merry xmas
Peter Janoff
Yes, yet another year has past! And where do we find ourselves? Yes, just a
little closer to one another. I must truly sing in praise of those who
tolerated my postings
in a somewhat futile attempt to contribute what I thought would be useful
material
But we all know it's a cruel world out there.
Even where the winds of Internet blow.
I have never been to the other 2 Baltic republics but have visited Estonia
on several occasions and found it to be a charming country despite the
lingering drawbacks of
the Soviet era.
You Might wonder why I am so liberal and outspoken nd why I take such a
great interest in Estonia.
Actually I am from the US, but have lived in the Netherlands (2 years),
Finland ( 8 years) and Sweden ( 15 years ) so what I haven't learnt in the
textbooks I've learnt
at school- the school of hard knocks! So I appreciate the verbal jousting
which took
place during the course of this year and truly regret offending any of you.
But the fact that any of you took offense probably means that i touched upon
a sore spot somewhere along the line.
Anyhow I really do wish you all a merry christmas ( both intolerant and
tolerant readers alike) and hope to meet you again minus the biggotry next
year!
A special thanks to Eugene. For being non- reactionary where it most
counted.
But let us reveiw the year swiftly in retosopect. I am sure most of you
regular contributors will agree that there wasn'nt much " culture" involved
here in a group
known as soc. culture baltics. I suggest we redefine the meaning of this NG
and it's true value or purpose and thus we can easily deminish it's value
for rascists and
self- determined nationalists from ignorant or perverted environments. Let
us grow together and seize the power which this truly fantastic medium has
to offer us collectively!
Happy Holidays to one and all,
Peter
zaga...@mail.stcc.mass.edu
> But let us reveiw the year swiftly in retosopect. I am sure most of
> you regular contributors will agree that there wasn'nt much " culture"
> involved here in a group known as soc. culture baltics.
CHRISTMAS LEGEND
I
From the sunny land of Palestine,
Land of intoxicating wine
and porridge made of manna,
Comes this story - shout Hosanna!
A king named Herod was the ruler,
No one ever could be crueler.
He ordered everyone to go
To sign up for the status quo.
''Not to go would incur his wrath!''
Sighed the carpenter from Nazareth,
''Punsihment would be a drag,
Go on, wife. Go pack our bag.''
Then he fed the donkey oats
And on its back he spread their cloaks
To make a sort of saddle.
He set his wife on it astraddle.
II
In the Holy Land there is no snow,
There is no frozen state, you know.
The climate's gentle through the year,
There is no problem what to wear.
In place of skirts and pants
They wear bedsheets in the Levant,
And to keep the bees and hornets out,
They wrap long belts all round about.
Nor did our pair of travellers
Bundle up, quite the reverse:
If they wore coats and shalls and mittens,
By heatstroke soon they would be smitten.
In fact it's hardly ever easy
To hike in sand - you soon get wheezy;
And Joseph had to leap and turn
To keep his toes from being burned.
Their little donkey huffed and puffed,
Its hooves were not quite hard enough.
III
They arrived at last, they breathed ''amen'',
In the city of David, called Bethlehem,
And when they entered through the gate,
The noise was loud, the confusion great.
No matter where they turned their eyes,
They saw great crowds and heard harsh cries.
The city streets were all congested
With carts and donkeys. Theirs protested.
Joseph groaned though he was strong,
''See here, wife, the lines are long.
You'll have to wait right here and loiter
While I go and reconnoiter.
Watch the donkey, keep an eye out,
And if you feel bad, just give a shout
And do not hesitate to call
An ambulance - for now, that's all.''
He gathered up his parchment scrolls
And off he strode to the census polls.
IV
What all they didn't want to know!
Where had he lived ten years ago?
To which church did he belong?
Why was his beard so very long?
Was he a practising ablutionary?
Why did he seldom sleep with Mary?
Why did he never dance the waltz? . . .
And so forth . . . Any other faults?
The Pharisees methodically inquired
While the people in line expired.
