Cemeteries and Certainties

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A visit to Highgate Cemetery is a reminder of a different way of life. Built as a fashionable burial ground for an overcrowded London of the Victorian Era, the cemetery demonstrates a closeness of life and death that we have very much sublimated in the twenty-first century, as if by avoiding the topic we might make death go away. As a tour guide led us through the overgrown, moody grounds with ivy-covered tombstones and doleful trees, she explained how those of just over a century ago wove death and life into a continuous fabric with elaborate rituals of mourning and a sure sense of the afterlife. Monuments commissioned by the families of the departed used symbols from a variety of traditions syncretized to assure the survivors that death was not the final word. The departed, one presumes, had little concern in the matter.

Symbols from the newly discovered wonderland of ancient Egypt combined with classical symbols of Greco-Roman antiquity and Gothic revival combined to assure the living that death was not really the end after all. How easy it is to forget that death, for most of human history, was very near at hand. Only with our recent medical innovations and concern not to overpopulate our environment have developed nations (something certain religious sects blithely overlook in their enthusiasm to conquer the world by dint of numbers) been able to shove death into the dark corners of our minds. Unless inspired by ghost hunters, we seldom linger in cemeteries. We separate ourselves from the dying as if the inevitable were some disease we dread catching. We can’t reconcile ourselves with the most biological aspect of our lives.

The Egyptians did believe in an afterlife, but at first it was not a democratic one. Kings and courtiers might live forever but the common person was only accorded a brief time in this world. The idea that death could be cheated by religion eventually grew, and Christianity came to accept such assurances as a hallmark of faith. The symbols for that faith figured prominently in Highgate Cemetery. As we came out from the tour, I was reminded that the radical Karl Marx, champion of the proletariat, was buried just yards away. Even those we today recognize as having borne immortal ideas still rest in the same chilly ground. Is the hope that binds them with the heavens an illusion left over from ancient times or is resurrection an idea from which we just can’t escape?

Good Morning, London

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First of all, Virgin-Atlantic Airlines gets a gold star in my book. Having flown quite a bit over the past six months, I’ve been reminded on just how stingy airlines can be, making even a brief flight a test of endurance. They are very generous with full body scanners and less so with basic human services, such as food, entertainment choices on long flights, and a sense that you’re doing anything other than propping up a flailing, deregulated industry. Virgin-Atlantic demonstrated that air time need not be torturous. So, with many choices of movie to watch, on Good Friday, I decided on one of my favorite genres of religious movie—the vampire flick.

I have been anticipating Dark Shadows for well over a year now, but I had heard nothing about Fright Night. Really, in many ways Fright Night was an unremarkable vampire movie, but then again, watching on a plane is maybe not the place where one would expect the gothic mood required for full enjoyment. Nevertheless, the full range of religious cures of vampires was present with one notable exception: crucifixes. Crosses abounded, but here on Good Friday I saw no corpi. There was holy water, so clearly it wasn’t purely Protestant sympathies that led to the abandonment of crucifixes in the movie. In any case, crosses were only a minor deterrent in this scenario. What finally dispatched the chief vampire in this case was a traditional wooden stake. Which, somehow reminds me of typical airplane food on most airlines.

Driving around a secular London dressed in religious garb, St. Paul’s Cathedral lit splendidly in the night, was a reminder of the hold Christianity still has on even non-religious culture. It was kind of like the corpus-less crucifix in the movie. The inspiration behind the great gothic stylings of Big Ben and Parliament arise from their long association with Christian culture. On the streets people were milling about London late in the evening, not apparently fresh from church, standing in the shadow of Westminster Abbey and happily snapping photos. This may be a montage of disparate images colliding in my jet-lagged mind, but somehow virgins, vampires, crucifixes, and churches seem to fit naturally together.

One of Us

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I suspect quite a few people are thinking about Jesus today. He does seem to be in the public consciousness with appearances on both Newsweek and the Watchtower. Newsweek, I have to admit, was an impulse buy. I’m flying to London today and I wanted something light to bring on the plane, so why not take Jesus along? I’ll have to report on the contents later. What caught my attention was the contemporary, very Caucasian Jesus standing in what appears to be Times Square. Since I walk through here a couple times a day, the immediately striking aspect is how unremarkable this would be. Perhaps that’s what the cover artist was going for, but people who think they’re Jesus—or at least a close approximation—are hardly rare. It seems that many of them are interested in running for president. Many others run Megachurches. Very few live on the streets.

