England’s Christian Gift

1 Comment

As much a part of the holiday season as Santa Claus and baby Jesus, the Salvation Army bell-ringers are out in full force. As I drop a quarter in the bucket, I ponder the strange lineage of this denomination. When the cheerful holiday shopper convivially donates spare change, few, I suspect, know that they are supporting a church. The Salvation Army is one of the bewildering number of denominations to spring from English Christianity. The Church of England, small in the United States, but imperial in much of the world, grew amid a religious unrest that spun off countless dissenters. We all know the story of Henry VIII and his not-so-merry wives. His political move to focus the official religion of England on the crown led to the Puritan resistance. Puritans left England for the Netherlands, and then on to America where they flocked to New England to develop into Calvinistic Congregationalists.

Meanwhile back in Amsterdam, some of the English Separatists evolved into Baptists. Baptists were also congregational in polity and also found the religious freedom of America to be appealing. (Now they select our elected officials.) The Puritans had helped develop the Presbyterian movement as well, with dissenters in Switzerland. Still at home in Britain, the Church of England waffled between Catholicism and Protestantism for some time. The evangelical fervor that emerged with the Wesley family led to the Methodist Church, which remained attached to the Church of England until its founder’s death. In America the Methodist Church grew rapidly. During the era of religious revivals the Adventist movement grew out of Methodism, as did the Church of the Nazarene, the Holiness movement, and Pentecostalism. All of them today are major denominations. Even the Anabaptists tip their wide-brimmed hats in the direction of the English dissenters. The Plymouth Brethren, inventors of the Rapture, were another English-derived denomination, as were the Wesleyan Churches.

What does all of this have to do with the Salvation Army? The Salvation Army was founded in London by a Methodist minister, William Booth, and his wife Catherine. The movement adopted quasi-military mythology and ranks, and soon grew into a church of its own that supported what would later become the Social Gospel cause. Known primarily for their charitable works, they are yet one more splinter from the tree of English Christianity. Perhaps the Christmas tree is an appropriate analogy for the Christianities to spring from Henry VIII’s loins. Like the pine’s many branches, each with its ornaments, Christianity in England sent its twigs in all directions. Counted together, the descendants of English Christianity far outnumber any other Protestant grouping. Just a thought to share while waiting for the quarter to drop.

Tebow or Not Tebow?

1 Comment

It is time to bow to the inevitable. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a sports fan. Every web page I open, however, seems to feature Tim Tebow, as if the media had never seen an evangelical before. Where have people been? What is even more amazing is that this athletic kid has invented an entirely new human gesture, “the Tebow.” Incredible what young folks can accomplish these days. And as Saturday Night Live has showed us, Jesus really isn’t that much of a football fan after all.

Ashamed at my naiveté, I decided to research the history of tebowing. What I found shocked and amazed me. Like so many modern day marvels, Tebowing seems to have been invented by those prescient Sumerians. Even before humans perfected the Tebow, semi-divine characters showed them how. This cylinder-seal depicts the monster Humbaba illustrating the correct posture to Gilgamesh and Enkidu. They do not, apparently, take kindly to his correction.

In the example below we see a rare double-kneed Tebow performed by an Asian football god while a hopelessly underchurched Joe Paterno looks on, hopelessly standing.

Fast forward a few centuries to a seasonal scene and we find shepherds tebowing to some baby. It is a fair guess that they suppose the baby to be a football incarnate.

Lest we think the Tebow has been coopted by the Christian crowd, we must remember that no religion has a copyright on humility. In this scene from Norse mythology, a clearly pagan Hermod tebows before the goddess Hela. She does not look amused.

Americans, who after all claim to have invented the Tebow, can trace the gesture back to our founding father himself. In this famous painting of George Washington at Valley Forge, just after the crucial touchdown, the great man can be seen tebowing in the snow.

The snow is a great segue to the Cold War. Here, in a government photo, we see Soviet naval infantry tebowing as they contemplate the big game. They are not now, nor have they ever been, Broncos.