And that was only just the start.
Next there was the second part:
He had to get the signatures
Of all of his superiors,
And then he went to the registry
To document his family tree.
V
Meanwhile Mary was getting frantic.
It was bad. It was not romantic.
The sun had set and the moon was old,
Out in the open she felt cold . . .
Where was that Joseph? What a dork!
Maybe she should call the morgue?
At last he came, a shadow of a man.
He dragged his feet. He could hardly stand.
But Mary made a bloody scene:
''Now you've had your double martini,
You've checked out the local prostitute.
You're the death of me! You are a beaut!
Here I huddle nibbling a crust
On the cold pavement - How unjust!
I'm having a baby - he'll need my teat!
Go find me a stable! Get on with it!''
Joseph did not even speak.
His demeanor was humble, he turned his cheek.
He let the donkey pick its way
Toward the sound of distant moo and bray.
VI
The town of Bethlehem back then
Had little commercial development.
Agriculture was the going thing:
There in the new milkery building
The place to go was the Shepherds' club.
It gave out awards and passed out grub:
Whoever raised a healthy goat
Took home a prize, good cause to gloat.
But if you raised a breeding bull,
You got an authentic Solomon's scroll.
And so it came to pass that there,
Not very far from where they were,
The shepherds watched the clock
And kept one eye upon their flock.
Their faces flushed and rosy,
Playing cards and feeling cozy,
They drank their wine from a big ram's horn -
To abstinence they were not forsworn.
The night enclosed them like a wall,
There were no stars. No stars at all.
Not a one shone down from the vaulting sky.
And then they all felt good and high,
But soon they all lay down and slept
Near where they their watch had kept.
And about that time in the animal barn,
To Mary and Joseph a child was born.
''Joseph, where are you off to now?''
demanded his wife. She knit her brow.
''It's cold for you. We'll need a fire.
I'll go to those shepherds to enquire.''
VII
Now that is the story. It isn't long.
To call it a legend isn't wrong.
But to say a star and angels came,
Would not be true, as some would claim.
Quite possibly Joseph did sing a song,
And his aura as he walked among
The sheep seemed like some miracle,
To set their ears a-wiggle and a-jiggle.
Maybe they bleated in alarm.
But the shepherds saw in it no harm,
For what they had drunk was nowhere near
the eighty proof that would take them there.
Professional ''shepherds of the soul''
May try to preach some rigmarole
That Jesus was born to a bride of God.
But Joseph knew better. ''That's odd.''
He'd say, ''That child was normal
Not the slightest bit ephemeral.
Please don't mix God's and my affairs,
Do not bring shame on my forbears!''
Valdis Artavs translated by Juris Zagarins
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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Jonhillr
>Date: Tue, Dec 22, 1998 18:54 EST
>Peter Janoff wrote:
>
>> But let us reveiw the year swiftly in retosopect. I am sure most of
>> you regular contributors will agree that there wasn'nt much " culture"
>> involved here in a group known as soc. culture baltics.
>CHRISTMAS LEGEND
.............
>Valdis Artavs translated by Juris Zagarins
Janoff can now consider himself mistaken and aculturated.
Rein Ende
>>> you regular contributors will agree that there wasn'nt much " culture"
>>> involved here in a group known as soc. culture baltics.
>
excessive messages in Russian and from Yosh. Recently, it seems that the
anti-Jewish messages have taken up too much bandwidth. Still, in the middle
of all of the trash, there are still valuable comments from respected
contributors to this newsgroup, like Doctors Hetzer and Holman, to name but
a few shining lights. It is a bit like mining for diamonds: You have to
sort through tonnes of gravel to find each gem.
Merry Christmas, and a prosperous New Year, to all the readers and
worthwhile participants in this newsgroup. (Grandfather Frost will likely
deal with the rest of the posters!)
Rein Ende
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Vari Esti
>Valdis Artavs translated by Juris Zagarins
This attempt to trivialize the birth and life of Jesus is, as you call it, a
"legend." The truth is, that on that night God was born a man, without
stopping being God. Jesus, who was and is wholly God, was also wholly human.