My Jehovah’s Witnesses friends stopped by recently. I used to chat with them when I was unemployed, but I’m no longer home during missionary hours. This edition of Watchtower also features a very Caucasian Jesus, but one who wears his hair in a style no first-century Jewish man would have. He has been stripped of his own faith heritage just as surely as the blue-eyed Jesus on Newsweek. The funny thing about Christianity is the chimera they make of the human half of Jesus. This is one part of the Bible nobody wants to take literally. Does Jesus need to look like us to effect salvific results?

It is often said that beauty is skin deep. One has to wonder just how profound faith is as well. People seem to be better at believing what they see. When it is time to consider what God might look like, we inevitably consult a mirror. Where is the comfort in an all-powerful being that looks like he’s not one of us? Well, maybe we could ask women what it’s like. For all the variables in Jesus’ appearance, he’s always male. Funny, so are the people who profit most from promoting his brand. Maybe my ideas are just taking a flight of fancy. The rest of me is on a flight as well. And I have no idea what the captain looks like.

Disputed Territory

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Revisiting a childhood home can be a bittersweet experience. As my wife reflects on the first house she remembers going up for sale, we are glad that we spent the holidays there one last time a few months back. In my case sentiment is a little harder to find. The three residences I recall from a fractured childhood all bear the same distinction: they were torn down after we left. All that remains of my youth is three parking lots. Things are a lot more level now than they were back then. Whenever I visit the area, however, I still slow down the car and remember. Memory, whether singular or collective, makes a geographic location a sacred space. We rented when I was growing up, so those spaces that I think of as mine were occupied by others before and after us. (The razing did not take place immediately after we closed the door for the last time.) Whether those others—strangers to me—consider the place special I have no way of knowing.

Holy, holy, holy?

In other cases the sacral nature of a place is hallowed by tradition. Say “the Holy Land” and most people will know that you’re referring to what is now Israel/Palestine. I only traveled there once, but was privileged to stay for about six weeks. Working on an archaeological dig is a rite of passage for young biblical scholars (for such I was at the time), and weekends were spent visiting the places I’d read about since I could first remember. One of the most jarring aspects of the holiness was the evidence of violence. Cars burning by the roadside. Bombs going off in a post office in Jerusalem. Sounds of heavy artillery lobbing explosives through a blue sky during the sunny afternoon. A place so sacred as to be continually baptized in blood. Humans, human memory, are what make a place sacred.

All of this comes to mind with the political posturing of New Jersey governor Chris Christie visiting Israel. God knows New Jersey has enough problems of its own, but it is a relief not to have him hanging around for a while. Nevertheless, what has Trenton to do with Jerusalem? One thing the Middle East doesn’t need is one more bully. Pushing, shoving, crusading, shooting, and bombing haven’t worked for that elusive peace. What value can our dauntless leader add to this unholy mess? Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I thought governors were supposed to take care of their own problems at home and leave international schmoozing until they got to the big offices. Maybe the race for a GOP nomination isn’t over yet. The most sacred space in this country is a white house that gets sold to the highest bidder every four years. At times there is more wisdom to be found in a parking lot.

Sacred Philadelphia

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What makes a space sacred? There is no agreement on that issue, but it is clear that considering a specific location numinous, holy, or just special is something that even the most secular do. We trek to the places where something happened, maybe hoping for a personal epiphany or enlightenment. So yesterday I found myself in Philadelphia on the trail of Edgar Allan Poe. Like some other famous figures of the past, Poe was essentially homeless—no place claimed him (though now many do). Several years of his short life were spent in Philadelphia, and only one of his residences still survives there. On a pleasant Saturday it was clear that many others were drawn to this sacred space on pilgrimages motivated by diverse needs and curiosities. My family has gone on literary trips for many years, visiting the places of writers—for, at the end of the day, every piece of sacred writ has a writer.

Poe's house on Spring Garden

I can’t recall a time, after I began to read, when I did not favor Poe. Like some other inspirational figures he lived a short life, frequently rejected by his peers. Sad circumstances haunted him and he expressed them so well. His was a rare gift. Standing in his Philadelphia house, I guess I might have been hoping that, on some level, he might know that his life had touched mine. We all seem to leave an intangible part of ourselves in places we have been. Even the hardest skeptic of the “paranormal” will travel countless miles to come to some location of significance. There is no logical reason to do so. It is perhaps the most human of religious impulses. I saw no specters, heard no ghostly voices. But I saw and listened and wondered.