Now, none of this resembles the education I received during my three degrees in religious studies. No matter. ‘Tis the child becomes the man, as they say. And since a little child shall lead them, we can all learn to tebow as if there were no tomorrow. If the actual Tebow is as bright as the sports-scholarship students I taught at Oshkosh, Rutgers, and Montclair, the education of the future will include a lot lower academic expectations and, I suspect, lots and lots of Levis with holes in the knees.

And Lowe

2 Comments

Hate is harder to muster for people just like us. I mean, if they live like us and look like us, what grounds do we have to distrust and fear them? This appears to be one of the premises behind the TLC show “All-American Muslim.” Many people know Muslims without knowing it and fear them without being aware of whom they fear. With this insidious kind of fear and hatred, religion must be involved.

Over the weekend, CNN online ran an article noting how Lowe’s is pulling advertising from the program. It seems that conservative Christian outcry is rising like the children of Israel in Egypt; the Muslims aren’t shown as bad guys—they’re like your next-door neighbor! Fear of takeovers has long been on the Neo-conservative agenda. If Romney is elected we will by overrun by Mormons. If we sleep, we’ll awake to Muslim neighbors. And we certainly can’t expect to all get along. If it weren’t for the media, we would probably never even know they held a different religion.

I’ve lived lots of places. With the exception of Grove City College and Nashotah House, I never once was aware of the religion (if any) of my neighbors. If they are civil and respect my right to believe what I will, they are entitled to the same. Religious supersessionism and maybe a pinch of jealousy play into this attitude of keeping others a minority. Is it because Muslims and Mormons are more effective at winning converts? The modern evangelicals have been relying on political bullying to get their way. Why not learn to appreciate your neighbor’s religion instead?

Religious freedom is a two-edged sword. Many of those who are worried now were quite happy when they were in the clear majority. When the lines get blurry the trigger finger gets itchy. Come on, Lowe’s! Educating ourselves about other religions is the best home-building project out there.

‘Tis the Season

1 Comment

A news story last week related how a traditional park area in Santa Monica, California had been “taken over” by atheists who wanted equal time with traditional Christmas displays. The park, which houses 21 display areas generally populated by nativity scenes of one sort or another, had so many requests for space this year that a lottery was instituted—a lottery that the atheist groups won. Claiming 18 of the spaces, the atheists groups have vastly reduced the visibility of traditional Bethlehem mythology. Does anybody else feel a culture war coming on?

The whole “Keep Christ in Christmas” campaign that has been fermenting over the past decade or so has made many Christians paranoid. Society has forgotten, they claim, whose birthday we’re celebrating. A plain view of the facts, however, calls this assertion into question. No one bothered to record the date of Jesus’ birth. The stories about it, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, were written after a lifetime of reflection by people who were not eyewitnesses to any of the events. Historians of the era mention no celestial anomalies and there are no records of crazy old Herod killing babies among his own people. (His domestic affairs, however, may be quite another story.) What is absolutely clear is that the stories have grown with the telling. Many a child can tell you the names of the three wise men. Luke doesn’t even place them at the first Christmas, does not name them, and does not say there were three. No records of Zoroastrian migrations to Israel verify this story either.

The true loss is the loss of story. We live in a society that abuses the words “just” and “only.” That’s just a myth. That’s only a story. Ancient people—from the time of Jesus—appreciated the truths a story conveys. Consider the parables of Jesus. They cite not sources neither do they seek verification. They are only stories. They are also cited as the basis of many church teachings. Even atheists can be taught to appreciate the value of stories. Who could object to a myth advocating peace, harmony, and goodwill? Even if it’s just a myth.

Santa Claus might come to Santa Monica’s rescue. Yes, diehard fans of historical veracity will say there was a saint called Nicholas. We all agree that he didn’t wear red velvet trimmed in white and that he didn’t possess magical, northern latitude cervid stock. Even before the days of forced air heat he didn’t slither down every chimney in the world in one night. Few would dispute, however, the value of giving gifts of good will. Just ask any member of the Salvation Army who appear at this season every year. Instead of arguing about whom to exclude, why don’t we invite everyone to our celebration? Jesus, angels, Santa, Jack Frost, Heat Miser, and Christopher Hitchens—what a party this could turn out to be!

