Is it better to Give, or to Receive?

Photo by LillyMarlene (flickr), Giving and Receiving Gifts.
This is my last Blog post of 2011.

My family used to go to church regularly when I was a young girl.  It was the Calvary Baptist Church in Rochester, NY, where my Dad was friends with the pastor and a dedicated church Deacon and my mom sang in the choir.  So did my sister and I for a while, in the Junior Choir under the intrepid Nancy Young.  She led from the piano and swung her arms around, and we followed dutifully. We had some great concerts, especially the humongous Christmas concert at the Eastman theater every year.

We  spent Saturday nights in our cozy house on New York Street, before we moved to 301 Landing Road South, cutting Wonder bread into small cubes for the monthly communion service and pouring grape juice into tiny glasses, the body and blood of Jesus.  How many people have this kind of memory, I wonder now! 

I was baptized when I was 12 years old, dunked in water in the sacred Baptismal in front of the church, as was the tradition in Northern Baptist churches, along with my Dad, a critical thinker who became a believer later in life.  It was a special time, father and daughter baptized together. Oh how the congregation rejoiced! I promised God I would be good forever. I haven’t always kept that promise, but I never forget making it, or the circumstances surrounding it.  And I always loved the music, the blasts from the organ which scared my brother Loren to death but sent me soaring.  I sang my heart out.

I also faithfully, reverently, attended Sunday school classes every week, where the teacher, some fervent young leader, would help us interpret the Bible and the lessons of Jesus.  "Jesus loves us, this I know, for the Bible tells us so."  We always ended our lessons with that song.  "Little ones to him belong, we are weak and He is strong."

A big question around Christmas was: “Is it better to give, or to receive?” 

I spoke up without hesitation.  “It’s better to give, to give to poor people and to give to others.”  Turns out that wasn't the answer the teacher was looking for. "It is even better to receive,” she said.  Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have spoken up at all.  I realized I had walked into a trap of sorts.  The teacher smiled and explained:  “It is most important to receive the word of the Lord, to listen to the words of Jesus, to receive them.”  

Okay.  That was the nature of my religious training at the time. How embedded the lessons, how deep the memories.  But, I have strayed. I have since wandered all over the theological map. I have listened to other voices, read other texts, from Ghandi to Carl Sagan to Mother Theresa to Christopher Hitchens, from Pope John 23 to Hindi, Muslim, and Hebrew believers, from the poets and the mythic gods of Joseph Campbell to the Goddesses, under the influence of my brother.

Now I have come to believe we all worship the same God/Goddess, just in different ways.  I believe it doesn’t matter how you believe, or the details of belief.  I believe it’s the large question of being good and kind, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, having a good heart and compassionate soul, like my brother Loren. I now believe it is equally important to give AND to receive, and to find joy in both. 

That’s the spirit of Christmas to me, and that’s how I spent Christmas with my kids and grandkids this year.  After two years in Ukraine and Christmases around the world it was a warm and comforting feeling of giving and receiving presents, giving and receiving love, enveloped in the simple truth that, indeed, God is love.   Happy New Year everyone! 

    

"A Pale Blue Dot"

Hard to see, but this is the NASA/JPL photo taken from Voyager 1
 that inspired Carl Sagan's view of  planet earth as "a pale blue dot" in a vast universe. 

Sometimes we need to put things in perspective. 

Carl Sagan (1934-1996), the brilliant astronomer, astrophysicist, scientific popularizer,  NASA advisor, and founder of The Planetary Society, did that when he looked at an image of the earth floating in space and fully comprehended that it was only “a pale blue dot.” 

The image was beamed back to earth from Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990 as the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system.  Voyager 1 was about 4 billion miles away when it captured this portrait of our world, where earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. 

“Look again at that dot,” Sagan writes in his 1994 essay. “That’s home.  That’s us.”  Everyone and everything we know “on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam....The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.” 


