December 22, 2004

• It kept on
  snowing.

  
  Throughout yesterday and into the night, the snow grew deeper.  I
  would have walked out and taken a comparison shot from the same POV as
  yesterday’s, but the snow that was merely over my boot tops in that
  previously packed path then is over my knees now.  Going out there
  would be stupid.

  Instead, I stayed in the paths that Doug has shoveled this morning, and kept the snow out of my boots this time.

  Greyfox called several times yesterday.  On one of those calls, he
  left the message that the weather service was predicting three to four
  feet of snow overnight north of Talkeetna.  We are just a bit
  south and west of Talkeetna.  We got between one and two feet here.

  Branches
  that yesterday were only sagging a little are bowed today.  If
  there was some sunshine, it would be pretty, “like a Christmas card,”
  as so many people have said of my photos. 

  With this gray sky, it looks a lot like the Christmas cards we get from
  our garbage collectors.  The Alaska Resource Group, which runs
  Talkeetna Refuse, has sent us the same photo cards for each of the last
  3 holiday seasons, as long as we’ve been using their services. 
  It’s a monochromatic snowy scene, presumably local, of a clear stream
  in a rocky creek bed.  They must have bought a wholesale lot of
  those cards, and maybe they have fewer customers than someone had
  anticipated when that order was placed.  For my money, they could
  find better ways to spend it than mailing out greeting cards.

  
  I know I may be sounding like Scrooge there.  The competitive sport of holiday spending baffles and befuddles me.  NFP
  addressed that issue today, with a link to an excellent opinion piece
  from some newspaper columnist. 

  This may be an appropriate place
  to insert the pic of our holiday wreath, our only seasonal
  decoration.  It came from the dumpster at Felony Flats and I have it because Greyfox
  didn’t want it.  The evergreen boughs are fake, and the fir cones
  are real.  The pink flowers and berries were presumably red before
  they faded, and the rope of aurora borealis beads appears to be
  something the person who discarded it had added (assuming that that
  person didn’t make the entire wreath) because Greyfox also fished out
  of the dumpster, at the same time, two more such bead strings new in
  the box.  I think it is lovely in its simplicity.  One of the loveliest things
  about it is that it is salvage, recycled.

  Doug
  has gotten most of the snow off my car so I can go to town
  tomorrow.  It is again my turn to drive the rehab van to the NA
  meeting.  It’s my mental health day, getting out among people,
  doing something useful and therapeutic.  I have been giving some
  thought about how and when to post tomorrow’s segment of the countdown
  to Christmas.  I’ve also been giving some thought to what its
  topic might be.  No firm conclusions on either of those questions
  yet.

  I have a topic for today, however.

  Today’s topic is:

  Why?
  
  Why?
  
  Why?
  

   Three days until Christmas
  

  
  Why would an almighty loving god send its
  offspring to a little planet circling a minor sun near the end of just
  another arm of just another spiral galaxy for the purpose of
  sacrificing himself so that the mortal creatures of that planet might
  be saved by that sacrifice from the jealous wrath of that loving
  almighty god?  Balderdash, nonsense and bullshit!

  What would Jesus do?  What would that incarnation of the Christos
  do if he were here now to respond in a televised interview to such a
  question?  Would he shake his head and tsk tolerantly at the way
  his message has been distorted, or would he go berserk as he did with
  the moneychangers in the temple?

  It’s apparent to any open-minded seeker of wisdom and truth that the
  Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus, was the origin of the “sacrificial lamb”
  crap that crept into Christianity.  It was a central tenet of his
  native religion, Mithraism.   Every year, Saul’s people would
  select a “Solar King”, a poor sap who was wined, dined and lionized,
  fattened up for the slaughter and then killed as a sacrifice to their
  jealous vengeful god so that he wouldn’t take his wrath out on the rest
  of them for their human frailties.

  The Heavenly Father that Joshua ben Joseph spoke of and worshipped was and IS loving, omniscient, omnipotent and far above such petty bullshit. 

  So, if any of my readers has gotten this far and can either agree that
  the “sacrifice” model for Christ’s incarnation doesn’t entirely make
  sense, (and has not already totally rejected the very idea of Christ for that reason) and/or can openmindedly accept that there might be another
  explanation that makes more sense, I offer this:  Christ wanted
  to come here because (a) the planet had gotten a bad deal, some bum
  breaks and (b) he wanted to dispel some of the illusion and delusion
  about our nature, our purpose and our destiny that had come about due to the masses of
  us not having been thinking too clearly and having been misled by a
  bunch of manipulative warlords and priests.

  I have always liked the way Vermont Royster of the Wall Street Journal
  put it in 1949 for this editorial the paper reprints every December:

  In Hoc Anno Domini

  When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the
  known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome.

  There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar. 

  Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long.

  Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

  But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression–for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar.

  There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the
  flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry
  treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people.

  There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were
  executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man
  for but to serve Caesar?

  There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard
  strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of
  men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have
  the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt
  for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a
  crowded world?

  Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from
  Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and
  unto God the things that are God’s.

  And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new
  Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his
  God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
  brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the
  Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

  So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were
  afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still
  believe salvation lay with the leaders.

  But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set
  man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to
  put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the
  light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness
  knoweth not whither he goeth.

  Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul
  of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other
  prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a
  servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God
  for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

  Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the
  lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of
  what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed
  only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass
  that men would not look upward to see even a winter’s star in the East,
  and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

  And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the
  Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the
  years of his Lord: 

  “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. “

  There is only one way to liberty, and we have to start digging now.

  
  “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
  

  John 8:32

  

  • 7:28 pm
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