Go Ahead…Unplug the Christmas Machine…

I am the new, updated cordless version of the Christmas Machine. I run on a hidden battery the size of plankton which stores more information on it than Santa’s scroll and has the capacity to power a small country for many a Christmas future. Go ahead…try to shut me off.

When I told my husband recently that my Tuesday morning bookclub (which meets at the Well) is discussing the very timely book titled “Unplug the Christmas Machine,” he looked at me over his bifocals, shook his head like he does when his football team is behind 40 to nothing and mumbled, “It’s hopeless, honey, that will never work.” Those were his exact words except for the honey part, but we’ve been married for 27 years, so I have permission from Mrs. Clause to embellish this time of year. Did I mention that I have direct permission to embellish from Mrs. Clause?

Somewhere there is a twelve-step program for those of us who just can’t get enough of Christmas. Those of us who, when asked to list our favorite Christmas tradition need more time than it takes for a men’s chorus to sing “Twelve Days of Christmas” in a round while foraging the woods for the perfect pine tree singing into walkie talkies. Eyes glaze over as I describe buying ornaments for the kids each year, putting books away for my future grandchildren, setting up my Nativity set collection all over the house, making so much fudge the weight of the sugared fancies causes the foundation of my house to second guess itself. I exaggerate as well as embellish…not sure I have permission from anyone important to do this. I just do, especially this time of year. There’s the annual Christmas light tour, the must-have beef stew and cornbread we eat every Christmas Eve, the Christmas pajamas, the candles, the white lights and the way I get so preachy about such a silly thing, the sweaters…I secretly LOVE tacky Christmas sweaters and snowman earrings and puff paint…okay, maybe it isn’t a secret. It most definitely SHOULD be. I attend every live Nativity scene within a 100 miles radius (hello…road trip with fudge!). I cry every year when the little girl in the movie finds Prancer in her barn. I listen to Christmas music constantly from October through March (the season just doesn’t last long enough). My kids buy me the same Jim Brickman Christmas CD every year because I wear one out every season. I hear them snickering in the breakfast nook about their plans to play this at my funeral.

If ever a woman needed to read the book “Unplug the Christmas Machine,” it’s probably me, except for reasons I hope to continue to explore I don’t ever approach this season with dread or a stressed out longing for an experience that is different from the one that I (along with my husband, Clark Griswold) get to enjoy each season with our family. Perhaps my machine just needs a tune-up.


My favorite Christmas tradition is the church service on Christmas Eve. When we pass the candles and sing “Silent Night”….that seems to permeate everything for me, including the beef stew waiting for us at home after service. Including the presents and the busyness. As I listen to the younger moms in my bookclub I am inspired at the questions they ask of themselves, of their quest to intentionally create holidays which are glistening with the grace of Christ. We teach much this season to the little ones in our midst as we shape cookies and make room on our hearths and in our hearts for joy. There is much “Mary-ness” to the “Martha-ness” of this special season that is ONLY SIXTY DAYS AWAY!

One lesson I have learned over the years….Christmas has taught me this…the less I compartmentalize Christ, the less I compartmentalize Christmas, the less activities in my life don’t fall into the category of religious pursuit. I am not really a “religious” person for the sake of picking and choosing this or that as “celebrates the birth of Christ” or “doesn’t celebrate the birth of Christ appropriately.” I more or less believe that I bring my faith to whatever task I am choosing to undertake for a given day because the promise of the Spirit’s dwelling within me means there is something sacred as well as super-sweet in that fudge I am stirring. The more Christmases I celebrate, the more awe and worship I see in the simplest of things, in the materials of life, if not in the materialism.


After all, the stuff of life, even the human stuff, these were created by God for us to use, and use is sacred. I hope this book helps me to distinguish between use and misuse. It seems to me that defining activities in black and white when we all know Christmas colors are much closer to each other than that…reds, greens, gold…and with the proper touch blues and silvers and plum…this is perhaps the guilt-inducing pressure point that sends Christmas machines everywhere into overdrive and makes us eat too much fudge. We bring some incredibly complicated theologies into our Christmases, don’t we?

