A Homily – Luke 1:57-66, 88 ©

The Gospel According to Luke – 2018.06.24

Narrative and Myth

The Gospel for today is quaint.

It demonstrates that the leaders of the early church, writing about a hundred years or so after the death of Jesus, and thirty years or so after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, that they felt a pressing need to enrich the story of their origins.

They invented myths, drafting a narrative that wove the disparate strands of their tradition in to a unity. They wanted to co-opt the strength of John’s community, to pull as many people as they could from John’s tradition, into their own, and to strip those who would not join them of any authority.

The story itself, is a pure fabrication. It can only be understood in terms of the metaphor it presents.

John and Jesus are presented as cousins, and the story depicts their entire family as beloved by God, protected by the hand of God, who works miracles in their lives.

There is variation in the metaphor depending on who is writing and when, but the basic disjunction shows John as prophet, and Jesus as High Priest, and King.

John is the goat and Jesus is the lamb.

John preaches in the wilderness, he is a man of the wild, like Ishmael, and Essau, and Jesus is presented as Abraham, or Moses; father, Lawgiver, or like David, the King.

The lesson from the gospel reading for today it that all narrative is fluid, and stories can be rewritten, all of our stories are, because we never tell them exactly as they happened. 

Take nothing at face value, and question everything.

'His Name is John'

The time came for Elizabeth to have her child, and she gave birth to a son; and when her neighbours and relations heard that the Lord had shown her so great a kindness, they shared her joy.

Now on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother spoke up. ‘No,’ she said ‘he is to be called John.’ They said to her, ‘But no one in your family has that name’, and made signs to his father to find out what he wanted him called. The father asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And they were all astonished. At that instant his power of speech returned and he spoke and praised God. All their neighbours were filled with awe and the whole affair was talked about throughout the hill country of Judaea. All those who heard of it treasured it in their hearts. ‘What will this child turn out to be?’ they wondered. And indeed the hand of the Lord was with him.

Meanwhile the child grew up and his spirit matured. And he lived out in the wilderness until the day he appeared openly to Israel.

12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Emergence 3.0 - Section Four, Kathy; Part Twenty-three, Prodigy: Chapter Seven, Other

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 175, Sunday

June 24th, 2018

Chapter Seven: Other

Kathy was unique.

She was different from every other human being on the planet, different from all who had ever been.

She was unique in all the universe, and she was born that way.

She was still young when she realized the differences that distinguished her from everyone else she had ever met. She had known empirically that this was the case. Her ancestors within her had said as much, and that estimation was confirmed by the voices of the entities she encountered in the nous sphere, in the Earth’s cynergenic field. Nevertheless, Kathy succumbed to a basic human tendency, which was to assume that the people she encountered were like her, that they shared a common point of view or perspective on things and events they were witnessing.   

Understanding her differences did not help her manage her feelings, or those of others. Because she had difficulty managing her feelings at times, it was also difficult to manage the feelings of others.

She knew that it was not her responsibility to control what other people felt. Whether they choose to be in a relationship with her, like her teachers, or whether, like her parents, the role had been thrust on them. 

People were afraid of her. They either wanted to run away from her, or to exploit her. Some people simply wanted to examine her, run experiments on her as if she was a laboratory animal.

Her parents were afraid, afraid for her. They were simultaneously proud of her, and ashamed that they had brought her into the world.

She was like an alien. The people who cared for her knew that she suffered, but they could do little about it.

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Nostalgia - Editorial, The Week in Review

Analysis, Commentary, Opinion

06.23.2018

Nostalgia

I watched the David Letterman interview of Barrack Obama this week. The interview itself was conducted in 2017, after the former president left office.

What a loss we have endured.

I miss his self-confidence and dignity, the thoughtful way he answered every question.

I do not expect a lot from the office of the president.

I do not expect any president to be a champion of human rights, or a just actor on the global stage, not actually, because I know what kind of dirty business the United States of America is engaged in around the world, and I know that every president is called on to defend American interest, which are not really the interests of the American people, but the interests of multinational corporations, big agriculture, big banks, big oil, and the rest of the military industrial complex.

I miss the theatre of the presidency, the elegance of the former first couple, their command of appointments of the office they occupied.

I am nostalgic for it.

I am use to being lied to by our political leaders, I am one of those who believes that all politicians are liars and narcissists, self-serving egomaniacs. I do not expect them to tell me the truth, but it is horrifying to watch as the current administration and all of his allies in congress, in the courts, even in houses of worship all over the nation, act as if there were no such thing as the truth at all.

