This year, Christmas and New Years Days were days of intense reflection. Perchance, that is true every year and for every individual. I cannot know what is true for others. I am only certain that on each of these dates I was immersed in a rigorous course of study. My gifts or the curriculum came wrapped in a routine event.
The lessons covered were Empathy and Education, although perhaps these were presented in reverse order. Possibly, the truer program was entropy and encouragement. Each edifies. I wonder; on each of the two days these topics were intertwined. In my attempt to analyze and understand what I needed to learn or did, I invite your assessments. Please indulge me as I share the story.
Perchance, on this the twenty-second commemoration of a lesson learned, it is time to reflect on our first, foremost, and greatest Teachers. More than a generation has passed. In that time, I have acquired much knowledge. Yet, I am forever reminded that the more I know, the more certain I am. I know nothing with certainty. What I once thought was the greatest treasure, a tradition I could never part with, was other than it appeared. I never imagined what would become my truth. Today, I share the tale with you.
This time of year my thoughts naturally turn to God and religion. Not because I'm conventionally religious: I'm not. Not because I have any certainty that God exists: I don't. But this is the most religion-oriented season for me: I hear and sing lots of Christmas carols with God and Jesus mentioned; I go to church for Christmas Eve services, and sometimes on Sunday morning as well; I listen to (and sometimes am even asked to say) lots of family pre-dinner prayers; I may well get into family conversations or even debates about theology and faith; and I do think of my religious upbringing and the Bible I read so much growing up, and still do fairly often. Talking politics and religion are two of my favorite things to do. The first one is my job, so I get to do it a lot. The second I mainly get to do with my family (outside of the random blog post), so that is part of why I enjoy this season a lot.
I stopped thinking or worrying much about whether there was a God about 35 years ago, when I was in high school. Once I realized that there was no way to be sure what the answers were to whether God existed, whether there was an afterlife and what kind it might be, whether there was a soul and what that meant, and all those other metaphysical issues, I stopped worrying about it much. I figured if God was the jealous, hot-tempered, unpredictable, sometimes even genocidal God of much of the Old Testament, I was screwed anyway: I have never been very good with that kind of authority figure. And I figured if I had to guess right as to which of the many religious dogmas that claimed to be the only path to salvation, my odds really sucked and I wouldn't make the cut anyway.
However, I did come away from my upbringing with certain core beliefs still intact. The moral teachings of the Jesus of the Gospels have never left me: treating others as I would wish to be treated; loving mercy and kindness and compassion toward those weaker and more vulnerable than I; being generally non-judgmental toward others, but caring passionately about justice. And I was raised to believe that at the end of my days, I would ultimately be judged by how I treated the poorest and most desperate among us: whether I fed the hungry, whether I gave thirsty water to drink, whether I clothed the naked, whether I gave shelter to the homeless, whether I helped those in prison and welcomed the stranger. That belief has never left me, although the judgment I expect does not necessarily come from God, but from my own sense of self worth and from the people I know.
I come out of my upbringing with the sense that something binds us humans together spiritually, with the feeling that we are something more holy than just a bucket of bolts. The humanity we share feels deeper than just a common ancestor 5,000,000 or so years back. I don't know what that common connection is, whether a godly creator, a universal soul, a collective memory as Carl Jung described it, a "force that flows through all things" as George Lucas described it, or something else. So maybe I do believe in some form of God after all, although I sure don't understand what it might be. I do still like to get into all those theological arguments back home, and I think if there is a god(s), he/she/it/they must have made us so we argue constantly about the existence of one mostly for its own enjoyment. I do some theological debating via email with a very conservative, very Christian nephew, and the way I put it to him recently was this:
This arguing back and forth is always interesting and enjoyable. But again, argument is all it can ever be, because the world of spirituality, of the soul, of God if he exists, is unknowable. However, in a sense, I do have faith, in the way the Greek word for faith is originally meant: trust. I trust there is a spiritual force in the world greater than myself, but I don't invest a dogma with that trust, I don't claim to understand what it all means. I have trust in something greater than myself, but I have doubt at the same time, because I don't claim knowledge or certainty about the unseen.
