I am done my Christmas shopping! Have been for a few days now actually. I found Christmas shopping strangely relaxing this year even in December crowded malls with Christmas crazed shoppers. Maybe it was all the spare time I have had lately, or maybe it was because I bought most of my gifts at smaller local stores, or maybe it was because of a revelation I had the other day.
I was standing in a crowded Canadian Tire store when I noticed something
odd. There were guys standing in the kitchen supply aisle talking about
spatulas and mixers and there were ladies in the tool aisle pondering over ratchet sets and cordless drills. Now I don't want to stereotype genders but I know this is not usual behaviour for the majority of Canadian Tire customers. These shoppers were clearly out of their element as they tried to understand and predict the interests and desires of their loved ones. Through their Christmas shopping and gift giving they were communicating a desire to know and be known which was unexpectedly beautiful.
A certain (ir?)rational part of my brain has always rebelled against the typical gift exchange. Why should I spend money buying a gift that you only sort of want/need only to have you spend money doing the same for me? Wouldn't it be easier/more efficient if I just bought something for myself and you did the same? And then there are the obvious objections to the over-commercialization and blatant greed that becomes so prevalent around Christmas time. Which is of course valid. As I was wandering the malls I also occasionally thought "can any of us really afford this?" and as I heard parents grumbling about the 2hr wait to get their child's photo taken with Santa I thought "don't we all take this a little too far?"
Certainly many of those shoppers in Canadian Tire will get their gift wrong. Come boxing day the stores will be packed with people who bought the wrong size, shape, colour or gift and are frantically trying to correct their mistake. Tempers will flare and frustrations will abound because after all we still live in a sinful world. But for one brilliant moment we tried to forget that and reached out in hope, seeking to love and be loved in our own imperfect way.
This shouldn’t surprise me. After all, Psalm 148 tells us that peach trees can praise the Lord with the same volume as “young men and women, old men and children.” But biting into one of those glorious peaches I am treated to an unexpected, gratuitous goodness. There are good evolutionary reasons for peaches to be sweet, but not that sweet. There are good evolutionary reasons for peaches to be beautiful, but not that beautiful. Or maybe there are; it really doesn’t matter. Their praise is extravagant, and it rings just as clear no matter how they came to my kitchen.
As you will note, I’ve been contemplating peaches for the last few days. And during this contemplation Hopkins’ great poem keeps coming to mind:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
My gushing about peaches attests to how much I agree with Hopkins that the world is charged with the grandeur of God. It is particularly charged in the Niagara region, I should add. Who knew such beauty and bounty could exist this side of Eden?
But he’s wrong to give trade and man’s smudge such a bad rap. Peaches, I learned, are oriental in origin. That is, they came to Canada by way of Europe, by way of Persia, by way of China. In other words, I can witness the divine because of the trade of many men and women through the ages. I can savour the sweetness of a peach because of farmers, scientists, Mexican labourers, and a friend from church worked to cultivate and deliver it. God’s grandeur is gathered together through the work of many. His “bright wings” lend his perfect beauty to our work, despite work’s bruises and rottenness. The result is a painting like a Renoir; imperfect, but no less beautiful for being smudged together.
