Relations

Breeze off the water cools,
sun off the surface glares with good will,
birds rise up in flight, raining beads of water, beaks full,
the fox in freedom runs through the tall grasses,
and the land that holds us up is home,
a place of habitation for all that breathe here,
& life is the experience of moving through this beauty,
in continual migration, from here to there,
by each dreamer of dreams.

We meet on this bridge,
as we might meet on any bridge,
for every meeting truly is a bridge,
every bridge an opportunity
to share this dream as expansive reality.

Toward such encounter,
how shall it be?
Shall we pass one another like ghosts,
or with a whispered hello?
Shall it be a challenge to a duel?

Or shall we meet the dream,
     sip the air together
            and share the song.

Cup your hand, my friend, and
hook it with mine in the time honored bond;
reaching out, from above,
below, around or between boundaries,
our greeting as equals helps to map
the extensive lifeline.

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Not Trinitarian, But Devoted to Trinity

In the calendar of the greater Christian Church, this past Sunday was Trinity Sunday.

I am not Trinitarian, and I personally believe the doctrine of the Trinity to be heretical, scripturally unsupported and socially destructive.

I won’t spend a great deal of time on this; for most people, this comes under the heading “churchy, boring, and who cares?” I mention it because I care.

I do not have much in the way of scholarly authority, but I do know that the notion of Trinity hangs on one slim line of scriptural text, Matthew 28:19: Go ye, therefore, and instruct all nations; and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. There has been a great deal of argument, in recent years as to whether this sentence is spurious or genuine. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that baptism as recorded in “The Acts of the Apostles” isn’t described in a way that matches with the description in Matthew. It seems obvious that things happened one or more ways in the beginnings of the early church, after which changes were adopted then for some reason, helped along by the zeal to establish an orthodoxy of practice.

There are triads all over the place in mythology and in many other cultural manifestations. The formula of “thought, word and deed” appears in Christianity by way of Judaism from Zoroastrianism. Three is a magical and a basic number, and I have no argument against the loveliness of three.

However, what I find offensive about the Christian idea of Trinity, as it comes to us today, is how it treats the feminine aspect in the world.

For me, three is the number that defines the basic family formula: Father, Mother, Child. Even in this modern era of wonderful families of two moms with a child or two dads with a child, it is still true that the only way for most kinds of children to arrive is by means of a fertile male component mingling with a fertile female component.

The oldest versions of words for Spirit or Wisdom are feminine. Ruaḥ is the Hebrew word for spirit (and Hokmah is the Hebrew word for wisdom; Shekinah is the Aramaic word for presence). Ruaḥ was translated into Greek as Pneuma, a neutral gender form, and the Vulgate has translated that into the Latin word Spiritus, which is masculine.

Just the other day, I wrote, in an Introduction to a collection of poems, “The more basic truth about words is that their accumulation constitutes the collective memory of our species, for better and for worse.” What I meant by that is that meanings and contexts can be and are lost through the avenues of translation. In terms of scriptural devices, the Trinitarian formula is invoked to make Yeshua into a super divine being, rather than a spiritually aware human. I’ll come clean and say I don’t think that is what Yeshua was about—Yeshua believed in YHWH, above all. Yeshua also believed that YHWH expected each person to respect, uphold and serve the holiness in every other person.

The Christian Religion has done a lot to ignore the recorded example of what Yeshua did during his ministry, opting to go its own way with generations of dogmatic hogwash and contradictory or even demeaning doctrine and theology, all of which has resulted in so much injustice and bloodshed. Indeed, most people who claim to be followers of Yeshua have no idea how many people were killed so that they can be materialist snobs, follow the ravings of ideologues, and revere commercialism during the Christmas season.

Getting back to that three-in-one idea, I have to say that I’ve never heard a single sermon on Trinity that has ever seemed anything but completely lame. But, we have to swear to it, because that is what came out of the Council of Nicea (in the year 325); a loyalty oath that was intended to build consensus throughout the church.

I’ll be honest and say that the only scripturally supported Trinity I can get behind is the one that Yeshua spoke as first clause of the Great Commandment: “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.” The second clause is equated with the first: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Returning to an earlier thread, you might ask why I quibble over the translation of Ruaḥ? It is because I look around me and see that the feminine has been written out of the picture in exchange for a purely patriarchal understanding and mode of operation. I know that it just happened that way… one language was more masculine than the other when it came to matters of spirit. But I also know that men try to own spirituality. Men cannot own spirituality, but they try to do so.

Yeshua was for people, male and female; conversely, the church seems all about sacerdotal hierarchy, which is dominated by males. Not only true of Christian denominations, this seems to be a global enterprise. Even in this modern era, women pushed out of the picture, as much and as far as possible. Daily, I read about women being assaulted, cheated, kidnapped, denigrated, trafficked, enslaved and murdered. Hundreds of girls are kidnapped from their school! Who is doing these things? Some men are doing them. Societies, the world over, have allowed women to be treated as inferiors and as objects by some men. With the exception of a token few, women are not allowed to be identified as holy. And this priestly business has turned out so well, hasn’t it? The terms episcopoi, presbuteroi, diakonoi mean (respectively) overseer, elder and servant; these titles do not automatically imply priesthood at all, but a role in community rule.

