A few days ago I was waiting in line at a local grocery store when I noticed an acquaintance standing adjacent to me, also waiting in line. I attempted to strike up a conversation, as it appeared we would be waiting for quite a while, but every time I asked a question or offered a prompt I received a one-word response. Not wishing to be rude, I left her be, as she was rather engrossed in an intense game of Words With Friends on her iPhone and could not be bothered.

But after a minute or so, a signal from my own smartphone alerted me that someone had mentioned me on Twitter.

“Just saw @MatthewProsser at the store, he’s really tall,” the message said, and it was posted by the woman standing right next to me in line.

I literally “laughed out loud” and informed her that (even at 6’2”) I’m only of average height for the men in my family. She smiled, and nodded politely, turning her attention back to her phone.

From there I went about paying for my groceries and on with my errands, but I thought about that encounter as I drove homeward. I started to recall a number of exchanges I’ve had with people of late, especially the younger people in my community.

A certain pattern of behavior emerged, especially among those of my acquaintance in their 20s. It seems that many of these younger people are far more outspoken and communicative electronically than IRL (internet slang for “in real life”).

This young lady, who is quick to comment vociferously on my Facebook profile or send me a “Tweet” with some snarky riposte, is virtually closemouthed when I’m standing a few feet away.

I noticed something similar at a high school basketball game I attended last month. Groups of youngsters sitting together in the stands or gathered around the concession stand, their fingers a blur on tiny blue-lit keypad screens. Jabbering idly to each other, even as they typed short messages to people sitting in the same general area.

Last summer I read an excellent article in the New York Times, in which a researcher posits that the sheer volume many of us spend communicating with others significantly impacts our ability to connect with others in person.

My own meager “field research” indicates something similar.

From the early days of television programming in the late 1940 until now, the electronic image has continued to change our consciousness…  increasing in complexity, resolution, availability, and most of all in content. Whether we like it or not, these “screens” have and will continue to change the way we see and interact with other human beings.

I don’t mean to sound alarmist, for I think this technology can be a tremendous asset in communicating and bringing people together. But like anything else, it is prone to abuse.

Objectification is certainly not a new trend for humankind. Ever since Descartes we have tended to view the world outside of ourselves as an object to be controlled and exploited for our own benefit. As easily manipulated and accessible as this media is, it opens us up to be changed and affected also.

Just as movable type changed the culture of the Western world during the 15th century, for good and for ill, so did the world grow smaller with the advent of the telegraph, radio, and television broadcasting of the 20th century.

Our own time presents us with a form of technology that can be as much a bane as a blessing.

Throughout the narrative of the Biblical account, Christ does not appeal to a vague nebulous idea of humanity but refers to us as “neighbor” to each other. Literally. The precise term Jesus used refers to whoever is in closest proximity to you. So, when he is saying love your “neighbor” and share life together in community, He’s referring to those people around you: that noisy throng from whom you attempt to stave off boredom by peering intently into the shifting screen of your smartphone.

I write all this as someone wholly enmeshed within this paradigm. I have multiple email accounts, and a readily-available Internet presence on various platforms.

But when you see me in person, please see me and be sure I see you. For we can only see a dim picture through our digital screens, and darkly at that.

The great advantage of being a political moderate is having the safe vantage point from which to lampoon the excess and foibles of either end of the spectrum. I’m able to lambast the wild-eyed right-wing kooks and fuzzy-headed left-wing flakes with impunity.

Both parties (and their earnest followers) are still only sharpening their blades for the oncoming 2012 presidential election, and no party has had such keen or constant practice as the Republican Party. Indeed, it seems, the presidential candidates for the “Grand Ol’ Party” have been running against our incumbent Commander In Chief since before Beyoncé belted out “At Last” during the inauguration.

Even so, one has to wonder just how well that’s worked out for them so far.

