The Children's Hour

When they tell you that faith is a chimera and belief in God is belief in an "invisible Sky Daddy" who will solve all your problems by and by....

Read them some of the comments at this article.  The article is absolutely right:  space travel is the chimera, the physical universe is the obstacle we cannot overcome, and "colonizing" a planet that doesn't now sustain life would require a journey of millennia (good luck with that) and "terraforming," an idea that's vague and amorphous in science fiction stories, much less being something we will someday do because "technology."  (Just recreating the ecosystem that sustains the bacteria that sustains us is literally beyond human comprehension.  But we'll do it!  Science will find a way!)

It's blind faith.   It's blind, simple, stupid, doo-dah faith, trust in science and engineering (i.e., technology) to solve all the problems we decide we have.

And since we have a problem living here, we'll solve that by finding another place to filth and foul.  Which is, to some degree, the summation of human history, especially of American history.  If it is our "Manifest Destiny" to go to "the stars," then who, pray, set that destiny for us?  The cosmos?  Life?  Intelligence?

God?

The very discussion of the topic puts into context all the other discussions that heat up the internet.  We can't agree on whether Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton should be the Democratic candidate for president, but we'll all agree with the technology that solves all our problems so we can escape this planet and find another one where we can start over and make sure this time everyone lives the way we want to.

MYOB!

Where have all the flowers gone?

I came across a recipe I've had for over 20 years now.  The remarkable thing about it wasn't the age of it, or the recipe; it was where it came from.

It came from a thread on Salon, back when Salon aspired to replicate the salons of Paris in the early 20th century, and when comments weren't handled by Haloscan or livefyre, but were a separate place for conversations rather than comments on articles.  That part of Salon was called "Table Talk," and topics could be set up by commenters.  I frequented the Politics thread there, and the "White House" thread within it (probably something like reddit, though I've never been near reddit.  I'm old and grey and full of sleep.).  It was, as I described it there once, the neighborhood where you didn't stop at the red lights, unless you were a regular.  Other denizens of "Table Talk" considered "Politics" more or less the insane asylum.  It was the Clinton Administration, 8 years of impeachment and investigation and Monica Lewinsky and "I did not have sex with that woman!", and we were quite partisan.

Except at Christmas, when we'd retire to newly created threads to behave like friends at a bar, enjoying virtual drinks and swapping recipes and other convivial topics.  You can't produce a recipe like this in comments now, much less easily print it out; but the recipe reminded of the best times on the internet, before it became what it is today.

Maybe it's a sociological version of Gresham's Law I'm not familiar with:  the economic idea that bad money drives out good.  Certainly the other users of "Table Talk" were happy to keep those of us in Politics (and especially in "White House," where things got white hot with regularity) away from the more civilized discourse.  But those days are gone on the internet, as best I can tell (reddit has such a reputation I don't want to learn the ropes of the place; I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, and walk upon a beach, and maybe dare to eat a peach.).

That recipe reflects the true sense of community we had on "Table Talk."  Narrow and confined, but no more or less so than any social club, any gathering of friends, any happy church congregation.  Blogs came after "Table Talk," and were supposed to be the newer, better source for on-line community.  At any rate, "Table Talk" was left behind.  When Facebook opened up, everybody fled there, leaving the blogs behind.  Now I hear Facebook is a bit of a wasteland, a series of enclaves where ignorant armies clash by night.

Maybe it's not quite that bad, but I don't know of anyplace on the internet, aside from a foodie blog, where recipes would be swapped with such camaraderie; and even then, the center point of the discussion is the blogger's post.  "Table Talk" was almost purely democratic:  so long as the new thread was in keeping with the place it was created, it was allowed, and the conversation was monitored by the users.  It was also, as I said, printer friendly; or I wouldn't have that memento of what now seems a heady and happier time.

Dark, dark, dark, it all goes down into the dark.  Why, I am not sure.  The early Church Fathers had their answers, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with them anymore.  Or maybe I am, and I just hesitate to admit it, because it cuts off so much discussion or consideration to do so.  All I know is there was once a hope of such community on the intertoobs, and now that seems to be completely gone.  There are sparks of light on distant shores, but they are flashes only.  The worst of human nature takes over, again and again and again, and the vast wasteland that TV supposedly turned into is as nothing compared with the morass that has become the internet.  It's a place for shilling and shopping, for screaming and howling, and nowhere do I find a place that offered the satisfactions of conversation and possibilities of community that I remember from the days of "Table Talk."

It wasn't idyllic; it wasn't perfect; I remember well enough how foul the air could be in those threads. But it had possibility that seems to have drained out of the internet altogether.  We didn't even drain the swamp only to find ourselves up to our asses in alligators.  The internet turned into the lowest place on the planet, where everything drains in and nothing really drains away.  Even swamps serve to filter the water and promote life in abundance.

Maybe the better comparison is a sewer:  stagnant, rank, and reeking of failure, failed hope and failed possibility.

Looking at that recipe and the note attached to it, one from me to the person who posted the recipe, me thinking her for the information, I remember when meetings on the internet were like conversations, and virtual friendships seemed as real and substantial as those in the real world.  I find that less and less on-line, now.  That one concrete glimpse into the past made me realize how much has been lost, and will never be recovered.

When will they every learn?

"For self-examination!"

I was going to leave this alone.  It's a review of a book by David Silverman who apparently aspires to be the next Madalyn Murray O'Hair (he is President of the organization she founded), and it's all same song, second verse, blah blah blah.  A good review of a tendentious book, but a tendentious book and theme nonetheless.

Then this caught my eye:

There’s a philosopher at the UC Riverside I admire named Eric Schwitzgebel. One of his more popular theories is his theory of jerks, which he defines as follows: “the jerk culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or idiots to be dealt with rather than as moral and epistemic peers.”

No offense to Mr. Schwitzgebel, but Christianity (at least) has been defining such persons for millennia.  We call them sinners. Or just humans, if you prefer.  Dealing with people as "moral and epistemic peers" is, at least in Christianity, generally regarded as a goal, not a given.  Once you start examining the failure "to appreciate the perspectives of others around" you, you start to realize just how great your failure is.  The idea of such an examination is the very basis of Christian humility.