Is there no room in the manger?

Don’t Need No Righting

Leave a comment

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” So the old saying goes. Besides the virtue of venerable age, this proverb has the added advantage of being true. When I first peered at a page full of complex combinations of minute, triangular wedge-marks and was told I’d learn how to read them, I needed to head outside for a few gulps of cold air. My first attempt at Akkadian was doomed to failure, but eventually I learned to read cuneiform through the gateway language of Ugaritic. After that the bewildering sprawl of Mesopotamian languages didn’t seem so threatening. I don’t exactly remember when I was first exposed to English cursive in the classroom, but I do recall that same breathless fear of the unknown. The language I’d learned to print out neatly all seemed to be melting into curly figures that looked remarkably alike. How would anyone ever be able to read this?

According to a story in Sunday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger, schools are moving away from teaching cursive. Beginning next year 46 states will no longer require it. Beyond that, some politicians are questioning why teachers should be wasting their time instructing students in printing, or even keyboarding. The gold standard they are worried about is identity. Can you sign your name (to endorse this campaign check)? If we have another way of identifying you—eyeball scans seem to be very popular suggestion—why should you bother to scrawl your name? Keyboarding, well, kids already know that by the time they start school these days. If the texting craze really takes off we may evolve future generations with just thumbs. School is for teaching students science, math, business—practical stuff. Oh yes, and intelligent design. (Got to keep the gods, or anthropic principles, happy.)

In a world where languages are dying out at a disturbing rate (each language is a thought process as well as a way of stringing sounds together), we have become very cavalier about the very innovation that has allowed us to develop as we have. I used to tell my students that less than seventy years separated the Wright brothers from the moon landing. A human lifespan where technology outstripped our ability to think. And the pace has only accelerated since then. Are we premature in leaving out cursive from the curriculum? There is coming a day when future archaeologists will discover a strange substance that seems to have been manufactured from wood pulp. On it they will find scrawls with loops and curls that form a pleasing pattern in the repetition, but from which no intent can be discerned. And if they are like modern technocrats, they will quickly realize the utility of the wood pulp for starting a fire.

What's it say?

On the Move

Leave a comment

Truth is increasingly a moving target. And when the Chronicle of Higher Education runs an article about religion, academics take notice. Actually, the article is about irreligion. An interview with Routledge author and Pitzer College professor Phil Zuckerman was the centerfold for November 23’s Chronicle Review. Zuckerman’s article, “Taking Leave of Religion” follows up from the book I reviewed on the sociology of religion. On the very same day, in an article my wife pointed out to me, MSNBC online published an article about the church and the Internet. Interviewed was Heidi Campbell, another Routledge author, at Texas A & M. What struck me in both of these cases was not so much what was said, but how.

In these days of higher education under siege, the media has come to love the young scholar. It has gotten to the point that I can hardly watch a documentary on the ancient world without seeing a friend or colleague on screen. I suppose the interviewing of scholars is not itself new, but the burgeoning of the celebrity scholar gives pause. Was a time when scholars wrote for other scholars. There are problems with that approach, mostly the issue of social irrelevance. Let’s be honest—when’s the last time we read a heavily footnoted, dry, academic monograph for fun? Honestly. So scholars have taken to the media. In popular forums with trendy words they make scholarship accessible.

What could be wrong with that?

The fact that I am writing this blog demonstrates that I believe in the public sharing of knowledge. I find it crass when experts charge for sharing what they’ve learned, but, I suppose knowledge is a kind of commodity in the marketplace of ideas. Herein lies the rub. The business of education. Scholars have become entertainer-specialists in the realm of commerce. Back in the day you had to seek the guru on the top of the mountain. Now he, or not uncommonly she, can be accessed from the comfort of your own couch or chair. Frequently there is no debate. Truth handed down, byte after exotic byte.

