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The time of year, the winter equinox, with light starting to get stronger and last longer, again, as we swing around the great sun that energizes our lives, I am grateful. It will be six months till we begin turning toward this place again. Comforting to know that some things can be counted upon -- hopefully.

I say hopefully because so much of what i've counted on has been shown to be more variable than I thought. The viability and nature of the country i've lived in all my life and took for granted, it seems, is changing in ways I hadn't expected and scares me. I've learned that wisdom is to expect change, but I really thought it would be more personal and less universal.

The city I lived in for 32 years, also burned down and our family office burned with it. Pretty much in the middle of town. In a town peopled by those with immense wealth. Wealth doesn't matter. Good to know. Where you live doesn't matter, either. Also good to know. Things you thought would always be there, people and places, change. Sometimes all at once--in a single day. A community that stood for over a hundred years was gone in a single day. That community will not come back to the way it was. And another one, across town, burned down, too. An old one, with houses of river rock and wood, great trees of olive and oak, green and verdant, are now gone and burned black.
A place near where I grew up.

I no longer drive up mountain roads in California and see vistas of canyons and green, I see places of danger and look for escape routes. My husband recently visited a house in Montecito, that covered the top of a hill like a great museum amidst oak and chapparel with a great infinity pool that merged with ocean and sky. Instead of celebrating our friend's good fortune and sense of design, he looked for the egress he might need if the road was blocked.

These are the changes that have happened, lately. We've had a pandemic. For me, 74 years old, I never experienced one before. I only read about jack-booted private armies, and now i see masked men with guns rounding up people in my city. People I know are afraid of our government. In the land of the free. I am afraid. I am half mexican. You can't tell, but i know. I know what it's like now, to be afraid for people my mom used to tell me about. The Japanese that went to internment camps.

I see people with crosses around their necks on TV and sometimes in real life. Many voted for these masked men. Some crosses are big as hockey sticks they use to sweep away any who would stand in their way. My friend said she heard the voice of god when she was 15. My mother-in-law wore a cross with diamonds that now my sister-in-law wears. No small cross. large so you can't miss it. The tiny crosses on the necks of ladies on tv, newscasters and press relations executives, gleefully telling us that people are not wanted here. they will be found and deported. Beware. Beware. Beware.

I see crosses and I see someone trying to distract me from what they do. I wore one once, when i was a teenager. It was in my mother's jewelry box. Someone asked if i were christian and I had to think. Am I? I went to church when i was a child. A few times. But i tried to kill myself when i was seven because i was not wanted. and my family was poor and troubled. and their families were, too. And a friend gave me a crucifix, which i put under my pillow, and she gave me a missal, which i also put under my pillow, and I learned the hail mary full of grace. Thankfully. It was the only comfort I'd ever read -- or felt -- up to then. So I believed in God a savior.

But when i didn't die, and the violence and the stupidity continued and my cousins went to prison, and my cousins were murdered and had babies out of wedlock and people lied and cheated. and i thought, how can there be a god if "he" lets this happen?

Didn't make sense. The long road of critical thinking to consciousness that there are some things that we cannot see, yet they do exist, and some things that we cannot see because they don't. Wisdom is learning the difference.

I believe in reality, various, wonderful and terrible. I try to hang with the wonderful and am in awe at my existence. Existence of everything as it is. It's just more pleasant around wonderful.

I heard Charlie Munger use a great phrase at an annual meeting, once. something about mixing raisins with turds. Everybody laughed. but it's true. Religions do it all the time. They tell you a truth and then tell you a lie or a myth, if you want to give it a mystical spin. but the literal thing they say is untrue. Like the virgin birth. But to get get the good stuff, like thou shalt not lie, is mixed with a lie, the virgin birth. so you need to swallow the good with a bit of shit. and it you don't you are bad. you are judged by the powers, the priests, as bad. so if you want praise, you have to swallow the shit with the good. And if you do, then they have you. You have forsaken your critical and independent thought for someone else's approval. And if you do it once, you will do it again. you surrender your power to another.

That is the great evil of religions and the great weakness of the religious. The religions control and the religious are cowed and controllable. Christianity uses its symbol: the cross, like a hypnotist. See this symbol and obey. See my cross, obey what I say for I am the servant of God. And a nice person, a sweet person, who has been indoctrinated maybe before they ever had a critical thought of their own, is cowed to stop thinking for themselves when it comes to god. When it comes to an authority with a cross. Because they don't want to be bad. They don't want to risk the wrath of God.

Anyway, I write this as a thank you note to Christmas. That it comes so near the winter solstice, where the real earth passes farthest from the real sun and the real light is weakest and it is time for real rest for the living and to marshal our strength we start back towards the light.

Forcing people to eat raisins mixed with turds comes from ignorance and cheating. Reality demands that they be processed, first, turned into fertilizer, and then we eat only the product of it.

Religion is a pale imitation of reality and is a screen from it.

I am grateful for the wonder of my consciousness of existence, that i can look and see what exists around me. Whatever it is. That i can keep learning, while i have breath, without ever knowing everything--and still be happy, that today, I am not a rock. That is the miracle of whatever this is. I have legs and eyes and ears. That I experience what is around me and share it with others who do the same.

Merry Christmas, everybody!!!

Wonderful message!

Minor nitpick. I don't think this is accurate:

That it comes so near the winter solstice, where the real earth passes farthest from the real sun

Isn't' it just that the tilt of the axis makes for the seasonal changes?