He taught people a great deal about God, especially about His love and His
holiness. Then He did what He had come here to do--He gave up His life on a
Roman cross, was buried, and on the third day took up His life again. He was
seen by many witnesses before He returned to Heaven, where He is seated at the
right hand of God the Father. At His first coming, He was rejected by the
people (as the prophets of God had said would happen); at His second coming
EVERY knee shall bow to Him and EVERYONE on earth will call Him "Lord."
The point of His death and resurrection was this: God loves us and wants us to
be with Him. But God is holy, and we are not. We have all messed up, and the
price to pay for that is death. However, God was willing to do what was
required to pay that price for us. Now all we have to do is accept that gift.
I don't say this very well, but if you want to know more about what God is
really about, then read the Bible. Start with John (or with Luke if you prefer
a more scientific approach [Luke was a doctor]). And pray. God really, truly
does hear you when you pray--just talk to Him.
I normally sign with my nickname, "Vari," but that means "shadow," and this is
no shadow--it's the absolute truth. Therefore, I sign with my real name.
Very sincerely (and with love),
Cheryl Green
zaga...@mail.stcc.mass.edu
> The point of His death and resurrection was this: God loves us and wants
> us to be with Him. But God is holy, and we are not. We have all messed
> up, and the price to pay for that is death.
Actually, Cheryl, my intention was not to trivialize anything. It would
be presumptious of me to try to trivialize such a thing as Xmas any more
than it is already trivialized in our culture.
The point of His death was to assert His divinity and to make it accessible
to us all. His was a powerful revolutionary act against the temporal power of
the Roman Empire. His self-sacrifice, by its example, encouraged the
oppressed people of Israel to refute the power of Rome. In large numbers they
willingly embraced the most horrible Roman instrument of torture and
execution. The death they suffered was hardly surrender. Roman authority was
shaken to its very foundations. Rome was saved ultimately by the the
ingenuity of Emperor Constantine some 300 years later at the Council of
Nicea. Constantine turned it all around by embracing Christ and by getting
the Christian priesthood to sell out to his temporal authority, and to assert
as dogma the story, not at all universally accepted until then, of Christ's
resurrection. Read John Dominic Crossan, "The Historical Jesus". The dogma of
Christ's resurrection trivializes His sacrifice no less than the myth that
three wise men from the East could tell from the stars that He was a God even
before He had asserted Himself by His voluntary self-sacrifice.
Juris
Vari Esti
I'm not sure where you're coming from, so I'll start with a question
(ultimately the most important question anyone will ever answer, but for now
I'm just asking it so I can understand your post) - who do you say that Jesus
is?
You wrote >The point of His death was to assert His divinity and to make it
accessible
>to us all.
To me, that means that you do believe that Jesus is God (divine), and that by
His dying we can become divine, too. Is that what you meant?
You said, >Constantine turned it all around by embracing Christ and by getting
>the Christian priesthood to sell out to his temporal authority
I will agree that, as far as my limited knowledge of the event goes, the church
really did sell its soul then, adopting all sorts of pagan symbols and
practices (many expressly forbidden in the Bible). The church was also no
doubt weakened by being watered down by so many forced (and undoubtedly
unenthusiastic) "converts."
I didn't understand what you said about the Roman Empire. >His self-sacrifice,
by its example, encouraged the
>oppressed people of Israel to refute the power of Rome. In large numbers they
>willingly embraced the most horrible Roman instrument of torture and
>execution
Jesus did die willingly, a "self-sacrifice" I suppose you could call it, but
that didn't have anything to do with refuting the power of Rome. It involved
breaking the power of sin and death. He died to save us; He became the
perfect, spotless sacrifice whose blood doesn't just cover up sin, it washes it
away. But because He was sinless, death (the wages of sin) couldn't hold Him.