Writing is among the canon of sacred activities. It is taking what is hidden safely inside the confines of our minds and offering the opportunity to others to read it. Frequently it is ignored, lost in the noise. Life is too busy to sit down and read unless some teacher or professor assigns a task with grade consequences. We miss, however, so many opportunities to explore the legacy bequeathed to us by great minds. Our lives are driven by economics, not enlightenment. Poe died poor and largely unmourned in Baltimore after having called many locations home. Those locations are now shrines. I suspect he may have been very surprised to learn that over a century and a half later some people would attempt to follow in his footsteps for what can only be described as religious reasons.

Sheep, Goats, and Preferred Customers

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The American dream, at least for many idealists, includes a classless society. Class has less to do with individual wealth than it does with a sense of entitlement or importance. During an election year we hear politicians advocating such utopian ideals, at least until they get into office. When is the last time you’ve seen a politician flying coach? I have had to fly quite a lot lately, and nothing underscores the rampant sense of self-importance as flying. First class passengers are pampered and fussed over while those of us of more humble means—or who work for more frugal companies—are treated with such condescension that Amtrak actually starts to look pretty good. Nowhere is this more evident than the mythical construct of “boarding lanes.” Anyone who has flown knows that, like in death, we all have to pass through that same narrow jet-way to get to our destination. There is one door and we all walk through it—even the flight crew. I’ve flown several airlines that now offer preferred customers the dubious advantage of boarding the plane through some kind of special “lane” that is in reality a ratty looking carpet that reinforces that some passengers are more equal than others.

Even religions that began as egalitarian enterprises soon constructed their own stratified societies. When’s the last time a bishop came calling, or even deigned to look your way? It’s not leadership that is at issue here, but the sense of superiority that comes with it. Can someone lead without the need of putting others in their place first? I have known some wealthy people, and occasionally met some very wealthy people, who have laid aside pretension and confessed that they were lucky enough to get a good deal. Such people, it seems, are rare. The fact is that hard work sometimes only leads to backaches and headaches, not personal advancement. And yet we literally roll out the red carpet for those who want to board first. If the plane goes down, we all go down together.

I realize that airline gimmicks are merely strategies to get some people to pay more for basically the same services as those in economy class. Oh, maybe your first class meal is complimentary, but it is still airline food. The pressurized cabin air we breathe we breathe in common, even with a thin curtain between us. Some of us have thinner wallets than others, and perhaps even thinner skin. But still we can dream. Looking down on the towns and cities of this great egalitarian experiment from 40,000 feet, everyone looks pretty small. Rich and poor alike are so tiny that you can’t even see one single individual even if you tried. That is the metaphor that perhaps sums up best the experience of flying. My sole has never touched the special carpet of privilege, I am frisked and prodded by strangers while first class customers are above suspicion, and I hear very wealthy men braying why I should elect them to lead this classless society. Time for a reality check. Step this way, sir, and spread your feet a little further. This will only take a minute.

Who's who?

California State of Mind

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California, it is sometimes said, is a state of mind. I leave today after a few days in Santa Barbara with a bag of mixed impressions of one of our nations great schools. My first impression on the University of California Santa Barbara campus was almost a physical one. Literally. I had no idea of the bicycle culture and nearly stepped into a bike lane with the flow of a New Jersey storm drain during a Nor’easter. California is a culture of wheels. I’d never been to a campus before that has four traffic lanes for non-motorized travel: two bike lanes going opposite directions, a skateboard lane, and the humble pedestrian walkway. There are so many skateboards here that the counter-culture has become conformist. Sorry, Bart, it’s true. And concern for the environment is palpable. Reclaimed rainwater feeds the lush plant life, every possible recycled item is sorted and sent to the correct facility, students bicycle instead of drive, smart cars are very evident for the two-wheel impaired, and almost nobody smokes. And as I ate my supper alone in the student union two separate groups of Christian students were having very vocal conversations about their faith. Free spirits not realizing that they’re trapped.

One conversation with a Native American specialist stayed with me. She spoke of how missionary work has damaged indigenous cultures irreparably. I listened in fascination as she told me about the local history. How an historic Spanish mission was publicly adorned with the skull of a murdered Native American and how it took years of persuading to get them to take it down, even in the late twentieth century. Across campus students are praying to Jesus for the courage to continue witnessing. In Newark, I suspect, a couple of guys are still laughing.