Perhaps we have lost the capacity for honest, if dusty, debate. Not only that, but the media now reserves the right to determine the truth we will receive. The target is moving, but the receiver is not.

Ignorance Should Be Bliss

Leave a comment

Even before we elected a president who was only a single year older than me, I had the creepy sensation that no one really knows what is going on. Call it what you will, but I am told, that for my own good, some information is kept from me. I can’t recall how old I was when I first came across the word “disinformation,” but the concept—a favorite of conspiracy theorists—has stayed with me ever since. It is that Kafka-esque sense that something is off kilter. Some time back I stumbled across a website called Disinformation, and was immediately intrigued. True to the nature of the title, the site keeps you guessing. I was pleased, therefore, when I was sent a prepublication copy of Daniele Bolelli’s forthcoming title, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Religion. Disinformation has a plucky series of books in the 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know series, so I was decidedly curious about this new volume.

Not a heavy academic tome, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Religion is written in a vein similar to this blog: reflective, unconventional, but not really earth-shattering. It is good fun. Bolelli does a great job pointing out less advertised aspects of otherwise socially respectable religions, not taking cheap shots, but simply rephrasing events as they really happened (mostly). Within all of this, however, some true wisdom lies. In thing 36 (of the 50), “Tao is the Sh*t,” Bolelli notes, “Many are those who, infatuated with all things ‘spiritual,’ forget that real spirituality is nothing but daily life lived with full awareness.” It is clear that Bolelli has an appreciation for eastern religions, but he is not so bourgeois as to let even those escape unscathed.

Often the reading of a book is the sharing of the author’s soul. The acknowledgements were so intense that I immediately felt that Bolelli has a hidden story. As the author of the highly regarded On the Warrior’s Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology, Bolelli is both a professor and a fourth-degree black belt. Clearly a man with whom to be reckoned (or better, reconciled). I too have been very influenced by a teacher who knows martial arts and who has one of the clearest heads around. I learned from him that there is a spiritual component to martial arts, and that spirituality seemed, rightly or wrongly, to be present even here in this book. Bolelli is willing to take on religions. In our alarmist society that stance is often confused with lack of morals or spiritual insight. From my idiosyncratic position, however, I found Bolelli’s small book engaging and irreverent and provocative (in every sense of the word). Do yourself a favor and read it. If you’re not careful, you’ll snigger a time or two and learn something along the way.

National Fear

1 Comment

Back in my full-time teaching days, the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting was an excuse to buy books. Not that we were flush with money, but the prices were so good (we’re talking academic books here) that they simply couldn’t be passed up. Those days are long gone. This year I limited myself to a single book: W. Scott Poole’s Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting. I was not disappointed. Poole gives us a smart study with considerable insight into American culture. Not only that, but it also proved an excellent source of self-understanding. I had never come across the phrase “monster kids” for those of us born in the blue light of the television when the Universal monster movies were released for television viewing in the 1960s and 70s. Poole classifies himself in that camp, and it is clear that we share this “guilty pleasure.”

Categorizing our monsters into types that fit various aspects of the American self-image, we find our national phobias reflected in our fictional fears. Throughout the book the uneasy sense of uncertainty towards sexuality, science, and death, like the revenants described, keep arising from the ground. Although Poole is a historian, it very soon becomes clear that one of the main driving forces behind both identifying and challenging these monsters is religion. It is a view Poole shares with Douglas Cowan and Stephen Asma and other analysts who take seriously the origins of our fears. Monsters creep out of the same mental space as gods. That which is not real is no less scary for its non-existence.