Jesus rose from the dead. And the Apostles and the early Christian church
(with very few exceptions, which are blasted as heretical by Paul and the other
scripture writers) believed and taught that Jesus, the Son of God, died for our
sins and rose from the dead and is seated, alive, at the right hand of the
Father.
In 1st Corinthians 15, Paul writes: "If Christ has not been raised, then our
preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" and ""If Christ has not been
raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins."
Those early Christians didn't go to their deaths protesting oppresive
government. Paul, for example, was a solid Roman citizen who didn't
intentionally do anything (so far as I can tell) to undermine Roman power or
authority. They died because they believed that Jesus was the Son of God,
that He died for their sins, that He rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven,
that He is making a home there for those who accept His gift, and that He will
return to earth to rule. They believed that Jesus is the only way to the
Father (as He stated) and that they could not in good conscience keep quiet
about Jesus. (And neither can I :-)
And as to the question of the star...
> the myth that
>three wise men from the East could tell from the stars that He was a God
That actually makes a great deal of sense. Don't forget that those wise men
probably were Chaldeans (i.e., Babylonians). They very likely had access to
much of the Jewish scriptures, left behind from the Jewish captivity in
Babylon. They may even have been descendents of Jews who, for whatever reason,
did not return with the rest of the Jews at the end of the captivity. They
knew to be expecting the birth of the Messiah. The star just showed them where
to look.
And hey, as the saying goes, let's put "Christ" back in "Christmas."
Sincerely,
Cheryl Green ("Vari")
zaga...@mail.stcc.mass.edu
> I'm just asking it so I can understand your post) - who do you say that Jesus
> is?
Normally I would not even try to answer such a question. In my experience,
discussions of this sort lead to trouble. Jesus is to me a paragon of
goodness, but with a lot of baggage. He is the guy who stares at me from the
thirty-foot altar painting in my church. He has a neatly trimmed brown beard,
a straight nose, Latvian eyes and flowing brown hair. He wears a white robe
which billows in the breeze as he treads the greenish-yellow water beneath
his feet. Over his right shoulder there is a storm cloud in the shape of
Latvia. I know it's irrelevant, but I can't help thinking that this image
meshes pretty accurately with the picture on the cover of the Watchtower that
the Jehovah's Witness Lady brought us the other day. The cover article is
about how Jesus was actually a strong, robust man, not the pale, skinny,
sickly looking type in a lot of Catholic iconography. Jesus taught us that
God is Love. Lawrence of Arabia describes meeting just such a holy man in the
Holy Land - apparently oblivious that he was not being very original.
>
> You wrote
> > The point of His death was to assert His divinity and to make it
> > accessible to us all.
> To me, that means that you do believe that Jesus is God (divine), and that by
> His dying we can become divine, too. Is that what you meant?
There is no denying that I am a Christian and that to Christians Christ is one
of the three faces of the Godhead.
> You said,
> > Constantine turned it all around by embracing Christ and by getting
> > the Christian priesthood to sell out to his temporal authority
>
> I will agree that, as far as my limited knowledge of the event goes,
> the church really did sell its soul then, adopting all sorts of pagan
> symbols and practices (many expressly forbidden in the Bible). The
> church was also no doubt weakened by being watered down by so many forced
> (and undoubtedly unenthusiastic) "converts."
I am not a certified theologian either, but instinctively, I feel that the
Church under Constantine did not weaken itself so much by acknowledging its
position in the continuum of historical religions (and confirming Paul's
postion, allowing converts to go uncircumsized), as it did by making everyone
swear faith in a literal resurrection (also confirming Paul's position in the
matter). The power of the mystery of His example is null and void if you have
to believe it or else. Then you might as well believe in little green men off
a flying saucer. Constantine's power was greatly increased, but the moral
power of the Church was greatly diminished. Pretty soon, the Church
institutionalized all the things that Paul had angrily ascribed to the
pagans: "...because they refused to see it was rational to acknowledge God,
God has left them to their own irrational ideas and to their monstrous
behavior. And so they are steeped in all sorts of depravity, rottenness,
greed and malice, and addicted to envy, murder, wrangling, treachery and
spite. Libellers, slanderers, enemies of God, rude, arrogant and boastful,
enterprising in sin, rebellious to parents, without brains, honor, love or
pity."