And Christian humility doesn't teach you that the best way to deal with people is to first decide which ones are the "jerks."

T'he current "analyses" of Christianity and religion generally all run along the tracks that the issue is about power and control, right and wrong, authority and submission:  and self-examination is never allowed.  Not from David Silverman, not from Jerry Coyne, not from any prominent critic of religion (and it's easy to become prominent by being a critic!  Just ask the internet....).  There's something profoundly sad about that; and something profoundly dishonest, too.

Hey, religion has insights into that, too!  Too bad the critics don't want to consider them; then again, self-examination is hard.

Jus soli or just us?

Turns out this isn't all that complicated:

In his emails to the Guardian, [Harvard Law Professor Laurence] Tribe discussed Cruz’s own approach to constitutional issues, noting that under “the kind of judge Cruz says he admires and would appoint to the supreme court – an ‘originalist’ who claims to be bound by the historical meaning of the constitution’s terms at the time of their adoption – Cruz wouldn’t be eligible because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and 90s required that someone be born on US soil to be a ‘natural born’ citizen.”

It's that last sentence that brings up the argument of Mary Brigid McManamon.  First, let's let Tribe finish his discussion:

“On the other hand, to the kind of judge that I admire and Cruz abhors – a ‘living constitutionalist’ who believes that the constitution’s meaning evolves with the needs of the time – Cruz would ironically be eligible because it no longer makes sense to be bound by so narrow and strict a definition.”

Tribe said: “There is no single, settled answer. And our supreme court has never addressed the issue.”

McManamon strikes a middle course between Tribe's extremes of originalist and "living constitutionalist," and even admits that a strictly historical reading might be too narrow to serve as the basis for a sound judicial opinion.  But if we examine the historical record....

As McManamon points out, the Supreme Court has looked to the common law to define phrases used in the Constitution (ex post facto; bill of attainder; etc.) which are not defined in that document.  As Tribe points out, the Supreme Court has never addressed this particular issue, so it's reasonable to presume the Court would at least start there to understand what "natural born citizen" was supposed to mean in the late 18th century.

Much has been made of her reliance on Blackstone, but really her argument only uses his Commentary to set the baseline for citizenship by birth.  The first statutes making children of British subjects themselves subjects at birth, wherever birth occurred, were limited to Protestants.  The 1773 revision of the 1731 statute required the children to move back to England, take the required oaths, and receive communion in the Church of England or a Protestant or Reformed Congregation.

No Catholics or Quakers need apply, presumably.

And then her argument gets interesting.

In 1789, [James Madison] indicated that the United States followed the common law notion of citizenship. On May 22 of that year, in a speech to the House of Representatives, Congressman Madison declared: “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth . . . derives its force sometimes from place, and sometimes from parentage; but . . . place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States . . . .”

And there's this, too:

William Rawlea member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Assembly and the first United States Attorney for the District of Pennsylvania agreed. He produced a scholarly treatise on the Constitution and released a second edition in 1829.  He stated that location dictated the meaning of the phrase and concluded that “[u]nder our Constitution the question is settled by its express language, and when we are informed that . . . no person is eligible to the office of president unless he is a natural born citizen, the principle that the place of birth creates the relative quality is established as to us.”

James Kentthe well-regarded chancellor of New York98also asserted that the United States distinguished between “natives” and “aliens” by using the “ancient English law” or the “common law.” In the first edition of his Commentaries on American Law, originally published in 1827, Kent averred: “Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction of the United States.”  In the third edition, published in 1836, he added: “They are what the common law terms natural-born subjects.” He further explained that “[a]n alien is a person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States,” with the exception of “the children of public ministers abroad.”  

The odd numeral in there is a footnote I couldn't delete.

And as for the argument that the First Congress clarified the Constitution's language in 1790, not so fast:

The very existence of this provision demonstrates that the early American notion of “natural born citizen” adopted the English common law only and did not include the eighteenth-century statutes. If it had been otherwise, there would have been no need for the 1790 statute because the children covered would have been natural born under then-current English law. As one nineteenth-century senator stated: “[T]he founders of this Government made no provisionof course they made nonefor the naturalization of natural- born citizens.”

Moreover, the legislative history suggests that the first Congress intended to effectuate a change in the law, not merely to declare the status quo.  On February 3, 1790, Congress began debating a draft bill that provided for naturalization. The legislature acknowledged the common law principle that “[a]n alien has no right to hold lands in any country [but his own].”  However, there was no real opposition to “let[ting] foreigners, on easy terms, be admitted to hold lands” in America. One of Congress’ greatest concerns was the prospect of all those immigrants pushing their way into the budding nation’s new government.

And:

 Did Congress [in the 1790 Act] mean to amend the requirements of the Clause statutorily? As aforementioned, the Framers constitutionalized the common law concept of natural born citizen. Under the common law, “[t]he first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born [citizens].”  In other words, everyone is either an alien or a natural born citizen based on his or her place of birth; that status does not change. Article I grants Congress the power to naturalize, that is, “remove the disabilities of alienage.”  However, Congress does not possess the alchemical power to convert one’s status from alien to natural born citizen.  If truly Congress’ intent, such a result would expand the requirements of Article II without a constitutional amendment.

Lastly, regarding the issue of the 14th Amendment and how it expresses the ideas of citizenship and naturalization, there is this from the Supreme Court in 1898 (U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark):

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution . . . contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization. . . . Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized . . . by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts.

Tribe argues that is doesn't make sense to be bound by so narrow and strict a definition; then again, the Ark decision notes that there are only two sources for citizenship in the U.S.  Shall we abandon the distinctions altogether?  Naturalized means made a citizen by law, not by birth.  Ted Cruz is a citizen by statute, not by the 14th Amendment.  Ambassadors and soldiers in hostile armies, McManamon points out, could have children who were citizens by birth even under the English common law.  That would apply to George Romney and John McCain; but it wouldn't apply to Ted Cruz.  But does that mean Cruz is ineligible to be President?

