William Sansom writes on page twenty six of A Book of Christmas:

"one of the objects of these pages will be to investigate the past, search out the teetotums, the gilded apples, the Noah's Ark peg-tops of the old-fashioned Christmas tree; to investigate wassail and lambswool, piñatas and posadas; to look everywhere in Europe for survivals of the old horned god, like the Welsh Mari Lwyd; to note how very pagan a Christian festival can be—always remembering that such disinterrments are only part of the luxury of knowledge, and that the proper Christian gifts to the world of love and gentleness outweigh any coincidental heritage of idolatry.”

Brandon here, with an invitation.

Tis the season to consider the reasons. I wonder if there aren’t several observations out there in web-land sprung anew from the most recent, rapidly passing transition through the dark.

Positions occur to me, as an admittedly over-used starting point, through which I would like to suggest we might find a way together into the sophisticating depths the dark suggests. For instance, I feel disinclined to minimize “such disinterrments” as “only part of the luxury of knowledge” and feel obligated to speak for this shovel work as yielding some of the finest fruits of the knowledge accretion process. It seems by turns an essential observance in a secular Christianizing culture that “the proper Christian gifts to the world [are] love and gentleness” and a colossally farcical disservice to frame this in terms of “outweigh[ing a] heritage” reduced to “idolatry” and dismissed as “coincidental”.

I don’t mean to suggest this is a new objection to an argument that carries great weight in and of itself, or that the author is particularly worthy of attention, only that digging around in Christmas and thoughts thereabout seems more fruitful for a far-flung familiars in the time of fruitcake than it may prove after.

Anyone interested in sharing some thoughts in lieu of nog?

A reading list from a 2003 Yale Alumni Mag

Honey Bear by Dixie Willson
Les Rougon-Macquart
Comedie Humaine
Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
The Right Stuff
Evgeny Zamyatin's "We"
John O'Hara
James M. Cain
Evelyn Waugh
Mencken
Thomas Wolfe
Carl Van Vechten
Jimmy Breslin
Gay Talese
Celine
Henry Miller
The Bonfire of the Vanities
A Man in Full.
When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss
Alexandra Robbins' Secrets of The Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Julia Glass' Three Junes.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Alan M. Dershowitz's Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age.
Charles Darwin: Voyaging and The Power of Place by Janet Browne
Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Glenn Fleishman's The Wireless Networking Startup Kit
The Koran
Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth
The Growth of Biological Thought by Ernst Mayr
Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy
David Quammen: Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind
The King James Bible
Sherwin B. Nuland's How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Tom Perrotta's Joe College
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 1908
Stephen Sandy's Surface Impressions: A Poem.
The Republic - Plato
Anthony Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession.
Confessiones by Augustine
Garry Wills Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm
Ann Packer's The Dive from Clausen's Pier and Mendocino and Other Stories.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Steve Olson: Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins
The Complete Essays of Montaigne translated by Donald M. Frame
Jennifer Ackerman: Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity

Ad for Tucker Carlson Unfiltered on PBS TV:

"You can always tell when someone's not telling the truth because he doesn't speak clearly.
Euphemism is always a cover either for ignorance or dishonesty. In other words, if you can't state it in a clear, simple, declarative sentence either you don't know what you're talking about or you're trying to prevent me from understanding you. Both bug me."

I wonder.

Brandon's response so far:

Didache (which is very cool in many ways) resource: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html
Though fascinating and applicable, it "has continued to be one of the most disputed of early Christian texts." My fantasy find not only involves a suprising and more obviously authoritative text, but one that fails to recommend "you bondmen shall be subject to your masters as to a type of God, in modesty and fear."

An "anonymous" voice here suggested that the Bible had been outlawed everywere to allow for complete Papal control, and also pointed out the difference between slavery in the First Century and more recent history in the Southern United States.
While these points are important, an anonymous voice is difficult to engage in this context.
If "Anonymous" would like to be a full part of this, he or she may feel free to appear under a recognizable name.




