And when you pray...

The US Supreme Cult is on a roll lately, privileging gun rights over public safety and local democracy, and rating reproductive rights for rapists over the same for women.. The latest one is an affirmation of the kind of religion that gets rammed down people's throats whether they want it or not.

This statement on reversing Roe from the American Friends Service Committee, previously posted here, sums up my position on that issue. As for the latest ruling on prayer, I'll defer to a higher authority.

“Take care not to practice your righteousness in the sight of people, to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven...And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they will be seen by people. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But as for you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Matthew 6:1, 5,6 New American Standard Bible

Or, if you prefer the King James version: 

 "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Matthew 6:5, 6

I can hardly wait to see what they roll out next, but I'm especially dreading the ruling on climate change in a case that embarrassingly bears the name of West Virginia, which could have devastating consequences for the environment and public health.

It looks like a long and ugly road ahead.

 

Epiphany

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, a major holy day in Western Christianity. It's one of my favorites (right up there with Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday). In an ordinary year, which this isn't, I'd attend special services whenever possible.

The word can mean something like manifestation, often of something divine, and the day celebrates the adoration of the Christ child by the Magi in the Gospel of Matthew. I don't take the story literally, but it means the  manifestation of divine revelation to the Gentiles. Other texts associated with the day are those of the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountaintop. 

The word also has grimmer associations. Antiochus IV, self-styling himself Epiphanes, was a Hellenistic king who considered himself divine and initiated a brutal persecution of the Jews in the 160s BCE. That persecution inspired the revolt of the Maccabees, one result of which is the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, which celebrates the cleansing of the Temple after its defilement with idols.

The Irish writer James Joyce borrowed the world from the realm of religion and used it to mean something like insight or inspiration. In that sense, it's kind of like a revelation or uncovering, which is the literal meaning of the Greek-derived word apocalypse.

In that sense, today is going to be a day of epiphany, manifestation and/or revealing in Washington as the fate of constitutional democracy, however imperfect, hangs in the balance. I'm guessing that the things said and done today will long be remembered.

This might be a good time to remember the words of Abraham Lincoln: “in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”

The Feast of the Annunciation

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, which commemorates the story in the Gospel of Luke where the archangel Gabriel tells the young Mary that she is destined to bare a special child. I don't think I've ever marked the date before and only noticed it today by chance. Whether you take it literally or literarily, it is a charming story.

I love the sheer radicalism of the song this young (probably teenage) woman was said to have spontaneously sung on receiving the message:

My soul doth magnify the Lord, * and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.

For he hath regarded * the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold from henceforth * all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me, * and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him * throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with his arm; * he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, * and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, * as he promised to our forefathers,

Abraham and his seed for ever. 

Putting down the mighty, exalting the humble, filling the hungry with good things...let me just say that works for me.

Then there's the amazingly brief but eloquent way she responds to this news:

"Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word."

I hadn't given much thought to Mary or this story until I walked the Camino de Santiago in the fall of 2018, where you can't avoid seeing her image over and over. Whatever the Palestinian Jewish woman who gave birth to Jesus may have been like in history, I came to appreciate  the power of the archetype of Mary as the Theotokos (Greek for God-bearer).

Two roads diverged

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. ...” So begins Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.”

Ever since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the power of crossroads. They have been the subject of poetry, song, myth and folklore.

Examples range from Robert Johnson’s classic blues song of the same name back to the days of ancient Greece, where they were sacred to Hermes, god of boundaries, borders and exchanges, and to Hecate, a witchy goddess associated both with magic and the home.

The image shows up in both the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and the gospels. In Jeremiah 6:16, the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Metaphorically, I think most of us have come upon crossroads where a choice must be made that can have lifelong consequences.

I think West Virginia is at a major crossroads now, one that will have a lasting impact on its future. It has to do with the face we present to the world: will it be one of narrow-mindedness, fear, hatred and bigotry or one of openness, hospitality, solidarity and basic fairness?

Let’s just say that if the West Virginia Legislature is any indication, the jury is still out. We’ve had one delegate embarrass the state by comparing people who identify as LGBTQ to terrorists ... and worse.

The leadership of the majority Republican Party has condemned these remarks, yet they refuse to move legislation ending discrimination — and some have even attempted to pass legislation that would undo local anti-discrimination ordinances.

