Neither Here Nor There

We are a Christian nation.

Would it weren’t so. The ethical foundations of a just and sound society are common to virtually all religions and spiritual philosophies. We certainly wouldn’t lose any moral ground by paying greater respect to our constitutionally guaranteed freedom to worship – or not worship – as we please. In fact, re-labeling America a non-denominational nation would be entirely in keeping with our country’s melting pot mythos and diverse ethnic reality.

It’s common knowledge that our nation’s founders came to these shores in search of religious freedom. The phrase “religious freedom” has a nice ring in our modern ears, but the only religious freedom the founders of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were interested in was the freedom to practice a particularly strict brand of Puritanism and to mandate it as the only acceptable religion of the New World. They not only refused to recognize the Native Americans’ belief systems as bona fide religions, they refused to countenance even slight deviations from the Puritanical spiritual norm within their own communities, as evidenced by clergyman Roger Williams’ banishment from Massachusetts Bay, primarily for spreading “newe and dangerous opinions.” The pith of the peril? Mr. Williams advocated the primacy of conscience over doctrine and preached religious tolerance.

With her historical roots solidly planted in restrictive religious soil, little wonder that a puritanical perfume still wafts over America’s amber waves of grain. Yes, indeed, we’ve come light-years from the bigotry, repression, persecution and abuse that ran rampant in early America. But our progress has definitely been a two-steps-forward/one-step-back sort of dance. For every surge of religious (or racial, or sexual, or social) enlightenment and tolerance, there’s been — and continues to be — a Christian-religious backlash. Look no further than California’s legalization of gay marriage (June, 2008) and the subsequent passage of Prop 8, making it illegal again (November, 2008) for a contemporary example.

Or consider the Pledge of Allegiance. The original was composed by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian Socialist, in 1892. Francis’ first cousin, Edward Bellamy, was the author of the utopian novels Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897). The two shared the same socialist ideals; Francis was forced to step down from his Boston church pulpit due to the content of his socialist sermons.

His original Pledge read as follows:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

He’d considered “with liberty, justice and equality for all,” but as he was writing the pledge in his capacity as chairman of a committee of state superintendents of education, and as those superintendents were against equality for women and African-Americans, he chose to be politic, and leave the word out. The National Flag Conference under the leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution altered the words again, changing “my Flag” to “the Flag of the United States of America.” Mr. Bellamy did not approve; his protest was ignored. In 1954, the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic benefit organization, campaigned to add the words, “under God” to Bellamy’s pledge. Congress complied, turning a patriotic oath into a public prayer.

The iconic symbols of the Christian faith and chronology of the Christian calendar have been so deeply ingrained in our national consciousness, you have to be a non-Christian to even notice them. When I was a kid, “spring break” was called “Easter vacation.” It says “winter break” on the school calendar, but it’s timed for Christmas. If you’re celebrating Kwanzaa, Solstice, Hannukah, Muharram or anything else, you’ll have to juggle your spiritual festivities with your work-life. If you’re Christian, no worries. Your holy day is the nation’s day off.

There’s been a lot of press these last few years about the “War Against Christmas.” The hype has the same tone as the Pledge of Allegiance propaganda. The latter claims, “The Godless, devil-worshipping heathens have control of our government and won’t let our children pray in their schools.” The former protests that we’re draining the wonder and beauty from their celebration of Christ’s birth by making it politically correct to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and by making it politically incorrect to plaster Christian religious symbols all over our public institutions and lands.

The feeling that fuels this Christian outrage is the feeling that non-Christians are making a big fucking deal out of nothing. It’s not just the passionately devout or the Christian fanatics that are offended by the idea of pulling back on the Santa Claus/Christmas Carol fun. It’s ordinary, everyday, rarely-go-to-church folks, folks who don’t even consider themselves true Christians. In their minds, in the minds of these average Americans who just happen to have been born into a family with a Christian heritage, the symbols are so benign, the music so evocative of the season, the greeting so generic, only someone with evil or hatred in their heart could find it offensive.

I have a serious Christian heritage on my dad’s side of the family, but I wasn’t raised a Christian and I can state absolutely that contrary to popular belief, Christmas trees are not a secular symbol, jolly old St. Nicholas doesn’t go down Jewish chimneys and “Away in a Manager” evokes the Christmas season, not the winter-tide. Chronologically and culturally, it was inevitable America establish herself as a Christian nation. Times change. Cultures merge as the world grows smaller and populations swell. Would we were no more a Christian nation, but a nation with liberty, justice and equality for all.

Risa is taking this week off to celebrate the return of the sun in seriously unserious ways.  May the new light bring blessings of love, health, prosperity and peace into your lives.

Blessed Be.

I enjoy watching the fog roll in.  I love falling asleep to the percussive music of rain on the roof.  My soul sings in a thunderstorm.

It’s genetic, apparently.  My kids are fall-winter/mist-and-rain lovers, just like their mum.

All things in balance.  I’m not weather extremist.  I’m a devoted fan of the succession of seasons – I love them all – but I have a favorite.  Fall.  I worship the sun, as well as the moon.  I’m as quick to see fairies in the light-dappled meadow as in the mysterious, fog-shrouded wood.  I like chocolate and caramel toppings, both…  I just like caramel better.