But again I digress. Perhaps my meandering thoughts are no better than any sermon you have heard on the doctrine of Trinity, if you have heard any.

In the creation story that I read for our congregation, it says very plainly “male and female, He created them… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” For me, this is the essence of what it is to follow the example of Yeshua: we must acknowledge that every being in this world is good, and we must respect, uphold and serve this truth with our actions. 

If there is a Trinity that must be respected, served and upheld, there is no mystery about what it is and what it means—it is the family unit: parent, parent, child. Everyone is both a parent and a child, worthy and beautiful: male and female, however they identify.

Peace be to you.

All Those Expendable People, Where Do They All Come From?

In the wake of the court decision in the Florida case of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, I wish humanity could “wake up” and realize that all people are in need of and deserving of respect, no matter where they come from, what they look like, how intelligent or not they may be. The planet is not likely to survive very much longer, unless respect is bred and nurtured so that all people know they are needed and wanted.

There are so many people of various religious or social orders who feel they can say they are better than other people and that people who don’t believe what they believe or who don’t come from where they come from are outsiders, even worse, people who are no better than dogs. Such people are the vilest of hypocrites.

You are to treat the resident alien the same way you treat the native born among you—love him like yourself, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.  (Leviticus 19:34)

We all live on a fragile planet that would work for us better and longer if we were good stewards. The place to begin is for us all to realize that all life is integral, and perhaps even more symbiotic than the material lifestyles we fret about and foster.

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Exodus 22:21)

Since the beginning of human existence, there has been injustice and inequity. Throughout the ignoble and iniquitous social history of humanity, women, children, the aged and ill, people with varying preferences of all sorts, foreigners and travelers, the highly intellectual, the mentally incapacitated and those who have been crippled or maimed, have each been over-run exploited, exiled, oppressed, trafficked or enslaved. In these cases, race might or might not be a factor, but most certainly, domination, generally by power hungry males of the species has been the common factor involved.

The LORD watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. (Psalm 146:9)

The same moral dilemma exists now, as ever. Is it right to oppress and suppress any group of people? Rhetorically, we know the answer to be NO, OF COURSE NOT. Every exemplar throughout time has advised that it is better to be good. Every monster throughout history has laughed in that person’s face and sentenced that person to death, invoking the “I can do anything I want because I am stronger than you are, so I don’t have to be good” logic of the sociopath.

If you come with us, we will share with you whatever good things the LORD gives us. (Numbers 10:32)

How can it be explained to controlling people, unscrupulous dictators, corrupt business leaders, hypocritical gurus and demagogues that human beings are the biggest natural resource on the planet? And in no way do I mean in terms of expendability. This is the cardinal error of the control monger, the bank executive, the authoritarian, the mob boss; the common thread of thinking, based on common actions and the results of such actions, is that people are expendable, that it is okay to use them, abuse them, even to use them up and dump them.

…when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are an expendable, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.; I changed “a Negro” to “an expendable” and added emphasis.)

Here is a truly radical statement: If we each cared about ourselves enough to extend that caring to everyone and everything around us, the entire world would be better off.

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world... (Imagine, John Lennon)

Simplistic? A Pipe Dream? Or could it be an environmentally sound economic plan?

Right now, there is an amoral rationale among a jockeying and ever smaller group of people we might call “the Elite”—certainly these people think of themselves as such, and all the power they have and the decisions they make that affect your life and my life and the lives of people all over the world—who don’t seem to be related to us by anything other than an overwhelming powerlessness—follow the formula that says: use it up, use it all up, now and until there isn’t anymore. This is the formula of expendability. Natural oil reserves, once gone are gone forever. The drill, baby drill and frack, baby frack ethos has created a daisy chain of natural disaster waiting to happen—doesn’t anyone remember that the liquids in the ground are like joint lubricant? Pump it out, use it up, it's gone.

By the same token, we are sold and fed foods that are bad for us, so that we become unhealthy and in need of expensive medical care and drugs that frequently have known or unknown side-effects and unforeseen consequences. We are taxed on income and further taxed on homes, on transportation, infrastructure, indeed we are taxed because we are alive. This is more in the unbroken chain unsound economics; once we are pumped out, used up and gone, what next? Homelessness and worse is the answer to that question for a lot too many people.

I could be a bit in the nutty side—I’ll just go right ahead and admit that—but I think that we could build a better and more equitable community if we work the stewardship angle, where we do the very best we can do for ourselves and other people. If we keep the water clean, and make it available for everyone; if we grow natural food and make it available for everyone to purchase for their families; if we educate people for the sake of educating, rather than money; if we develop urban farming and new housing alternatives, not just here (wherever “here” is for you), but everywhere, we can create jobs that help the environment. Heck, even if all we did right now was to hire people to answer phones, we would improve the quality of life.

Do you see where I am headed? Right now, it is all about shooting down, cutting, eliminating, taxing, spending, expending, ravaging and stealing, diminishing, extinguishing.