Still other lawmakers have sought bills that would keep out refugees and immigrants in a state largely composed of the descendants of refugees and immigrants that is also rapidly aging and losing population.


That kind of thing sends a message loud and clear both to young West Virginians who feel they have no place here and to other bright and energetic people who will think two or three times before moving here.

It discourages the kind of employers and investments that would provide good jobs while promoting a good quality of life.

That degree of closed-mindedness says that education isn’t valued here and that we are proud of what — and who — we don’t know.

That kind of thing sends a message that we should continue to be nothing but a sacrifice zone for extractive industries, whether they are those that take away our natural resources or those that strip-mine our public schools.

It doesn’t have to be that way. To paraphrase the last lines of Frost’s poem, we could take the road less traveled by, and that could make all the difference.

(This appeared as an op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Holy Saturday, or the Harrowing of Hell

This is reposted from 2013, with a few updates:

The time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is an interesting part of the traditional Christian calendar. It symbolized the only day of the year in which Christ is thought of as being dead. By tradition, it is also the only day of the year in which the Holy Eucharist is not celebrated (except in cases of emergencies).

In Christian tradition, lots of interesting legends developed around this day. Some passages in the New Testament suggest that Jesus descended to the realms of the dead to bring liberation to captive spirits. Apocryphal gospels from the second and third centuries elaborated this theme. In the late classical and medieval period, legends bloomed about the "Harrowing of Hell" in which the spirit of Jesus trashed the place while freeing the souls of the virtuous. In Dante's Inferno, both the architecture and geography of Hell show the aftershocks of that cataclysmic event nearly 1300 years later.

I love the image of captive spirits who have long ago given up hope being suddenly and unexpectedly rescued by a power far greater than themselves or the forces that hold them down. We could use a good bit more of that.

Right now.

Jerusalem views

It was another amazing day in Jerusalem I'm leaving out the politics and social commentary for now and just sharing some of the skyline. 

The Church of Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives.

 A view of the Mount of Olives.

 Speaking of which, this is my first olive tree.

 The Golden Gate to the Old City. According to Jewish tradition, this gate will only open when the Messiah appears. Let's just say it didn't see much action today.

 The Jewish Old Cemetery on the lower slope of the Mount of Olives.

 The Muslim Dome of the Rock in the Old City. Behind it is the Wailing Wall, the remnants of the Jewish Temple that was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 by the legions of soon-to-be-emperor Titus.

                                     

 The Garden of Gethsemane.This place was really moving to me. In case you weren't big on the New Testament, this is where, after the Last Supper, Jesus prayed for the cup of crucifixion to be taken away but submitted in the end to the will of God. He was arrested shortly after. He was said to have brought three disciples, Peter, James and John, to wait while he prayed. They all fell asleep. This caused Jesus to unleash another of his great one-liners: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

A closer view of the Church of Mary Magdalene.

 The Lion's Gate to the Old City.

Sorry, I can't remember the name of this garden. Good though.

By tradition, although I wouldn't bet the farm on it, this is where Jesus was condemned.

Next time, more edgy.

An evening in Jerusalem

It's my first night in Jerusalem. One of the first things I saw was an Israeli-led protest of the eviction of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah community.

There was drumming and chanting.

The security forces were there, but the demonstration was peaceful on all sides.

Here are some views of the skyline.

An Anglican cathedral dedicated to St. George was an island of quiet.

Inside East Jerusalem's Old City.

By tradition, this is part of the "way of sorrows" Jesus walked en route to his crucifixion.

According to tradition, this is where St. Veronica wiped the face of Jesus with a cloth that became a sacred relic.

This is said to be the place where Jesus dropped the cross and Simon of Cyrene was told to carry it for him. I didn't make it along the rest of the Via Dolorosa tonight. But let's just say that the way of sorrows is still pretty crowded here. And it could be getting worse.

A look from the road. More to come.

Annals of arrogance

This is rich. Paul Ryan, an Ayn Rand Kool-Aid imbiber who claims to be a Catholic and pretends to care about the poor, decides to lecture Pope Francis about the folly of the pontiff's economic views. I guess maybe next he should also try to teach Jesus, the Hebrew prophets, and possibly God Almighty about the folly of their ways...

The Harrowing of Hell

The time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is an interesting part of the traditional Christian calendar. It symbolized the only day of the year in which Christ is thought of as being dead. By tradition, it is also the only day of the year in which the Holy Eucharist is not celebrated (except in cases of emergencies).

