A blogger, who identifies herself on line as Velveteen Rabbi, has been nominated for an award, given to bloggers by bloggers for an up-and-coming blog with fewer than 200 followers. "Leibster" is a German word which mean beloved or favorite. Rabbi Rachel Barneblat of North Adams, Massachusetts, has answered the questions asked of her as a nominee and is meant to identify eleven other small-readership blogs and nominate them. Rachel sent out five questions to potential nominees to help her select nominees. I'm a small-readership blogger, unable to resist the temptation, or invitation, to be a Liebster and get more readers for my off-beat religio-spiritual blogspot blog called Spiritual Lemons.
Here are the questions the Velveteen Rabbi asked and my responses:
1) What's your favorite book? My favorite book is The Little Book About God published in 1934, just four years before I was born, and written by Lauren Ford for her granddaughter Lauren. It's the biblical story, from Creation to the Annunciation to Mary, Mother of Jesus—the whole sweep. I fell in love with the book as a young child and recently retrieved it while writing my memoir. The book present an image of God as Creator of wonders, but also as Meditator in a garden listening carefully and identifying all the sounds of Earth. God listened to and tracked every single sound, even "weeny sounds," like those of a small girl-child crying. I got my image of God from that book.
2) With what fictional character do you most identify? Jane Eyre. I read the book a long time ago and re-read it recently. I was not as bereft with hardship as Jane, but have had my share of struggle. Jane prayed and had faith against great odds. She also developed self-reliance and never abandoned herself, or her God. I loved to watch Jane make hard choices. I love to see love and freedom win together.
3) If you could throw a dinner party and invite five people, real or fictional, from any moment in human history, who would you invite?
Jane Eyre for her spirituality, and fortitude, and compassion.
Beatrix Potter for her love of everything wee.
David, the biblical hero, who faced a giant of an obstacle and became aware of his own resources in five smooth stones.
Jesus, a lover of people and a man who spoke in parables that challenged, not lesson plans that assigned.
Hillary Clinton, a woman leader who has suffered greatly just because she is a woman, but who has not given up or lost her voice, in spite of public and private scorn
4) What's your favorite place to pray/meditate/engage in spiritual practice? My liebster place is my home altar, a low table at which I kneel on a prayer cushion daily to lament, plead, bitch, beg, gripe, eat consecrated bread, and praise every day. On and under my altar is an array of spiritual tchotchkes, some traditional icons and some personal icons, all of them with meaning, great and small. I get grace and grit at my altar.
5) What's something you're hoping for in 2013? Personally I'm hoping, also praying, that I will get my memoir Under The Table: Becoming a Woman Priest published. Religiously, I'm hoping for honest interfaith conversations. Spiritually, I'm hoping that the one Godde will acquire a new wardrobe, specifically that the use of exclusively male language and image for Divinity will be transformed. I'm a writer and a wordsmith, and I'm tired of feeling left out of the imago dei. Language can change. Politically, I'm hoping for a wannabe woman president for 2016 who is progressive, wise, wry and able to be a non-anxious presence with humility, and who can heal our wounds and move us along out of patriarchy and into a new unitive way of being a country, and a world.
How would you answer these questions? A good way to get to know your own depths and maybe God/Godde.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
2013.01.13 Pink Is the New Black
It’s the 50th birthday of my oldest daughter and first child, the 10th birthday of my oldest grandson, so I’m thinking of firsts, and of time and its passage—not a preoccupation I usually bother with, at least until my body lets me know my age. And it is the Sunday we remember Jesus' baptism in the Jordan. Another first.
My daughter was born on Jan. 13, at 1:13 a.m., weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces. Thirteen is a very good number. Some say it represents the divine feminine. Here is the 13 girl Bev with her boyfriend Steve. Happy Birthday to you Bev—young, beautiful, and limitlessly beloved.
In 1989, the diocese of Massachusetts, against all human odds, elected the Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris as its bishop suffragan. She is the first woman to be elected bishop in the Episcopal Church. Some people thought it was “the final crisis,” a disaster of apocalyptic proportions. But it wasn’t. It was simply history making progress in the flesh of a small, feisty African American woman with a passion for justice, and a sense of humor that has peppered the Church with the courage it needs to keep God’s creation alive and well in the Body of Christ.
