midnight crafts the major measures
of atonal music molding space and time
in silent rhythm for a ballet of stars
far beyond the reach of moon hung high
to climax in a soundless, booming dirge
heard but by God whose mind foresaw,
programmed this extinguishment of light -
light that momentarily did conquer dark, til the
crushing embrace of its evolved reality crafted it
to be a star imploding and made barren of both
light and life by blackest gravity not subject
to man's laws but time. once placed in motion,
evolution cannot be stilled without calling into question
the wisdom of first cause which let all of creation
seek its own end, for only God can claim to hold
eternity that neither had nor has beginning nor an end,
while black space that was once a star will, for but a speck
of time, inevitably pull time into its void of unplumbed night.
at a farthest remove from the not seen or known to us
we liven our roles on a hardscrabble stage with here a tear,
a laugh, a sigh, in time defining lives that move or not were
they but luminous riot of mindless fireflies swirling on a summer
night and reaching, without the faintest hint of its coming, toward
an unforeseen and unimagined dawning - light, ascendant.
were I to touch you, what is it I would feel?
were I to taste you, would that taste be sweet, or would
it be bitter as old rind? what lies beyond, behind that
careful public face? what spell of roses ever did move
your heart to song, to reach out, to strive, oh, to seek
to hold beyond your grasp? ever did you wonder why,
all cossetted and wrapped up in your lavender pastels,
who's to know? who's to see, who's to care? who -
who will take the moment - why, who will dare to love?
Dept.of the Best Laid Plans, etc. The week of December 12 was the beginning of a monster span of days and nights that stretched all the way to the early new year. I was floored by a winter cold that tried to morph into some sort of flu and beyond that literally made it impossible to sit at the computer and worse, not to be able to watch TV. After a couple of visits to the emergency room, one on new year's eve day, I more or less got back on my feet.
Please accept these belated wishes: Being who and what I am, and belonging to those who feel that Christmas is worth more than a wish for a "happy", may those who share basic beliefs with me enjoyed a Blessed and Peaceful Christmas: for my Jewish friends, I hope you also enjoyed a peaceful - with so many spellings, let me choose - Festival of the Lights, for all of us can use all the illumination we can get. Ffor my Buddhist and Muslin friends, and yes, I have a couple, may you and yours have been and be at Peace during this season.
For my Original Peoples brothers and sisters who are non-Christian members of the American Indian Church, may the Creator continue to guide you as you walk on the good road, and may you all be at peace with each other as you continue to care for Mother Earth and for Pachamama - the Planet: and for my pagan and/or atheistic friends, keep on doing good as you have done and continue to do for yourselves and for others - which is why I really do love you.
It had been my intention to write about the Four Weeks of Advent in progression, along with the O Antiphons. All that went by the wayside. Well, maybe next Christmas season.
I had wanted to quote a master, Chris Hedges, who knows what Christmas is about. And I will do so a litle further down. And I will also share a few of my favorite Christmas carols, in Spanish and English. We are not that far away from Christmas eve and day.
For yes, in the old tradition, the season of Christmas ends with the presentation of the Lord, forty days afer the birth. For an imense number of people, world-wide, the Birth is not about Black or other Fridays, houses decorated to the level of wretched excesses, a mutant red nosed reindeer and other popular atrocities visited on the season.
The birth is about being born in a stable. Coming to earth in a stable is a powerful metaphor for beginning life among animals and their copious offerings of shit and assorted animal smells.
Anyone who has ever shoveled the droppings from a barn will know what I am talking about. It is a task best undertaken while wearing a stout pair of boots and wielding an oversized shovel.
It is about a birth among the beasts because of a "stupid law that forced the poor to travel, register, and show the authority they should pay taxes", as a priest friend put it in an on point Christmas sermon.
And from there, the good priest went on to speak about how the fear and hatred of the other, the alien, the immigrant, is such a pervasive trend in modren politics, a trend we will come to rue.
And rue we will, failing to recognize that Christ, as God, was the first pilgrim, born to a pilgrim family among animals and shepherds, visited by those who knew and believed.
And I thought about multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, a Mormon Mexican born in Mexico, who has stated that if he were president and the Dream Act crossed his desk, he would veto it.
A fine touch of irony from one whose family was welcomed, as the current colonists of the Mormon faith who continue to live in Mexico, are welcomed.
This empty suit really believes that corporations are persons, and are blessed with all rights enjoyed by natural persons. Worse still, he believes that a certain class of people have little or no rights.
Here is part of a Chris Hedges talk about the season of Christmas:
"The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance.
"The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young.
"Outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"It was the church in Latin America, especially in Central America and Augusto Pinochet's Chile, which provided the physical space, moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship. It was the church in East Germany that organized the peaceful opposition marches in Leipzig that would bring down the communist regime in that country. It was the church in Czechoslovakia, and its 90-year-old cardinal, that blessed and defended the Velvet Revolution. It was the church, and especially the African-American church, that made possible the civil rights movements.
