Some Thoughts and Prayers for Christmas

May we be reminded this Christmas of seeking to fulfill the gift of presence… And how to live out Christmas gifts his year

To be present or have a beneficial presence within our parenting, to be present with our compassion for others, and to be positive and present with any and all expressions of caring for one another…

What is Christmas All About?

Let us affirm, in Mary’s name, that Christmas is all about the gift of love given to all of us; It is about being of service to the child, and to all our children; Its all about being and living as a benefit to all humankind, starting with Christmas and all year long…

The Promise and The Hope

When God wants an important thing done in this world, or when there is a wrong that needs to be righted, God goes about it in a very singular and consistent way… No, God does not release vengeful thunderbolts or disastrous earthquakes to punish or to beset us- God seeks justice, wisdom and compassion.

God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps to a humble mother and father…

And their guidance, perseverance, and desire to teach and serve, to love and to heal, they put the idea of love and the ideals of justice into that child’s heart. Then God waits…

The great and significant events of this world are not found in recounting the fierce battles, the close elections, or in surviving natural disasters. The great events happen every day, every few minutes, when a child is born…

Each child born comes to us with a message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting good will to become incarnate in and through each human life…

Thoughts after reading The Magnificat ( Ave Maria passage in Luke…)

One of the most enduring inner lessons we are given from Mary’s life is that we are all to live beyond our egos or any self serving ,personal desires. If we identify ourselves as being spiritual, then we are willing to open our hearts to human need. To the degree that our hearts are open, our actions will be compassionate. To the degree our hearts are willing, we make ourselves ready and willing to receive an improbable blessing…

Because many of our life experiences or relationships or challenges comes to us unexpectedly, or not when it would be convenient, does not invalidate its importance or is value for us. In fact, across the Myths and stories of faith that span all of humankind, it is the appearance of the improbable, the awkward, the uncomfortable, and the seemingly impossible that will often open up that which is spiritual and gracious for us…

A Christmas Grace

Dear God;

Whatever else be lost among the years, let us keep Christmas a shining thing:

Whatever doubts assail us, or what fears-Let us hold close one day, remembering

Its poignant meaning for the hearts of all mankind

Let us get back our childlike faith again.

Grace Neil Crowell

The Christmas Prayer of Pope John XXIII

O sweet child of Bethlehem, grant that we might share, with all our hearts, in the profound mystery of Christmas. Put into the hearts of {men and women} the desire for peace which the world seeks so desperately, and the peace that only an understanding of you can give.

Help us to know each other better, and to live as brothers and sisters of the same God. Reveal to them your beauty, holiness and purity. Awaken in their hearts, the love and gratitude for your infinite goodness.

Join them together in Your love. And give us Thy heavenly peace.   AMEN

An Introduction to Western Spiritual Traditions: Advent & Christmas

Question for centering and reflection: How important are the origins of things? Does it seem important to know the original story before accepting its importance for you?

What is idolatry? Are you idolatrous? how does our confusion between spiritual values and societal expectations clash? In what ways can they be reconciled? How does one decide how best to keep and observe the holiday season?

Ancient Origins and The The Middle Eastern Experience;

Early Judaism and The Pagan cycles of nature; The Roman festivals, and pre-Christain practices

Our world is, for the most part, aligned with linear and time-bound thinking. It seems to generally follow a historical approach where each person, each event has a birth, a maturity, and a death- all in a neat arrangement of years throughout the centuries of civilization.

However, the ancient world and the world from which we receive our religious and spiritual teachings and instruction was a far different place. There the years of one’s life were bound tightly to the seasons of the year and the seasons of one’s soul.

This was not a simple, linear or mathematical progression; instead, there was an understanding that we are all a distinct yet unified part of the Cosmos- the divinely ordered pattern and design of life, death, and rebirth.

Originally, most religious festivals, holidays, and celebrations has their origin in the cycles of the seasons, and in the rhythms that exist between heaven and earth. The Sun and the seasons, when observed, gave     rise to patterning of planting and harvesting, and celebrations around significant events when the seasons changed.

