BY Edwin Cooney
I don’t even have to ask -- I know, because I’m one of you, that you’ve wondered! Yah, I know you’re a critic and a realist, that you’re educated and sophisticated, terrific and scientific, cool and hip – me, too! -- but you’ve wondered! What’s it gonna be like, when suddenly life, as you know it, permanently changes?
The end of our time on earth is, of course, as natural as was our beginning, but most of us have spent our entire lives in fear of it. Those among us raised in Christian homes have been told of two possible occurrences which will mark the close of our familiar earthly existence. These are (1) our physical death or (2) the second coming of Christ during our lifetime here on the Planet Earth.
Millions of people have witnessed the occurrence – and, of course, the results of -- physical death. As starkly real as it is, death seldom if ever simply leaves its physical calling card. It also leaves in its wake such emotional feelings and reactions as horror, loss, anger, sadness, and loneliness. Occasionally it even leaves a feeling of satisfaction or accomplishment. (As evidence of this last point, consider those who recently took part in the hanging of Saddam Hussein!) We also can inherit from death’s visitation a feeling of wonder as well as legend.
Since no one has experienced the second occurrence mentioned above, its likelihood for most of us seems exceedingly remote. Yet, I confess, that I’ve always found even its possibility very gripping.
That is why I was quite fascinated the other night when I received what appears to be one of those email chain letters describing what could conceivably take place on that fate-filled day.
Of course, that day is just like any other summer’s day. You’re driving home and suddenly you hear a rather high-pitched sound like trumpets or a choir. The sound is so unusual and persistent that you pull your car over to the edge of the road or freeway. (The one factor the author doesn’t take into consideration is the possibility that you might be a teenager or young adult whose boombox is on so loud you couldn’t possibly hear the approach of a fire truck or ambulance siren -- let alone the sound of trumpets or a choir)!
Okay! I’ll let the author tell you the rest:
So you pull over, get out of your car, and look up. As you do, you see you aren't the only curious one. The roadside has become a parking lot. Car doors are open, and people are staring at the sky. Shoppers are racing out of the grocery store.
The Little League baseball game across the street has come to a halt.
Players and parents are searching the clouds. And what they see, and what you see, has never before been seen.
As if the sky were a curtain, the drapes of the atmosphere part. A brilliant
light spills onto the earth. There are no shadows. None. From whence came the light begins to tumble a river of color spiking crystals of every hue ever seen and a million more never seen. Riding on the flow is an endless fleet of angels. They pass through the curtains one myriad at a time, until they occupy every square inch of the sky.
North.
South.
East.
West.
Thousands of silvery wings rise and fall in unison, and over the sound of
the trumpets, you can hear the cherubim and seraphim chanting, Holy, holy, holy. The final flank of angels is followed by twenty-four silver-bearded elders and a multitude of souls who join the angels in worship.
Presently the movement stops and the trumpets are silent, leaving only the
triumphant triplet: Holy, holy, holy. Between each word is a pause. With
each word, a profound reverence. You hear your voice join in the chorus.
You don't know why you say the words, but you know you must.
Suddenly, the heavens are quiet. All is quiet.
The angels turn, you turn, the entire world turns and there He is. Jesus.
Through waves of light you see the silhouetted figure of Christ the King.
He is atop a great stallion, and the stallion is atop a billowing cloud.
He opens his mouth, and you are surrounded by his declaration:
I am the Alpha and the Omega.
The angels bow their heads.
The elders remove their crowns.
And before you is a Figure so consuming that you know,
instantly you know: Nothing else matters.
Forget stock markets and school reports.
Sales meetings and football games.
Nothing is newsworthy...
All that mattered, matters no more....
for Christ has come...
From this point the author requests that you let him or her know when you received this message. Assuring you that your reception of this message was no accident, you’re requested not to break the chain and to send it to at least four people. Additionally, you’re promised that if you do send it on, you’ll get a wanted phone call or be contacted by someone whom you’ve been longing to hear from. Finally, you’re assured that you’ve just seen evidence of the beginning of God’s love but that you’ll never see the end of it.
So, what’s this chain letter really all about? Does it have value beyond its plausibility or even lack of plausibility? Even more, is it relevant to non-Christians?
I believe the answer to the last two questions is: yes, indeed!!
My guess is that silvery angel’s wings and Christ returning on a stallion are strictly symbolic to make God fathomable to humankind. The author might have been even more persuasive if Christ were standing in an open Mercedes atop that cloud. Besides, it’s silly to think Jesus would return riding a stallion: the Congressional Women’s Caucus would be outraged!
Clearly, the author is a Believer. He or she believes that Christ will one day return. What is likely to happen once He returns, the author does not say. Nor I think does it matter much what happens. What this does tell us is that the day will come when there will be an end to human control on the earth. Presumably, the arrival of Jesus will mark the end of all wars, and bring to a close all human conflict via the force of an all-abiding love.
We Christians, of course, like to think that we understand God better than anyone else does. However, it’s just possible that not even we understand -- really understand -- much of anything God ever has done or will do. We Christians don’t even take orders particularly well. For example:
It’s written in scripture that God asked His followers to build God’s Church. Instead, we have built many churches, thereby demonstrating our capacity to be political even in worship. Insofar as I’m aware there isn’t anything written in scripture giving us permission to have done this! The good news, so written in scripture and surely implied in the message above, is that God’s love is sufficiently powerful enough to forgive even this self-centered and self-important human tendency on the part of us Christians.
