(Article changed on December 21, 2012 at 15:16)
Having given up on blogging for every major holiday, though
racking my brain for some original slant on things is a good exercise, I
decided nonetheless to narrate some Christmas musings--this time messages that
came to me unsummoned.
I am stuck by the
cruel irony of the mass murder of children and mother figures up against the
ultimate celebration of a child's birth, Christmas. A young anti-Christ also
emerges. To me the Mayan prediction of doomsday as today is beside the point,
though thought-provoking. Then there is the solstice, which occurs about
fifteen minutes from now, 10:57 am.
Every day is
doomsday somewhere--be it individual death or the massive slaughter unabated in
the Congo and Syria. Worlds are dying around us constantly. Our social welfare
system is being kicked around by conservatives in this pioneer land of modern
democracy. All subsequent ones modeled on ours include a welfare state as part
of government's role as servant to the people. Why do our conservatives fight
against it? Why do gun murders in this country top world statistics in this
category, by far? Are these two pinnacles of destructiveness related? Why do
conservatives (largely) fight for guns by misconstruing the Second Amendment?
Prohibition is outdated and few people fight to keep the Eighteenth Amendment
active.
As much as the birth of a child is to many
the ultimate joy, so is premature death the ultimate tragedy.
Another very painful
question is whether this country would be suffering so badly if the children
had been non-Caucasian, farther from the Norman Rockwell stereotype. One
question among many. Remember the racist bombing that killed four little girls
attending Sunday School at a Baptist church in Birmingham, back in 1964, in the
thick of the civil rights movement crises? Was that as painful to as many
people? Not quite.
Two more minutes
until the solstice, the shortest day of the year. The sky here in DC is ominous
but the heavy snow coming from the west will bypass us. One more minute.
Shortest day of the year, the ultimate darkness for this part of the globe.
And now the
solstice. And now it's already 11:13. The Child, legend tells us, though
research contradicts it, brought light to the world with the Star of Bethlehem
beaming in celebration at the dawn of winter. Is this ultimate birth any solace
to the grieving families in Newtown? I doubt it, even if they are religious
Christians. Perhaps in future years it will become this solace, birth
conquering death, more children born to the bereaved, not replacing the
slaughtered ones but giving rebirth to the spirits.
Even among the
bleakest prophecies regarding the fate of the new century, we derive hope from
the innocent faces of children, our future, the world's future. I have to know
that they will find solutions to global warming, as science advances. Some
genius will figure out how to thicken the ozone layer. If we can seed clouds to
produce rain, surely other controls over destructive weather are within the
reach of our restless, grasping intellects.
Parents survive
the death of children, shadowed always with their ghosts thereafter. Every joy
thereafter revives some measure of grief.
Jesus can absorb
such grief, but smiles back with tender sadness. He gave life back to Lazarus,
healed the sick, but here can do no more than console. Rebirth is still a
miracle and people tell of the experience of dying and being brought back to
life. It's been done. Jesus rose from the dead. One day science will conquer death.
But Gilgamesh never
found Enkidu, little Arielle Pozner may search for her twin brother Noah but
will never find him, and with all his supernatural strength, his battle with
the river god, Achilles could not bring back Patroclus.
Is hope at the
bottom of the barrel for those bereaved in Newtown? Gunshot was a routine sound
there. Gun owners live there at peace with their neighbors. Will other lives be
saved once the parents' grief gives way to anger--become MADD, as one writer
expressed it?
Will the death of
the twenty children of Newtown become a children's crusade against guns? Can we
rally all the little ones? Are their faces more powerful than the gun lover's
passion for his/her sport?
Is this the
message of Christmas 2012? Children have stood up to fight evil before, and the
Children's Crusade of the late sixties reached the public with other messages.
Neither is the original Children's Crusade a model in this context. But the
victimization of children abounds throughout history to the present.
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