Senor Parrot’s Perch

Christmas truly is the most wonderful time of the year. Working so hard to find the time to travel across the country to spend time with our families, and then the fun time we have make it the highlight of the year.

But, today, the day after Christmas, I feel that I’ve missed it. The focus on family, especially our children, neices and nephews, seems to have left Jesus on the periphery this year. It’s the tragedy of Christmas.

It has been slowly moving toward this for me. Despite church on Christmas Eve, despite telling the Nativity story to our children over and over, for me it seems to have become perfunctory, not an act of love or devotion. It’s time I changed.

Jesus’ message to the church at Ephesus warned them to return to their first love, to devote themselves to Jesus and not to His works. It’s devotion to our Christ that transforms our actions and activities into more than acts of duty. Its devotion to our Jesus that makes our lives rich and transforms us. It’s our unity in our faith in Jesus that transforms our love and extends Christmas through the entire year, longer then the toys that break or the memories that fade.

So, I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and I pray, too, that you enter into a meaningful and prosperous New Year. I don’t have a bible handy to get a proper quote, but John writes something about prospering as our souls prospers. So, let us all have a year where our souls truly prosper, and avoid another Christmas Tragedy.

Christmas is here in two days! The family and I arrived in El Paso with out incident yesterday, and now we’re busily engaged in eating too much, seeing all the relatives and eating too much, and going to church and eating to much and eating too much. (more…)

Putting my kids to bed is just about the best time of day. Its very ritualized and we all love it. First, we always read the Bible. For the oldest, its a paraphrase of the NIV that suites her age level, and for the youngest its Bible stories. After that, we read stories and pray, sing them their lullabies, tuck them in with hugs and kisses, and off with the lights.

This routine is the cause behind my rekindled interest in kids books. I had thought of being a writer in high school, and on through college, and even then my primary interest was in kids books. I had a few attempts at stories and poems in high school, but then forgot about writing until a brief period in college, when I wrote some poems in German for classes I was taking. That was extremely fun and I can still remember one.

Some years ago I was asked to speak for a service at a rest home. It was Palm Sunday and I spoke about Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem. As I was reading over the story again, I suddenly got hit with a story about the little donkey that Jesus rode into the city. A few months later, a friend of mine told me about awakening to the sound of clinking glass on her dresser. It was a mouse! Another story came  right away. More followed, all of them stories for kids.

Then my first child was born. My wife and I both read to her and she never tired of books. She paged through books rather than play with stuffed animals. And as we searched for more books to read we discovered the riches of children’s literature. Some books, like the Bear in the Big Blue House, or Teletubbies, we couldn’t avoid, but there were many, many others that our daughter liked even more. And some of the books we’ve enjoyed the most, Because of Winn Dixie,  The Tale of Despereaux, Ginger Pye or Treasure Island, have all been bedtime reading.

Since kids, I’ve grown to love kids books even more. Not that I don’t read a lot of other things. For instance, I’ve been reading an excellent book, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. It is really thought provoking. But my attention keeps being drawn back to my children’s books.

After my 3rd grade daughter’s evening teacher’s conference I took the family out to dinner since it was a bit too late to whip something up and we were in a happy mood after what the teachers had to say. At a booth near us, four teenage girls were sitting to have dinner with each other. So, you know that there was a lot of talking.

Each one of them was talking on a cell phone. Four girls. Four cellphones. No one talking with anyone at the table. I suppose if one had wanted to talk with one of the others they could just call.