These rhythms of seeding and harvesting, for example, gave us the origins for the rites of Spring, new life, hope and the the Rites of Harvest and Thanksgiving, abundant, gratitude, and preparation for the winter that lies ahead. When we extrapolate from these seasonal events, and place a spiritual and a religious meaning on to them, we find ourselves at the original meanings of the holidays people in the West celebrate & observe.

Early Judaism and Pagan cycles

In the Ancient Near  East, the world was populated by nomadic peoples and roving gods- it seemed as if each tribe or clan had a special deity that guided or admonished them. It was a polytheistic panoply of gods and goddesses, good and evil spirits, characters and consorts that populated the reality and the imagination of these tribal bands. from languages that differed, to the gods they worshipped, there was no unifying beliefs or themes apart from the celebration of seasonal changes. Most of the deities they would claim had direct connections to the weather patterns and the qualities and experiences a nomadic people would encounter- wind, water, sand, stars, and the moon… each being a special god or goddess that provides or punishes the people based on the outcome of natural phenomena such as having enough water to grow a successful crop so no one would starve.

At or around the year 2000 B.C., much of this religious and natural landscape changed. There was a dramatic shift in religious life and in the consciousness of the people who would become known as the Hebrews. They began a shifted in their religious beliefs , moving from a wide assortment of gods and goddesses that was still popular in great civilizations as Egypt, China, and Greece, to becoming more exclusively centered on one supreme God and forsaking or at least demoting all the others.

This parallels the loss of the matriarchy in primitive religions and the fall of the goddesses as being an equal to the god, and it also is CO-evolutionary to the origins and the dominance of the bicameral mind that now so dominates all of Western thought. From a left brain, male oriented world view, we come to the religious shift toward a supreme male god among the Hebrews called Yahweh.

Originally a storm or thunder and lightening God, Yahweh achieved supreme status over the others as the God who could be the most influential and the most powerful one among the many that were worshipped in the areas of Palestine and the Ancient Near East. In the world and beliefs of the Hebrew nations, their Yahweh replaced all the Assyrian gods and goddesses, all the Caananite festivals of seeding and harvesting, and all the Babylonian legends, myths and observances… not that they did not borrow from those traditions in their teaching stories, ethics, wisdom, or prayers … but they did manage to create the Western world’s first distinctively monotheistic religion, which by its very nature and teachings, can into conflict with the beliefs of the larger pagan world and all the festivals they observed.

What the ancient Hebrews and later, the early Christians chose to do was to try to eliminate any festivals and celebrations that they found too offensive, or whose practices were too sensual, explicit, or that might undermine the ethical standards they were trying hard to uphold or impose. If that strategy did not work, and the people and their ‘folk soul” required certain holidays, then these Western religious leaders hit upon a brilliant and prudent strategy- accommodation and alteration- give the people their festivals, but change their symbols slightly and change the meaning of the day to accommodate the belief system that they were trying to teach.

From this strategy, we, the children of this Western heritage, have received our many holidays and observances- each with a different meaning that their original observance and beliefs: from Halloween, to the Christmas tree, from  Candlemas to the Easter egg- each was an accommodation to a Pagan ritual that was reinterpreted to fit the Western Judeo- Christian calendar. ( more on all of these days later…)

A simple example; Setting the day for Christmas as December 25th… During Roman times, there were seasonal festivals linked with the Greco- Roman mythology and with the ancient Etruscans who first occupied much of Italy and the Adriatic world. There was also a wholesale adoption of the Mithras cult from Persia who was their god of the Sun.  After the Fall of the year, these early tribal indigenous peoples would mark the “dying” of the year or the time when darkness arrived early with the withdrawal of the Sun from their fields and from their lives, and the progress of the darkness  into the cold, harsh, often bleak winter. ( of course, the farther North you go, the more significant this cycle is- among the Celts, Teutons, and the Norse peoples, this is a highly dramatic, even life threatening event… by the way, they are the ones who gave us the Christmas tree, mistletoe, the red Santa, reindeer, snow men, and other fanciful delights…)

The Roman festival held during the winter solstice- the time when the days astronomically are the  shortest and the night the longest, was known as Saturnalia. Saturn was the great taskmaster and disciplinarian of the Gods; where ever humanity needed a correction, a karmic lesson, or some discipline, Saturn was usually there.