I don't know.  Josh Marshall assembles a set of lawyers who don't think the case is a simple one.  And all of this makes me agree with former Justice Scalia law clerk Michael Ramsey: “It’s a mystery to me why anyone thinks it’s an easy question.”

Mortal Kombat

Battle lines being drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong....

David Brat says President Obama is "mocking his enemies in order to compel a larger federal state using the tradition of love."

Frederick Clarkson says we must reclaim "religious freedom" from Christian conservatives.

FIGHT!

Now, on one level, Clarkson has a point.  There is a solid concern here:

A number of Christian right legal agencies have produced manuals for churches and related institutions, to rewrite such things as job descriptions to extend the legal definition of “ministry” in order to seek exemption from labor standards and civil rights laws, and to inoculate themselves against discrimination lawsuits.

The legal arguments here rest on the Hobby Lobby decision and Hosanna-Tabor, two Supreme Court decisions.  On the other hand, the legal arguments being made are radical extensions of those decisions, and are not getting much support in the courts (a prime example would be the Kim Davis case.  Mr. Clarkson insists that:  "Conservative Christianity has systematically transformed itself into a formidable 21st century theocratic political movement, developing an electoral capacity that is broad and deep, even as organizations and leaders come and go."  On the other hand, Rick Santorum is a non-entity, Ted Cruz is rising in the GOP polls only because he's the newest person who isn't Donald Trump (and who is actually a politician, as opposed to Carly Fiorina or Ben Carson), and Donald Trump still seems to be the person to beat in that race.

"Broad and deep" seems to be relegated to whatever percentage of the GOP Ted Cruz is appealing to (but not Mike Huckabee?), and at best that represents 5-8% of the national electorate.  It's not good that David Brat is in the House of Representatives, but we've survived Louie Gohmert and most of the Texas Representatives this far, I think we're good for a few more years.  The Apocalypse will not be televised; at least, not yet.

On the other other hand, there is solid ground for concern in the wake of decisions like Hobby Lobby.  I even like Clarkson's concerns over "religious freedom."  But it seems to be one built first on campaign rhetoric (until we have a President who does advocate limiting immigrants to certain religious groups only, and a Congress willing to play along, I don't put much stock in anything Ted Cruz says) and second on fear of the awesome power of groups that don't really have any awesome power.

Just ask Kim Davis.

I mean, if the opposition consists of people like David Brat, a man almost no one has heard of, who puts together an argument as incoherent as this:

Dave Brat, the Tea Party Republican who beat former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary race and then went on to win a seat in Congress, was agitated that Obama said last year that Republicans opposed to allowing refugees into the country were "scared of widows and orphans."

"People in the tradition know what that word means, right?" Brat said in a Monday interview with Sandy Rios of American Family Radio, noting that Jesus commands that Christians take care of widows and orphans.  

"He’s using the Christian tradition and he's trying to bring about compassion by bonking Republicans over the head with the Bible," Brat said in audio posted online by Right Wing Watch. "It’s almost a comedy routine on what compassion and love is."

Brat said Obama is "mocking his enemies in order to compel a larger federal state using the tradition of love."

He said it's time for conservatives to take back the Bible.

"Our side, the conservative side, needs to reeducate its people that we own the entire tradition," he said. 

Brat also said conservatives need to reclaim the moral argument.

"If you lose the moral argument, you'll lose the policy argument every time," he said. "We need to regain the moral argument where we're so strong." 

As I say, if that's the opposition, I'm not going to stay up nights coming up with strategies in opposition.  Those aren't even dog whistles, it's just a string of sentences.  What is comic about what Obama said about widows and orphans?  How is he "mocking his enemies" with compassion, and by the way, wasn't that the advice of Paul?  Methinks Brat doth protest too much.  What "moral argument" does Brat think he has:  "we" are right, and "they" are wrong?

In fact, let's be clear here:  "widows and orphans" is a phrase that appears repeatedly among the prophets, and it always means the poorest and most marginalized, those with the least power in the system.  Widows have no husband to speak for them, orphans have no parents to care for them (at a time when children were little more than economic burdens until they were old enough to work, a Dickensian orphanage a la Oliver Twist would probably have been a boon).  Consider just this passage from Jeremiah:

Woe to him who says,
"I shall build myself a spacious palace
with airy roof chambers and
windows set in it.
It will be paneled with cedar
and painted with vermilion."
Though your cedar is so splendid,
does that prove you a king?
Think of your father: he ate and drank,
dealt justly and fairly; all went well with him.
He upheld the cause of the lowly and poor;
then all was well.
Did not this show he knew me? says the Lord.
But your eyes and your heart are set on naught but gain, set only on the innocent blood you can shed,
on the cruel acts of tyranny you perpetrate.

Jeremiah 22: 14-17 (REB)

If that isn't a call for a "larger federal state using the tradition of love," I don't know what is.  The King was even less responsive to the people than Mr. Brat or Mr. Obama have to be, and yet the King was advised to take care of the poorest and the neediest, because only then would all be well in the kingdom.  Nothing Jesus of Nazareth ever said contradicts that.

What, exactly, is Mr. Brat's argument?

If this, along with Kim Davis' legal team, are the deep and strong bench Mr. Clarkson is worried about, I think I'll have another cup of coffee and go back to reading Wodehouse.

There is solid ground for concern about legal questions, especially in the wake of Hobby Lobby.  Much mischief can be done in the lower courts which will never rise to the level of a corrective in the Supreme Court.  But fearing the rhetoric of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump?  I'll wait to see how effective that rhetoric is on a national stage.  And as for my Christianity:  I don't want to get that tied up in "fights" with people who disagree with me about what being Christian means.  That's when people not involved in either my Christianity or the fight, can't tell the difference between the fighters.

