Yuletide 2003

Well, I had my Christmas, or Yuletide, as it is for me, since I do not believe in any special significance in Jesus Christ. However, the idea of a special child did take a part in my Yuletide for 2003. I went to a service of the First Unitarian Church of Richmond, and heard a Christmas story by Cyndi Simpson. Yes, this is the same Cyndi Simpson that wanted to give an invocation to the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors, but was not allowed to by the board because of her Wiccan religion. It was a story I had never heard before, of a woman, La Befana, who lived by herself with her cooking and her broom. Yes, according to the cultural stereotype, she was a witch. A parade came to town and a boy ran out to her house, saying they were going to see the Royal Child of Light and give him gifts. So La Befana cooked up a storm and took a whole bunch of gifts for this child, and got her broom to fly and rode it after the parade. She did not find the Child, nor did she ever, but she kept showering gifts on all the children, thinking that any one of them could be the child.

I had heard this story earlier, of someone who was trying to find someone special to give a gift to, but could not find him, so he gave gifts to everyone thinking that any one could be this person. I could see a person hunting around for the perfect job, and that he wants to perform it well, but never find it, and instead does the best he can at each job he gets anyway, thinking that each of these jobs could be the perfect job. I could think of some man hunting for the perfect mate, an L6 (see "Logarithms keep Dr. Brown in Perspective" for definition of L6) or even better, and in the meantime treating each woman he meets as though she were this perfect woman. In each case the protagonist does a lot of good and achieves his purposes with less than the perfect, while hunting down the perfect and never finding it. So I find it quite inspiring, and I am glad to have heard it. It inspired me so much that I wrote a song symbolizing the journey of La Befana.

Terror Confusion

Once again we are under Orange Alert. It seems that we have picked up some "chatter" indicating a terrorist attack may be immanent. An Orange Condition is High and means that there is a high chance of a terrorist attack (however, "high" is not very well defined). So of course the media is hyping it up for all they can get. In so doing they are really causing some bad confusion. They say that "The national threat level was elevated to the Orange, or High level earlier this week." They mean that it was increased to that level. It is their use of "elevated" that causes the problem. "Elevated" is the next lower state of terror alert, the Yellow level, one below Orange. So the media seem to be saying that the level is both Yellow and Orange and is really causing some confusion. They should avoid using "elevated" to mean raised to a level, because "elevated" is now a specific term meaning a specific level. It's like saying that tomorrow's weather is cool, man, because it is the first day of the year that it has really gotten warm out. If you really like something, you can say it's cool, but not when describing weather. In the same way, you can say that things have been elevated to another level, but not when describing terror conditions.

Religious sayings

I heard an interesting sermon from a UU minister today. He got really emphatic at one point in the sermon, and I got his point. To me it can be summarized thus: There is no Promised Land, except for the entire Earth that is the Promised Land for us all. How true that is. Where else in the solar system can we live? Those who think that a certain segment of Earth belongs to them as their Promised Land will find that it doesn't.

Here are other sayings I have come up with, that combine more than one of humankind's religious principles:

Christianity and Islam: Blessed are the meek, the sick, and the downtrodden, for if you don't give to these, you are not a true believer.

Christianity and Zen Buddhism: If you see Christ the Son of God along the road with his host of angels, crucify him.

Islam and Taoism: There is no God but the unspeakable Allah; the Allah of which we speak is not the Real Allah.

And some of my favorite sayings from the world's religions:

Christianity: Let he who has not sinned throw the first stone. - Jesus

Islam: If you don't give to the poor and sick, you are not a true Muslim.

Taoism: The tao that can be spoken is not the Real Tao.

Unitarian-Universalism: We affirm the principle of the never-ending quest for truth and meaning.

Hinduism: There are many paths to the Ultimate, but they all lead to the same goal.

Yuletide Fantasy Run 2003

Once again I ran at night this season to find out what kind of Yule displays there were. My rules were the same as past years, with the main one being that white floodlights eliminate a house from being my Display of the Year. I found many interesting displays, and also a few dark areas. The house with the star at the top radiating from it to the ground and a lit up ground was still there. One lot had red lights all over a series of bushes, while another one had reindeer that moved their heads. The Display of the Year for me this year was the one with the star at the top. Another house had lights all over the trees in the yard up high in the air, and it looked really impressive when you stand next to it; however, he had a floodlight on the roof blaring down on it incongruously. I have a Star Saver award, as well. To qualify for this, a display must have absolutely no white lights of any kind. I did not see too many like that. My own house does not qualify, but if you turn off the white lights in the front, it does, and is my choice for this year, featuring two colorful trees in the windows and twelve red 3-candle candelabras. The most unusual display featured three flat snowmen kicking their feet in their air. So that's it for this year.