For those of other religious faiths, this Christian isn’t sufficiently smug to be absolutely sure that Christ hasn’t infiltrated your faith. If Christ can return on a horse or perhaps even in a Mercedes, it’s just possible that at some point long ago he could have appeared as Muhammad or Buddah or…! (Please, please don’t tell Billy Graham I said that!)
As for the atheist or agnostic, there’s a message here for you as well. You’ll find that message in the power of its symbolism. Surely you know that in order to appreciate a good mystery or science fiction thriller, the first thing you have to do is suspend belief. If you can do that for Captain James T. Kirk as well as for your enjoyment of other science fiction novels and movies, can’t you do it to save your own soul?
Even if logic must be king, why let the spiritual have an absolute monopoly on faith? If scientific logic is your first love, then by all means enjoy it. Why let the possibility that science may have been conceived and created by an even more powerful force or mind spoil your fun. If you can’t suspend belief for your own benefit, why not do the opposite—suspend disbelief. It may well matter to you and those who love you for a long, long time!
The bottom line is that I like this piece of writing despite its rather tacky plea to spread the word. The reason I like it is because it’s symbolism takes us to the edge of the unfathomable—the awsome power of God’s Love.
We fear the unfathomable because we can neither comprehend or control it. This piece of writing reminds us that just as our individual presence on earth ends, our collective earthly responsibilities will one day end. We need not fear death. Fear is made and perpetuated by humankind. We needn’t fear death any more than we feared the dawning of life on the day we were born.
From the moment we take our first breath, as much as air, water, food, clothing and shelter, we must have love.
What this message tells me is that we were born of God’s and humankind’s capacity for love and that, if we allow it to be so, an eternity of love awaits us.
As to whether or not angels really have or need silver wings — it beats the “you know what” out of me!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Originally published January 5, 2007
Monday, December 27, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
'TIS THE SEASON!
By Edwin Cooney
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la,
Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la
It’s that time again—and I love it. Perhaps a little of the magic dwindles over the years, but only the tiniest bit of it.
I don’t anticipate where Santa might be at any hour on Christmas eve anymore—but I know he’s surely somewhere.
Mary, Joseph and the Christ child, Christmas carols, Santa Claus, stockings, Christmas cookies with hot chocolate or fruit juice are as much a part of my boyhood as the turkey on Thanksgiving, Jack O’Lanterns, doughnuts and apple cider on Halloween, and the importance of the baseball World Series. So since I believe that the history of a nation is the sum of all of our life experiences, I thought it might be entertaining as well as instructive to visit, however sketchily, the history of Christmas in America.
Most of us like to think that Christmas is as American as Christopher Columbus, (who isn’t at all American), the Pilgrims, Ben Franklin and George Washington. However, such is not the case!
As you’ll recall, Massachusetts was settled first by the Pilgrims or Separatists -- who wanted to separate totally from the Anglican Church -- and then by the Puritans -- whose aim was to purify rather than leave the Anglican Church.
The Puritans, who became dominant in Massachusetts over the Separatists, eventually took over in England under Oliver Cromwell during the 1650s. They banned the celebration of Christmas partly because it was practiced by the former royalists and partly because they considered it a symbol of Popery, a leading characteristic of the much unreconstructed and therefore maligned Roman Catholic Church of that day.
By the 1660s, the Puritans had lost power in London and throughout the rest of England, but they were very much in power in Boston as well as throughout the rest of Massachusetts. Thus, Christmas was officially banned in Boston between 1659 and 1681. It should be noted however that while Christmas was banned in Massachusetts, it was celebrated in both the Virginia and the New York colonies.
After the British monarchy was restored, Christmas was once again celebrated in England although its restoration in Massachusetts took another twenty one years. Once William and Mary took over as more or less equal partners as British monarchs in 1688 and Catholicism was on the decline there, Christmas began to be practiced in a more secular way in Britain.
One of the casualties of our Revolutionary War at the hands of our founding fathers, incidentally, was Christmas. Christmas in the era of Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al, was considered an English holiday and was, publicly at least, unwelcome in the hallowed halls of liberty until the mid-nineteenth century.
Three writers, Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore -- both Americans -- and Charles Dickens -- an Englishman -- were primarily responsible for introducing Christmas as a family holiday to the American people.
Washington Irving, who traveled and wrote extensively from both Europe and Britain, published short Christmas stories in “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” as well as a story entitled “Old Christmas” during the late 1820s and early 1830s.
Most significant was the 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and Charles Dickens’ 1842 story “A Christmas Carol”.
Americans, with their eternal love of the underdog and sympathy for the reformed, fell hard for Mr. Dickens’ Bob Crachit and the crippled Tiny Tim, and readily forgave old Ebenezer Scrooge once he’d seen the error of his ways and showered the Crachit family with gifts and plenty of Christmas cheer.
As for Clement Moore’s Santa Claus, everyone could identify with a little old white bearded man whose little round belly “shook when he laughed” and whose pipe smoke “encircled his head like a wreath” as he joyfully delivered toys to little children.
Santa was everyone’s idea of Grandpa!
By the 1850s, German and Irish immigration had changed the face of America’s largest cities and had, most notably, tapped the strongest American incentive: the profit motive.
Thus, Christmas was truly on its way in America—led, of course, by Santa Claus!
Information describing how American presidents historically have celebrated Christmas is a bit sketchy. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson, despite his contempt for Britain and all its institutions and traditions—including Christmas—did privately celebrate Christmas at the White House in 1805. Andrew Jackson was said to have held private family Christmas celebrations as well.
