Epiphany

 Some quotations:

 Save me, Oh Lord – for the waters have risen above my neck ( Psalm 69.1)

 From Wikipedia: An epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphanea, "manifestation, striking appearance") is an experience of a sudden and striking realization. . . Epiphanies are relatively rare occurrences and generally follow a process of significant thought about a problem. Often they are triggered by a new and key piece of information, but importantly, a depth of prior knowledge is required to allow the leap of understanding.

 And also this: 

Western churches generally celebrate the Visit of the Magi as the revelation of the Incarnation of the infant Christ, and commemorate the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.

 Some news stories were hard to find on television on Wednesday.  US Congress was no longer dominated by a single party.  Covid 19  hospitalizaed cases and deaths reached the highest numbers ever. There was nothing about Epiphany as a celebration of the visit of the Wise Men until a message announcing a link to a live streamed service at my parish church came via email. I left CNN to attend it online.  With the strains of Gregorian Chant, sung by single alternating voices complying with the rules of public health and an engaging homily, and the noting of the passing of two friends – one far too early from cancer and the other probably only from advanced age - it was a moment of Kairos in a world of Chaos.

 *I lived for three years in Manhattan in the early 60s. My eldest son came into the world as an American by birth.  It is a country I have admired and loved ever since my first visit as a young child. I have been totally mystified by its support of a president who seemed to have no qualifications for office and gained notoriety as a reality TV celebrity who in real life cheated on wives, businesses, banks and taxes. As someone who had inherited milions he was an unlikely saviour of people who felt left out and disadvantaged, but were eager to become his disciples.  But like everyone else I fell captive to news in print and social media that was all Trump all the Time.  His ability to capture out our attention Trumped all.

 I’m not complicit in marching, vandalizing or believing conspiracy theories. But if there is a personal epiphany, it is in realizing how much attention I gave to this person.  I read of a refusal of a sitting president to concede his loss in an election and his many attempts to contest it in the courts with baseless or non-existent claims. I thought that press accounts of correction were enough.  I thought that resignations of colleagues was enough.  I thought that invitations to protest by a sitting president to overthrow the government were disgraceful, but that law enforcement and curfews were enough.  I thought that even though some politicians wanted to engage in spurious theatre without risking the outcome - and a chairman adhering to the constitution was enough.  I was wrong.

 While those who were making those claims, thugs were invading and desecrating the Capitol, urged on to violence by the defeated president, his family members and their cohort. It appears to have been a wake-up call for some members of congress to have a similar epiphany – a sudden realization of what they have supported and how close they came to death – perhaps their own – but certainly that of democracy. 

What happens to a man or woman who runs for office with a view to making the world a better place and then loses any sense of what it true - just to stay in power?  What young person is going to undertake a position of office to risk being spit upon, called unspeakable names or even murdered?  How do you deal with someone using a Bible as a prop after tear gassing peaceful protesters - and then goes on to love thugs and domestic terrorists?

 I’m not suggesting that hanging out at an online church service is the answer.  Religions of all kinds have much to answer for. But however we find it, the sense of  decency and sacredness of places and institutions has to be part of  reality however one can find it.

 And I’m not about to join those condemning the leader of the senate and the vice president and others for finally doing the right thing as too little too late.  Sometimes epiphanies take a lifetime – including my own.  What makes the difference is a distinction between habits – some chosen, but more often learned and assumed unconsciously – and practice, which involves choices.  I along with others have choices to make – in terms of time and energy and focus and determine what I value.  It’s a new day.  

Gratitude

Last year on the day after Christmas, family members and I boarded a plane in Toronto. Five and a half hours later we were enjoying a late lunch at a lovely Chinese restaurant in Richmond, British Columbia. We texted relatives that we would catch the six o’clock ferry to join them on Bowen Island and anticipated the celebration of marriage of a family member and her new husband the next day.