Republicans have vacillated from the venerable and level-headed John McCain (2008’s losing candidate) to his unconventional veep choice in “Mama Grizzly” hockey mom extraordinaire Sarah Palin, who raised a ton of money and attention before bolting for the talking head circuit.

From there it was fellow “Tea Party” candidate Rick Perry, who was sure to capture the South en route to a battle royale of archetypes (white/conservative vs. multi-racial/liberal) before party loyalists realized that Perry has as much business running our country as he does the Great State of Texas. Herman Cain’s now laughable campaign had a lot to do with that, but a closer look at the pizza chain magnate shows he had little grounds to challenge anyone’s record. Newt Gingrich has generated as lot of heat on and off again but, in a party that champions the family and old-school values, Newt’s still a glory-hungry bully with two divorces.

Which brings us back to Mitt Romney, whose ongoing narrative has seemed to be one of steadiness. The former Massachusetts governor has one thing going for him: he seems about as controversial as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with an appeal that’s just as generic.

Sure he’s got the Mormon thing, which seems to cause some trepidation with my fellow Southern evangelicals. Of course, not enough trepidation to send them screaming to the Southern Baptist, Vietnam Era veteran, and Texas congressman by the name of Ron Paul…  even though he’s got the most conservative voting record of any member of Congress since 1937. Oh, but that’s a rant for another day.

Romney wins the Republican nomination by default, because he’s the “anti-Obama” and because there’s no one more capable of challenging our current president than a fellow well-heeled Ivy League-educated caricature of ideology.

In what stands to be the most volatile election cycle for the GOP since the advent of polling, my impression of my Republican friends and relatives is that they want a restoration of the country. A return to the America of former days than these.

“We were once a nation of strong moral values but we’ve gone astray,” is a typical refrain. That we must return from whence we came, and restore this country to its former glory.

I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking approach to governing an empire as vast, diverse, and abundant as ours. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America, as it pines for a way of life that can never, will never, and must never return.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a conservative evangelical myself, with a strong sense of wistfulness about the warm sepia-toned East Texas in which I grew up.

Just last week I took a drive to “the old neighborhood” and parked out front of a rambling vacant lot where I and my cohorts spent many a lazy afternoon playing baseball and building clubhouses.

Gone is the grassy field upon which I threw for countless touchdowns, as are the sheltering oaks whose thick branches held our clumsily-built fortifications. In their place, a gas station and rundown convenience store.

So no, you can’t go home again, but I guess you can shop there.

It was on a wintry Oklahoma morning five years ago today that you came bawling into the world.

Today is your fifth birthday.

In appearance you are petite and graceful, with pale blue eyes and willowy blond tresses that fall carelessly upon your brow. You are short, to be sure (especially compared to your siblings) but you have a personality and manner that far outreaches your grasp. You are the archetype of the little person with a Napoleonic tendency, you are my Princess Sophia.

Among your friends and peers, you lead the way. While you are initially shy toward strangers or other children you have just met, you bond swiftly. Indeed, it seems you have a strong ambition to have many friends and you somehow are able maintain a deep connection to them all…  even if it’s been a long time since you’ve seen them.

You are demure and yet a natural coquette at the same time. I can only marvel at this. For it is certainly not a trait that has ever been encouraged in our household, yet I cannot deny it…  you are a little flirt. But this is not to imply that your affections are entirely insincere, simply that you possess an inordinate amount of charisma that people seem to gravitate around you. I can only wonder at how this is going to develop as you grow older.

Within our family you hold the favored position of being the youngest girl, which prompts a sort of protective cocoon from both your parents and siblings. Still, you carry yourself with a mettle that indicates you don’t need to be protected, and yet your revel in this comfort at the same time. A child of strange and beguiling contrasts you certainly are.

Your relationship with Liam is one of tenderness and contention in equal measure. While you admire and adore him as though he was your elder, you also take a strange delight in playfully antagonizing him as well. It is similar with Israel, the two of you rarely (if ever) actually quarrel, but you like needling him just to the edge of actually annoyance, without going over into outright hostility.

