I don’t want this to be another rant against industrialist societies, like the one I live in, and their misappropriation of a religious holiday. the society itself is not to blame, of course, since it is the people in it who do the dirty work, only to separate themselves using some kind of psychic trick from their monster creation, whenever they look at the thing and see it’s ugly.

nor was it ever really that religious. the old folks will reminisce proudly of their deep commitment to humanity – now lost on toady’s youth.  these, the same folk who brought you World Wars I and II (boxed set) and dropped the A Bomb on a human civilization. those same people set up their wise men with gifts in front of their plastic baby – a little Jewish boy with blond hair and blue eyes. you know the drill.

we’re all hypocrites. good thing we don’t have to wear an hypocrisy Geiger counter.

because my personal view is that it isn’t all that bad. there is this hipster tendency – actually, its own religion! – to dis everything that is traditional – clearly a misconception not worthy of such mighty intellects. one man’s tradition is another man’s new age. did they really think that acting like Hindus was revolutionary? that the Buddhism practiced by the Dalai isn’t steeped in thousands of years of dogma, and dominated by men? please….

my maternal grandpa brought two dressed chickens to a Black family,in Spencer, Iowa   some Christmas during the Great Depression. this is Karma.

I wish I was in high school – then my writing wouldn’t wander so much…….

there was this girl we call Mary – the Virgin Mary, they call her. she was 14 years old by most scholarship when she told her husband, some older man (The Talmud recommends that a man marry at age 18, or somewhere between 16 and 24.), that she was pregnant, not by him. this quote always kills me

Matthew 1: 19 New International Version:

19] Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

sorry, but what an asshole. I mean, in our fear of the truth, we don’t actually apply what we know to what we read. and that is a problem for me. if this happened to a friend of yours – a 14-year-old girl gets pregnant and her husband wants to divorce – because, he says, he doesn’t want to disgrace her? got it. asshole. luckily God intervened for his dumb ass, and changed the way history would view him.

of course, she would not have been “disgraced” – she would have been stoned to death: Adultery (specifically in the case of an engaged woman having sex with a man other than her fiancé) (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). and he, would have had to tell someone that the child was not his. so, if he divorced her, do you think she would have been”ok”? this is not a society that honored women, in my opinion.

so Mary, with her crazy crazy story – was a freak and an outcast. for sure. whether you believe the story or not, is irrelevant. in a scholarly sense, “history”, as written at that time (let’s say 70 – 200 CE), was not the same as “history” as we view it now (even though it is probably exactly the same, in fact, it is not the same in the way we view it). historical tales were mnemonic devices, since they had been largely oral. their purpose was to “remind” you of the nature of facts and things that happened at some time in history. the exact time, or place, or people involved, were likely not important. it was the message!

and this message is that God chooses marginalized peopled every time. the affluent, the “normal”, the adult, the mature, the wise, the perfect – all these people are there only to watch the miracles. yes, the crux of all Christian history belongs to a little girl who was pregnant!  love it! such a girl would be shunned by most of the people who darken the stoop of the church on Christmas Eve.

my favorite perspective on this is Lauryn Hill’s world-famous hymn, Zion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwJ3u2wk0Ko).

Unsure of what the balance held
I touched my belly overwhelmed
By what I had been chosen to perform
But then an angel came one day
Told me to kneel down and pray
For unto me a man child would be born
Woe this crazy circumstance
I knew his life deserved a chance
But everybody told me to be smart
Look at your career they said,
“Lauryn, baby use your head”
But instead I chose to use my heart

Now the joy of my world is in Zion
Now the joy of my world is in Zion

How beautiful if nothing more
Than to wait at Zion’s door
I’ve never been in love like this before
Now let me pray to keep you from
The perils that will surely come
See life for you my prince has just begun
And I thank you for choosing me
To come through unto life to be
A beautiful reflection of his grace
See I know that a gift so great
Is only one God could create
And I’m reminded every time I see your face

first, let me say that I was driven to writing about this some time around midnight, in a downtown hotel in Mexico City.

second, let me explain my position on Zarathustra, with whom I have had a long relationship.  I do not agree with the translation of Übermensch as “Superman”.  In fact, I find this ignorant.  It astounds me that despite such incredible scholarship devoted to Nietsche, no one, not even the native German-speaking scholars, bring this point into question.

The allegory of the tightrope walker provides some clarity on this very issue: he walks a tightrope, above the crowd – the German word über means above, not super. Certainly in US culture, Superman is this guy from Krypton – not from earth. And what makes him super is his strength – that’s it! Consider the beautyr of this quote:

But even the wisest among you, he is only a discord and hybrid of  ghost and of plant.  But do I bid you to become ghosts or plants?

He is not asking us to abandon our humanness –  our earthly essence, as would be the case with the man from Krypton. This is so exactly the notion of “maya” in Hinduism – that the dichotomy between spirit and body is false. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29)

The Übermench is the meaning of the earth….remain true to the earth

I don’t want to write and exhaustive (exhausting!) critical exposition of this here.  So tired of intellectual babble!  This is a simple reality, something to be used by people, on a daily basis.  It is human and earthly – a practical guide for living.  I consider Jesus’ teachings to be the same.  Theology and Philosophy came later, from men with bigger egos than penises.  The allegory of the tightrope walker is for you and for me.

The rope symbolizes us now – a transition between our animal nature and our ultimate human nature. When Jesus talked of the narrow  path and the straight gate, he was speaking of this same path.

Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it,” Matthew 7:13-14

Jesus wanted us to become Übermench, too – right here on earth, while we are alive! There could be no narrower path that a tightrope.  Z. says,

what is great about human is that it is a bridge, not a goal

I particularly like this because it contrasts a very common metaphor among us – that life is a path, and that there is some goal, which  is what? A bridge simply connects two points – one is not the goal, more than the other.  The point to bridge is connection. And we must “step as a spirit across the bridge.”

Back to the story – the tightrope walker falls, because “the devil” – actually, a brightly-colored clown –  trips him up.  Z. explains to him that there is no devil.  And clearly, the choice of a clown (often translated as “buffoon” – but what modern English reader knows what a buffoon meant at that time, since N. did not mean “just some stupid guy”, as we understand the word buffoon today).

So, the clown freaks out the tightrope walker.  There is no bedevilment – just confusion at brightly-colored entertainment.  We all suffer from that daily, right?

Z. comforts the dying tightrope walker by honoring him and his choices in life. His life is redeemed because he chose danger as his profession, and died in the line of duty. Of course, we need to be smart here – it’s an allegory – we are not meant to honor trick motorcycle riders over all other humans!

It just  means you have to take chances in life, push yourself, dedicate yourself not to the safety of your couch and your remote, or even your NPR and your NPR coffee mug, but to extending yourself, all of yourself, to the pursuit of finding the truth.  The truth is, inevitably, somewhere outside your comfort zone.