Camels in the Streets

Wisemen and camels plodding through the streets -- in Bethlehem they searched for a King. In Village Square it means a parade.

Main Street in Village Square is a festive blizzard of lights, music and shoppers. Crowds line the street in anticipation of the event. But this is not a 'holiday' parade, not in this village. With shepherds and their sheep, singing angels, and Mary, Joseph and the babe in the manger, this is very clearly, Christmas.

This really is smalltown, so it's a really short parade. But it's unabashed in tone. The music, the parade entrants, all center around the Bible story of a God who became a baby. It's quieter than most parades, and many of the several thousand spectators follow to the manger scene, for community caroling and candlelighting. This is a celebration in honor of the birth of the Divine Son to a human family.

In a community known for living a peacable lifestyle, this hardcore Christmas parade may seem a quiet act of rebellion against the sanitized and secularized holiday season. But it's really just a people celebrating what they believe: A King is born. He brings peace to the soul.

For wise men and women plodding through the streets of Bethlehem, Times Square, or Village Square, that's worth celebrating.
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Facebook Thanksgiving

Today was my first ever Facebook Thanksgiving. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing?

"It's a family Thanksgiving dinner. I'm not taking my laptop." That was my bold declaration at 11ish as we left the house with our collection of foodstuffs for the two get-togethers we had planned.

Heh.

At the stuffing ceremony that afternoon, we discovered my new camera takes videos too. (who knew?) So we recorded a holiday greeting for an absent nephew (stateside) and an absent niece (an ocean away.) Of course, this had to be posted on Facebook immediately.

And the floodgates opened. It seems laptops run in gangs. Or they like to gather on Thanksgiving like other families. Within an hour I was staring at maybe half a dozen Dell, HP, and Asus logos perched smugly on their owners' laps. A little crowd hovered around the first person to pull up the just-posted video of the dinner we had just engorged, I mean enjoyed.

Not that it ruined our family time. Half an hour later the dining room table was crowded with a card-playing group. The guitars came out later for some home-cooked music. And before the day is over, family from hours or days away gets a glimpse into our day.

No, it wasn't a Facebook Thanksgiving. It was a family day with a new wrinkle in our rhythm, a wrinkle that served to expand the borders of our family along with our waistlines.
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Pay Here

Pay Here, said the simple hand-lettered sign at the entrance to the tent-covered petting zoo.

Alas, I wish life was like that. 'Pay here, pay this much for this experience'. But it's quite the opposite.

In the exhibition called life, you see the picture of a little girl on the back of the giraffe and you wander inside to see it. Turns out there's no giraffe, and if there was you couldn't ride it. The pygmy goats are there, and the ducks. A garter snake but not the ananconda. It is a petting zoo, but you can't touch the sheep. Just the puppies, which are on sale today for only seven hundred and ninety five dollars.

But it is kinda fun and you're smiling and you wander out to the exit only to be stopped by a smiling, but resolute gentleman.

"That will be $49 for your tour of the petting zoo, please."

"Forty nine dollars?" you protest. "I would never have gone in if I knew it was $49 and there was no giraffe."

That's life. It doesn't tell you ahead of time what an experience will cost.
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Soul Rhythm

It's not just the music; it's what the music did to the people listening that sticks in my mind.

Rock the Block was a Friday night party in downtown Winston-Salem. Playing on the blues stage was The Ladies Auxiliary, two white chicks and two black dudes rockin' the park. Not the headliners, but they could belt the blues.

But the crowd...the crowd was the show. The rains had just passed, mud prevailed in small grassy space directly at stage front. The sidewalk in front of our seats was mostly underwater, so the first row of seats became the ad hoc walkway. The teens danced in the muddy grass, the grown-ups stayed on the sidewalks.

One couple in particular was entertaining. The wiry, sharp-dressed gentleman, from crisp white shirt to polished shoes, was smooth as butter. Not big and flashy moves, but small, elegant. And the lady, though not so small, showed a love of the rhythm in her smiling eyes, the swing of her hips and the grand gestures of her bejeweled hands. We were enjoying the show...until...

...until the wiry gentleman beckoned insistently to a friend of ours, who promptly joined him on the rain drenched sidewalk. And then the big lady with big rhythm beckoned me and didn't seem to care if I could dance or not; she only cared that I had a smile on my face and rhythm in my soul.

Luvly joined me shortly and we rediscovered what everyone who taps their toes to the music instinctively knows; Listening to music is a pleasure; experiencing the music with your body gets it down in your soul.
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