Spilling Hot Coffee on Christmas

My pre-advent high is officially over.  Reality has set in.  

I have a google calendar. I can add things to it from my phone or my laptop. I am so technological. I am so overbooked. It all goes fine until you print out the calendar of events you have so effortlessly been adding to the virtual months of November and December. Holy cow. I've done it again. Some live and learn, and some just live.

I habitually fill in the spaces of family life. Like an impressionistic canvas, I fill in every space with brush stroke events, overlapping when necessary. The result is often blurry.

Every weekend day between now and New Years somehow got painted in--colors blending. Band concerts. School choir concerts. The fifth grade program. Calvin as Herod in the church pageant-twice.  Choristers and Cherub choirs at church services.  Senior choir choral services. Piano Christmas recital.  Children's theatre tickets. A new gymnastic showcase event. Piano kids playing Christmas music at a nursing home. The Christmas Tea at church. A trip to Austin, for fun. . .what was I thinking?

Here are some sobering words from one of my theological heros, Thomas Merton:

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects , to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his or her work for peace.  

In The Book of Awakening, page 361, Mark Nepo comments on Merton's words:

"Merton wisely challenges us not just to slow down, but, at the heart of it, to accept our limitations. We are at best filled with the divine, but we have only two hands and one heart. In a deep and subtle way, the want to do it all is a want to be it all, and though it comes from a desire to do good, it often becomes frenzied because our egos seize our goodness as a way to be revered.  I have done this many times: not wanting to say no, not wanting to miss an opportunity, not wanting to be seen as less than totally compassionate.  But wherever I cannot bring my entire being, I am not there.  Its is like offering to bring too many cups of coffee through a crowd.  I always spill something hot on some innocent along the way."

Guilty as charged. I feel a little like I might be spilling hot coffee on Christmas.  And Thanksgiving for that matter.  I see my sin.  I know what I have done . . . but . . .

What's done is done.  I don't think I can undo any of these events. It is not as easy as hitting delete on the google calendar. Anyway, I don't want to--they are all special and valuable in their own way. The season will center around music and church--family and friends--all things I love. Some other things--like trying to be Martha Stewart--will have to go. Nepo offers one more suggestion--and I think it will be my mantra for the next six weeks:

Do one thing at a time and do it entirely, and it will lead you to the next moment of love. . . 

Thanksgiving is about giving thanks.  Christmas is about celebrating God's love given to us in the birth of Jesus.  Dear Lord, let this season be a series of events about those things. . . moment by moment. . . moments of love.  Amen.