Don't lose it
This is the fourth time. Three times today have I started this blogpost. And three times come back to continue it and found it had erased itself. In, not a rage, not a snit, but simple surrender, I’ve said to hell with it, deciding not to blog today, when today was this morning. Closed the filthy beast down, and gone off to sip my Black and eat an antepenultimate serving of my magical oyster dressing.
Then another mug of Black and a part of a link of Tallahassee sausage. Finally another mug of Black and a tiny mincemeat pie.
Then ultimately the decision to revert to what I’ve not done in nearly a decade, well it was May 2011 wasn’t it, i.e., draft what I want to say on Word before I copy and paste into my +Time blog.
It begins - - Christmas is over and we are heading for the New Year. No, Christmas is NOT over, Advent ended with Christmas Eve at 2400 hours Dec24, and Christmas began at 0000 hours Dec25 and goes until January 6th, Epiphany. Not only is Christmas not over, we have barely begun Christmas which, for us in our particular Christian cultic practice, is not a Day but a Season, with plenty of Time to contemplate.
Reading, I like to read. I read some sensible things and even more goofy things. One of the goofy things I just read because, seasonally controversial and therefore potentially profitably attention-getting, it was just published, is an essay about how better off we'd be if we give up the Virgin Birth. How much? Well, eight. Eight, that much, many. Here's a link to the article
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/unsystematictheology/2018/12/eight-things-we-gain-when-we-lose-the-virgin-birth/
Comment, yes I mean to comment, gently, perhaps ignorantly, and momentarily will return to do so, but got lost scrolling down in this online flood of memories from many families' Christmas gatherings, some hilarious, many bittersweet, some emotionally catastrophic, nearly all of them stirring one's own past
https://twitter.com/JeffLoveness/status/1210379021831196672?partner=applenews&ad-keywords=APPLEMOBILE®ion=written_through&asset_id=100000006886139&uri=nyt:/article/7971505f-c6b1-5212-b092-253670acc87e
And recalling some of my own memories, including that my mother, whom I loved dearly as a son does, held onto stories of tragedies she had read about or seen on television over the years, and stories you really didn't need to hear the first time, much less again and again, about various family members over their lifetimes, and told the stories so often, especially to me at breakfast, that they eventually seared the brain - - until one day I said kindly and gently and lovingly as a heartbreaking story began again, ”mama, please don't, you've told me that story, and there's nothing I can do about it, and it makes me sad all the rest of the day, please don't tell me that story" and she would stop and go on to something else.
Though I always did it gently, each occasion reminded me of the English topic-changer or pregnant-pause-filler, "Do you think we'll have rain?" that Puddleglum the marsh-wiggle says when he and the children unwittingly encounter Prince Rilian and the witch riding on horseback, that day on their travels. The witch asks too many questions and Puddleglum says "I think we'll keep our own confidence" and then, gazing up at the sky, adds "Do you think we'll have rain?" Of all Narnia stories, The Silver Chair is not my favorite, but Puddleglum is my hero, and the most real if you know the stories and have gone there and do not want to come back. So click the Twitter link, whoever likes, scroll down, and read until either you tire of nodding your head “YES!” or your heart breaks.
But this morning’s trigger: from Patheos, which comes by email regularly and sometimes I read some, though seldom because I’m very little into spiritual writing - - biblical often, religious and spiritual not so much:
"Eight Things We Gain When We Lose the Virgin Birth"
The author says get real, give it up. The virgin birth is from Matthew’s and Luke’s Nativity narratives - - our beloved Christmas stories that we mix and blend such that three kings arrive on their camels to join the shepherds and sheep at the stable - - with Matthew tracing it back to Isaiah 7. Then institutional religion, as some scathingly refer to it, finds itself obliged to reduce stories to doctrine, or in worst and most authoritative cases to dogma; and, by power of persuasion, ballot, and force of arms if necessary (again, see Philip Jenkins’ book Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years) to Creed. We need the Bible. We need the stories, to keep alive the stories we love, along with songs that we sing about them. Stories are to be told and cherished and passed on. Doctrines and the Creeds, which are archaic products of the world view of their ancient time, can be shelved in the back of the prayerbook under “Historical Documents of the Church”. Intelligent people can read, hear and enjoy stories direct from the Bible, but do not need to be told what they must believe doctrinally; nor prescribed to stand and say every Sunday, a symbol of faith that holds anachronistically to world views of a primitive age, just as our age will be primitive to future generations.
Beloved stories, yes, to read and celebrate. Doctrines, set too rigid to be updated from time to time, nor is there the requisite authority to update, do not need to be renounced, which would stain the magical stories; nor do Creeds need to be rubbished; simply recorded in the archives and laid to rest along with the Athanasian Creed.
As for fanatics who demand that everyone else think and believe as they do, ignore them.
Ignore also, calls to lose the virgin birth. It's part of our Christmas Story. Enjoy.
RSF&PTL
T
top pic, from online, the solar eclipse ring of fire at its most awesome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjNN-yD9j1U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P6X3IWLECY