Why Tweedledee needs Tweedledum

This is a very interesting article at RD, if only for the analysis of evangelical Christianity in America, which analysis can be summed up in these two sentences:

In sum, the threats that evangelical schools perceive have shifted somewhat over the last 100 years, but the pattern remains: evangelicalism knows what it is by fighting against what it is not.

Take its enemies away, and evangelicalism loses its identity and reason for being.

Most especially interesting because the same thing could be said of the "New Atheists" and their on-line followers.

Proof Texting 101

I don't usually engage this kind of article (what's the point?), but Valerie Tarico makes it too easy.

It seems she's read a book, and that book has taught her all the virtues (!) of proof-texting.  So, she quotes Deuteronomy 32:39-42.  Well, she doesn't quote it, exactly.  In fact, here's exactly what she says:

I kill … I wound … I will make mine arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh. So says Yahweh in Deuteronomy 32:39-42, and this is no idle threat. You’ve heard the story of Noah’s flood, and about the fire God rains down on Sodom and Gomorrah, and about the 12 plagues of Egypt, but did you know that in the Bible God kills 158 times? The full list can be found in the Steve Wells book, Drunk With Blood.

Now, there are a lot of assertions in there, but let's start with Deuteronomy.  Here's the passage in question:

See now that I, I am He,
and besides me there is no god;
I put to death and I keep alive,
I inflict wounds and I heal;
there is no rescue from my grasp.
I raise my hand towards heaven
and swear:  As I live for ever,
when I have whetted my flashing sword,
when I have set my hand to judgment,
then shall I punish my adversaries.
and wreak vengeance on my foes.
I shall make my arrows drunk with blood,
my sword shall devour flesh,
blood of slain and captives,
the heads of the enemy princes.'

Deuteronomy 32:39-42, REB.

Sounds pretty grim, huh?  And what is that?  It's a song of Moses, which begins with recounting the salvation history of Israel, and includes these lines about the wrath of God:

I had resolved to strike them down
and to destroy all memory of them,
but I feared that I should be
provoked by their foes,
that their enemies would take the credit,
saying, "It was not the Lord,
but we who got the upper hand."

"Them" there is the nation of Israel.  The punishment would be for their apostasy.  These words were written after the Exile, the fall of Israel and removal of its people to Babylon.  If that event didn't feel like the wrath of God and the apocalypse to Israel, what would except absolute extermination, and then who would there be left alive to write about it?

The lines after that address Israel:

They are a nation devoid of good counsel,
that lacks all understanding.
In only they had the wisdom to discern this
and understand what their end is to be!
How could one man rout a thousand of them,
how could two put ten thousand to flight,
if their Rock had not sold them to their enemies,
if the Lord had not handed them over?

This is Israel recounting the Exile, and assessing blame.  The next section is God addressing Israel:

He will ask, "Where are your gods,
the rock in which you sought refuge,
the gods who ate the fat of your sacrifices,
and drank the wine of your drink-offerings?
Let them rise to help you!
Let them be your protection!

Deuteronomy 32:37-38, REB

Which rather puts verses 39 through 42 in a different context, and gives them a different interpretation.  For one thing, God isn't killing anyone in those verses, any more than God is killing babies in Babylon in Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

4 How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

7 Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.

8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Another song of Exile; and not the words of God.  Tarico makes another error there (probably one made by Steve Wells, too) of assuming the Bible is the "Word of God" and every word in it, therefore, is the "word of God" issuing forth from God.  It's the error of assuming the most fundamentalist and literalist interpretation of the Bible is the only correct one.  There's also a very long history of very ugly anti-semitism that follows this kind of proof-texting, used to proved the Jews were blood-thirsty savages and that Christianity redeemed the violence of the Jews.  Tarico walks in those footsteps in complete ignorance, but it is a dangerous path to tread, nonetheless.  This, for example, could easily be the worst kind of anti-semitic rant:

The Chosen People see the horrors God rains down on evildoers, meaning anyone who worships another god, and despite having dedicated themselves to the cult of Yahweh, they walk on eggshells, following an intricate set of rules and rituals and offering up burnt offerings in order to avoid his wrath. 

That is such a gross misinterpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures that it reeks of racism.  It would seem racism based on skin color is not the only attitude enjoying an undeserved resurgence.

As I say, God isn't killing anyone in that song of Moses; God is promising judgment and justice for Israel, the restoration of Israel vouchsafed in Ezekiel's famous vision of the valley of dry bones.  Yes, it is stated in the language of blood vengeance and militarism, but here's the interesting thing:  that didn't happen.  Indeed, Israel was returned to Jerusalem through the good offices of Cyrus of Persia, who is praised in the post-Exilic scriptures as an agent of God.  Moses's song promises destruction and military victory; history provides a much less violent recovery (and that is recorded in the Scriptures, too.  Oops.).

As for the idea that God "kills" 158 times in the Bible:  I can think of the story of Noah, and some of the stories of military victories of Israel, the passover in Egypt, and of course the story of Job (which even in the Bible is taken as fiction, again except by the literalists), but this passage is not one of those examples, except that the word "kill" appears.  If that's all you want to find, a good concordance will guide you to all those uses, and you can total up the number of times the word appears in English translation rather than rely on the dubious work of Mr. Wells in his book (the title of which alone tells you all you need to know about his editorial opinions).  But you won't understand any better than you did before by using that kind of calculus.

She goes on in this vein, citing 5 more such "examples."  I'll only mention one more:

Jesus even uses words that invoke the slaughter commanded by Moses at Mt. Sinai, “Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth. I did not come to send peace, but a sword. I am sent to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:34-35).

And to put that back in context, the gospel of Matthew continues in verses 36 and following:

Those who love father and mother more than me are not worthy of me, and those who love son or daughter more than me are not worthy of me.  And those who do not take their cross and follow me are not worthy of me.  Those who find their life will lose it, and those ho lose their life for my sake will find it.