Particularly insightful was Poole’s analysis of the subversive nature of monsters. They challenge convention, forcing a cultural catharsis. The notable exception, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, also has a religious rationale. Meyer, a conservative Mormon, effectively extracts the fangs of the vampire to make it a safe, if not Christian, monster. Monsters make establishment believers uncomfortable, for they remind us of the darkness that always follows the light. Humanity responds with efforts, religious and scientific, to banish the dark. But at the end of even the longest day, night will come. When it does, I would recommend curling up with Poole for an evening of cultural self-understanding. Followed by a bowl of popcorn and a movie from his filmography.

Fecit potentiam

2 Comments

Yesterday at Princeton’s annual seasonal choral concert, the program consisted of Bach. The first piece was a Magnificat, a piece that, in prose form, I quickly memorized at Nashotah House. With our daily double dose of chapel services, liturgical standbys such as the Magnificat quickly became reflex recitations, made with little thought beyond getting on to the next piece. It occurred to me as I listened to it at leisure, the hopes of poor Mary haven’t really materialized after these 2000 plus years. After a couple of millennia, perhaps it is time for a state of the theology assessment.

Despite the veneration of Mary in the liturgical branches of Christianity, the collective handmaids of the Lord have made slow progress in being integrated fully into church leadership. Only with the last century, and fairly late therein, did many Protestant denominations finally recognize that Mary’s gender might have something to teach the men. Paul, for one, would have had none of it. Even today the Roman Catholic Church stalwartly refuses to consider female priesthood. Perhaps Mary’s prayer should be uttered yet again within its walls?

At the section labeled “fecit potentiam,” however, I noticed further lack of fulfillment. “God has shown strength with God’s arm,” the program translates, “God has scattered the proud.” The hopes expressed in the next several verses have been silenced beneath the greed of an economic system with no responsibility. “God has deposed the mighty from their seats.” When did that happen? Those of the Occupy movement who’ve received a face of pepper spray might beg to differ. “God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich God has sent away empty.” Sent away to their summerhouses, their mansions, and their penthouse apartments? Away from the working class who oil the gears of their massive machines. No, it seems that the Magnificat has not fared so well at predicting the new era to be brought in by a special child.

Of course, Luke’s song of Mary is based on Hannah’s song at becoming the mother of Samuel from the Hebrew Bible. Samuel was the great judge and prophet who saw to the law and order in the land. Strangely, however, the Bible manages to confuse Samuel with his erstwhile enemy Saul, conflating their birth accounts. Isn’t it just like the Bible to confuse the oppressed with the oppressor? The strength shown with the divine arm, the wealthy inform us, is the strength they wield. After all, god and gold differ by only one letter.

Soccer Moms and Robot Dads

2 Comments

Long past Halloween, the air is taking on its terminal, winter chill. High school football teams have moved off the fields (although the “pros” will keep at it until the Super Bowl in sunnier climes). What are sports parents with an excess of aggression and competitiveness to do? It is the time of year when some parents start thinking about the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition. It is a good sport for the hibernation season.

My daughter is on the FIRST Robotics teams in her high school. FIRST was invented by Dean Kamen (along with many physical inventions) as a way of stirring up interest in STEM careers. Interest in science and technology careers, inexplicably, is faltering in the US, while many of us who grew up enamored of science but without any natural ability sit by and scratch our heads. Careers in robotics are very hot—especially since machines can do things we mere biological units can’t. We are that squishy, organic chemistry with a mysterious plan that serve as gods to the mechanical beings we create. Woe to humanity when the robots become atheists! But that’s a point for another post. Sports—and FIRST clearly is a sport, as much as racecar driving or horse jockeying—take on a religious devotion among people of leisure that rivals the commitment oppressed peoples have to their more tradition forms of faith. The easiest means of seeing this is in the fans.

“Fan,” of course, is an apocopated form of “fanatic,” a word wielded with derision against those who take religious belief too seriously. In sports it is a venial sin, if not a downright virtue. Consider the continuing news stories still swirling around a non-necessary sports figure at Penn State. Even the name of the school evokes football rather than academic performance. The same thing applies to FIRST. FIRST robotics is a sport for the mind, and it has its share of analogues to the soccer mom, what I might call the robot dads. These are parents who are particularly driven to win. In a sport involving band saws, hydraulic lifts, and multiple motors, parents are actively involved in building robots suitable for competition. And the competition can be intense. It becomes a kind of robot religion. Dean Kamen, the Susan Calvin of FIRST, has tried to instill commandments of sportsmanship and gracious professionalism into the competitions. That is something the kids understand. As I attend the competitions, however, it is the religious parents that I worry about.