In Christian tradition, lots of interesting legends developed around this day. Some passages in the New Testament suggest that Jesus descended to the realms of the dead to bring liberation to captive spirits. Apocryphal gospels from the second and third centuries elaborated this theme. In the late classical and medieval period, legends bloomed about the "Harrowing of Hell" in which the spirit of Jesus trashed the place while freeing the souls of the virtuous. In Dante's Inferno, both the architecture and geography of Hell show the aftershocks of that cataclysmic event nearly 1300 years later.

I love the image of captive spirits who have long ago given up hope being suddenly and unexpectedly rescued by a power far greater than themselves or the forces that hold them down. We could use a good bit more of that.

This high chant from the poet's lips

This is a busy season for yours truly, so rather than scrounge daily for random topics I've been pondering the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Right now, the focus is on his controversial 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address, which so antagonized his pious Unitarian listeners (strange as it may seem, there were pious Unitarians in those days) that he wasn't invited back for 30 years.

What got him into hot water were comments like these:

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.'

(Actually, I think he was about as far from what the historical Jesus actually thought or said as his orthodox opponents. Jesus was no doubt many things in his earthy life, but poetic dreamyTranscendentalist probably wasn't one of them.)

Emerson then went on to argue that historical Christianity was based on a huge distortion:

But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, `This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
 

That pretty much did it, even for Unitarians.

LOOKING BACK. Here's another take on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war.

COOL NEWLY DISCOVERED LIZARDS here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

 

Two urgent items and then some

This blog was established to draw attention to the burning social issues of our day. I'm not sure what happened to that plan.

However, I would like to say thank you to everyone who has sent in good wishes for our Great Pyrenees Arpad, who, as reported here, broke his leg last week.

I am pleased to report that Arpad, perhaps more accurately referred to these days as Tripod, is doing much better. Last night he walked the perimeter of the Farm and barked at any and all nocturnal malefactors. Today he's gone farther and faster than ever on his walks and seems to be doing better all around.

The Pod abides.

Secondly, I received an email from the Spousal Unit. After reading this post about, among other things, Patrick Swayze's mullet in the movie Roadhouse, she wrote that his haircut was in fact not a mullet and sent the following link with mullet pictures to prove her point. After perusing the site, I still say Patrick was wearing one.

What do you think, Gentle Reader? When is a mullet a mullet?

This issue may not soon be resolved, but it does occur to me that Arpad might look good in a mullet. I know he may not like the cut, but then again he isn't very mobile these days. He should have thought of that before he broke his leg.

I THINK I'M JEALOUS. The Gazette ran this great story yesterday about a retired WV state trooper hiking the Appalachian Trail. He's almost done. That has always been a dream of mine, although the odds of it happening are pretty remote.

REWRITING THE GOSPELS.  What would Supply Side Jesus do?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Oh well

I guess the Rapture didn't happen as predicted. That kind of took me off guard given the uncanny accuracy of other predictions of the end of the world.

I would have been OK with it. I figure if I made the cut, most of my problems would be solved. On the other hand, if folks of the more fundamentalist persuasion disappeared, it would probably do wonders for the high school biology curriculum. Plus, my car has almost 300,000 miles on it and a free upgrade would have been kind of nice.

(By the way, a friend of mine passed on a suggestion late last week that a good prank would have been to leave pairs of empty shoes with dry ice in them in public places to freak people out.)

THE FIRST COMING. Here's Adam Gopnik on Jesus as an historical figure.

MORE REACTIONS to the Upper Big Branch mine disaster investigation report keep coming. Here's one from The Rolling Stone.

INTERESTING QUESTIONS FOR PROGRESSIVES are raised here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A must read for Easter Weekend: "Atlas Shrugged, Jesus didn't"

Here's a great post by Isaiah Poole that is especially timely as Ayn Rand disciples and extremists in Congress prepare to pull the plug on the middle class, the poor, and the elderly.

Strip mining for Jesus

You never know what you're going to find when you browse through the vent lines in the local paper. Occasionally, however one comes across a real gem. Here's one from the Saturday Charleston Gazette-Mail:

Jesus will be awfully angry when he comes back and we didn't use the resources and the coal in the mountains that his Father, God in Heaven, put there for us

.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, enviros!