The first president to set up a Christmas tree in the White House was Franklin Pierce. Franklin Pierce, the once handsome and energetic Democratic presidential candidate known as “Young Hickory of the Granite Hills”—after the great Democrat Andrew Jackson—was by then a listless, defensive, melancholy and defeated incumbent President. The year was 1856. Franklin and Jane Pierce were spending their last unhappy months in the White House. Tragically childless by now--and heavily burdened by political and administrative misjudgments—President Pierce purchased the first White House Christmas tree for the children of his Sunday school class.
Christmas was declared a federal holiday in 1870. It would be hard to imagine that President Ulysses S. Grant didn’t have something to say about that, but so far I haven’t found any reference to President Grant in the accounts of the establishment of Christmas as a federal holiday.
In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison installed a tree lit with candles on the second floor of the White House. He also purchased turkeys and gloves for members of the White House staff.
In 1895, First Lady Frances Cleveland attached the first electric lights to the White House Christmas tree.
In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge began the tradition of a National Christmas tree on the White House lawn. The following year, sadness prevailed at the White House despite President Coolidge’s re-election, due to the death from blood poisoning of President and Mrs. Coolidge’s sixteen year old son Calvin Jr. the previous July. Nevertheless, the ceremony was held with the participation of Calvin and Grace Coolidge.
Jacqueline Kennedy began the Christmas theme for the National Christmas tree in 1961 by decorating it with figures from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”.
In 2001, Laura Bush’s theme was “Home For the Holidays” which used replicas of the homes of previous presidents.
What, do you suppose, this all means? What do the forces of religion, politics and commercialism say about what we do? Which one of these forces have had the greatest beneficial effect on our celebration of Christmas? Which one of these forces have had the most detrimental effect?
The answers to the above questions I’ll leave up to you. However, I’ll close this week’s effort with my favorite presidential Christmas story.
It was December of 1921 and President Warren G. Harding faced a dilemma, a struggle between his conscience and his need to be politically effective. A small town Republican, he was sensitive to and even shared the suspicions of his fellow townsmen of what might be called foreign ideologies.
As president, possessing the pardoning power as he did, Warren Harding had received pleas for the release of Socialist party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs from federal prison. Debs had been convicted during the “Great War” of sedition for public opposition to the war once it had been declared by Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.
Now the war was over. Since the League of Nations had been rejected by the Senate in 1919 and again in 1920, the U.S. government, under the direction of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had negotiated a separate peace treaty with Germany which President Harding had signed during a golf game the previous July.
Thus, Mr. Debs was no longer a threat to America’s national security. However, many of the president’s closest friends and political advisors were dead set against any sympathy for Debs whom they strongly believed had deliberately undermined the patriotic efforts of those who had made the “supreme sacrifice” in France during the war. To them, Debs as a labor leader, was little more than a life long trouble maker inspired lately by foreign ideologies and interests. One of those who drove home that point most vigorously was the president’s personal hometown buddy Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. (Note: Mr. Daugherty himself would need presidential tolerance within a few years once he was indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal).
For President Harding, however, the question was whether or not justice would be further served by keeping a 66 year old pacifist in jail or whether the spirit of Christmas required him to be charitable. Earlier in 1921, outgoing President Woodrow Wilson had bitterly rejected pleas for Debs’ pardon.
Christmas was on a Sunday in 1921 thereby giving the celebration of the birth of Christ a special intensity. About the 20th of December, President Harding had made up his mind. Attorney General Daugherty was called in and told to prepare the necessary papers. They were prepared and sent to the federal prison in Atlanta.
By lunch time on Friday December 23rd, Eugene Victor Debs was in President Harding’s office. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Debs was home.
When asked why he had pardoned Debs, the President is said to have replied in words similar to these: “At Christmas time, a peaceful man ought to be home with his wife.”
While it is true that the pardon didn’t reinstate Mr. Debs’ citizenship to allow him to vote or seek public office as before, he could act as a political consultant, write, and lecture. Most significant, thanks to the conscience and humanity of Warren Gamaliel Harding, Eugene Victor Debs was once again a free man.
If any president has given a gift more noble and worthy of the spirit of Christmas, I haven’t heard of it.
Christmas, wow! What a season!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la,
Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la
It’s that time again—and I love it. Perhaps a little of the magic dwindles over the years, but only the tiniest bit of it.
I don’t anticipate where Santa might be at any hour on Christmas eve anymore—but I know he’s surely somewhere.
Mary, Joseph and the Christ child, Christmas carols, Santa Claus, stockings, Christmas cookies with hot chocolate or fruit juice are as much a part of my boyhood as the turkey on Thanksgiving, Jack O’Lanterns, doughnuts and apple cider on Halloween, and the importance of the baseball World Series. So since I believe that the history of a nation is the sum of all of our life experiences, I thought it might be entertaining as well as instructive to visit, however sketchily, the history of Christmas in America.
Most of us like to think that Christmas is as American as Christopher Columbus, (who isn’t at all American), the Pilgrims, Ben Franklin and George Washington. However, such is not the case!
As you’ll recall, Massachusetts was settled first by the Pilgrims or Separatists -- who wanted to separate totally from the Anglican Church -- and then by the Puritans -- whose aim was to purify rather than leave the Anglican Church.
The Puritans, who became dominant in Massachusetts over the Separatists, eventually took over in England under Oliver Cromwell during the 1650s. They banned the celebration of Christmas partly because it was practiced by the former royalists and partly because they considered it a symbol of Popery, a leading characteristic of the much unreconstructed and therefore maligned Roman Catholic Church of that day.
