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Originally posted on Serendipity – Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth:
I was a child in the 1950’s and a teenager in the 1960’s. So I should be well versed in the misogynistic attitudes that were, and in some ways still…
Dennis Aubrey of Via Lucis Photography
Dennis Aubrey’s Via Lucis photographic reflection on the different between Gothic and Romanesque architecture opens the Infinite Interior I needed this morning.
If you, too, are looking for light in the midst of darkness of whatever sort, this is for you. If you read nothing else, scroll down to the last paragraph and ponder our own infinite interior.
Dennis Aubrey, PJ McKey and Via Lucis are Views from the Edge‘s favorite companions on the way.
Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 21, 2017
The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth. ― Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie
Basilique Saint Austremoine, Issoire (Puy-de-Dôme) Photo by PJ McKey
There is a conceptual difference between Gothic and Romanesque churches and cathedrals. While the Romanesque builders paved the way for the Gothic, there is a deep and wide chasm between the two worlds. It starts on the outside – Gothic cathedrals make you want to sit on a bench and admire the exterior. One enters later and experiences the wonders of the soaring internal architecture.
The exterior of Romanesque church architecture is different, much simpler. It is dominated by three features – the clocher, west front, and the chevet. The clocher (or belltower), like the contemporary church steeple, identifies the structure from the distance as a church.
Église Saint-Révérien, Saint-Révérien (Nièvre) Photo by PJ…
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Grandpa, do we like taxes?
Why are you asking about taxes, Elijah?
‘Cause they’re all over the news. I don’t get it. Are taxes bad or are they good, Grandpa?
It all depends, Elijah.
You always say stuff like that! Depends on what? I wear Huggies!
We’ve already talked about that. I don’t mean that kind of Depends. I mean it depends on what kind of taxes.
Yeah, like the tax of Caesar Augustus that made Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem. Mom’s been getting me ready for my first Christmas. Look at this picture of Caesar Augustus, Grandpa. He did the same thing with his hand president You-Know-Who does! And he didn’t care about that little baby. Maybe that little baby is Jesus!
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. – Gospel According to Luke 2:1-6 KJV.
Yes, Elijah, it was because of a Roman census for purposes of levying Roman taxes on the country they occupied. The tax system wasn’t fair.
Hmmm. So taxes are bad!
No, they’re not. Like I said, Elijah, it all depends.
On what?
On whether the taxes are fair. Taxes are good so long as they fairly distribute the financial burden for maintaining life together in a good society: things like health care, roads, fire-fighters like the ones battling the fires in California, and economic assistance for the disabled, children, the poor, and retired people like Grandma and Grandpa who depend like Social Security.
So fair taxes are good? Unfair taxes are bad?
Yes, sort of. Tax systems that don’t require the wealthy to pay their fair share are like Roman taxes and like the British taxes that caused the American Revolution. The tax wasn’t fair. And tax systems measure what a country values. So even if the tax burden is fairly distributed, they can be bad if the money is used badly.
Yeah, just like Mary said, “He lifted up the lowly, and the rich he has sent empty away!” Liddle Bob Corker is lowly but he just voted for tax reform that Marissa says isn’t fair.
Yes, he did, Elijah. Senator Corker was a hold-out who agreed to vote for the tax bill after it was amended in a way that favored his real estate interests so he wouldn’t be so little anymore.
You own real estate, right? Are you going to vote for the tax bill, Grandpa?
No, Elijah, I really don’t own any real estate. The bank owns Grandma and Grandpa’s condo. We still make mortgage payments. And I don’t get to vote on it. Members of the House of Representatives and Senate represent us in Congress. Only they get to vote, and the president can then sign it or veto it.
Hmm. So you’re going to be liddler than liddle Bob Corker. But in my eyes, you’ll always be big, Grandpa. Remember Joseph and Mary and Jesus in liddle old Bethlehem.
I will, Elijah. Here’s a more hopeful picture for you to remember. Mary and the baby Jesus are at the top. At the bottom are prophetess named Sybil and Caesar Augustus, but it doesn’t look anything Caesar. It’s the Byzantine emperor Manuel II from the 15 Century that the artist viewed as the new Caesar. Every empire has its emperor, and every one of them is soon forgotten, but the story of Christmas is eternal.
— Grandpa Gordon, Chaska, MN, Dec. 20, 2017.
Grandpa, what’s joy? Is it like happiness?
Good morning, Elijah! What brought that up?
Mom keeps singing “Joy to the world”! What’s joy? What’s the world?
Joy is deep gladness, Elijah. Happiness is like joy, but joy is deeper. It has to do with who you and and an inexplainable assurance about you, your Mom, and the world. It’s a deep inner gladness. You show it to me every day. Don’t let the world take away your gladness, Elijah!
