Matt W Cook

Do you remember this one?  It was always one of my favorites.  It still is and I want to tell you why.

You have Larry, a picture of a normal Christmas observer.  He wants to honor Santa.  With what does he honor Santa?  With cookies, because that’s what he’s good at.  But things don’t turn out the way he expects.

Instead of Santa, evil people show up, planning to do him harm.  But, as a faithful follower of the spirit of Christmas, he gives good gifts in return for their evil intent, thus winning them over.  That and that alone stands out and shouts a seriously Christ-centered worldview.  Yay for VeggieTales.

But then things get complicated.

Santa, the figurehead of Christmas, shows up, full of good intents for Larry.  But then he sees the robber and viking.  His response?  Threats and violence!  “No one messes with Santa!”  The deep, glorious worldview that Larry was living out is denied by its figurehead.  I can’t help but think of the West and the Western Church.  We are looked upon as the beacon of Faith and Jesus, yet when we have an opportunity to do something for someone who doesn’t earn it, we drop the ball.  We love those who love us and punish the rest.  We’re Santa, a fool in a red suit who only helps the ‘nice’.  Larry hardly exists.

I’d rather be Larry.

But what about the IRS guy?  Larry slams the door on him.  Why?  Why did the IRS guy earn a cold shoulder when the violent viking and crafty bank robber got yummy cookies?

I find myself thinking that the IRS guy represents official religious convention.  The letters and the law.  The strict adherence to dead form.  Larry won’t let that into his house.

Yet I find myself thinking that, in Santa’s book, the IRS guy would have gotten endorsement.

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What I’ve noticed:

• Meat, when rare, is a delightful thing!
• Anything, even homemade bread, can be bad when you eat too much.
• My mind works ten times better with a decent diet and no distractions.  And when it works better, all of life suddenly becomes a little bit easier.
• I feel like it would work a bit better with well-regulated distractions.
• Devoting yourself to a challenge publicly makes it a little easier than if you did it alone.
• Dark chocolate is a better friend than coffee ever was.
• The hardest itches last only a week.  If you want to do something that you don’t really want to do, just get through a week.  It’s easier after that.
• When your spouse is behind you, you feel like you can do almost anything.  And, suddenly, you end up actually doing it.  I would assume that when your spouse is not behind you you can’t really get much done.  But I wouldn’t know.  That’s never happened.
• When you push yourself to do something that you don’t really want to do, you end up learning interesting things about yourself.

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One of the most interesting places in the Harry Potter universe is St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.  The tour the reader get in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is incredible.  You get the impression that the Healers at St Mungo’s are pretty much capable of handling any injury or illness that comes their way.  Broken arm?  Fixed in seconds.  Lost limbs?  Regrown easily.  Nearly anything short of death can be cured at St Mungo’s.

Suddenly, after reading this, I had a deep feeling of animosity for the wizards and wizard culture in the Harry Potter universe.  Can you guess why?

If they can cure so much, why aren’t they curing AIDS in Africa?  Why aren’t they curing polio in Egypt?  Why aren’t they using their amazing powers to make the world a better place?  I mean, can you imagine what a wizard could accomplish in a country like India where 217 million people aren’t getting enough to eat?  What a bunch of jerks these wizards are, eh?  Blessed with supernatural powers, they hoard it all and keep the blessings to themselves.

Sadly, it kinda reminds me of the Church.

What do we have?  Money, education and (apparently) the almighty power of God.  That’s what we have.  How do we use it?  The vast majority of our money is spent on ourselves (this includes the money we give to the church).  We use our education to make ourselves more money.  And the almighty power of God that we claim can move mountains and change the world?  We use that for singing.

Let’s get out of St Mungos, out of Hogwarts, and into the world.  There is so much pain that can be cured, if only we are willing to cure it.

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 I opened my clothing drawer today.  It’s hard to find stuff in there.  I have to dig around and stuff always seems to spill out.  Today a thought hit me while I was rummaging: How many clothes do I have?  I had to find out.  Here it is:

To me, that seemed like a lot.  I mean, how many clothes does a person need?  I started wondering if my Wellness Challenge had anything to say about the clothing I owned?  Isn’t it better to own what I need and be rid of the rest?  Doesn’t the man with two shirts have a responsibility to give his extra one away?