As with Liam, you are also keen to know Xander. While you were initially disappointed to learn that your new sibling would be a brother and not a baby sister, you quickly rallied to the idea of another baby brother. You are fond of talking about the fun you and Xander will have together.

With Gaelynn you are still too far apart in age to be confidants, but the two of you get along very well. More often than not you’ll creep silently through the house at a late hour of the evening to sneak into bed with your elder sister. You two are close, but separated by the very different seasons of life you are experiencing. As this gulf narrows in time, I pray you grow closer in kinship.

In a similar manner I suspect you and your mother will have an even greater affection with time than you do know, though for now we can only wonder at how two people such as we gave rise to a child of your peculiar mixture of traits. Coy and yet cavalier, doggedly determined and yet a delicate princess.

Happy birthday my sweet girl, and may you continue to grow ever lovely as you grow stronger in my heart’s love.

Dear Liam,

It was on a snowy and sunny Winter’s day three years ago, overlooking a crystalline Chesapeake Bay, that your mother and I welcomed your gentle spirit into the world.

Today is your third birthday.

In appearance you are slender but with a well-built frame, you can tumble and jostle quite a bit with your older and larger siblings without injury or complaint. You have the clear ocean-water eyes of your mother on a fair complexion, with golden corn-silk hair that is straight but seldom stays combed for long.

You are easy to laugh and smile and yet this temperament can swiftly darken to a stoic diffidence, especially around strangers. You cloak your shyness with a curious sort of arrogance, as if you don’t want the other person to know you’re ill-at-ease.

However, you also show a strong tendency toward leadership. You like to be in charge but you don’t fight for dominance, you just assume it among your peers. You simply lead the way and expect others to follow. To this end I’ve long since affectionately referred to you as “big cheese” for your way of conducting yourself as “the boss” and in charge of things.

One among a household of children who are all “above average” you are articulate beyond your years, and can converse with adults with clear diction and insightful remarks that often catch them off-guard. I don’t think you can read with any comprehension yet, though you are fond of looking at books for long spans of time, and already know the names of colors, shapes, numerals, and the sounds of letters.

Unlike your siblings you show only a passing interest in music but are fascinated by ball sports and other sorts of roughhousing. Yes, you love rough play, even though you are (at least for now) the smallest person in our family. You have strong hands, strong feet, and love climbing. One afternoon I caught you climbing up my bookshelf, dangling more than six feet in the air, trying to reach a popgun I’d put up there to keep you from “shooting” your little sister in the face.

Oh yeah, Sophia is your “little” sister. Even though she’s older than you by two years, you’re almost as big as she is and certainly as strong…  if not more so. Thankfully, you two get along well and seldom quarrel beyond a playful antagonism.

You idolize Israel, everything he does is fascinating to you, though your affections seem to annoy him at this stage of his development. At this point you are still the proverbial “kid brother” who follows his elder sibling around, wanting to be a part of every project he attempts or activity that he engages. Nevertheless, I detect a strong bond between the two of you that, I hope, will deepen as you outgrow your occasional juvenile spat.

With Gaelynn you have a tender and loving relationship, she dotes and cares for you as much now as she did in your earliest days. Despite your age difference, you get along famously, and are fond of making each other laugh. She’s quick to help you with some task or read you a story.

…and, odd as it may seem, you seem to have developed a strong bond with Xander. Xander, your unborn baby brother, who you’ve never met. Throughout your mother’s pregnancy you’ve spent long moments cuddled in her lap, serenely stroking her gradually expanding abdomen, and talking to him directly. Your mother and I find this practice endearing, and hope that it prefigures a closeness that will be a lasting part of your relationship as brothers.

With your mother and I you remain our precious little boy. So much potential abides in you. So much hope. We have a dream for the sort of person you’re going to become, and suspect that you will likely surpass anything we could imagine…  as you have thus far with each turn of the seasons.