Question(s) that come up:

"It stresses compassion and personal ethics over our modern "outward" ethics, and shows the "abominations" of the First Century Christians were things like "turning away the needy, weighing down with toil the oppressed, [being] advocates of the rich." "

What happened? Goof Troop Ag

Rufel has offered:

Except that the Bible as Bible has all of those "problems with Judeo-Christianity" in it -- let's not even talk about the OT God who would test the "righteous" believers by ordering them to sacrifice their son and then staying their hand just before the knife drops upon the poor innocents' neck.

And as for Christianity, well, what flavour? For the the early church of Augustine's time certainly didn't survive the Great Schism that split the Christian world between East and West (Orthodox and Catholicism, respectively) in the 11th century (1054, as I recall).

And as for Dark Ages... that term is a huge misnomer, for the Medieval World was a diverse place in which some places where certainly "dark" but other places where shining beacons of culture, like Byzantium. (Believe me, after living with two medievalists, one of whom has a doctorate in Medieval Studies, I've become convinced of this.)

And as for the Bible being outlawed, the majority of Biblical teaching was oral -- literacy rates among ordinary folk certainly didn't include being able to read ecclesiastical Latin, which was the universal language of the Western Christian Church at that time. In my own doctoral research in medieval drama, I've found out that for the ordinary folk mystery cycles, that dramatized the Bible from Creation to Judgement Day, was a more effective means of spreading the faith than *reading* it, because, except for a dedicated few, who had time to learn to read and then to read the Bible?

And, no, my research has shown that it wasn't the clergy who wrote the plays -- it was the laity. That's why the plays were so popular -- they were the film festivals of their day.

This sacred/secular dichotomy isn't a medieval thing... in fact, the medieval world saw the sacred and secular as mixed... Manicheanism (this dual-split) was a heretical notion, unfortunately passed down from the residue of Augustine's own dabbling with Manicheanism before he became a Christian, and it was passed down, whole-hog, into fundamentalist strains of Christianity.

So, Eric, I agree with you on Augustine -- although I still think he, like Nietzsche, was a guy whose followers became more extreme than he ever was. The other points I kind of go, "Ummm..."

Sometimes tangential comments on other blogs can get a bit out of hand.

I've brought just such an attached thread here because I dig it.

This is the thread begun by my response to Lisa's questions which I hope may develop here more deeply than is characteristic of most blogs. if things get lost in the daily shuffle, please search for terms you rememeber.

Eric's collected responses/suggestions/positions (admittedly taken out of the conversational order):

In the last post [Brandon] said he would like to find a discovery that shows Jesus didn't really espouse most of the modern theological views projected on Him. Well, I have to admit, that is an even better answer than the Ark of the Covenant, and while there may or may not be something out there that would fit the bill, there is something that would start.

It's called the Didache. I probably told you about it too. It's an awesome manuscript found a little over a hundred years ago and now universally accepted as a genuine document written no later than AD 70. While it perpetuates many of our ideas, it also opens the door to a MUCH broader interpretation, and it also shows us that the main focus of the early church was altruism - helping the poor, etc. One could not walk "in the light" unless he or she put others first.
It is also astoundingly inclusive in its wording. Instead of using all the male-centric vocabulary of the traditional books of the Bible, it uses non-gender-specific words nearly all the time. It's just an awesome book, and you can get a paperback copy for almost nothing.

The Didache was hotly debated for a long time, but its *veracity* is pretty much universally accepted. Many other first and early second century documents have been found that quote part of it. Nearly everyone agrees that the absolute latest it was written would have been the very beginning of the second century, but most scholars accept that it is an authentic first century Christian manuscript.

Its *content* is an entirely different matter. It seems that almost everyone has a different view about it. That's understandable, though. I personally like Aaron Milavech's writing about it.

Of course, your fantasy would be the most amazing discovery. I think it would change the world more than any other, because whether or not we like it, Western Christianity has probably shaped the world more than any other thing, including science. Our ethics, which stem from the Judeo-Christian culture (whether genuine or not), color everything. Imagine what it would be like for the new "religious right" who have turned God into a commodity, if they found irrefutable evidence of Jesus' outright compassion. That is one thing I loved about the Didache. It stresses compassion and personal ethics over our modern "outward" ethics, and shows the "abominations" of the First Century Christians were things like "turning away the needy, weighing down with toil the oppressed, [being] advocates of the rich." That puts a major dent in the whole "Moral Majority" right-wing theology so pervasive today.

We owe our modern (and largely false) religious doctrines on three things:
1) Constantine - made Christianity the state religion, but mixed in pagan ideologies thoroughly.
2) Augustine - decided sex, pleasure, and prosperity were evil, and single-handedly shifted Christianity from a religion of peacemaking, generosity, and social altruism into a religion of self-condemnation and judgment.
3) The Dark Ages - we lost so, so, so much in the Dark Ages. Basically, Bibles were completely outlawed, and this is when Christianity turned from a personal belief into a clergy/laity paradigm where the church has absolute power and spiritual authority over "the common man." Before this, all were considered brothers and equals in the church. After, we got the sacred/secular dichotomy we have today.

That's a very condensed version, of course...

Actually, a couple hundred years before Manicheanism, Gnosticism started the sacred/secular paradigm in the church as early as AD 60. By the time Constantine came around, Gnosticism had already infiltrated much of the church, and was a major point in the Nicene and Arian Controversies.

As for Abraham with Isaac, it was a prophetic enactment of what God would do later with Jesus. And Jewish tradition and the book of Hebrews say that Abraham wasn't afraid to do it because he had faith that even if God did make him go through with it, He would raise Isaac from the dead according to His promise. There is a lot of violence in the Old Testament, but it can certainly be argued that most of it is culturally relevant: God speaking to the people on their terms rather than His.

It's not [a question] of true theology, but is really about history when it all boils down to it.
By the way, I know vocal intonation can't really come across in this. I hope it doesn't come across as a lecture. Just trying to explain some history.

Unlearning the Preventitive Trauma of Proactivity
I love it when the history of something reveals why it is problematic.
pro•ac•tive or pro-ac•tive (pr½-²k“t¹v) adj. Acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty; anticipatory: not reactive, but proactive steps to combat terrorism. --pro•ac“tion n. --pro•ac“tive•ly adv.
BUT
http://www.word-detective.com/020501.html suggests that "Proactive" has actually been around since the 1930s as a technical term in psychology, denoting a trauma or complex stemming from an earlier occurrence ("pro" being a Latin prefix meaning, in this case, "before") that makes learning difficult. Our modern "proactive," however, is a completely different word, formed from "pro" in the sense of "forward" attached to the "active" from "reactive." This management-ese "proactive" thus carries the sense of "pushing forward" and first appeared around 1971.

What trauma or complex stemming from an earlier occurrence makes learning difficult such that the meaning of the word itself must be shifted into being the cure for its own dilemma?
It is not a completely different word. Psychologically it contains and illustrates its own origin and consequence - original trauma entirely redefined through use to support the fantasy (and not one without usefulness) that preemption can avoid future trauma. What is not useful is the complete loss in current usage of the traumatic context of the original meaning. Now it is simply management-ese for pushing forward, still carrying the hidden reality of trauma unconsciously.

This needs images, additional examples of applications, and a longer paper. Hmmm....

"On earth, as it is in heaven": that is the theme. Man is returned to the innocence of the sun and stars, and of the animal world, which is rooted in nature, by an equation of himself with the sun, the great lion of the heavens, and of his victims with the herds of the night sky. And by concentrating on these, he is able to erase from consciousness the actual threat of the night of annihilation. The reality of nature and himself as nature has been countered by a myth of personal immortality."

Joseph Campbell, 1959 Eranos Lecture "Renewal Myths and Rites of the Primitive Hunters and Planters" p.17

Things I'm thinking about and needed a place to write down:

Typology of the Psyche, 1919, Jung created it coming out of psychotic break, thought it was beside the point as he worked with it, and really never mentioned it again thereafter.

James Hillman on:
William James' (brother of Henry ) approach to psyche. American Psychologist, died just before WWI. Deconstructed the Hegelian drive to unify into idea of "wholeness". Prefering instead "each-ness".

The idea of individuation is a linear narrative. Another kind of "getting it all together", but does that really work? Am I really going anywhere in particular or wandering through a mosaic?


Simpsons Season 2 Episode #7F22 had Mr. Burns presenting Bart with a Mesoamerican Olmec War God from 3000 years ago named Xtapalapaquetl. I giggled for several days. Anybody got a jpg or a screen shot?

