It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Part II

    Three years ago I wrote an essay titled It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. In that essay I described why I liked Christmas so much and the reasons it should be such an important holiday.  I am now going to expand on that theme.  Earlier this year, I read an amazing book, The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton.  Two chapters in particular threw all the details of Christmas into an even clearer and sublime light than even I had cast them. 

The End of the World

    Chesterton begins his discourse by describing the defeat of Carthage by Rome.  He describes that the citizens of Carthage were worshipers of Moloch, also known as Baal, the most vile and dark of the heathen gods of the middle east. How the evils of their worship poisoned their whole society into something terrible, where human life was considered very cheap and babies were thrown in furnaces to appease Moloch and his sinister consort Tanit.  When Hannibal invaded Rome it was seen as a threat to all that was good and light in the world, everything was about to be swallowed in darkness. Then, by some miracle, Hannibal was defeated and Carthage itself was razed to the ground and never recovered.  The best and brightest of human civilization had defeated darkness once and for all.

 Or had it?A culture that began and ended with domesticity, whose household gods defeated the demons of Hannibal's Carthage began a slow moral decay. Greek and oriental vices and immorality began to invade as the new fads of society. Every new fad that came from the fringes of the empire, new eastern philosophy, new secret mystery religions, any and all things new were used to stab awake their drowsy apathy. This could truly have been the end of the world.*

    Chesterton compares Mythology to a search, a search for man's purpose in the world. There comes a time in a civilization, if it lasts long enough, when men tire of playing mythology and pretending that the tree is a maiden and the moon made love to a man, it is then that men seek stranger obscenities to cure their jadedness. They tire of walking in their sleep of ordinary life and begin to wake themselves with nightmares such as gladiators and mystery religions.The noble mythology of man was dying and would have left a vacuum had it not been replaced with something far, far more wondrous, theology.  

   Paganism was dying because society itself was maturing.   The mythology that had been around for millenia, or not quite religious paganism, was the young world's riot with ideas and images rather like a young man's riot with wine and lovemaking.  Youthful irresponsibility more than malicious immorality. As society matured, like an individual matures, it began to see the weaknesses and insufficiency of this lifestyle.  So as society began to decay, it got bored with it’s old lifestyle and started to turn to obscenities to cure it's boredom.
 

    The urban mob became 'enlightened', in other words, they lost the mental power to create legends. Rather like jaded grown ups who lament the loss of their childhood yet despise the idea of fairy tales; or today's historical and literary revisionists that delight in tearing down heroes but then wonder why people seem to have no sense of morality.  The people mourned the loss of the gods and consoled themselves with bread and circuses.  A similar thing is happening in our own present day.  We became 'enlightened' and 'free thinkers'.  We threw God out of society (since He is un-progressive unscientific) and as a result, condemned any ideas of being in awe of things supernatural or worshiping something larger than ourselves or our social systems.  In the deadness that has resulted, we console ourselves with celebrities, sports, and reality TV.

 "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons." Galatians 4:4

The God in the Cave

   The world was dying, when news came out of the east that would shake the whole earth to the very core, and strike fear into the hearts of the demon-worshipers and the philosophers.  God really was dead, some even claimed to see Him die.  But, they added, He then became alive again.  No longer would humanity have to seek for the reason of their existence, He had been found, in a cave, under a star.  The shepherds had found their Good Shepherd, and the philosophers, their endless searching over, would kneel before Him, for the Desire of the Ages had come. 

   This new sect calling themselves "Christians" were invited to set up an image of their God along with all the others in the temple.  They refused, saying that their God was alive, and not a dead image.  Not only that, but he was the only God, and would suffer no worship of another.  This refusal to integrate was the turning point of history. If the Christians had accepted and tossed their God in with all the rest, the would have been subsumed into the melting pot of gods that was already evaporating.   This new claim of only one God who had come as a helpless baby to save us from ourselves was the one thing that would revolutionize the whole world.  

   The Birth of Christ in a cave can be equated to the start of a revolution.  He was announced with shouts and songs of angels, and the shouting of that night still hangs in the air today.  Christians are on the whole meek and mild and love their neighbors.  However, their refusal to kneel to other gods, or go against the commands of their own God, is as much a challenge as anything. A challenge to fight against all error and evil. Christianity proclaims peace on earth but never forgets why there was a war in heaven.