Correct, tilt is primary reason, elliptical orbit actually an inverse factor.

From AI search:

Earth's ~23.5° axial tilt (obliquity) is the primary cause of seasons, making sunlight more direct in one hemisphere while the other tilts away, despite the Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun, where distance changes (closest at perihelion in January, farthest at aphelion in July) have minimal seasonal impact, with the tilt providing concentrated energy and longer days for summer and less for winter. These tilt and orbital variations, known as Milankovitch cycles, slowly change over millennia, influencing long-term ice ages, with greater tilt meaning more extreme seasons.

But a minor quibble to a thoughtful post.

You are absolutely right. Tilt had occurred to me when I was writing but didn't want to break my rhythm. First Draft! :)
So, thanks for fact checking!

And the compliment!

I don't recall seeing you on this board before. In which case, that was quite an introduction! Welcome.

I read this board, occasionally, but I hadn't much to say. I don't think all people who believe in a god are Christians. But they bother me the most, maybe because they are most familiar to me.

I posted because, as a favor to a friend, i recently saw, The Christmas Story, on CBS. It infuriated me. While a supposed more realistic version of what "actually" happened, it revealed the dark reasons Christianity is an evil, pernicious model of the universe for our society.

It starts with better production values than most. Kevin Costner, lights torches as he guides us through the history of Christ's birth and all, a reliably approachable and reasonable-appearing moderator. However, the Christmas Story becomes almost prurient when the handsome angel from God, dressed in white Roman armor, appears to the beautiful, teenage Mary when alone in a barn. Frightened, she backs away, falling into a pile of hay. Don't be afraid, says the angel, speaking softly, as he slowly moves closer. Closer. She crab walks backwards deeper into the hay. He comes closer and softly tells her that God has chosen her to have his son and that he will come to her as the holy spirit. This takes forever and there is so much suspense and fear on her part, lying in the hay, with the angel coming so close, that it's creepy.

Maybe i've seen too many movies but, this was uncomfortably like the real thing; flashbacks of Jane Russell kept popping into my mind. The angel may have spoken softly and soothingly, but it left no doubt that God is male and has something in mind for a beautiful young woman, whether she wants it or not.

Just putting it into words makes me ill. And it doesn't get better because there is a whole other scene where she lays in bed waiting for God to come to her.

This Christmas story is realistic in all the wrong ways. Or right ways, because, really, this is the story the Christians are selling. It goes on as dozens, or hundreds of first-born sons are murdered by a mad and crazy Herod. And, then, we don't hear a thing from this son of God, again, until a quick sketch of the Easter Story reminds of us what is to come. Can't wait to see the realistic, beautiful, mid-twenty-ish Mary Magdalene and all the rest of the characters. I'm sure it's coming.

Stupidity and depravity in living color on a Disney-owned Channel, cutting at all the high points with to insane commercials geared to the very young. The answer to this disgusting mess: The uber male Christian god who is all powerful but sacrifices humans for his purposes. I'm not against men! They have their place, but not as God of everything, the universe, forever and ever.

Enter, my post from yesterday.

I don't normally post because anyone with any sense and those here already know how senseless it is to argue the veracity of any of son of god stories.

I think the reason I wrote about this and am writing now is I don't understand what possessed Kevin to do this? Is he insane? Cynical and now milking the sucker audience during the last stages of his career? Is this the beginning of a series? Or is he beat up and hurting, returning to the childhood comfort of his early childhood? All three? No wisdom around him? Maybe it was the last young wife, and a life of superficial indulgences.

What makes people believe these things? Don't they ask questions? Are there ways to teach? Like the miracle worker, Annie Sullivan, did who signed the symbols into Helen Keller's hand, water, water, water, until the girl understood that the motions in her hand and the water were the same. And Helen Keller was deaf and blind -- and unwilling to learn. Ignorant of what was could be learned.

Annie Sullivan was stubborn. :)

If anyone wonders whether Christianity is real, watching this will dispel it. Only for the young, and whoever still thinks magically.

Turned into a mini review!

The uber male Christian god who is all powerful but sacrifices humans for his purposes.

As Hitchens often said, religion is not just man-made, it is male-made. You can see it very clearly in how women are subordinated (or even, in many cases, chattel).

A gendered deity makes no sense to me unless he/she is limited to organic creation the same way we are.

Which no religious tome claims. Quite the contrary, in fact.

These tilt and orbital variations, known as Milankovitch cycles, slowly change over millennia, influencing long-term ice ages

When the next ice age comes, assuming we humans haven’t blown ourselves off the planet by then, those who remain will curse us for having used up every drop of petroleum for such lofty purposes as driving to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes - meanwhile they and their families huddle in mud huts (there being no fuel to make steel or glass anymore) to try to survive the cold.

Merry Christmas.

I want to write further about how i agree with all the ideas brought up so far because i agree with them, but I have guests this afternoon!
Young people and a new baby. New minds.

Anyway, there is so much to say about the mixture of raisons and turds in all religions, and their use as a tool. So much is benign and good hearted, and much is low and manipulative.

Political tools. The destruction of democracy, principles, science and the very idea of truth. Deliberately blurring definitions of true thing with false things.

Look forward to continuing exploring these issues.

Beginner

Wow you sound insane.

The most notable thing about your post is actually your very appreciative comments about your friends beautiful house, without seeming to understand that people altering the landscape like this and creating such monstrosities where they really shouldn't be, because they have the good fortune to be able to do so, is the problem.

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