Christmas and beyond

We made it through Christmas in our year without shopping. Christmas was the one holiday that I was worried about because it is the most obviously consumer based holiday (next to groundhogs day). The music, art, and spirit of Christmas are all bound up in the trappings of gifts and shopping. No more ranting on that.

It was the first Christmas in a long time that Malora and I did not get the “Christmas blues”. The feeling of disappointment that Christmas is over and that it didn’t live up to the hype. It is so nice to bind Christmas up in Christ instead of what presents we can give and get. When you focus on the true meaning of Christmas instead of the consumeristic meaning of Christmas - there is absolute meaning to the holiday.

We have less then a week left in our compact life and I can feel the temptation coming back to shop. I sort of wish we could continue this little experiencement on for the years to come, but I think we need to take a sabbath from our sabbath. Malora and I will both share some closing thoughts in the days a head. But for now I have a qoute from a really good book I am reading by Shane Claiborne called Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers:

The moment that we are no longer tempted by the “pots of meat” the empire offers, we should be concerned - for if we can’t feel the temptation , we have probably already given in to it (pg. 45)