My worry includes the kind of gender disparity that characterizes the work place. Why should not the scientists and engineers include more women? The field strives to do so, but our society still discourages the participation of women in the men’s room of heavy equipment and intense mathematics. Isaac Asimov, frequently a writer with distance vision, made a woman the head robopsychologist of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. If Dr. Calvin were to look back from her fictional 21st century to the actual 21st century she would see women still struggling for equal voice in both science and religion.

Let's hear it for the boy

Christian Window Cleaners

6 Comments

In the city, with all the traffic, windows sure can get dirty. I often arrive in Manhattan around 7 in the morning, before the crowds grow too intense. It is a favored time with street-level window washers. There’s a lot of glass in the city, and when doing tall windows they need to use long poles, and that can be tricky with hundreds of people trying to get around you. So when I saw a window washer yesterday, I thought nothing of it. Then I noticed the red cross embroidered on his jacket. The back read “Christian Window Cleaners.” I tried to get a picture, but I didn’t want to be obvious. Even New York has its limits. The poor guy’s jacket already made him a target for stares, but I was intrigued. Long I had suspected my windows to have been cleaned by pagans, on account of the smears.

Businesses have been using the Christian cache to drum up the drachmas for decades, but for some reason, this particular business struck me as transparent. Are non-Christians going to peep in the windows while they’re cleaning? Try to steal your stuff when you step out to Starbucks? What does it say about those of us who never clean our windows at all? The implications suddenly seemed to grow enormous. I see window washers every day. Most of them seem like descent, upstanding citizens. If you’re going to go for a business where people are concerned with fairness, why not Christian cabbies? That’d be a big hit in New York. The prices, however, would remain extortionate. Such is the way of religion.

The eyes, they say, are the window to the soul. If so, window washers are given a unique privilege of looking inside. We all tend to be cautious about what we leave in front of windows, that which we want the world to see about our lives. At dusk we pull the shades. Perhaps it really does matter who stands close to our glass. But as C. S. Lewis once noted, a Christian and a pagan boil an egg the same way. Of course, C. S. Lewis is big business now among the evangelical crowd. His more sensible words are generally overlooked as he is stuffed into a coffin-shaped wardrobe of conservative dimensions. I suspect that his smoke-smeared windows were cleaned by people after whose faith he never inquired. But then, I am only looking through a glass darkly.

Retrograde Hollow-days

1 Comment

Surrounded by the intoxicatingly ebullient aroma of balsam, it is difficult to believe that it is not yet Christmas. As 4-Hers decorate their wreathes, in November, I recall that the first signs of Christmas appeared in the stores before its unexpected cousin Halloween this year. In fact, stores hawking Christmas remain open year round. This retrograde motion of the holidays in time belies the very concept of the “holy day.” Ancients, and not-so-ancients, believed that there actually was something different about particular days. The trimmings and the trappings were secondary to the point of the day; something momentous had transpired on this very day, making it unlike any other. With the advent of industrialization and its unrelenting work ethic, holidays came to represent a kind of mini-exodus, a release from labor that falls outside the insufficient weekend. Leisure time encourages shopping. A modern holiday is born.

A child's Christmas in Bucharest

The increase in labor-saving devices has placed us in a twilight of leisure. Holidays can be anticipated many months in advance—gifts purchased earlier and earlier, until the holiday itself seems to pale by comparison. Moving retrograde into other seasons. The joys of the consumer holiday are hollow. It is too easily forgotten that money is a symbol, a mere medium of exchange. It has become an end in itself. Just two centuries ago nobody would have dreamed of collecting the symbolic patina of a capitalist system for a profession. Now accounting may lead to great wealth. The wealth, however, is transparent. Millionaires, like emperors, are disinclined to have the fact that their clothes are immaterial pointed out. They are, after all, where we want to be. Let the one with no dreams pop the first seam.