I lament that no one ever seems to care or count what the Church does to advance the cause of women in leadership, unless that Church is Roman Catholic. The Episcopal Church is small but mighty, and rarely gets noticed—except for its firsts: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, first woman in that office, elected in 2006; Bishop Gene Robinson, first openly gay man elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2002; and Bishop Barbara Harris
HOWEVER......on Jeopardy this week, one of the clues under the Women Firsts category mentioned Barbara Harris. We Episcopalians made it to Jeopardy. And, one of the contestants, a a young man of Indian descent, knew which Church she represented—and pronounced it correctly!
Here is the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, bishop, maker of history, and woman of Godde, at a recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Have you ever in your life seen so much PINK on a Church dignitary?
Pink is the new black!
My daughter was born on Jan. 13, at 1:13 a.m., weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces. Thirteen is a very good number. Some say it represents the divine feminine. Here is the 13 girl Bev with her boyfriend Steve. Happy Birthday to you Bev—young, beautiful, and limitlessly beloved.
In 1989, the diocese of Massachusetts, against all human odds, elected the Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris as its bishop suffragan. She is the first woman to be elected bishop in the Episcopal Church. Some people thought it was “the final crisis,” a disaster of apocalyptic proportions. But it wasn’t. It was simply history making progress in the flesh of a small, feisty African American woman with a passion for justice, and a sense of humor that has peppered the Church with the courage it needs to keep God’s creation alive and well in the Body of Christ.
I lament that no one ever seems to care or count what the Church does to advance the cause of women in leadership, unless that Church is Roman Catholic. The Episcopal Church is small but mighty, and rarely gets noticed—except for its firsts: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, first woman in that office, elected in 2006; Bishop Gene Robinson, first openly gay man elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2002; and Bishop Barbara Harris
HOWEVER......on Jeopardy this week, one of the clues under the Women Firsts category mentioned Barbara Harris. We Episcopalians made it to Jeopardy. And, one of the contestants, a a young man of Indian descent, knew which Church she represented—and pronounced it correctly!
Here is the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, bishop, maker of history, and woman of Godde, at a recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Have you ever in your life seen so much PINK on a Church dignitary?
Pink is the new black!
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
2013.01.13 GPS On Track
Last evening at about 6:15 p.m. we heard a big BANG, followed by police sirens, and every blinking light there could at the railroad track that runs just behind our house.
We are quite used to the trains rushing through back and forth from Fitchburg, and to the clanging of the warning bells to stop traffic as the gates go down. The train never honks, because the gates are usually faithful. But last night we heard two honk— at the lone car on the tracks facing into this speeding ball of steel, called a train.
The train always wins. Although the driver had put on the emergency brake it wasn’t in enough time to stop the train, and the car went flying off the tracks.
Oh my God, is always the first prayer.
Dick and others went outside to see what happened. They saw a demolished car, a train full of commuters stopped in mid-journey, firemen and police directing traffic and creating order, and one woman talking to police.
The dazed woman told police and others she was okay. She said her GPS told her to turn left. She turned left and found herself on the RR tracks facing into an oncoming train headlight. Second prayer: thank God, she got out of the car and was safe before her car was hit.
No one was hurt physically, but I prayed for the woman: thanks for her life, that shame and horror would not overwhelm her and would in time be healed, that her family would be forgiving and not scorning, and that everyone who relies on a GPS device would NOT trust it over their own senses.
I also renewed my own resolve not to get a GPS. Knowing myself, I would become dependent on it and never know at all where I was going—a dangerous state of affairs for someone who is already directionally challenged. I’d rather stop and ask a human being.
After all, God dwells in human flesh, not computer mechanics. Or so we Christians say.
We are quite used to the trains rushing through back and forth from Fitchburg, and to the clanging of the warning bells to stop traffic as the gates go down. The train never honks, because the gates are usually faithful. But last night we heard two honk— at the lone car on the tracks facing into this speeding ball of steel, called a train.
The train always wins. Although the driver had put on the emergency brake it wasn’t in enough time to stop the train, and the car went flying off the tracks.
Oh my God, is always the first prayer.
Dick and others went outside to see what happened. They saw a demolished car, a train full of commuters stopped in mid-journey, firemen and police directing traffic and creating order, and one woman talking to police.
The dazed woman told police and others she was okay. She said her GPS told her to turn left. She turned left and found herself on the RR tracks facing into an oncoming train headlight. Second prayer: thank God, she got out of the car and was safe before her car was hit.