Okay, Grandpa! But what’s with that third stanza, that thing about the curse?
Oh, that! “No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found, Far as the curse is found, Far as, far as, the curse is found.”
Yeah, that. What’s the curse, Grandpa? We’re not supposed to curse, right?
Right. But this is a different kind of curse. It’s the curse of selfishness and greed that bring sorrow to the world.
Isaac Watts — he’s the one who wrote the words to “Joy to the World” for Christmas — knew all about selfishness and greed when he wrote “Joy to the World” way back in 1719. Isaac was English. He knew all about colonialism and the nations.
Yeah, my baby-sitter really loves that last stanza about the nations! She says American exceptionalism is a curse. She really likes that fourth stanza. “He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the nations prove The glories of His righteousness, And wonders of His love, And wonders of His love, And wonders, wonders, of His love.”
Grandpa, what are the seven last words?
Oh, my, Elijah, that’s a strange question for this season.
Why? What’s a ‘season’?
A season is a period of days or weeks, a period of time. Right now we’re in the Advent season and Christmas season is almost here.
Okay, thanks. So . . . why is a question about the seven words strange for this season?
Because the Seven Last Words are from Good Friday. This isn’t Holy Week; we’re getting ready for Christmas.
That’s not what my baby-sitter says! She says the seven last words are diversity, fetus, transgender, vulnerable, entitlement, science-based, and evidence-based. We’re never ever supposed to use those words again. Are those curse words, Grandpa?
No, Elijah, they’re not curse words. But the ones who told the Center for Disease Control not to use seven words anymore are cursers. They’re substituting their seven words for Jesus’s seven last words.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reportedly received a list from the Trump administration on Dec. 14 consisting of seven words or phrases that will be banned in all official documents prepared for 2018’s budget. Many in the U.S., both those who work in public health and concerned citizens alike, are struggling to come to grips with the nature of the terms that are being censored.
The seven forbidden words or phrases are: “evidence-based,” “science-based,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” and “fetus.”– Futurism.com.
Grandpa, I was a fetus just seven months ago. Oops! I shouldn’t have used that word!
Yes, and you’re still very vulnerable. But, according to the You-Know-Who Administration, we’re not supposed to talk about that.
So those are the ‘Seven Last Words’?
No, those are seven words that the CDC is not supposed to use anymore in its 2018 budget preparations, but the “Seven Last Words” are very different. We’re Christians, Elijah. We listen to the news with the Seven Last Words from the cross ringing in our ears.
So…we’re supposed to consider the ‘seven words’ of the You-Know-Who Administration in light of the ‘Seven Last Words’?
Yes, Elijah. Yes. And they’re very different.
So…was Jesus a scientist? What did he say from the cross, Grandpa, and what’s a cross?
No, Jesus wasn’t a scientist, but he loved the truth, just like real scientists do. A cross was the means of a state execution, Elijah. It was the way the Roman Empire killed people who got in the way of their agenda. Lots of people were executed during Jesus’s time. Jesus was executed. In our tradition, there are seven words he spoke from the cross.
Okay, I’m starting to get the picture. So what were the ‘Seven Last Words’?
Okay. Remember these and share them with Marissa tomorrow at day care.
James Tissot, What Jesus Saw from the Cross, Brooklyn Museum of Art
So does God forgive the You-Know-Who Administration because they don’t know what they’re doing?
Hmmm. Good question, Elijah. Sure looks to me like they know exactly what they’re doing, but even when we think we know what we’re doing, I guess we really don’t. And “Behold your son; behold your mother” was a ‘word’ spoken to Jesus’s vulnerable mother and his best friend, but, according to the You-Know-Who Administration we can’t say ‘vulnerable’ any more. All those words are ‘finished’.
Yeah! And that’s not right! I’m still little but I pay attention to the ‘Seven Last Words’. I’m going to be like Jesus’s friend. I’m going to take care of my vulnerable mother, Grandpa. Mom and I are vulnerable. Who’s going to take care of us if the You-Know-Who Administration doesn’t?
Like Jesus said, “into your hands I commit my spirit.” Remember, Elijah, the cross doesn’t have the last word. No one expected Easter. We live in resistance to cruelty with hope in a better tomorrow. It’s also the season of Chanuka, the Festival of Lights when our Jewish friends — always remember, Elijah, that Jesus was a Jew — light a new candle of hope every day to remember how an occupying power like the You-Know-Who Administration in the second century BCE was brought down by the Maccabean revolt. Thus us a season for hope, Elijah.
