The Lilt of Jet Lag

I knew I was in trouble with the nefarious Jet Lag when, on my first night home in the United States, I awoke at 2:00 a.m. ready to go. My body was nagging at me—“come on, it’s 9:00 a.m.” in Jordan, but as you would imagine, there was nothing much going on in the eastern time zone at home. I had gone to bed about 11:00 and figured after the 30 hours of traveling I would enjoy one of those great nights of slumber. Nah. Didn’t happen. So you know, you turn on the television, and yes, at 2:00 a.m. that is when the most execrable shows cram the airwaves. You look through a magazine or two, pick up a boring book (you don’t want a great book at 2:00—the plan, the hope is that you will soon be slumbering again) make some notes about the next day’s plans, and wait. You wait for the sleep. But with jet lag, it rarely rewards you with more hours of sleep…

I have a great capacity to function on little sleep. It comes from years of teaching school, directing plays, and trying to cram a couple days worth of activities and work into one solid, overheated day. On the third day of my body rousing me between 2:00 and 4:00 I began to realize this jet lag might take a little while to conquer. On that third day I hadn’t yet seen a movie, so my dear friend Sylvia and I went out to a movie. I decided to choose a cheap movie—not just because frugality is a quality I embrace—but in case I fell asleep, I might as well nap in a $3 movie instead of the high-end, first-run Tom-and-Julia flick. I stoke myself with a little caffeine and Sylvia and I arrive for the 7:45 movie. I remember just as the “Don’t Talk” PSA blared, I put my head on Sylvia’s shoulder, she sang a lullaby in German, and the next thing I knew my phone was going off in the theater. My friend Kevin had called, and wrecked this great sleep—I think it was about 2/3 of the way through the movie. As I whispered apologies to the patrons near me, I asked Sylvia how long I had slept. “Oh, since the previews. I didn’t have the heart to waken you!” Interestingly enough—the movie during which I got some shut-eye: Gone, Baby, Gone.

Over the next few nights as the middle-of-the-night blackness became my wake-up siren, I started doing some more constructive things. I actually came up with the best gift ideas for Christmas (yes, I know, good thing, since the day quickly approached!). I remember saying to my sister, “I had the best idea for a gift last night for you.” She said, “Yeah, but how was the idea in the morning?” Some times those “fabulous” ideas look a little wan in the light of day, but for my dad, my sister, my brother-in-law, I got the best ideas during that little incubating awake-time.

Since I didn’t want to sacrifice any awake-time not visiting, or eating or talking (only not seeing movies since I knew what would happen…) I still stayed up until normal bed times, and then would see how late the slumber fairies would allow me rest time. By Christmas Eve, I had begun to sleep until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. But since I didn’t want to bother my father downstairs, I confined my early morning business to the upstairs. On one of those dark risings I saw that my mother’s bible was in my room, and I started to look through it. My mother had one of those bibles chock-full of papers—notes from long-ago sermons, church bulletins from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, letters from dear church friends, offering envelopes weathered with age—a veritable filing cabinet of church and spiritual business of our lives. I had looked through my mother’s bible before—we are a family that genuinely enjoys looking through ancient paper trails, if you have seen our house, you know we cannot bear to throw anything away—everything it seems has some sentimental value!

As with any loved one who has died, there was now a special poignance in seeing my mother’s handwriting, and in the 1970s and 80s, this was a time before the MS ravaged her beautiful, elegant penmanship. This time as I read through the notes, I realized that these notes could make a powerful spiritual gift—how she heard and notated the sermons would make a wonderful devotional book for our family, and decided to choose one of the notes to frame as a Christmas gift for my sister. I decided that in the next 11 months I would take all of these notes and type them up, so we could have a record, perhaps, enough for a year-round calendar, and would finish them up by November 27, 2008, the occasion of the 70th anniversary of my mother’s birth.

See, it was good to be up in the middle of the night with nothing to do!

On Christmas Eve, I went to three Christmas Eve services. Yes, three. I am nothing if not excessive! Niece Emma and Nephew Jack appeared as an angel and a shepherd, respectively, in the service at the Catholic church where they attend school. That was at 4:00 p.m. and was very fun to see an old-fashioned Christmas pageant with scores of children as camels, angels, shepherds, wise men, etc. I also noticed something really interesting. The boy playing Joseph was wearing a hatta, that middle-eastern scarf thing that now I recognize from my months in Jordan. Each hatta is of a certain color, and the color tells you something of the political alignment of the wearer—blue and white is for an Israeli, red and white for a Jordanian, black and white for a Palestinian (who knew? You learn so much moving abroad!). The boy playing Joseph was wearing a black and white hatta, which caught my eye, since the original Joseph was from Palestine. I told my sister, and she wondered if the intelligent costumer might actually have known that point.

