Tricia Rose Burt

Speaker. Storyteller. Coach.

Jesus

A Cross-Dressing Frosty the Snowman Meets Jesus at the Dump

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Here in my small New Hampshire town, we take our garbage and recycling to the dump, or “transfer station” if we’re being proper. One of the highlights of the dump is visiting the swap shop — a room loaded with either trash or treasure, depending on your perspective. It’s one of my favorite places to go and Mama’s, too. Forget NH’s natural beauty. Whenever she comes to visit, she always asks, “When are we going to the dump?”

Away in a (Whacky) Manger

The nativity, as imagined at the Hancock, NH dump
The nativity, as imagined at the Hancock, NH dump

Last year, I couldn’t help but notice the fabulous nativity scene that swap shop attendant and fellow artist Evelien Bachrach created. Sure, baby Jesus lays in a manger (with blonde hair, which of course every Jewish man sported 2,000 years ago), and some version of Mary watches over him, but the rest of the characters make up a motley crew of discarded items. There are chickens, a pig, what might be a rabid red dog, alarmed sheep, and a small Trojan horse-like ornament. There’s no Joseph, shepherds, or wise men to be seen, but there’s an African woman in native dress (or maybe she’s from the islands) and Frosty the Snow Man, who looks like he’s cross-dressing with Little Bo Peep. Santa looks concerned, the angel’s content with her doll, and a plaster Teddy bear — joyous despite the hole in his stomach — stands guard. A handmade star hangs from a yellow plastic push pin and just over the particle board roofline, a plate that looks like a photographed pepperoni pizza completes the tableau.

A Christmas Metaphor

To me, this nativity scene provides a handy metaphor for our lives.

Sure we’d like our lives to be a matched set, with all the right parts and players present, to appear dignified so we feel like we have some control. But the truth is, our lives are messy and chipped, and some of the important parts and players are missing. Instead of hosting a conventional family for Christmas dinner where we use the good china, we serve a rag tag group that includes a cross-dressing Frosty the Snowman who eats off a photographed pepperoni pizza plate. Personally, I think that’s much more interesting.

And I think our messy lives make Jesus happy, because there is nothing judgmental or conventional about Jesus. He was always hanging out on the fringes, with the folks that didn’t quite fit in, with the discarded and the despised — lepers, prostitutes, and refugees, an important point to remember this particular Christmas. To Jesus, everybody was family, no matter how different or crazy or broken they might be.

And Speaking of Families

The Tricia Ball, star of The Moth Radio Hour
The Tricia Ball, one of the stars of this week’s The Moth Radio Hour

Starting December 15, I’ll be part of The Moth Radio Hour’s Second Annual Holiday Show, which will be broadcast over more than 500 public radio stations nationwide. I’ll be telling “The Tricia Ball,” a story about my parents’ divorce, our Christmas “celebrations,” and the ornament Daddy made for me when I was very little. The story resonates with anyone who’s ever tried to navigate family drama and heartbreak at a time when we’re supposed to be happy. But as always, humor and redemption can abound even in the bleakest situations.

If you miss the radio show, the story will be available on their podcast beginning December 22. And you can always go to  The Moth and listen to the show online.

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Listening to Your Life

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A companion of mine for nearly 20 years

It’s Lent. And whether you are religiously inclined or not, it’s always a good thing to do a little emotional and mental spring cleaning this time of year. Weak-willed and perpetually distracted, I always need some help along the way. This Lent, I thought I’d return to a book my dear friend Sarah gave me years ago, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner.

If you don’t know much about Frederick Buechner, suffice it to say Maya Angelou, Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott, and The New York Times are big fans. He’s written more than 30 books, is an ordained Presbyterian minister, and inspires people to see grace in their daily lives. He can also be very funny.

So, I thought I’d share with you his thoughts on Lent, taken from his Feb. 26 entry in Listening to Your Life. It got me thinking (again). Hope it does the same for you.

In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone in the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.

If you have to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn’t, which side would get your money and why?

When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?

If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?

Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you the happiest to remember?

Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?

If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sack-cloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.

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