A Charlie Brown Christmas

ABC television aired “A Charlie Brown Christmas” last night. After a long day of fighting Baton Rouge traffic in search of carpeting and a bean bag chair (details will be spared), I tumbled in to my motorhome to sit down with my TV dinner and television to relax from the day. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was airing. The Peanuts gang after 40-plus years frolic and tease each other just as they did when I was a child. It brought back many memories and a sense of comfort. What is Christmas really about anyway? Yes, the birth of our risen Lord, but what is it really about to you? Come on, admit it. If Christmas were truly the celebration of Christ’s birth and only that, wouldn’t we handle this mega-holiday in a different fashion? Christmas is a very complex holiday. I believe Charles Schultz’s characters portray a thumbnail of all those complicated facets from the baby in the manger to presents under the tree, caroling, food, parties, cards, etc. My Christmas is uncomplicated this year. No tree, no card, no presents. Moving during the holiday time is very strange. Instead of writing Christmas notes or wrapping presents, I’m painting, searching for carpet and selecting new faucets.

My life is very sans Christmas. Oh I do see signs of Christmas, especially in decorations, mostly outside lighting. There’s a doozie complete with a radio station to tune in to on the last ¼ mile to the campground. Yesterday’s trip to the mall engaged my senses with holiday music and Santa and people shopping, sales clerks wishing Merry Christmas at the end of my purchase of paint and brushes. But what finally made me realize Christmas was approaching was this simple ½ cartoon. It was a memory. Maybe that’s Christmas, remembering the cherished moments from childhood and life; remembering a little baby in a stable who brought love and peace and Good News; remembering blessings and joys, sorrows and wants, and many emotions we so elegantly and selectively push aside the rest of the year. That’s why Christmas is so complex. We unintentionally made it this way. Christmas is a prism casting a rainbow palette of refracted light that splays open the crevasses of our heart when we allow those shadows to be exposed. Sometimes the shadows contain absolute joy and other times deep sorrow or disappointment.

If you dare, unwrap your private heart of Christmas and rediscover or explore what this season truly means to you. It might be your best present this year.

Gratefulness

Taking my five minutes to breathe in and out and just be while working through a major move, I continue to hold to my five minutes of being grateful, at peace, and accept whatever is going on in my life at any given moment. It’s a challenge at times. Those five minutes have maintained my sanity.

What is another life saver? Having a phone that connects to the internet; being able to text; receiving email via my phone.

You may not move as often as I. You may not move 500 to 1,500 miles at a time. For those of us who find this part of our lives due to our professions, I thank God for the businesses and organizations who have embraced technology to make information easier to find for people like me.

You may never know who you are helping by providing information about your church or organization through the Internet. Just know that you are….

Contingency Plans

That high-stress holiday is coming. It’s breathing down our throats. Have you had it with the talking head gurus on TV, print and radio telling you how to contend with your relatives and keep peace in your heart if you’re gathering to break bread with people who have a tendency of getting your dander up?

While it would be much safer to stick to my profession of web and technology items, I’m straying toward emotions that pierce our patience. I’m in the midst of moving 499 miles away with thirteen people coming to sleep, eat and commune 3 days before I leave. Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted and excited to have the family together for the first time in years.

Preparations began this weekend with purchasing and making food for the small army arriving at the door. Yesterday, after buying, cleaning, and cooking like Julia Child reincarnated; after the flour was scooped, the noodles rolled and the cooked meatballs stored, I learned 8 of the group were not coming. A death in a spouse’s family had occurred and all plans were changed.

This was of course was disheartening, unavoidable and a disappointment for everyone. A big dead space of silence overflowed the boundaries of the walls. All the work, plans, hopes, dreams visions of laughter were gone. The emptiness and pain of defeat just sat there like an uncomfortable friend.

A contingency plan was formed. Unused food was whisked back to the store, re-alignment to the menu calendar was made and my “new plan” was ready, unhappy, but ready. Low and behold, a phone call a mere two hours later changed all the plans again. The group was coming with an adjustment of time frame, minus one spouse. Thanksgiving will be salvaged for us. But it left me thinking….

It is a shame the importance the next 5 weeks have become in the stress level of our lives. Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, New Year’s. We sure pack it all in to one small amount of time. This year’s holiday’s occur in a total of 36 days. If you’re a multi-cultural family, you may be throwing Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in there as well. I don’t know the origin of your stress, but if you are like my family, the answer lies in between the sentences. In other words, the unspoken words none of us utter.

If my family were geographically closer, we may get together more often, who’s to say. The magnitude of this Thanksgiving was the first holiday we had all spent together in 9 years. I didn’t need a TV guru to analyze the roller coaster of emotions that happened to my family over the course of this weekend. I’d say you have similar stories with various scenarios that are quite familiar thematically in one form or another. When you attempt to cram 365 days of hopes and dreams in to 36 days, lightning is guaranteed to strike. The lightning generally gets bigger the more days that are added to the 365. Sometimes it doesn’t take 365 days for lightning; sometimes 365 hours, or 365 minutes. In any event, batten down the hatches, full steam ahead. These 36 days of flurry are coming regardless. Develop a few contingency plans and by all means, don’t get in the refund line too quick. Oh, and like last week’s blog: -BREATHE.

Waste Not Wrought Naught?

It was a banner day last week on the walk. My early morning walk with my dog and husband is one of the rituals we keep. We sometimes talk, sometimes not. Sometimes discuss the upcoming day or work through dreams from sleep. Once in a while we salvage the left-behind towel or ball in the park. Last week I found twenty-cents.