Sad to say, but that may not be an unrepresentative sample of the state of theological end ecological opinion amongst the "friends of coal."

PUBLIC OPTION. Reports of its death appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

AFTER REFORM--WHAT? Here's Paul Krugman looking ahead on health care.

WE HAPPY (NOT SO) FEW. Historians are reassessing the battle of Agincourt, made famous by Shakespeare's Henry V. The new research may be right, but I like the Bard's version.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Biblical Zen

The Bible has got way more than its share of zingers. Jesus himself was the master of the one liner. But one of my favorites is from Luke's version of the Easter event.

When two women approach the tomb, they encounter two men in shining garments,who ask them "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

I love that line. It wouldn't make a bad Zen koan.

Now El Cabrero has no idea what happened in those first days after the crucifixion or whether you could have filmed it with a video camera. But I love the idea that the sacred is living, fluid, mobile, elusive, not defined or contained.

People want to turn it into something defined, legalistic, cut and dry. Dead in other words.

The question remains.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: SUSPENDED

Good Friday

Dali's version of the crucifixion. The real thing was a lot worse. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

(Note: this item has appeared here before at this time of the religious year. New links and comments below. El Cabrero is too tired for originality today.)

I'm not sure at what point in church history the observation of the crucifixion of Jesus acquired the name "Good Friday." It pretty terrible to the people involved. It's hard in our day and age to understand how terrible or commonplace crucifixion was to people in the ancient world. The early church would have been horrified at the use of crosses as ornaments; they did not become standard features of Christian art until around the 4th century, after the practice was largely abandoned.

According to Martin Hengel, author of Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, "among the Romans it was inflicted above all on the lower classes, i.e., slaves, violent criminals, and the unruly elements in rebellious provinces, not least in Judea. The chief reason for its use was its allegedly supreme efficacy as a deterrent; it was, of course, carried out publicly..."

The practice was in part a spectacle of power and degradation. Hengel continues, "By the public display of a naked victim at a prominent place--at a crossroads, in the theatre, on high ground, at the place of his crime--crucifixion also represented his uttermost humiliation, which had a numinous dimension to it. " Often the crucified were denied burial and simply left on the cross, which for many in the ancient world was worse than the death itself.

Historians and believers agree that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem during Passover week shortly after he caused a disturbance at the Temple. Passover was more than a religious holiday to the Jews in Roman controlled Judea: it was a subversive celebration of freedom. The Roman occupiers would have been on high alert for the slightest disturbance at such politically charged times.

The Romans were right about one thing: the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed and enacted was and is a threat to all systems of violence, hierarchy, exploitation, oppression and degradation. To that extent--and to his honor--Jesus was guilty. In the best sense of the word.

THE CASE FOR BORING BANKING. Paul Krugman makes it here.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A JOB? There are more than four unemployed workers for every job opening, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

HIGH ANXIETY. Lots of people have it these days. No wonder.

THE COMPLEXITIES OF COAL and climate change policy show up here.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, a foreman at Massey Energy's Aracoma Mine pleaded guilty to not conducting evacuation drills as required by law. A fire at that mine in Logan County, WV resulted in two fatalities in 2006. While we're at it, another Massey case is headed to the WV Supreme Court. It is not clear at this point whether this will inspire another John Grisham novel. You can always find the latest on coal related stories here and elsewhere at Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo blog.

THE MUSES. A new Gazette blog, Mountainword, features poetry and WV literature.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Getting in isn't the problem

Nice puppy! William Blake's version of Cerberus, the dog that guards the realm of the dead.

Goat Rope is trailing the journey of Odysseus these days and the next stop is the underworld. If you scroll down, there are also links and comments about current events.

One of the pivotal moments of Homer's Odyssey is the visit its hero paid to the land of the dead. Only a few others in Greek and related myths were able to get there and go back again.

One such was Theseus of Minotaur fame, who went there with a buddy as part of a hare-brained scheme to capture Persephone, wife of Hades, the lord of the dead. That didn't work out so well and he was stuck in a chair there until rescued by Heracles, who visited the land of the dead when stealing Cerberus as part of his 12 labors.

The musician Orpheus visited the underworld after the death of his beloved Eurydice. His musical talents were such that Persephone allowed him to bring her back to the land of the living if he didn't look back on the way out. He did and she didn't. Another mystery cult (see yesterday's post) developed around Orpheus which also promised to provide advantages after death and seemed to include ideas of reincarnation.

