Saturday, December 31, 2022
Seventh Day of Christmas
New Year’s Eve
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The last hour
On the next to last day of the year we met Andi’s family at the McKenna Kids Museum in New Braunfels, forty miles south of Austin. We brought snacks and bought some soup at lunchtime. Miles, Jasper and Andi drove the ambulance while Margaret laid languishing in the back. Jasper rubbed the longhorn cow’s nose as he raced to check out groceries at the store.
Both boys traveled to outer space through the darkest possible tunnel of stars. They fished for magnetic fish. They saw onion skin through a big beautiful white microscope. Jasper got a little tired, was rescued by his dad, and then everyone played bingo at the Noon Year’s Eve party and they both won a prize.
Children, this is the last hour. You have the anointing that comes from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth but because you do.
Miles and Jasper joined the hundred other kids screaming under the balloons at noon (midnight), and the countdown began. Ten, nine, eight, seven … at zero everyone screamed even louder, the balloons came pouring down, a few minutes later the entire contraption came tumbling down, and I must say … everyone had a good old time. We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
Later in the afternoon Margaret and I sat outside (this is southern Texas!) at a coffee shop on the square, spent a couple of hours tracking down outdoor murals depicting the German history of New Braunfels, and found ourselves having a German dinner complete with Hofbrau at Krause’s Cafe and Biergarten, first opened within a year of the founding of the town in 1845.
But more than any of that, this felt like a day to be grateful and feel the presence of God’s peace. The next to last day blends into today’s December 31, both made for parties but also reflection, for laughter but also silence.
Flee for a while from your tasks, hide yourself for a little space from the turmoil of your thoughts. Come, cast aside your burdensome cares, and put aside your laborious pursuits. For a little while give your time to God, and rest in him for a little while. Enter into the inner chamber of your mind, shut out all things save God and whatever may aid you in seeking God; and having barred the door of your chamber, seek him. – St. Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109
We spent awhile in the first church built in New Braunfels, St. Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church. History pulled us in. After walking and talking around the empty church, we sat in our pew and prayed, for our families and our friends and the people around us, alive and dead.
We wanted to stop at the new HEB store, but the parking lot was packed. We went to Buc-ee’s instead, for some Hill Country Behemian garlic beef jerky. But I remembered the history of that other grocery, named for Howard E. Butts, whose family began helping others in big ways after a Texas tornado in 1934, and never stopped. “Our Foundation helps people find transformation on the other side of hardship,” Mr. Butts told his children.
To those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God.
HEB is by far the most popular grocery chain in the United States, although limited to stores in Texas and Mexico. Customer loyalty isn’t to merchandise as much as to its philanthropy. About their philosophy, Howard Butts Jr. said, “Doing flows from being, for what we are, we do.”
On my own Texas Monthly-guided tour of the Hill Country two years ago, I added a trip to the Laity Lodge, built by the Butts, down into the Frio River canyon on a beautiful March day. Turn off the Farm to Market road onto gravel, which descends too quickly and becomes more dirt, down, and down, (oh what am I doing here in my little white Prius?) to the edge of a typical barely flowing Texas river with a rocky shore, a cowboy in a pickup and a big hat stops by and tells me I’m on the right track, just head east along and not too far into the river, do not be afraid. You’ll see a lane turning north with a sign, take that and keep on going.
So I did, and suddenly in the middle of nowhere the lodge glowed gleaming in the sun. Down the river another mile, the youth camp. Up another lane the Quiet House, waiting for another writer like Elisabeth Elliot, who wrote much of Through Gates of Splendor here in 1956-57, resisting and re-engaging with memories of betrayal and trust, writing about her martyred husband and confronting God.
So. Yes. We get most of our groceries at HEB.
And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, full of grace and truth.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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