So I fell into purge mode:

What do I have left?  Three pants, four T-shirts, four collared shirts…not much else.  All I need.  The rest of my wardrobe?  In separate bags headed for Pakistan and goodwill.

What do you have in your closets that you don’t need?  What do you have that someone else might need?

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Do you know what that is?  That’s homemade bread, baby.  And not just homemade bread, but homemade raisin bread with a glaze of honey and topped with sesame seed.

My good buddy Ben bakes bread all the time.  You should go over to his house.  Whatever he’ll feed you is like the happiest day of your life – in your mouth.  I stood in awe of his bread-baking abilities.  He’s like a super-hero.  And then he told me it was easy.

“Easy?!” quoth I to self.  “Easy!  Surely not!  Surely you’re putting on that false modesty that makes me feel like a loser for not having that magical ability to make my own bread.  Grr!”

For months I thought about how wonderful it would be to make my own bread.  For months I toyed with the idea, looking up ingredients and imagining the horrible, day-long process it would take to make a loaf that probably would turn out to be crud.

I looked at the ingredient list from the cookbook.  It looked pretty simple, actually.  Then I looked at the ingredient list of a normal loaf of bread from the supermarket.  Quite different!  It looked like something Professor Snape would put into his potions.  And then I started the Wellness Challenge.  I imagined that I shouldn’t be eating anything I couldn’t pronounce or identify at sight.

So I caved.  I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed the ingredients and make some bread.

Ben was right.

I was shocked.  After 15 minutes of work, I was practically done.  And I didn’t even use a breadmaker!  How did it turn out?  Well…within eight hours the entire loaf was gone.  And that glorious picture of the raisin bread of glory?  That was my second try.  Boo ya!

What does this mean?  It means that it’s not hard to do it yourself!  Why did it seem so hard?  Because I (like you) have been born and raised in a culture where we never do things for ourselves!  We never make real food!  We never do our own work!  Heck, with the rise of video games and MMORPGs, we don’t even use our own imaginations!

Make some bread!  Do something yourself!  It’s better for you.  It’s better for the world.  It’s just plain better!

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Last week Ruth and I watched Outsourced.  Ever heard of it?  Probably not.  I think it’s an Indie film.  Which is funny, because it’s about India (Indie Indian?).   Blockbuster only had one copy.  I picked it up on a whim, because of the cover.  I read the back and found out that the protagonist was a guy named Todd Anderson.  I have a good friend named Todd Anderson, so I took it as a sign and got the movie.

We were not disappointed.

I swear, the people who made the film must have been stuck in India or Pakistan at some point because they were able to perfectly capture the feelings and struggles of a white guy in a small town in India.  Todd’s struggles as he tries to stay American are marvelous.  Get the movie.  It’s great (especially you, Todd.  You’ll love it).

About half-way through the movie Todd, who is stuck in India, gets so fed up with the culture and food that he takes a five-hour taxi ride to the main city so he can get a cheeseburger at McDonald’s.  When he fails at this he almost snaps.  But then another American steps in and gives him some advice.  He tells Todd to stop fighting.  Stop struggling and just give up.  Stop resisting India and India will stop resisting you.  If you can’t be an American in India, stop trying so hard to be American.  Give in.

And so Todd does.  And, suddenly, he’s happy.

That’s great advice for travelers.  It reminds me of a great ad I saw: Don’t be a tourist.  Be a traveler.  You will hate any country you visit if you try to make that country into the one you came from.  You will hate it if you continually compare it to your own.  Instead, give up.  Don’t fight India (how could you?  You’re in India, for crying out loud).  Instead, accept it, and it will accept you in return.

The same thing happened to us in Pakistan.  While I was at war with Pakistani custom and climate, I was miserable.  But as soon as I gave up, grew a beard and tried to enjoy the unique things that Pakistan had to offer (without comparing it to my beloved Canada), I began to love it.  So much, in fact, that I sit here longing to be back there.

If you’re going to travel, consider it like an arranged marriage.  You won’t fall in love immediately.  Rather, you’ll need to learn to love.  And you’ll never learn to love your new wife if you are always comparing her to your mother.

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