By the 1660s, the Puritans had lost power in London and throughout the rest of England, but they were very much in power in Boston as well as throughout the rest of Massachusetts. Thus, Christmas was officially banned in Boston between 1659 and 1681. It should be noted however that while Christmas was banned in Massachusetts, it was celebrated in both the Virginia and the New York colonies.
After the British monarchy was restored, Christmas was once again celebrated in England although its restoration in Massachusetts took another twenty one years. Once William and Mary took over as more or less equal partners as British monarchs in 1688 and Catholicism was on the decline there, Christmas began to be practiced in a more secular way in Britain.
One of the casualties of our Revolutionary War at the hands of our founding fathers, incidentally, was Christmas. Christmas in the era of Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al, was considered an English holiday and was, publicly at least, unwelcome in the hallowed halls of liberty until the mid-nineteenth century.
Three writers, Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore -- both Americans -- and Charles Dickens -- an Englishman -- were primarily responsible for introducing Christmas as a family holiday to the American people.
Washington Irving, who traveled and wrote extensively from both Europe and Britain, published short Christmas stories in “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” as well as a story entitled “Old Christmas” during the late 1820s and early 1830s.
Most significant was the 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and Charles Dickens’ 1842 story “A Christmas Carol”.
Americans, with their eternal love of the underdog and sympathy for the reformed, fell hard for Mr. Dickens’ Bob Crachit and the crippled Tiny Tim, and readily forgave old Ebenezer Scrooge once he’d seen the error of his ways and showered the Crachit family with gifts and plenty of Christmas cheer.
As for Clement Moore’s Santa Claus, everyone could identify with a little old white bearded man whose little round belly “shook when he laughed” and whose pipe smoke “encircled his head like a wreath” as he joyfully delivered toys to little children.
Santa was everyone’s idea of Grandpa!
By the 1850s, German and Irish immigration had changed the face of America’s largest cities and had, most notably, tapped the strongest American incentive: the profit motive.
Thus, Christmas was truly on its way in America—led, of course, by Santa Claus!
Information describing how American presidents historically have celebrated Christmas is a bit sketchy. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson, despite his contempt for Britain and all its institutions and traditions—including Christmas—did privately celebrate Christmas at the White House in 1805. Andrew Jackson was said to have held private family Christmas celebrations as well.
The first president to set up a Christmas tree in the White House was Franklin Pierce. Franklin Pierce, the once handsome and energetic Democratic presidential candidate known as “Young Hickory of the Granite Hills”—after the great Democrat Andrew Jackson—was by then a listless, defensive, melancholy and defeated incumbent President. The year was 1856. Franklin and Jane Pierce were spending their last unhappy months in the White House. Tragically childless by now--and heavily burdened by political and administrative misjudgments—President Pierce purchased the first White House Christmas tree for the children of his Sunday school class.
Christmas was declared a federal holiday in 1870. It would be hard to imagine that President Ulysses S. Grant didn’t have something to say about that, but so far I haven’t found any reference to President Grant in the accounts of the establishment of Christmas as a federal holiday.
In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison installed a tree lit with candles on the second floor of the White House. He also purchased turkeys and gloves for members of the White House staff.
In 1895, First Lady Frances Cleveland attached the first electric lights to the White House Christmas tree.
In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge began the tradition of a National Christmas tree on the White House lawn. The following year, sadness prevailed at the White House despite President Coolidge’s re-election, due to the death from blood poisoning of President and Mrs. Coolidge’s sixteen year old son Calvin Jr. the previous July. Nevertheless, the ceremony was held with the participation of Calvin and Grace Coolidge.
Jacqueline Kennedy began the Christmas theme for the National Christmas tree in 1961 by decorating it with figures from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”.
In 2001, Laura Bush’s theme was “Home For the Holidays” which used replicas of the homes of previous presidents.
What, do you suppose, this all means? What do the forces of religion, politics and commercialism say about what we do? Which one of these forces have had the greatest beneficial effect on our celebration of Christmas? Which one of these forces have had the most detrimental effect?
The answers to the above questions I’ll leave up to you. However, I’ll close this week’s effort with my favorite presidential Christmas story.
It was December of 1921 and President Warren G. Harding faced a dilemma, a struggle between his conscience and his need to be politically effective. A small town Republican, he was sensitive to and even shared the suspicions of his fellow townsmen of what might be called foreign ideologies.
As president, possessing the pardoning power as he did, Warren Harding had received pleas for the release of Socialist party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs from federal prison. Debs had been convicted during the “Great War” of sedition for public opposition to the war once it had been declared by Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.
Now the war was over. Since the League of Nations had been rejected by the Senate in 1919 and again in 1920, the U.S. government, under the direction of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had negotiated a separate peace treaty with Germany which President Harding had signed during a golf game the previous July.
Thus, Mr. Debs was no longer a threat to America’s national security. However, many of the president’s closest friends and political advisors were dead set against any sympathy for Debs whom they strongly believed had deliberately undermined the patriotic efforts of those who had made the “supreme sacrifice” in France during the war. To them, Debs as a labor leader, was little more than a life long trouble maker inspired lately by foreign ideologies and interests. One of those who drove home that point most vigorously was the president’s personal hometown buddy Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. (Note: Mr. Daugherty himself would need presidential tolerance within a few years once he was indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal).
For President Harding, however, the question was whether or not justice would be further served by keeping a 66 year old pacifist in jail or whether the spirit of Christmas required him to be charitable. Earlier in 1921, outgoing President Woodrow Wilson had bitterly rejected pleas for Debs’ pardon.