I can’t wait to explore all of this with my inspiring and intelligent bookclub ladies on Tuesday mornings at The Well. We are wired by our Creator to celebrate this birth that is never far away from a cross. It’s impossible to separate His coming from His going and His coming again. The newness of the season invites us every time– the sparkle on the snow at a time when God’s earth is declining, and yet for that to be the most tangible promise ever of a new spring. Let there be lights if not on our houses within our eyes…because the Light of the World has come.

-Submitted by Kerri Snell
Come study Unplug the Christmas Machine with us! Join us for Morning Blend - a morning book club for moms at The Well, Tuesdays from 9am to 10am.

A Prayer Filled Fall

It has been a beautiful, picturesque fall; it has been a prayerful fall.

The Tuesday morning book club which meets at The Well just concluded our reading and discussion of Prayer Saturated Kids by Cheryl Sacks and Arlyn Lawrence.

 

I have personally felt an inner urging toward the obedience of prayer, so this book just seemed to be another part of God’s puzzle, putting me together, completing me, teaching me. The book is hands-on and practical and it discusses the importance of praying parents who pray for their children and who also pray in front of and with their children.

 

Prayer is more than a discipline, it is a relationship. Prayer is all the little things about a big thing, and prayer is that big thing about all the little things. If I could offer any encouragement to young Christian mothers out there it would be “Just do it.” Take that step from reading about prayer, from studying about prayer, from hearing sermons about prayer and spend time in prayer. Prayer Saturated Kids really challenges readers to take concrete steps toward implementing a variety of prayer methods into daily family life.

 

I have always been a person who prays, but I have not always shared those prayers with my children. There are many prayers written on the hard drive of my computer (I tend to write my prayers), but do I really want my children to only see my devotion to prayer after I am gone and someone finds the boxes and boxes of writing? The book and the book club discussions have motivated me to come out of the prayer closet and speak some perhaps linguistically inferior prayers aloud and in front of my son.

 

The prayer time at Moms in Touch (also held at the Well on first and third Thursdays) and the book club study on prayer have enriched my autumn with a harvest of answered prayers already! These answers are not always definitive miracles or desired results; most often the answer comes in the form of an incredible sense of peace no matter the circumstances of my day, my week, my month, my year, my life. Prayer has broken my pride and healed a relationship, and the beautiful truth about prayer is that when prayer breaks you, it is a very clean break. The bones of life fuse back together and there is no limp, no crimp in the wings.

 

I’d like to tell you prayer has made me perfect, but then again, not. Prayer has guided me to seek less perfectionism in myself and in others. I have learned this autumn that no matter how much head knowledge I may possess and no matter how many Bible verses I have heard thousands and thousands of sermons on in my lifetime, no matter how many good deeds I perform, no matter how wonderful my family might look (on one or two days out of a year) I am a woman who needs prayer. God doesn’t instruct us to pray because he needs to hear our thoughts verbalized or written or danced or run like a race or drawn in a beautiful picture…He instructs me to pray because I need it. I need the relationship. Prayer is the first thing. Prayer is often the last thing. God gives me words, and it’s a beautiful thing when I choose to give those back to Him. Or to take His words to me in silence. Or to laugh with Him at the same time He is laughing with me. Prayer is pouring out. Prayer is absorption. We must teach this to our children. We must.

-Submitted by guest writer, Kerri Snell

The mom's book club meets Tuesday mornings from 9:30-10:30am at The Well. The book they are getting ready to delve into is Unplug The Christmas Machine. New members are welcome!
Prayer Saturated Kids, the last book featured is available as well.

Moms in Touch meets the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month at 9:15am for a prayer meeting.  Guests are welcome.

