CHRISTMAS 2023

Christmas is my favorite Christian celebration.  I basically celebrate it all year long in the sense the I am constantly playing Christmas music performed by my favorite choir, King's College Choir, in Cambridge UK, besides my other go-to musical selection of the entire works of Bach, which I cycle through during the year.  

Now some might find my attraction to Christmas a bit baffling.  Those who read my post are undoubtedly aware that I see the whole Christmas story as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as a myth - something that didn't actually happen the way it is portrayed in those Gospels.  I'm not going to go into all of why I believe that to be the case, only to say that I see myths as an attempt to get at something that is true about human nature and, in the case of the Christmas Myth, something true about all of humankind; that we are all the children of the that Being in which we live, move, and have our being - commonly referred to God.   

What I like about Christmas is that it reveals our common aspirations for world peace and goodwill among all people.   Such aspirations transcend religious boundaries because at their core they are the aspirations  that most humans throughout the world share, whether one considers oneself religious or not.   

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As a mythic story, the Christmas story transcends any sense or need to be understood as a historical event. There is something universal in its telling as I mentioned earlier.  That is not to say it doesn't involve history.  It does.  It's our history told from an ancient biblical perspective. Jesus exemplifies the mythic meaning of our life stories.   When I think of the original Christmas story of Jesus' birth, I wonder how we would tell it in today's context.   

For example. the Palestinian Christians in Jesus' biblical birthplace, Bethlehem, have done just that this year.  With a war ravaging the Palestinian Gaza Strip, they canceled their traditional celebrations and instead created a moving and thought-provoking manger scene in the drab gray tones of the bombed out streets of Gaza.  The holy family is not in manger, but in a amid the rubble of a street that many Palestinians in Gaza are living in today.  If memory serves me there is only one shepherd, not coming, but heading out, and one wise man who gift appears to be a pall, suggesting the others are missing in action.  Mary holds the infant Jesus, but you can't see him. Is he alive, or did he become a sacrifice before he could minister to the world?  

What she is holding reminds me of the mothers and fathers in Gaza who are holding their slaughtered infants wrapped in the traditional white funeral sheeting, ready for burial.   For Christmas 2023, this is the most poignant message of Christmas and it begs the question how we might write the story of Jesus' birth today?   It seems to me that there are worse places to bring a newborn baby into the world than a manger with cattle and sheep and the presence of a caring and joyful mother and father.  What of the mothers who give birth to their babies in a back alley, a bombed out apartment with no one to help or a hospital that has lost power and is a target for attacks.   This year, Jesus being born in a barn, with his loving mother and father present and caring for him is both heartwarming and heartbreaking when considering how some children are being brought into the world today.

This Christmas has a Herodian feel to it.  The slaughter of innocent women and children continues out of a sense of revenge and outrage at the events of innocent Israelis being killed and taken hostage by militant Hamas terrorist on October 7.  The only safe place for the children of Gaza this Christmas, however, is Egypt, if allowed.  The irony of that should not be lost on any Christian or Israeli.  

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Mary's question to Gabriel, "How can this be?" takes on a new meaning in light of the war in Gaza, the Ukraine, and elsewhere around the world.  In the sense of the mindless dehumanizing and murderous behaviors that wars result in, Mary's question can be reduced to a one-word question, "Why?"   

The Christmas story's proclamation of Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all humankind is the template for diplomatic dialogue because if there is a universal meaning to be derived from the story of Jesus' birth it is that in his story we come to learn that we too, the whole of humankind are the children of God.  The angelic proclamation of  peace and goodwill on earth has always been and remains the trajectory of our evolution as a species.  We should take it to heart that peace and goodwill amongst all humankind is more than possible, it is a calling we should embrace, now more than ever.  

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

THE PASSING OF OUR TWO PARTY SYSTEM - A LAMENT

Before returning to the topic of religion and, in particular the religion of my upbringing, Christianity, I want to spend a brief moment to talk about the state of affairs in the country of my birth, The United States of America.   

I know I'm getting old; that is, old enough to sense something is missing, something that used to be a source of pride in the America I grew up in, something that is no longer spoken of and that something is what was referred to in days past as our two-party system.  As a child in grade school of the late 50's,  I remember hearing that what made our nation great was our two party system that not only summed up but also shored up our constitutional democracy.  There is nothing within our Constitution that requires a two party system, other than an unwritten assumption there will  be more than one party representing the will of the people; otherwise, why have a general election to elect presidents, senators, and representatives?  Why not leave it a party's leadership to choose?

Since the time I can recall being aware of a thing called politics, Democrats and Republicans were two sides of the same democratic coin.  Because both sides were, at a time within my memory, committed to the democratic processes that defined our constitutional republic.   As such, senators and representatives in the halls of Congress could vigorously debate and argue with each other while in session, but at the end of the day, they would take each other out for a drink or visit each others homes because they wanted to  know each other as people.  Overtime, some learned that they could trust each other to the extent that many of their families became life-long friends.  Lamentably, that appears to be no longer the case.   Few members of Congress have the time or take the time to get to know members of the other party. 

