Happy Pagan Winter Festival of Rebirth Day!
An interesting phenomenon here that I haven't noticed in other cities (quite possibly because I avoid public places like the plague around Christmas) is what I've taken to calling "Las Santas Mugrientas": The Filthy Santas. These are random street people who sit on the sidewalk, dressed in full-on Santa regalia, and are just dirty as hell. Their suits are dirty, their faces, hands...personalities...this one guy, the prototypical example, has a beard...only it's gray and scraggly and gross. I'd like to think he was going for the "I got sooty coming down the chimney" look, but... I imagine him telling the little children to "come sit on Santa's lap and tell him what you want for Christmas" and shudder.
This makes it all the more clear why it's the Three Wise Men who bring gifts to children at Christmastime here. Cause if someone were to catch even a glimpse of a Filthy Santa at an impressionable age...jeez-o-man. I, for one, would be saying to myself, "wait a damn minute here...this motherfucker is going to be coming down my chimney in the middle of the night? Eatin' my cookies? Oh hell no." It would scare the crap out of me.
Oh yeah, happy solstice everyone! I actually get way more excited for solstice these days than Christmas...especially in
Had an interesting solstice-related experience this week. On Sunday, I decided that I wanted to spend some more time this week in study; specifically religious/spiritual studies.
So to recap: I had already decided to focus more on my spiritual studies this week. And then the first thing I read tells me that the week will culminate in a day of heightened spiritual energy. Pretty neat huh?
So I thumbed through the Tao De Ching again, read The Gospel of Thomas (one of the Apocryphal books of Christianity, very different from the accepted scripture and really cool), and have now set out to read parts of the New Testament. I figure it's Jesus's birthday...might as well check out his biography for once.
Some interesting research I've been doing is about the "historical Jesus" question. In my opinion, he's a mythic character designed to represent each person's individual path to enlightenment. Whether or not he was a real person is immaterial to me; he's a metaphor. There is a whole lot of material written about this topic of course; I won't go into all the details, arguments, etc. Suffice to say it's a pretty compelling argument, as far as I'm concerned.
So I'm reading some essays written by literalist Christians...and they have to run themselves in these circles trying to prove that the bible is history, when the straightest line is mystic. One guy says "the only possible explanation for how Jesus's life so completely mirrors Jacob's is that Jesus was Jacob reincarnated!" The next guy: "the fact that Joshua and Jesus are so eerily similar proves without a doubt that God is real and the bible is his literal message! How else could their life stories match up so closely otherwise?" Uhhhh...here's a theory guys; what if the guys who wrote the New Testament actually READ THE OLD TESTAMENT??? And maybe used some of the same imagery for their updated stories, because people were already familiar with them, etc.? No? Not possible?
Sorry, I'm not trying to be elitist or condescending, really I'm not. I have a lot of my own blind spots and assumed truths: wearing pants in public for example. I'm pretty well stuck on that one. And I'm definitely not mocking people who believe in God, are religious, etc., because it should be pretty obvious that I am myself committed to my own spiritual development...and part of that is accepting all the bat-shit loony ways other people want to express their beliefs. That being said...these fundies, man...they scare me more than Filthy Santa.
Anyways, that's where I am: sitting in
posted by the_pope_of_chilitown at 11:50 AM
4 Comments:
The Old Testament!!! What's That?!!! I want to be a gross dirty old Santa one day. That could be cool. With my white rickety van.
I pulled out a bible the other day to learn more about Jacob and the angel he wrestled. For me, the passage was practically unintelligible. A handful of paragraphs that make it ridiculously improbable that any one person could form a literalist view of the bible; much less that more than one person could agree on such an interpretation.
But I digress. This Christmas I have endeavored to spoil the ever-livin-crap out of my kids. Most of the year I reject the notion that kids need toys. Rocks, sticks, bugs, puddles. These are all kids need. But on this holiday, my attitude tilts considerably in the other direction. Toy robots were at the top of the list this year, so I got three of the better toy robots out there.
One thing about ordering online: you should probably get out a tape-measure and use it to help you visualize the size of the things you buy. One robot, in particular, is physically much larger than I had imagined. No harm done in this case, but being so far wrong in understanding what I'm buying is a cheap lesson, I guess.
I've had that same experience (re: your foray into the bible) with pretty much every piece of scripture I've ever tried to read...I've almost invariably found that reading other peoples' interpretations and expositions to be more helpful (wikipedia for example :). A big part of that is how old the texts are, of course; they just don't speak to the modern ear/mind clearly, in my experience...
That being said, I'm discovering something new as I work my way through different texts now; I think the idea of these texts is a deep and repeated experience; you have to go over them and over them, keep yourself open to the thoughts, feelings, and reactions they engender, and then take the time to really reflect on your reactions. Like how the best music just makes you feel a certain way, and you can't really describe it, etc. I think, when you discover a book of any sort, scripture included, that you find moves you, the idea is to pore over it and dig as deeply (and as patiently) as you can to figure out both what it's causing you to feel, and how/why it's doing it.
Merry Christmas!
I hope you are enjoying your Christmas. Heidi and I spent a Christmas in Bordeaux one year, and despite the great surroundings, found that we were a bit melancholy to be away from home on that particular day. So, we empathize with you if that is your situation. And, if you're engaged in a wild fling with some flamenco-dancing goddess, which has basically erased the thought of family, and Christmas from your mind, then we'll quit worrying about your mood and start asking for pictures.
Remember, this is my vicarious vacation you're taking. I'm going to need something juicy here to replace the spot in my vacation-memory that is now occupied by the "faint smell of urine".
Seriously though: Merry Christmas.
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