Celebrating with Stores Across the Country

As we reflect on the blessings of one year-Yes! Can you believe it's been ONE year as The Well!?!-what more appropriate time to celebrate a national celebration put on by many Christian distributors called Christian Store Day. The 1st annual Christian Store Day is scheduled for Saturday, October 23-almost exactly a year after our big move into our new home at 101 N. Main. Is that too much of a coincidence? I don't think so! So, we're celebrating Christian Store Day, The Well's 1st year anniversary, and YOU-the customer we couldn't do without. We'll have door prizes-lots of door prizes, sales-bunches of $5 books, loads of $5 CDs by groups like Casting Crowns, Red, Third Day  and DVDs including Chonda Pierce, sale priced gift items, half price movies including this year's #1 Christian movie, To Save a Life. Also on sale: Faith Like Potatoes, Flywheel, and Fireproof, and music from Israel Houghton and Tenth Avenue North food- what celebration would be complete without food? and lots more.

Realizing that only a year ago, we were figuring out exactly at what angle the book shelves should be at or what in the world we were going to fill our gift section with, I am amazed that we made it to this point! We've learned a lot - and are still learning. We still rearrange the cupboards, still have those baked flops-that I deem not edible, but somehow coworkers rejoice in such a confectionary windfall-who says you can't have burnt cookies for lunch!?! We still wrestle with the right amount of products, and still have those moments of panic when my phone rings and I hear, "Jenny, we're out of chocolate."  I fully expect most of these experiences to continue as a way of life - except maybe the chocolate scares if I can get my head on straight. We've been blessed to be a part of the community in so many ways. We were able to host all 9 1st Disctrict Primary candidates, Representative Todd Tiahrt, Senator Sam Brownback, and Representative Jerry Moran this summer. We have hosted or helped to host several Chamber of Commerce Coffees. We have not only baked fresh cinnamon rolls every day we've been open, but we've also expanded to include fresh pies, cookies, scones, muffins, and so much more. Jerry has continued to make trips down to Old School Bagel Cafe for our legendary bagels. We have scheduled meetings, Bible studies, or book clubs most days of the week. Our goal to make this a place to find community resonates with almost every age group-from giggling Jr. High girls to college students "studying" to retired individuals coming in for a piece of pie and a card game. Our Friday night concerts have also been a highlight in our weeks. The talent in this area is great and we're so happy to showcase just a portion. Side note: we're always looking for new entertainers. Contact us if you're interested.

Some particular highlights in the past year were a book signing by Deb Raney, Deborah Vogts, and Kim Vogel Sawyer, a coffee and dessert pairing by our coffee roaster, Greg Holmes of Marks Brothers Big World Coffee, the opportunity to do our first ever "real" book table at a retreat, and the release of 2 new t shirt designs (another one is in the works).

We want to thank you as the customer and the fan for a great year. We as individuals have been blessed to get to know you a little better and have enjoyed being part of your life -whether it's to supply that cup of joe in the morning or to help find that book that meets you where you are. We hope you'll celebrate with us on our holiday - National Christian Store Day - Saturday, October 23, 2010.

-submitted by Jenny for The Well

Living Water

October is a contemplative season, perhaps lost upon souls afflicted with an exclusionary strand of attention deficit disorder. We are a culture full of the present tense, of what’s happening now, of maintaining a hefty status quo whose brute force can only squelch any feeble attempt at looking upward. Or outward. Or inward.

I realize this morning as the sunlight diffuses into a few scattered clouds in a baby blue sky through my life’s window that I cannot provide through the living of my life, any generalities which sense the impending dangers to each of us within the framework of this worldwide lack of contemplation.

We live as though silence has nothing to say to us. No…I live that way. That is all that I can ever say.

It feels like putting a band-aid on a gushing, broken heart. It feels futile. What can one person do?

The silence tells me this morning that it is more impactful, more important to own the heart than to document the bleeding out of hearts in the plural, hearts in the comfort of numbers and society.