This dying of the year, with all its anxiety and foreboding had one redeeming factor associated with it. Since the ancient people had no complete or scientific understanding of the axial tilt and annual rotation of the Earth around the Sun, they attributed the reasons for the seasons as the grace and the blessings of the supernatural or of the Gods whims and favors towards humankind.

When the saw the days beginning to lengthen again, they interpreted it as the strength and the power of the Sun to over come Saturn, and the light, hope, warmth and joy would return to the Earth and to her people. They called this first day of lengthening Calends and it marked the festival also known as Sol Invictus- the Invincible Sun.

Later, when the Christians of the fourth century (336 ACE to be exact when they held the 1st midnight Mass) wanted to replace this holiday with one of their own, they neatly substituted the Sun for the SON- and chose the darkest time of the year for when the light of the world, Christ Jesus, would be born to all humanity… brilliant move?!!  What happened at Saturnalia?  On or approximately December 17th and lasting for a week or so, the celebration of the Sun’s return  was marked by acts of charity and kindness- debts and grudges were forgiven, wars interrupted or postponed, courts and businesses were closed; Slaves were given equality; and other benevolence… that is, until people caught on and confused this suspension of norms for a license to misbehave- soon, like the Mardi Gras, this festival once rooted in compassion, became a time of unbridled mischief and vice.

What does survive from those times was the custom of giving gifts to friends and family: especially dolls, waxed fruit, and candles.  At any rate, it was one change that has gone unchallenged by all except the scholars for the last 16  centuries. There was a calendar mistake that made it the 25th; it was to be the 21st on the shortest day; others, more mystical state that the sun stays or does not grow in light until the 25th… its a toss-up…( The Early Church- the church of the first three hundred years before the Councils and creeds and the cultural dominance of Christianity as the official state religion, did not celebrate Christmas in December- they chose Epiphany, January 6th as his “birth” day- most likely it was in either late February or early March- Astrological chart of Jesus of Nazareth presentation)

Actually, there is a good reason for all the confusion… the primary focus for the early Christians was on the life of Jesus, not his birth or even his death. Those events took on a greater meaning while contrary to what the early believers expected, he did not come back during their lifetimes or even during the next few generations! therefore, some new emphasis for faith had to be developed- one that rivaled the great myths of the Mediterranean where there was a special, even superhuman. Extraordinary birth and death accounts were created in order to instill faith and to encourage belief in the doctrines and decisions of the church and its influence and power in one’s life. That is one to main reasons there is so little accuracy in the story… and the fact, rightly so, that malicious rulers like Herod and Nero or Caligula would have certainly killed anyone who was born special or who could have been perceived to be a threat to their power and throne.

The main objections to pagan worship were these two, one of which is truly serious, and the other relative to culture and to the rules that religions try to establish over their members. The first or more objective and understandable reason, it was idolatrous- it placed other concerns, other gods, other allegiances and loyalties before the one supreme God of Israel, Yahweh. That was blasphemous! Yahweh was a jealous and exclusive God- he can have no rivals in one’s heart or in one’s life! ( The 1st Commandment)

The second reason was the objection to the behaviors associated with revels and partying that were far from the sober and serene approaches of the spiritual life. One cannot promote a religion that is taken seriously if there is too much fun, joy or rabble rousing associated with it!

There is also another corollary or a third reason. It was the teaching that God and humanity were somehow above, removed, or aloof from Nature- that our human task was to conquer or subdue the natural world- to tame it- but not to honor its rhythms & reasons – the essence of the Pagan lifestyle.

Remember, this detached, linear, rational religious world view was instituted and reinforced within the general patriarchal society and throughout the development of Western thought for the last 2000 years! Only in recent memory have these attitudes been challenged and found to be Unbiblical!  Only with the rise of scholarship and a greater understanding of our dependence on Nature and the grace of life itself have we begun to reap praise western teachings on the environment and on our place within the Cosmos of God’s creation. It is these insights and new understanding of spirit, society and self that I wish to outline for you tonight. ( definitions of Keep; Observe; Believe in their original meanings… What is the difference between a holiday and a holy day?  Sabbath time; reflection, etc.)   Questions????

