Holiday smear

Everyone I know is currently blogging. Which should excite me, but it's actually pressuring me to post.

I just finished "Life Together" by Bonhoeffer. Some of it was definitely skimmed through, but other parts were deeply challenging. One of the things that hit me the hardest was the truth that community is a human reality, not an ideal. Anytime we put our own desires on a community we're looking at it all wrong. Because community doesn't exists to meet the needs of its members, but it is essential to living the Christian life. We tend to talk about it as this external entity that we'd like to create around us somehow, someday. But the reality is that the community of brothers and sisters is simply the way God created us to live, and it can't be formed out of our own desire, it should be built out of obedience and thankfulness to our God who knows what we need so much better than we do.

Later in the book Bonhoeffer speaks about ministry, about how the key elements of our ministry to one another are holding our tongue, humility, meekness, listening, helpfulness, and service. I must say I was quite convicted. I try so often to be a superstar at ministering, but my idea about what that looks like is really skewed. And in the last chapter Bonhoeffer talks about confession, and about how we share in the cross of Christ through confession. Confession is an act of humility, of admitting who we are as sinners, of standing in that shame before another Christian. But what did Christ do on the cross but take on all of that, for the entire human race, and bear it? Being honest in front of my brothers and sisters is an opportunity to share in the sufferings of Christ. Food for thought...

In other news, I'm drowning in case studies... 7 this week, each with a thought paper and 2 with a presentation. Ridiculous. I'm also strangely overcome by holiday cheer. Usually I'm the Scrooge character, bitching about decorations and Christmas music taking over the city before Thanksgiving. But this year I've found myself pausing to gaze at the holiday window displays, the lit up snowflakes in the Time Warner Center, and browsing iTunes for bearable Christmas music. What's happening to me?!

Today I busted out the Cuddl Duds, and friends arrived at our door singing carols (albeit mockingly), and I'm not even mad about the late night of wrestling with case studies ahead of me. Damn holiday cheer.