’Twas the week before Christmas....

Last night someone must have left open the door between northern Minnesota and Canada. Today is about half the temperature yesterday was and tomorrow is expected to be. At least we’re finally enjoying some sunshine. My sister, who lives in a Boston suburb, informs me today’s weather on the East coast is like a hurricane, not what one expects around Boston in mid December. It’s almost like something has disrupted the climate.

the Star of Bethlehem

Photo by J. Harrington

With the exception of light pollution, satellites and space junk, I think earth's night skies are pretty much the same as they’ve always been. That isn’t true of the surface of the planet. The dinosaurs are no more. The atmosphere is now oxygen rich. At one time it wasn’t. At various times and places, parts of the earth’s surface have been covered by sheets of ice miles thick. Now there are forecasts that both poles could be mostly free of ice in less than one hundred years. When we consider baselines, I think we should learn to be more nuanced than we generally are. According to most historical records, there were no christians slightly more than two thousand years ago. That means there was a significant baseline shift about two millennia ago.

Although many (most?) of us would do well to live more in the present, i.e., now, we also need to become more sensitive to the realization that change is constant; that it frequently results in differential changes, some for the better for some folks, some not so much. We have reached a point at which our technology allows us to reach toward the star of Bethlehem but our ethical capabilities lag far behind. If you doubt this assessment, please consider Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, Israel and numerous other current war zones and the growing pushback against more inclusive cultures and politics. Once there were few, if any, oxygen-breathing creatures on earth. Is that a state of purity to be desired?

If evolution is to be believed, almost all of us are, or were at one time, immigrants. Our predecessors developed on the plains of Africa and/or China. Then again, at one time, before there were humans, all the continents are theorized to have been part of Pangaea.

In one week, we will again celebrate the birth of one who was first known as King of the Jews, not founder of Christianity. Is nothing sacred?

Museum of Tolerance

By Michael Miller

The shirtless man by the ticket counter

  has already broken the gloom here, his crowd

    of two boys and the cashier with the Star of David

      gathered around and mouthing astonishment

as he tells the tale behind every scar.

  Yes, this one on the side was from the camp—

     he tells them not to be shy to ask—

       when he tripped into the ditch

on the run after stealing cigarettes,

  the one on the knuckle from punching the soldier

   in the bar, brave with whiskey, a decade after.

     Touch it, he snarls, jutting out his fist.

That split a real Nazi’s lip.

  In the rooms behind him, the voices lay low

    but touch is the rule, the extended families

      passing in fours and fives as tight

as at church or the carnival. Are they

  all survivors here, dazed and exhilarated

    by the fate that dropped them so far from blight?

      A father heads the line, shirt fat with muscles

and a single proud thumb pushing the stroller;

  the woman and girl hug sideways, then again,

     tight as dancers in a row. At each display,

       the time lines and the whispered assurances

reiterate that what is done is done.

  Pol Pot is dead, the children of Kampuchea

    reading again to go to college; Rwanda

       has forgiven itself and opened supermarkets;

the ghettos are demolished, the Cold War won.

  Sudan, they skip. For now, the beasts are gone.

    They face the new life, the one after the mending,

      after the last mistakes were made.

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