FROM 10/01/07 TO 12/31/07
Birthday of the Sun
All the winter festivals revolve around the return of light and heat, the further north the more desperate the celebrations. Matthew summarizes the feeling fueling these festivals (4: 16): "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned." (see also Isaiah 9:1) After this, the creation story at the beginning of John, and the post Constantine Christian ascendancy, it is no accident that Christ was placed at the right hand of God and was born at the birthday of the sun, Sol Invictus, in Rome. His actual date of birth was not known. Why not place it at the winter solstice and the principal holiday of Christianity's chief rival, Mithraism? From such an auspicious beginning all else in Christmas has been added, absorbed from many earlier traditions. Without this assembling over the centuries all we could say of Jesus' birthday would be, "The Jewish teacher, Jesus, was born circa 4 B.C."
12/25/07
Walls
The Great Wall of China is such a prominent feature of the landscape it can be seen from space. Walls surrounded every medieval town in Europe and elsewhere. Parts of Hadrian's Wall across England can still be visited. Meanwhile walls are proliferating as a current strategy against unwelcome peoples: Israel's "Apartheid Wall" against the Palestinians, the U.S. "virtual wall" against the Mexicans. Now we have the "Green Zone" in Iraq and gated communities in wealthy sections of New Orleans and golf retirement communities. City businesses with fences, barbed wire, lights and surveillance cameras have long been a feature to keep teens and burglars away. Government buildings in D.C. now have concrete barriers to keep people from "the people's business." We all know what happened to the "Maginot Line," left high and dry by the Blitzkrieg. The new walls will eventually go the way of all ancient walls, but perhaps not as pretty on the landscape. Walls do not solve social inequities. They merely postpone redress of grievances.
12/15/07
Two Tier Religion
Before modern times most religions maintained themselves on two tiers: the initiates and the laity. For the most part scriptures and manuals of spiritual practice had not been written down, and for centuries were only found in scarce handwritten scrolls or wood block hand-pressed pages of books (in China). You had to learn the deeper aspects of your tradition as a disciple at the feet of a teacher. If you look at the structure of Christian worship spaces you will find a railing separating the priesthood and sacred altar from the laity, the uninitiated. This form is several thousand years old. Often the initiated live apart from everyday in monasteries or sangha. The laity are faithful adherents by observing certain ritual and moral behaviors and by supporting the initiated. With printing now everyone is included. Buddhist meditators, Taoist inspired martial arts, pastoral associates, all proliferate. But fanaticism endures among those of primitive consciousness. Witness the KKK, Christian militias, abortion clinic bombers, Zionists, Islamic jihadists, Buddhist massacres of Tamils, Hindu mob violence against mosques. There is a good deal of work to be done.
12/05/07
An After-Life?
No one has ever returned from an after-life to give us a picture or idea of its state of being. What would one do with an eternity? Or, if not forever, it would only push the problem of death back awhile. Would it be impersonal or a personal continuity? So-called "near death experiences" appear to replicate the birth experience, an archetypal push into the light. Even floating "above" looking down on oneself dying seems surreal as suddenly there is a sucking back into being alive, living on. Perhaps we linger, revisiting for awhile, before dissolving entirely into atmospheric mists or dry desert winds, consumed as fire dissolves grasses and trees in dancing smoke. Knowing is a bodily reality, filtered through billions of nerves, in-sight, in-sound, in-touch, in-taste, in-smell, in well-being or off-balance, in-memory. When earth was flat and the sky "above" a dome, heaven could be located in-the firmament. Now heaven is no-where or in-here. Likewise reincarnation appears to be a kind of millstone which in-heres our present condition. Whatever salvation there may be, the search must begin of, by, and for the life we now know.
11/26/07
Thanksgiving.
When I was a child my Great Aunt was the keeper of the traditions. She would arrive with Lincoln's proclamation, a medallion of George Washington and the family Bible. We would be reminded of the "first" Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims in 1623 and a discussion of family lineages back to Richard Warren and the others. The menu was always turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, hubbard squash, turnip, cranberry, creamed onions, mince pie and apple pie with sharp cheddar cheese. There was an occasional discussion of the difference between squash and pumpkin pies (molasses in the latter). There was the Thanksgiving when the turkey fell on the kitchen floor, my brother's last Thanksgiving, and the Thanksgiving an uncle from Connecticut gave testimony in glossolalia. Afternoons included concerts or recitations by us children and occasional political and theological "discussions." I don't remember any football or anticipations of Friday Christmas shopping. I inherited the medallion and the family Bible but times have changed. And one year recently we had green peas!
11/22/07
Anticipating Thanksgiving
What was once the American holiday, or at least the New England holiday, now seems to fill religious liberals with P C qualms. The first Pilgrim Thanksgiving of course was likely not the first feast in the "new world," whether it be Pemaquid (1607), or Jamestown (1607), the Spanish in what is now the U.S. Southwest or the "Indians" from time immemorial. But that is not the point. Holidays have always altered the events they commemorate.