No one was hurt physically, but I prayed for the woman: thanks for her life, that shame and horror would not overwhelm her and would in time be healed, that her family would be forgiving and not scorning, and that everyone who relies on a GPS device would NOT trust it over their own senses.
I also renewed my own resolve not to get a GPS. Knowing myself, I would become dependent on it and never know at all where I was going—a dangerous state of affairs for someone who is already directionally challenged. I’d rather stop and ask a human being.
After all, God dwells in human flesh, not computer mechanics. Or so we Christians say.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
2013.01.16 Epiphany Stories
Epiphany means revelation or insight. Or in words of James Joyce, the "revelation of the whatness of a thing . . .the moment when the soul of the commonest object...seems to be radiant."
Twelfth Night, Epiphany Eve, is an English celebration, a time to try everything new you can think of—pranks, scandals, and role reversals. This is my favorite season of the church year, because I just LOVE new ideas and insights that shed light on something in a different way. And I love the God of reversals. I watch for such surprises and usually applaud.
Epiphany takes us from Christmas to Lent and is based on the biblical story of the Magi arriving for a baby-viewing. They’ve heard that this kid may be special, sent from Godde—also dangerous, according to King Herod who feared a challenge to his own almighty rule/dictatorship. He sent the wisest men in his kingdom to check out the truth of the theological rumor.
Imagine the scene: three august foreigners, Gentiles, astrologers from the east no less, arrived at the stable entrance bringing lavish gifts to the little Jewish baby cooing in a filthy crib around which huddled two exhausted parents, wondering if they would survive. Just imagine what Mary and Joseph felt at this appalling visitation.
It's only a story (but never say only a story), for this kind of thing happens all the time to mess up what we all agree is true and real, and even what we are sure God’s plans are! The story is biblical, therefore a bit grandiose on purpose, and rich in symbols and imagery of light and star, things these Magi know something about, and trust to guide them.
The story’s meaning is not just to emphasize God’s action in history to enlighten the people, but also to show that Jesus Christ is intended as Messiah, a liberator for ALL people.
Stories have power to transform and inspire no matter how fantastical they seem. Even if they don’t turn out the way they predict we keep on telling them, because we need to hear them, over and over.
I remember when a man who lived in the local shelter in Gloucester started to come to church at our parish of St. John’s. His name was David. He sat quietly in the back for weeks, and in time came up to join others for the Holy Communion meal. He said, “something's going on here.” He revealed nothing personal, except that he had a drinking problem. No one asked for more.
One day the office staff heard someone talking out loud in the sanctuary (open for prayer when the parish office was open, or people were in the building), and peeked in to investigate. They saw David standing at the lectern reading aloud to an empty church the biblical readings for the Sunday just past. I don’t think the church was really empty.
In time David vanished, as quickly as he had appeared. He left the place richer for his presence, and perhaps he received something himself.
I have a story I’m trying to write. You have a story. Theology has a story. Even Science has a story.
What might be the inside story the Wise Men would tell? I wonder if those ancient astrologers and sages faced some of the same problems and insights modern astronomers and astro physicists encounter? They could read the stars, and they knew the sky pretty well, but they couldn’t quite come up with a really good insight about the origins of the universe. For that they needed theology’s story. Their astronomical GPS wasn’t enough.
Even today, scientific calculations come up against a brick wall in the search for truth. Sometimes, they need theology, or let’s say insights from the mystical/spiritual/religious faith traditions. They need the Mystery some call God to fill in the blanks about the cosmos and its quantum beginnings.
Like the ancients who followed a star that the prophets advertised as leading to Divinity, scientists today are in respectful conversation with theologians they once dismissed as too non-scientific to be useful. A result a new discipline called astro-theology is evolving. (The Journal of Cosmology, based on the science of astronomy and mathematics, has a theology issue.)
When two or three gather together to share their gifts, there is Epiphany and epiphanies.
Twelfth Night, Epiphany Eve, is an English celebration, a time to try everything new you can think of—pranks, scandals, and role reversals. This is my favorite season of the church year, because I just LOVE new ideas and insights that shed light on something in a different way. And I love the God of reversals. I watch for such surprises and usually applaud.
