Lest we forget Jolly Old St. Nick during our holiday festivities, a quick tour of the history and development of one of the “fringe characters” of the Christmas story should put things to rights. Santa is, of course, not at the fringe but rather the very center of many of our current and...
An Unlikely Christmas Carol(er)
posted by DJL
I love words. I love what you can do with words. I love playing with words, shaping ideas with them, communicating things that matter to me through them, and affecting the thoughts and feelings of others with them. For all these reasons and more, I love words. But not always. As I’ve said before, I don’t always love words when they come as poems. When words come in poems, they don’t seem to follow the rules, or at least they operate by different rules, rules I haven’t mastered and don’t feel competent at. That’s, in part, why the Saturday poetry post has been important to me. It’s a way to stretch, to push myself to work a...
Luke 2:8
posted by DJL
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Of all the characters in the Christmas story, I suspect it’s the shepherds we have most misunderstood. I don’t know if it’s all the cute kids who have worn their dad’s bathrobes in...
Little (Rockin’) Drummer Boy!
posted by DJL
I’m going to omit our usual Wednesday TEDTalks episode for a week or two to make a little more room for holiday cheer. Today’s feature…a modern day – and rockin’ – little drummer boy named Sean Quigley. Sean, a native of Winnipeg, put together a very fun – and very well made – video of his version of the “The Little Drummer Boy.” What’s kind of amazing is that he plays all the instruments as well as produced the video. And his exuberance as a drummer is, well, seriously fun. As he said in an interview with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp) last year shortly after the video went up and went viral, “Drummer Boy...
Luke 2:6-7
posted by DJL
While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. At first glance, it’s almost as if Luke’s artistry has failed him. Two...