Easter thoughts

 I got an email from my local hardware store the other day, informing me that they would be closed this Sunday for Easter. The funny thought struck me then that the whole holiday is based on the idea that Jesus got up and went back to work that morning after a pretty rough weekend. Now get back in there and sell me some grass seed and deck stain!

Christian societies have had a conflicted relationship with the sabbath for a long time, especially in the United States, a country founded on commerce even before it was a country. Each colony was a profit-seeking venture. Communities of conscience just provided the recruits willing to undertake the danger and hardship of the perilous ocean voyage and carving out a foothold, for the sake of a place where they could have a dominant role in governance. Religious freedom indeed. But your backers expect more than thoughts and prayers.

I've been out of the church scene for decades, but the logic of Jesus as I understood it then was that we would all do better if we looked out for each other rather than doing the work of tyrants or aspiring in even a small way to be one. This does lead to a world without concentrated wealth, but also without poverty.

At its most extreme, sabbath observance restricts virtually everything that we've come to associate with weekends. Work, play, travel, commerce, toil of nearly any kind must halt. That would include your Easter egg hunt, and a whole lot of the food preparation for Easter dinner. You'd have to rely on the labor of unbelievers, exploiting that they are damned by their unbelief. "Sucks to be you! But this lamb is cooked to perfection!"

Fortunately, we in America have embraced Sabbath Lite. By the words of the Constitution, you are free to express whatever faith you have in whatever way suits you. Just once in a while will you run into an interruption of the seven-day retail and recreation week. The term "business day" refers to specific types of business. You face little stigma for doing whatever you want on weekends, because those days are your allotted little share of your precious life, ceded back to you by the lords of the economy.

Sabbath breaking feeds the economy. And it erodes righteousness no more than sitting on your hands for a day would have done. You get the same choices that you would have on any other day about how to treat the people you deal with.

A scheduled sabbath gathering does create an opportunity for regular accountability to the community. Tying it to your specific religion limits that community, however, and might weaken the bonds overall to the larger secular community that provides the real engine of your economy and the legal framework that -- theoretically -- protects you.

"Might" weaken. Look at how the church is pitted against itself right now, between the "open and accepting" congregations and the Christian nationalist theocrats. Quick now: how many protestant denominations can you name in 30 seconds? And that's long after the split between eastern and western Catholicism. Christians have been arguing about the true nature and word of their headliner since about a week after he disappeared from every place in the mortal world except for the occasional miraculous piece of toast, or scam Shroud.

My own family embraced an easygoing philosophy toward other faiths: "One God, many names." It's an easy out if you want to go to a certain church but don't want to get sucked into a holy war. Other faiths of all sorts have their own adherents to the idea that we can all tie our values to a superior or supreme entity if that helps, praying in a familiar language. This attitude drives the fundamentalists cross-eyed with rage.

"One true faith! One true faith! One true faith!" There can be only one. The all-powerful deity needs propitiating, dammit. Now get in here and propitiate exactly as we taught you.

Hard core attitudes like that grow naturally from the exclusionary nature of source texts. If you saturate yourself with one brand of righteousness, it can't help but repel the concept that someone else might be okay too. Maybe you don't make direct war on them, but you know that you won't be seeing them in the Great Beyond. Go a little deeper and you can't associate with them at all. A little deeper yet and you can't even countenance their existence.

I can't tell you how to interpret Easter for yourself. Not even going to try. In most ways it is a day like any other. There is war, sickness, atrocity, suffering, privation, and injustice all unremedied. Nearly every problem is created by humans devaluing other humans. The will to stop it can never come from outside. It's a personal choice.

Happy darkness

The public controversy over what to say to people at this time of year got me wondering what life would be like if we had evolved with a scientific approach from the very beginning, instead of a superstitious one. We wouldn't go whack down an evergreen or appoint a mock king we would have to kill at the end of a week of partying. We might build something like Stonehenge just because it's so damn cool.

"I'm feeling a little down, since the days are so short."

"Here, have a mild euphoric, and stand in front of this light for an hour."

Partying, artificial light, and comfort food are scientifically supportable responses to seasonal depression. Those would happen anyway. But around the punch bowl we'd be talking about the angle of the Earth's axis, and the speed at which our planet journeys around the sun to complete a year. There might be a Stonehenge in the back yard of every family with school age children. And one in every city park, because they're just so damn cool. Plus, we'd be looking at the stars with whatever technology had been invented so far.

I won't say we'd live in a kinder and gentler society. One would hope that peer-reviewed research would have long ago dispelled many of the bases for bigotry and oppression. Science is simply an approach and an attitude. But it was interesting to think of this time of year without the amalgamation of traditions based on invented stories and placatory rituals.

