Dan Byl

I may have shot my self in my right and left foot with that last blog. I will admit that I did not participate in the shoebox Christmas this year, and I don’t have any good excuse. I really have not spent any time thinking about Christmas until this weekend, and anything that was even related to Christmas I ran from like it was Godzilla and I was trapped in a black and white Japanese movie.

It is a lot easier to say then do. It is always easier to talk about change, changing the world, feeding the hungry, and so on. But when it actually comes down to doing it, I for one fail over and over.

What is the thing that hinders us from making the changes that we would like to see in the world. Is it our pride, our selfishness, or maybe our amazing ability to display apathy in its purest form. I know that I would like other people to change because well its easier for them to change then it is for me.

This is my challenge to everyone this Christmas, I think that first step is not necessarily taking the focus off of ourselves and putting it on to the entire world, though that would be very saintly of us. I think the first step is taking the focus off of ourselves and putting it onto the people around us. Our family, and friends, inviting a friend over to join us if they have no family around for the holidays. Asking a couple bachelors over for Christmas dinner because odds are if they don’t go to some ones house they will probably go to Wendy’s.

Start small; look to include people who you would not normally include. Start one person at a time and start making the holiday about people instead of things.

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I think that might be a song by the Black Eyed Peas, and be that as it may, it is also the question I have been asking lately. It seem that as Christmas approaches, and good will to man and cheer to all gets closer and closer, the exact opposite is happening in reality. It seem that people are getting more and more stressed, selfish, self absorbed and irritable.

I personally can’t stand Christmas. And this is the reason, we have turned this day that in my opinion should be a glorified thanksgiving or Easter into a consumeristic, me centered nothing. We run around spending, spending, spending in hopes that we get, get, get. Someone always loses out because secretly we are hoping we get more then we give. Then if we don’t get that new Polaris GT from Costco in just the right color, we walk around like the world has just given us the short end of the stick and beat us with the other end.

We forget about all the people in need, we forget that there are millions of people starving, and dieing. We get so focused on us and completely forget why we are even celebrating the day it’s ridiculous. The introduction of presents was the worst idea we ever came up with. And it was the best idea the enemy ever came up with for taking our focus off of what Christmas is all about and putting it onto us.

I sort of laugh when churches do the shoebox thing, don’t get me wrong I think it is an amazing thing and thousands of Kids are blessed by it. But the cost of doing one of these show boxes is 15 dollars right. And then after we drop one or two of these off at the church we go to future shop and by our kids, a 350$ ipod touch.

We could have made 23 kids Christmas’s something that they will never forget, or we can make one kid happy for about a week. And then they will want something new. We feed this selfish me centered world. The part that urks me about the shoebox thing, is not the idea it self, but the attitude that the church approaches it with. It’s like they are asking some huge favor from us.

Did you know that Christmas on average brings in several Hundred Billion dollars for businesses every year. Imagine what would happen if we took that money and gave it to people in need. Instead of used Christmas as an excuse to by ourselves more useless junk.

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As my wife and I sat in our vehicle talking out side of Walmart on a snowy Sunday afternoon, we both lurched forward in unison. We where parked neatly in our stall minding our own business when a lady in a white GMC van bulled in behind us and then preceded to push a buggy out of her way with the front of her car straight into the back of ours.

I got out of the car to see what had hit our suburu. And there it was a buggy rammed up against our bumper. In an annoyed tone I asked the lady what the “deal was” she said that people shouldn’t leave there buggies in the parking stalls, to which I answered and people shouldn’t push those buggies into bystanders cars. This comment evoked the response of “kiss my ass” I stood there contemplating this 50 something woman’s remark.

You push a buggy into the back of my car and instead of saying sorry I didn’t mean for that to happen you tell me to kiss your ass. Where has all the good in humanity gone. Well I can tell you one thing it is not in North America during the “Christmas Season, and you might as well be looking in hell if you are trying to find some good in humanity if you are looking in the Walmart parking lot.

I couldn’t decide what the correct retaliation would be for such an event. I personally wanted to take that buggy and put it on the roof of the ladies van. I figured it would be just the right amount of inconvenience for a 50-year-old woman. And I wouldn’t be hurting anyone.

However my lovely wife kyboshed that idea in a big hurry and said that I would be sowing bad seed, I might be but it would be funny and make me feel really good.

What do you think the correct retaliation would have been for this?

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One of the nurses my wife works with used a phrase with her the other day that phrase was, “starter wife.” I don’t know about you but I think that this is a horrible saying.

If you are reading this and unsure what was being implied by this statement, the meaning is this. That she is my starter wife, that we spend time together and we learn what we can from each other and then we upgrade to someone different. What it implies is that divorce rates are so high, she should be willing to except that she will be my first and that this probably wont last.