This language also appears in Luke 12:48-53 (Ms. Tarico can't even open a cross-referenced Bible.  My source is the Scholar's Version, which notes this passage comes from Q):

I came to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already ablaze!  I have a baptism to be baptized with, and what pressure I'm under until it's over!  Do you suppose I came here to bring peace on earth?  No, I tell you, on the contrary: conflict.  As a result, from now on in any given house there will be five in conflict, three against two and two against three.  Father will be pitted against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.*

As my NT professor pointed out, the power lines there are generational:  father v. son, mother in law v. daughter in law.  That passage isn't a call to arms, it's a call to discipleship.   It's a call to radical change, the kind of thing you might think Ms. Tarico would be sympathetic with because it calls on the younger generation to radically change the world given to them by the older generation.   Of course, you need a community of faith to understand that, and to implement it.  The kind of community of faith Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came from, and spoke to.  He understood, too, that these passages are supposed to be interpreted within a community of faith.  Undoubtedly someone can take it and decide it means God wants us to set the whole world on fire, but that's rather like saying the 2nd Amendment guarantees my right to keep and bear a bazooka.

It ain't, in other words, necessarily so; and we rely on a community to understand and implement our laws as we will accept them.  The same reasoning applies to scripture, be it from the Bible or the Koran.

*and if you're wondering why only mothers in law and daughters in law get singled out, it's because wives would live with their husband's family.  The conflict is both generational and very local.  It is not a war of nations, and it is not a war of arms; it is a war for hearts and minds, not for power and land.

Addendum:  A much more reasonable reading of scripture can be found here, albeit on a different topic altogether.  The thesis is that the theological discussion Judge Roy Moore wants to engage in Alabama belongs among the theologians, not in the court of law; and that this discussion would allow us to call into question the assertions made in the court of law on the basis of Scripture.

Interestingly, 3 out of 4 comments at RD miss that point entirely, and argue with the premise of the article even as they argue against Judge Moore.  The biggest problem with any discussion is that you can't talk to people who don't want to listen.

Finishing the "Ariel" Poems

Marina
By T.S. Eliot

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death

Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place

What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.

This one I conclude with, because it is one of the "Ariel" poems of Eliot, and because it is echoed in this, another of my favorite poems.

Examination at the Womb-Door

Who owns those scrawny little feet?    Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face?    Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs?    Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles?    Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts?    Death.
Who owns these questionable brains?    Death.
All this messy blood?    Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes?    Death.
This wicked little tongue?    Death.
This occasional wakefulness?    Death.

Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.

Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth?    Death.
Who owns all of space?    Death.

Who is stronger than hope?    Death.
Who is stronger than the will?    Death.
Stronger than love?    Death.
Stronger than life?    Death.

But who is stronger than Death?
                          Me, evidently.
Pass, Crow.

"A Song for Simeon"

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

--T.S. Eliot

"The Cultivation of Christmas Trees"

There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish - which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.


The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,



So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St.Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):



So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By "eightieth" meaning whichever is last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

National Bobblehead Day

Or so the radio tells me.  So:  why not?

Animula--The Season of Epiphany

'Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul'
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
And running stags around a silver tray;
Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,
What the fairies do and what the servants say.
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of 'is and seems'
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.

Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
For Boudin, blown to pieces,
For this one who made a great fortune,
And that one who went his own way.
Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the yew trees,
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.

I never paid much attention to the "Ariel" poems, aside from reading them all once long ago.  "Journey of the Magi" remains the most accessible, although I find the ending of that poem weaker and weaker as I go along (probably because I lived too long among the "born again" school of Christians, and find the conclusion a bit too much in keeping with that theology).  They repay attention now, I think; and suit the season, which has now turned to Epiphany.

The saddest part of Epiphany is that there is no profit in it, so we turn away and go back to work, waiting for Mardi Gras to give us a reason to rejoice and play.

The Journey of the Magi

The beginning of an Eliot binge.  Today is Epiphany, so this is "traditional":

The Journey Of The Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Epiphany 2015

A day to look forward by looking backward.  In this case "looking backward" means back to 2006 (I have been at this too long).   I'm leaving it as it was, with only the inclusion of the scriptures mentioned.

What follows are notes from a lecture I gave this morning. I was asked a month ago to teach the class, and came up with this idea of the "songs" behind the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke. The basic idea revolved around the idea of occupation: of Israel as an occupied country under Rome, and Babylon, but even before the Exile, under God. Occupation is sort of the defining principle of Israel, in the scriptures. I wouldn't press that insight to a point of ultimate concern, but it opens a few doors and allows a few interesting insights.

Which spilled out of me over the course of a few hours last night, when I finally sat down to prepare for this lecture. The results of those hours follow, virtually unchanged. The entire experience made me realize I've been spending too much time concerned with matters about which I can do nothing (will the Senate confirm Alito? Should they? Will people "buy" another war in the Middle East? are they that stupid?), and too little time on matters close to my heart.

This may not be the proper corrective for this blog, but I thought the ideas were, at least, interesting.

Israel as a country occupied by God.

God is, of course, the “creator” of Israel, in confession as well as reality. The prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah (!) present the image of a God who forces compliance which, although its goal is good, is in tension with the will of the people, by being in tension with the will of the prophet. This is a necessary tension, but it is a tension, nonetheless. That tension reaches a breaking point with the Exile, the defining event of Israel’s history that supercedes even the Exodus in the psyche of the nation. Then Israel, having rejected occupation by God as intolerable, is made vulnerable to occupation by a human power; an occupation from which it never really recovers.

And it is from that occupation, that Exile and return, that Israel begins to hope to receive the Messiah. And it is the connection to that history that the Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke speak, and to which they reach out. And that connection, as the Christmas story has primarily been connected to generations throughout time, is made through songs.

Matthew:

The gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ; which is not his last name, but his title. It is the family tree of the Anointed One, the Messiah; and that fact alone recalls immediately the genealogies that the Exile made necessary, as families returning from Babylon and around the area tried to decide, a generation later, who was the child of who, who was a descendant of one of the tribes, who was another of the children of Abraham. And so Matthew beings: “The genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” And this itinerant peasant from Nazareth is immediately identified with the father of nations, and the greatest king of the nation of Israel. And we are immediately reminded of the Exile, of the first occupation of Israel, in the time of the second occupation of Israel, and after the second fall of Jerusalem, and the second diaspora of Abraham’s descendants.