Imagine no Black Friday.
It's easy if you try.
No commercial onslaught
Telling you "Buy! Buy! Buy!"

We can't subtract it from our lives and pretend it never existed. Too many people are too invested in it, emotionally as well as financially. Chances are, the ones most financially invested are the least interested in peace and good will, but the rest of us grew up with one form or another of the communal feeling that people feel when faced with darkness and implacable cold. We really sense that we need each other at a time like that. Come spring, go screw yourself. But right now, we want company, warmth, and good cheer.

May you find it. And may it at last extend beyond the lighted circle in the darkest night. We could use a little more good will.

A dark truth becomes ever more obvious

As a Baby Boomer, I accepted without question that the human race wanted to last a long time and grow ever more friendly toward each other. How could I have been so blind to the fact that nearly half of all people are outright hostile to such a utopia? I joined vast numbers of others who bought into a vision of a world beyond hatred and divisiveness, unaware that the very concept fostered deeper and more bitter divisions.

The descendants of that world view continue to work toward it in spite of the continuing opposition. We dig through the muck of hostility and greed, thinking we're building a permanent road to higher ground, only to see the mire close behind us and grow deeper in front.

Believers in a higher power have an advantage when it comes to organizing. That's the way in which they will gather and march forth to destroy a secular society created by ethical -- but non-religious -- citizens who may come to outnumber the believers in a specific, narrow version of religious doctrine. The believers in their small groups can plan their campaigns of violence and sabotage in the name of goodness and righteousness. With the stamp of God's approval they can dedicate themselves to destroying the enemies of their belief system. These enemies include religious people who believe that believers in different faiths can and should get along.

Any way you look, you can see a final confrontation brewing. Obstinacy and superstition demand it.

In the Christian tradition, God will whisk the virtuous true believers straight to heaven before the shit hits the fan. It would be interesting if this roster included a lot of people who were not scripture-waving churchgoers.

Meanwhile, in another Abrahamic religion, the self-styled Islamic State is trying to bring about their own version of the final battle, as described in an article from 2016 about the attacks to date in Europe and America.

No religious narrative has to be true for religious warfare to bring about the end of our species. Everything does happen for a reason. Unfortunately, the reason turns out to be that humans are suckers for suicidal delusions.

Pop and sacraments

Religion and rock and roll were both ruined for me by the same thing: I started really listening to the words. I would not go back to my old ways. But it makes me a conspicuous element in a front pew at a Christmas Eve service.

I have no quarrel with many of the general principles espoused by the followers of God, but church has become more than just a boring interlude before we get gooey breakfast pastries on our way home to enjoy the rest of the day. And I don't mean that in a sappy TV movie way. "More" in this case means "more mind-bendingly encumbered with wacky beliefs about supernatural beings and human sacrifices," and "more disturbingly filled with group chants and rituals."

Add to this my aversion to singing in public and you get one stressed unbeliever on public display among a bunch of happy Christians.

I do mean Christian in the best sense. If I was going to be one, I would be one with them. The sermon was about welcoming strangers. I am the habitual stranger. I do not assimilate.

I hope my Episcopalian friends who are the cellist's friends and fellow musicians will forget anything they might have seen that betrayed my lack of Christmas spirit. They kindly placed me by the choir with whom the cellist sang as a guest, little realizing the position in which it placed me with my conscience and my lack of vocal range and control.

I'm a back-row churchgoer who accidentally ended up stuck in prime real estate last night. I like what they do. I'm glad they do it. I just don't need to do it with them. I prayed that someone deserving would come up and ask me with puppy-dog eyes if I would kindly give up my front-row seat to their ailing mother or something so I could slither back to my natural habitat looking at the backs of a bunch of heads. I might even be able to slip out the side door into the comforting raw fog that made the darkness that much darker.  But no, of course it didn't happen. Would it have made me believe in miracles? I had to sit there looking suitably reverent while the words ran in my head as if I was saying them but I could not open my lips to affirm a belief I do not hold. If judge there be, I hope I get a few points for honesty before a foot to the forehead starts me down the sliding board to eternal fire. But I will no doubt get a few demerits for being a poor guest and not joining in with the culture with wholehearted verve just to help them keep the party at full festivity. Really, what IS wrong with me?

Strange as it may seem, I was happy to be there for the reasons I was there: the cellist is loved and respected by this warm group who also surround and connect with her father. The mortal remains of her mother and brother rest on the church grounds. As much as I wanted it to be over, I would not have wanted it not to happen. And I did not want to just send her out on the foggy night alone to do her thing and then come back.