Holidays have the capacity to give symbolic meaning to life. They emphasize the cycles of nature and of life itself: birth, procreation, death. Removed from context, however, they lose their meaning and become just another excuse to spend too much, eat too much, drink too much. We call it celebrating. Those on the receiving end of the cash flow have the most to gain by promoting such hollow-days. Nothing is so easily exploited as child-like anticipation. The scent of balsam takes me back to a far-distant childhood this November night. The memories, no matter how dysfunctional the setting, are serene and full of anticipation. The symbolism suggests this may not be vanity after all. Until the bank statement comes, and the hollow-days begin all over again.

Lost Knowledge

6 Comments

While an actual apocalypse for many turkeys ensued on Thursday, Fox News announced that a second reference to the Mayan apocalypse has been “admitted” by Mexican authorities. So I guess the world will end next year after all. And it figures, I just finally got a full-time job. For some reason, for all of our modern technology and scientific knowledge, many people still fear ancient “prophecies.” This remains true after countless failed apocalypses, two of them just this year proposed by Harold Camping in the name of the Almighty. People who trust the science of their cell phones—which, from any trip to the airport or bus station proves, humans are incapable of surviving without—nevertheless fear the “lost knowledge” of the ancients who believed myths were the most parsimonious means of comprehending a cold and uncaring universe. Yes, I’ll trust my entire life, finances, travel plans, social calendar, to a plastic box barely the size of a credit card. But if the Mayans said the world was going to end… these are the Mayans, after all! The Mayans!

Never mind that we know little about this antique people; we have had predicted ends to the universe from disaffected visionaries and disgruntled prophets ever since the Zoroastrians suggested this might not go on forever. And now that two predictions appear to coincide, it looks like its time to sell some stocks, cash in some IRAs and party like it’s 1999. When 2000 came in with its baleful symmetry, as some saw it, with events two millennia earlier, not many were dissuaded from the concept that never emerges. Doesn’t the book of 2 Peter state that the universe is reserved for a fiery destruction? Perhaps the Mayans had access to Holy Writ?

The fact is that most cultures concoct origin myths, stories of beginnings. The way the mind works, it is almost a necessary corollary to construct myths of the end as well. And somehow we trust that arcane knowledge on such matters is more accurate than the scientific scenario that, given the limited longevity of any single species, no humans are likely to be present when old Sol balloons out to be a red giant. Far more spectacular to suggest some ancient sage or savage saw it coming and grow anxious with the waiting. Strangely, many people seem ready to discard all the progress, the monuments, the essence of our humanity for the sake of ancient predictions. 2013 does not seem so far away. Many of us are planning to be here, even if they find an entire library of Mayan predictions. Perhaps the truest prophecy of all is that we, as humans, make our own future no matter what other humans have said in the past.

Nightmare Behind Holidays

1 Comment

Among the first mythical creatures to go extinct when the early rays of the Enlightenment began to filter through the blinds of superstitious antiquity, were demons. It was recognized that the activities attributed to demonic possession closely resembled epilepsy and psychological illness and that Occam’s Razor would remove any unseen entities with its no-nonsense straight-edge in one deft pass. And yet they remain. Among the ghost hunting crowd, demons have been recategorized from fallen angels to entities that have never been human. Their reality is assumed, and results of investigations, not surprisingly, support that assumption. It was, however, a Dirt Devil advertisement that created a desire to watch The Exorcist now when darkness comes early and the leaves have fallen from the naked branches and a chill has permeated the air.

