Midlife Meditation

Looking at the picture I just plugged in here, I realize "it" is open to multiple interpretations. Just to be clear, "it" in the title refers to the Christmas tree--though, in case you read it a different way, I'm definitely hanging onto this woman! In fact...no, wait, I'll save that for a different post, and leave you hanging. Back to the it I'm keeping: this series (sporadically hash-tagged "Christmas Curmudgeon") has been about my complaints about the Season of Super Awesome Excess, and all that I have come to have against it: wacky theology, abusive customs, insanely hypocritically oxymoronic mixed messages, and so and so and so on. One could justifiably imagine, given all I've ranted about and will rant about in the coming weeks, that I would have an objection to the iconic Christmas tree. And one would be wrong, for of all the plethora of symbolic doo dads and what nots that are essential to the Christmas holiday season, the tr...

Oh, how I hate Christmas.   I came to this realization a little over a week ago at Costco. Amy and I had stopped in to stock up on a few things--which, of course, wound up being quite a few more things by the time we were done. Early in our shopping odyssey, I became aware of the Christmas decoration section. I was curious what might be there, so we directed our cart down that aisle. There I beheld garish tinsel-fringed and sparkle-encrusted stars, trees, reindeer, Santas; lights that would turn a UFO green with envy; inflatable snowmen (because we really don't get the chance to make the real ones here in the Northwest); and on and on until I turned to Amy and said these words: "I hate Christmas."   As I've observed before, I have not always had this attitude toward the holiday. As a child, I was quite taken with all the foofaraw: the brilliance and aroma of the tree, the letter to Santa, the smells coming from the kitchen, the sleeplessness of Christmas Ev...

Let's play Highlights Magazine! How many errors can you spot in this picture? Have you made your list? Good, because here I go: 1. Mary is blonde! 2. Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the shepherds, and two of the wise men are white! 3. The other wise man appears to be of African descent! 4. Jesus is getting a Faberge egg for his birthday! 5. The wise men and the shepherds are there at the same time! I'm cutting it off right there, because the last is what this post is really about. But before I tackle it, I will quickly take on the first three errors, all of which are grounded in the anti-Semitic movement of the nineteenth century, which sought to bleach Jesus' complexion to make him more acceptable to the world-dominating Europeans who also used the Bible to justify slavery, colonization, and social Darwinism. Caucasians ruled the world because we were destined by both God and nature to do so; which meant the foundational stories of the Bible had to be retrofitted w...

Up is relative. We live on a ball spinning in, and moving through, empty space. The direction we call "down" is toward the center of the earth, while "up" is away from the center of the earth, and toward space. Pictures of the earth, whether photographs or maps, seem to have a top and bottom, and up and down, because, as beings whose perceptions have evolved in a world in which gravity affects everything, they are as fundamental as any concepts can be, and as such we apply them to everything we look at. Had we evolved in free fall, up/down and top/bottom would be meaningless. So every map has a "top" and "bottom," even though the reality is that, for every human being located anywhere on that map, "up" would mean "above the map" and "down" would mean "under the map." Our culture, evolving as it has in the northern hemisphere, has tended to think of north as up, south as down, even though to any human...

My favorite Advent carol comes from West Side Story : Could be! Who knows? There's something due any day; I will know right away, Soon as it shows. It may come cannonballing down through the sky, Gleam in its eye, Bright as a rose! Who knows? It's only just out of reach, Down the block, on a beach, Under a tree. I got a feeling there's a miracle due, Gonna come true, Coming to me! Could it be? Yes, it could. Something's coming, something good, If I can wait! Something's coming, I don't know what it is, But it is Gonna be great! With a click, with a shock, Phone'll jingle, door'll knock, Open the latch! Something's coming, don't know when, but it's soon; Catch the moon, One-handed catch! Around the corner, Or whistling down the river, Come on, deliver To me! Will it be? Yes, it will. Maybe just by holding still, It'll be there! Come on, something, come on in, don't be shy, Meet a guy, Pull up a cha...

Oh, how I hate Christmas. What's this, you say? You hate the most wonderful time of the year? You hate the time of Peace on Earth, Good Will to All, God bless us everyone, merriness and good cheer, lifting up the meek and the lowly, fa la la la la la la la la.... Well, no. Not exactly. All right, not at all. And yet, oh, how I hate it. Sensing some conflict here? Good. Because I'm loaded with  it--not unlike the season of Christmas, as observed in these United States of America. In fact, I've got a lifetime's worth of joys and concerns, complaints and plaudits, raptures and regrets, heart and spleen aching to be vented. Good thing I've got a blog. I have decided to make December the month of Christmas. And yes, I'm aware that, outside of this blog, it already is. But back to me. I'm dedicating my blog this month to taking apart Christmas: the pluses, the minuses, the excesses, the recesses, the blessings and abominations and exploitations and neg...

You know the story of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," but I'm going to retell it anyway: Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly moneychanger, is visited on Christmas Eve by four ghosts: his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him that his stinginess will doom him to a life and afterlife of loneliness and pain; the ghost of Christmas past, who shows him through a montage of memories how he became the man he is; the ghost of Christmas present, who shows him how some are rejoicing at Christmas, while others suffer, all of them grieving or berating the coldness of his heart; and the ghost of Christmas future, a silent specter who shows him how little time he has left, and what a miserable end he will come to, due to his solitary selfishness. The shock of the experience changes him into a man of love and generosity, and both he and the world are better for the transformation. It's been told and retold, performed on stage, filmed, animated, digitized, updated, g...