This year some of the same family members picked me up to transport me to the one permitted household - with presents for exchange,, a floral arrangement sent from the BC relatives, home-made cookies from an exchange among Toronto friends, and my dinner contribution of an English trifle.  We settled in for a leisurely lunch, while my son did the cooking and viewed an interchange on his laptop in the kitchen and the rest of us visited with extended family members on another one in the dinning room – one from a recently purchased schoolhouse getaway in Eastern Ontario, one from a dacha outside Moscow, another from an apartment in Winnipeg, Manitoba at minus forty degrees – where Fahrenheit and Centigrade temperatures actually meet – colder than the home of one of the residents from Finland – and another stuck in Ottawa where the meeting of the Canadian Senate kept him from flying home in time. 

 On Christmas Eve we had gathered on Zoom for an even larger gathering where another family member read “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.  Three generations of one family had lived there, either teaching at or attending one of the United World Colleges. Members were now spread out in different countries but still seeing one another on the screen.  Another presented a radio presentation, where he acted as Trinculo in Shakespeares’ The Tempest - reprising a performance that his grandfather had done decades earlier. Another accompanied himself on a guitar while singing a Psalm in both Hebrew and English. His sister played and sang a carol. His aunt played a clarinet to show us what she could do after working with one for only six months. I read my Covid parody.

And all this is seen as possible – and normal during a pandemic. And we would never have thought to connect with so many at once - until we couldn’t do so in person.

 How different it is from the pandemic of 1918. My father was 18 years old that year and my mother was 15.  I never thought to ask them what that pandemic was like for them. This morning’s paper details some similarities with the present one.  The number of patients strained the hospital and the number of deaths - 50,000 in Canada – 50 million around the world – meant the large number could not be interred quickly enough.  Businesses were shut down.  Prime Ministers caught the flu.  The Stanley Cup was postponed.  But there were differences too.  Children and young adults were the most threatened. There was little government help – either national or provincial – and local governments had to work on their own.

 Let’s hope that some of the patterns don’t recur.  There were swings between opening up and needing to shut down again.  There was initial avoidance of the severity of the pandemic. There was resistance to closings.  Public health officials were both congratulated and denigrated.  Health workers were infected and shortages were severe.  Quack cures prevailed.  Indigenous communities were hit hardest. The disease faded away in most countries but Canada continued to have sporadic outbreaks until 2020.

 The key difference is the development of vaccines. Some were developed in 1918 at Queen’s University and by Connaught Laboratories at the University of Toronto.  What scientists did not know then was that the disease was produced by a virus.  Their vaccines did reduce the severity but vaccine development with both new understanding and speed of production were decades away.  We are so fortunate to live in the new century where over time we will overcome the effects of the current one.

 The amazing opportunities afforded by technology where we can see each other from a distance and be safely together in new ways is so taken for granted that we forget the creators of so many inventions.  I searched for a timeline and found one here

 And I was fascinated by those with impact on my own life:

My Mediaeval Manuscript

The handwritten page from a psalter hanging above my electronic piano had some precursors. Anod of course they were followed by the printing press to allow books to spread through the known universe, open up learning and change the world

My great grandfather hated the telephone

When the family in Parry Sound installed on the first in the town, he hated the idea of people intruding on his privacy. Now I text my grandchildren.

This doesn’t even show how I do it now

A Google Nest responding to my oral request to play some Christmas Carols on Combo - with a number of the best ones sounding in three different rooms on three small units.

My TV watching at home started in 1950

Now I ask my TV to head toward Prime or YouTube on the big screen with hundreds of choices in spectacular colour - or switch back to one of the many cable stations - not exactly like the small screen of the past.

Communication machines

In university, the weekly newsletter in my college was printed on a ditto machine - and I still have a purple version. Then came the fax machine in the 80e where in 1985 one board member had one - and 1986 where only one member didn’t - and no parctically no one does. I’d still like it better if my all in one printer would print in colour even though only the demo does.

From turning on a desktop in 1984

To meeting the family on Zoom in 2020. It’s been an amazing journey through it all.

As I write, I am restricted to my apartment but my life is both safe and rich.  It is so easy to forget how fortunate I am compared to most of the world during a pandemic.  Mu family came up with an innovative way to enjoy company on my balcony in cold weather – electric fleece throws. The view from there of the canopy of trees is beautiful even missing their former leaves and the lake and sky still dominate the extensive built environment.

An obituary of  famous nature writer Barry Lopez reminds me to put all this technology in perspective.  We, like the wolves he spent time with and wrote about so lovingly, are also creatures of the planet.

 The New York Times quotes the British writer Robert Macfarlane as he  put it this way in The Guardian in 2005 writing about the author. “Throughout his writings, Lopez returns to the idea that natural landscapes are capable of bestowing a grace upon those who pass through them. Certain landscape forms, in his vision, possess a spiritual correspondence. The stern curve of a mountain slope, a nest of wet stones on a beach, the bent trunk of a windblown tree: These abstract shapes can call out in us a goodness we might not have known we possessed.”

 The technological and the natural are part of our lives in the Anthropocene and both bring us grace..  Many of our journeys this season involved a much smaller carbon footprint, though they depended on electricity and that is a small benefit to the planet.  The human connections in my small world were made well – while all around us there are evidence of such connections and care that are made badly. So much will depend on our choices and sense of a sacred that we must receive with grace as we move ahead.

In a lighter seasonal vein

T’was a night during Covid, when all through the state

Statistics were rising, the news was not great.

The face masks were hung by the front door with care,

In hopes that the virus would not soon be there

The ICUs filled up with folks in their beds,

With visions of long-term disruption in heads.

With hand sanitizer, not touching my face,

and nary an option for hugs in this place

Out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang to the front door to view all the matter.

Away to the doorstep I flew like a flash,

Opened the front door and hoped for some cash.

The Liberals on breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave promise at mid-day to dollars below,

But what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But the DoorDash attendant with restaurant beer,

And an Instacart messenger dragging a cart

(I knew in a moment my tips had been smart).

More rapid than eagles the groceries came,

And we named all the heroes and villains by name

Yay, Trudeau! yay, Theresa! yay, Deena, yay Rerx

Yay Fauci, Yay Sangay! Boo Anti-Vax Jerks.

Leave stuff on the porch! Six feet from the wall

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry throats, that before the new virus comes on

When they meet with a test are immediately gone

So up to the house-top the droplets they flew,

To infect a new household with Covid to rue

But then, in a twinkling, I heard on the air

From CBC, NBC ways to repair!

As I rolled up my sleeve, and was turning around,

Moderna attendant came in with a bound.

She was dressed all in Hazmat, from head to her toes,

With vaccine in hand to attend to my woes.

A bundle of vials she had flung on the table,

To use on my arm quite as quickly as able

My eyes -- how they shut fast! My arm it was bare

To welcome the vaccine, about to go there.

My droll little mouth was drawn up with a wince

Bur heart with more hope than we hadn’t had since

The virus descended in March of this year

As we sheltered in place with a sense of new fear

The virus was scary and full of infection

That senators said there should be no election

Instead, the politicos offered a CERB

Since then, the word “pay back” is now the new verb.

Health officers all became the new stars

And most public transport gave way to our cars.

We baked, we did puzzles, we Netlixed to death

And hoped we’d live through this before our last breath

We watched anti-vaccers with moments of dread

Like POTUS, they thought it was all in the head

He was chubby and plump, a right dangerous elf,

And he did lose the White House because of himself.

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave us to live in perpetual dread;

He Twittered a lot, but went naught to his work,

And spouted conspiracies. Then as a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up to pardons he rose;

He sprang to his plane, to his team gave a wave,

And we hoped he was heading quite soon for a grave.

But we heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

Leave the Covid to Joe - and he’ll soon get it right!

Solstice - A Universe Birthday

This is the solstice, the still point of the Sun . . .
where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.

— Margaret Atwood

 The Canadian poet and novelist kicks off the site of the Deep Time Network, a place that celebrates the larger creation story than the one usually told in European traditions and the countries that emerged from it. The Christmas ritual relates to it in terms of timing.

 As the Network site notes,

 “From time immemorial, humans have honored the winter and summer solstices, as sacred and rich times, to align our personal and collective lives with the movement of celestial bodies.  Some of us are heading into the darkness of winter while others are headed into summer and longer days.  Wherever you are, the solstice is a planetary event.”

 A solstice occurs when the Sun reaches its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the equator. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21.

The term solstice can also be used in a broader sense, as the day when this event occurs. The day of a solstice in both hemispheres has either the most sunlight of the year (summer solstice) or the least sunlight of the year (winter solstice) for any place other than the Equator, where the days and nights are equal in length all through the year.

The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol (“sun”) and sistere (“to stand still”), because at the solstices, the Sun appears to “stand still”; that is, the seasonal movement of the Sun’s daily path (as seen from Earth) pauses at a northern or southern limit before reversing direction.

 And this year there is an added bonus, if you are in a location with a clear night. There are likely to be meteor showers but there is also the best chance in 400 years to see two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, appear closer than usual – not that they are actually close to us. Saturn is 1.6 billion km. from earth, while Jupiter is about 885 million away. They appear to meet in the night sky. The last time this happened so visibly was in 1623.  Binoculars may make it visible in the south west sky just around sun down. Through right now, and for the rest of December, they will appear to be super-close in the post-sunset night sky. 

 And though it’s a shorter interval, the great Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City has celebrated the solstice for the past 41 years with a performance by the famed Paul Winter consort. I sang in the chorus when they came to Toronto for a performance of the Missa Gaia in 1989 and it still happened again this year at the Cathedral.  NPR offers a reprise of the 2019 concert and you can listen and watch excerpts of it here..

Beyond Belief

I’m curious how people become immersed in conspiracy theories – whether in large situations like the American election – or small ones like an unwelcome change in an organization.  I was therefore pleased when the New York Times columnist tackled the subject in a recent column.  One of the benefits of the Times is its continuing support of columnists with both liberal and conservative biases.  I was thus more than casually interested in how Ross Douthat would frame this.

He first debunked the notion that the theories come solely from the supply side – social media and biased press and cable networks. It’s not the fault of a top-down power base. There is a demand from the bottom up to support an already existing belief.  He goes on to describe three mindsets that move participants in the direction of conspiracy theories that make sense.  I wish he had spent more time on the hero worship of celebrity, but perhaps he will do so in the future.

The first group he describes are the “Conspiracy Curious Normies”.  These are not diehards but people who see the lack of transparency in government and institutions all the time and wonder what’s behind the curtain of official secrecy.  The lack of detail can arouse a reasonable skepticism.  Politics, of course, encourages this. The party not in power plays the role of official opposition – seldom a loyal one - and the task is to uncover the “there there”.

The second group are the “Outsider Intellectuals”. Such persons, usually with more than a modicum of formal education, place much of their identity on questioning everything. Sometimes, of course, they get it right.  Because much of the discourse is sincere and now happens in social media, others are quick to pick it up and reinforce it. Any person has the power to gain a following in no time – as Kevin Ashton proved with his fictional consultant, Santiago Swallow and his 85,000 followers.  This is a cautionary tale relating to celebrity culture – but it also shows how the faux outside intellectual can dupe us.

The last group Douthat identifies are the “Recently Radicalized”.  To some extent they are the creatures of the pandemic.  Lockdown has had an effect in my own family where teenagers are studying online while all their parents work from home and an older grandson was hired immediately after graduating from university. Another son teaches graduate students online in Hong Kong. I’ll add myself to make ten people all functioning with their own technology at an optimal level.  How common is that? The contrast of impoverished inner city or rural families in any country is staggering. It is an invitation to mistrust authority. Added to that are unusual events – racial unrest, natural disasters and it reinforces the belief that no one is in charge – and that any who are attempting to be – those who talk about resets – are simply moving to take advantage of the situation and are out to get us.

 Douthat concludes that there is more reason here that we are willing to give credit to. The easy thing is to mock it and laugh it away. The more responsible thing is to ponder ways to rebut it.

For the first group, the conspiracy curious, Douthat suggests avoiding the media coverage and going directly to the sources.  If claims are being made in court, what are the lawyers saying to make their case?  If it is legislation, what does the proposed bill say?  If there is lack of transparency, what can be revealed and what is reasonable to withhold and redact?

For the outsider intellectuals, Douthat suggests that they take a breath and recognize that anomalies might be simple errors rather than dastardly plots.  For the recently radicalized, pandemics do create chaos and ascribing mistakes as overreaching attempts to mislead are unfair.  People do get things wrong because they are human and respond in various ways.  If it appears that no one is in charge, it might be due to complexity of the reaction rather than autocracy.

In the long run what we need to focus on is law making – not story telling.