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On the road again: the Christmas spirit 2
Hi everyone!
Writing a blog is fun because you get to write to your friends, the ones you know and the ones you don't know (yet?) I'm laughing to myself now because I sound like Will Ferril's character in the wonderful movie, "Elf," that Amy and I saw yesterday on our flight back from Fort Worth, Texas. The movie was wonderful - a modern day "Miracle on 34th Street" (another movie truly worth seeing!) I
"Elf" really captures the secular spirit of Christmas in a way that I would never have thought possible, especially since I have been truly upset about all the efforts to take Christ out of Christmas. In my opinion, if you take the story of Christ out of Christmas (in reality, not in just one movie, no matter how good it is) you are left with a meaningless though guilt-ridden and sad-memory depressing buying frenzy.
The anti-Christian sentiment today in the world is disgusting to me. I know all to well about the excesses of the Roman Catholic Inquisition and the witch burnings and the horrible treatment and second class citizenship of women and the child molestation scandals and the much lessor problems that beset the various Christian sects from all sides nowadays, but don't throw out Baby Jesus with the dirty bathwater!
I am a long time defender of the rights of women since I was a little child in the late 1950's and literaly ran up to a man beating his wife in public to tell him to stop. The maniac was going to hit me, too, and it was a good thing my father the huge NYPD policeman was running few steps behind me exposing his off-duty gun under his shirt and his badge! It was great, like a movie. My dad grabbed the guy by the neck (this was the 1950's and cops were cops back then - at least 6 feet tall and you didn't mess with them!) and pushed him against the wall, then letting him go and saying "So you like to fight? OK, fight with me!" I was as proud of him as that violent jerk was scared and that poor woman was relieved - and that's a lot!
But even if the Christian church has a ways to go to put women on the equal footing with men that is their birthright, Christianity is at its heart a religion of peace and love and that needs supporting, not removing from all business and public places! The ACLU is dead wrong on this one. We need more not less love and reminders of what is good in this world. Target department stores' forbidding of the Salvation Army's bell ringers on their property and Macy's changing their "Merry Christmas" signs to read "Happy Holidays" are actions that merit the boycotts of both stores that are now ongoing. We have no other way of influencing commercial enterprises other than by voting with our wallets.
My view of God/dess is radically different from just about everyone I know but I am not threatened in the least by anyone else's spirituality or their views about mine, unless they are using it as an excuse to persecute me. As they say in Raja Yoga, "The Truth is not afraid of questions."
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