Christmas was on a Sunday in 1921 thereby giving the celebration of the birth of Christ a special intensity. About the 20th of December, President Harding had made up his mind. Attorney General Daugherty was called in and told to prepare the necessary papers. They were prepared and sent to the federal prison in Atlanta.
By lunch time on Friday December 23rd, Eugene Victor Debs was in President Harding’s office. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Debs was home.
When asked why he had pardoned Debs, the President is said to have replied in words similar to these: “At Christmas time, a peaceful man ought to be home with his wife.”
While it is true that the pardon didn’t reinstate Mr. Debs’ citizenship to allow him to vote or seek public office as before, he could act as a political consultant, write, and lecture. Most significant, thanks to the conscience and humanity of Warren Gamaliel Harding, Eugene Victor Debs was once again a free man.
If any president has given a gift more noble and worthy of the spirit of Christmas, I haven’t heard of it.
Christmas, wow! What a season!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, December 20, 2010
SOLAR SHOCKS: HUMAN SOLUTIONS
By Edwin Cooney
As a former sweetheart of mine used to say: take a squint at this!
“NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft surround sun. On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.”
The article goes on to describe how solar activity can affect the environment as well as our capacity to operate our increasingly vital satellite communication systems. What exactly this solar holocaust might ultimately mean to you and to me, they either can’t or don’t say, although they’ll certainly insist that explosions and shocks on the sun need to be monitored for our ultimate benefit.
I can’t say for certain, but my guess is that shocks (or earthquakes) and explosions affecting one of our earthly hemispheres would be a bigger story than 9/11! However, since the sun is constructed of little more than eternally flaming gases, it is unlikely to sustain such vital activities as competitive sports, romance, religion and politics. Explosions and shocks are all that can happen on the sun! Such activities have no doubt been going on there for years, but now we know about them, and thus we worry and wonder about their significance.
So, as I often do when flummoxed, I went down to my local watering hole to talk this over with my two buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead.
They were in their usual places at the bar. Lunkhead, as usual, was chewing a dead cigar and stirring his neat scotch with a swizzle stick. Dunderhead was drinking an exotic Mexican beer while stuffing his face with salted peanuts.
“What do you say, fellows?” I asked as each finished reading copies of the article I just described.
“Those liberals are at it again,” said Lunkhead. “It’s all about scaring the taxpayers over the environment. Then they can spend our money on themselves due to a situation none of us can do anything about!”
“Nuts!” shot back Dunderhead, “Who expects you to do anything about it? The purpose of the article is to inform the taxpayer as to what the government and private industry can accomplish when there are no politicians, editorialists and talk show hosts around. Besides, there’s no mention of anything that’s Republican, Democratic, or even Tea Party in this piece,” Dunderhead insisted.
“The problem with you, Lunkhead, is that you see politics where there isn’t any to be seen!”
“Okay, Hot Shot! You tell us what significant effect solar activities have on you, me, and this here guy,” said Lunkhead, pointing his dead cigar at me.
“Well, let’s see now,” said Dunderhead. “August first—hmmmm. There were five Sundays in August of 2010—-that could be significant.” He paused for a moment. “Oh, I know, the San Francisco Giants began taking off in August. Those solar shocks and explosions made the Giants a team of destiny—-that’s it! Don’t laugh! Lunar and solar activities mean a lot in baseball. Did you know that former Giants’ pitcher Gaylord Perry predicted after hitting a home run in 1963 he wouldn’t hit another one until we landed a man on the moon? Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened. On July 20th, 1969, just after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Perry hit a home run against Atlanta. So, you’ve gotta take both solar and lunar activities seriously.
“Aw, come on!” said Lunkhead, “You’re putting me on. That story about Gaylord Perry may be true, but the reason we landed a man on the moon was because, as President Nixon said on board the U.S.S. Hornet, “God intended that week to be the greatest week since the Creation—so we definitely had to do something! Now that I think about it,” continued Lunkhead, draining the last of his scotch, “How much do these scientists dare to tell us? If there are explosions on the sun, couldn’t it blow up? If it blows up, then it’s going to get damned cold down here, isn’t it? Maybe they know more than they’re telling us. Here’s a hell of an idea: let’s waterboard them and find out what they really know!
“I just thought of something,” said Dunderhead, his voice getting strangely quiet and mysterious. “Maybe it’s up to us to make solar activity mean something! If the sun is a tool, it might not be a bad idea to spend a little money in order to learn how to use it.”
“Not bad, Dunderhead,” said Lunkhead as he took the first sip from his recently refreshed drink. “Just the other day, Bertha made me get solar paneling installed on our house. Hmmm! Maybe what takes place on the sun matters as much as who won this year’s World Series! Is that possible, Dunderhead?”
“I suppose,” said Dunderhead, “That depends on how much money you had on the World Series!”
“Ya,” said Lunkhead, “Let’s not make too much sense; after all, we might destroy our hard-earned reputations!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
As a former sweetheart of mine used to say: take a squint at this!
“NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft surround sun. On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.”
The article goes on to describe how solar activity can affect the environment as well as our capacity to operate our increasingly vital satellite communication systems. What exactly this solar holocaust might ultimately mean to you and to me, they either can’t or don’t say, although they’ll certainly insist that explosions and shocks on the sun need to be monitored for our ultimate benefit.
I can’t say for certain, but my guess is that shocks (or earthquakes) and explosions affecting one of our earthly hemispheres would be a bigger story than 9/11! However, since the sun is constructed of little more than eternally flaming gases, it is unlikely to sustain such vital activities as competitive sports, romance, religion and politics. Explosions and shocks are all that can happen on the sun! Such activities have no doubt been going on there for years, but now we know about them, and thus we worry and wonder about their significance.
