Giving in to Christmas

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2)

Two weeks ago, I gave in to Christmas. My Hanukkah sweater from the Bryn Mawr thrift store sprung out of the drawer, and I walked to Irving's equipped to tackle the week head-on with a backpack full of work.
Thankfully, the corner seat with the power plug was available. Watching the rain outside, I imagined how many inches of snow it would have been if it was colder. Pennsylvania weather is so wet! I never realized how wet we have it until spending a summer in the desert of northern New Mexico. Almost every Christmas I can remember in Philly has been rainy. I once had it explained to me that Philadelphia actually lies in a different temperate zone from the rest of the state. I guess this is yet another way that the City of Brotherly Love has been cut off from the rest of the state it occupies.

As a general principle, I try not to think much about Christmas until after Thanksgiving. In my family, Thanksgiving is the bigger holiday—it’s when we have our big reunion in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. This year was different though; I’ve had so many projects and exams and other important grades in the past two weeks of school that it really helps if the lights at the end of the tunnel are tinted red and green. Before I really knew what I was doing, I had opened up Grooveshark and my fingers were tapping out equations to the tune of Relient K’s version of Sleigh Ride.

Sleigh Ride isn’t a very deep or meaningful song. It doesn’t encapsulate what Christmas is about. Relient K’s version is fun, but they’re no Bach or Handel (I cringe everytime I hear their version of the Hallelujah Chorus). This song occupies a special place in my heart, however, because of the memories it brings.

When I hear this song, I think of 336 Atherton Hall and all the shenanigans therein: hammering the Christmas lights into the walls as loud as we could, rocking out at our desks while doing homework, decorating the door with discarded pom-pom handles left from our yeti suits we made for the 2008 Big Ten Championship season. I remember the time we stole the posters exhorting us not to steal food from the dining hall…the time we filled our friend’s room to the ceiling with crumpled newspaper…the list goes on and on. Most of all however, I remember the fellowship and brotherhood experienced with friends around a campfire made in the snow during finals week. The relief of the end of yet another semester of work mixed with struggles, hopes, fears, dreams. Making memories. This year the joys of college life have been too often eclipsed by uncertainties about the near and distant futures. I forget what I learned as a freshman and sophomore—the simple joy of brothers dwelling together in unity. These memories, even though fleeting and temporal, call my focus back to the joy that is ours through the redemption of Christ.

You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy;

they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest. (Isaiah 9:3)

Around the campfire this year, the struggles and fears will feel bigger and more real than the previous three years’. Yet I know that the hopes and dreams will be greater still, for we serve an awesome God. As those red and green lights at the end of your tunnel get closer, ruminate on what this verse from Isaiah has to say about the Lord whose birth we will celebrate in a few short weeks:

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this. (Isaiah 9:6-7)

Frustration and Flight-an Engineer's response to "A Letter to Young Artists"

Sitting on the bed—48 hours awake now—forcibly burning sequential utility into my memory. How will I buy bread tomorrow?

Beginning is always the hardest part. This is true of writing, of friendship, of moving to a new place.

The beauty begins soon after when the creation begins to flow. Connections fire off in the brain, interests are shared, secret places are discovered.

Growing excitement as familiar thoughts develop new names.

Engineering homework is no exception. The thought of the perfectly quadrille paper with its strictness, a blank canvass where only one plane is correct. It seems to challenge me from where it lies cast on the floor. Even my choice of pencil seems black and white—I will need all the help I can get to fill the squares correctly. Reread the question, glance at the clock, a sleepless night is inescapable now.

Slowly, the concepts flow, choppy at first, growing in confidence. Cul-de-sacs and detours lead me through the index of several textbooks. False hopes of a solution give me bursts of energy which die away as I recognize some deeper level of complexity. Hair and keyboard slowly becoming greasy from the hands which move between. Facebook resolutions are made, broken, remade, and broken again. Time passes faster as the work slows.

Starting to speak a new language, muscles unaccustomed to juxtapositioning such sounds.

Human beings come preprogrammed with the desire to create. We must fill the space around us, leave a mark. We start by imitating the world around us, first roughly, growing in detail as our fingers gain skill. A pile of Legos becomes a house, which becomes a neighborhood, which becomes an X-Wing fighter, mounting an assault on the Death Star. Creation is simultaneously looking into the future and back to the past, but it is never still. When momentum is lost, the self-examination begins:

Why am I doing this right now? Why do I create? Am I adequate for this job? Is this part of His Plan, or my pride? Why does my life seem so compartmentalized?

Fear of being wrong, of being measured and found wanting.

The chair grows uncomfortable. Even the tea I’ve made for myself doesn’t work as well as I had hoped. The fluorescent buzz above my head reminds me that I should be asleep. I begin to wonder if I can finish, despairing even of knowing what ‘finished’ would look like. Staring at the ceiling, my momentum stalls as my breath quickens and the tenseness grows in my shoulders. “Fear and terror, in any form, will destroy creativity and people.”

How could I make such a dumb mistake? Resolutions. Late nights. Stepping out in conversation.

This semester, I’ve started offering up each assignment to God before I begin. I felt ridiculous there in the Unix lab with Psalm 90 open next to Duderstadt’s classic, Nuclear Reactor Analysis. Yet never have the words “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love” rung more true than on a frigid trudge from a night spent at Redifer Commons, sun greyly rising over my back, illuminating clusters of windows on each building. In those times, having confronted my own sense of inadequacy and lack of trust, perfect love truly drives out the fears of the night.

Never has He abandoned me. Never have I been alone.

An entire culture is accelerating through my desperately grasping fingers. I strain to hear the now-familiar syllables through the sterile terminal; each brings a beloved face to my mind. The whole of a language is greater than the sum of its constituents; the end goal—relationship—is indeed love itself.

Fujimura concludes his thoughts with the climax: Therefore we cannot create but by sacrificial love. What a profound statement! For how can we love, except to follow timidly in the steps of our Savior, who has shown us the extent of love through his sacrifice of existence’s greatest treasure—Himself. Any effort disconnected from the Branch will wilt away, and in the light of the Son, the only response is to soar ever higher in the knowledge that love has won my victory.

SDG

Original Article:

http://www.makotofujimura.com/writings/a-letter-to-a-young-artist/