I hear people asking all the time: “How did we get here?”

We got here because we collectively decided that football is more important than critical thinking, that basketball is more important than the arts, that competitive dance is more important than civics, and because we allowed those values to shape the budgets of our school systems nation-wide.

That is how we got to the point where the average American cannot parse the findings of basic science, and our leadership is so ignorant that they will tell you it does not matter.

It is not just that the current president lies (all the time), it the angry venomous nature of the lies, and the defense of those lies, the sickening, groveling, obsequious, acceptance of this fundamental change in our culture.

It did not happen overnight, the water in the pot was slowly boiling, and now it has boiled over.

How do we recover from this, when we do not even have the basis for a dialogue?

We cannot call the truth a liar, and then sit down at the table to negotiate a deal.

If you say that 2 + 2 = 5, how can I trust any agreement you might sign.

For all of Barrack Obama’s faults, George Bush’s, Bill Clinton’s; they did not take us to this place.

Do you recall the Roman Emperor, Nero, how he played the fiddle while the city burned, or his predecessor Caligula, who made his horse a senator.

Have you ever seen the Nazi propaganda films, which they used to justify their annexation of the Sudeten lands, and the invasion of Poland? Those films depicted the Slavic and the Polish people as marauding rapists and murders, as lawless animals who struck fear into the hearts of innocent Germans, before they assaulted and killed them.

There are echoes of those themes playing out now, playing out in our name, the people of the United States of America.

A majority of us are outrages, we want it to stop, but the majority of our elected peoples, those with the power to stop, are more concerned about keeping their own power than they are about the interests of justice.

Remember this, law is the servant the servant of justice, the demands of justice must always come first.

Emergence 3.0 - Section Four, Kathy; Part Twenty-three, Prodigy; Chapter Six, Quietude

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 174, Saturday

June 23rd, 2018

Chapter Six: Quietude

For Kathy to get along she learned to be silent, to listen, to wait, to let the others fail. She had to be content that she knew the answers and had to resist the temptation to seek the rewards of praise.

She would not assert herself. She did everything she could to divert attention away from herself, she sought only the private recognition of her teachers.

She could not insert herself into the activities of her peers (she had none), she could not correct them, or provide the right answer to problems that were proposed in public settings to her classmates.

She learned to experience success as a personal matter, only harkening to the applause that came from within.

She was quiet.

She turned in flawless work.

She reacted negatively to her teachers when they tried to highlight her talents, her knowledge and skills.

This was difficult for her.

Like any child she loved praise, but she had to force herself to eschew it.

More than praise from her teachers, she wanted friends

The other children in her classes with her did not like her, they did not like the she looked at them, looked through them. They knew intuitively that she was beyond them.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Four, Kathy; Part Twenty-three, Prodigy; Chapter Five, Conformity

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page per Day

Day 173, Friday

June 22nd, 2018

Chapter Five: Conformity

Whatever her parents tried to teach her, Kathy took to with ease. Despite the challenges she endured in dealing with her atavistic past, sometimes second by second, she was nevertheless an ordinary child.

She wanted to belong to her parents, and for them to belong to her.

She wanted to please them, make them smile, watch them laugh. She did not like it when the things she said or did, or did not do, disturbed them.

Kathy mastered complex tasks without effort.

She had to learn to pretend to learn from her parents, and the adults around her.

This was one of the things that put her parents at ease. It was often the case that they would propose to show her how to do something, like tie her shoes, and she would just do it without thinking because the voices within her supplied her with the method.

This unnerved her parents, she had to learn to slow down and hide these things, even pretend to make mistakes so that they could correct her.

The only thing that took time was developing muscle memory; which required repetition. By constant repetitions she trained herself to do the little things that might take other children years to accomplish.

She struggled with the skill of blending in, with hiding her differences. Her parents came to accept the fact that Kathy was pretending. They could tell because she was not good at it, and also because she would almost always shift to a pattern of action that was better, more efficient, quicker, more streamlined than what they had taught her.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Four, Kathy; Part Twenty-three, Prodigy; Chapter Four, Discipline

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 172, Thursday

June 21st, 2018

Chapter Four: Discipline

The direction for her exercises came from deep within herself. From her ancestors, and from her intimate link to the cynergenic field, through which she could commune with those who were not directly linked to her heredity.

Through the nous-sphere, Kathy connected with the assembled masters of every tradition, they instructed her; physical disciplines, martial disciplines, cognitive disciplines, the full scope of human knowledge was accessible to her.