Advent- Via Positiva- waiting; affirmation and gratitude from November through to Epiphany; The Archangel Gabriel- White w/ green and/or blue; way of the heart Symbols of light; Overcoming the darkness in oneself and in one’s world through the promise of the Chistchild being born in and among us all.

Thanksgiving Prayer

We return thanks to our mother, the
earth, which sustains us.

We return thanks to the rivers and
streams, which supply us with water.

We return thanks to all herbs, which
furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases.

We return thanks to the moon and stars,
which have given to us their light when the sun was gone.

We return thanks to the sun, that has
looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye.

Lastly, we return thanks to the Great
Spirit, in Whom is embodied all goodness, and Who directs all things for the
good of Her children.

Iroquois Prayer, adapted

O God, whose goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our lives, we blessyou because the beautiful cup of our love and friendship is not large enough to hold all that we feel at such a time as this… The cup runs over, and our thanksgiving spills itself towards the Infinite Giver, who is great enough to understand our humble joy.

We thank you that we do not become aloof from human worth by our gratitude to you. We thank you that we have known at least a little how true it is that where love is, God is. You have prepared a taable before us, not only in the presence of our enemies, but in the presence of our dearest ones and in the face of friendly company.  …

We bless you for the tender things which hearts can never fully tell in words; for the delicate flowers of affinity which speech is too clumsy to hold; for the hopes which shine like distant stars; for a faith in the future, a faith in life, which can look over the dark valleys and see the light of dawn on faraway hills. Shepherd of all souls, in spire of our fears, may we trust in your unfolding love, and feel safe when all safey is lost.

    519 Years After Columbus:

Reflections on Civilization, Culture, and Consciousness

The Reverend Peter Edward Lanzillotta, Ph.D.

As school children for many generations knew and memorized, “In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two, Columbus sailed the oceans blue….” Yet, was this the full story? Hardly! It served to promote a particular view of events and circumstances that reinforced many of our cultural beliefs and traditions for many years. Only in the last fifty years or so, coinciding with the greater awareness or the ethical implications of our postwar policies and the realities of dictators, genocides, etc., have we begun to place the history of western Colonial exploration into a much less flattering perspective.

Now this change of perspective is one that stands at odds or in opposition to my “personal” and ethnic experience of Columbus day: as a North American of Italian descent, October 12th was MY St. Patrick’s Day- a time to celebrate my ethnic

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heritage. Columbus, after all, was one of the Italian heroes in history, and we acknowledged it by wearing Italian flag colors or wearing burgundy red in his honor. There would be special church services, dances, and of course lots of wine and FOOD! As you know, various groups such as the Knights of Columbus were founded on such ethnic pride… So you see, to look at Columbus differently, at least early in my life… And it represented for me a long, hard step into political and economic objectivity- maybe even more than most Americans who look at it as just another day off from work!

What do we know and what can we learn from Columbus today? Is the “truth” about him anymore or less than a metaphor for all the efforts of human conquest called the advance of civilization? Lets begin by outlining a brief appraisal of what we know about this momentous event in Western history? Depending on your political, ethnic, racial and religious views, you can come to completely different assessments and emphasizes concerning Columbus and the importance or the extended value and meaning of his journey to the New World.

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For instance, on the positive side, you can list that he was the first Southern European to colonize what was called The New World. He brought back evidence that the world was indeed rounder or at least larger than anyone had previous taught or even anticipated.

He informed the European world that there were untold riches in this new uncharted land that ranged from pepper to gold, from corn, tomatoes and potatoes, to lumber, gemstones, new medicines, and a new opportunities to spread the faith of Catholic Christianity and the lands of Spain throughout the world!

On the negative, and admittedly more cynical side, we are given the picture of a near-do well explorer who thought that he knew where he was going, and almost did not find any land at all! (Please no jokes about men and their not wanting to stop for directions!)