Happy birthday, my son, may the Lord continue to bless me with many more days if knowing and loving you.

As each interminable minute passes, I begin to gradually despise the woman. Internally a great stream of cursing invective rages behind my calm facial expression. Though my mouth remains quite open throughout, I respond to her inquiries with only one-word or brief responses.

“So, do you floss regularly?” she asks, though I suspect the answer is all too apparent to her.

“Yes,” I respond, defining “regularly” as “every time I remember to” or “whenever I eat something that gets stuck in my teeth.”

Of course, if she defines “regularly” as daily (which is how the American Dental Association defines it), then no…  I most certainly do not floss regularly.

While I take my oral hygiene seriously enough to brush my teeth every morning and evening, I admit my flossing is woefully inadequate.

However, I begin to realize just how inadequate when the smiling dental technician begins methodically scraping and gouging my enamel with a cruel but effective precision.

Even as my annoyance with this process has reached its zenith (and I have fully resolved to remove my dentist from my Christmas card list), this more puerile side of my conscience is suddenly shoved aside. It seems my sleeping “Reason” and his good friend “Self-Responsibility” have had enough with this inner monologue of petulance and blame-exchanging.

You see, I know full well who’s responsible for the tartar hidden within the deep recesses in the far corners of my mouth…  and it’s not the nice lady saddled with the burden of trying to salvage the mess I’ve made of my mouth in the many months since my last professional cleaning.

One of the biggest problems I observe with many of my peers is a certainly obnoxious tendency to shift the blame for the various burdens we encounter. Not only those of my generation, but our forebears and descendants. Verily, it is an all too human trait that spans time and place.

We love to ascribe the fault for the things we suffer to others…  to pretend that we are hapless victims of a fickle and universe that is indifferent to our actions, that we are each left wholly vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and made to exist far removed from the direct consequence of our own actions. However, this is simply not the case. This is only a warm blanket in a tempest, easily rent asunder.

Our lives are the sum substance of action and consequence, both for good as for ill.

The neglect and irresponsibility demonstrated with regard to my own oral hygiene precipitated a rather unpleasant visit to the dentist yesterday. The hard barnacles of tartar and plaque that were scraped away were not brought about by anyone other than myself.

Rather than blame the specialist who spent the better part of an hour having to mend the damage I’ve caused, I should blame the lazy rascal who flosses only every other fortnight.

It was a painful lesson and, unfortunately, one I’ve had to learn over and over again… moreover, I fear this will not be the last such lesson

What would such a system look like?

How successful could it be?

What if instead of excellence, the system’s main goal is equity? The families of poor children receive intensive social and financial support from birth on so that they don’t come to school lagging in the skills they need for academic achievement.

All children, regardless of how much money their parents make or where they live, receive free lunch at school and have access to health care, mental health services and individualized guidance counseling. All schools are public schools; private schools are non-existent. No schools (not even universities) are allowed to charge tuition.

Because the focus is on making all schools equal, schools are not compared with each other and rankings and lists of best schools don’t exist. School choice isn’t an option…  nor is it asked for.

Instead of being staffed with novice teachers straight out of college with a bachelor’s degree or Teach for America corps members with limited training, all schools hire teachers with advanced master’s degrees. All teachers belong to a strong national union, unlike in the United States where many states disallow collective bargaining or unions and school districts work at odds.

Curricular goals are broad and sketched out rather than cloaked in details – and teachers are responsible for deciding what and how to teach. A comprehensive common core curriculum written and promoted by standardized test makers is unthinkable.

Instead of a schedule of standardized tests to ensure accountability, students take no standardized tests – none – except for a single final exam at the end of high school. Teachers alone decide how to measure student achievement, making and implementing their own classroom tests and report cards.

Professional development consists of teachers collaborating with each other rather than school districts mandating extra training. Most importantly, instead of the American hand-wringing over student performance on international achievement tests, the parents in such a school system hear consistently good news about how their children outperform the rest of the world.