On a brief respite from my busy day of meetings, I walked the Lagoon (sorry, I can never see or say that word without thinking of Gilligan’s Island) Trail. Emphasizing the environmental features of this wetland habitat, the trail leads down to the ocean where flocks of pelicans and egrets fly overhead, unperturbed on the shores of the vast Pacific. In 1969 what had been to date the worst US waters oil spill took place from Platform A, still visible in the distance from the beach. My thoughts turn from Gilligan’s Island to Deepwater Horizon. My laughter to tears. The Lagoon Trail winds through the headland to a labyrinth. In today’s resurgence of interest in the labyrinth, it is viewed as a spiritual journey. Labyrinths appear in churches as early as the Roman Empire, but nobody knows what they mean. I silently stand beside the maze. What does it mean? Platform A leers from the ocean. Christian undergrads look to convert the world. And under the cross is not the skull of Adam, but that of an anonymous Native American. What does it mean?

Tortured Gospel

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Tornadoes? I don't see any tornadoes.

It is a little difficult to force yourself to think of tornadoes when you’re in sunny California. On my flight into Santa Barbara I could see the tail end of the gray whale migration from a few thousand feet in the air. Outside the tiny municipal airport (with its full-body scanner) I see palm trees swaying in the wind. The air smells like flowers. Life is too easy in California for me ever to live here. I need more angst in my diet. I can’t come to the sunny coast, however, without the Eagle’s “Hotel California” replaying endlessly in my head. It was the running joke at Nashotah House that the real Hotel California was located in the woods just outside Delafield, Wisconsin. The haunting lyrics by Don Felder, Don Henley, and Glenn Frey managed to capture the witch’s brew of mind control, humiliation, and desire that laced that little, gothic seminary in the woods. Yet even sitting in California with its full greenery in March, I see that Pat Robertson is blaming the devastation of the recent tornadoes on lack of prayer.

Blaming the victim is a classic fascist technique, and it is very easy to proclaim one’s own righteousness when not in harm’s way. Herein lies the darkest sin of the self-justified; they think themselves specially blessed and therefore not responsible to help the victims. While flying over the Santa Ynez Mountains, seeing the smoke from California wildfires climbing like the terminal flames of Babylon, I could hear a voice like a choir of fascists singing, “Alleluia And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.” Schadenfreude fuels too much of the evangelical worldview. According the Gospel writers, when Jesus foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem, he wept. WWJD, Rev. Robertson?

Tornadoes look so much like divine judgment that it is almost understandable how a naïve believer might see them as coming from God. We, however, are the gods destroying our own planet with the accompanying degradation of the weather. Neo-cons deny the fact of global warming. It is not a myth or a theory, there is inconvertible proof that it is happening. Still, it is more convenient to blame God. After all, chances of him showing up to deny false charges, as history repeatedly shows, are very slim. Ask any innocent woman tied to a stake in Medieval Europe accused of being a witch. Apparently the divine calendar is too full to worry about the troubles of hundreds of thousands, or even a few millions who are falsely accused. Why not send some terror from the sky? It is hard to think of such things in sunny California. Yet as the “good news” of the televangelists spreads to the ends of the earth, even those forever in the sun will need to stand in judgment before a very capricious deity.

Religion Undisclosed

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I’m getting to be a pat-down connoisseur. In Raleigh-Durham it was a more intimate affair with Mr. TSA—I don’t even have his name or number—narrating the intimate details. “I will move my hands up your thigh until I encounter ‘resistance,’” he said. At Newark the pat-down was quicker, more business-like, almost as if Mr. TSA were embarrassed. In Raleigh-Durham, nobody batted a lash when I said full-body scanners were against my religion. At Newark, they laughed. The gate attendants began asking me what my religion is. Private. My religion is as private as my “resistance.” And I was being ridiculed for it. This is the Patriot Act vision of America. Regular readers of this blog know that I have never revealed my religious convictions. They are a very private matter with me, and I had supposed that I’d been born in a nation where that was respected. Instead, I am laughed at.

We extend religious liberty to those who wish to handle rattlesnakes. To men who wear black dresses and have an historic penchant for young boys. To people who believe the world was created in six days. To people who believe golden tablets only seen by one man through rose-colored glasses are the basis for sacred scriptures. To the traveler who believes in the integrity of the human body and cannot divorce it from the respect and dignity of human modesty, this does not apply. Religions arm military forces. Religions rape women. Religions murder children as well as adults. Who’s laughing at them?