How insignificant all the wars,  battles, conflicts and cruelties seem, how pointless.  “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.“  

My brother Loren loved Carl Sagan and uttered the phrase “a pale blue dot” everytime we looked at the sky together.  Loren was an avid advocate for the space program, for the explorations undertaken by Voyager.  Perhaps now he has an even better view, an even clearer perspective, and might be having some extraordinary conversations with Sagan himself.  Wouldn’t that be a wondrous miracle.

Carl Sagan combined skepticism and wonder, discovery and clarity.  He made us think.  He helped us put our life on planet Earth in perspective.  

"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience," Sagan concluded his essay. "There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.  To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." 

Defiance in the Age of Information Democracy

www.graphITIndia.net image, an
Information Technology Consulting service

 "Putin defiant in face of protests." http://news.yahoo.com/putin-team-defiant-protest-rocks-russia-103526416.html 

I think this kind of defiance in the face of unprecedented public outrage is going to backfire, and more so now than in the past.   If not soon, eventually.

You just can’t keep a lid on dissatisfaction forever, not in the age we live in, the Age of Information Democracy.   

Dictators, elected or not, are notoriously “defiant,” like those in Syria, Libya, eastern Europe, some nations in Africa and Latin America.  The Papa Doc, once absolute dictator of Haiti, syndrome.  The Mubarek of Egypt syndrome.   Sometimes US foreign policy makes it worse.  Usually it just prolongs, even exascerbates, the inevitable internal struggle for self-determination, as in Iraq. It will all shake out in spite of us.  It's a matter of time, and a painful process. 

Defiance on the part of the ruling elite used to work for a long time, decades even.  Not now.

Now, everything is known or can be discovered, found out, googled, out of the closet, open, accessible.  There’s no hiding the truth now, no hiding information.  No hiding facts, ideas, secrets.  No hiding правда.  

It’s the Age of Information Democracy, the age of the internet and social media, with online access for all.  Information of, by and for the people.  You can run, but you cannot hide.

So deception and defiance won’t work for long as a strategy against protest and expressions of the people’s will.  That’s how it’s looking in Russia today. Putin's outdated. Nor is the USA immune from this age-old syndrome.  We don’t always practice what we preach.

Better to listen to the people’s voices. Nations, their governments, their economic and political elites, need to change strategy. Develop a new paradigm of communication and change.  Is this possible?   It's the Age of Information Democracy.  A new generation, the internet generation, has emerged.   Something’s gotta give.  Something new is evolving.  A new age is dawning. 

Christmases Past

Photos: Christmas tree in Starobelsk; with Jason in the heart of Istanbul, Christmas 2009; in the Luxor desert, New Year's Eve, 2010. 

In the desert outside of Luxor, Egypt, January 1, 2010.

Last year at this time, in Ukraine, I bought a few holiday trinkets at the Bookstore in downtown Starobelsk and a few ornaments at the Bazaar and decorated my room at Natalia’s on Kyrova, as I had done the year before when I lived with Luba on Panfelova. 

I had to work at getting the Christmas spirit, because nothing really happens there until after December 25;  the orthodox Christmas is celebrated on January 7, but it is not such a huge holiday as it is here.  

I walked around town looking for signs of the season.  I took photos of a little decorated tree in front of the Children’s House of Culture on one of my walks through the University to the center of town. We spent English Club meetings talking about the meaning of Christmas and made trinkets for a  tree made out of branches I had collected on my walks.  I watched workmen put up the large tree in front of the main Cultural Center, awhich took weeks of labor, nd went with my friend Nicolai on a cold winter’s night at the end of December to watch the lighting of the giant tree and to join happy people dancing around it.   The global village alight.

In 2009 I celebrated Christmas in Istanbul with PCV friends Jud and Jason.   I remember walking in Sultanabat, around the Blue Mosque and St. Sophia’s, in the heart of the old city, marveling at the dazzling blue and white lights and the ancient and present beauty.  Breathtaking.  The whole city sparkled, and best of all, we got to stroll along the colorful main street  to the very Church where Pope John 23 preached.  It was a holy night in Istanbul.