Could such a school system actually exist?

It does – in Finland.

As it has for the past decade, Finland scores at or near the top of international tests on reading and math, prompting many school reformers to seek out Finnish education experts such as Pasi Sahlberg, whose latest book, “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?“ attempts to account for Finland’s success.

Since the 1970s, Finns have seen their school system make a dramatic turnaround from poor to one of the best in the world – and not because they did any of the school reforms being tried in the United States.

According to Sahlberg, Americans believe the only way to track student success is with frequent tests, that schools have to have accountability for bad teachers and merit pay for good teachers, that competition and the private sector engagement (as well as school choice) make schools better. All are ideas rejected by the Finnish education system.

When Finns wanted to lift their education system out of the doldrums, they placed their lever in a very different place than Americans have. Rather than focus on how to change schools, Finns decided to change their society…  or at least to compensate for the inequities of income and opportunities that left some Finnish children behind.

Rather than blaming teachers or holding them accountable for student performance, Finns decided to make teaching a profession that the best and brightest college graduates sought out…  by offering prestige and money but also the sort of autonomy and responsibility that attract creative, intelligent people to the profession.

“There’s no word for accountability in Finnish,” Sahlberg said recently in a speech at Columbia University. “Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”

Finland is, of course, different from the U.S. in ways that make comparisons tricky. Much smaller, less diverse, and with a much lower poverty rate, Finland is also committed to the sorts of social supports that conservative Americans decry.

A more useful comparison might be between Finland and Norway, another small country with a similar population, but one which is following American-style school reforms. How do Norwegian students measure up? Mediocre performance on the same international tests the Finns are excelling in.

If American reformers are determined to use Finnish schools as a benchmark of student achievement, then they can’t ignore the reasons for that success.

Wanting Finnish results while dismissing Finnish methods is a surefire way to continue to lose that numbers game.

In an email he sent to me upon their return, he described the feeling of reaching the summit after an exhilarating climb.

“When I looked out at the distance all around me, and looked back down the trail from which we’d just climbed, I didn’t feel the uplifting sense of accomplishment I was expecting,” he said. “Rather, I felt humbled [...] it made me feel very small and insignificant in comparison to how vast and permanent everything around me seemed.”

I get the same feeling any time I’m before the crashing tide of the ocean, or miles above the earth in a passenger jet…  that whatever overinflated sense of myself, my talents, or accomplishments, it seems futile in the face of something so much more ancient and indomitable than I am.

Standing atop a mountain or before a raging sea bragging: “I can arc weld underwater!” or “I can read Medieval Latin!” or “I once scored four touchdowns in a single game!” is comically absurd. Time is a great leveler and the infinite depth of the universe defeats us.

Yet, in that humility there is glory. In knowing our insignificance we start to understand an impulse far greater than any abject fear: awe. A true sense of awe directs one toward worship, a facet of human existence that supersedes any doctrine of formal religious practice.

Human beings are designed to worship, whether it’s Jehovah, the Dallas Cowboys, or our own smug sense of self-satisfaction: we all bow before some altar. There is an insatiable thirst in the heart of man to worship, which is why we do the things we do.

Much like my friend who stood upon a mountain’s summit, we too stand upon a precipice of our own. We stand at the culmination of another great span of 365 days (366 since it’s a leap year), facing the innumerate possibility of this newborn year of our Lord 2012.

Some of you are already scrambling.

Another friend of mine manages a fitness center in the Hill Country and he’s seeing record attendance in just the first week of 2012. Attendance breaking last year’s record, a record that was set in the first month of 2011 which, in turn, broke the previous year’s record that was set in January 2010.

See where this is going?

This is indeed a time for new beginnings and fresh starts, the person you will be in December has a lot to do with the decisions you make today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. You are cultivating your year even now.