Kathy’s memories spoke to her, they guided her, the ancestral voices focused her, kept her calm, allowing her to see her own life and experiences in the context of the collective experiences swelling within her.

She formed plans spontaneously, in order to realize her goals, her powerful mind operating beyond the limits of time and space, and then she had to slow everything down, to allow her body time to make the adjustments she was preparing it for.

It was excruciating, she wanted nothing more than to allow her mind to drift away, to leave the cares of the flesh behind, but when she felt that way, the chorus would rise within her, reminding her that she has a purpose to fulfill.

To fulfill that purpose she must prepare, be quiet, discreet, not draw attention to herself she must develop, both her physical strength, and the strength of her mind.

Kathy could shut the outside world off and retreat into the recesses of her internal life. But she could not escape from the voices within, they were always with her. She might ignore them for a time, but she could not depart from them, and even if she died, she knew that she would remain with them, as with all people, a shadow imprinted on the cynergenic field.

Kathy followed the path of discipline, to protect herself from the world and from what was inside her, both.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Four, Kathy; Part Twenty-three, Prodigy; Chapter Three, A Frightening Child

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 171, Wednesday

June 20th, 2018

Chapter Three: A Frightening Child

Kathy was crawling within weeks of being born, and walking within a few short months. In her private moments she was flexing her muscles, training, gaining strength, and tuning her body to obey her thoughts.

The voices within her guided her. Through repetition and diligence, she gained control of her limbs, she developed dexterity, and coordination.

By her first birthday she was dancing.  

Kathy practiced and practiced in the quiet moments of her day.

At night, in the dark, while her parents slept.

She did not speak a word until she was speaking in complete sentences. Her vocal muscles were the most difficult to master.

She practiced her breathing, she spoke to herself when she thought no one was watching.

She listened to the conversations happening all around her, the dialog without, and within.

She knew that her parents were concerned about her.

Every person they ever brought to meet her told them how strange she was. Kathy tried to make things easier on them, but she was not always able to hide the things that she was doing, and could not control her feelings.

The glands that produced the hormones and chemicals, which formed the wetwork of the human emotional spectrum, they required much greater level of discipline and quantities of time to control.    

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Dawn

Sunrise in pastels

The pale melody of Dawn

Pink-violet fire

The lake, un-rippled

Capturing the softest shades

A silver mirror

In still life portrays

Beauty surpassing knowledge

A goddess of light

Goddess, beyond time

Seizing the divine, rapture

Grace, in the pure-land

Soft now, she rises

Prismatic-brilliance, light

Across the still plane

Radiant vision

Pale gold in the morning, bright

Rising to her touch

Ecstatic moment

The sorcery of desire

Love’s inspiration

An angel en-fleshed

Sweet as the rose in morning

Quiet and lonely

The Earth-bound goddess

Daughter of Hope, beloved Dawn

Sister to the Sun

Emergence 3.0 - Section Four, Kathy; Part Twenty-three, Prodigy; Chapter Two, A Strange Child

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 170, Tuesday

June 19th, 2018

Chapter Two: A Strange Child

Kathy was as quiet as she was observant. She learned to watch and ask questions of the voices within her.

It was better this way. The knowledge she acquired was more accurate, the analytical skills she developed were more astute, and she found that asking questions, the types of questions she asked set her parents and her teachers on edge.

As a baby, she did not flit about randomly like infants and toddlers do. She was not easily distracted or delighted by the things that most babies are delighted by.

Her introspection was so extreme that in those first months of life her parents thought she might be developmentally disabled. They had no way of knowing that in those moments she was communing with the voices of her ancestors.  

She was focused, balanced, and cautious. The evidence of her determinative spirit showed clearly through everything that she did.

She repeated sounds and gestures in patterns that quickly became noticeable to her parents. The subtleties of her personality, the things they had thought were the ticks of autism, were in fact her measured and purposeful quest to learn.

Kathy was motivated by a deep desire to communicate and be understood. While she had the cognitive ability to speak, nearly from the day she was born, she did not have the motor skills to form words, those took time to develop.  

She was training herself, quickening the pace by which she would learn to walk, and talk, and she would not be stopped.

Her parents had no desire to get in her way. In the days when they were figuring out what their child was doing, if they were to interrupt her, or try to redirect her, they would see the flash of anger in her eyes.

This was not the helpless rage of an infant wailing. It was the anger of a fully formed person who would not be deterred from her path.

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