I come from a broken home, my parents divorced just before there 25th anniversary, and I am know that in the public school system, you are a minority if your parents are still together. We have become such a consumerist society that we have begun to consume people.

We get in a relationship and then we get bored and start looking for the next best thing. We treat people like cell phone plans, we shop around and try to get the best deal and then six months goes by and we hear of a better plan, that offers us more minutes and a better phone.

Yes that’s right I just compared marriage in today’s world to shopping for a cell phone plan. But it’s true, I watch people do it all the time. People go through several marriages in there life time. 20 years ago, you had your home phone and that was it there were no options, that was it just one phone and maybe a dozen plans to choose from. Now we all have our individual phones, my wife and me don’t even have a home phone. And if someone has a better plan then us we call up our carrier and switch. We sign new three year contracts with the company, let me ask you a question when was the last time you actually finished your 3 year contract with out renewing it for a new phone or a better option on your plan?

I think it is time we being to teach the meaning of commitment again in our schools and churches, especially our churches. How long until we begin to try and consume God. In many ways I think we already do. We create a God that fits our lives, that doesn’t stretch us or challenge us to much.

We create a God that is comfortable, and we combine ideas, Buddhism and new age ideas. We don’t want anything that takes to much work or maintenance and it has to feel good.

Do we even understand what it means to commit anymore?

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A question that a lot us can’t even ask, why? Well not enough of us are even willing to be honest enough with our selves to recognize that we do this. I know I am amazing I have been able to be honest enough with myself to come to the conclusion that I do in fact sell my self short in so many ways. Woohoo!!! Ok enough of the sarcasm.

Honestly I do this though, so the question is, why? What makes me do this? Fear, insecurities, self-preservation, I protect my self from things that don’t even exist and in the process of doing this I miss out on so many opportunities. I fear the things that I want most.

I have a fear of success, what if I reach my goals, what if I get what I think I want only to find that it is inadequate, or that what I thought was the be all, end all, is not all I thought it was. What if I put my self out there, get what it is that I have wanted for so long and then something happens and I screw it up. So I go through life not quite reaching my full potential in fact I actually hinder my self so that I can’t actually get there just so that I can’t and won’t screw up something good.

I enjoy a life of “lack of expectations” because people don’t expect a lot out of you, if you look like you are trying to getting somewhere, but aren’t quite there. People go oh I will help him reach his potential then I can ask for his help. People will give everything they have to help you get there, then when they don’t see any success, they go “well he just has growing to do” and they either give up or give you “space” so that you can grow. The fact is this that selling my self short is very much the easy way out.

The second reason that we sell our selves short is much like the first. We become we think we are happy, but it is more a strange sort of comfortable in our mediocrity. We find comfort in what we know. If we grow up in chaos we tend to find chaotic situations to be apart of, rather then striving for peace and tranquility.

It comes back to fear, so often we get stuck on the fear of “failure” because we all want to succeed, right? Well not really, if we fail we know what will happen, but if we succeed that is unknown territory, what then, what are the steps that I take? I have never been there before, what doors will it actually open? All these questions linger in our minds, and we are more afraid of trying to figure out all the unknowns then failing and being exactly where we presently are. And well we know what that’s like, we know how to handle that situation.

So next time you are rocking it in the free world ask yourself am I really more afraid to fail then I am to succeed?

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I watched District 9 and it got me to thinking, this is not a movie for everyone and especially kids. The other thoughts that passed through my mind were why do we fear what we don’t understand? And what do we do in order to prevent our selves from becoming something we fear?

What are some of the thing we fear? Being poor, alone, unwanted, hurt and the list goes on. It is interesting to see how we sell out as people to a culture that makes promises it can’t deliver. It tells us that if we have the right things we won’t be with out friends. If say the right things we will never be unwanted, if we work hard and have the right friends and looks we won’t be poor.

We sell out our integrity, our honor, and our selves. We put on masks to hide the real us in hopes that people will see what they want to see and then we wont be alone. I was looking through some books at chapters and saw some pictures of starving children. I know that I never want to find my self in that position and subconsciously I put as much distance as I can between my self and the things I don’t want to be.

I don’t sit down and spend time with homeless people, I don’t hang around the gospel mission, I don’t go to east Hastings street, I don’t go to the slums in Africa. Why not? Why is there a fear in me to being in those places or around those people?

There is a saying that I am sure we have all heard,

“Surround your self with the people you want to be and you will become them” or another version of this is “imitate the people you want to be, and so you will find that you are them.”

So there is a fear that is bred into us, that if we spend time around people that are hurt, alone, poor, or destitute, that is what we will inevitably become. We spend our days watching celebrities and the rich; we neglect the people that we have been called to. We focus on the things in this world rather then the people. And we are so afraid of becoming these “bad” things that we blind our selves to what God has called us to do.

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