Suddenly I understand just wanting to shut up and play a drum. It can mean whatever you want it to mean while keeping a nice beat for the other celebrants. Too bad that wasn't an option. Music Director James Fitzpatrick asked me if I wanted to sing and I couldn't decline fast enough. If he'd offered extraneous percussion I would have joined immediately. Well, maybe not tambourine.

Every believer picks and chooses scripture and interpretation. At what point should you cease to call yourself by a familiar denominational designation and honestly examine your spirituality without the cocoon of an institution? You can find your social capital in any number of affiliations. And some of us really are reclusive. That may not make us defective. We'll simply never join a group to represent our rights and beliefs. Talk about an invisible minority. We'll just be known as "that weirdo in the front row who didn't say any of the prayers or sing any of the hymns and carols," or other descriptions psychological or anatomical. As long as you feel freaked out by us as individuals rather than a monolithic bloc we can't ask for much more.

Save the world?

When I was young my father used to ask me, "What did you do today to make the world a better place?" Or it might have been, "What did you do for mankind today?" In any case, it was a call to serve a higher purpose than personal gratification or even personal salvation. He wanted me to think globally. He never specified which humans or whose specific world I was to improve by my presence.

Maybe I was supposed to figure out the narrowing parameters for myself. In that case he failed completely.

Some people who serve what they call goodness feel they do their best work by exterminating the agents of badness. This category produces holy warriors.

Some people serve goodness by drawing power to themselves, so that they may have a powerful influence on human affairs.

Some people serve goodness by eschewing power and wealth. They try to lead by example. Some of them through the centuries have generated compelling legends over which later generations argue bitterly, further slicing the concept of goodness into narrow strips of turf turned into battlefields and homelands of the One True Faith.

True Believers of any sect regard nonbelievers as disposable. We are not all in this together. No one will unify a human race made up of exclusive divisions. Only if every single human identified with its own unique existence and the shared experience of being human would the race have any chance at unity. And without unity we are doomed to die in blood and fire, as the holy warriors fervently hope.

Unity does not mean uniformity. Uniformity would mask differences and lead to internal stresses that would eventually break out in civil strife. Unity requires an easygoing attitude and thoughtful cooperation. Such an attitude does destroy zealotry. This frightens zealotry no end, leading to the saber rattling that threatens us in every age. The weapons of war get more horrific as technology advances. The horror deters humanity from flinging itself so readily into war, but some ideologies consider it more important to die for the right reason than to live for easygoing unity. If it really looks like the majority will choose to learn to get along, some true believer will be ready to push the button to send us all to judgment.

The current state of the Republicans illustrates the power that zealotry has gained over a nation once supposedly proud of its ability to give people of many backgrounds a place to flourish under the warm sun of freedom. The truth is darker, of course, but for a very short time around the early 1970s it did look like we meant it. Immigrants and strivers had risen during the 20th Century to make the mythical American Dream very gradually somewhat more inclusive.

In good times people tend to graph those rising curves of prosperity right up through the roof. The same is true of inclusiveness and social freedom. The social turmoil of the 1960s led to a nice party in the 1970s. The party atmosphere masked the fact that bitter resentment was festering in the darkness outside the various circles of light in which happy people danced. The forces of division and exclusion would not be denied. While the celebrants graphed their happiness up toward an amazing future in which a unified humanity cleaned up its own planet and then journeyed to the stars, the frustrated bigots marshaled their forces.

Force is the key to conflict. If the argument is not going your way, whip out a gun and shoot your opponent. Change the basis of discourse to one that suits you. If God is on your side you cannot lose. Even in death you will be exalted because you were doing the right thing. The other side claims God as well? Blasphemers! Theirs is a false god or a sinful misinterpretation of holy word. See how easy it is to keep the bloodletting legitimate?

As long as we praise warriors as the best among us we will remain locked in a death spiral. Thus the world cannot be saved. Humanity is doomed by its own idealism that extends even beyond death. As long as we force each other to prove our devotion by facing extermination we will continue to treat each other as prey.

How do you end hatred when so many people love it so much? Even people who claim to be tolerant will rise to some bait and show themselves willing to fight the ultimate battle, to end some other person's all-too-brief span or have their own ended, just to prove a point.

So what's to save?

Religious Extremism

A suspected terrorist from a radical Shaker sect blew himself up today while attempting to assemble a bomb.

A statement from the extremist group Shaker Jihad stated that Brother Jacob was unfortunately overcome by the Holy Spirit while performing the tricky task of installing the detonator. Giving way to the tremulous trance for which the Shaker sect is named, he set off the explosive.

See, it just doesn't work for some religions.