That he was someone who succeed only after persistently appealing to the greed and pride of a thoroughly corrupt and prejudiced queen and her lackey husband, was given three meager ships that were to be filled with gold and riches on his return… If he returned… .

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We are informed by the ship’s log records that Columbus nearly missed out on a full mutiny that would have returned the ships empty to Spain, or sunk them somewhere in the Atlantic!

On his ship’s tenuous arrival, he then arrogantly claims all the land he finds for Spain and the Roman Catholic Church! After extracting all the gold, silver, and spices he could, he forcibly held some of the natives aboard ship as captive slaves. Not to be miserly, the Spanish or the European crew did give the Native Americans presents of their own…. They gave the Indians many new things, along with a forced religion and a new system of slavery… They gave them small pox tuberculosis, and syphilis! These are some of the reasons is why the coming of Columbus is treated as a great tragedy and a day of mourning by some Native Americans.

Now I am sure that we can begin quite a debate over the pros and cons of Columbus… from the positive contributions of the European culture such as horses, honey bees, rice and wheat, and from the Native Americans to the Europeans, they gave them an effective model for a cooperative community that could work; that peanuts taste good, and chocolate is delicious…

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Negatively, we can state that Europeans forced cultural change and adoption of alien mores and values. And as a subtle revenge, the Native Americans introduced Europeans to tobacco. (My experience of Gambling and Indians in AZ)

But I feel that it is necessary to look at the larger perspective of how explorers such as Columbus teach us about basic precepts in the creation of culture and consciousness. Only recently have we began to amend our textbooks and provide our students with a more balanced and objective appraisal of history’s event. This attempt, as I see it, is an attempt to place reason over the emotions of pride, and to reinforce that admission that history is rarely black or white, and that the saga of humankind always includes many shades of gray.

To try to be fair, balanced, and compassionate is a noble approach to recording and retelling history. And while I can have my problems with too much “political correctness” when it comes to telling our cultural stories, it is a healthy departure from the more harmful, jingoistic, and excessively patriotic elements that many of us grew up believing as patently true. With the new rewritten examinations of historical figures like

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Columbus, there comes torrid exposes’ of everyone, including our national Founding Fathers, our former military and political heroes, who now not only have been seen to have “clay feet” but that have been taken out of context of their times, and made to be unworthy of serious regard, study and our admiration!

And as a consequence, many of these action heroes of yesteryear have undeservedly lost our respect and loyalty, especially when we want to hold them up as shining examples of the “American character”, and as moral, and ethical models for our youth.

Tragically, by debunking our historical ancestors, we are given very few examples of heroism and nobility in our culture, and so we hotly pursue the lowest common denominator of heroism which we call “living the good life” that is, having money and fame- and so the modern heroes become rock stars, sports figures, and even governors of California!

(LCD: Culture is the lowest common denominator of interpersonal ethics and actions that everyone is willing to support or will allow)

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There is an vital and important point in assessing history and the change of civilizations, and it is this: Not all change is progress, nor does all progress creates meaningful change; It does not necessarily follow that because things change, it is necessarily better, higher, more refined or more evolved.

Progress as we most commonly define and understand it, is almost always a result of a change in technology, not an advancement in ethics and values.

Unfortunately, to tie any advances or technical progress with what is better for society or genuinely good for humanity is considered to be far too idealistic and unrealistic. After all, the stock market and stock holders are loathe to consider the ethical implications of capitalism or what the long range effects of various products are on the culture and the environment. Historically, we get the idealistic notion of humane and ethical progress from St. Augustine (De Civitatem) who linked the changes in civilization to the growth of the kingdom of God or good in the world. We also derive some of this materialistic idealism from the Yankee Calvinist Protestant notion that newer, better, richer and being more

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successful meant in someway to be more gracious or favored by God. To those particular Calvinist ancestors, wealth and success meant that you were among the elect, the saved, people on earth!

From the age of enlightenment on, we rational human beings have taken this notion of progress as an unqualified good and we have made it into a cultural dogma…. A urgent and insistent belief or a nouvomania- that anything new is better for us…

History or his story is simply the selected and favorable accumulation of events and experiences that we as human beings decide to give importance. And as we all know, who has always written the history books? The winners, of course!