In my view, the Bible from its very beginning never had a single message. When its editors started to put together various books and oral traditions into a scripture, they happily and intentionally included different stories and different visions of God, sometimes literally side by side as in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. And in those early days, writers and editors are known to have edited heavily, written new things to fit the political and spiritual needs of the times, and given entire new meanings and interpretations to the stories. These different visions and ideas and philosophies and interpretations made the Bible more holy in my view, not less. The fact that God casually walked among us in some parts of the Bible, and could not be seen or spoken to in another; that faith was more essential to Paul but works were more essential to James; that man was created before the animals and plants in one version of Genesis, and after in another; that Jesus was in utter despair on the cross in one story but peaceful and accepting in another: these variations and contradictions make the Bible all the more beautiful to me because they show the writers were wrestling with their beliefs about God. There was no dogma that all must follow; there were debates and ideas about what God was and intended all in the same scripture.
And so the debate goes on. We are meant to struggle with it. We are meant to wrestle with it. We become holier when we do so. At the end of the day, I have faith that what we believe has nothing to do with our soul's fate, unless that belief leads us to evil acts. Faith is not dogma or doctrine, it is trust in a spirit of goodness that we all have access to. And if we love our neighbor as ourselves, if we treat others as we would wish to be treated, if we love mercy and kindness, if we treat the least of these as if they were Jesus himself, we can come to the end of our days knowing that we have lived with grace and go happily to our resting place.
So that's my quasi-religious, somewhat-agnostic Christmas message. Let the debate go on, as long as us humans exist, but hopefully we can do it in a way where we aren't killing and condemning each other while argue. And hopefully, when we stop debating and start acting, we can embrace a community where we look out for each other in a way where the weak and the ill and the hungry and the stranger are welcomed into that community as brothers and sisters.
In these times, there is clearly no way to make light of our ongoing political miasma. We cannot shrug off the unnecessary suffering that grips so many of our fellow Americans, as we take baby steps towards improving an economy in need of a 400-meter dash.
But in the tradition of others who have looked at the bleak social conditions that surround them and the corrupt institutions that seek not to improve things, I give you good satire. From Aristophanes to The Onion, it is this form of political dissent that can often engage people in the goings on of their troubled times. Bruce Kluger (full disclosure, a friend who I am helping promote this book) and David Slavin have released a new book, a 2010 version of Twas The Night Before Christmas, which clearly is capable of just that.
It will make you laugh, so you don't cry.
Kluger, satirist extraordinaire of NPR & USA Today, along with the similarly accomplished Slavin, uses this laugh-out-loud tome to point us in the direction of only the latest person to suffer on the altar of "Greed Is Good." Santa himself:
"Tis the season to be Jolly" This was the sentiment expressed by President Barack Obama. The actual words were, the health care Bill passed on Christmas Eve was "the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s." Together with the proposed regulations our Representatives approved weeks ago, citizens of this country can rest assured "the toughest measures ever taken to hold the insurance industry accountable" will soon be law. This would be wondrous news if only the legislation brought joy to the land or authentic health care coverage to the American people.
Millions muse; it will not. The American people are reminded of the professionally wrapped gift boxes left under the tree or stashed on a shelf near a Menorah, Kinara, or near the Fanouz, These too, may glitter like gold. Still, the contents can be as lackluster as the new directive, meant to better manage America's medical system, would seem to be. Whether we celebrate traditional holidays or only observe those who do, most of us have learned, all is not as it appears to be.
Our economy may be collapsing, but as the holidays approach we still feel compelled to exchange gifts with friends and family. Some folks enjoy the quest for the perfect gift, but for those of us who haven't got a lot of time, money, or imagination, schlepping around town hunting down thoughtful presents for our loved ones can be an angst-ridden errand.
The pressure to please collides with our limited resources, and the ensuing wreckage litters living rooms all over America on Christmas morning with mounds of stuff we have no use for. Oh, sure, there are the happy exceptions--the book you've been dying to read, the cordless drill that you actually needed--but all too often we find ourselves sincerely saying "oh, you shouldn't have".