"And it is the church, especially Trinity Church in New York City with its open park space at Canal and 6th, which can make manifest its commitment to the Gospel and nonviolent social change by permitting the Occupy movement to use this empty space, just as churches in other cities that hold unused physical space have a moral imperative to turn them over to Occupy movements. If this nonviolent movement fails, it will eventually be replaced by one that will employ violence. And if it fails it will fail in part because good men and women, especially those in the church, did nothing.
"Where is the church now? Where are the clergy? Why do so many church doors remain shut? Why do so many churches refuse to carry out the central mandate of the Christian Gospel and lift up the cross?
I wish there had been a way to have made Hedge's article available through newspapers countrywide.
It is my felt hope that you view the Carol of the Bells video to completion.
Having seen several of the television adverts, I had desperately wanted to go to the Christmas spectacular put on by the people over at the Abundant Living Faith Center, where the so-called "prosperity theology" holds sway - "God wants you have an bundant life". I couldn't do it, so I'll make do with what some friends who went told me.
Apparently the traffic jams were huge, and my friends put up with the spectacle for as long as they could - and they left. So I don't have much to tell, other than that they were terribly offended by the kitsch - read vulgarity - with the message of Christmas totally obliterated with a sumptuous display of light, sound, dancers, all in a temple to bad taste, a modern barn with a huge televsion set, a sort of stage, and nothing to identify the premises as a "church."
I was more or less at a loss as how to describe the extravaganza without having seen it, so I did the Google. Sure enough, my pals were on the money.
The video promo to your right makes me ask, what is this thing about? Just how shallow can you get in crafting junk? I wonder how people can fall for this "theology of prosperity", this absurd spectacle depicting the Birth, this embrace of a pie-in-the-sky creed that is just this side of the rapturists? You'd think that Christians - and not the Christians of the extreme right which, on close examination, are truly neither Christian nor right - had enough troubles without this particular type of flotsam. Not to mention the jetsam.
Seems to me that the real end of the preachers who spin this properity bit actually are asking their flock to worship the coin of the realm. It would be fit and proper for the owners of the Abundant Life center to have a huge $100 bill framed with lights that would blink at the high points of a sermon which cites the Bible as proof that Jesus really wanted you to live well, with at least a two car garage housing, in Texas, both a Ford F150 and an equivalent Dodge pickup with a hemi engine.
And speaking of churches, It isn't as if my personal church were all free from folly, so to speak. And maybe it's time to speak to that.
A few months back, Notre Dame Magazine featured an artice by the Rev. John S. Dunne, in which he writes that the Catholic Church had "committed suicide" in its 20th century effort to combat "modernism." The article makes clear that Fr. Dunne's objection was levelled "exclusively at the manner in which Rome had taken on the modernishm heresy, excising Catholicism's best and brightest."
It is my opinion that in my lifetime, after Vatican II, following the publication of Pope Paul VI's enclyclical Humana Vitae and the later election of John Paul II to the Papacy, Rome has again teetered on the brink of intellectual suicide.
This matter is far too complex to cover in one article, so I will begin with posting a letter,
printed in 1999 in El País, a widely read Spanish newspaper, and written by then Canon
François Houtart, which I have translated into English. Canon Houtart wrote:
CARTA ABIERTA AL PAPA JUAN PABLO II OPEN LETTER TO POPE JOHN PAUL II
19-02-1999
Santísimo Padre: Most Holy Father:
Tras conocer a través de los medios de comunicación su intervención ante las autoridades inglesas y españolas a favor del general Augusto Pinochet, me permito expresarle la profunda pena que he sentido. Habiendo tenido la oportunidad de presidir la sesión del Tribunal de los Pueblos sobre la Impunidad en América Latina, sostenida en Bogotá en 1991, he podido conocer personalmente el horror que ha significado el régimen político dirigido por los militares en Chile. El Tribunal se ha pronunciado sobre el caso chileno, denunciando la inmunidad que se atribuyeron los autores de los crímenes antes de aceptar la transición hacia una democracia controlada.
After learning through the media of your intervention before English and Spanish authorities in favor of General Pinochet, I make known to you the profound sorrow I have experienced. Having had the opportunity to preside over the 1991 Bogota session of the Peoples Tribunal regarding impunity in Latin America, I have personally learned of the horror which has characterized the political regime directed by the military in Chile. The Tribunal has ruled on the Chile matter, and has denounced the immunity which the authors of crimes granted themselves prior to authorizing the transition toward a controlled democracy.
Ninguna razón jurídica ni humanitaria puede ser invocada para pasar la esponja del olvido sobre los crímenes contra la humanidad. Hablar de reconciliación en el caso de Chile no tiene sentido alguno en tanto los culpables no reconocen su falta. Después de eso, pero solamente después de eso, las víctimas y los responsables del bien público pueden hacer prueba de clemencia. La posición, que usted tomó, entra en contradicción con toda moral, incluyendo la del evangelio que exige la contrición del pecador.
There exists no legal nor humanitarian reason which could be invoked to justify erasing the crimes against humanity. To speak of reconciliation in the case of Chile makes no sense if the guilty do not admit their guilt. After that admission, and only after, could the victims and those responsible for the public well being grant clemency. The position you have taken totally contradicts all morality, including the gospels which require that the sinner repent.