>
> I didn't understand what you said about the Roman Empire.
> > His self-sacrifice, by its example, encouraged the oppressed people of
> > Israel to refute the power of Rome. In large numbers they willingly
> > embraced the most horrible Roman instrument of torture and execution
> In 1st Corinthians 15, Paul writes: "If Christ has not been raised, then our
> preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" and ""If Christ has not been
> raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins."
Paul the politician, a.k.a. Saul. He proselytized in a way that his audience
would hear what they wanted to hear. But what a strange argument: if what you
believe to be true were not true, then your faith would be futile. To me it
seems more credible to argue that the thing you believe is true to the degree
that you believe it. Belief should not be made easy. I can't stand smug Church
ladies with pursed lips.
> Those early Christians didn't go to their deaths protesting oppresive
> government. Paul, for example, was a solid Roman citizen who didn't
> intentionally do anything (so far as I can tell) to undermine Roman power or
> authority.
Well, yes, and the Jews rejected Christ as their Messiah because He insisted
that His Kingdom was not of this world. Paul was not only a solid Roman
citizen, he was a brilliant politician. But why then did the Romans so long
and so mercilessly persecute the Christians and why did they go willingly to
the Cross? Wan't it almost like Jim Jones in Guiana, with the exception that
the role of the cool-aid was played by the Roman civil authorities?
> And as to the question of the star...
> the myth that three wise men from the East could tell from the stars
> that He was a God That actually makes a great deal of sense. Don't
> forget that those wise men probably were Chaldeans (i.e., Babylonians).
> They very likely had access to much of the Jewish scriptures, left
> behind from the Jewish captivity in Babylon. They may even have been
> descendents of Jews who, for whatever reason, did not return with the
> rest of the Jews at the end of the captivity. They knew to be expecting
> the birth of the Messiah. The star just showed them where to look.
It makes a great deal of sense to a true believer, I suppose, but isn't it a
bit too glib? How could those Babylonian wise men of Jewish descent have
divined a virgin birth to a woman named Mary clear on the other side of the
then known world if the Jewish scriptures they were presumably studying
specified that the Messiah would be born of a male descendant of the family
of David? Mary, as far as I know was not of the family of David. Joseph was.
And it is a shame that Christianity should lay credence in the purely pagan
religion of astrology by validating the belief that the place of the
anybody's birth could be pinpointed by the appearance of a new star somewhere
overhead.
> And hey, as the saying goes, let's put "Christ" back in "Christmas."
Better yet, let's acknowledge our pagan roots during the solstices and the
equinoxes and let's worship Christ for what he really is.
Juris Zagarins
Vari Esti
>> I'm just asking it so I can understand your post) - who do you say that
Jesus
>> is?
>Normally I would not even try to answer such a question. In my experience,
>discussions of this sort lead to trouble.
I don't know what your experience has been, but I doubt this discussion will
cause any trouble. :-)
> Jesus is to me a paragon of
>goodness, but with a lot of baggage. He is the guy who stares at me from the
>thirty-foot altar painting in my church.
Jesus is my God and my Creator.
John 1: 1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him
nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the
light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not
understood it.
Jesus is my Savior. There can be no other.
John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through me."
John 3:16-18
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send
his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands
condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only
Son.
Jesus is my Lord, my Commander, my King, the one to whom I willingly turn over
the steering wheel of my life.
Romans 1:1
"Paul, a bondservant [or slave] of Jesus Christ..."