In the words of the Samaritan woman in the fourth chapter of John: Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!
I am that woman at that well. Not because I have had five husbands or because I am living with a man who isn’t my husband, but because whatever the particulars of my story might be, there is a man traveling through the noise of this world who can retell and foretell them. And most importantly, can untell them.

The woman at the well wasn’t living a good life, and yet she also wasn’t falsely insulated within her own goodness. Goodness, which like the water from Jacob’s well can only serve us day-to-day in rote survival. Goodness is a water which depletes our eternal parts in order to sustain itself, to pass off as a greater good than goodness can ever hope to be. There are many people walking around living what those of us who are “churched” would consider hopeless lives while we in the church hoard and scratch like so many roosters around Jacob’s finite well, secluding the location of the well where living water flows in abundance for all.

I believed for a long time that we Christians were hoarding the contents of this living well…no, wait…that I was hoarding the contents of this well in an attempt to preserve it, to keep the water and myself pure, to ensure my own children could drink of it first and would be able, by comparing the hope of living water to the hopelessness outside the doors of whatever church I was blessing with my own body heat, to see the difference. Or that it was a lack of faith on my part, or a lack of vision, or that I needed to keep praying about this for at least another hundred years before I could hope to know why.

This is what it really is: my inability to see my own redemption, my own constant need for it, the thirst I bring to contemplation every day, the base, ugly muddy water that fills my cup if I attempt to live on my own, alone. If I don’t want to run to everyone I see and share the joy of my own redemption, then have I truly come to terms with my own sin? Living water can never be sullied into anything less. Bring anyone to this well and you will see that this holds true. First, though, I must bring myself.


Submitted by guest writer, Kerri Snell. Published from her blog with permission

OCTOBER!

As the weather gets crisper and pumpkins begin appearing on porch steps, it's time that we embrace fall and celebrate all things fall! For one, we have a new shipment of candles in and this month only, any $10 candle purchase gets you a free tea light! We're enjoying the wonderful fall scents like Pumpkin Pie and Indian Summer. The wonderful smells are also wafting from the kitchen. With home made pie Monday through Friday, fresh cinnamon rolls everyday and many other freshly baked goodies, our kitchen is sure to please.
Now that the days are getting cooler and shorter, it's a good time to get involved in "indoor" activities and do we have some for you!
Like always, we've scheduled live music every Friday night:

• *October 8-WACCC (Women and Children Combatting Cancer)Open Mic Night. 10% of drink purchases will go to WACCC (7pm)
• October 15-David Mills (7pm)
• October 22-Caleb Marsh (7pm)
• October 29-Central Christian College Songwriters (7pm)
• November 5-Central Christian Jazz Band (7pm)

Need a couple hours sans kids? Our 2nd Saturday activity is geared just towards kids in grades k-6th. This month we'll study Japan on Saturday, October 9 from 9:30-11am. No reservation or money required.

• Monday is Chess Night! Come with friends or make some new ones.
• Moms in Touch Prayer Meeting - 1st and 3rd Thursdays at 9:15a
• FOCAS (Fellowship of Christian Adult Singles) Every Tuesday and Wednesday from 6:30-9pm
•  Prayer Saturated Kids Book Study (lead by Sharla Jost) Tuesdays from 9-10:30a
• Lunchtime Reflections Bible Study (lead by Dr. Connie Clark) Thursdays at 12:10






• Our first ever monthly book club! 2nd Mondays at 12pm (lead by Sandy Weicht) Read and discuss a new book every month. Join this club and receive a special membership card with discounts on featured books.

Mark your calendars! Friday (Nov. 5), Saturday (Nov. 6), and Sunday (Nov. 7) is Christmas Open House Weekend! Our hours for that weekend our 7a-10pm, Friday and Saturday, and 1pm-5pm on Sunday. We'll have live music all weekend long and will have refreshments, door prizes and much more.