So, as I often do when flummoxed, I went down to my local watering hole to talk this over with my two buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead.
They were in their usual places at the bar. Lunkhead, as usual, was chewing a dead cigar and stirring his neat scotch with a swizzle stick. Dunderhead was drinking an exotic Mexican beer while stuffing his face with salted peanuts.
“What do you say, fellows?” I asked as each finished reading copies of the article I just described.
“Those liberals are at it again,” said Lunkhead. “It’s all about scaring the taxpayers over the environment. Then they can spend our money on themselves due to a situation none of us can do anything about!”
“Nuts!” shot back Dunderhead, “Who expects you to do anything about it? The purpose of the article is to inform the taxpayer as to what the government and private industry can accomplish when there are no politicians, editorialists and talk show hosts around. Besides, there’s no mention of anything that’s Republican, Democratic, or even Tea Party in this piece,” Dunderhead insisted.
“The problem with you, Lunkhead, is that you see politics where there isn’t any to be seen!”
“Okay, Hot Shot! You tell us what significant effect solar activities have on you, me, and this here guy,” said Lunkhead, pointing his dead cigar at me.
“Well, let’s see now,” said Dunderhead. “August first—hmmmm. There were five Sundays in August of 2010—-that could be significant.” He paused for a moment. “Oh, I know, the San Francisco Giants began taking off in August. Those solar shocks and explosions made the Giants a team of destiny—-that’s it! Don’t laugh! Lunar and solar activities mean a lot in baseball. Did you know that former Giants’ pitcher Gaylord Perry predicted after hitting a home run in 1963 he wouldn’t hit another one until we landed a man on the moon? Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened. On July 20th, 1969, just after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Perry hit a home run against Atlanta. So, you’ve gotta take both solar and lunar activities seriously.
“Aw, come on!” said Lunkhead, “You’re putting me on. That story about Gaylord Perry may be true, but the reason we landed a man on the moon was because, as President Nixon said on board the U.S.S. Hornet, “God intended that week to be the greatest week since the Creation—so we definitely had to do something! Now that I think about it,” continued Lunkhead, draining the last of his scotch, “How much do these scientists dare to tell us? If there are explosions on the sun, couldn’t it blow up? If it blows up, then it’s going to get damned cold down here, isn’t it? Maybe they know more than they’re telling us. Here’s a hell of an idea: let’s waterboard them and find out what they really know!
“I just thought of something,” said Dunderhead, his voice getting strangely quiet and mysterious. “Maybe it’s up to us to make solar activity mean something! If the sun is a tool, it might not be a bad idea to spend a little money in order to learn how to use it.”
“Not bad, Dunderhead,” said Lunkhead as he took the first sip from his recently refreshed drink. “Just the other day, Bertha made me get solar paneling installed on our house. Hmmm! Maybe what takes place on the sun matters as much as who won this year’s World Series! Is that possible, Dunderhead?”
“I suppose,” said Dunderhead, “That depends on how much money you had on the World Series!”
“Ya,” said Lunkhead, “Let’s not make too much sense; after all, we might destroy our hard-earned reputations!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, December 13, 2010
LOVING THE LEAST AMONG US—IS IT NOBLE OR OUTRAGEOUS?
By Edwin Cooney
As I’ve asserted numerous times in these musings, I don’t love anyone because they are perfect and, as far as I’m aware, no one else does either.
I recall many times as a youth being publicly punished and wondering -- as I obeyed the teacher’s command to “stand in the corner, Eddie” -- whether my friends would still be my friends at lunchtime. Fortunately, they usually were. Still, most of us feel best about ourselves when we’re publicly acknowledged for our heroic deeds.
Nevertheless, there have been occasions when I’ve felt sympathy for someone even when that person has been rightly punished for outrageous behavior.
Christian scripture reminds us that Christ spent more time with the dregs of society than He did with the righteous. After all, the righteous didn’t need Him.
This was forcefully brought home to me a few years ago by an article in the New York Times. Times reporter Dan Barry introduced me to a man by the name of Roy Ratcliff. Mr. Ratcliff was then the sixty-year-old pastor of the Mandrake Road Church of Christ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was like most ministers you meet or read about: reflective, spiritual, and possessing that special capacity for tolerance that comes with his profession. There was only one thing that marked him from any other preacher you’d ever meet. That difference was that since 1994 he’d dwelt in that special place of the outrageous.
As he told Dan Barry of the Times, he had never been to a prison before April 1994. Now, as Christ and his Disciples often did, Reverend Ratcliff visits prisons all the time.
While visiting his first prison, Reverend Ratcliff was introduced to a rather tall, blonde, and good-looking prisoner who wanted to be baptized. He’d sinned the worst of sins. He was among the most despised of his time. He knew that baptism wouldn’t cleanse him of his earthly crimes against humanity. However, he’d heard that, were he to be accepted into God’s realm, even he could start over.
The young man was just 34 years old that May 21st. He was sentenced to spend the equivalent of fifteen life sentences at the Columbia State Prison in Portage, Wisconsin. He believed that he should have received the death penalty for his crimes and the Reverend Ratcliff agreed. However, there was no death penalty in Wisconsin.
Still, the prisoner told Roy Ratcliff that he was increasingly aware that there is something beyond life on earth. In order to experience that meaningful place, he would have to be baptized and, indeed, he was anxious for the experience.
So the good Reverend Mr. Ratcliff did baptize the still youthful looking Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Within months, Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison and thus the “taxpayer” was relieved of having anything whatsoever to do with his upkeep. For that, most were quite grateful, it would seem.
