the manifestation of light and darkness

January 6 is the Day of the Epiphany on the Christian calendar. It strikes me again this year, as it did January 6, 2021, as a two-fold manifestation. It celebrates the manifestation of Light and opens our eyes to the darkness. We cannot celebrate light without facing the darkness in Herod, who invites the foreign sages (Magi) to report back to him when they have found the new-born king, “so that I too might worship him.” Herod’s stated intent is a fraud. He worships nothing higher than himself. He says nothing to the Magi about the slaughter of innocents.

Epiphany opens our eyes to the Light of truth and goodness, on the one hand, and the darkness of deceit and malice, on the other: the contrasts of light and darkness, hope and despair, fear and love, goodness and evil.

Jimmy Carter as a manifestation of goodness

As President Jimmy Carter lies in state in the nation’s capitol, and President-elect Donald Trump chooses a group of billionaires to join his cabinet, is it too much to ask for a pause to ponder what has happened to us, who we are, and what we aspire to become?

Whatever our differences, I have heard no one question Jimmy Carter’s character or motives. I have yet to hear criticism of Jimmy Carter as ruthless or vindictive, or the charges that his efforts for peace arose from self-serving motives, or that his policies on climate change responsibility were rooted in vested interest or ill intent.

The solar panels on the White House are long gone, but the prophetic light of the good man who put them there will not be forgotten. What happened in the nation’s Capitol on Epiphany 2021 and in the years that followed expose a darkness no eye can see, no court indict, no jury acquit or convict.

Of Treason and Traitors:the Supreme Judge of the People

Nothing in history is sealed in a vacuum. What seems unrepeatable gets repeated. The names are different, the places are different, but they are essentially the same. The past is never dead. Those who ignore it are doomed to repeat it.

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“The Night of the Long Knives” is one such moment. In June, 1934, six months after Hitler took the oath of office required to become Chancellor, an irreconcilable conflict arose between the two paramilitary forces that had brought Hitler to power. On “the Night of the Long Knives” Hitler settled the dispute. The SS carried out Hitler’s covert plan to seek and execute members of the of the SA (the “Brownshirts”). As news of the covert operation began to leak, Reich “Minister Without Portfolio” Joseph Göring ordered police stations to burn “all documents concerning the action of the past two days.”

Newspapers were told not to publish the names of the dead. In a radio address to the German people, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Hermann Goebbels went to the airwaves to inform the nation that Hitler had prevented traitors from creating social chaos and overthrowing the government. Eleven days later (July 13, 1934) Hitler’s address to the Reichstag (the German equivalent of Congress) filled the airwaves of an anxious nation by conflating the nation with himself. The Strong Man who made Germany great again proclaimed himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people” and called those who opposed him “traitors”.

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Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, social commentator, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN. January 6, 2024.