{"id":651,"date":"2019-12-04T10:16:44","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T16:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/?p=651"},"modified":"2019-12-04T10:19:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T16:19:15","slug":"advent-calendar-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/04\/advent-calendar-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent calendar #4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube alignright wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q_qtwOhu3C4?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Inevitably, any Advent calendar of mine is going to contain a number of my favorite choir pieces. Here is my favorite Palestrina introit, &#8220;I Look From Afar.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s part of the nature of Advent, too, that looking from afar is both looking at the past as from the far future, and looking at the future from an always-incipient present. Like gestalt arrows, it&#8217;s both at once: that on-the-cusp feeling belongs so completely to no other time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A friend once observed of me that I want to &#8220;save the world,&#8221; and they weren&#8217;t wrong. Something in me is a perpetual paladin, and whenever I do something that matters to me, it matters because of that. Advent taps into and intensifies a feeling I have year-round, that there are lots of reasons not to act, not to do a thing &#8212; but if you&#8217;re going to do it, then <em>do it<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t mean do it perfectly, though. Long ago, a (different) friend was lamenting their depression and how it was causing them to &#8220;half-ass&#8221; their last semester of school. I said: &#8220;Sometimes half an ass is all you have,&#8221; and the other person in the chatroom suggested putting that on a cross-stitch sampler. But that&#8217;s exactly what I mean. If half an ass is what you have to give to a thing you want to do, then give half an ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I try to remind myself of this antidote periodically, because I too fall prey to the feeling that Advent (and Lent, too, often) got started before I was ready and I&#8217;m in a futile scramble to catch up. It&#8217;s not Fear Of Missing Out, it&#8217;s Fear Of Missing In, fear that I will have &#8220;had the experience but missed the meaning.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Advent is its own antidote. The answer to FOMI is to plant your feet, and your ass &#8212; whole or half &#8212; and look from afar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The gestalt has got you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inevitably, any Advent calendar of mine is going to contain a number of my favorite choir pieces. Here is my favorite Palestrina introit, &#8220;I Look From Afar.&#8221; It&#8217;s part of the nature of Advent, too, that looking from afar is both looking at the past as from the far future, and looking at the future<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/04\/advent-calendar-4\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More&nbsp;<i class=\"fas fa-long-arrow-alt-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p><!-- entry-read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"Advent calendar #4\nIn which I share my favorite Palestrina introit and meditate on the gestalt of waiting. #authorblogging","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[16,129,21,18,130,20,27],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/payFy4-av","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}