Anyway, on to the next service. At 7:00 we attended the Christmas Eve service at our family’s church, and as we have done every single year since 1974, I played the piano and my sister sang. Of course every year we lament the fact that we have never taken pictures, for wouldn’t it be interesting to see a line-up of pictures every year since 1974, when as precocious children we mounted the pulpit to deliver musical Christmas wishes.

At 9:45 Sylvia came by to get me to go downtown to an old, old German protestant church that had cried out for singers to help with a midnight service. Their choir had shrunk in years, and they wanted singers who could sing in German to help augment their group. Last year was the first year they made the public plea, via the newspaper, and even though it is in a sketchy part of town, about 50 singers showed up, strangers all, to help out this church in their midnight service.

Maybe this night I will sleep until morning!!

What a futile wish! About 4:30 a.m. I awoke, not just excited to see what Santa had brought me, but interested to fill some time until I could go downstairs.

I got out my mother’s bible again to check out the Christmas story. But not the story from Luke! As much as I love that story (and my favorite rendering is when Linus recites the passage in "It’s Christmas Charlie Brown," beginning with “Lights, please,” and ending with the gentle, “So that’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”) I had just been in church three times in the last 12 hours and in each service we tread over the familiar ground of Luke!!!

So I paged back to Matthew, the first gospel. I hadn’t thought of this for many a year. Well, the Christmas story in Matthew’s gospel isn’t made of the sentimental stuff in the typical Christmas programs. It opens with a much starker scene. There are no shepherds. There is no host of angels praising God and singing. Instead, one angel dashes onto the scene with a desperate message: They are seeking to kill the child.

Herod, that corrupt puppet of Rome, had dispatched armed men to kill all the baby boys of Bethlehem, since he had heard that there was a new baby King, and he wanted to protect his shaky claim to the title, “King.” As a result of the angel’s message, the baby is snatched from his bed, held tight in his mother’s arms as she runs for her life. The baby’s eyes must have seen the fear in his mother’s eyes, in his father’s actions.

Imagine the child, growing up as a refugee, away from his father’s clan home. Imagine the day he asks why there are no cousins or aunts or uncles around. Perhaps his mother can say nothing, but only looks down and away, silently trying to control her breathing. Perhaps his father simply leaves the room. Perhaps, finally, they answer his question, weaving dread and terror into the story of the family’s purpose, the family’s hope, the family’s faith. Jesus must have asked. Jesus must have remembered the pained answers.

New situations in life certainly create new perspectives. I have imbibed the Christmas story since my birth. But as I read this story from Matthew in December 2007, nearing dawn on Christmas morning the other night, I enjoyed new insights into this story—insights I daresay I would not have understood before this year. When Jesus is grabbed from his bed as his family flees, I understood anew the plight of Palestinians, the people who proudly wear that black and white hatta. Indeed, Jesus has metaphorical company on every continent, in every century. Fleeing with him are Cherokee and Lakota, Dinka and Tutsi, Baptists and Mennonites, Serbs and Bosnians and Croatians, Katrina and Tsunami victims, Jews and Palestinians. As I read this story, I understood that God comes into creation to be with us, the name Emmanuel. And with us, Jesus, Emmanuel, runs for his life. Of course it is not only genocide that hunts us. Disease, drunken drivers, depression all snatch away our joy, holding lives that insist on fraying and unraveling, day-by-day.

The cries of the dispossessed ring through this story—but there are hints of hope and promise. In that early morning light, I am hoping to learn the deep and impatient wisdom of the darker Christmas story. Matthew’s story links Jesus with all the children who do, and do not, escape disaster—in Bethlehem, in Auschwitz, Rwanda, in Darfur, and throughout history in every human family.

This jet lag hasn’t been all torment—there have been moments of learning and epiphany, that most prized present of all.

Wishing you a blessed Christmas season!

I have enjoyed my 11 days in Cincinnati, and tomorrow I leave for New York before jetting back to Jordan. I may not be back at blog duty until I am ensconced, once again, in Jordan. So I wish you a Happy New Year, and look forward to more blog entries in 2008.