Last year, I was in Egypt with Jud, Cairo then onto Luxor by train. One of the most memorable trips I've ever taken.  In Cairo we stayed at a hostel, Egyptian Nights, right across from the Egyptian museum, where a few weeks later protests erupted and tanks filled the street.  We spent New Year's eve in the moonscape desert outside of Luxor, savoring the stunning night sky, a fantastic traditional meal, and good cheer with people from around the world.   

Of course there were lots of  Christmases here in the States, with kids in Toledo, with my parents in Rochester, with friends in Washington  and in balmy Florida, where houses and boats are lavishly decorated,. 

Now, here in Sylvania, a whole new set of traditions is growing out of the fertile soil of old traditions.

The memories evolve like a string of lights around all the places I have been.

They float over Christmases past and present. 

They decorate trees, windows, and wreaths.  The lights of memory, stretching on forever, expanding the tapestry of Christmases past into the now and the unknown future.  

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! 

Channeling Loren

flickr photo by 'developmentcorporate' (only name given), which I used in my Hitchens blog for several symbolic reasons, including that the windmill looks almost like a cross, plus Loren after a hike by his friend Linda with Florida Trails Association.

I must be channeling my dearly beloved brother Loren, or is it Christopher Hitchens?  My rants are becoming more acerbic, strident, defiant.  When I read my blogs I am almost surprised at the outrage they express.  I never thought I’d be so openly critical of Obama, for example. The state of the economy, fine. The end of the "NOTHING ACCOMPLISHED" war in Iraq, okay.  But Obama's been kind of off-limits, and my friends remind me when they defend against my attacks.  As one wrote in  response to one of my blogs, “Lots of truth there, Fran, but kind of harsh!” 

Yeah. Wow. But you know what?  I think this is the first time I am hearing from my brother since he died too fast, too early on his last hike along the Aucilla River in northern Florida.  All of a sudden he was gone, and I am still unbelieving. I look for him. I look for any signs.

Loren wasn’t one to screen his thoughts and ideas.  I seem to be following in his footsteps lately.  I certainly wasn’t so critical during my Peace Corps years in Ukraine. I kept my thoughts to myself and went with the flow.  Except when Loren and I emailed.

Now I seem to be ranting against injustice and inequality like an occupied Wallstreeter. It’s not always the best thing to do, or perhaps I should say the best way to do it.  Maybe this is an excuse, but somehow I feel Loren’s spirit when I rant about things I know he cared about, and I am moved.  I cry for my brother, whose insights and honesty, and outrage and anger, were unsullied.     

Unsullied. That's the key.  I don't think I can match that.  I could tone down the rhetoric, as we used to advice Loren from time to time.  But then it wouldn’t be Loren, or me, and I’d be channeling someone else.    Maybe it's Christopher Hitchens, but not as eloquent!  

Life After Peace Corps: Unhitching Hitchens

Life After Peace Corps: Unhitching Hitchens

Unhitching Hitchens

Don Quixote goes at a Windmill, art by GA Haqher,
flickr photo by DevelopmentCorporate

I have friends who admired Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) for his acerbic wit and fearless views about everything from religion to culture to politics.  He was a master of the English language and he wielded it like Don Quixote  attacking the windmills of injustice wherever he found them.  I didn’t follow Hitchens closely, but I did read some of his rather outrageous, in the broadest meaning of that word, essays on Mother Theresa. Gutsy irreverence, for sure, which he carried even to the hallowed walls of the Vatican.  No one was sparred.  Few took freedom of speech and religion as seriously as Hitchens.   He devoted his too-short life and unmatched talent to them until the very end.  He died of cancer last week, writing and unbelieving unto death, believing only, and as strongly as ever, in his own beliefs.  

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten put his sentiments into a poem for Hitchens for ArtsPost (quoted in Cara Kelly, “Remembering an Icon,” Washington Post, 19 December 2011):

Christopher Hitchens ceases to be;
A remarkable life he led.
He isn’t in heaven; he isn’t in hell — 
He is simply, emphatically, dead.