Holdays Always Make Me Think of Evil

Whereas my friend Nathan said, on his own blog (and church news letter, apparently),

“I enjoy Twinkies and canned ravioli as much as the next fellow, but bringing in our own small crop of corn, tomatoes, and watermelon tended from seeds by our own hand helped me realize that there is something more than magical, something sacred in the harvest. Sometimes we become too insulated from the great but subtle miracles which the Lord has placed in our lives, especially when we see them pre-packaged every day along the shelves in the supermarket. Sometimes we need to see the gifts of God springing forth out of the earth under our own imperfect hands in order to cultivate a spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving for our Father and Creator in all that he has done for us.”

I would say that we in the opulent West go through our entire lives “insulated from the great but subtle miracles“ that lay scattered all about us. We a kept so purposefully, that we might be more compliant, that much more susceptible to crowd control and mass indoctrination. We’re rich and powerful, you see, and if we were aware of even half the evil that goes down around the world every…single…day…we certainly wouldn’t tolerate it. We would not tolerate the destruction of our planet—our one and only home, with its clear cut forests, beheaded mountains, poison streams and lifeless oceans. We would not tolerate even a tenth of the senseless brutalities the human race inflicts upon itself.

We need seasonal shopping sprees to take our minds off all of this. That’s why Franklin Delano Roosevelt invented Thanksgiving on the second-to-last Thursday of November, 1939. Go on. Go look it up. Congress fought him over it, and 22 states (mostly the South…surprised?) didn’t go along with it, but it became a federal law on the books scant months before Pearl Harbor.

Nathan and I do not share the same Lord, however. If I’m to pick a Jesus, I pick the Living Jesus, of whom it is written,

His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
"It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."
--The Gospel of Thomas, v. 113

It’s the truth. And with that thought, Merry Thanksgiving and a Happy Christ Mass to come…(thought certain sects continue to warn that celebrating either might just condemn you all to Hell--if so, then I’ll see you there.)