Hacer tabla rasa del pasado significa igualmente ignorar la función de un régimen político que contribuyó a la entrada del país en el sistema económico neoliberal que usted acaba de condenar durante su visita a México. En cuanto a los más ardientes defensores de cierta reconciliación en Chile, estos pertenecen principalmente a los grupos de la sociedad que se han ampliamente beneficiado de la desigualdad social dramáticamente acrecentada en el transcurso de los últimos años.
To view the past as a clean slate also means to ignore the contribution by a political regime to the neoliberal system of economics which you recently condemned during your visit to Mexico. As regards the most ardent defenders of a sort of reconcitliation for Chile, these generally belong to those social groups which have benefited amply from the social inequality which increased dramatically during the past few years.
Hace tres años, en ocasión del 50 aniversario de matrimonio del general Augusto Pinochet, el envío de vuestra parte de una foto con dedicatoria y la carta del Cardenal Sodano, Secretario de Estado de la Santa Sede, saludando en la persona del general Pinochet y de su esposa a una pareja cristiana ejemplar, habían impactado fuertemente a una gran cantidad de los cristianos chilenos. Viniendo de su parte y la del máximo representante de la curia romana, es difícil considerar que se trataba de un simple asunto privado.
Three years ago, on the occasion of General Pinochet's 50th wedding anniversay, the sending, on your behalf, a photograph bearing a dedicatory message and signed by you, along with a letter from Cardinal Sodano, Secretary of State for the Holy See, greeting General Pinochet and his wife as an exemplary Catholic couple, had a marked impact on a great number of Chilean Catholics. Coming on your behalf and from the highest representative of the Roman Curia, it is difficult to consider this to have been simply a private affair.
Usted ha sido objeto de presiones de parte de ciertos miembros de la administración central de la Iglesia, bien conocidos por sus simpatías hacia todo lo que en el pasado ha contribuido a la caída del comunismo o lo que se solía calificar como comunismo. Al parecer, para ellos los méritos adquiridos en la materia justifican cualquier injusticia y crimen. La imagen que dan de la Iglesia es objeto de escándalo, y muchos cristianos afirman hoy, con razón, que esa no es la Iglesia a la que pertenecen. En la medida que usted también se aproxima a tales posiciones, no se puede evitar la identificación de la Iglesia con los poderes opresores, al margen del tenor de ciertos discursos. Si, por lo contrario, usted ya no logra hacerle frente a las presiones internas, ¿no sería tiempo para dejar a su sucesor la responsabilidad de hacerlo?
You have been the object of pressure from certain members of the central administration of the Church, well known for their sympathies toward everything that has contributed to the fall of communism, along with what used to be considered communism. Apparently, for these persons the ends and merits acquired serving these ends justify any injustice or crimes. The image which they clothe the Church is an object of scandal, and many Christians affirm, with justificaton, that this is not the Church they belong to. To the extent that you identify with these positions, the identification of the Church with the oppressors cannot be avoided, at least in certain circles and discussions. If, on the other hand, you can no longer deal with these internal pressures, isn't it time to leave this responsibility to your successor?
Espero que usted comprenda que cristianos se sienten concernidos por estos asuntos en virtud de la búsqueda de justicia y humanidad para las innumerables víctimas del general Pinochet y finalmente por adhesión a los valores del Reino, tal como se encuentran expresados en el evangelio.
I hope that you understand that Christians are very concerned by these affairs, in view of the seach for justice and humanity for the innumerable victims of General Pinochet, and in view of fidelity to the values of the Kingdom, as those are expressed in the gospels.
Santísimo Padre, reciba mis sentimientos respetuosos. Most Holy Father, receive my respectful sentiments.
Canon François Houtart
Emeritus Professor of the
Catholic Universify of Louvain
I am not aware of any response made by either John Paul II or the Vatican to Canon Houtart's letter. I recall that elements of the extreme Catholic right, both clergy and lay, were terribly disturbed and claimed that Houtart was scandal mongering.
It is a matter of public record and awareness that John Paul II, given the choice between calling for an end to the atrocities perpetrated on the people in the name of anti-communist radical right regimes in Central and South America's dirty wars, opted to support "oppressors" - the thuggish regimes - as Canon Houtart suggests.
And, as Hedges notes, "It was the church in Latin America, especially in Central America and Augusto Pinochet's Chile, which provided the physical space, moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship." But it was no church that John Paul II could be comfortable in, and Lord knows he had ample opportunities to undertsand that supporting murderous regimes in the name of anti-Communism was - it had to be - a moral abomination.
It was the Church of the people south of the border who continued to embrace liberation theology and the base communities, which have survived from the Sierra of Chihuahua and Durango, through the interior of Mexico, through Central America down to the entirety of South America.
Coming Next: John Paul II and Bishop Oscar Romero; the murdered Jesuits, St. Escriva, Opus Dei, Fr. Marcial Maciel and the Legionnaires of Christ.
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