Ironically, what seems to have eroded the concept of our two-party system was that there wasn't enough political drama to keep the electorate interested in keeping the constitutional process working, since Democrats and Republicans were hard to differentiate when it came to issues like wars.  Where they differed grew old and uninteresting.  There were talks of the need for a third party to add some grist to the wheels of our constitutional processes.  Parties began to search for hot topic issues to keep their constituents interested.  "Washington" became the identified term co-opted by both parties to describe the lack luster problem associated with voters' waning interest in the political status quo.    

A problem the two-party system faced was that party members went from treating their perspective parties as a team engaged in a sporting event called an election in which both teams were playing by the same rules to treating elections as a time when the gloves needed to come off.  Anything and everything was on the table, rules be damned, and the mantra of monied cheerleaders of party politics became, "win at all costs."  

Attacks on an opponent's voting record and political views were always fair game, but increasingly such attacks became personal, citing character flaws and moral improprieties as a means to discredit the opponent as a worthy candidate for holding office.  Beyond that, and more recently, personal attack are no longer limited to candidates running for office, but the voters, calling some in the voting public "deplorable" or "vermin."  In the case of the "deplorable," it meant they weren't worth paying attention to.  In the case of  the vermin, it meant they weren't worth existing. 

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I am not one who takes comfort in our history.  Some are too quick to say that our politics has always been fraught with vitriol and name-calling as an excuse to downplay the anxiety caused by vitriol of today.  We should feel very anxious by the upcoming election because what is missing is the Republican Party I knew, the loyal opposition to the party I'm a registered member of.   

Being in a largely Republican state, I can say that I have rarely voted along a strict Democratic line.  There were times when that wasn't even a realistic option in this state.  There are Republicans I know and admire in this state.   As time goes on, however, it is clear that the Republican party that I knew as essential part in shoring up our constitutional democracy has gone missing, being replaced by so-called MAGA Republicans who are not true Republicans.   MAGA Republicans, like the Tea Party within the Republican Party, are movements that have co-opted the Republican Party as a means to end constitutional democracy and the Republic as we know it.    

Rachel Maddow, host of the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC, made a poignant observation in one of her shows.  She said that the only institution that can stop the MAGA movement is the Republican Party, itself.  I think she is right.  According to recent polling, that seems unlikely since most MAGA Republicans appear entrenched in their commitment to the leader of their movement.  Nevertheless time will tell if Donald Trump will sweep the Republican Primary or someone else will emerge as the Republican Party's nominee.  For the moment, at least, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln has disappeared under the shadow of the MAGA movement.

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I don't want to end on that note.  I have hope that the Republican Party will emerge from the shadows to be a loyal and worthy opponent, a party sharing the same coin with the Democrats believing in and committed to the U.S. Constitution and the preservation of our Republic. 

Age has a way of making one more reflective and thoughtful.  For example, I was never a fan of Antonin Scalia, a Republican appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan.  When his name was brought up regarding a Supreme Court case or a decision I'd get a sinking feeling in gut.  Of course, I never bothered to read the opinions he authored regarding a Supreme Court decision until Obergefell V. Hodges in 2015 in which he wrote the dissenting opinion on same sex marriage and the majority opinion in the The District of Columbian V. Heller regarding a Second Amendment case and the right to own a handgun in the District.

To be honest, I didn't agree with either of his positions regarding these two cases, but after reading his positions, I came away an admirer of his writing skill, his being a wordsmith, and his wit.  In the case of Justice Scalia, wit is more than cleverness (although he was clever in humorous way that spoke of his underlying wisdom) it displayed his conviction about, and his commitment to the Constitution.  

I can well understand the friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.  I always was a fan of RBG and I became an admirer of Antonin Scalia due to his wit and wisdom.  In fact, I recently purchased a quasi-autobiographical book complied by his son Christopher Scalia and a former law clerk, Edward Whelan, called "Scalia Speaks" which is a collection of his speeches and other writings.  While I know I won't agree with everything he wrote (I'm about half-way through the book), I will continue to enjoy reading him, and I would advise anyone to pick up a copy and get to know this wise man better.  

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What has always made the United States of America great is its ability to live with diversity and differing opinions to which I must add, as long as the Constitution remains the guiding star of our Republic.  That the  Constitution is being challenged is due to it being treated as irrelevant by those who are already in power and those who wish to rule with impunity.  I believe it is essential that we return to a two-party system that is dedicated to the Constitution's preservation as opposed to its manipulation.  

Antonin Scalia may yet convince me of the value in being a Constitutional originalist.  

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm