A little over a year ago (not long before the date indicated above), I was engaged in a conversation on a friend's page on Facebook, regarding global warming. A friend of my friend, with whom I've interacted before on this subject, was saying things that confused me as to his position. So I asked him if he didn't believe warming was happening, or only if he thought humans weren't causing it. He did reply, but I didn't have time to respond immediately. Now I have. His original words are in standard font. My comments are in italics.
My position is: Warming is happening. It has been happening for thousands of years. Mankind is having an impact on the environment and has contributed to warming of the planet, but not to the extent that it is being portrayed. I believe that mankind should use its time, talents, resources, and technology to find ways of living with the change and not squander its time, talents, resources and technology on trying to stop something that is NOT going to be able to be stopped or reversed. With 7 billion people on the planet to feed, house, and support, it is totally naive of anyone to think that we are going to cast aside the use of fossil fuels to supply the needs of the population in favor of ridiculously expensive, unproven cleaner energy options.
So you agree that we are warming the planet, but not as much as most scientists agree is the case. Why would you be correct, and almost every climate scientist on the planet be wrong?
You don't think we should do anything to slow it down? If we can change it in one direction, why not in the reverse direction? Because it's expensive? The costs of slowing global warming will likely be smaller than the costs resulting from doing nothing to slow climate change. Maybe a lucky planetary wobble or small solar cycle 25 will help us out, but that's just knocking on wood and crossing fingers. We REALLY can't do anything about those things.
You say it's naive to think we can cast aside fossil fuels? There is no choice. That's the one inevitable thing to which we must adapt. Fossil fuels will only become harder to find and extract. We can wean ourselves off fossil fuels proactively, or it will be difficult and tragic later on. It's already begun, for some people.
You say clean energy is unproven and expensive? If there is ANY truth to your statement, it is only because fossil fuels have artificially low prices because they are subsidized, and the fossil fuel producers lobby to squelch innovation and regulation at every turn. The fact is that many of these technologies are viable, but haven't been broadly applied because of resistance from fossil fuel monopolies, who now can buy their way around Washington. If it weren't for artificial inequalities, alternative technologies would be much more competitive. And if the societal costs of fossil fuel use were accounted for, alternative energy sources would be more than competitive.
I firmly believe that all available cleaner technology should be utilized in as much new construction as possible. We as a nation should be able to take full advantage of our natural resources and not be obstructed by government or environmentalists in doing so. I believe that governments, federal, state and local are too intrusive in our lives. When I see that I need to apply for a zoning permit and a building permit to construct an out building over 64 square feet, I see intrusion.
So you agree that we should be efficient, but don't want to be required to be efficient. You agree that new buildings should employ efficient technology, but where is a builder's incentive? When has voluntary efficiency EVER worked on a broad scale? People you call "libtards" do it, and some people are efficient because they don't have "money to burn", but how else but by regulation, can this be made to happen? We saved countless barrels of oil when Carter imposed the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. But I've been in favor of positive-incentive-based regulation for a long time. And what about the rights of our children and grandchildren to have fossil fuels available to them while they are making the inevitable adaptation to non-fossil-fuel-energy.
I see our freedoms being stripped from us 1 by 1, and people sitting idly by accepting it. I see unnecessary regulation being forced upon us in the name of progress and ideology.
Our freedoms ARE being stripped from us because of things like the Patriot Act, enacted by a President who REALLY played the scaremongering game you keep accusing me of doing. Our freedom is disappearing because of things like the Citizens United case, which allows a few affluent people to spend all the money they want, to spread whatever disinformation they wish. Like denial of climate change. And too many are buying it, to everyone's peril.
I see a country in moral decay, because people have changed the definition of freedom. I am old school. I realize a problem and either correct it if I can, or learn to embrace it if I can't. I do not waste time trying to fix something I can't to perpetuate an image or ideology that makes me look or seem cool at the time. I am against federal grant money of all kind. If the cause is just, right and necessary, the people should come together and promote it and fund it. Let the private sector do what is designed to do.
Moral decay? I see that, but probably not how you mean. I see too many things that indicate we are in another "Gilded Era" when ruthless people were allowed to get away with whatever they want.
You say the private sector should do what it's designed to do? The private sector is designed to make profit. Period. They do that, whether they are causing global warming or not. And that IS the problem. That is why we need regulation: To limit the wanton destruction of every resource by people who care only about profit, and not about their impact on other people.
Get the scientists out in the private sector where their ideas have to stand on their own and not be propped up by the government, thus forcing them to contrive science to keep the money flowing in. I can go on, but by now you should have an understanding of what I'm about.
You say scientists are propped up by the government? So are businesses. The private sector is not some idealistic, pristine environment. It's a jungle out there, and our government is supposed to do those things that private enterprise can't or won't, like keep people from harming EVERYONE'S environment for their own profit.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Some questions . . .
First, the Republicans want the government to intervene (by preventing an abortion) when a woman wants to abort a pregnancy under "normal" circumstances, but they don't want it to intervene by providing an abortion when she's been raped.
Then the Republicans want government to intervene if you are a man who loves a man or a woman who lives with a woman, but don't say anything when a man beats his wife, or if their candidate is a serial philanderer.
Now, the Republicans want the government to intervene if you lose your job: they want you to pass a drug test before you can collect your unemployment payments.
What drugs will they test for? What happens if they get a false positive? What recourse do you have? Who's going to pay for all the testing and notifying and verifying? I thought the Republicans were for less government.
They want to interfere with someone who just lost their job, but they aren't willing to increase taxes on rich people nor allow regular middle-class people to keep their stimulus tax credit.
From whence does such doctrine arise?
Then the Republicans want government to intervene if you are a man who loves a man or a woman who lives with a woman, but don't say anything when a man beats his wife, or if their candidate is a serial philanderer.
Now, the Republicans want the government to intervene if you lose your job: they want you to pass a drug test before you can collect your unemployment payments.
What drugs will they test for? What happens if they get a false positive? What recourse do you have? Who's going to pay for all the testing and notifying and verifying? I thought the Republicans were for less government.
They want to interfere with someone who just lost their job, but they aren't willing to increase taxes on rich people nor allow regular middle-class people to keep their stimulus tax credit.
From whence does such doctrine arise?
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Sharing a post from another blog
"You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your stinking teeth about "death panels" and "Obama is coming for your guns" and "He isn't a citizen" and "He's a secret Muslim" and "Sharia Law is coming to America," you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger. The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage.
You who worship Jesus at the top of your lungs (in defiance of Christ's own teachings on the matter of worship, by the way) helped put several churchgoers into their graves and into the hospital. You who shriek about the sanctity of marriage helped cut down a man who was about to be married. You who crow with ceaseless abandon about military service and the nobility of our fighting forces helped to critically wound the wife of a Naval aviator who fought for you in a war. You who hold September 11 as your sword and shield helped put a little girl born on that day into the ground . . .
"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."
- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95
"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."
- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton
"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02
"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."
- Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02
"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."
- John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01
"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men."
- State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01"
http://www.truth-out.org/the-wrath-fools-an-open-letter-to-far-right66686
This blogger, in an open letter to the far right, lays out my emotions for me. I may at moments feel we should not lay too much blame at the feet of people who say violent things because it's the people who carry out the violence who are ultimately to blame. But I certainly feel that there is WAY too much violent language in our society. Too much real violence. Too many young people denied a life because a gang threatened them with violence if they didn't themselves become violent. Too many like Abraham, Martin and John (and Bobby) have already been killed, although Ann Coulter overlooks this. Too many have gone off to war and not returned because a man who stole an election sent them off to fight an unjustifiable war. Too many get beat up in school because they're pudgy or skinny, or just a little different in some other way. Too many use language that demeans them because they've never been taught that words can be used to heal as well as to hurt. Too many hurt inside.
This blog encourages me to feel angry. But no more the actual quotes from those targeted by the writer. And I know that the best anger is the anger that impels a person to act with determination, but also with creativity and love. When Jesus overturned the money-changers' tables, he was angry. He used it to expose the exploitation carried out by those money-changers, and to call for REAL piety, not a sham of piety.
You who worship Jesus at the top of your lungs (in defiance of Christ's own teachings on the matter of worship, by the way) helped put several churchgoers into their graves and into the hospital. You who shriek about the sanctity of marriage helped cut down a man who was about to be married. You who crow with ceaseless abandon about military service and the nobility of our fighting forces helped to critically wound the wife of a Naval aviator who fought for you in a war. You who hold September 11 as your sword and shield helped put a little girl born on that day into the ground . . .
"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."
- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95
"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."
- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton
"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02
"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."
- Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02
"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."
- John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01
"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men."
- State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01"
http://www.truth-out.org/the-wrath-fools-an-open-letter-to-far-right66686
This blogger, in an open letter to the far right, lays out my emotions for me. I may at moments feel we should not lay too much blame at the feet of people who say violent things because it's the people who carry out the violence who are ultimately to blame. But I certainly feel that there is WAY too much violent language in our society. Too much real violence. Too many young people denied a life because a gang threatened them with violence if they didn't themselves become violent. Too many like Abraham, Martin and John (and Bobby) have already been killed, although Ann Coulter overlooks this. Too many have gone off to war and not returned because a man who stole an election sent them off to fight an unjustifiable war. Too many get beat up in school because they're pudgy or skinny, or just a little different in some other way. Too many use language that demeans them because they've never been taught that words can be used to heal as well as to hurt. Too many hurt inside.
This blog encourages me to feel angry. But no more the actual quotes from those targeted by the writer. And I know that the best anger is the anger that impels a person to act with determination, but also with creativity and love. When Jesus overturned the money-changers' tables, he was angry. He used it to expose the exploitation carried out by those money-changers, and to call for REAL piety, not a sham of piety.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Happy Holidays!
Once again, I am of two minds:
On the one hand, I feel that the Christmas holiday is messed up. It co-opts the old pagan Solstice celebration, and it's likely that the date it's celebrated has nothing whatsoever to do with when Jesus of Nazareth was born. It has come to be a time of extravagance, of which I'm quite certain he would disapprove. People are wondering what they can get for Christmas, and worrying about what material things they can give, instead of being truly supportive of one another. It's so much about material things, instead of the lasting things that can be shared by humans.
On the other hand, what's wrong with celebration? Laws were passed in England and these colonies in the 1600s, forbidding the celebration of Christmas and the use of its pagan trappings, like Christmas trees and decorations and mince pie and pudding, so that it was not generally celebrated in this country until the 1850s. And that was so much "bah, humbug".
So, where does that leave me? Perhaps just back where I began, feeling that there's plenty to be critical of, but also acknowledging that people need to get together to enjoy one another's company, enjoy good food and drink, and perhaps to give gifts to one another. It is good to see a child's smile when they receive a toy that gives them pleasure. Every child deserves some of that. So do grown-ups.
But I won't go so far as to say that Jesus is all this holiday is about. Feeling this way may get me accused of just being politically correct (or worse), but I don't think that's an insult. Political correctness simply takes into account that not EVERYone celebrates Christmas. To say "Happy Holidays" may seem to dilute the greeting, but it takes into account the preferences of an audience that is not singularly Christian, and most people do know someone who celebrates Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, or the winter Solstice, and this is as it should be.
In the same sense that we should not be prohibited from celebrating Christmas, or Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, or the Solstice, neither should we be REQUIRED to do so. We should celebrate Christmas with joy and gratitude. Hanukkah deserves celebrating, as a commemoration of the end of fighting, and a festival of lights. Kwanzaa, as a celebration of family, community and culture, does, too. So does the solstice, because it is wonderful to know that the days will be getting longer instead of shorter, when winter seems to have closed in around us.
May we all find more of the best of ourselves and each other, at this holiday time, and less of the worst of ourselves, and of others.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Joyous Kwanzaa! Happy Winter Solstice! Happy Holidays!
On the one hand, I feel that the Christmas holiday is messed up. It co-opts the old pagan Solstice celebration, and it's likely that the date it's celebrated has nothing whatsoever to do with when Jesus of Nazareth was born. It has come to be a time of extravagance, of which I'm quite certain he would disapprove. People are wondering what they can get for Christmas, and worrying about what material things they can give, instead of being truly supportive of one another. It's so much about material things, instead of the lasting things that can be shared by humans.
On the other hand, what's wrong with celebration? Laws were passed in England and these colonies in the 1600s, forbidding the celebration of Christmas and the use of its pagan trappings, like Christmas trees and decorations and mince pie and pudding, so that it was not generally celebrated in this country until the 1850s. And that was so much "bah, humbug".
So, where does that leave me? Perhaps just back where I began, feeling that there's plenty to be critical of, but also acknowledging that people need to get together to enjoy one another's company, enjoy good food and drink, and perhaps to give gifts to one another. It is good to see a child's smile when they receive a toy that gives them pleasure. Every child deserves some of that. So do grown-ups.
But I won't go so far as to say that Jesus is all this holiday is about. Feeling this way may get me accused of just being politically correct (or worse), but I don't think that's an insult. Political correctness simply takes into account that not EVERYone celebrates Christmas. To say "Happy Holidays" may seem to dilute the greeting, but it takes into account the preferences of an audience that is not singularly Christian, and most people do know someone who celebrates Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, or the winter Solstice, and this is as it should be.
In the same sense that we should not be prohibited from celebrating Christmas, or Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, or the Solstice, neither should we be REQUIRED to do so. We should celebrate Christmas with joy and gratitude. Hanukkah deserves celebrating, as a commemoration of the end of fighting, and a festival of lights. Kwanzaa, as a celebration of family, community and culture, does, too. So does the solstice, because it is wonderful to know that the days will be getting longer instead of shorter, when winter seems to have closed in around us.
May we all find more of the best of ourselves and each other, at this holiday time, and less of the worst of ourselves, and of others.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Joyous Kwanzaa! Happy Winter Solstice! Happy Holidays!
Saturday, March 20, 2010
He looks like me
Who is he?
This young man looks like me.
He is my co-creation.
His mother carried and nourished him,
We have tried to guide.
Encouraged him
These thirteen years.
A lifetime left to go . . .
He seems to feel things I recall.
I cringe at all he must go through.
He is so like his mother
That I relive our courtship again.
My love for him is deep,
Beyond fathoming,
As if it were
My own love for life.
If I could
I would give him all I know:
A database file
Direct to his mind.
Whatever wisdom I’ve earned.
Struggle and heartache.
Moments of joy.
All we can do
Is moment by moment:
Reassurance.
Shared laughter.
Common tears.
Advice.
Stories from life.
Dose by dose,
Day by day.
This young man looks like me,
But he is another self,
Beyond my grasp.
I cannot make him love what I love,
But I can nourish his mind and spirit
With love and excursions
From which he will sculpt his own being.
He will protect himself from my judgement
Though I judge myself more harshly.
This young man looks like me.
He is my boy,
Yet he is his own man.
My son,
May you walk with courage in spite of darkness.
May daylight brighten your days.
May you live with satisfaction of work well done.
May your friends be many and faithful.
May love find you in many places,
And may you find many to give yours to.
May your love also grow deep and strong.
May your children be blessed
And your grandchildren many.
And may our love find its way to them all.
G. Douglas Clarke
March 20, 2010
This young man looks like me.
He is my co-creation.
His mother carried and nourished him,
We have tried to guide.
Encouraged him
These thirteen years.
A lifetime left to go . . .
He seems to feel things I recall.
I cringe at all he must go through.
He is so like his mother
That I relive our courtship again.
My love for him is deep,
Beyond fathoming,
As if it were
My own love for life.
If I could
I would give him all I know:
A database file
Direct to his mind.
Whatever wisdom I’ve earned.
Struggle and heartache.
Moments of joy.
All we can do
Is moment by moment:
Reassurance.
Shared laughter.
Common tears.
Advice.
Stories from life.
Dose by dose,
Day by day.
This young man looks like me,
But he is another self,
Beyond my grasp.
I cannot make him love what I love,
But I can nourish his mind and spirit
With love and excursions
From which he will sculpt his own being.
He will protect himself from my judgement
Though I judge myself more harshly.
This young man looks like me.
He is my boy,
Yet he is his own man.
My son,
May you walk with courage in spite of darkness.
May daylight brighten your days.
May you live with satisfaction of work well done.
May your friends be many and faithful.
May love find you in many places,
And may you find many to give yours to.
May your love also grow deep and strong.
May your children be blessed
And your grandchildren many.
And may our love find its way to them all.
G. Douglas Clarke
March 20, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Tracks in snow
I took a walk in the field below our house this morning with our dog, before the sun had yet come up. The wind was unceasing and biting, in spite of temperatures that have been melting our snow-pack steadily for a week. Not many days ago, if I tried to walk in our fields or woods, most of my steps were ones in which I put my foot down in one place but it slid to a new one before my weight was even resting upon it. Enough of the snow is now gone, that ones feet mostly stay where you put them, when walking. As i moved south across the meadow on the path that I mow in the summer, I found my own tracks. I had taken our son and a friend to a slope below the house, for some sledding, twice during the winter, and here were tracks from one of those outings, that had been buried under a foot or more of snow, for a month or more. It got me to thinking about the evidence for global warming that has been trapped in ice and snow for hundreds of thousands of years. It also got me thinking about the impact one person may have on others' lives, or even on their own. I could, by looking in my diary, figure out what day we had made those tracks. But I couldn't have found those tracks a few days ago, before the layers of more recent snow had melted. The sun and warm air had done what I could not. I had an experience yesterday that was a similar sort of liberation, perhaps. I had been told that a person who joined our fire department when I was an assistant chief, had said that he'd not been effectively engaged in learning how things work, and being trained so he could be active. I had taken this as fact, and assumed some of the responsibility for his never getting very active in the department, which is very much in need of people to fill offices and get things done. Yesterday, I saw him on the street and had a chance to ask him if he could serve in some more active role, or if he would at least recommend people for those roles. In introducing that possibility to him, I said I'd understood that he'd felt neglected in those early days. He said that no, everyone had been friendly and engaging, and that he never had felt ignored nor neglected. For years I had carried a load of guilt around, thinking I had been responsible for his hurt feelings and his not being active in the organization. I don't know if whoever told me that, had misunderstood something my friend had said, or if I had associated the guilt with the wrong person, or whether he had simply stopped feeling that way, but it was like that depth of snow that has melted from our meadow, was lifted off in an instant.
Why I carry such burdens around with me, I don't know. I know I come by the propensity due to inherited traits from my ancestors, both learned and genetic. But I don't know why I don't throw off such burdens, psychologically and emotionally. I know they steal buoyancy from my spirit, but it is difficult not to cling to them.
Well, at least there is one less of them, now.
Why I carry such burdens around with me, I don't know. I know I come by the propensity due to inherited traits from my ancestors, both learned and genetic. But I don't know why I don't throw off such burdens, psychologically and emotionally. I know they steal buoyancy from my spirit, but it is difficult not to cling to them.
Well, at least there is one less of them, now.
Friday, December 25, 2009
The welcome I gave at our church last night's Christmas Eve service
Welcome to the First Seventh Day Baptist Church of Alfred! This is perhaps the one-hundred-fifty-fifth time that Christmas has been celebrated in this building. The entire community has not always met here on Christmas Eve, but at least this congregation has celebrated it here on the Sabbath before Christmas Eve, every year since the building was completed, back in 1854.
The tradition of celebrating Christmas is apparently quite long in our family and, of course, goes back about two-thousand years. One of our earliest ancestors who lived on this continent was a man by the name of Joseph Clarke, and he was known as “The Immigrant”. His elder brother, Dr. John Clarke, founded the town of Newport, R.I. in 1639 and became the pastor of the first Baptist Church in the American colonies. Although John Clarke apparently had no children, he spent twelve years back in England lobbying for a new charter for Rhode Island colony, and the one he secured from King Charles II in 1663 was probably the first to ever grant such complete religious liberty for the inhabitants. His younger brother, our ancestor, was a solid citizen of that colony, and his descendants are many.
I can only assume that Joseph’s parents gave him that name to honor the earthly father of the one whose birth we celebrate tonight. He and his children thought so much of it that there was a Joseph in each of the next three generations, and several more since then.
So it is that our family, and each of your families, honors that tradition with your presence here. We gather tonight to consider the events of that night so long ago, to ponder what thoughts may have come to Mary, and to Joseph, and to all who witnessed those events. May this shared experience of reflection and celebration bring you new and deeper meaning for Christmas, the satisfaction of love shared among family and friends, and joy in abundance.
Let us pray:
Dear Heavenly Father, we gather this evening to remember a night long ago when one was born who would later ask his followers to love one another, and to love even their enemies. We find ourselves in a world very much changed while two millennia have come and gone, yet it is very much the same. We are still in need of that admonition to love one another.
There are now, as then, wars going on elsewhere, and we think of those whose duty it is to wage them. We think also of those who are trying to build peace between the families, tribes, and nations of the world.
We consider the awesome obligations of those who wield political and economic power in our nation, and in all the nations circling the vast oceans. We consider the fearsome duties of those with little apparent power, whose only occupation is simply to survive, and to help their families and friends to live another day. Guide each person who hears your voice, to lend a hand to another, across the Earth.
We ask that your wisdom might be granted to the greatest and the least, that all might benefit from it, and this world be made more peaceful. Let our hearts be so full of your love, and our minds so full of insight, that we might all live as did that babe, born in a manger, so long ago.
In His name,
Amen
The tradition of celebrating Christmas is apparently quite long in our family and, of course, goes back about two-thousand years. One of our earliest ancestors who lived on this continent was a man by the name of Joseph Clarke, and he was known as “The Immigrant”. His elder brother, Dr. John Clarke, founded the town of Newport, R.I. in 1639 and became the pastor of the first Baptist Church in the American colonies. Although John Clarke apparently had no children, he spent twelve years back in England lobbying for a new charter for Rhode Island colony, and the one he secured from King Charles II in 1663 was probably the first to ever grant such complete religious liberty for the inhabitants. His younger brother, our ancestor, was a solid citizen of that colony, and his descendants are many.
I can only assume that Joseph’s parents gave him that name to honor the earthly father of the one whose birth we celebrate tonight. He and his children thought so much of it that there was a Joseph in each of the next three generations, and several more since then.
So it is that our family, and each of your families, honors that tradition with your presence here. We gather tonight to consider the events of that night so long ago, to ponder what thoughts may have come to Mary, and to Joseph, and to all who witnessed those events. May this shared experience of reflection and celebration bring you new and deeper meaning for Christmas, the satisfaction of love shared among family and friends, and joy in abundance.
Let us pray:
Dear Heavenly Father, we gather this evening to remember a night long ago when one was born who would later ask his followers to love one another, and to love even their enemies. We find ourselves in a world very much changed while two millennia have come and gone, yet it is very much the same. We are still in need of that admonition to love one another.
There are now, as then, wars going on elsewhere, and we think of those whose duty it is to wage them. We think also of those who are trying to build peace between the families, tribes, and nations of the world.
We consider the awesome obligations of those who wield political and economic power in our nation, and in all the nations circling the vast oceans. We consider the fearsome duties of those with little apparent power, whose only occupation is simply to survive, and to help their families and friends to live another day. Guide each person who hears your voice, to lend a hand to another, across the Earth.
We ask that your wisdom might be granted to the greatest and the least, that all might benefit from it, and this world be made more peaceful. Let our hearts be so full of your love, and our minds so full of insight, that we might all live as did that babe, born in a manger, so long ago.
In His name,
Amen
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