12.25.2003
Prince of Peace
I wish you a Happy Holiday Season, and hope you are sharing closeness and Love
with those you hold dear. I thought I would share a few thoughts on this Christmas
day.
The Prince of Peace
Today across America and around the world Christians and folks who respect our recieved message of a fellow named Jesus celebrate his birth.
His story, from the various threads of it we see is one of a common working man, a wood worker; a fellow of humble origins who wore a toolbelt, who got his hands dirty and who also saw a radically different way to relate to life, to the All that is our source, to each other as an honoring community- God incarnate amongst us came with a message of how to be more fully human, more truly honoring of lifes gift. I call this message radical in the sense that what he teaches us cuts right to the root (radix, the origin of "radical") of what is still wrong with our world today.
In a society that was constellated around family and the mutual benefit inherent in village social groupings Jesus advocated ownership by the group- predating Marx by nineteen hundred years the people in power found his threat to their class order just as threatening all the way back then.
Mary pointed out the prefferential option for the poor well before Vatican two: "God fill the poor with good things, sends the rich away empty" she sings in her canticle glorifying God and her pregnancy.
Jesus said the famous line about "...rich man having a better chance getting through the eye of a needle rather than getting into heaven" showing he was concious of the corruption of money and power in his ancient society.
Whom one ate with in Jesus day was really important; societally one would not eat with those who one did not call equal. What we are told of this man from Gallilee is that he surrounded himself with the rabble, fishermen, farmers, shephards, even tax collectors and prostitutes. "We the People" warts and all were welcome at the table of Jesus.
You'll note who scripture does not see honoring God incarnate. The religious hierarchy of his day. The people who collaborated with the occupying Rome to have power over their own fellow citizens. The religious fundamentalists who percieved as their power (and thereby their station in life) threatened by this simple man's simple message. Jewish folks have been roundly accused and persecuted throughout the centuries as "Christ Killers", when Jesus, an observant Jew was put to death by religious fundamentalists due to his threat to the status quo. He was killed by state power. Romans crucified, Jewish folks did not. Those who collaborated with Rome, who sought to keep their power, crucified Jesus.
I have read somewhere that Japanese folks need special ministering to when missionaries proselytize over there. These perceptive people "get" the fact that Jesus died at the hands of the state- and in Japanese culture the state is seen as overwhelmingly correct- making Jesus a criminal. A cultural fact that gets in the way of a quick conversion...
Jesus as he walked this earth was a progressive. A favorite scene of mine from the Bible shows Jesus writing in the sand with his finger as we see him saving a woman from stoning. Most remember the "... who is without sin cast the first stone" line but how many grasp the significance of Jesus' actions in that scene. Where in the Old Testament we saw the finger of God writing Commandments in stone, in the New Testament we see God as man reacting situationally, using reason tempered by love, figuring in the sand. As though embodiment gave the Most High perspective.
So we see that the God of the New Testament is not the warlike tribal God of the older book. God in the New Testament doesn't bash babies heads or wipeout whole towns. We are no longer shown a God of vengence but one of love. Humankind has it's freewill acknowledged not through some seedy bet and it's accompanying afflictions as in one of the Bibles oldest books, the book of Job but as the people are allowed to hear and learn from the Messiah, or not. Simple stuff. A nonjudgemental, loving God is what Jesus offers us. One has to wonder what the Pharisees and Saducees of our millenium, Pat Robertson and his ilk would do with the Prince of Peace today. My guess? We saw what a threatened power structured did to Martin Luther King. Dietrich Boenhoffer confronted a power structure that spoke spiritually but was morally bankrupt; Hitler had him killed.
Fundamentalists. Jesus died at their hands, through the power of the state. These leaders, this spiritual/political elite could sway "the people" to accede to killing a harmless man who preached love- and this was before Fox network News.
When will we learn?
Just as an aside: Today is also the birthday of Karl Rove, known as "Bush's Brain". Mr Rove is an idealogical decendent of Lee Atwater, a man known for his use of political dirty tricks. Mr Rove is widely credited for much of the Republican Right strategy that is seeing the present White House administration faring so well in the public eye despite a total disregard for the truth in both foreign policy as well as domestic. These folks have Fox News in their corner.
