¿¿ REGRET FOR YESTERDAY ??

Photo by Jovis Aloor, on Unsplash.

Nearly every Saturday for about 15 years I did volunteer prison work with a group of guys at a nearby prison.  Periodically we would discuss dealing with depression.  I’d remind them that they couldn’t change “yesterday” — but they could learn from it, saying  stress is about tomorrow; and regret is about yesterday — neither of those days exist — (also mentioning that Rabbi Jesus said something similar: “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matt 6:34 NASB).

At a certain point in life we begin gazing into that sacred mirror, remembering scenarios from our past which could have been handled better.  I found a quote recently from Ralph Waldo Emerson that fits for today, the last day of the year, and every day, which I shared with a few friends on Christmas day:

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.” 

~Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good day > > > or now, ~A Good New Year.  Blessings are ours today if we will hunger and thirst for them.

THE LIGHT RETURNS

Copyrighted photo by Matt Molloy, 500 px; FAIR USE claimed by MeridaGOround

This Saturday is winter solstice.  Our star, Sol, The Sun, will appear ever-so-subtly to begin its annual northerly march, delivering longer days and more light and warmth to our hemisphere, and to our lives. The ancient Mayans were astute observers of this phenomenon, ably predicting the event with amazing mathematical accuracy, long before the invention of the telescope brought the heavens visually closer for Europeans to argue that Earth was not the center of the universe.  (“The church” fought this science, spilling blood in its futile resistance to truth – but that’s another story.)  

Let’s think about light as metaphor, setting aside superstitions about a flat Earth at the center of a dying fallen world, and welcome the returning light of learning which ever increases our understanding of our place in creation, if we would grow wiser.  Reading between the lines of scripture can be instructive in this exercise, for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life (see v.6).  A flexible approach to reading tends to enlighten.  (In a hurricane the rigid pine tree snaps, while the graceful palm bends and survives and grows more fruitful.)  Yes, rigid literalism is a major problem in discerning truth.

Yesterday I was looking at various translators’ renderings of a popular  Christmas verse: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (Isa 7:14).  Some scholars and Bible students have long favored literalism, insisting that Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, was a virgin — but this word can simply mean a young woman.  This rendering can generate more heat than light!  One scholar, an expert on ancient Bible languages, also a brilliant storyteller, has written a very credible novel titled Rabbi Jesus, arguing that Jesus was viewed in his hometown as born out of wedlock — which I’ve commented on, here.

Such a story might offend many believers, just as evidence that Earth was not central outraged many churchmen in Galileo’s day.  Rather than personally taking a position on something as unprovable as a young girl’s virginity 2000 years ago, I found myself looking for the blessing in this more flexible prophesy.  IF, as Professor Chilton argues, Jesus was born out of wedlock, how might that impact us?  Doesn’t that make him more human?  Could this be “a sign” that God cares deeply about all children?  

The rendering which really grabbed my attention on this is from the Good News translation, which differs significantly from the New International Version (you can compare by using the pull-down menu: GNT, or NIV) by pointing out that the Lord’s sign would arrive through a young woman who was already pregnant.  And, hey, although she didn’t name her child Jesus, but Immanuel (which means God with us) — her kid came to deliver a peace regarding God’s presence which Jesus clearly demonstrated later in life.  He told us we are children of light. We can enter into that peace today.  “The government is upon his shoulders”— a verse sung so powerfully in Handel’s Messiah: Unto us a child is born.  (skip ad to listen)   

Blessings to all readers.

Post Script :   Nowhere in the gospels is the date of Jesus’s birth specified. The first time it’s pinned down to 25 December, or at least to the “Eighth day before the Kalends of January” is the year AD354, in the Roman calendar of Philocalus. The date seems to have been chosen to replace the prior festival, decreed by Aurelian, of the unconquered sun – Sol Invictus. ¶  As a midwinter festival of the sun, the date makes celestial sense. It falls just after the solstice, when the days are perceptibly lengthening.  source.

GOT MILK ? — ¿¿ GOT EGGS ??

GOT MILK?  Literalism is a hoot. (It’s also dangerous, even deadly.)    For Mexican readers, and others unfamiliar with this famous advertising campaign, things will become amply clear.

Anyone who has experienced attempting to speak a second language in a foreign culture knows it can be risky and embarrassing.  This morning I went to breakfast with a friend at a concina economica, in a tiny pueblo, the kitchen of which is depicted above.  He had been planning to cook breakfast, after doing a little work back at the ranch, but the eggs he bought the day before were bad.  So, we went into town.  While waiting for the cook to prepare huevos Mexicanos con frijoles on her smoky fire, Jim stepped into the tienda (a quick-stop grocery-wing of the diner) and asked the guy at the register ¿Tienes huevos?

 Of course, this is a perfectly literal translation of English.  But in colloquial Spanish he had bluntly asked the guy: Have you got testicles?  A polite phrasing would be ¿Se venden huevos aqui?  (Are eggs sold here.)  Hilarious!  We all had a good laugh.

Such are the pitfalls of translation.  Anyone overhearing construction workers catcalling to each other as a woman walks past on the sidewalk — Did you see those melons? — quickly recognizes the difference between idiom and literal wording,  the distinction between animal and vegetable, and word-play.

And so it is with biblical literalism.  Yet many are those Christians who insist that their reading of scripture is based on good renderings of an ancient language, even tho’ filtered thru other languages several times over :  Aramaic>Greek>Latin>English, for example — and therefore their opinion on the text must be accepted, bluntly.