I wonder if I might have a legal case here. When has the free practice of my religion—which decrees that full-body scanners are immoral—been opened to public scorn? And don’t tell me it’s the price of security. I walked through “security” with my eyes open; first class passengers do not get scanned like hoi polloi. It’s not a matter of security—it’s about control and money. When will the people take back control of their own country from officials inebriated with power? I feel no safer with a stranger’s latex-gloved hand on my resistance. I feel no safer when people who couldn’t cut college get jobs in the US government and look at their fellow citizens naked. You’ll blank out my face? That makes it even worse. If someone’s going to violate my dignity I want him to look me in the eye and realize that it’s a human being he’s humiliating, not just a hunk of meat. Or in the language of the TSA, mere resistance.

First, show me yours

Watch Your Tower

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So when the smoke clears from another leap day barely survived, and my Apocalypse calendar tells me about the looming end of all things, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses stop by and leave a Watchtower with the headline “Armageddon” at my door, I start to get a little paranoid. Did I miss the memo on this? I tend to be suspicious of any religion that is less than 150 years old—call me a historical snob in that respect. By the time of the nineteenth century of the Common Era, we were getting industrialization, evolution, and the Whig party sorted out. It was hardly a propitious time to be starting new religions. Well, I was curious about Armageddon, so I read a bit of the Watchtower in any case. It goes best with salt.

“The original Hebrew word Har-Magedon literally means, ‘Mountain of Megiddo.’ Although no such literal mountain existed, a place known as Megiddo does exist.” So I learned. But there was a mountain at Megiddo. Literally. I’ve been there. It’s not an impressive mountain like the Front Range of the Rockies, but it is sufficient for the purposes of the Bible. Megiddo overlooks the broad plain of the Jezreel Valley. In ancient times such valleys were highly valued for fighting because of a basic engineering difficulty with chariots: they don’t work well on hills. Chariots have open backs, so falling out would hamper effective up-hill battles (literal ones), and your chariot bumping into your horses or chasing them downhill would have resulted when the fighting was done. Or when you were fleeing. Valleys like Jezreel were perfect for fighting. And Megiddo has a front-row seat on its little mountain. The site of Megiddo has been excavated by archaeologists and is well worth the time it takes to get there.

By coincidence (or is it?) my apocalypse wall calendar begins March by saying, “Make Archaeology Your Friend.” Hmm, is there a message somewhere in here? When the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mayan interpreters agree, should we not at least admit a little doubt? I don’t think so. Both traditions, as certain of special revelation as they may be, are human attempts to make sense of our world. We know of nothing that doesn’t end. The great Eastern religions seem to have caught on more readily to the idea of impermanence than Western cultures have, but they all share this in common—it’s gotta end sometime. I would, however, point out to Mr. Santorum, as he begins to think about his concession speech, that the Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to agree with the amateur Catholic on the part about Satan. My Watchtower says “Satan will marshal the nations for an assault on those who worship Jehovah God.” Perhaps politicians should stick to following the Mayans.

Nevermore

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Once in a while an uncanny clarity penetrates this fog of an asphyxiating miasma that passes for a life in higher education. It was a rainy, gray day in February when I stood outside 13 West Range at the University of Virginia, looking into Edgar Allan Poe’s restored room. Poe, who is right up there with Melville and Moses among the greatest writers of all time, lived a life that was short, sad, and silenced. Or so it seemed. Dead by 40, with a career that never really got a foothold, Poe would seem to be the ideal model of a failure. His currency, however, has preserved the voice of unrest that pulses like the very life-blood through American culture. Even as a teenager, I identified with Poe. Knowing that I could never attain his level of polish and perfection, even listening to the cadences of “The Raven” can still reduce me to tears. So, standing outside his room in the gloomy rain was a private epiphany.

13 West Range

Undefined was the sense of loose ends and hopelessly tangled threads of a life I tried to weave without the blessing of Athena. I ended up at a small seminary where my influence was limited to the few students with open minds. It was truly a gothic experience, living at Nashotah House with its medieval mindset and matching physical setting. Daily watching my learning being shredded by the staunch dictates of undying dogma, I never forgot Poe. When my own career was jettisoned by a bloated theology that had no room for questions, I spent many months in a depression so deep that life had almost lost that spark of hope that makes it worth continuing. Again and again the waves crashed over me—this was the doing of the church. Those who putatively followed the teaching of a man who said, “Do unto others—” Fill in the blank.