Epiphany takes us from Christmas to Lent and is based on the biblical story of the Magi arriving for a baby-viewing. They’ve heard that this kid may be special, sent from Godde—also dangerous, according to King Herod who feared a challenge to his own almighty rule/dictatorship. He sent the wisest men in his kingdom to check out the truth of the theological rumor.
Imagine the scene: three august foreigners, Gentiles, astrologers from the east no less, arrived at the stable entrance bringing lavish gifts to the little Jewish baby cooing in a filthy crib around which huddled two exhausted parents, wondering if they would survive. Just imagine what Mary and Joseph felt at this appalling visitation.
It's only a story (but never say only a story), for this kind of thing happens all the time to mess up what we all agree is true and real, and even what we are sure God’s plans are! The story is biblical, therefore a bit grandiose on purpose, and rich in symbols and imagery of light and star, things these Magi know something about, and trust to guide them.
The story’s meaning is not just to emphasize God’s action in history to enlighten the people, but also to show that Jesus Christ is intended as Messiah, a liberator for ALL people.
Stories have power to transform and inspire no matter how fantastical they seem. Even if they don’t turn out the way they predict we keep on telling them, because we need to hear them, over and over.
I remember when a man who lived in the local shelter in Gloucester started to come to church at our parish of St. John’s. His name was David. He sat quietly in the back for weeks, and in time came up to join others for the Holy Communion meal. He said, “something's going on here.” He revealed nothing personal, except that he had a drinking problem. No one asked for more.
One day the office staff heard someone talking out loud in the sanctuary (open for prayer when the parish office was open, or people were in the building), and peeked in to investigate. They saw David standing at the lectern reading aloud to an empty church the biblical readings for the Sunday just past. I don’t think the church was really empty.
In time David vanished, as quickly as he had appeared. He left the place richer for his presence, and perhaps he received something himself.
I have a story I’m trying to write. You have a story. Theology has a story. Even Science has a story.
What might be the inside story the Wise Men would tell? I wonder if those ancient astrologers and sages faced some of the same problems and insights modern astronomers and astro physicists encounter? They could read the stars, and they knew the sky pretty well, but they couldn’t quite come up with a really good insight about the origins of the universe. For that they needed theology’s story. Their astronomical GPS wasn’t enough.
Even today, scientific calculations come up against a brick wall in the search for truth. Sometimes, they need theology, or let’s say insights from the mystical/spiritual/religious faith traditions. They need the Mystery some call God to fill in the blanks about the cosmos and its quantum beginnings.
Like the ancients who followed a star that the prophets advertised as leading to Divinity, scientists today are in respectful conversation with theologians they once dismissed as too non-scientific to be useful. A result a new discipline called astro-theology is evolving. (The Journal of Cosmology, based on the science of astronomy and mathematics, has a theology issue.)
When two or three gather together to share their gifts, there is Epiphany and epiphanies.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
2013.01.02 What is God Like, Really Anyway?
How can we possibly imagine that anyone who constantly hears, pray, sings, and reads “Oh praise HIM, Oh praise HIM, Alelluia Alleluia” and the like, will think of God as anything but male?
Godde needs a wardrobe change. It’s not fair to women who feel excluded from Divinity, and it’s not fair to men who may feel proud and powerful as demi-gods at first, but then suddenly realize what a set up it is. As Dad used to say, “we’re riding for a fall.”
And, most decidedly, it's not fair to God!
No, this vocabulary must change. We can do it. It’s not hard. In this new year I hope to write, and make it the case in my memoir, that God is not exclusively male.
Let’s hope it won’t take another century to revise our language and images of Divinity. Jesus of course was a man, a good and great one, divinized to a high degree. The Christ, however, is not a man. If Christ were a man, how could we seek and serve Christ in all persons, when half of these christ-bearing persons are female! !??
A friend recently wondered if God were really perfect and immutable and all the things she’d learned in church. It didn’t make sense to her, and, in an article she’d read and shared, the author had written that the God of the Bible was none of these things. In fact the biblical deity was quite moody and changed HIS divine mind regularly. HE had also made a very far from perfect creation program.
Sounds right to me. So..... language is not immutable.
God isn't perfect, because Godde chooses to mix it up with all of us. Divinity is about love not perfection, and we all know how blooming imperfect love is. We are free to give and receive love; so is Godde, although I happen to believe that God, more spacious of heart, is able to love a bit better and more gracefully than most of us are. And Godde consistently chooses connection over distance.