Now, Jesus certainly never asked the woman at the well in Samaria GOT MELONS? — (the longest conversation scripture ever reports of Jesus talking with a woman) — but wait!  Did you ever notice that she came onto him, basically saying Hey baby, I’m not married (hinting “I’m available” see v.17) — yet we miss it, due to literalism.  I doubt the average pew-sitter has ever heard this preached.

Language is slippery. Yet so many are so quick to argue as if they know what scripture says, as though it were digitally mastered for us to replay the recording.  Preachers are taught to avoid controversy, as being “bad for business.”  Thus we suffer literalism, the great red dragon of fundamentalism, which portends disaster in whatever religion, sect, or denomination one cares to visit, across the globe, world without end, amen, be it Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc — ignoring the warning signs: HARD HAT AREA.  (My point, folks: don’t hit people over the head with bible verses; instead, let them feel your compassion.) We’ve all embarrassed ourselves; but God is patient, and SHe will forgive, if we will allow it and receive it, and live the forgiveness by standing corrected.

NB: Anyone wishing for a fresh reading of scripture might look at The Message, by Eugene Peterson; or at Rabbi Jesus: AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY.

 

 

 

HOW TO READ “the CHRISTMAS stories”

Flickr photo by Sara

I love good stories.  I love to read them and think about them. So, I was distressed when, in grad’ school, a teaching assistant suggested I read a book titled How to Read a Book.  ¿Did he think I was illiterate?  (I complied, of course.)  And maybe I learned something about reading between the lines, and asking hard questions of the text.

So forgive me if I don’t deliver on my headline.  I’m not inclined to tell anyone how to read a story.  But I’m not afraid to ask hard questions, such as:  If you had just delivered you first child (in winter) how many miles would you be willing to walk to have the child surgically blessed, eight days after giving birth?  (Speedbump ahead: I will be questioning the text, too, as good questions are the beginning of wisdom.)

My friend Steve over at SurvivingYucatan blog has put up some interesting thoughts on the nativity accounts — so you can blame him if you don’t like my questions!  I’m not trying to be provocative, but rather, introspective.  Hey, words are slippery.  If we take them too literally we are likely to fool ourselves.  Group-think can put us into a ditch, fast!  (A famous thinker said so.)  Now, storytellers often embroider the truth to help make it memorable.  And well-told stories can be truer and more useful  than mere facts, if they are retained and applied.

So, back to my question: how far?  A good storyteller wants us to see the story in all its glory, even if it may not have happened exactly as told. Remember now, you have (or your wife has) just given birth.  Are you really gonna walk 90 miles from Bethlehem of Galilee, which is very close to Nazareth at 19 road miles (NB: details can be vexing); or, all the way to Bethlehem of Judea, near Jerusalem  ~68 miles as the crow flies / 163± kilometers – with a newborn, in winter, to have your 8-day old child circumcised in the Temple at Jersualem?  (Bethlehem Ephrata simply means “fruitful”.)  Yes, this is what “Hollywood” wants you to see, but it is much more likely that you are practical and rational, and that you will have this important event performed at home or in a local synagogue in Bethlehem of Galilee.  But wait, you say — my kid is super human!  Well, maybe we should ponder the verse that says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature — got smarter as he got older and taller, as we all should, and most of us do.

 “But what about the tax and the census?” you say.  Yes, a convenient ruse to force them to travel to the area of the Temple for “the big scene”, but unlikely – according to the records of the time. Again, the storyteller, Luke, is trying to help us remember — but we also recall being lied to about Santa (which probably didn’t do much harm) — instead perhaps teaching us something about understanding stories, and adults. (If you lost your faith in the nature of experience because of Santa, maybe you never had any?) But even if there had been such a census, Mary would not have been required to appear.  ¿So what’s Luke’s point regarding this census? I think he wanted to establish for us that Joseph was a descendant of King David – a good point.  

Am I eroding the credibility of the Bible?  No.  I read it daily.  For me, it’s a blessing.  It helps me think about big issues.  And I like to read about the Bible, too.  There are some really good writers who have spent their lives studying this book of books.  I’m reading one now which has me excited all over again:  Rabbi Jesus AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY.  

The author, Bruce Chilton, is a professor of ancient languages and a leading expert on the language of Jesus:  Aramaic.  He is also an Anglican priest. And he’s a superb storyteller.  But beware.  He may rock your boat, or rearrange your furniture.  So, if you prefer your nativity accounts tailored for nap-time, please don’t go there.  But if you want a plausible account of the factors which caused Jesus to take up his role on the world stage, I can promise you an exciting biography.  It’s a very Jewish story about a devoutly Jewish guy — a country boy who knew something deep about purity and integrity and honesty and peace and compassion and justice and . . .

And a blessed Christmas season is upon us all, once again. Hey, thanks for this unspeakable gift!

 

UPDATE : excerpt from The Mystic’s Christmas by John Greenleaf Whittier —

“But now, beyond the things of sense,
Beyond occasions and events,
I know, through God’s exceeding grace,
Release from form and time and space.

“I listen, from no mortal tongue,
To hear the song the angels sung;
And wait within myself to know
The Christmas lilies bud and blow.

“The outward symbols disappear
From him whose inward sight is clear;
And small must be the choice of days
To him who fills them all with praise!

“Keep while you need it, brothers mine,
With honest zeal your Christmas sign,
But judge not him who every morn
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!”