Child lighting candle of Chanukah menorah
Some places and some police departments have a refreshing sense of humor. Places like this New Zealand and a New Zealand police recruitment video. Enjoy.
Grandpa, Grandma just called you a racist!
No, she didn’t, Elijah. She said I’m a Sadist. She was just kidding.
What’s a sadist?
It’s a husband who doesn’t do his fair share of the housework.
Is that like a racist?
Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of it, Elijah, but now that you mention it, I suppose it is.
How’s that?
Well, a Sadist is mean. So is a racist. They both demean others they regard as less important than themselves.
So you’re both.
Both what?
A sadist and a racist.
Now that you mention it, I suppose I am, Elijah. I’m a descendant of the Mayflower.
Voyage of the Mayflower
What’s a ‘Mayflower’, Grandpa? Is it the like the flowers you give Grandma?
No. What are you talking about? I only give flowers to Grandma on our anniversary.
Why? You may, if you want, and you should, Grandpa. But first you should help with the dishes and the housework. Otherwise you’ll be both a racist and a sadist. I feel bad for Grandma! You’re not only a sadist; you’re a misogynist!
Where’d you pick up that word?
I hear lots of stuff you don’t know about, Grandpa. I pick up a lot of words at Marissa’s house. She’s really mad at a bunch of guys. She watches lots of CNN and MSNBC — Harvey What’s-His-Name in Hollywood, Kevin Spacey, Roy Moore, and You Know Who. She really likes Rachel. She’s hoping that woman who got thrown out of the White House tells on the Chief Racist-Sadist-Mesogynist. Marissa says Omorosa could bring down You Know Who.
I do know who Who is, Elijah, and Omorosa, and I love Marissa. But you need to be careful not to swallow everything other people says about others. You don’t want to be self-righteous, Elijah. None of us is righteous.
There you go again, Grandpa, slipping out of the noose. Excuses, excuses, excuses! You should be more righteous. Give Grandma some mayflowers, unload the dishwasher, and be a better husband around the house. Otherwise you’ll just be like You Know Who!
Elijah talking about his day with Marissa
Grandpa, Marissa threw her shoe at the television this morning.
Did she break the television?
No, actually, it was a slipper but she thew it hard.
Why’d she throw her slipper at the TV, Elijah?
She thew it at the President.
Why? What was he doing?
He was talking bad to the FBI! He said people like Marissa are “the worst of the worst,” Grandpa! Before I could understand what he’d said, her slipper sailed by my play pen and hit the TV!
Wow! That must have been scary!
manual labor roofing a house for a roofer
Yeah, but what Marissa said he said was scarier. Marissa said the President’s either evil or ignorant and that he should come to Minnesota to see what her cousins do. He should meet some immigrants. They’re not the worst of the worst. Miguel works up on roofs in the hot sun 16 hours a day all summer long, Grandpa.
Her other cousin, Maria, makes minimum wage cleaning toilets and making beds for a hotel. It’s not enough to live on. She works hard, Grandpa. So does Marissa. They’re not the worst of the worst. They work harder than you do!
So I have an idea, Grandpa.
Okay, Elijah. Let’s hear it. “Out of the mouths of babes….”
I’m not a baby anymore, Grandpa. I crawled today. I’m seven.
Well, you’re not seven. You’re seven-months. But it doesn’t matter. You’re very wise. Let’s hear it.
Okay, Grandpa, here’s my idea. Everyone elected to office in the United States should have to pass a six-week orientation re-roofing houses and cleaning toilets to qualify for taking the oath of office. That way people like the President will stop insulting good hard-working people like Marissa, Miguel, and Maria, like he did this morning, and Marissa won’t break here television. She can’t afford a new one.
Freshman Class of 115th Congress, January 2017
What a great idea, Elijah! That’s a GREAT idea. Maybe an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring a six-month orientation working in minimum-wage jobs before the oath of office is administered as a hedge against evil, ignorance and the worst of the worst serving in office.
Yeah! Let’s amend the Constitution! What’s a Constitution?
Sometimes, Elijah, you make me smile, even on cruel days when I don’t feel like it.
Irony is the word for this out-of-sorts time where the anti-Darwinian creationists are the proponents of the survival of the fittest. Think net neutrality. Think tax policy that favors the strongest. Think disregard for the weak, those less able to survive if left to the forces of a survival of the fittest free market. Think selective readings of the Bible.
Think rabbits and owls. Not the way we usually think of them, but the way I thought of them the other night after hearing what I thought was a child screaming. It was a blood-curdling cry from the sidewalk just outside our home.