Toward the end of his Republic, Plato tells the tall of Er, a soldier who dies and tours the underworld before returning to life. He saw various kinds of rewards and punishments being dispensed as well and learned about the process of reincarnation

In the Roman epic the Aeneid of Virgil, the hero Aeneas has to visit the underworld to consult the shade of his father and learn about the destiny of Rome which he is fated to found. As with Plato, souls destined for rebirth on earth had first to drink from the river of Lethe or forgetfulness so they wouldn't remember their previous lives.

Early Christian converts from paganism were fascinated with what happened to Jesus between his death and resurrection and developed charming traditions about "the harrowing of hell," in which the victorious Christ liberated the souls of Adam, Eve and other figures from the Hebrew Bible before rising on Sunday morning. According to 1 Peter 4:6,

For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

One line from the Apostle's Creed states of him that "he descended into hell," which helped to inspire speculation. The harrowing of hell was the subject of some apocryphal gospels.

Last but not least, the Italian poet Dante's Divine Comedy tells of that poets tour through Hell, Heaven and Purgatory (check Goat Rope archives for an earlier series on that).

The consensus of the ages seems to be that getting there isn't the problem for most folks--getting out again is.

ON A RELATED NOTE, a report from the World Health Organization calls social justice a matter of life and death.

WORST DAY ON WALL STREET since 2001. Let's hope tomorrow's headlines don't say 1929. Thought for the day: isn't it a good thing we didn't let President Bush privatize Social Security?

THE RIPPLE EFFECT. From the Sept. 22 print edition of Business Week:

Losing a job isn't just a career setback, it can be a permanent blow to the community, a recent study finds. Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which tracked 4,000 high school graduates over 45 years, researchers at UCLA and the University of Michigan studied the community involvement of workers aged 35 to 53. Their finding: After being laid off, employees were 35% less likely than before to participate in community or church groups, charitable organizations--even bowling teams. And few returned once they got new jobs. Instead, they focused their energies on professional and political groups--in the belief, hypothesizes UCLA sociology professor Jennie Brand, that both could have an impact on finding and keeping work

.

HOLY KARMA, BATMAN! After years of lobbying--to the tune of $40 million--for tougher bankruptcy laws, lenders are now starting to feel the pain of getting what they asked for. My heart breaketh...

THIS CAN'T BE TRUE because it would be inconvenient for the coal industry. QED.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

IF NOT A GOD, THEN WHAT?

Mammon from Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme lately at Goat Rope is the economy and how we think about it. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

Short summary: the way we think about things matters because it can effect our actions. We often speak of "The Economy" as if it was an independent being endowed with a will of its own--and sometimes it seems that way.

In recent years, we've even witnessed the rise of a new religion, the cult of the market god--and market fundamentalists aren't a whole lot better than any other type of fanatic.

It is the view of El Cabrero that a healthy way to think about it was suggested long ago by a certain Jesus, who knew a thing or two about a thing or two. When he was busted for violating Sabbath regulations, he responded by saying "The Sabbath was made for people and not people for the Sabbath." Just substitute "economy" for "Sabbath."

TURNING UP THE HEAT. A Senate panel blasted the Bush administration for exaggerations and misstatements leading up to the unnecessary war in Iraq.

OH GOOD. Some folks think the Bush administration is gearing up to attack Iran.

BOOTY SHAKING, BEE STYLE. Bees from different parts of the world understand each other's rear-end wiggling. I just thought you should know.

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. Here's a critique of apocalyptic religion.

OH MY PROPHETIC KNEE! There's scientific evidence that people with aching joints really can predict storms.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SERPENTS AND DOVES

This would be an interesting topic to research, but El Cabrero is willing to bet that most people who are active in the anti-war/"peace and justice" movement have little or no interest in the history of warfare and strategy, mostly because they think war is bad.

I suspect that this neglect isn't contributing a whole lot to their effectiveness.

I would agree that war is bad. It's one of many nasty things in human history, along with poverty, massive inequality, exploitation, domination, oppression, etc. Economic disparities alone cause many more deaths today than armed conflict (at a ratio of around 180:1, according to one estimate I found in the 1990s). But I don't think ignoring things one doesn't like is the best way to deal with them.

Can you imagine what the fields of medicine or public health would look like if people refused to study injuries and diseases because they were "bad?"

