Don Draper is selling the "carousel" marketing pitch to Kodak. He defines nostalgia in such a perfect way that it reaches across every culture, generation, sex, race, state. Nostalgia, "delicate but potent," that which causes us to ache in our hearts to return to a place we have once been, to have what we once had.

***

The irony of the song "Silent Night" is that the entire point of Christ's entrance into this world was to expose the violence, the jealousy, the greed--the total lack of heavenly peace on earth. There could have been little solace there in the manger or beyond, given Herod's orders. According to Ortberg's "Who is this Man?," Herod, upon hearing the news of the birth a King of the Jews, ordered soldiers to plunge their swords into every baby boy in Bethlehem. How still we see thee lie.

***

Christmas is nostalgic. Christmas is the reminder of three-speed bikes once-longed-for. Christmas is finally getting to go to midnight mass. Christmas is observing new chocolate ice cream traditions at 3 o'clock in the cold winter afternoon.

But Christmas is also inherently nostalgic. Christ's birth is nostalgic, pointing us to a condition we once had and can once again attain, but only through Him. He was born, vulnerable to a broken world. The earth ached to return to what it once was. Christ, the one who would redeem us all, longs to restore our factory settings so that our hearts may no longer know the pain of separation.

#2014 recap

I like the rhythm of asking myself the same questions over and over again, so here's the survey I usually do at EOY. 1. What did you do in 2013 that you’d never done before? The two biggest newnesses were: a.) going to Minneapolis where I made awesome friends at writers camp b.) launching my own column on Nooga.com.

Also memorable this past year were: Met Lauren Winner. Started my fourth consecutive year working at the same place. Taught a new class just for first year students. Witnessed one of my sibbies get married. Toured Graceland. Moving and having lots of meltdowns about it.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
 I tried so hard to get into the best shape of my life. The silver lining is that when I couldn't because I kept getting injured, I learned that I was anemic. Knowledge is such power.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
 Yes, and I am especially ecstatic about the first of my cousins to become a parent. Congrazzles to Ryan and Rachel on the gorgeous Claire!

4. Did anyone close to you die? I'm so extra grateful to answer no this year.

5. What would you like to have in 2015 that you lacked in 2014? A book deal.

6. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
 Writing a bimonthly column has been so life-giving to me. It has connected me with community members in ways I had not yet anticipated, and my love for Chattanooga has grown immeasurably.

7. What was your biggest failure? I learned some things about teaching this year that were major blows to my ego but I don't call learning from shortcomings "a biggest failure." Just learning to fail forward, as it were.

8. Did you suffer illness or injury? see #2

9. What was the best thing you bought? Um, Just Dance 4 for the Wii is pretty fabulous.

10. What did you get really excited about? My sister TP got married Sarah Koenig is absolutely blowing the doors off investigative journalism with Serial.

11. What was the best book you read this year?

close ranking:

12. Compared to this time last year, are you:
 – happier or sadder? I have a lot to be happy about – thinner or fatter? Fatter – richer or poorer? About the same

13. What was your favorite TV program? Parenthood The Good Wife Orange is the New Black Season II

14. What was your favorite music from this year?
 Ryan Adams' newest Bethel Church "It is Well"

15. What were your favorite films of the year? I really liked "Liberal Arts," "Thanks for Sharing," and "One Day"--all on Netflix. Honestly, Big Hero 6 was absolutely adorable.

16. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? On my 34th birthday, I went to a staff meeting and accompanied my hubby at the hospital when his finger got dislocated.

17. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2014.
 I am a better mom when I am in educating-mode versus rebuking-mode. Majoring in the former makes the latter more impactful.