     Christmas is most wonderful because it remembers the day when the whole world was saved from itself.  The world nearly died once of broad-mindedness and the brotherhood of all religions. Christ was born to revolutionize that and show us that while we must love our enemies and be innocent as doves, we must also fight to the death for what is true, good and right. As Joy Davidman Lewis states when discussing how disappointed the Jewish leaders were with Jesus when he would not overthrow Rome and be their King "He offered them not all the longed-for kingdoms of the earth, but only-only!- the salvation of their own souls."

*It is telling that at this time many high-society Roman women began to convert to Judaism.

This is the Season Dearest to the Heart

As I stated when I posted the first portion of Kortirion Among the Trees, there is another part that I like to read at Christmas time.  Again, I prefer the second version of this poem to the first or third.  In the third version of the poem, Tolkien refers to "The funeral candles of the Silver Wain" (meaning the Big Dipper) and I think that is a rather poor description of the night sky in winter, which is my favorite season.  But then, John could be quite a humbug when it came to winter.  And even Jack Lewis, who loved snow and Christmas almost as much as I do, turned into a real Scrooge while Joy was ill (as I saw this summer from some of his writings). But that is neither here nor there, and they are allowed to be that way.  Here is the winter part of the second draft of Kortirion Among the Trees, starting at line 85.

  This is the season dearest to the heart,
  And time most fitting to the ancient town,
  With waning musics sweet that slow depart
  Winding with echoed sadness faintly down
  The paths of stranded mist.  O gentle time,
  When the late mornings are begemmed with rime,
  And early shadows fold the distant woods!
  The Elves go silent by, their shining hair
  They cloak in twilight under secret hoods
  Of grey, and filmy purple, and long bands
  Of frosted starlight sewn by silver hands.

  And oft they dance beneath the roofless sky,
  When naked elms entwine in branching lace
  The Seven Stars, and through the boughs the eye
  Stares golden-beaming in the round moon's face.
  O holy Elves and fair immortal Folk,
  You sing then ancient songs that once awoke
  Under primeval stars before the Dawn;
  You whirl then dancing with the eddying wind,
  As once you danced upon the shimmering lawn
 ***
(Line 119)
The seven candles of the Silver Wain,
Like lighted tapers in a darkened fane,
Now flare above the fallen year.
Thought court and street now cold and empty lie,
And Elves dance seldom neath the barren sky,
Yet under the white moon there is a sound
Of buried music still beneath the ground.
When winter comes, I would meet winter here.

Quoted from The Book of Lost Tales, pages 38 and 39.

An Awkward Musical Situation

  We had a massive power failure at work this past Thursday. It was a little annoying and kind of fun.  I had just come in from my break and was heating some water for tea in the microwave. Suddenly there were several loud pops and bangs, and the lights started flashing on and off while the microwave bleeped at me and the vending machines started making strange noises at me. 

   It took me a few moments to realize that the appliances were not staging a massive revolution against mankind, there was just some sort of power surge going on.  I pulled my water from the microwave, dumped it, and came out of the break room rather wide eyed asking what was going on.  The building looked like a disco with lights flickering on and off.  My computer was one of the few that stayed on, so I sat down at my desk ready to go back to work in the dark. I had enough light from my computer screen. But then they told us to turn off everything so, no working.

    After a call to my mother and some protracted playing with my phone, I got bored, so I wheeled my chair to where a group of my coworkers were talking and laughing. I picked up a couple of new jokes from one of the IT guys: If a dwarf fortune-teller escaped from jail would he be a small medium at large? (Ok so that is an old one, but it was funny at the time.) What's brown and sticky?...a stick.  I really like that one. 

 Then several of us pulled out our iPhones, iPods and smart phones and started playing with our music. Everyone was playing Brittany Spears, Maroon Five (Maroon something, I don't remember the name) Psychedelic Firs (never even heard of them, but the group was obviously named by someone on a really bad trip). Everyone was playing music and saying "Oh I love that song! Here I have this one!" "Oh that's my favorite song!". I pulled out my phone and began trying to find something to impress everyone else with.  That was when I became painfully aware of the fact that all of my music is rather.....well.....nerdy, and UNpopular. Enya, Mannheim Steamroller Secret Garden, the Band Perry, Loreena McKennit,  fiddle music of Natalie McMaster and Popcorn Behavior, modern classical piano such as Michelle McLaughlin or Philip Wesley, regular classical like Handel's Water Music or all six of Bach's Cello Suites. I suddenly realized that not only were none of them probably familiar with any of this, it was also incredibly dorky. Ah well! I like what I like, even if it isn't popular. I suppose it all goes with my plaid fixation or my reading gigantic books during lunch.