I think it's bad when people's houses burn down, which is why I'm glad that all firefighters have to study at least a little about the science of fire. Car wrecks are bad, which is why I'm glad EMTs, rescue services, and fire departments study first aid and auto extrication.

For that matter, even the most peaceful efforts to promote social change often involve dealing with opposition and power, both one's own and that of the opponent. Power is defined by sociologists as the ability to make something happen or keep it from happening even in the face of opposition. Any chance of improving things (victory) requires intelligent decision making (strategy).

In fact, a whole lot of the universe and the biosphere consists of things colliding with each other and if people want to make things better and more peaceful, I think we need to recognize that right off the bat.

I am reminded of a couple sayings of Jesus along this line. In Luke (16:8), he said "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." This, by the way, inspired the title of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's classic The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In Matthew (10:16), he advised his followers to "be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

Musings such as these will be the theme of this week's Goat Rope. Tune in again if you want to get in touch with your inner reptile.

STUCK RECORD. As signs of a recession increase, a rational economic policy would involve some kind of stimulus that would help people who are struggling the most. But, as this NY Times editorial notes, for the Bush administration, the correct answer to any question is tax cuts. It seems to escape their notice that if cutting taxes for the rich was the road to the promised land, we'd have gotten there a while back.

WHO'S COUNTING? The Drum Major Institute, that's who. Here's their 2007 Injustice Index.

ICED OUT. From Sunday's Gazette-Mail, here's an item about a WV scientist's first hand evidence of global warming. The vested interests that run WV think denial is the answer, but I don't think that will help them much in the long run either.

WORD TRAVELS. Here's a review of a book about mountaintop removal in WV all the way from the LA Times.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CHRISTIANITIES

Caption: It started here but took a lot of twists and turns. Photo courtesy of wikipedia.

One of the things that is most striking and interesting about early Christianity is its diversity. Often we tend to think of "the early church" as a unified body, but that was far from the case.

Many New Testament writings attest to controversies within Christian communities within the first century (keep in mind though that the canon of the New Testament was not finally set until almost 350 years after the crucifixion of Jesus).

The writings of Paul, the earliest surviving Christian documents, attest to tensions between Paul, Peter and James, as well as others farther removed from the historical person of Jesus.

That diversity grew in the second century and was only definitely closed when the orthodox or catholic tendency received imperial support in the 4th century and unorthodox versions were suppressed or driven underground.

The version that won out, and to which El Cabrero belongs, may not have been the earliest or most popular in many places.

Not surprisingly, many controversies centered around the person of Jesus. To start with, peasants in Galilee who responded to Jesus' ministry there may have continued that tradition with little knowledge of or contact with the later church.

For some communities, such as those that circulated the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus was primarily a wisdom teacher.

Christians known as Ebionites continued to observe Jewish law and regarded Jesus as a man who was "adopted" by God. At another extreme were the Docetists who believed that Jesus was a divine being who only seemed to suffer (the term Docetism is derived from the Greek word meaning "to seem").

Followers of the second century leader Marcion believed that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a lesser deity and not the loving father proclaimed by Jesus.

Some people classify Docetism and Marcionism as early forms of a much larger gnostic movement, which has Christian and non-Christian forms. Gnostics tended to regard the material world as evil and claimed to offer a path to liberation for a small spiritual elite.

The whole field of studying diverse Christian traditions exploded with the discovery of several gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.

It makes you wonder what else is still out there somewhere.

NATURAL LAWS? Does nature have laws or just habits? Here's an interesting item on this scientific controversy.

UNIONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE. A growing number of people in the labor movement are taking the climate change issue seriously. Here's a post from the AFLCIO blog about the recent climate conference in Bali.

HELL HOLES AND HOOEY. Here's a good reality check on the state of WV's legal system. The Chamber of Whatever and allies continually issue reports about the abominable state of our courts but the data isn't there to back them up. Perhaps they will only be happy when workers and citizens no longer have access to the legal system. Thanks to the WV uber blog Lincoln Walks at Midnight for posting this.

URGENT DINOSAUR UPDATE. They found another one. This time it's a huge meat eater from the Republic of Niger:

The new species is one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs ever to have lived. Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis was probably 13-14 metres long, making it taller than a double-decker bus. It had a skull about 1.75 metres long and its teeth were the size of bananas.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED