We were rushing out to our car in the frigid cold. Suddenly our oldest son froze in the middle of the park and our entire day with him. With a quiet concern that masked panic, he wondered aloud, "Where's George?" George, his stuffed monkey. His constant companion since he could barely talk. At first, I said he didn't come inside the mall, but with horror I immediately corrected myself.

George did go inside with Jim. And now he wasn't with Jim. And I couldn't remember the last time I had seen him.

I cursed under my breath as I rushed back inside the food court to check the table where we had eaten lunch. No George. I ran to the one store we went to after we had eaten. I looked around. I asked the employees if they had seen a stuffed monkey. They checked behind the counter. "Sorry, no."

I can't stop thinking about Sandy Hook today. I was reminded this morning that it has been five years since that indescribably tragedy. I saw faces of children whose lives were ripped away on that day. And it all felt like a boot on my chest.

I see my sons in their faces. Our oldest was two and an only child when the shooting happened. Five years on, he's the same age as some of the children who died that day. His little brother is not too far behind him. He'll start elementary school in the fall. And I cannot imagine the hell those parents went through; that they still go through.

You would think that day would have galvanized us as a country. That we would have done something, anything to try to make sure that didn't happen again. You would think that children being murdered in their school would have brought us together to protect the future that beat inside their hearts.

The calendar gave us an early Thanksgiving this year and it seems like it has been an eon between turkey and Advent. But I am ready for Advent. I need Advent right now. I need it more than I need Christmas. Advent might be the most real that the Christian faith gets. It is darkness and defiant hope. It rages against the powerful who pay lip service to God but leave the marginalized out in the cold. Advent is when we stand in the thick of Already and Not Yetness of the Reign of God. When we sit alongside those waiting for Immanuel and wait ourselves for when all shall be made right. 

I was typing away at Starbucks this morning as the playlist in the room changed from the coffeehouse’s typical brand fo corporate indie to eclectic Christmas grab bag. Somewhere in the midst of things “Last Christmas” started playing and, for some reason, I started overanalyzing the song.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart
The very next day you gave it away

That’s rough. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Maybe not on Christmas. It’s more like a random Tuesday in March, but it stings nonetheless. But on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas where there’s already a melancholy holiday hangover (in America, I think the day is actually more festive in George Michael’s UK. Or not, maybe it just involves a lot of watching BBC. I don’t know), that cuts deep. I see why you’re singing this song, person.

I have written about Furman quite a bit over the years but haven’t this season. It was’t any sort of conscious decision. I haven’t written much about anything this season. But here’s the quick version of what’s up: 

The Paladins finished 3-8 last season which led to our new coach Clay Hendrix being hired. We were picked to finish 7th in the conference and started the season 0-3. We then reeled off 7 straight in dominating fashion, which put us in position to win a share of the conference championship this past weekend if we defeated Samford in Birmingham (who was ranked higher than us and also playing for a playoff spot).

We lost 26-20 and it was sad. But then we still got an at-large bid to the FCS playoffs and it’s happy again.

While I was in Memphis, we went to the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum is located at the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. It was a haunting experience because the treatment of African-Americans in this country is a stain upon the church, a stain upon the nation that has billed itself to be a land of freedom from the start.

You cannot help but see people violently torn from their homes and stacked on slave ships to hear stories of their abuse to see white mobs violently tear non-violent protesters from lunch counters and think, “My God, what have we done? What are we still doing?” While there have been some improvements, it feels like prejudice has just evolved so it can stay alive. It’s taken different forms and scurried into different corners of our nation to survive.

The story of the museum mostly ends with the assassination of Dr. King and maybe that’s the point. Because that tragedy is not a crowning achievement. It’s this ugly truth that stares us in the fact that struggle for civil rights is still going on. April 4 in Memphis was not a triumphant period to that story but a lingering ellipses. What will happen next. What horror or progress will fill the next chapter?

The first thing that struck me was the disconnect between myself and the music. And I mean that it literally struck me. The bass drum was like a defibrillator. Even in the back, I felt its sound wave kick my heart. But I didn’t know the songs. And when you are in a room where it seems like everyone else knows every word deep in the marrow of their bones, but you don’t then it creates this immediate sense of alienation.

I don’t really know how people who lead worship week in and week out handle that. Because the last thing you want when someone comes into a place of worship is for them to feel like a stranger. That is going to happen but you want to minimize that foreignness. Perhaps it can’t be handled in that one week. There are songs at our church that I didn’t know when I first got here, but I have come to know and love them with time and connections to a community.

But that’s not where we were in that giant convention hall. That disconnect was there and it was not aided by the lead singer imploring us to “shout it out to God” no matter how good-natured his intent was. Sing it with all my heart? Dude, this is the first time I have ever heard this song. One of the things that I love about music is the way that it often pulls me closer to God in ways that words cannot do in as adequate a manner. Yet I think that because it can connect in such a deep way that music is even more frustrating when it doesn’t connect. When you feel like you’re repeatedly running into a brick wall.

Several years ago when my grandparents were about to go on a trip to the Mediterranean, my Grandma asked me if I wanted anything specific from the region. I knew the answer immediately. I wanted an icon. I spent five weeks in Greece and Italy on foreign study in college and always regretted not taking home one of these beautiful works of religious art. Is there a specific icon you want? she asked me. I thought for a moment. I wanted an icon where Jesus was teaching.

Sitting on the floor of my office (it's been a really, really long week even though it's only Wednesday), I see that icon my grandparents brought home from Greece hanging across the room. Jesus sits in a tree with a book of scripture open in his lap. His hands are open at his side, gesturing in conversation with the twelve disciples sitting around him. They listen rapt in attention, confused, awed, grasping at something that they don't quite understand.

I like Reformation Day. Probably more than a person should like Reformation Day. I've written Reformation Day carols. I used a Martin Luther bobblehead to talk in this past Sunday's communion meditation. At our youth Halloween party, I dressed up as the Wittenberg by way of Asgard Avenger Martin Lu-Thor. Yes, I like Reformation Day quite a bit.

It doesn't really have to do with fanboying over Luther. By all accounts, he was a highly unpleasant person to put it mildly. Most of my zeal comes from being a massive church history nerd and then running that through my slightly off-kilter way of looking at things.