Going outside to see what had happened, what did I see but a large bird (an owl) flying from the tree overhead, dropping the rabbit it had just attacked for dinner. The rabbit never had a chance. Aside from its kin somewhere in a nearby briar patch and the “superior species” who heard the screams, the rabbit’s disappearance was without consequence. It’s nature doing its thing.
Like the economy of Darwinian creationists. There is a mindset beneath the surface of the socio-economic policies being enacted into law by Congress. Creation versus science when it comes to climate change. Creation versus compassion when it comes to the human equivalents of rabbits and owls, hawks and field mice, coyotes and puppies. The strongest will survive. The weak will not. And it’s all part of God’s plan. It must be. Or it wouldn’t be. And, as for the Hebrew prophets who say otherwise — Amos, who thundered divine judgment of the rich who slept of beds of ivory made from the tusks of slaughtered elephants while they trampled on the poor; Micah, who summarized good religion as doing justice, loving kindness/mercy, and walking humbly; and Jesus of Nazareth, who gathered 5,000 hungry people for a free lunch, lifted up the poor, reached out to the maimed, the sick, the leper, the foreigner, and declared “Woe to you are rich!”and ““Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” — their cries on behalf of the rabbits fall on the deaf ears of the Darwinian creationists.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525–1569) – Greed
“Let those with ears hear,” said Jesus. Who among us has ears to hear and eyes to see?
“Pieter Bruegel Bruegel . . . castigated human weakness . . . with avarice and greed as the main targets of his criticism that was ingeniously expressed in the engraving The Battle Between the Money Bags and Strong Boxes” (Encyclopedia Britannica).
The great irony of the theological creationist-economic Darwinians is that the human species has developed talons but lost our ears as the strong who are meant to have dominion over the weak and over nature itself.
So long as we avoid the faith issue here, the rabbit will lose. It fall to those of us who espouse the Judeo-Christian faith and biblical tradition, to do in our time what Pieter Bruegel the Elder did in his: engage the discussion with those within the same tradition whose hearing seems impaired.
Without that discussion, the rabbits in America and around the globe will be left to predators whose ironic Darwinian economics have nothing to do with informed biblical faith, the survival of anything worth saving, or reality itself. All will be left to the battle between empty money bags and rusted strong boxes.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Battle of the Money Bags and the Strong Box
— Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, December 15, 2017.
Today’s FCC vote to end net neutrality is but the latest act in the tsunami of greed that is eliminating all things neutral.
Neutral in the case of the internet means non-favoring, as in protecting a fair playing field that does not favor large providers while dis-favoring others and looking out for the interests of the general public that uses the internet.
But it’s not just in the internet debate that neutrality is in trouble in America. Our traditional allies in Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, among others scratch their heads and wonder what’s happened to America.
In Washington, D.C. the President and Congress are “reforming” the American tax code by lowering the taxes for corporations and America’s wealthiest individuals who are already reaping record profits on the pretext of lowering taxes on the middle class. The tax reform is anything but neutral. It’s greedy. It continues to widen the divide between the well-to-do and those who aren’t doing so well.
While a tax system that is anything but neutral moves forward, Congress and the President strategically malign the integrity of the independent counsel assigned the odious task of investigating foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. election. The attack on Robert Mueller’s neutrality is undertaken in the name of neutrality, portraying the former FBI Director most everyone once respected as part of a partisan Democrat plot to embarrass and unseat the President.
There is, of course, no such thing as neutrality. Never has been and never will be. But the attempt to be neutral, the attempt to put our biases and vested self-interests behind us for the sake of the greater good is a bedrock principal of a civil society and of a democratic republic.
In the American thesaurus, neutrality and fairness are kissing cousins. So are power and abuse. American history is being re-written as we speak.
Thomas Jefferson took a razor to the Bible and cut out texts from the New Testament that seemed unreasonable according to the canons of the Enlightenment — things like miracles. But he never cut the teachings of Jesus — the Beatitudes of Matthew and Luke — “Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers” — the Golden Rule –“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — or “the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” or the commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Today in America those in power are cutting these most sacred texts from the Jefferson Bible in the name of God and country. Any semblance of neutrality, fairness, or compassion are being erased. But one text from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Job will yet have the last word beyond the scissors of greed that scorn even the slightest attempts toward neutrality.
If you have understanding, hear this;
listen to what I say.
Shall one who hates justice govern?
Will you condemn one who is righteous and mighty,
who says to a king, ‘You scoundrel!’
and to princes, ‘You wicked men!’;
who shows no partiality to nobles,
nor regards the rich more than the poor,
for they are all the work of his hands?
– Book of Job 34:16-19, NRSV.
May we all live to see the day.
Views from the Edge 