However, herein lies a powerful irony! The “taxpayer,” were he to express his gratitude, would have to express that gratitude to a triple murderer by the name of Christopher Scarver. Scarver was not only in jail for a brutal murder -- I’ve yet to hear of a gentle murder! -- but he killed Jesse Anderson, another inmate, at the same time he dispatched Dahmer. Is that not both outrageous as well as ironic?
The really outrageous thing is, of course, the willingness of Reverend Ratcliff not only to baptize Jeffrey Dahmer, but even more to let it be known that the least among us remained Roy Ratcliff’s friend.
As Reverend Ratcliff told the Times’ Dan Barry, he has been both embraced and ostracized within his church and throughout the religious community for having baptized and befriended Jeffrey Dahmer. However, Reverend Ratcliff had the temerity to say that he believes that he is a better man for having done so.
Of course, it’s much easier to love the pretty and the righteous. However, the forces which cause all of us to do what we do and be who we are, very often are beyond our control. That there might be those among us possessed of sufficient power to love the least among us is, it seems to me, the most fortunate of blessings.
The Reverend Roy Ratcliff has not, like me, merely visited that outrageous place — he lives there, I believe, in heroic humbleness.
Furthermore, by the title of the book he has written describing his relationship with young Dahmer, one can tell that the Reverend Mr. Ratcliff fully comprehended the significance -- and the ultimate power -- of God’s greatest gift to you and me, the most imperfect of beings.
The book is entitled: “DARK JOURNEY, DEEP GRACE.”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
As I’ve asserted numerous times in these musings, I don’t love anyone because they are perfect and, as far as I’m aware, no one else does either.
I recall many times as a youth being publicly punished and wondering -- as I obeyed the teacher’s command to “stand in the corner, Eddie” -- whether my friends would still be my friends at lunchtime. Fortunately, they usually were. Still, most of us feel best about ourselves when we’re publicly acknowledged for our heroic deeds.
Nevertheless, there have been occasions when I’ve felt sympathy for someone even when that person has been rightly punished for outrageous behavior.
Christian scripture reminds us that Christ spent more time with the dregs of society than He did with the righteous. After all, the righteous didn’t need Him.
This was forcefully brought home to me a few years ago by an article in the New York Times. Times reporter Dan Barry introduced me to a man by the name of Roy Ratcliff. Mr. Ratcliff was then the sixty-year-old pastor of the Mandrake Road Church of Christ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was like most ministers you meet or read about: reflective, spiritual, and possessing that special capacity for tolerance that comes with his profession. There was only one thing that marked him from any other preacher you’d ever meet. That difference was that since 1994 he’d dwelt in that special place of the outrageous.
As he told Dan Barry of the Times, he had never been to a prison before April 1994. Now, as Christ and his Disciples often did, Reverend Ratcliff visits prisons all the time.
While visiting his first prison, Reverend Ratcliff was introduced to a rather tall, blonde, and good-looking prisoner who wanted to be baptized. He’d sinned the worst of sins. He was among the most despised of his time. He knew that baptism wouldn’t cleanse him of his earthly crimes against humanity. However, he’d heard that, were he to be accepted into God’s realm, even he could start over.
The young man was just 34 years old that May 21st. He was sentenced to spend the equivalent of fifteen life sentences at the Columbia State Prison in Portage, Wisconsin. He believed that he should have received the death penalty for his crimes and the Reverend Ratcliff agreed. However, there was no death penalty in Wisconsin.
Still, the prisoner told Roy Ratcliff that he was increasingly aware that there is something beyond life on earth. In order to experience that meaningful place, he would have to be baptized and, indeed, he was anxious for the experience.
So the good Reverend Mr. Ratcliff did baptize the still youthful looking Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Within months, Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison and thus the “taxpayer” was relieved of having anything whatsoever to do with his upkeep. For that, most were quite grateful, it would seem.
However, herein lies a powerful irony! The “taxpayer,” were he to express his gratitude, would have to express that gratitude to a triple murderer by the name of Christopher Scarver. Scarver was not only in jail for a brutal murder -- I’ve yet to hear of a gentle murder! -- but he killed Jesse Anderson, another inmate, at the same time he dispatched Dahmer. Is that not both outrageous as well as ironic?
The really outrageous thing is, of course, the willingness of Reverend Ratcliff not only to baptize Jeffrey Dahmer, but even more to let it be known that the least among us remained Roy Ratcliff’s friend.
As Reverend Ratcliff told the Times’ Dan Barry, he has been both embraced and ostracized within his church and throughout the religious community for having baptized and befriended Jeffrey Dahmer. However, Reverend Ratcliff had the temerity to say that he believes that he is a better man for having done so.
Of course, it’s much easier to love the pretty and the righteous. However, the forces which cause all of us to do what we do and be who we are, very often are beyond our control. That there might be those among us possessed of sufficient power to love the least among us is, it seems to me, the most fortunate of blessings.
The Reverend Roy Ratcliff has not, like me, merely visited that outrageous place — he lives there, I believe, in heroic humbleness.
Furthermore, by the title of the book he has written describing his relationship with young Dahmer, one can tell that the Reverend Mr. Ratcliff fully comprehended the significance -- and the ultimate power -- of God’s greatest gift to you and me, the most imperfect of beings.
The book is entitled: “DARK JOURNEY, DEEP GRACE.”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, December 6, 2010
SO—WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
By Edwin Cooney
A few days ago, someone sent me a piece that appears designed to reinforce my sense of outrage with our modern “socialistic and secular society.”