  In hindsight, I suppose I could have played them a little Celine Dion, Hayley Westenra or Josh Groban, that is about as popular as my music gets. I am fairly certain that they would have found Simon & Garfunkel's I Am A Rock fitting for my cube that is a bit separated from most of the others. (Nota Bene: The cube is not separated from the rest by my own choosing, it's just they way the office is arranged. I may indeed have my books and poetry to protect me, but I did NOT make a special request at work to be separated from the rest. I find it....kind of  lonely at times, really.)

Next time, I am going to find the most annoying, geeky thing I can, jack up the volume, and hit "play". Maybe Roisin Dubh (Little Black Rose) as done by Cherish the Ladies.

Post Script: The spell check has been driving me insane through this whole post.  Why is realize spelled with a Z but choose is spelled with and S?

Kortirion Among the Trees

The following is the excerpt of a poem penned by J.R.R. Tolkien titled Kortirion among the trees. I prefer the second version.  The first version is a but rough, but that is to be expected. I do not know why he wrote a third version, the second, in my opinion, is perfect.  The third version, while better polished, is far more depressing.  but then, that was Reuel all over. Here is a beautiful description about the coming of Autumn, and I always read it when I sense the first breath of autumn in the air, which I did earlier this week. Another part of this poem, which begins "This is the season dearest ti the heart" is a matchless description of winter, and I always read it at Christmas.

Kortirion Among the Trees (beginning at line 53)

Once Spring was here with joy, and all was fair
Among the trees; but Summer drowsing by the stream
Heard trembling in her heart the secret player
Pipe, out beyond the tangle of her forest dream,
The long-drawn tune that elvish voices made
Foreseeing Winter through the leafy glade;
The late flowers nodding on the ruined walls
Then stooping heard afar that haunting flute
Beyond the sunny aisles and tree-propped halls;
For thin and clear and cold the note,
As strand of silver glass remote.

Then all thy trees Kortirion, were bent,
And shook with sudden whispering lament:
For passing were the days, and doomed the nights
When flitting ghost-moths danced as satellites
Round tapers in the moveless air;
And doomed already were the radiant dawns,
The fingered sunlight drawn across the lawns;
The odour and the slumbrous noise of meads,

Where all the sorrel, flowers and pluméd weeds

Go down before the scyther's share.
When cool October robed her dewy furze
In netted sheen of gold-shot gossamers,
Then the wide-umbraged elms began to fail;
Their mourning multitude of leaves grew pale,
Seeing afar the icy spears
Of Winter marching blue behind the sun
Of bright All-Hallows.  Then their hour was done,
And wanly borne on wings of amber pale
They beat the wide airs of the fading vale,
And flew like birds across the misty meres.

Our Spaceships are Bigger than Your Spaceships.....

According to this Starship Comparison Chart, practically all of the ships on Babylon 5 are bigger than a good half of the ships on Star Trek (bigger by far than all the Federation ships. The Earth Alliance ships alone make them look like flies). Of course, B5 also has better writing and acting, but there isn't a comparison chart for that...yet. I just get a little bit of satisfaction by telling all my trekkie friends that B5 has bigger ships. So raspberries to all of them.

  On another note...my mother has a blog now.....Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, my mother has a blog.  I was completely shocked because for years both my parents have oft declaimed the self-centeredness of my generation, how they are so self-focused they have blogs. Of course, I have a had a blog myself on and off for a number of years, so every time that subject came up, the opposite wall or my fingernails suddenly became very interesting. I never told them about it.  I did finally tell my mother I have had a blog for quite some time, but I would never let them read it. Why? Because I like to avoid awkward situations such as "we need to talk about what you wrote on your blog yesterday".

Will I let my parents read my blog...eventually? Probably, but I am still considering the idea. Some things I do like to at least believe are my own, even if they are not.

Pause and Consider: A Picture of Grace

    I was reading Matthew 27 and 28 yesterday afternoon. Usually, reading that account and the matching accounts of Christ's crucifixion leave me with a white-knuckled grip on the table and an overwhelming sense of God's grace. Yesterday was no exception.  However, in addition to all that, something was brought to my attention I had not before noticed. I'm not going to try to establish a new theological point here; the following is mere speculation. However, if it was indeed intended as I saw it yesterday, it is a beautiful picture.

