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Several weeks ago I froze in my tracks when I heard Christmas music in a mall. It was still October. I thought to myself, “I’m not going to make it this year.” To hear great hymns blurring in and out of hideous Christmas jiggles has gotten harder each year of my life. At this point, I just leave.

Perhaps the most odious aspect of Christmas for me is when, every year, Christians claim that others are trying to steal the holiday from us.

“The Grinch is trying to steal our holiday.” The Grinch in question is atheists, and they will not be satisfied until they stamp out happiness itself.

“The nation comes together, we sing Christmas carols, we give gifts to each other. We have lighted trees, and it’s just a beautiful thing,” says Robertson. “Atheists don’t like our happiness, they don’t want you to be happy, they want you to be miserable! They’re miserable, so they want you to be miserable! So they want to steal your holiday away from you.” -Pat Robertson

I thought the whole point of Christmas was to share! If some of us want to share the holiday with Jews, Muslims and with atheist friends, isn’t that what the season is for? How did we get from a symbol of sharing to a celebration of hoarding? How did we get from a poor baby born in a cattle stall, to people in mink coats announcing televised parades? How did we get from reverence for a solitary star, to malls awash in garish lights and tinsel? How did the “silence” of “Silent Night” get converted into blaring elevator music?

http://www.alternet.org/pat-robertson-issues-dire-warning-about-atheists-stealing-christmas

“Purity of heart is to will one thing.” -Kierkegaard

I used to find Kierkegaard’s words mysterious. If purity of heart is to will one thing, what should that solitary focus be upon?

As a child I believed that one thing was God. The problem with that approach was that my idea of God was an extension of myself. It was perhaps my highest and best thought, but it was still built around me and what I needed. My idea of God, therefore, put me in conflict with others.

Many people turn to religion as a hiding place. I once knew a man who suffered from depression. He stopped coming to church because he did not want to hear about the world’s problems. “How can I care about world when I can’t even hold my head above water?” He had no idea that the narrowness of his concern was what kept him feeling isolated and helpless. He was like a flower that, in closing in on itself, had turned from the sun which gave it energy.

Kierkegaard’s famous words are no longer a mystery to me. While I cannot claim to know what he meant by the words, to me they are perfectly clear. When Kierkegaard says, “purity of heart is to will one thing,” he is speaking of the freedom that comes from living in the common life and seeking the common good. It does not mean focusing on any one thing, it means living in the whole. If we use the symbol “God” it should be an idea that lifts us past every partial desire and gives us a vision of our common life with all.

Paul Buchheit has composed a list of ten facts often ignored by those who advocate lower taxes for the very wealthy. I have included his list and a link to the longer article.

1. Only THREE PERCENT of the very rich are entrepreneurs.

Thanks to Michael Younger for sending this time lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998. The flashing lights and bleeping sounds for every explosion was created by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto who hoped to show “the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” As it warns in the link the presentation starts off slow so you may want to fast forward to the sixties for the real light show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

Speaking for God can be a subtle art. Many would assume that two men committing the same adulterous act would draw the same response from a righteous and impartial judge like Rev. Pat Robertson. Not so. When Bill Clinton had an affair, Prophet Robertson saw it as a wickedness that threatened the integrity of a nation. But when Gen. Petraeus had an affair with Paula Broadwell, many thought he too would receive a rebuke, but Prophet Robertson surprised:

“Who knows?” he said. “The man’s off in a foreign land and he’s lonely and here’s a good looking lady throwing herself at him. I mean, he’s a man.”

The lesson for Bible students is clear. If Bill Clinton had been in a far away country, and Monica Lewinsky had been in better looking, then Rev. Robertson would not have called for his impeachment. It seems confusing. I understand that, to the unskilled, it almost seems that Robertson uses a different standard for his friends and enemies, but remember God’s ways are not our ways.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/pat-robertson-on-general-_n_2123111.html

loving the fire that burns us

Life is a fire. You and I are tongues within that flame.

As humans, we may fall in love with the shapes and forms rather than the actual fire of life itself.  As infants we fall in love with the bottle that feeds us and cannot recognize the same kindness when offered with a spoon.  The baby sees weaning as a time of bitter grief rather than as transition to a more stable form of sustenance.

As adolescents, we seek the love of a suitor.  We cannot recognize love when offered by family or childhood friends.  Each lover we lose (and we will lose them all) seems an irreplaceable loss if we cannot find the one lover behind them all.

Life contains much change and sadness.  We would not be fully human if we did not grieve, but loss reminds the mystic to return to life’s center.  We despair of life only because we have left the fire burning at the center to clutch after ashes blowing in the wind.

There is an interesting article on Common Dreams today (“Why is Oprah the only Black person on the Forbes 400?”).

The Forbes 400 is a list of the richest people in the U.S. That list provides a neutral test to the claim that women and Blacks have come so far in the U.S. that they no longer need safeguards like affirmative action. Instead, the Forbes 400 could be exhibit A in the case against our current economic set up.

 While Blacks comprise 13 percent of the total population, the Forbes list is only one quarter of one percent Black.

Racism and white supremacy have been hallmarks of this country since the original colonists washed ashore, and that legacy, which continues to this day, is evident in the current racial economic divide. The median Black family, for example, has only 10¢ of wealth for every dollar of white wealth. Based on the rate of progress Blacks have made over the past 30 years, it would take over five hundred years for them to reach wealth parity with Whites.

The Forbes 400 is equally damning when it comes to women:

The Forbes 400 is a men’s club, with women—the majority of whom inherited their fortunes—making up just 10 percent of the total list. And, with well over half of the Forbes 400 having inherited a substantial fortune and 17 percent having family members on the list, it should be clear that financial success isn’t just a product of intelligence and strong work ethic—often privilege and birthright are all it takes.

Women have long waited for opportunities to participate as fully in the economy as men. Though women have worked outside the home since the 1800s, they were, throughout history, systemically barred from resources and institutions that could have helped to move them more quickly toward economic parity with men. Today, women earn but 77¢ for each dollar men earn, and there’s no rational argument for why that should continue to be the case.

The Forbes 400 raises the question whether we are truly still “the land of opportunity?”

Class barriers restrict the economic mobility of those born poor. The rules of our economy heavily favor the wealthy, making the adage, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” truer by the day. Over 40 percent of those born into the bottom fifth of the economy are likely to stay at the bottom. Over 40 percent of those born into the richest fifth are likely to maintain or enhance their socioeconomic positions.

The article then moves to its conclusion:

Our country isn’t a beacon of opportunity as it’s so frequently depicted. Neither is it the cradle of democracy that those in power would have us believe. There are similarities between our current system and the nobility and family dynasties of the past. Money has poisoned the well of democracy. The richer you are, the louder your political voice—an idea made more literal with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that equated political spending with free speech.

The article moves to its conclusion:

Post-racialists, on the other hand, argue that race is no longer a factor. To “pull the race card” is to be divisive. Let the past be the past, they say. If you’re thinking, Well, if Oprah did it…, consider that some people, because of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status or anything else beyond their control, have to work harder than others to realize a life of economic security.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/16-1

Right before his own sex scandal broke Dinesh D’Souza gave a telephone interview accusing Obama of attacking traditional Christian values on Rick Scarborough’s  “40 Days to Save America.”

Why is Obama on the social issues — and I’m thinking here of abortion, I’m thinking here of gay marriage — why is Obama so aggressive in attacking the traditional values agenda?

…I think for Obama colonialism is identified not just with the soldiers but also with the missionaries. Remember it’s the missionaries that went alongside the conquerors, the conquistadors, came to the Americas and worked on converting the Indians and later missionaries went to China, India and Japan. So I think this is the problem, Obama doesn’t like traditional Christianity because he identifies it with colonialism. Obama’s own Christianity is more of a Third World liberation theology, a very different kind of Jeremiah Wright type philosophy, summarized in the idea that America is the rogue nation in the world.

I’m not sure D’Souza is correct that Obama has anti-colonial attitudes, but he is 100% right about liberation theology. What he is calling “traditional theology” is not the original teaching of Jesus. What many call “traditional Christianity” was born out of the crater of the Roman Empire. It was designed by an emperor who saw in Christianity an opportunity to unify his empire if only he could replaced Christianity’s original emphasis on love and justice with an obsession for doctrine and private morality.

The emperor Constantine forced Christian bishops to come together to craft a creed that would replace the sermon on the mount as the heart of Christianity. Whereas Jesus commanded followers to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, the new religion claimed that by parroting it’s creed believers would be saved. Whereas Jesus overturned the tables of oppression, the new religion told followers to submit to their rulers no matter what. Whereas Jesus sent his followers out with a message of love and justice for the whole world, the new religion said that “conversion” meant joining the institutional church.

So I believe that D’Souza is correct when he says there are two incompatible visions of Christianity and that we must choose between them. I just believe he is trying to get people to pick the wrong one.