I don’t recall when this ritual began. I pick up money. Pennies, nickels, dimes, the occasional quarter; and this year a $5 bill! In the overall picture of life, my collection doesn’t amount to much, but I keep it over the course of the year and donate what I’ve found plus a percentage to charity. It’s my personal barometer of the economy. I call it my God money.

An old joke tells the tale of a couple of guys lamenting about giving to the church. The punch line is, “Well, I throw my money up in the air and what God wants, He keeps.” From that joke I decided the money I found on the ground was money God must have dropped, so I collect it for Him and give it back plus interest. No heroics here; just my way.

Most years I collect around $ 4-5 dollars. It’s been rather slim pickings with the take coming in around $3 the last couple of years. I figured it’s the economy. But this year, a year of foreclosures and 10%-plus unemployment, I’ve collected $7.17 so far and the year’s not over. Either the economy isn’t so bad or we are a very frazzled people.

Today we picked up a soccer ball. That makes three for the year. Theodore, our dog, proudly stretched his jaw as far as he could muster in order to carry his latest prize home with him. Tugging at Theodore’s collar to hold him in a walk, this article floated back to my conscious thought. I had abandoned it. Dropped like the soccer ball clutched so tightly in my dogs teeth as we rounded the last corner to our house, the article I’d begun didn’t seem to be important any longer. The ball, the money, the article: Is it “waste not “ or “wrought naught”?

Before you start baking, buying, building light-filled trees and bustling about this year, stop and not only be thankful next Thursday, stop and breathe. Breathe in a whole second. Bend your mind around idleness; not loaf-some, frittered away time. Stop and just be. Be a part of the moment of the world you live in with perspective.

I almost laugh at myself as I type this. Yes, my idle life of packing to move to Baton Rouge, finalizing a sale on a house, preparing for 14 guests in my home over Thanksgiving, and creating and updating web pages. Ha! No wonder $7.17 was found on the ground over the course of this year. Me, you, us… we are all just running, running, running like the little mouse on the treadmill to the beat of our crammed up lives. Running from thought to task to where the coins and balls of our lives are dropped for lack of the thought of a true second to stop and collect them.

Let’s make a pack together. I will promise to stop at least for 5 minutes every day through the end of this year to just breathe, thank God for my life and family, and love the time I have on this earth. Not worry about whether I answered that email, caught the latest post on Facebook, beat the stop light before it changed to red and all the other stuff that jumble up our days. Just breathe and be.

Peace.

Season of Change

It’s that time of year- colored leaves, crisp mornings with dew on the grass, a hint of Christmas tide ebbing around the corner. For me, it’s generally a time of new beginnings. I don’t know why my time of change is the fall. It’s just how my life has unfolded. I begin new jobs, form new relationships, and move. Yes, I’ve moved 5 times in my life in the fall and guess what? I’m moving again.

Being married to a minister, it becomes part of your DNA. Serving the church is cyclical. When you are part of that lifestyle, it is sometimes a challenge being the other partner as you get to seek a new job. This is one of the reasons I began my own company. It’s also great that my company lives in the cyber-world: it’s everywhere! – Kind of like God’s love.

The Internet is often touted as a scary place. I warn my clients about images of young people displayed on their website and to be mindful of what they are saying. The Internet can also be a wonderful place; a place to embrace and reach people who are too far away from us geographically yet sometimes feel like they are in the room when you are reading an email or seeing a sentence they have written on a social network. It’s a gentle reminder they are okay, they are alive, they are thinking of you.

I’m not a sit-in-a-circle-and-sing-camp-songs like “Kum Bai Yah” or “Pass It On” and hug and sigh kind of gal. There are moments when I encounter a comment or email that makes me realize the sentiment behind the note or shared joke or whatever, is more a subtle message, saying, “Hey, I’m thinking about you”. It makes all the crazy over-sent copied messaged I receive from my cousin bearable. Because ultimately, her intent is not to make me irritated and wonder if she has something better do to with her life, but to remind me, she’s thinking about me. Cyber-connection with others can be a presence like God’s love when we choose to recognize its potential in helping us touch hands we cannot reach; feel a presence when it doesn’t physically exist.

VTG Enterprises is moving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and not one thing changes with my relationship with my clients. Well, maybe a couple; such as a new phone number and an address, but that’s it. My web service stays connected to you as it is; the same as right now, with me sitting in my office in Flower Mound, Texas. Now I’ll just be sitting a little further east and south; that my friends, makes me love my job. I get to take you with me. I may travel far and wide, but our relationship can stay the same with this wonderful interconnected tool that allows thought and imagery to pass freely.

Transition begins December 1, 2009 and will be completed mid-to-late January 2010. VTG Enterprises will still be plugging along throughout this time.

Pico –boo; Doesn’t Play hide-n-Seek with Projection

Cool Technology! Don’t you just love new gadgets!? Okay, maybe not for some of you. Hot off the presses in new digital gizmos is Pico Projector. I read an article using Texas Instrument integration but little Pico Projectors are around —TODAY! Pico Projectors hit the market last year but they are now providing a much better image quality. And—they’re going to cell phones!

What is Pico Projectors? Have you watched a projection screen image in a sanctuary or large meeting? Generally one of two things is happening: words to music, scripture, etc. is being shown or you’re viewing a report from a committee that is trying to convey large amounts of information or enhancing a presentation. Viewing on this format has generally involved very expensive projectors, costing in the neighborhood of $3,000 to $5,000. Pico Projectors will use your cell phone to cast the same image. I get the sense the viewing format is going to be smaller, by the nonetheless, it's an incredible tool you can now carry around in your pocket.

View the video about Samsung:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGrBsJV4oiE&feature=player_embedded#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06HHfaWJLSI&NR=1&feature=fvwp

We’ll be seeing much more of this cool stuff in January at the CES [Consumer Electronic Show]