The Bible is a patriarchal document out of a patriarchal age. It’s language for God is all masculinized, though translations over time have made the language for humankind inclusive, so we address humankind as brothers AND sisters now. We can do more. So what if the word for God in Hebrew or Greek is gendered? English nouns have no gender. What are we afraid of?
This grand memoir of faith has a thrumming spiritual truth that vibrates through it and keeps us all wondering— which is the point. Let’s help the truth along.
Our religion consistently proclaims the glory of God, while our pronouns, with equal consistency, proclaim God’s maleness. Enough already.
Godde needs a wardrobe change. It’s not fair to women who feel excluded from Divinity, and it’s not fair to men who may feel proud and powerful as demi-gods at first, but then suddenly realize what a set up it is. As Dad used to say, “we’re riding for a fall.”
And, most decidedly, it's not fair to God!
No, this vocabulary must change. We can do it. It’s not hard. In this new year I hope to write, and make it the case in my memoir, that God is not exclusively male.
Let’s hope it won’t take another century to revise our language and images of Divinity. Jesus of course was a man, a good and great one, divinized to a high degree. The Christ, however, is not a man. If Christ were a man, how could we seek and serve Christ in all persons, when half of these christ-bearing persons are female! !??
A friend recently wondered if God were really perfect and immutable and all the things she’d learned in church. It didn’t make sense to her, and, in an article she’d read and shared, the author had written that the God of the Bible was none of these things. In fact the biblical deity was quite moody and changed HIS divine mind regularly. HE had also made a very far from perfect creation program.
Sounds right to me. So..... language is not immutable.
God isn't perfect, because Godde chooses to mix it up with all of us. Divinity is about love not perfection, and we all know how blooming imperfect love is. We are free to give and receive love; so is Godde, although I happen to believe that God, more spacious of heart, is able to love a bit better and more gracefully than most of us are. And Godde consistently chooses connection over distance.
The Bible is a patriarchal document out of a patriarchal age. It’s language for God is all masculinized, though translations over time have made the language for humankind inclusive, so we address humankind as brothers AND sisters now. We can do more. So what if the word for God in Hebrew or Greek is gendered? English nouns have no gender. What are we afraid of?
This grand memoir of faith has a thrumming spiritual truth that vibrates through it and keeps us all wondering— which is the point. Let’s help the truth along.
Our religion consistently proclaims the glory of God, while our pronouns, with equal consistency, proclaim God’s maleness. Enough already.
Monday, December 31, 2012
2012.31.12 Holy Innocence
Isn’t it true that we often remember, best and most lastingly, the small pieces of advice from wise teachers in elementary school when we are most vulnerably wide open to awe and wonder— before worldly sophistication sets in.
Here’s one from a third grade teacher shared by our parish priest ,who never forgot it. The children became tense at the sound of a loud approaching siren. The teacher asked what the siren meant. “Someone has been hurt,” they said, and called out their own fearful speculations: fire, an accident, an bad emergency.
The teacher listened to the children’s apprehensive associations. She affirmed them all with the compassion that only good listening can offer. Then she said: “All this is true, children, but remember too, that whenever you hear the sound of a siren, it also means that someone is on the way fast to bring help.”
The time between Nativity and Epiphany, when the Magi finally make it to Bethlehem, thanks to a good star + wise astro-physics and astro-theology, is a time for breathing after the rush and panic of conspicuous consumption.
It's a time for hope, enormous hope, unknowing hope.
Something brand new has happened, and we have no idea what it means yet. It’s also very dark time, full of many “sirens.” A time of mixed fear AND wonder.
When I was pregnant with each of my children and in their early infancy I felt the same—excited wondering, and also exhaustion from the weight of it, and the worry about whether this child would be all right, and would I be a good enough mother?
You know that any “child” will face all of life’s challenges, some more intense than others. Being born whole is a blessing, but only the first step. In church, therefore, we keep on singing hymns that include cradle and cross, because we know we need to keep hope alive amidst the sirens that signal both hurt and help.
For who knows? Three weird desert types, from the east or the streets, may just ride in, on camels or in hot green sneakers, with wisdom and gifts that may get us through the night, help us understand that there is more than hurt and fear in store—always.
The third graders and their teacher had it right. Help is on the way, and some of it is up to us.
Here’s one from a third grade teacher shared by our parish priest ,who never forgot it. The children became tense at the sound of a loud approaching siren. The teacher asked what the siren meant. “Someone has been hurt,” they said, and called out their own fearful speculations: fire, an accident, an bad emergency.