This is a story told during yet another occupation. Once again, the nation is occupied by foreigners, even as it struggles to remain occupied by God. And so the great break point in the genealogy is the deportation to Babylon, and then the time after that: fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Exile; fourteen from the Exile to the Messiah. God still occupies Israel, and always will.

But occupation brings a sense of oppression, a sense of danger. Joseph is engaged to Mary, but to his shame she is pregnant. Only when he learns in a dream that this is to fulfill prophecy does he decide he can relax, and accept this pregnant woman as his wife. And when the child is born, Joseph names the child Joshua, Jesus in the koine Greek of the gospels, which means “Yahweh is salvation.”

Occupation brings not only the sense of oppression, but true oppression. The birth of the Messiah is not an event that can happen quietly. When God came to Moses on the mountain there was theophany: thunder and lightning and clouds. When God came to Elijah there was a wind, and then an earthquake, and then fire: God was in none of those things, but nature could not be quiet when God was present. And so Creation must announce the birth of Messiah, but who will read the signs? Magi; magicians; men of wisdom and learning from another land; for truly, as Jesus would later say, a prophet is not honored in his own country. And surely his own people will not know him first. So comes the epiphany.

And straight from scripture it comes: for here is the amazing thing. Does knowledge come from revelation, or does it come from discovery? Do we learn what is most important for us to know, what is of “ultimate concern,” or is it revealed to us? Matthew and the Hebrew people would say that it is revealed, and would point to the story of Abraham, of Joshua, of Samuel and David and the call of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, of Amos and Hosea and even Jonah, as their proof. We do not seek God so much as God seeks us, and we do not know what is most important to know so much as God reveals it to us: if we will listen; if we will see; if we will learn.

And so the Magi come just as expected. But why do we know to expect it? Because Psalm 72 has told us it will happen. Not in the simple sense of prophecy, “as it is written:” but in the complex sense of a revelation, an enactment of what the Psalmist said would happen as a sign of God’s favor and the righteousness of the king to whom God gives God’s judgment.

[Psalm 72]
Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son.

2 He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.

3 The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.

4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

5 They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.

6 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.

7 In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.

8 He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.

9 They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust.

10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.

11 Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him.

12 For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.

13 He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.

14 He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight.

15 And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba: prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall he be praised.

16 There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.

17 His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed.

18 Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things.

19 And blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen.

20 The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.

There is much in that Psalm that repays study in light of the nativity stories, and the gospel stories. There is much that is connected to the ministry of Jesus, and to the songs of Luke’s nativity tale. But I want to pay attention to the kings who come bringing presents.

We call them “kings” because of this Psalm, even if we don’t know the connection between Matthew and Psalm 72. That isn’t what Matthew calls them: he calls them “magi.” He calls them “astrologers.” The Psalmist says the kings of foreign countries will come and offer gifts, the kings of Tarshish and Sheba and Seba. But Matthew lives under oppression, and any mention of foreign kings and any naming of nations is dangerous, so his “magi” come only from the East, from outside the Empire, and they are not kings, but wise men, men of deep knowledge. And they come with gifts, to fall down before the child, and serve him.

But Matthew lives under oppression, and the immediate sponsor of that oppression is Herod; Herod who serves the occupiers, and like them fears any challenge to his power. Herod, who with all of Jerusalem is disturbed to hear the news of this birth. Disturbed precisely because the Psalmists words were true: this king will have the Lord’s justice, and will deliver the needy and the poor and those who cry. No wonder Herod and all Jerusalem are disturbed: the end of their time has been announced, and they have just heard of it. The time of their oppression is at an end.

And how is this revealed to him? By strangers coming to ask for information he doesn’t have, who bring the information with them that he needs and open his eyes to what the Scriptures say, but to which he hasn’t listened. And so he sends the Magi to Bethlehem, to find the child. And now the revelation of the Scripture, and the revelation of Creation, and the revelation of God, come all three together. An angel speaks directly to Joseph, and later to the Magi; the star that rises new in the heavens is the first clue for the Magi; and the Scripture that make sense of all of this for Matthew’s audience, reveal the last connections for the Magi between their curiosity, and their goal. Guided by their knowledge of nature, playing their part according to the psalm, they need scripture to complete the picture.

And the last song of Matthew is another snatch of scripture, this time from Jeremiah, from the heart of the Exile itself. Rachel weeps for the exile of the northern kingdom in Jeremiah, and Matthew cuts off the hope of recovery, the response of the Lord to “keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears,” for “they shall come back from the land of the enemy, ther eis hope for your future.” But does he leave that part of the poem, the song, the song of lament, out of his story of Messiah? Or does he incorporate it by reference, as he incorporates by reference to Psalm 72 the last line of that psalm: “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” Ended? Why? Because they have been fulfilled. Because Messiah has come and the prayers of David son of Jesse have been fulfilled in the incarnation of the Christ who is also son of Abraham, son of David. And because the psalm itself portends, in Matthew’s gospel, and ending, almost an eschaton, a close to history. Because the psalm does not say what gifts the kings will bring from Sheba and Seba, but Matthew does: they bring gold, the precious element fit for a king, and frankincense and myrrh; strange perfumes for a child, but appropriate to prepare a corpse for burial. These gifts point already to the end, the crucifixion. We who are born mortal are born to die, and while this child is Messiah, this child is also mortal.

Just as the innocents slaughtered by Herod were mortal. But where Matthew cuts the story short with his quote from Jeremiah, he invites the rest of the story in tacitly, sotto voce, beneath the wailing of the mothers for their sons. He reminds them, reminds us all, that the terrible price of oppression, the terrible power of the oppressors, cannot be denied, cannot be overlooked or passed by easily: but neither is it the last word. That last word is God’s, and that word of hope will be heard in the gospel that follows this nativity story.