As I watched the still disturbing film, I realized that I had also watched the Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Last Exorcism within the past few months as well. I am no fan of demon movies; even with no demonic forces out there, inevitably young women are tormented by what ultimately turns out to be a male establishment. My threshold for watching the suffering of others, even if only acted, is minimal. Movie makers—and often horror writers—know and exploit this, bringing us to face the real demons, the shadowy regions of our own minds. The Exorcist is particularly effective in this since it is Fr. Karras’s demon that ultimately wins out. Having never read the novel, I’m not sure whose idea it was to make the demon Pazuzu, but once again the origins of demons does not fit modern media’s expectations.

Pazuzu was a Mesopotamian “demon.” Akkadian doesn’t have a proper word for what the Judeo-Christian tradition would introduce as a fallen angel. Demons were simply a way of explaining profound misfortunes such as droughts, pestilence, or the Bush administration. Eventually such misfortunes became personified and took on the ability to possess a human being. Here is where psychology and neurology have come to banish demons. Part of the terror of The Exorcist is that such scientific explanations are laid flat in the face of real supernatural power. The lessons of over-consumerism, as evidenced in Black Friday eclipsing Thanksgiving for many (the lines were formed in many locations well before midnight, cutting into family time in order to get first crack at the bargains) show the demon more clearly. Holidays are measured in importance by the amount of money spent. Perhaps it is no wonder that Halloween’s demons have lingered through November and even to the end of the year.

Imagine Thanksgiving

Leave a comment

Although mildly jetlagged and slightly incoherent, a promise is a promise, so I took my family to Manhattan to see (the upper half of) the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Commercial and flashy, it is difficult to conceive of a more American expression of holiday wonder. It kicks off the secular Christmas season and the parade forms the background noise to many a feast preparation in the United States. Not living in the city proper, there are limits to how early public transportation can get one into town, so by the time we reached the Upper West Side, the crowds were pretty intense. We met our friends at West 72nd Street and tried to see the floats and balloons over the heads of a sea of humanity; if you could glimpse the flashing tip of a tuba, we counted that as seeing a marching band. The weather was cool but nice and in the dense crowd I kept my hands shoved in pockets, not always sure they were my own pockets, and waited for the next tall or hovering parade feature. In-between times I stared at the building to our left until a friend informed me that it was the Dakota. The site of John Lennon’s slaying and the exterior used in Rosemary’s Baby, where, presciently, a murder victim was laid out on the sidewalk not far from where Lennon fell. Suddenly the parade took on a profundity that betrayed the levity of the gas-filled characters floating by.

Mark David Chapman, a delusional, born again Christian, had spent many hours waiting about where we were suspended in the crowd. Thinking himself Holden Caulfield of the Catcher in the Rye, he murdered Lennon creating a saint and a demon simultaneously. Perhaps John Lennon’s ashes are still floating about Central Park, and as we walked through, the exterior of the Teutonic Dakota took on a haunting quality. Lennon was a lover and a protestor and an experimenter, and scenes from Rosemary’s Baby of Satanists smoking cigars also hung in the air. The shop window displays on Fifth Avenue drew great crowds, but as we drifted toward 51st Street, we decided to stop into Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, along with the surging mass of the faithful.

Cathedrals are best enjoyed in quiet solitude. Nevertheless, we followed the pilgrims through the long nave, stopping to glance at the numerous chapels with statues along the way, each with a collection box, securely locked, asking for donations. And people say Christmas is commercial! Want to pray through your favorite saint? Please deposit a quarter. Preferably two. Or more. Their budget in candles alone would support many a smaller church throughout the nation. Advent begins this weekend, so the crèche was set up at the front with life-sized figures of the usual players: holy family, shepherds, wise men. And collection box. There was no baby Jesus and when my daughter asked why I said, pointing to the collection box, apparently they were saving up to purchase one. Keeping Christ in Christmas? Indeed. All those bronze, life-size Pope head statues can’t be cheap. John Lennon was cremated and his ashes scattered, leaving no trace. Popes are cast in bronze. Yes, John Lennon was wealthy, and once quipped that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. What is the truth of the matter? Looking at the façade of the Dakota, I know where I would rather light a candle.