The unique feature of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving is its significance for religious freedom. The Mayflower Compact begins the story of civil democracy and congregational polity in the new world. Robinson's farewell sermon represents our liberal attitude towards any religious scripture or tradition, phrased in the genre of the times, "The Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from out his Holy Word." It all began in 1606 in Scrooby, England, with adoption of the covenant the Pilgrims brought with them to Plymouth:
As ye Lord's free people, we joyne ourselves, by a covenant of the Lord,
in ye fellowship of ye gospell, to walke in all his ways, made known, or
to be made known unto us, according to our best endeavours, whatsoever
it shall cost, the Lord assisting us.
From these roots of openness to new insights and to the independent mutuality of congregational life, I am grateful the tradition emerged in 1800 as Unitarianism in Plymouth's First Church. In our celebration it is a particular and UU story of principles we advocate and we hope will prosper in our human future.
11/20/07
The Second Amendment
At last we will have a ruling on the Second Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. Of course it was written in the age of hand made guns. You simply did not issue identical guns off an assembly line to your local militia. Each gun needed an individual knowledge and familiarity. A soldier's gun was also his hunting rifle and life-long companion as was his house and his horse.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed."
For example my fourth great grandfather, Joseph Ingraham, adjudicated violations of militia rules listed by one of his sons, Coit, in 1820. One document shows that Nathaniel Robinson, Enoch Post and Peter Williams were fined for deficient cartridges and James Butler, Daniel Paul, Judah Counce, John Kelloch and William Spalding were fined for non appearance. Thomas Hambra had a deficient musket and Anthony Hall forgot his flints. If they did not appear and pay their fines the Sheriff was notified. It was in the public interest that its young men took their arms bearing seriously and mustered periodically for inspection. As the frontier receded and the nation created a standing peacetime army making militias obsolete the Second Amendment went into obscurity until more recently the NRA and like-minded lobbyists appropriated it for their own purposes. The intent and grammar of the Second Amendment are clear and I hope the Supreme Court will not muddy the waters and allow chaos on our streets and danger to lurk in our back forties.
11/18/07
Veterans Day
PBS has treated us with many weeks now of WWII images of mayhem, heroics, tragic deaths and the forming of an entire generation. Meanwhile the media for years now since "shock and awe" have projected images at us of departing soldiers, returning soldiers, funerals of soldiers, the wounded and maimed being mistreated in an inadequate support system, of post-traumatic battle flash-backs with long term stresses for families and society. Right wing ads have rallied support for the Iraq occupation, as fighting "them" there before they strike here (a fallacious image). Of course we should care for the wounded, mentally and physically. But I fail to see glory, honor, or patriotism in continued battering of Iraq into the Stone Age so that oil interests and "crisis capitalism" can profit from the suffering of others. In short I am war coverage fatigued. I resent "in your face" militarism. To turn off the TV would deprive me of knowing the emotional climate being established by all this.
11/11/07
Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush
Something must have happened at Kennebunkport. Since his meeting with President Bush last summer, Putin has soured on U.S. plans for missile "defense" and belligerence towards Iran. Missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic appear to be placed as symbols against Russia. Real "defense" would place them in northern Norway, Sweden, or Hudson's Bay. And bombing Iran? Many hundreds of thousands of dissidents would be silenced, a generation would turn against us and Iran would be forced into the arms of Russia, China and "the Stans." Look at an unbiased map (I use R. B. Fuller's Dymaxion Sky-Ocean World) if you do not believe me. Putin must have felt he was visiting a nut case, or perhaps a myopic ignoramus. I hope Congress will develop some spine and oppose these moves. If not we can hope Mr Putin, of all people, will prevent a humanitarian and (for us) strategic Asian disaster.
11/04/07
Living In Bondage
Middle class Americans look around themselves and conclude they are the fortunate ones. After all they embody the good life as portrayed in TV ads, the smiling faces, the leisure, the healthy image. And the fact of those others, an emerging underclass of poverty and not making it reminds them of their good fortune. The current foreclosure crisis sets the dividing line, those who can and those who fall by the wayside, the abyss of failure. Thank God we are not as one of them. But for the most part "middle class" Americans are. If you have a mortgage (mort-gauge) you are indebted to a bank. If you have credit card debt you are beholden to another bank. If you are buying your car "on time" you are indebted to a third bank. Banks are glorified accountants who handle your money for safekeeping. If you owe them their money you are in bondage to their system. You live within their requirements. Until you have no mort-gauge, no debt, you are not free, you live within walls of credit, you cannot move. You work for your creditors. You are not superior to those who fall away. Indeed you may have less freedom of movement than they. You are living in bondage. Get real! Get out of debt!
10/26/07
Columbus Day
Columbus Day is a particularly irritating holiday. Not only are banks and post offices closed but also Columbus did not "discover" America. You can't discover a "new" continent when millions of people are already living there. It should be a European, not an American holiday. With Columbus, Europe escaped its provincial isolation and began to join (or conquer) the rest of the world.
10/08/07
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