Those of us who prefer our skies overcast can easily articulate the “why” of it.  We wilt in the heat; we rouse to action in the cold.  We feel over-exposed under bright, cloudless heavens, we feel safe and cozy under a blanket of gray.  Too much sunshine oppresses our spirits; downpours free us from Sol’s golden chains.

And even so, the elation that took me today, and filled me, and banished every negative thought, every discontented, impatient, unhappy feeling… it’s inexplicable.  We’ve had a run of nice days, lately (meaning seasonally brisk, windy, bracing).  I’ve been enjoying them immensely, but my pleasure wasn’t powerful enough to erase the to-do list, lift the weight of worry from my heart, or dispel the doubts and fears that have been clinging to my thoughts.

Today, the clouds gathered.  The cold cut.  The wind stirred the yellow leaves and ever-green oak branches.  The rain fell.

And, suddenly, all was right with the world.  I felt good in my body.  I felt clear in my mind.  My heart was light as it’s been since… since I can’t remember when.

Some might say the explanation is simple:  a simple, deep-seated association with a highly enjoyable life-experience from my past.  The fragrance of gardenia can make one person swoon with delight and another gag in revulsion if the former associates the scent with a first, sweet kiss and the latter with an abusive relation.  Perhaps the unbridled happiness that swept over me this morning was no more than a childhood sense-memory?

Perhaps not.  Memories aren’t to be trusted, I know, but mine surely don’t support the idea that I love rain because it happened to be falling on a ‘specially wonderful day.  It was the rain that made a day special.  Always and still, it’s the dark clouds and weeping skies themselves that fill my soul with light and laughter.

Tools, speech, cranial capacity and abstract thought are but four of many characteristics, inventions and capabilities scientists and scholars have touted as the essential, defining distinction between humans and the rest of the creatures that inhabit this planet.

I think it’s fire that defines us.

Granted, we’re not the only species with an ancient and intimate relationship to fire-light and/or fire-warmth.  Owls hunt more actively when the moon is full (reflected sun-fire).  The golden-haired macaques of Japan have long taken advantage of the Jigokudani hot springs (volcanic fire).  A proliferation of rare ocean species cling to the fissures at the bottom of the seas, basking in waters heated by the earth’s molten core.  Moths are drawn to flames.

So are humans.  We’re pair-bonding, clan-conscious social primates – and I’d be willing to argue that our social consciousness was born in the fire-circle.

The communal fire-pit burned from Olduvai to Heorot; it’s burning still in the heart of the dwindling rain forest, in a lofty Himalayan temple, on the final night of summer camp.  The individual hearths that replaced it were the beating heart of the families’ that tended them well into the last century.  Individual hearths are still the heart of the home in nations less wealthy, less urban or less industrial than ours.  Even after the furnace banished the hearth to the basement, the wood-burning stove held sway.  Even after corporate gas and electric sent the stoves to the slag heaps, the fireplace survived as symbol of luxury and opulence for the rich to enjoy at will and display to their guests on grand occasions.

Born in Chicago, a child of the ‘50s, my early experiences with fires were few and far between.  There was the Halloween bonfire at Boltwood Park (a tradition that had gone the way of all things by the time I was 7).  There was a fireplace in one of the houses we looked at when we were hunting a new place to live.  I still remember the reprimand I received as we drove away… I’d been warned to be quiet and not show interest in any of the homes we were viewing, but that house had a fireplace!  I couldn’t imagine that my entire family wasn’t as excited and enthusiastic as I was – though, in retrospect, I suppose my dancing around in front of the hearth begging my dad to “Buy it – please can we buy this one?” was a bit over the top.  Freshman year of high school I went on an overnight retreat to a dune-y beach.  I scorned my tent to sleep outdoors by the fire.

When I was 15-going-on-16, we moved to northern California.  Central heating had far less of a hold in the more rustic, more rural, more organic and far more temperate zones of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Wall heaters were common; fireplaces were everywhere – including our new house.  We were fire-illiterate.  Our hearth tending never amounted to more than the occasional Presto-Log set a-light for the pure delight of watching live flames leap.

But my fire-savvy grew.  Beyond my new home were my friends’ homes, where fires burned in all winter long.  There were homes that were heated entirely by wood-burning stoves.  There were camping fires, cookout fires… when I travelled to Ireland I learned to build and tend turf fires, in Wales I made them from coal.  By the time I was a grown-up mum, a house without a fireplace wasn’t really home.  Our first house-purchase had a fireplace and a wood-burner both, then we dug firepit in the backyard.

We traded that home for this one in 1996.  Yes, our 2-story A-frame has central heating, but the central heat doesn’t get upstairs.  November to May, we’d freeze at night if not for our black-iron wood-burning stove.

The annual series of chores that lead to my winter fires feed my heart and soul.  So I’m grieved, heart and soul, that I can no longer light my fires with impunity.  Fact is, fires aren’t green.  The particulate matter they generate is a major source of air pollution.  I’ve been saying for years we’ll be the last generation to light the home fires.  What I haven’t been saying, what I haven’t been wanting to contemplate, is that we’ll be the last generation with a sensory link to the fiery roots of human society.  If fire made us human, what will we become when the fire-circle is broken?