LEAVING THE DECORATIONS UP . . .

Among the decorations in Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, 2015

    Yesterday (December 26), I saw a cartoon about  someone's having their house already decorated for  Christmas 364 days early.  Then, a perceptive wag corrected the math to 365 due to 2016's being a Leap Year.  In mid-January 1972, on a research trip, I interviewed a retired National Guard officer in his middle-Tennessee home.  A very large, very brown Christmas tree commanded a prominent place in the living room.  And, Jack and Violet, long-ago acquaintances, left their outdoor lights up year round. Why take them down, Christmas is coming !

  I remember being sad as a child on the evening of December 25--the huge build-up and poof !, it was gone, just like visits with Santa. [ Do you remember your first Santa sighting?  Only later did I learn that Mr. Walt Hatley had been subbing for Santa that day.  I was not as brave as my friend Danny who tested the authenticity of the beard (see his hand).]

  

  By contrast, the experience of advent, or preparation, of anticipation, has long been overwhelmed, drowned out, as it were,  by the culture's commercial co-opting of 'christmas' (lower case deliberate).  With few exceptions, liturgically focused churches  retain and promote the understanding that the festival of Christmas begins on December 25 and continues for the next twelve days.  When a parish minister, I steadfastly avoided Christmas songs during the Sundays of Advent, much to the consternation of some. (There just are few singable Advent hymns.) By now, though, many people are past-ready for the music to stop, the decorations  to come down, and let's move on to New Year's Eve and all that comes thereafter.  Little wonder, given the duration to which we have been exposed and over-exposed. Even given the symbolism encoded in its words,  The Twelve Days of Christmas  remains one of my personal least favorite "seasonal" songs, right up there with Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer.

    While the ornaments and other decorations soon will be returned to their places in attics and basements and Santa will go into hiding to await next year,  I have been periodically reflecting about other aspects 'Christmas'.  Re-reading Borg and Crossan's, The First Christmas, has provided reminders of the subversive and counter-cultural dimensions in Matthew and Luke's nativity stories, as well as offering alternative interpretations of enduring Christmas.  A motif that continues to resonate for me is "Light".  In the Genesis account of Creation, the first words of the Holy One are "Let there be Light!" . . . not the reflected light from the sun, moon and stars, those come later.  (The Reverend Doctor Harrell Beck used to maintain that the words were not spoken, but sung joyously to the initial four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony !) Much of human experience has been a striving to realize or avoid that command. Long, dark Winter nights loom just ahead.  Leaving festive lights burning (literally and symbolically) is a good  'push back' against 'the hopes and fears of all the years' that have accumulated, individually and corporately.  Maybe, Jack and Violet had it right, after all.

    "LET  THERE  BE  LIGHT !!"

           Satchel

   

"UP IN THE AIR" or "DOWN TO EARTH"

ALMOST  THERE !



 I think that it was A.Einstein who observed that 'time' is relative.

     In an earlier post --"Getting There is Half the Fun"--, I muttered about a seemingly interminable flight from Anchorage to Chicago.  Actually, it lasted only six hours; just seemed much longer.  By contrast, this week's flight from Raleigh-Durham to Los Angeles was but slightly less 'clock time' and passed much more quickly.     

The flight tracker screen (above) was a 'mixed blessing'; once becoming aware of the remaining time, I began feeling like my kids who on long trips constantly asked, "Are we there yet?" 

  How do you use 'time' when flying?  Being six feet tall, I know that long naps in the cramped rows are unlikely, so I seek other ways to 'pass the time'. Looking around the cabin on this week's trip, I spotted: sleepers, readers, movie-watchers, blankstare-ers, workers (or at least, I suppose that is what the brief cases indicated), and other 'people watchers'.  Among the passengers was a large contingent of young Australian basketball players en route home after several 'travel ball' games in the Carolinas.  Many of them apparently had  sleep deficits and used the trip to refuel.  Several of them were TALL. For them to find comfortable sleep position could have earned Contortionist certifications.

Flaps down.  Back to Earth


If credit for the 'First Flight' belongs to the Wright brothers' efforts on North Carolina's sand dunes on December 17, 1901, air travel is relatively new in human history.  Our flight was 114 years to the date after that and looking out the window on the mountains below, I thought of the weeks of struggles by earlier travelers heading West.  So,  a not-so-trite question : How long is a LONG time?

I wonder if the children in those  long ago wagon trains ever asked, "Are we there yet?"

Satchel  


P.S.   A reader with an eye for historical accuracy noted that the Wrights' flight was in 1903 rather than in 1901.  He (she) also disclaimed having been there !

   

Les Mots Justes

                         Or, how to say the 'unsayable' ??!!

    Being at 'a loss for words' is seldom my lot.  However, lately I have struggled to capture the vowels, consonants, nouns, verbs that could carry the freight for expressing the impact of the scenes that have been unfolding at warp speed.  French: Les Mots Justes,  "the precise words" are elusive.

    Paris on November 13 was not the 'beginning' of the madness, nor , unfortunately, will the murders in California be the last.  Just prior to those were the bombings in Beruit, and ...., and ... as well as mass murders, almost daily.  Beyond that, come literally countless local shootings.  Egregious violence and inhumanity have been on display since humanity began.  But there is something about the past dozen-plus years that portends a tilt towards a new kind of barbarity.

   Propensity for "Violence" is not a racial or cultural monopoly.  In the United States, perpetrators come within an array of racial, ethnic and religious groupings.  "Motivations" and "causes" also vary widely . . . drugs, vengeance, racial, mental disorders, jihadist, and, as might have once been  termed,  'plain old meanness and evil'. 

      Whether the killings originate as societal violence or international terrorism, a climate of fear and distrust and radical counter-measures is emerging.  And, there are opportunists more than willing to 'stir the pot' of societal anxieties for their own aggrandizement. As an example, in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, the focus on barring Syrian refugees within several American states seemed a knee jerk 'answer'.  Many years ago, an esteemed historian, Richard Hofstedter, identified a legacy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics.  Current Presidential campaigning  could offer opportunity for thoughtful approaches for addressing the violence.  Such has been largely lacking thus far. 

    So, how do 'civilized' people of good will respond in this climate?  The admonition to be 'wise as serpents and harmless as doves' comes to mind. Living that becomes another challenge.
President Roosevelt's 1933 assertion that  "the only thing we have to fear is Fear itself" is still valid.  Such is not being naive; nor is it capitulation to barbarism.  

    Easy answers and posturing have limited 'shelf life'.  Prudence is always appropriate. The very randomness of violence heightens the anxiety.  Not knowingly putting oneself in 'harm's way' can be a good start.  But just 'going about one's own business' has not always been 'safe'.  Self-defense has increasingly come to mean
concealed or open carry weaponry. Instances of excessive force by sworn law enforcement have polluted trust among many.

    For me, I'm back to Mark Errelli's lyrics cited in an earlier post:
"Sometimes injustice and indifference are the only things I see. But I refuse to let my hope become the latest casualty. . . . And, if I can't change the world, I'll change the world within my reach."

     Satchel