Jesus loves me and cares for me. He is the one who has stood beside me my
whole life. He is the one who wrapped His arms around me and gave me strength
and comfort when my daughter was diagnosed with a fatal heart defect before she
was even born. He is the one who gave her a quick (if extremely uncomfortable)
delivery so that we could both be as strong as possible for her operation. He
is the one who made her healthy enough that we could hold her for a few minutes
after she was born, before all the tubes and needles and her trip to Children's
Hospital. He is the one who gave us a few precious days with her (and nurses
who were willing to go to the trouble of letting us hold her in the Intensive
Care unit). He is the one who brought her through the surgery (rather than
taking her then when we weren't with her). He is the one who took her from us
gradually, giving us time to accept that she was dying. He is the one who gave
us a young doctor who had just the right words to say to us. Jesus is the one
who made sure we could hold her again, one last time, before she went ahead of
us into His presence. He is the one who gave us the strength and comfort to
enable us to function in the days after our daughter's death. I remember being
amazed, at feeling like I was wrapped in cotton; I know it was because He was
answering all the prayers of all the people who were praying for us. He has
been with me throughout the last year, even after the cotton came off and I had
to face the pain of a wound that just wouldn't heal. And He is the one who
helped me to finally face the reason for that lack of healing--a feeling that I
had failed my daughter and needed forgiveness; whether or not I needed it, I
asked His forgiveness, and the wound finally healed.
I still miss my daughter. I do not know why God didn't heal her; I have no
doubts about His abilities. I know He loves me and her. I wish she were still
here with me, despite the difficulties we would have faced. But how can I
begrudge her having stepped into Heaven after only a brief stay in this often
miserable world. As the pastor said at her memorial, "It must be wonderful to
have accomplished all that God had planned for your life in only four short
days."
If Jesus is nothing more to you than a paragon of goodness or a painting on the
wall or a dead revolutionary, then I ache for you, because you don't know what
you are missing. Jesus is real and alive in the here and now, and He is
looking for a relationship with you.
And as to whether Jesus looks more like Steven Segall or Richard Simmons, who
cares? He is the God of all creation; He can look however He chooses to look.
>The power of the mystery of His example is null and void if you have
>to believe it or else.
I don't see how a thing can have power by being mysterious
.>But what a strange argument: if what you
>believe to be true were not true, then your faith would be futile. To me it
>seems more credible to argue that the thing you believe is true to the degree
>that you believe it. Belief should not be made easy.
I don't follow that. If something is not true, then it is pointless to believe
in it. I can believe 100% that I can flap my arms and fly, but if I step off a
cliff, I'm going to fall and die. Believing something doesn't make it true.
Faith in faith is pointless; the point is to have faith in God and in Jesus'
work on the cross.
>I can't stand smug Church
>ladies with pursed lips.
I try not to purse my lips very much--it causes wrinkles :-)
>But why then did the Romans so long
>and so mercilessly persecute the Christians and why did they go willingly to
>the Cross?
My recollection is that it had a lot to do with refusing to worship Caesar as a
god.
>How could those Babylonian wise men of Jewish descent have
>divined a virgin birth to a woman named Mary clear on the other side of the
>then known world if the Jewish scriptures they were presumably studying
>specified that the Messiah would be born of a male descendant of the family
>of David?
The Bible doesn't say anything about them looking for a virgin named Mary.
Matthew 2: 1-2 "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of
King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one
who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come
to worship him.'"
>> And hey, as the saying goes, let's put "Christ" back in "Christmas."
>
>Better yet, let's acknowledge our pagan roots during the solstices and the
>equinoxes and let's worship Christ for what he really is.
I'll grant you that the celebration of Christmas has an enormous amount of
pagan baggage associated with it. However, it is still the day I celebrate the
birth of my Savior. And I agree, let's worship Christ for who He really is.
My goal here, btw, isn't to win debate points and logic anyone into believing
my point of view. Only God working in a person's heart can bring anyone into a
relationship with Him. My goal here is just to tell you what I know about God
and about what He has done in my life. And what He can do for you.
One thing I really still don't understand about your comments is that you seem
to say that Jesus is God and He died and He stayed dead. How could that be,
and what would be the point, anyway?
In love,
Cheryl