KICKING CREATION IN THE A$$?

Is my title a bit, shall we say provocative? Damn straight. This is not how I was raised. And frankly this is pretty damn scary. If my fellow self described Christian citizens are willing to see foreigners tortured to protect their precious lives and property what will they sanction if they see a threat from their neighbors?

This graph is from a poll taken by the Washington Post/ABC News. Now they only broke down the results between all adults, Christian variations and respondents who claimed no religion so we don't know how Jews, Muslims or Pagans might have responded. And it's not broken down by race. Those results might be very interesting

But frankly? These results don't say much for Christianity American style. At least until you go back and read your history books. It's always been there. Lurking just below the surface. The mobs that made Cyril Patriarch of Alexandria and then used by him to drive out the Jewish population that had lived in the city for centuries? Yep. The inquisition? The witch trials? The European wars of religion? What we've done to the rest of Creation? I'm not sure when we started down this terrible path. Different groups, Anabaptists, Quakers other small groups have tried but we've never gotten past the fringes. And damned if I know how to stop it now.

SHAPING CREATION

A non-traditional Celtic take on the traditional Trinity.

Cruthaitheoir (noun): creator Cruth (noun):shape. Cruthigh (verb): to create, to shape.

Honestly, I have no idea how to pronounce the Irish and the net wasn’t much help. In any case when most of us use the word create we mean to bring something into existence. However, the less common definition of create is ‘to bring into a new form.” And, the root word cruth in those Irish words means to shape. Shaping implies that you are working with something that already exists.

In the Celtic mythology stories that have survived, there appears to be no creation myths as we understand them. One of those in the beginning there was  a Void, a cosmic Egg, something that wasn’t there and then it was there, somehow. Something created from nothing.

Since those eternally curious scribes in the ancient Irish monasteries  translated, copied, and recopied every written scrap they could find it seems unlikely to many scholars that any creation myths they found wouldn’t have been recorded even if they were cleaned up to give them a less pagan cast.

Or, perhaps, the Celts never had an “in the beginning” story to start with. The universe didn’t have to come “into” existence because it has always existed. This does answer one problem. If the universe is created, who created the Creator? If somehow the universe has always existed then the Creator has always existed, does exist and will always exist. Creation then becomes a reshaping of what already exists, not the creation of something out of nothing. In this universe even the big bang becomes a reshaping of a “something” that already existed. What that “something” was or is we don’t know. Perhaps as humans with human limitations this is something we can’t know or comprehend.

And where does the raw material for reshaping come from? For some, like the writer Tom Cowan, the raw material the Creator works with is the Creator itself. (arrrrgh! Pronouns describing the indescribable are such fun to try to use.) This ever changing, ever shifting, and always becoming universe is made not only by the Creator but from the very essence of that Creator.

One of the best examples I can think of is this. A giant star is mostly hydrogen with some helium and an almost undetectable scattering of heavier elements. It lives its life, burns through its hydrogen fuel in a few million years, explodes as a supernova and seeds the universe with star stuff. The carbon that builds our cells, the oxygen we breathe, the iron in the steel that holds up our skyscrapers: these elements were forged in the heart of an exploding star. This star stuff reshaped, renewed, becomes new stars, new planets and wonder of wonders; us.

Cowan, who works with Celtic and shamanic traditions took the more traditional trinity and reworked it using the image of shaping. So the trinity becomes The Shaper of life, the Shape of life, and the Shaping of life. These three are truly indivisible, no one of the three can exist without the other two. It sounds really odd to say it but this trinity does work. And in a strange way we become not only the Created but the Creator. We are the Shaper, the Shape and the Shaping itself. (I know, my brain is feeling a little “sprained” right now.)

And he rewrote an old Irish prayer using the trinity of shaping.

Shaper of life, above me and below.

Shaper of life before me as I go.

Shaper of life, at my sides and

I know that You circle me around

And around and around.

Shape of life, above and below.

Shape of life before me as I go.

Shape of life, at my sides and

I know that You circle me around

And around and around.