Luke:

So then we jump to Luke, since we are following songs and scriptures and sources of revelation. Luke presents us with four songs, fitting for a Christmas story, and Luke’s is our favorite Christmas story: we fit the details of Matthew’s in around it, in our most common tellings. Our nativity scenes include shepherds and magi, a star and and angel, and always the iconic manger. Where Matthew implies concern for the poor and the powerless, Luke makes it concrete: Jesus is so poor and so powerless that even his birthplace is the result of oppression, of an order from the oppressor that his family go to their ancestral home. But here the oppressor, as ignorant as Herod of what God plans to do, has already done, will do in days to come, is made to play a necessary role in the story, is forced despite his intentions, to arrange the pieces so that God’s will is made clear to all who will see, to all who will listen.

But God’s will is obscure, even to the priests who serve God in the temple. Luke opens his story with Zechariah, a man of priestly line who should know his story of Abraham better, because although God made the promise to Abraham five times before it was fulfilled, but Abraham never doubted, and never asked for anything more than a sign once. Zechariah, on the other hand, wonders how the news of a child to be born to his wife Elizabeth is even possible. And for that he is silenced. Luke works in reverse to follow the story of the scriptures: God speaks first to a man, one who is to father the forerunner of Messiah, and then God speaks to the mother of Messiah. But where Zechariah is clumsy, Mary is subtle and wise in her humility.

And yet it is only after Elizabeth speaks to Mary that Mary sings her hymn of praise to God for what God has promised. It is only when her story is confirmed by her cousin, by another and older woman, that the younger woman rejoices in what God has done for her. And then she sings the most revolutionary song in the Gospels, one that echoes, but goes far beyond, the song of Hanna in 1 Samuel:

[1 Samuel 2:1-10]
And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.

2 There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.

3 Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

4 The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.

5 They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.

6 The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.

7 The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.

8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them.

9 He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.

10 The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.

[Luke 1:46-55]

My soul extols the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has shown consideration for the lowly stature of his slave. As a consequence, from now on every generation will congratulate me; the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name, and his mercy will come to generation after generation of those who fear him. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has put the arrogant to rout, along with their private schemes; he has pulled the mighty down from their thrones, and exalted the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he spoke to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

It is the first of Luke’s four songs, and it is no accident that this song sings of apocalypse and eschaton and revelation. Hannah sings because the Lord has lifted her oppression: because her place in society was to be a mother, and that joy had been denied her, until the Lord saw fit to allow it. Sarah laughs when God tells Abraham she will have a son within the year. Elizabeth gives thanks that God has removed her dishonor. Position and society and expectation oppress as much as governments and tyrants, and God removes the oppression of all of them. God removes oppression and suppression, and how should we respond except to sing?

Hannah sings of reversal, of strong men distraught, the weak made strong, the hungry fed while the full beg for a crust of bread, and childless mothers bear seven children while the mother of children languishes. Just so Mary sings of the reversal of oppression, but oppression of the people, not of the society. God will level; God will reverse. The valleys will be filled, and the mountains lowered, so that all will see the glory of God.

And as soon as Zechariah fulfills the word of the Lord as spoken by the angel, he can speak again, and he sings. We call that one the Benedictus, because the Latin version begins: “Benedictus Dominus, Deus Israel.” Mary’s song praises what God will do; Zechariah’s song praises what God has done. Together they tie up the strands of history, past and future, and make them one moving knot through the present, but all of time connected through that knot, through the moving present. Ironically, Zechariah’s song also does one more thing, in a way Luke never could have foreseen or intended. It ends with the one use of the word “epiphany” in all the Gospels.

The word means “revelation,” but it also means “light, illumination.” Epiphanai, sings Zechariah: Epiphanai tois en skotei kai skia thanatou kathamenois: light to those in darkness and in death’s shadow. Epiphanai: light, to show us the way. And so the Christmas stories connect again, through music.

There are two final songs in Luke, both short and simple: the gloria of the angels, a doxology, a praise to God and good news to humankind; and the nunc dimmitus, “now allow,” of Simeon, the song of the acceptance of death because history has been fulfilled, the expectation of Israel is over, the Exile is indeed now ended. One is the expected theophany of the birth of Messiah: Luke puts it in the mouths of heavenly messengers, but to draw shepherds, not magi, to witness the birth, because it is for them. And because the words “peace among those God favors” apply directly to the shepherds. It is for them this messiah has come. The reversal sung by Mary has already started. This news does not come first to the wise or the powerful, but to the outlaws, the shepherds, up late and with nothing else to do. As Mary sang, and Hanna before her, and the Psalmist, these are the ones favored by God, the poor and the oppressed to whom God listens. And again, their oppression is lifted, because they are the first invitees into the kingdom this new-born will grow up to proclaim.

Conclusion:

So these songs set the themes of the gospel stories. The Psalm and the lament of Jeremiah set the framework of Matthew’s nativity, and set it inside the story of the revelation already told by the Jewish people to themselves, already recorded and revered in their scriptures. Luke, the Gentile, speaks to a Gentile community of ostensibly Jewish matters, so the witness of scripture is not as strong a pull on him. But he, too, needs scripture to anchor his story, to give it context. Scripture, and songs, because the truth is revealed in dreams, and sung in inspiration. The Benedidictus and the Magnificat bookend the kerygma of the kingdom, the proclamation of the change that is coming, a change that will comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The Gloria is sung to those whom God favors, and it is not those we would expect; and the Nunc Dimmitus, much like Matthew’s gifts from the Magi, presents the eschaton, the end that awaits this family and this baby.

Unconnected with Matthew, still the stories are connected, and connected to the gospels they precede. They set the tone and themes for each gospel’s version of the story of the life of Jesus of Nazareth: a story of a peasant born under oppression; oppression both social and economic, and political. Each of those sources of oppression and repression are challenged in the nativity stories, and shown to be undone by God’s hand, by God’s action in history. Both encompass, from the beginning, outsiders, which means people like us, and people still not like us. So both stories offer us challenges, today.