Are you sowing the seed or idly dreaming of flowers? Are you driving full throttle into 2012 or just spinning your wheels? If you’re anything like me, you feel a slight tremor of panic at just how fast last year passed by and are not a little bit fearful that this year is going to rush by just as quick.

I don’t want to alarm you, but it will.

God help me… I’m going to blink my eyes, take a turn about the room, and I’ll be sitting down to write my first column of 2013. I swear I just did this!

We are all standing before the face of another new year to climb, so let us do so. The mountain may well outlast us, but we can still put one foot in front of the other. Indeed we must.

Like many of you, the days leading up to Christmas day are my favorite of the entire year. The rush and keening torrents of activities, parties, and family get-togethers. As the old carol says: “it’s the most wonderful time of the year.”

At the same time, the first few days following Christmas are my least favorite.

I don’t know what it is exactly but there’s a certain forlorn weariness that comes over me. Not so much a melancholy, though I am already hearing such sentiments being expressed by friends, relatives, and co-workers. It’s just a sighing relief, tinged with wistfulness…  like the summer’s over and school’s back in session.

My family’s Christmas festivities were hosted at my home again this year and it was wonderful. My extended family is large, and a rather spirited crew. Like some sort of weird juxtaposition of the first act of Fanny & Alexander combined with Robert Earl Keene’s “Merry Christmas from the Family.” Yeah…  that’s about the only way I can describe it succinctly without digressing even more.

One of my Roman Catholic friends told me that, were I part of his tradition, I would have almost two weeks worth of Christmas to celebrate, but I bet that’s a pretty hard sell with the management. One day off for Christmas is all I’m gonna get.

I suppose it’s natural. After all, a person can have too much of a good thing or way too much of a mediocre thing, or even diabolically too much of a lousy thing. But the party has got to end sometime and one’s responsibilities are always waiting, crouched in the corner.

However, I wonder if there isn’t something deeper at work. Christmas night, after we’d arrived home quite late from a post-church nightcap at my parents house, my youngest daughter drowsily asked what was next. “Now what?” she said. “Christmas is over…  now what?

I don’t know if it was the overabundance of “Christmas cheer” I’d enjoyed over the last 36-hour period or simple exhaustion, but I was quite unable to respond.

Finally, after a long beat, I replied that now we get ready for the New Year, then the onset of the all-too-brief Wintertime in East Texas. But she wasn’t buying it, she wanted to know where this grand build up of the season was heading. I have to admit, so do I.

Since the early rumblings of All Hallows Eve in early Autumn (through the brief hiatus of Thanksgiving) and now into the last slim glimmers of the year, the days have passed at a dizzying and breakneck pace.

Now Christmas, having ravished our community and left us all somewhat dazed in its wake, roars on down the road with its bright lights and joyful sounds echoing into the dark of night.

Perhaps this longing is helpful. Perhaps it is woven into our very being, this longing. Maybe we’re supposed to desire more than can be found in even “the most wonderful time” of our short earth-bound lives. Perhaps we’re supposed to drink deep of our temporal joys, and find that our thirst is far from quenched.

Even as the anticipation of the birth of our blessed Savior is but a shadow of His greater return yet to come, so too does this longing reveal that we have much greater things to anticipate than another year of holiday cheer.

Another year of hoping for the latest electronic peripheral can’t fill the groaning loneliness within our souls that know we were created for more than whatever dim pleasures we can extract from seven or eight brief decades upon this spinning orb.

Though our good and great God gives us a great abundance of such things to enjoy, they are simply the expressions of His generosity as well as ours…  but gifts and celebrations themselves are not designed to satisfy. They’re designed to point us to the Giver. Gifts are like sunbeams. We are not meant to love sunbeams but the Sun.

Putting our hope in gifts will leave us empty.

Many people live their lives looking for the right “sunbeam” to make them happy. But if we depend on anything in the world to satisfy our soul’s deepest desire, it will eventually leave us with that post-Christmas soul-ache. Like my sweet four-year-old daughter, we will all ask: “So now what?” because we know deep down that’s not all there is. We are designed to treasure a Person, not His things.

It’s just like God to let the glitter and flash of the celebrations (even those held in His honor!) to pass and then to come to us in the quiet, even melancholic void they leave. Because often that’s when we are most likely to understand the hope He intends for us to have at Christmas.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and I wish you all health and much blessing for this swiftly coming year.

More than this, though, I wish you to cling tighter to our mighty Lord, from Whom all such blessing flows.

Though I knew nothing about the play itself, I knew it had to have something to do with Shakespeare…  which was good enough for me.

If you’re unfamiliar with Tom Stoppard‘s brilliant play (or the hilariously-deadpan Gary Oldman/Tim Roth film version) it’s basically a “play within a play” with two minor characters as the main protagonists.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare is knocked on its ear in this play, with the two titular characters bantering about contradictions, destiny, free will, and providence, with plenty of tautologies thrown in for good measure.

Picture a drunken John Calvin arguing with a sober Oscar Wilde and you start to get the idea.

While I didn’t know anything about these sorts of things at the time (or if I did, it was on a very puerile level) it was nevertheless one of those precious opportunities to strain the bonds of my provincial upbringing. Such opportunities I savored.

Besides, I was more than a little enamored with the young lady in question. Of course I was also at that gaunt and awkward point in my life where I immediately fell in love with any girl who showed me the least bit of attention.

She was smart and popular and interesting. A combination I found to be rare, if not wholly non-existent in the suburban cultural wasteland of East Texas.

After the play we attended a special Advent church service at one of those vast drafty ivy-and-marble sanctuaries in the nearby downtown area.

Though not of a particularly religious household, I enjoyed the sensual aspects of high-church mysticism, especially during Christmas-tide.

Even as a mannish-boy of fifteen, I found little in common between the two venues but now, as a bearded man of five and thirty Winters, I find much that the two share in common.

I only thought of this because last night, due to my inability to sleep soundly ’til the morning, I found myself watching the aforementioned film version on DVD. Though yawning and watching through bleary eyes, a pattern began to emerge that I could not help but consider deeper.

At the close of the program, I took my dog out for a walk in the bone-aching cold of the blue pre-Dawn hours. A thought began to flower…

This play is perfect for Advent, though not if you think Advent is merely a pre-Christmas party.

Advent is a penitential season where we remember that Jesus Christ’s first coming will lead inevitably to his Second. His first coming found God made flesh and contained in a manger. His second coming will find God in the flesh so mighty that the cosmos will be remade to contain Him.

The Lord Jesus is returning and all injustice and evil will be destroyed. That is good news, except for own injustices and evils. Being “not so bad” in a universe where everything is interconnected is very bad.

What far-reaching implication do my careless words and thoughtless actions unleash? It frightens me to imagine.

My sin is a stink in God’s paradise so it cannot last.

Going on the way I am is not an option, so I am born to die. Part of me longs to live forever but my better self knows that as I am this would be a sort of hell of its own. My fear of death is irrational, to be sure, but reason is no match for fear.

Stoppard unknowingly presents the dilemma perfectly, with winsome wit and a cleverly constructed narrative.

His heroes are designed to die by Shakespeare but they don’t want to fulfill their role. It is small and their deaths seem meaningless…  especially when you consider all the carnage in Hamlet.

By the time Hamlet joins the choir angelic, the audience has forgotten all about poor Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern. (Or is it gentle Rosencrantz and poor Guildenstern?)

Neither character ever finds a way to escape doom and, though we get to know them better than Shakespeare allows, the only answer to “to be or not to be?” is that for now we are and thus will inevitably not be.

Is it possible for life to come again? Can there be a birth in our death? Stoppard does not suggest so but Shakespeare does.

Hamlet (and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!) leaves this life to another world. At times the Prince of Denmark is not sure of it, despite seeing his father’s ghost, but like most of us in his heart he fears it.