Only recently have we begun to incorporate dissenting views into our perspective of history so that we could at least begin to present a balanced view. It is often from the viewpoint of the victors, and the dominant class, color, and conscience that is currently supported.

It almost as if public opinion has become a master puppeteer, and it pulls the strings of public opinion in a way that only reinforces the dominant feelings and values, and doesn’t let dissent or change assert itself, or threaten the status quo…

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And each of has to admit to some degree or another, that we allow these dominant opinions to sway our own conclusions, and then assign various levels of priority and meaning to what occurs to us and what events in our larger world seem to influence us the most.

For some people, history and culture directly shapes them… what happens in the world influences and concerns them in dramatic and permanent ways… (Media; Diana; JFK)

For others, they state almost defiantly that they make their own personal and family history, and that only those events and experiences give their lives their greatest meaning, and what the world offers or seems to be about is only of passing curiosity but hardly vital or contributory. I sense and conclude that the more objective and understandable position lies somewhere in-between these poles or dichotomies. My personal understanding is that we unavoidably hold a shared responsibility, that each of us separately, and our families and social groups together, act to shape or create history and that through our honest relationships, our work, our values, and through our national events, We will become permanently shaped by accepted or condoned history and the

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actions and consequences of the culture we live in and support.

This relationship, this unavoidable interdependence of the individual with their society is what creates history and culture. It can and will determine the patterns and potentials for our awareness and for our understanding of what constitutes both progress and civilization.

The admission that history teaches us that humanity and nations can behave wisely once they have exhausted all other ways, or alternatives (Lawrence Durcell) need not be perpetuated in this next generation! As our Unitarian mystic and man of letters. R.W. Emerson advises, the only history that personally counts or as he emphatically put, that is worth a tinker’s dam, is the history we create today, together…

Lastly, As I look at it, history, civilization and consciousness are both ancient and timeless. They are, experienced as inconsistent teachers, whose lessons are still relevant and emerging each and every day. It is up to us to benefit from a fair and balanced knowledge of history, not just blindly rehearse its fallibility’s. In the ominous and insightful words of the philosopher George

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Santayana, if we refuse to learn the lessons of history, we will be doomed to repeat them.

I will know invite you to share some of your understanding about Columbus day’s importance, and how the values and insights of history have impact on us today….

Pastoral Reflection:     Another Perspective On Adventure and Conquest

Over the years, I have seriously questioned our desire to advocate or even idealize the quest for adventure or exploration. When opening myself to the spiritual life, I switched my focus to the inner journey and have begun to see, at least for me, that the greatest adventures are not to be found outside of ourselves, not in climbing mountains, crossing jungles, racing cars, or sailing yachts- not even in landing on the Moon or Mars. … Instead, our greatest adventures are to be found in exploring inner space…

As for conquest, there is no greater conquest than understanding of oneself. Two of many teachings I refer to are these:

The first is this, that “Love’s divine adventure is to be All in All.” Miscellany  Mary Baker Eddy

And the second comes from the first essential writings of the Buddha, The Dharmapada, which states, “Greater than the person who conquers ten thousand men, is the person who can conquer him or herself.”

These wisdom teachings stand in sharp contrast with our Media driven glorification of high tech warriors, machismo figures, and governmental policies where the talk is touch and the actions vicious or violent. These words of reflection and insight also definitively stand against our national mythology of having a “manifest destiny” which is a disguised arrogance of power that has been used against every race of color, and used in every century since this New World of ours has been discovered.

Loving is the hardest task and the greatest adventure anyone of us has to face; it is the goal which all other tasks and goals are but preparation. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

To understand and to love oneself, and unselfishly love anyone else requires our deepest, longest lasting, toughest, and most demanding efforts. The adventure, the risk and the reward is to see, and affirm what we, as individuals, families, what we as humankind, need most to learn, explore and then practice. It is the conquest of the human ego, and the ultimate adventure of being openhearted, courageous, sincere, vulnerable, compassionate, empathetic, honest and free…