And if there is a lesson for us today, it is that oppression and suppression take many forms, and many of them are imposed on us not just by governments, but by groups, by societies and communities. Matthew’s community was occupied by evil rulers; Luke’s community was dominated and defined by the Roman Empire. Like them, we are always struggling against what holds us, and always looking for liberation. But the question both these gospels present to us, from the very beginning of their stories, is: in what form does our liberation come, and is it what we are looking for? Are we always ready to recognize our epiphany?

By the way

They don't treat BLM this way!

This is why the Bundy "occupiers" are not terrorists.  And why we should all point and laugh now:

"The Black Lives Matter movement, they can go and protest, close freeways down and all that stuff, and they don't get any backlash, not on the level that we're getting," said the man, who identified himself as "Fluffy Unicorn."

And the guy who called this his "supply room"

for a long occupation, said this:

I don’t know a lot about the Black Lives Matter movement but I know their initial protest involved lots of looting and violence towards businesses and innocent citizens which I do not agree with. I do agree with them standing up for what they believe in. I just think during their protest they were unorganized and not well-planned.

Of course, he also said this (as of 5:30 p.m. PST January 4, 2016):

We have been preparing the camp for a long standoff against federal agents for when they show up. Making sure everyone knows their job when the standoff begins.

So they're just standing around eating and burning wood and waiting for something to start?  Bundy also has what can politely be called delusions of grandeur:

“This will become a base place for patriots from all over the country,” he said, inviting like-minded people to bring their weapons and join up. “We’re the point of the spear that’s going to bring confidence and strength to the rest of the people.”

Except the Guardian reports the plan is to cut power to the site:

“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” said the official, who is based in Washington, DC, and has knowledge of the planned response to the militia. “And it’s flat-ass cold up there.”

....

“After they shut off the power, they’ll kill the phone service,” the government official added. “Then they’ll block all the roads so that all those guys have a long, lonely winter to think about what they’ve done.”

Snowstorms are expected in the wilderness surrounding the refuge on Tuesday, which is some 30 miles from the town of Burns. At night, temperatures are forecast to plummet to -8C (18F).

The militia, numbering few more than a dozen, have been building fires to stay warm and have been sleeping in the building usually used by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which runs the refuge for wild birds.

The Guardian also nots that supply room is as empty as it looks to be:

Bundy has repeatedly said the group is prepared for the long-haul. However during a tour of the site earlier in the day, the Guardian was shown a food storage room that did not look like it could sustain a dozen men for more than a few weeks.

It included a cardboard box of apples and oranges, a few dozen pots of instant ramen, 24 cans of chicken noodle soup, a similar number of cans of sweetcorn, peas, beans and chili, and 20 boxes of macaroni and cheese.

There were also three sacks of potatoes, one bag of flour, another of rolled oats, boxes of raisins, a single bag of pretzels and one granola bar.

And this is the best part:

"This is their county – we can't be here and force this on them," Ryan Bundy said. "If they don't want to retrieve their rights, and if the county people tell us to leave, we'll leave."

Well, the sheriff did ask them to leave, yesterday.  Maybe they aren't getting Twitter up there.  Or maybe only certain sheriffs are the lawful authority for a locale.

If anybody else remembers Dandy Don Meredith from Monday Night Football back in the day, I hear him warming up in the wings:  "Turn out the lights, the party's over!"

These guys are very silly.

And in other news.....

Local control, ironically, means the locals decide who controls.

And that doesn't mean people from Arizona decide for people in Oregon.

I had a lot of elaboration around this.  Then I decided this entire story comes down to this picture,  posted to Twitter by an Oregon reporter.

That's the "supply room" for Bundy & Co.  To fully appreciate it, you need to know what Bundy says about this "siege."

"The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Ammon Bundy said.
"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he added. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

I'm guessin' somebody's planning to go into town for supplies before the week is over.

This isn't sedition; this is just silly.

For the Time Being

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --

Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought

Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now

Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry

And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly

Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be

Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment

We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;

Remembering the stable where for once in our lives

Everything became a You and nothing was an It.

And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,

We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit

Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose

Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,

We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;

"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."

They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form

That we do not expect, and certainly with a force

More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime

There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,

Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem

From insignificance. The happy morning is over,

The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:

When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing

Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure

A silence that is neither for nor against her faith

That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,

God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

--W.H. Auden

I opened my copy of Collected Longer Poems by W.H. Auden last night, as bed-time reading, and found myself talking to my younger self.

I have no memory of reading these poems.  Instead, I have a memory of not reading them, because they were long and I was not that interested in poetry.  My memory tells me I got interested in poetry in graduate school, in a seminar on Yeats where we read all of his lyric poems.  My memory lies.

The title page of Collected Longer Poems is covered in my handwriting:  notes about the poetry, specific notes and general notes about Auden's poetry.  I wrote a long paper on Auden, part of a special course I took in my undergraduate work.  I vaguely remember the course, don't remember at all what I wrote about.  But there I was, 40 years younger and full of ideas.  And I realized it wasn't the ideas that had left me: it was the source material.  I used to write about stuff worth knowing, if only notes to myself.  Now, what do I know?

This morning on Salon (my morning habit), I read this article:  one that promised Chomsky and Orwell, and only offered warmed-over Orwell.  Hitchens wrote more insightfully about Orwell, and Hitchens was a putz with an Oxonian accent (even in print!) which only made him sound good.  I could construct a better analysis of U.S. ideals v. reality from the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, as indeed Andrew Bacevich has done.  But Bacevich doesn't get discussed on the internet, and Niebuhr is a dead white man at Salon.  They are far more interested in the nuanced thinking of Amy Schumer.

And where on the internet does one find a discussion that isn't about confirming one's prejudices and proving one's superiority to all outsiders (because every discussion forms its own clique.  That would be true here if I had more readers. As it is, my readers are a clique, but a gentle one with no real boundaries, because no one here defends any boundaries, except perhaps your gentle host.  He can be a real jerk.)?

So,  a New Year's resolution:  back to the books, and away with the screen.

Call it a mental health resolution.  I'll call it a spiritual one.