In Matthew 27, when Pilate asks the crowd whom they would rather he release, Jesus or Barabbas, they called for Barabbas and said of Jesus "Let him be crucified!" All of this is horrible enough, but it is even more so when we consider what Barabbas full name was.  He was Jesus Barabbas, Yeshua Bar Abba, Jesus Son of the Father.  So, if you like, we could say he is another Jesus, a fake, not the real one. So, in a sense, as we look at this picture, we have chosen the false Jesus rather than the true Son of God. (Yes, I say WE chose.  The idea that the Jews killed Jesus has been bandied about for centuries. That is false. Yes they were the tools on that day, but we have all rejected Him and those of us alive across 2,000 years up to today are just as guilty as those that said the actual words.)

But let us continue. They took Jesus and hung him between two thieves. These were not mere pickpockets, that type weren't usually crucified.  The word in the original text denotes a rebel and plunderer, a brigand. John MacArthur suggests they were probably cohorts of Barabbas. That was where I stopped and thought a while. Companions of Barabbas. Were these two brigands perhaps scheduled to be crucified with their fellow criminal Barabbas? Was Jesus, the real one, the Only Begotten Son of the true living God hanging between two rebels where Barabbas was supposed to have hung?  The innocent was taking the place if the guilty, while the guilty was set free. The innocent Lamb of God is crushed by the wrath of God, while we, the guilty, who should by all rights have been hanging there instead, go free. What a picture of God! Of His love, His justice, and His Grace.

"...And He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Isaiah 53:12

An old love is even better than you remembered after several years of rest.

 I watched an old favourite movie of mine tonight.  Mystery Men.  I used to be practically obsessed with that one, but I have largely ignored it over the past 5 years or so.  It was even better than I remembered!

I think I have just about settled on a background for this site.  I tend to change my mind numerous times before I settle on something.  Originally the background was a 17th century style map  in a burgundy brown. Classy, but almost too stiff for me.  The bookshelves are nice, they match the skin on my Kindle. A wall full of tomes has always been my main security blanket.  I'm sure there's some deep-seated psychological reason for that.  I wish I could find a nice argyle or Burberry plaid background, that would be perfect.

  Speaking of Kindles, have I yet mentioned how much I love mine? I got it for Christmas, and was skeptical at first.  It doesn't feel like a book, it doesn't smell like a book, and there are no pages to turn. However, for someone like me who has a bad habit of reading several books at a time, and a worse habit of dragging a bagful of books everywhere she goes, being able to keep a whole library's worth on a little flat thing is a boon. Also, if one likes to annotate, you can underline and type notes on the screen without worrying about having a pencil nearby.  I still like my wall of tomes, but I also like my Kindle. Hmm, it really needs a name rather than just  "the Kindle" or "My Kindle".

   I was interested this evening in a concept I came upon in my current read Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis.  Lewis posited in his work Miracles that humans are continually unaware of the supernatural, it's a chronic problem we have. I'm doing a bad job of relating his ideas (as usual) but the idea is that humans are unaware of the supernatural because it is with us all the time, it is like a window, our mother tongue, or breathing.  We don't notice a window when we are looking outside, or our breathing, or speaking our mother tongue, it just naturally happens.  As I said, I'm doing a bad job of relating the concept.  I will elaborate further after I have sorted it in my mind.

  After a couple of rotten weeks at work, yesterday and today ended on a high note. I am happy.

It's plain, simple English!

Had trouble sleeping again last night...just when I thought it was safe to start weaning myself off the Chamomile.  I'm actually beginning to develop a taste for it.  

I'm rather rusty at this blogging thing.  The last time I posted on my (now defunct) blog was just after my foot surgery, and that was nigh on two years ago.  

Where was I...Ah yes! English. 

   I overheard a conversation at work today.  It all started when a coworker of mine said her husband was an English Liverpudlian.  I was about to quip something about him being a Scouser, but I was not sure how this would be received. (Must ask British friends if this is considered derogatory or not.) 

That led to another person saying that they needed subtitles to understand British TV.  It made me think, why do Americans have such trouble with British accents.  This isn't the first time I have heard something of the sort.  Maybe for me the accent really isn't hard to understand because my mother spent her teenage years in Britain, and I watch inordinate amounts of British TV an movies.  Granted, RP is easier to grasp than a thick Scots accent, but even those aren't that difficult. Have Americans moved from being monolingual to mono-accentual (is that a word?) as well? I mean it is just plain English, isn't it?  Ah well.......   

As for tomorrow, more training from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.  I wish the extra responsibility at work did not come with so much hassle.  I almost cried today.  I have too much to do already without spending all day in a conference room.