Poe was forced out of school by an unloving foster parent who valued money more than his adoptive son. Traveling up and down the east coast looking for a place to fit his writings into a slot for a little money, he died from causes that will never be identified. Today we know he was a meteor—a brief, brilliant light in a darkened sky. He is the patron saint of all those whose voices have been silenced by an unfeeling establishment. Even in my wildest dreams, I never hope to approach the depth and grandeur of his pen, but I can stand here in the rain and commune with him. The emblem of the Raven Society stands perched in that room, and its single word is the dying word of hope in the face of an uncaring world. And that one word will be the epitaph of society that refuses, even now, to listen.

Jefferson’s Legacy

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With the gears grinding in the political machine and candidates for the GOP nomination each trying to show they are more righteous than the others, the name of Thomas Jefferson gets used quite a bit. Jefferson’s famous Bible, literally cut-and-pasted together by one of our better presidents, removed miracles from the picture, and Jefferson’s writings leave open the question of whether Deist or Atheist is a more accurate description. I’m in Charlottesville, Virginia right now, home of that paean to Jefferson, the University of Virginia. For a state university, UVA has perhaps the largest religion department in the country. I noted with some irony, that the religion department is housed just above the political science department in Gibson Hall. While waiting for my first appointment, I sat in an alcove where two students began talking about politics. (This was in the religion department.) My chagrin grew as my grin faded with their lament about how poor the Republican candidates are, “but we have to get Obama out of the White House.” In order to do so, they’d elect a man whom they believe unqualified for the office.

Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying a person who doesn’t start out as a liberal has no heart, but who remains a liberal as an adult has no brain—or some such nonsense. The fact is, compassion never should go out of style. It seems to me that somebody changed the terms and what they mean. “Conservative” used to equate to a fiscal position that, while it favored the wealthy, still had sympathy—or even empathy—for those less well-off built in. Now it has come to define “selfish disregard of those different than me.” We see it all the time, not just in political speeches, but in acts passed in the name of Christianity. Jefferson’s Bible is being trampled underfoot. And we are told repeatedly that America was founded as a Christian nation. Of the students discussing politics here, the more conservative of the two was the woman.

Does she not realize that without the liberalizing tendencies of the suffragettes her own future would be limited? That does not excuse in any way the patriarchy that made suffrage necessary in the first place, but it does speak to how quickly we are taught to forget. Even in the land of Jefferson, there are those who would protect privilege and call it divinity. “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” The words of Thomas Jefferson. In our great universities those who actually do learn are sometimes taught that empathy is weakness and fiscal gain is god. Unless it’s an election year. With great wealth going into the carnival we call the nomination process, we might legitimately ask what’s to become of us if those with no empathy are elected. After all, what are we, apes?

One of the few presidents worth casting in bronze

Frozen Falls

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Some weather we’ve been having! New Jersey has just completed its mildest January on record. Weather has always been a favorite mode of resort to the divine since it is one of those things we people just haven’t been able to control yet. And it makes perfect sense. The atmosphere is, by definition, bigger than the planet’s surface itself, and we people are pretty tiny, all things considered. I’ve stood next to some trees in the northwest that give me a flea’s eye view of the world.

I remember one of my teachers telling us that Niagara Falls doesn’t freeze over. When I told my mother this, her response was to pull out these photos and send them to school with me. Someone in the family back in my grandfather’s younger days owned a photography business. The photos are unfortunately not dated, but they have been iconic images for me ever since that day in grade school. Yes, even Niagara Falls can freeze over. My best guess for the dates here must be sometime around 1920.

Back when we still had television, I was an avid fan of the PBS Naked Planet series. One of the episodes was on Niagara Falls. In the late 1950s and early 60’s the hydro-electric potential of the falls had been tapped to such an extent that now between 50 and 75 percent of the water flow of the thundering falls is diverted upriver. I first visited Niagara Falls as a child, but I have never experienced the falls with the full force that nature intended. Likely no one ever will again, at least as long as we are in charge of planet.

These pictures remind me of the awe of nature. They were taken when the falls were pretty much at full flow, and yet they are frozen solid and people are walking around on a river that boasts class 6 rapids, the highest the whitewater scale goes. Sometimes when people assert too much control on their planet, it is nice to be reminded that our tired orthodoxies aren’t always what they seem to be. It may be an unseasonably mild winter this year, but nature may still have a few tricks up her sleeves.