The teacher listened to the children’s apprehensive associations. She affirmed them all with the compassion that only good listening can offer. Then she said: “All this is true, children, but remember too, that whenever you hear the sound of a siren, it also means that someone is on the way fast to bring help.”
The time between Nativity and Epiphany, when the Magi finally make it to Bethlehem, thanks to a good star + wise astro-physics and astro-theology, is a time for breathing after the rush and panic of conspicuous consumption.
It's a time for hope, enormous hope, unknowing hope.
Something brand new has happened, and we have no idea what it means yet. It’s also very dark time, full of many “sirens.” A time of mixed fear AND wonder.
When I was pregnant with each of my children and in their early infancy I felt the same—excited wondering, and also exhaustion from the weight of it, and the worry about whether this child would be all right, and would I be a good enough mother?
You know that any “child” will face all of life’s challenges, some more intense than others. Being born whole is a blessing, but only the first step. In church, therefore, we keep on singing hymns that include cradle and cross, because we know we need to keep hope alive amidst the sirens that signal both hurt and help.
For who knows? Three weird desert types, from the east or the streets, may just ride in, on camels or in hot green sneakers, with wisdom and gifts that may get us through the night, help us understand that there is more than hurt and fear in store—always.
The third graders and their teacher had it right. Help is on the way, and some of it is up to us.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
2012.30.12 Mary, Joseph, and Santa Claus
In a neighboring town in a Boston suburb we saw a creche set-up, effulgent with strings of lights, strung about on hapless trees. Creche figures stood tall, gathered in a threesome: Mary, Joseph and Santa.
The sight amused and teased me. The first temptation was to scoff and scorn such cheap excess. The second was to lament the way the religious meaning of Christmas has been all but lost. And the third was to wonder if Santa was an image of Divinity, of Christ.
In important ways Santa is a christ figure. In equally important ways, Santa falls short, because the old elf's generosity and love has conditions (naughty and nice lists.) But.....Godde's love in Christ offers unconditional love.
Christmas is surrounded by other holy day traditions with similar meanings. Hannukah is a celebration of liberation for the Jewish people, ancient and modern. The day after Christmas, Kwanzaa is celebrated. It’s a pan-African celebration of “first fruits”—all the best offerings and gifts coming together in a celebration of shared life. Kwanzaa started during the Black Freedom Movement in the United States in1966, but has ancient roots in Egypt.
All these days honor the mystery of the human spirit. Religious interpretations attribute a portion of that mysterious expansive spirit to God working within human strength, empowering us to go beyond our limits for love, liberation, and generosity.
Kwanzaa’s founder, Dr. Maulana Karenga, chose to make the holiday cultural rather than religious, so that people of all faiths could gather to celebrate.
American culture right now has more Santa-awareness than Christ-awareness. Christmas has become more holly day than holy day, a day more cultural than religious.
Some Christians rue this as religious loss, but I wonder if it’s gain?
The sight amused and teased me. The first temptation was to scoff and scorn such cheap excess. The second was to lament the way the religious meaning of Christmas has been all but lost. And the third was to wonder if Santa was an image of Divinity, of Christ.
In important ways Santa is a christ figure. In equally important ways, Santa falls short, because the old elf's generosity and love has conditions (naughty and nice lists.) But.....Godde's love in Christ offers unconditional love.
Christmas is surrounded by other holy day traditions with similar meanings. Hannukah is a celebration of liberation for the Jewish people, ancient and modern. The day after Christmas, Kwanzaa is celebrated. It’s a pan-African celebration of “first fruits”—all the best offerings and gifts coming together in a celebration of shared life. Kwanzaa started during the Black Freedom Movement in the United States in1966, but has ancient roots in Egypt.
All these days honor the mystery of the human spirit. Religious interpretations attribute a portion of that mysterious expansive spirit to God working within human strength, empowering us to go beyond our limits for love, liberation, and generosity.
Kwanzaa’s founder, Dr. Maulana Karenga, chose to make the holiday cultural rather than religious, so that people of all faiths could gather to celebrate.
American culture right now has more Santa-awareness than Christ-awareness. Christmas has become more holly day than holy day, a day more cultural than religious.
Some Christians rue this as religious loss, but I wonder if it’s gain?
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