Brandon D. WilliamsCraig gpx Spring 2003 Why Pacifica? - Culturopoesis

Traditional methods of developing scholarship encourage the internalization of a set of systemic assumptions. Schools habituate students to the applications of particular methodologies.

While Pacifica is both traditional and a school, the Pacifica departure, if I may be so bold as to articulate it in these terms, is in the attempt to deliteralize scholarship, or reorient in terms of imagination the systemic assumptions behind scholarship. In the same way that mythic material has no ultimate origin and no correct interpretation there is no universally applicable approach to the study of creativity and culture as a participatory art form in and of itself.

In order to hope for both a useful and compassionate engagement of the co-creative effort that is culture it is necessary to not only hear and speak the sounds and recognize the images of the oldest patterns and stories but also to do so in a way that the process of engagement is as much a matter for cultivation as the engagement of the material itself. This ‘departure’ is in the tradition of identifying psychology with image and also with the shift, the “movement” toward understanding everything in terms of imagination. I continue my internalization and generation of this shift for many of the same reasons I originally chose Pacifica. I intend to develop understanding and participate in the process of being human as best I can by attending the process of understanding.

The process of engagement is as much a matter for cultivation as the engagement of the material itself. The term I coined in the 1990’s for practices creating movement toward this attending, the “Process Arts”, is a naming in order to of develop and articulate the change becoming apparent in the social shift toward the deepening awareness of global interrelatedness and the necessity of consciously sharing context. David Miller suggests our study of mythology is essential so myth, religion, and ideology are not used for evil purposes. Stated positively, the Process Arts are for the loving seduction of the collective imagination into a rediscovery, re-vivification, and re-prioritization of the process that is Communitas.

In a process poor environment conflict itself becomes a rite of initiation, but of what kind? I am not always sure how to articulate the messages carried by my initiation into the ritual of conflict via robbery and assault. Sometimes I feel equally uncertain about what remains to be said sitting with a CEO, Dojo Cho, program director, or standing with strangers on mass transit who, like me, both can and do not choose behavior that ritually roots the process of peace. I end up listening and simply telling stories and then digging around and working the experience with the people involved. What is happening today among co-creators of peace sounds, smells, and feels like new rites, paths woven through a wilderness that are means or tangible forms of grace and the “performance of freedom” (Tom Driver).

It has been said that we lack rituals, particularly of initiation. I disagree. What we lack is imagination and creativity in our group process that lays the groundwork for the initiation to be fundamentally life giving. We have a monstrous storehouse of decrepit images and codified behavior that are being worn even thinner by Madison Avenue and other military-industrial manifestations worldwide. I agree with Driver in declaiming our lack of the ritualizing that provides structure in which freedom may be performed even in the midst of extremely complex and multi-layered challenges to humanness.

Initiation does not create an altogether different person. It gives new habits so that initiation per se becomes a fundamental and generative frame of reference. The initiate participates in and continues the process of initiation. In a moral void violence is often unbounded and involuntary. In this sense conflict is initiation but into contextlessness. The paths we follow when we encounter difference and the quality of our conflicts is directly involved in the texture of daily reality. Ignoring the necessity to develop mythopoetically profound processes that artfully include difference and conflict perpetuates violence without boundary and feeds a fecund oubliette for the mulching of our hidden and communal deformities of imagination. As Campbell suggests, mythology is no toy for children.

The most important part of this journey to dissertation is covering the distance between the desire for a sign of dynamic peace in the world and the practice of the habits that bring freedom to be performed. The inescapable presence of difference guarantees conflict in every interaction and is authentically distinguishable only by degree. It is a misuse of that gift to leave it where it sits alone under the scaly feet of the reptilian brain. Becoming a process naturalist, a tender of story, image, dream and psyche, means becoming process savvy and putting specific and inviolable time aside to cultivate not only an understanding of mythopoesis but also culturopoesis, the remaking of Community. It means developing the process of relationship as an art. All choices visited by difference must be practiced as Process Arts in a post-modern world. The alternative is the surrender of freedom itself and the betrayal of the generations that follow. The whole project is a life work for many, cannot be undertaken alone or without the individuality and engages psychecultural elements that initiate mythopoesis, and bring conflict into ritual group processes.