Merry Christmas (smiling warmly and shaking hands with love); God bless you and your family (beaming with joy and sharing a hug); May the peace of Christ be with you (looking deeply into one anothers' eyes). Those are some of the ways we share our emotions following the annual Christmas Eve candle light service; we feel great; we feel the love of friends, of family, of the Lord surrounding us and filling our lives. It is a wondrous time.
And here is thing: I feel good sharing my good feeling with people that I meet in shops or at the CO -OP, or at work--just wherever I am. And I hope that people will know that I am expressing a sincere best wish to them in words that are most meaningful to me. At least that is how I used to feel. Now, I am hesitant. I haven't changed: I still want to share what I have in my heart, but now the word is out that I am being offensive to some people of different beliefs. Now, I really do care about the integrity of belief, and I have the greatest respect for how everyone deals with their spirituality. So, I hesitate to offer greetings and end up mumbling, "Happy holidays." And then I feel as if I have let everyone down by being insincere.
To solve my problem, and that of anyone offended by cheery Christmas greetings, I have a proposal. Lets' abolish extended vacation time associated with religious celebrations. No more Christmas holidays, no more Easter holidays. Instead, let's take mid-term breaks in the fall and in the spring semesters. we can still focus the break on the grade school year. The rationalization of the dates would benefit the education system providing opporunity for balanced semesters and exams at the end of the instruction period (with no intervening Christmas holiday, for example). But the big pay-off is in terms of equal recognition of all religions.
In this system, everyone gets an entitlement to four days of religious celebration time. So, the Christians can choose time at Christmas and at Easter; the Muslims can choose Eid and Ramadan; the Jews can choose Passover and Hanukah, for example. Or they can anme whichever religious festival they prefer. The atheists can go to work and feel righteous! God won't mind their use of a religious term. The point is, every world religion has days that are important in the calendar of their worship year. Observants should be accorded the dignity of their faith by our society. For all I know, there may be a "There is no God Day" and a "I believe nothing day" so that such folk could gather and curse rather than pray.
The point surely is, if Christians deserve time away from work to worship, so to do beilevers of every faith. And, just think of the benefits to Christians of not having everyone else taking time off for our festival days. We won't be complaining about hypocrites nearly as much; we won't whine about commercialization or about nobody recognizing the "real message" of Christmas. all of us who are celebrating Christ's birth are doing so because we really get that message. And anyone who wants to come and share our joy will be welcomed with open hearts. And wouldn't that feel good?
Then, if we really get into the spirit of equality that is at the heart of most religions, we might just decide that nobody will get a recognized religious festival time off. Because we are faithful, we will live it every day and special celebrations will be part of our routine day. After work, we will go home or to church and celebrate, just like people of faiths other than Christian do now.
Then, what we believe will be revealed through our actions and not just a repetition of something that our society does every year at those times in order to boost retail sales.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
Older and grumpier
What a ridiculous week! Political excitement roared across the country followed by the anticlimactic whoosh of wind from all of the trial balloons. There is still lots of buzz, but but the low pressure zone is gone; the entropy of the hi has prevailed. Meteorologically speaking, it is as if nothing has happened. A moderate front has passed through, but there was more agitation in the clouds than on the ground. A few dead autumn leaves whipped about for a short time, but now all is placid, calm, boring. So why am I grumpy, I wonder?
Here it is. Canadian politics are a useless waste of time and money. We have people whining all the time about "tax payers' money." So why do we not do something about it instead of just whine? Are we a lazy-minded lot content to do like feeble-minded Lennie wanted in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men to "live of the fatta the lan'?" It sure looks that way. We surely have no interest in looking for new and imaginative solutions to problems that we have.
So, maybe we get the politicians we deserve. They sure seem to have no ideas worth pursuing. The Prime Minister put the country through an election that only he wanted so that he might better deal with the economy, he assured us. Well, in the seven weeks following that election, he and his government came up with nothing on the economy except the news that Canada is in pretty good shape. Well, that is clearly not so; thousands of Canadians are losing their jobs every day. Today's lead stories, ahead of the political nonsense, are about bankruptcies and job losses in November. If Mr. Harper was unaware of the situation, it is an even greater condemnation of his worth than is his inaction.