The piece repeatedly inquires “did you know?” and states that the Supreme Court building is bedecked with religious icons depicting Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. It also states that the Ten Commandments are engraved on the lower portion of the court’s two front oaken doors. In addition, it notes that there are Bible verses engraved on buildings and statues all over Washington, D.C. and that 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were members of the orthodox churches of their colonies. Further, it reminds us that the taxpayers have paid the clergy to open and close Congress on a daily basis since 1777.
The next little zinger was a quote from James Madison which tersely reminds posterity (that’s you and me) that: “We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” Thus, big government is immoral and local or state government is moral government!
Finally we’re reminded of the following: Thomas Jefferson worried that the courts would overstep their authority and, instead of interpreting the law, would begin making law -- thus establishing an oligarchy, the rule of the few over the many.
The piece closes asserting that if I agree with its sentiments, I should pass it on and if I don’t, I could delete it. My dilemma is that if all of the above is true, there’s little to argue about -- except that 39 not 55 men signed the completed Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17th, 1787.
The obvious question is -- is that all there really is to know about American history?? For example, did you know that in 1797 President John Adams assured the Moslem nations of North Africa that the United States was not officially a Christian nation because it allows for the practice of all religions?
Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson emphatically denied the divinity of Christ?
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson -- using a razor blade -- systematically cut out all references in the Bible to Christ’s divinity and works as a healer and that in fact there exists a Jefferson Bible?
Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt considered “In God We Trust” on our money as blasphemous? His explanation was that it was sacrilegious to associate God with money.
Did you know that American capitalists, not the poor, were the original proponents of “big government”? Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and even John C. Calhoun sought federal money all their political lives to finance the transportation and moneymaking institutions in their states.
What I object to in pieces such as the one from which I extrapolated the above quotations is the righteously angry tone in them. Even worse is the suggestion that America was founded by wise, selfless and righteously moral men to whom our current leadership can’t even begin to compare. I could enumerate some of the personal sins of Madison, Jefferson -- and certainly the sins of the Supreme Court from its inception, but to what end?
Too many people teach history as though they’re teaching theology and, in this observer’s opinion, that’s reckless instruction. Additionally, they appear to really be telling you something about today when they cite yesterday’s idealism and let yesterday’s slumbering sins lie. Among many truths is that neither America’s past nor future will ever be ideal because, like the rest of humanity, Americans are imperfect.
Whatever may be your fate or wherever you find your eternal home, you can be absolutely certain of one thing: you’ll never get there on your American passport! After all, “Providence” -- as Adams and Jefferson would identify our “Creator” -- created and continues to love all the rest of humanity!
I’m trying to recall whether I deleted that little gem or passed it on.
Whoops! I may soon have a very long nose!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
A few days ago, someone sent me a piece that appears designed to reinforce my sense of outrage with our modern “socialistic and secular society.”
The piece repeatedly inquires “did you know?” and states that the Supreme Court building is bedecked with religious icons depicting Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. It also states that the Ten Commandments are engraved on the lower portion of the court’s two front oaken doors. In addition, it notes that there are Bible verses engraved on buildings and statues all over Washington, D.C. and that 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were members of the orthodox churches of their colonies. Further, it reminds us that the taxpayers have paid the clergy to open and close Congress on a daily basis since 1777.
The next little zinger was a quote from James Madison which tersely reminds posterity (that’s you and me) that: “We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” Thus, big government is immoral and local or state government is moral government!
Finally we’re reminded of the following: Thomas Jefferson worried that the courts would overstep their authority and, instead of interpreting the law, would begin making law -- thus establishing an oligarchy, the rule of the few over the many.
The piece closes asserting that if I agree with its sentiments, I should pass it on and if I don’t, I could delete it. My dilemma is that if all of the above is true, there’s little to argue about -- except that 39 not 55 men signed the completed Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17th, 1787.
The obvious question is -- is that all there really is to know about American history?? For example, did you know that in 1797 President John Adams assured the Moslem nations of North Africa that the United States was not officially a Christian nation because it allows for the practice of all religions?
Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson emphatically denied the divinity of Christ?
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson -- using a razor blade -- systematically cut out all references in the Bible to Christ’s divinity and works as a healer and that in fact there exists a Jefferson Bible?
Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt considered “In God We Trust” on our money as blasphemous? His explanation was that it was sacrilegious to associate God with money.
Did you know that American capitalists, not the poor, were the original proponents of “big government”? Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and even John C. Calhoun sought federal money all their political lives to finance the transportation and moneymaking institutions in their states.
What I object to in pieces such as the one from which I extrapolated the above quotations is the righteously angry tone in them. Even worse is the suggestion that America was founded by wise, selfless and righteously moral men to whom our current leadership can’t even begin to compare. I could enumerate some of the personal sins of Madison, Jefferson -- and certainly the sins of the Supreme Court from its inception, but to what end?
Too many people teach history as though they’re teaching theology and, in this observer’s opinion, that’s reckless instruction. Additionally, they appear to really be telling you something about today when they cite yesterday’s idealism and let yesterday’s slumbering sins lie. Among many truths is that neither America’s past nor future will ever be ideal because, like the rest of humanity, Americans are imperfect.
Whatever may be your fate or wherever you find your eternal home, you can be absolutely certain of one thing: you’ll never get there on your American passport! After all, “Providence” -- as Adams and Jefferson would identify our “Creator” -- created and continues to love all the rest of humanity!
I’m trying to recall whether I deleted that little gem or passed it on.
Whoops! I may soon have a very long nose!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)