Best Prayer in the Air

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With my current job I travel quite a bit. With all the attendant time hanging around airports, I have time to think back to pre-deregulation days when flying meant some kind of care in the air. It has been in the news the last few days that Alaska Airlines is removing the prayer cards from its trays during meals. When I saw that, the real surprise to me was—airlines serving meals? When did they start doing that? A couple years back I flew coast to coast on Alaska Airlines with nothing more than a sack of peanuts. I would have been happy to have had a prayer card to eat. I agree with those who pointed out to the airline, when it served these alleged meals, that paying customers shouldn’t be proselytized. You can get enough of that by watching GOP debates. And I certainly hope the message wasn’t that the plane only flew on a miracle.

I’m sure that some people will say there’s no harm in a little non-invasive sermonizing. Therefore I must make my own confession; I was a teenage evangelical. Although I never actually did tracts myself, I hung out with kids who did. Once, on the way home from a youth meeting, a carload of us stopped to get a bite to eat in a diner. Now, we were high school kids, not flush with money, but even I knew it was right to tip—waitresses have to put up with a lot for little pay. One of my friends told us that if we really wanted to help the young lady out, we should leave a tract as a tip. What reward could be better than salvation? Surely that would help to feed her family or buy her kids a new pair of shoes. Indoctrinated as I was (and I hadn’t even been to college yet, Mr. Santorum), it seemed like a good idea. Still, I felt bad when we left.

These two situations are not dissimilar. In both cases someone would rather print cheap words on cheap paper with free sentiments rather than giving a person sustenance. It’s been a few years since I’ve darkened a pulpit, but I do seem to recall Jesus insisting that the hungry be fed. I don’t recall what he said about tracts and prayer cards.

Religions have a way of focusing on the forgettable minutiae while overlooking the real need right in front of them. In November I flew from New York to San Francisco, subsisting on a tiny bag of peanuts and some airline orange juice. If old Deutero-Isaiah were sitting next to me he might have said, “why spend money on what is not bread?” But I was thinking that maybe the karma of that tipless waitress was simply coming back full circle.

Wassailing

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It was a nippy 42 degrees with a chill January breeze cutting through the brightly garbed crowd of maybe two-dozen stalwart souls. There were Molly dancers holding hands and skipping in a circle. Smoke from a bonfire caught the breeze as a woman with a painted face sang about the circle of the sun. The whole event had a Wicker Man sort of feeling to it, but participating in an ancient tradition is strangely fulfilling. A basket on the table held pencils and paper on with instructions to write your wish and burn the paper in the bonfire so that “Your message will travel into the cosmos.” The bare apple trees were seasonally pruned and discarded branches littered the ground. It all sounds suitably pagan for a Sunday afternoon in New Jersey.

Having grown up in a rather sheltered small-town environment I never even heard of wassail until planning for my December wedding nearly twenty-five years ago. A low budget affair with the reception in a church basement, my wife decided not to offend Methodist sensibilities by serving wassail, a spiced cider drink generally associated with Christmas. As I learned this midwinter, wassailing has a deep and mysterious ancestry that is a mix of pagan and Christian traditions. One aspect of wassailing is associated with Christmas carols and is based on the tradition of the wealthy sharing with the poor during the holiday season (a practice clearly extinct these days). The second type of wassailing goes back to nature religion and the blessing of the apple trees. It was observed on midwinter, which, before the Gregorian calendar, fell on January 17. At Terhune Orchards the festival fell on the 29th this year.

After watching the Molly dancers and sending our wishes up to the cosmos in the bonfire, one of the orchard proprietors gathered the crowd, now having about doubled to fifty, to sing the Somerset Wassail and then to make noise to drive out the evil spirits. This the crowd did with enthusiasm. We were then asked to recite the wassail prayer, printed on a signpost for all to see. Bread was passed out which we dunked in cider and hung on the naked apple trees. After a final blessing we headed to our car to preserve our own wassail. In England’s apple-growing regions, wassailing the trees is still practiced with a sincerity that marks the deeply mysterious. Some Christian sensibilities, I’m sure would be offended, but this ancient custom, like leaving a tree to stand in the midst of a plowed field to propitiate the spirit of nature, goes profoundly into human consciousness. I, for one, will lift a cup of cider and join the ancient rite to brighten a winter day.