The life after life is more frightening than extinction. The fear for a Stoppard character is that Rosencrantz will die, only to awake once again linked to Guildenstern at yet another performance of the tragedy. Eternal cycles of this life make Richard Dawkins’ belief in extinction of being seem cheerful by comparison. Indeed many a man adopts atheism as a crutch against this fear.

Even so, denying what is actually likely, life from death, is not as comforting as atheists hope.

Stoppard is right to wonder if the Great Author is malicious or not, since this understanding of the problem of evil does not lead inexorably to atheism but more naturally to a sort of “bad god” amusing himself at our expense.

It is the message of Christmas that things are just as bad as Stoppard fears, but still hopeful. We can be changed from within and so even Hamlet can hope.

How glorious it would be if life ended but then a better life came? What if our lack of freedom, the constraints we feel, are put there by a truly good God to keep us from destroying ourselves? What if, in the life to come, we have been so glorified that no restraint is necessary?

Thus, the perfect “liberty” of paradise is the result of God’s love.

In that case then the script in which God has placed me is better than any alternative. It accounts for the evil decisions other beings of volition (from my obnoxious next-door neighbor to Satan himself) make. It also accounts for my own sin and folly.

Like any school, this school for souls has patterns and requirements, but also like any good school it ends in a holiday. Christmas is a foretaste of that liberty.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot die, because they are fictional and death is a great gift for men. Someday soon I will be dead and that will be for my good.

Oh but on the other side I will find, finally, what is to truly live.

When challenged on this by his wife, Ricky Bobby snaps back that he prefers to think of Jesus as a baby and so will continue to pray to Him as such.

Although the scene is blasphemous in many ways, it places a finger on how many people like to picture Jesus during the Christmas Season and why He is so popular this time of the year.

Baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, is cute and cuddly. He’s not the Prince of Heaven, the Savior of the World, the King of Kings, and the Lion of Judah.

More than anything else: He’s safe, because He’s just a sweet little baby.

Of course, I think this is more an over-the-top plot device to show how backward and provincial the character is more than it is any slight toward the lordship of Jesus Christ. But I cannot help but think, especially during this time of year, if we are not ourselves guilty of the same absurd thing.

I don’t mean to say that any of us are gathered around our dinner tables making an absurd paean to a cherubic, ruddy-cheeked, bowdlerized version of the “holy infant” whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day. But in reducing Him to anything less than Lord of our lives, we are doing so. If I do not live in such a way that testifies before others that He is my king and master, then am I doing any better than Ricky Bobby? If my thoughts and actions are contrary to His commandment, am I not simply relegating Him to the “kid’s table” in my conscience?

Jesus Christ was divine, God incarnate, who condescended to take on the mantle of a man that He would teach us how to live and in His death purchase our Salvation. Though the life He lived started in the humble means of a manger, Jesus Christ grew to manhood as the sacrificial Lamb and prepares to return as the Lion.

Thus, He is no one to be trifled with or trivialized.

My own children are charmed by the Nativity narrative, of humble shepherds straining for a glimpse of the newborn king, of the tranquil Mary bearing her child with quiet grace, and of baby Jesus so tender and mild…  but I’m not content for them to remain there, to remain as children or for their understanding of their Lord to remain a juvenile one.

As we celebrate this season with stories of the birth of Jesus, let us remember that birth is not the end point of our spiritual lives, any more than childbirth is the essence of parenting. These are only starting points.

The goal of parenting is to raise healthy, intelligent adults who are loving and caring, with the strength and skills to face the challenges of their lives. So too it goes with our spiritual lives. The object of our religion is not only a spiritual rebirth, but to have

Christ grows within us to be an everyday guide, comfort and support. We are to have the presence of God be a part of everything we do and to share the fruits of that growth with the people around us and in the wider world.

What child is this? This is Christ the Lord. O, come let us adore Him.