On November 16, after the G20 Washington meeting, he said, "Look, it there is a worldwide agreement, then we will engage in sufficient stimulus to do our part in carrying global economic demand," he said. "We will fulfill our part of that agreement." OK. That is clear.
However, as reported in today's Globe and Mail, Robert Fairholm, director economic forecasting of the Centre for Spatial Economics, one of four firms the Department of Finance depends on to provide thorough economic forecasts upon which the government's budget track is based, says the government is not fulfilling anytyhing of the sort. He says, "The only way to break the credit logjam is for fiscal policy to leap into action, and boost the economy." Mr. Fairholm added that his analysis of the situation is shared by the IMF and was signed on to by leaders at the Group 20 summit in Washington last month, including Mr. Harper.
Well, proroguing the House of Commons is a leap alright--out of the way of the bus that would have run Mr. Harper down. He was the fool that released the park brake on that bus with his ridiculous decision to destroy the opposition parties by suspending their funding. How on earth did he have time to think that up when the economy is crashing. I guess everyone has personal priorities.
I don't like Stephane Dion; I don't like Jack Layton; and I don't trust the intentions of Giles Duceppe. But Stephen Harper is a dangerous man. He wants absolute political power--a majority government, and he is willing to take unconscionable risks to get it. How many people will suffer because of the three months of inaction by his government since the last election? All he has done is to bait three foolish politicians into trying something they have neither the wit nor the public support to pull off. He really has destroyed the opposition. Will he now force another election to get his majority?
Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." Well, for the sake of my children's future, I deeply hope that we are in the third of those times.
Here it is. Canadian politics are a useless waste of time and money. We have people whining all the time about "tax payers' money." So why do we not do something about it instead of just whine? Are we a lazy-minded lot content to do like feeble-minded Lennie wanted in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men to "live of the fatta the lan'?" It sure looks that way. We surely have no interest in looking for new and imaginative solutions to problems that we have.
So, maybe we get the politicians we deserve. They sure seem to have no ideas worth pursuing. The Prime Minister put the country through an election that only he wanted so that he might better deal with the economy, he assured us. Well, in the seven weeks following that election, he and his government came up with nothing on the economy except the news that Canada is in pretty good shape. Well, that is clearly not so; thousands of Canadians are losing their jobs every day. Today's lead stories, ahead of the political nonsense, are about bankruptcies and job losses in November. If Mr. Harper was unaware of the situation, it is an even greater condemnation of his worth than is his inaction.
On November 16, after the G20 Washington meeting, he said, "Look, it there is a worldwide agreement, then we will engage in sufficient stimulus to do our part in carrying global economic demand," he said. "We will fulfill our part of that agreement." OK. That is clear.
However, as reported in today's Globe and Mail, Robert Fairholm, director economic forecasting of the Centre for Spatial Economics, one of four firms the Department of Finance depends on to provide thorough economic forecasts upon which the government's budget track is based, says the government is not fulfilling anytyhing of the sort. He says, "The only way to break the credit logjam is for fiscal policy to leap into action, and boost the economy." Mr. Fairholm added that his analysis of the situation is shared by the IMF and was signed on to by leaders at the Group 20 summit in Washington last month, including Mr. Harper.
Well, proroguing the House of Commons is a leap alright--out of the way of the bus that would have run Mr. Harper down. He was the fool that released the park brake on that bus with his ridiculous decision to destroy the opposition parties by suspending their funding. How on earth did he have time to think that up when the economy is crashing. I guess everyone has personal priorities.
I don't like Stephane Dion; I don't like Jack Layton; and I don't trust the intentions of Giles Duceppe. But Stephen Harper is a dangerous man. He wants absolute political power--a majority government, and he is willing to take unconscionable risks to get it. How many people will suffer because of the three months of inaction by his government since the last election? All he has done is to bait three foolish politicians into trying something they have neither the wit nor the public support to pull off. He really has destroyed the opposition. Will he now force another election to get his majority?
Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." Well, for the sake of my children's future, I deeply hope that we are in the third of those times.
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