Maybe the world would be different if we understood economic growth to be about all people equally (and responsibly) engaged in creating, making, growing, educating, earning, upholding, maintaining and sharing. If such a model were to emerge, it must work top-down as well as bottom-up; all need to be willing, invested and engaged. People: This is how you maintain your tax-base as an infinite resource, not just for earnings and for upkeep, but for GOOD!

If we lived in that kind of world, a man like Zimmerman might not have felt threatened or tweaked by the presence of a man named Martin, and we would be celebrating life, rather than arguing and rioting over laws that do not protect, legal decisions that allow people and governments and corporations to kill and steal, a way of life that makes us all expendable.

… time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now is, and has always been, the time; not just here, but everywhere.

If not now, when?

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Thoughts on International Women’s Day

Today is International Woman’s Day. This is not a day I celebrate; it is a reminder to me that, while “Baby” (Wow! Remember that patronizing Virginia Slims ad slogan?) has come a long way, there is still a huge distance that needs to be crossed before there is anything remotely like equality among genders, let along among races. This kind of recognition day seems a hollow sort of political lip service, not a day of genuine respect and honor.

Here is brief rundown of a few of recent international news items that prove the dream of gender equality and mutual respect is still a dream:

•  Todd Aikin, former republican member of the House of Representative, serving Missouri’s second district declares that women who are “legitimately raped” do not get pregnant.
• A female medical student in South Delhi is gang raped, her male companion beaten. This woman died of her injuries. In Delhi, incidents of rape are reported to authorities every two hours.
• Rainer Bruderle, a pro-business Free Democrat in Germany reportedly commented how well one female journalist could “fill out a dirndl.”
• An Indonesian high-court judge, interviewing for a position on the Indonesian Supreme Court, suggested that women might "enjoy" being raped. (He did not get the appointment he sought.)
• A Vatican assessment found that The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, whose members represent 80% of Catholic nuns in the United States, have fallen under the sway of radical feminism and needed to hand control of their group over to a trio of bishops.
• Malala, twelve-years-old student and education activist from Pakistan is shot in the head.
• Ireland has only just acknowledged and officially apologized for governmental complicity in consigning women who had been labeled as “fallen women” to prison-style laundries run by Catholic nuns, where they labored for no pay. More than 10,000 women worked in 10 laundries from 1922 to 1996.
• Medical research tends to focus on male research subjects.

I could report more, but I think that is unnecessary. Women of today, if they are allowed to work, earn between 20% and 30% less than men for the same work. Women are frequently denied reproductive, as well as other, health choices and resources. There are governments and religions that do not allow women to work outside the home, to receive education, to show their faces in public, to be seen in the company of men other than male relatives. The women are told that these policies are made out of respect for them, that men were made to serve women; however, if disputes occur where there is a woman involved, it is always alleged to be the fault and responsibility of the woman, and the woman is made to suffer abuse and punishment at the hands of spouse or other male family members that is either condoned or ignored by officials. Millions of women and their children, worldwide are endangered by domestic abuse, war, trafficking, slavery, pollution, political and financial inequity.

The celebration of the beauty, strength and bravery of women should happen everyday. Likewise, men need to be celebrated, too. I am grateful for the many women in my life, starting with my own mother, who have shaped me as a person by being strong role models, pioneers and trail blazers. And I am grateful for men who have been role models, pioneers and trail blazers.

I would rather see all such recognition days fade away into the kind of world community that offers mutual respect as a primary motivating force within a Commonwealth of Humanity.

The Irony of Labor Day

I have often thought that the way we tend to shunt aside problems is to crystallize them as holidays. Once the problem is a holiday, to which we can pay lip service once, annually, as we pour out our alcoholic libations, we put it completely out of mind. Labor Day is a case in point.

Labor Day has been celebrated nationally since 1882, if you can believe it.

The U.S. Department of Labor offers this explanation for the holiday:

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

The irony is that Americans celebrate American Labor with a holiday observance while international business and government batter away at the average laborer's ability to earn a living wage under conditions that are safe and humane.

There is no sadder testament to this truth than the fact that California still has no legislation to insure that shade and water are provided for agricultural workers in the fields. This is not a new issue. I can remember marching with my parents in solidarity with farm workers in the 1960s and 1970s. A great many American authors, Sinclair and Steinbeck among many others, outline in their novels—often in shocking detail—how bosses and their political cronies take advantage of people in the workplace, wherever that may be—whether in the fields or in any office nationwide.

When you go to your local farmer’s market and purchase the “amazing” organic produce that you love to eat, remember those who harvest the food that sustains you. While you are attending your barbeques, watching ball games, try to remember that Labor really does sustain the world we take for granted, and that we are all the laborers of the fields of life.

And then think for a minute: How is your workplace treating you? In our hyper-connected high tech world, chances are you are tethered to your job more than you might want to admit, and being compensated a lot less for the amount of time you tend your job. It is well worth thinking about.

On this day, put yourself in the sandals of a worker in another industry, for just a moment.

And say a prayer of thanks for all who labor.