So what happens to the sweater you don't really like, or the cheesy fondue set you'll never use? Sometimes you give it away, but other times you let it stick around and clutter up your life, because it's a symbol of someone's affection for you.
And then you die, and somebody has to go through all the crap you accumulated over your lifetime. For me, it was my mother's things; she died unexpectedly a few years back and my father delegated the depressing task of sorting out all her clothes and bric-a-brac to me, her only daughter.
Eating Liberally Food For Thought by Kerry Trueman
Advocates for healthy, ethical eating have a pretty tough row to hoe this time of year. It starts at Thanksgiving, with a flurry of Butterballs, and builds up to a Christmas crescendo of heavy cream, butter, eggs, and pretty much every kind of animal fat known to mankind. Vegetarians have to content themselves with cheese and crackers, while vegans crunch away on the crudités, in solidarity with the bunnies they'd never dream of broiling.
So, as a little gift to our meat-and-dairy-defying friends, I thought it would be nice to find a recipe for a festive and flavorful not-eggnog that's easy to make and so good that even we non-vegans can enjoy it. If you've ever tried Vitasoy's "Holly Nog," you'll know that it's possible to make a decent 'nog with soymilk, but homemade is always best. After a bit of googling I came up with a recipe from Vegetarian Times that's been around for years and is apparently the gold standard for vegan eggnog-I made a batch and was pleased by its eggnogginess. And that was without the rum!
VEGAN EGGNOG (from Vegetarian Times)
2 12-oz. packages silken tofu 16 oz. vanilla soymilk or rice milk 1 Tbs. plus 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1/4 cup sugar (I substituted agave syrup, which worked fine) 2 Tbs. brown sugar 1/4 tsp. ground turmeric 1/2 to 1 cup rum or brandy (optional) Nutmeg
In blender or food processor, combine all ingredients except nutmeg; blend thoroughly. Serve well-chilled and dusted with nutmeg. Makes 8 servings.
I tend to not think or worry much about metaphysical matters (you know, stuff like God, the soul, heaven, hell, reincarnation), having always taken the view that since there's no way to know, and it doesn't affect my life anyway, there's no reason to get worked up about it. I guess that makes me an agnostic. But I was raised a Methodist, in a churchy family: one of my grandparents was a minister, my father was the lay (non-minister) leader of the Methodist church in Nebraska for many years, and my brother is a minister. It is also fair to say that my minister in our church as I was growing up, who had been in the civil rights movement in the South, and was a leader in the peace movement in the 1960s and 1990s, was one of the most influential people in my becoming an activist. And there is no doubt that reading the Bible influenced my leftward movement as I was developing political identity in my teens, because it really is a pretty leftist piece of literature overall.
With that as background, I wanted to share a Christmas post with all of you. I send along these verses for those of you who are going home to argue politics with more conservative and/or more religious family members. I also want to make the broader and vitally important point, given our society's culture/religious landmarks, that Jesus- or at least the people who wrote about him 50 years later- were pretty far left.
Bill O'Reilly claims he has beaten back the dark forces that declared war on Christmas. Despite his best efforts, he may be surprised to find what a pack of proven progressives are saying about "his" holiday.
Witness the gathering of Crafting Liberally that took place last Sunday in New York. Far from the heathen celebration you might imagine among self-identified liberals getting in touch with their handiwork, these quilters, jewelers and assorted other crafters were looking forward to Christmas. Lisa, teaching the art of folding an origami crane, even suggested using her creations as tree ornaments.
Is it any surprise that liberals enjoy the Christmas season? Giving, sharing...changing course (Scrooge), finding one's heart (the Grinch) -- lessons Bush and Cheney would benefit from.
And after all, what neocon ever gave a damn for a Middle Eastern boy born to a poor unwed mother?
Liberals should never run from Christmas just because O'Reilly wants to claim it. This season is too full of strong symbols to cede to the other side.
But we don't need to out-argue him...we just need to out-craft him.
On this last night of Channukah, and in the full swing of the seasonal spirit, Happy Holidays.
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