Where I given to that fundamentalist favorite pastime of decoding present day life in light of the book of Revelations I would hazard a guess that Bush/Rove represent that greatest of liars, the AntiChrist. Peddling death for big bucks, putting money before God and man and life itself would pretty much seal it, eh? But one thing the fundies ignore is that if the Bible is the innerrant word of God and "the big guy" can't even get four scribes to write consistant accounts of his embodied son's (that is him) life down straight, well suffice it to saythere is a bit of humanity corrupting the heavenly files, some corporeal download difficulties or something... So no, I just think that Bush/Rove are greedy beings lacking integrity- as well as any sense of moral decency. But they sure act the opposite of the fellow who's birth we celebrate today.
Please, if you are a Christian speak out against the people perverting this faith. Fundamentalism, whether Christian, Hebraic or Islamic is what is most putting our freedom and lives at stake. Putting love of power before the power of love may well be the swansong of our millenium...
12/25/2003
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12.23.2003
US SOB Paul Wolfowitz
Computer difficulties have had me away for a bit.
I'll offer a a link to Noam Chomsky's article " Dictators R Us". One need only consider the 2000 presidential election to see proof positive of the contempt the GOP holds for democracy. History shows that the US government has a long history of support for dictators pliant to will of corporate capital. America's "Friendly Dictator" trading cards are a really clear and straightforward resource (circa 1990) reminding us that Saddam Hussein is one of a long line of unsavory murderous dictators that might best be described with a paraphrasing of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's comment about Somoza Sr. ( yes, there was a Jr. too) - "Hussein may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."
Until reading the Chomsky article I had no idea that Paul Wolfowitz was ambassador to Indonesia during the reign of Suharto, a dictator who's murderousness makes Saddam Hussein look like a rank amateur at political torture and the spilling of blood..
As Mark Zepezauer puts it in The CIA's Greatest Hits: "On a per-capita basis, East Timor is the greatest genocide since the Holocaust. Combined with the 1965 killings and other Indonesian atrocities, it puts Suharto in the first rank of twentieth-century mass murders, right up there with Hitler, Stalin, the Turks who massacred the Armenians in 1915 and the generals who run Guatemala."
A bit on Wolfowitz and Suharto's Indonesia;
Wolfowitz is worse on Indonesia, where he forged close ties with the intelligence and corporate elite. In May 1997, a year before Suharto was driven out of office, Wolfowitz told Congress of "the significant progress" Indonesia has made under the "strong and remarkable leadership of President Suharto". In an interview on PBS in February 2000, Wolfowitz was asked about General Wiranto, who had just been forced to resign after being named by Indonesian authorities as the mastermind of the 1999 military rampage in East Timor. He praised Wiranto as "the general who commanded the army during the first elections in Indonesian history". Wiranto "may have done bad things in East Timor or failed to stop bad things in East Timor, but that's what makes it so tricky," he added.
The case of Wolfowitz illustrates that support for dictators is not a solely a Republican policy; administrations of both Republicans and Democratic presidents have supported the corporate interests of their contributors rather than exporting the American ideal of Democracy.East Timor, which was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons - a security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. "Paul and I," he said, "have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."
East Timor is a classic example of the bipartisan nature of US foreign policy during the Cold War - and the secrecy surrounding US military support for authoritarian leaders like president Suharto, who ruled Indonesia from the US-backed coup in 1965 until his downfall in 1998. There is an unbroken link from the Ford-Kissinger years, when the US backed Suharto's invasion of the former Portuguese territory. This continued through the Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras, when US policy focused on supporting Suharto's military and burnishing his image to the world.
I'd urge you to read the full links, I am operating under time constraints and can't really do the ideas offered justice.
The present administration lied to the American people about a need to attack Iraq due to the threat of "weapons of mass destruction" and now is courting public opinion with talk of importing democracy to the middle east, starting with Iraq. Read about what Paul Wolfowitz sees as "Democracy". Things plainly are not looking too good...
Where does your candidate for President stand? Be honest.
12/23/2003
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