Shaping of life, above and below.

Shaping of life before me as I go.

Shaping of life, at my sides and

 I know the You circle me around

And around and around.

Sacred Three, above and below.

Sacred Three before me as I go.

Sacred Three at my sides and

 I know that You circle me around

And around and around.

From Yearning for the Wind

So, all of us should rejoice for we are truly a part of the Creator of creation. 

ANOTHER REASON FOR THE SEASON

Winter solstice is just around the corner. Found this on the net. Wish I could find this in a yard sign. I would really love to play with the fundies minds this time of year. Trouble is most of them wouldn't even know what I was talking about. 

TONE DEAF

If you believe, as I do, that all of Creation has a voice if we would just listen with our souls instead of just using our ears we could hear the trees singing and know it was more than an afternoon breeze. They do not hear the Great Song, the Oran Mor of the Celts.

Those who use the world assuming
their knowledge is sufficient
destroy the world. The forest
is mangled for sale
of a few sticks, or is bulldozed
into a stream and covered over
the earth it once stood
upon. The stream turns foul,
killing the creatures that once
lived from it. Industrial humanity,
an alien species, lives by death.
In the clutter of facts, the destroyers
leave behind them on big story,
of the world and the world's end,
that they don't know. They know
the names and the little stories. But the
names of everything are not everything.
The story of everything, told,
is only a little story. They don't know
the languages of the birds
who pass northward, feeding
through the treetops early in
May, kept alive by knowledge
never to said in words.
Hang your head. This is our hope: Words
emerge from silence, the silence remains.

Wendell Berry 2007

WE BLEW UP PARADISE

John Denver sang it too in Rocky Mountain High. "They try to tear the mountain down to bring in a couple more." Or the song with the refrain "they paved paradise and put in a parking lot."

We've allowed the multinationals to use precious fresh water in this country to frack for natural gas to sell overseas. The corporations rip the guts out of the mountains here to sell the coal somewhere else. What's left behind by our unique form of American Socialism? Fouled streams, choked valleys and quiet places that fall to the bulldozers. Destroying what the Creator gave freely would be bad enough if we at least saw the benefits from the resources. Instead the gas and coal go overseas. The profits go to a mulitnational headquartered in some tax haven and WE end up with the mess to clean up.

"When you get the time to do it and you drive up here and leave your truck and walk into the woods and stay awhile in a pretty place where you don't hear no noise and nothing's bothering you, and you go back the next week and that place is not even there, that's hard."

Joe Begley (1919-2000) of Blacky, Kentucky

speaking of mountaintop removal mining. 

I dream by night the horror

That I oppose by day.

The nation in its error 

In its work and in its play

Destroys its land, pollutes

Its streams, and desecrates

Its air and light. From the roots

It dies upwards, our rights,

Divinely given, plundered

And sold to purchased power

That dies from the head downward,

Marketed hour by hour. 

The market is a grave 

Where goods lie dead that ought

to live and grow and thrive,

The dear world sold and bought

To be destroyed by fire,

Forest and soil and stone,

The conscience put to hire

Rules over flesh and bone. 

To take the coal to burn

They overturn the world

And all the world has worn

Of grace, of health. The gnarled

Clenched, and forever shut

Fist of their greed makes small 

The great life. Hollowed out,

The soul like a green hill

Yields to the force of death.

The crack in the despots skull

Descends into the earth, 

And what was bright turns dull. 

Wendell Berry 2007 

WHICH KINGDOM DO WE BELONG TO?

Another Wendell Berry. This one is from 2005 at the height of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They gather like an ancestry
in the centuries behind us:
the killed by violence, the dead
in war, the "acceptable losses" --
killed by custom in self defense,
by way of correction, in revenge,
for the love of God, for the glory
of the world, for peace; killed
for pride, lust, envy, anger,
covetousness, gluttony, sloth,
and fun. the strewn carcasses
cease to feed even the flies,
the stench passes from them,
the earth folds in the bones
like salt in batter.

And we have learned
nothing. "Love your enemies,
bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you" --
It goes on regardless, reasonably:
the always uncompleted
symmetry of just reprisal,
the angry word, the boast
of superior righteousness,
hate in Christ's name.
scorn for the dead, lies
for the honor of the nation,
centuries bloodied and dismembered
for ideas, for ideals,
for the love of God!

When I read this one it hit me as too strong. Then the torture report was released and I remembered an article in Newsweek several years ago that profiled an attorney that the administration had finally located who would sign off on the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques." Didn't say how many others they talked to. Then I read more comments on the Ferguson and New York stories. Then there was another school shooting. This one in Portland. Then I read Benjamin Corey's breakdown of the stories in his blog that drew the most hate mail. Especially the one at the top of the list. And suddenly this poem wasn't strong enough.

POLITICAL WEATHER

Another Wendell Berry from the early nineties. Prime example? California is getting hit with the worst storm in over five years. Massive amounts of rain. Winds at gale force; close to hurricane strength. And the storm is heading for the southern burned areas with potential for massive mudslide. Only on AOHell could a story about the weather be turned political.

"Oh poor California. They're getting rained on call in the disaster designation." Go watch the blasted weather channel and wonder how you'd do in gale force winds as the storm drains not only back up but geyser. Remember how Texas begged for help a couple of years ago when the whole state threatened to turn to ashes?

Hate has no world.
The people of hate must
try to posses the world of love,
for it is the only world;
it is Heaven and Earth.
But as lonely, eager hate
possesses it, it disappears;
it never did exist,
and hate must seek another
world that love has made.

ETERNAL FOREST

From a poem by Wendell Berry

How long does it take to make the woods?
As long as it takes to make the world.
The woods is present as the world is, the presence of
all its past, and of all its time to come.
It is always finished, it is always being made, the act
of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction.
It is part of eternity, for its end and its beginning
belong to the end and the beginning of all things,
the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.

A forest is constantly beginning and ending. A giant redwood begins to die, shoots come up from the roots, reaching for the sun and the sky. Go into the woods, Find a clearing where a pine or fir or hemlock has found its final resting place. But that tree is not alone. It's a home to new life. Mushrooms, little bushes, insects, birds.

That's why I believe it is impossible to practice sustainable forestry. We take out what would support the next of living things. The big timber companies turn a forest into a monoculture using herbicides that poison not only the earth in the tree plantation but anyone and anything living near by.What a world.

THE LORDS OF WAR

We've heard it all before. "Better dead than red" with the power to turn the earth into an ash heap.  As if the birds, beasts and flowers knew or cared about the politics of the destroyers. "We had to destroy the village to save it" as we forced old men, women and children into ready made villages that were little more than detentions camps so we could plow the earth with bombs, coat it with napalm and turn their crops into wastelands. Who can hear the cry of the newborn in the manger over the screams of the fallen?

Our reasons for our newest wars shifted like a sand dune under our feet. Fighting terrorism without asking WHY we were a target. And shouting anyone who did ask as a traitor, a coward or a disbeliever in American "Exceptionalism."  Making the world safe for McDonalds, Wally World and our version of "democracy." Add the sacrilege of so called holy men standing in their pulpits arguing that the Prince of Peace arrived carrying an Uzi and Peace on Earth fades into the distance like a mirage on a sun baked highway.

But do the Lords of War in fact
hate the world? That would be easy
to bear if so. If they hated their
children and the flowers that
grow in the morning light, that
would be easy to bear. For then
we could hate the haters
and be right. What is hard
is to imagine that the Lords of War
may love the things that they destroy.

Wendell Berry 2003 in Collected and New Sabbath Poems

OoooooKaaaaaay! As sometimes happens the entry took over and wrote itself. It feels really weird when "somebody" takes over and off we go on a roller coaster ride.

THE AMERICA THAT COULD BE

From Martin Luther King the Inconvenient Hero by Vincent Harding. Tragic that at a time when the memory of his powerful belief in the power of non violence could help turn this country around his name isn’t even mentioned.

“Who dares recall this man, when all the plagues he fought are still among us, standing in the way of the “America we hope to be”: poverty and exploitation, racism, militarism, materialism, manipulated anticommunism?* How shall we recall him when the America which has been is still is still protected and justified by Bible quoting presidents and supine legislators who offer no visionary leadership to a spiritually crippled people?

Who dare rededicate themselves to the causes of this hero? Who is there now, when major portions of his black middle class have made their peace, found equal opportunity in the America that is? Someone.

Who is there now, when the overwhelming experience of the Black church is still focused on an individualistic religious experience, breaking faith with the Tubmans, the Turners, the Truths, and the Kings (and the King)? Someone.

Who is there when so many of his white comrades now stand back in cynicism, fear, success and puzzlement? Someone.

Who is there when so many of poor (and recently poor) now compete for crumbs across racial and ethnic lines, rather than standing together to vision, to pray, to recollect, to plan, to struggle? Someone.

Who stands with a hero who insists on living for the broken and exploited, who refuses to deny nightmares, who still will not let dreams die? And who is not afraid to go on exploring, stumbling, trembling, wherever visions lead him? Someone.

Who will open the door for the children, to let them see him, feel him, as he was, to recall him as he is, perhaps to expose their hungry directionless lives to the flaming vector of his passion for the poor? Someone.

Is he safely dead? Perhaps we should recall him and see. Now. Perhaps in the process we may learn again how to live-unsafely, in love with God and neighbor, with cleansing, purifying fire, with the America that is yet to be created-by us?”

*Soviet Union fell over twenty years ago and we’re still being called commies etc. 

ANATOMY OF POLICE VIOLENCE

Graphic created by Benjamin L, Corey Formerly Fundie. He put a lot of work into this and I believe it's spot on. His blog is a great one. The link is on my sidebar. You might not agree with all his conclusions. On the other hand ask the few Pequots who survived the war engineered by colonists in Connecticut.

WHAT CAN'T BE CHANGED

I’m getting a little fed up with the comments that the Irish, the Germans, the Italians etc. ad nauseum had adapted to the majority culture in the US so why can’t _______ I don’t think you’ll have to think too hard to fill in the blank.

Well for starters many of those minorities are white or at least rather tan in complexion. Lose the accent, alter your name, move to the other side of the country and you can pretend to be just about anything you want to be. If anyone is curious enough to ask, that is. Even the Italians. For every immigrant’s son who looks like Antonin Scalia, there’s a blue eyed blond from the north of the country that was settled by the Germanic tribes. Change your name from Bellini to Bell and nobody will ask any questions.

As for the minorities from the orient, they faced some very extreme prejudice in the early years. And let’s face it. I didn’t take the time to run the numbers but there just aren’t that many Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian Americans in this country. I suspect that there are parts of the country where the good citizens can go for years and not see an Asian face outside of the TV or movies.

African Americans have been the quintessential other from the beginning. Were they persons or property? The constitution came down on the side of what? They were persons but only 3/5 of a person and only so they could be counted for census purposes. Called “black” even though most African Americans are varying shades of brown it conjures up all those images of darkness.

The dangers of night. Going over to the “dark side.” Thanks George we really needed that and Darth Vader in his midnight black get up to let us know he wasn’t one of the good guys. The psy cops in the Babylon 5 universe with their SS wannabe’s black uniforms. The black sheep of the family. The black market. All the negative images conjured up by “black.”

You can change your name. You can get an education that lets you speak like a BBC presenter. You can get a good job and dress the part. Even buy a decent car. There are still areas where the real estate agents will try to steer you away from. You can still be arrested for buying belt considered too nice for somebody like you. You and that nice care can still be pulled over for “infractions” that probably wouldn’t be noticed in a European American driver.

You can be stopped and questioned for walking while black with your hands in your pockets. (true story. Apparently a store owner had called because an African American with his hands in his pockets had been passing back and forth in front of the store and he was afraid he was going to be robbed. No matter that the man who was actually stopped was nowhere near the store. He was walking the mile between the house of a friend and his place about a mile away)

You can still be called every vile  name in the book because, unlike other hyphenated Americans, you can’t change the color of your skin. From the day you’re born until the day you die too many people will only look at skin color and no further. And from the comments I’ve been reading on too many stories too many people aren’t interested in doing things any different. 

BLACK FRIDAY SURPRISES?

Surprise, surprise. Turns out post Thanksgiving weekend retail sales were/are down. I suspect that the same people shop 'til they drop year after year. Give them more time to shop with the same amount of money something has to give and it did.

That and the suspicion that the "gift" being bought are pretty much for the buyers. I remember one year when mom took an old formal and reworked it into a lovely robe for my little sister. I still have the knitting instructions for the slippers we used to make. I could probably knock out a pair with my eyes closed. Same with knitted hats. We always made a lot more jams, jellies and kraut than WE needed because it all made good gifts. One year my room was awash in shredded foam for the Raggedy Anne and Andy dolls for the littlest sister.

Traditionally the Christmas tree went up the week before Christmas and went down at New Years. Providing the tree stayed green enough long enough. Ornaments were gradually collected. We still have two or three that were my grandmother's. Lots of lights to fill in the gaps.

Cars, TV's shop equipment? Christmas gifts? I watched film clips of the stores opening their doors on Thursday evening. Pushing, shoving, knocking other people down and not stopping to help them. Most of them looking like they were just this side of insane. Hell a security guard got trampled to death a few years ago. I think it was at a WalMart. If there's a War on Christmas it started about Halloween, hit the beaches on Thanksgiving and is being fought in your local mall. And we're losing. And whether you celebrate Christmas, the Winter Solstice, the Celtic pantheon or just want to hang with family, take a deep breath and enjoy watching the squirrels at the feeder we're losing. Big time.

We're working on Advent and the Solstice right now. We'll get around to Christmas when it is time.

JURIES

I haven't spent much time in the comments sections of stories about Ferguson and the protests. Not from lack of interest but in the interests of keeping my blood pressure at levels closer to Mt. Hood levels than Mt Everest.

What I have seen. If you aren't white you don't have the right to protest. I've seen comments that seemed to call for genocide against minorities in this country. Most African Americans are thugs or worse and those who acknowledge that like whites, a small minority are responsible for violent crimes. However, even that person called on the African American community to "police themselves." That's why we have the LAW, bonehead. Not all cops are trigger happy either. All African Americans are lazy, on welfare, on food stamps etc. etc. etc. One commenter even called for 7 PM to 7 AM curfews in the cities and if you don't "have a good reason to be out" subject to arrest. Shades of North Korea, the old USSR and Nazi Germany.

And something that really bothers me. Too many of our fellow citizens don't seem to know the difference between a grand jury proceeding and a jury trial. There's a joke that a careful prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. After the sandwich is indicted both sides have their chance to present their best evidence before the public and before a jury of the sandwiche's "peers." Now THAT presents an interesting picture. LOL

I've run into more than one comment of "he's not guilty, get over it." No, we don't know that. The grand jury didn't indict the officer and there are plenty of questions about how the prosecutor handled the proceedings. No indictment, no trial. No chance for the public to watch what's going on and see justice being served.

Now, about those protests. I'm all in favor of non violent confrontation, that's NON VIOLENT confrontation. And if it means going to jail, that's part of the price we pay for something resembling the rule of law. You don't throw bottles at the cops. You don't throw barricades at the cops. You don't spit at the cops.

Anybody out there ever watch the movie Gandhi? There is a sequence where demonstrators are marching on a salt works. There was a tax on salt and the British government controlled production. Row by row they marched towards the native police armed with bamboo staves. Row by row they were struck down and the women carried them to one side for first aid treatment. They kept it up hour after hour until after dark. It took another decade and WWII to finally achieve Indian independence but the Raj fell that day. True non violence is a disciplined, courageous confrontation of injustice. It doesn't always work. But it puts the violent response squarely in the oppressors ball park. Dr. King where you now?