Whispers From Babylon

Here is a delightful piece sent courtesy of Ellen and Mike Hodnett

Christmas characters

The rule of three

What those magical, royal wanderers through the desert really signify

Dec 20th 2014 | From the print edition

OF ALL the actors in the Nativity story, the three wise men are by far the most fun. To a scene that would otherwise verge on the gloomy—a hazardous birth, a stroppy landlord, a derelict stable, uncouth shepherds—they add glitter and mystery. Small wonder that most primary-school thespians, offered the choice between the saintly principals and the glamorous visitors, plump for the velvet robes, the gold-foil headgear and the tissue-boxes stuck with jewels.

T.S. Eliot, filled with the anomie of his age, did his best to drab the wise men down:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp…
…the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.

It didn’t work, however. These surprising visitors to the stable always look splendid, and remarkably fresh for the journey. Longfellow’s kings are perhaps best of all:

Their robes were of crimson silk with rows
Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,
Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.

Glum or extravagant, were these figures magi (specifically Persian scholars from the Zoroastrian tradition, tasked with keeping the holy fire of Ormuzd and skilled in astronomy, medicine, magic and astrology), or kings from Tarsus, Saba, Sheba and points east, as Psalm 72 had predicted? Matthew, the only Gospel source, used the Greek word magoi, which signified wise men in general, and had them announce that they had seen the star at its rising. This tilts the balance towards astronomers, which was what the early church imagined them to be.

If these travellers were magi, the most circumstantial source—the Book of Seth, attributed to St John Chrysostom in the fourth century—said there were 12 of them, and that they had been watching for a star on the mythical mountain of Vauls, vaguely in Persia, for generation after generation, ever since Adam in old age had taken refuge there. With him he already had the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, actually pinched from Eden. It was because the gifts were three (symbolising respectively king, God and mortal, since resinous myrrh was used to anoint the body after death) that the travellers, too, were reduced to a trio of seekers cleverly navigating their way across the desert.

This version finds favour with modern researchers, who have spilt much ink unravelling the parallels between Zoroastrianism and Christianity (basically, Good and Evil Principles) and pinning down the exact spot in “the east” the magi came from, most probably the border between Iran and Afghanistan, possibly India, via the Silk Road. It is still impossible to know, though, exactly what sort of scholars they were; and much easier to dismiss them, as Rowan Williams did when Archbishop of Canterbury, as simply mythical, together with the ox and the ass.

It is just as hard to say which heavenly phenomenon the wise men were meant to have seen. It was possibly a supernova; possibly a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces in 7BC; and possibly a comet, since the star’s beams were often said to stream and wave like a bird flying. In the Hellenic-Roman world comets presaged deaths or disasters, not births. Nonetheless the magi had been instructed, according to the Book of Seth, that one particular bright star would announce the coming of a child; and Matthew’smagoi knew it was a king’s star. One modern writer on magi, Martin Gilbert, spins the theory that the wise men themselves represent three stars in conjunction, this time Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury, and that they have swum into Matthew, chapter 2, for purely astrological reasons.

Their first words, “Where is the child that is born King of the Jews?” came out of mist, confusion and panic

The magi edition of the story did not, however, get much traction in the Middle Ages. Nor has it done on Christmas cards since. A sixth-century mosaic at Ravenna (see picture) is almost the last time they appear as scholars, looking suitably impecunious, and in the tight trousers and floppy Phrygian caps worn by Persians. “People think they were magi,” wrote John of Hildesheim, whose “Historia Trium Regum” of the mid-14th century was taken then as the last word on the matter, “because the star was so bright, and they did the journey so fast [in 13 days from the Nativity, to arrive on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany]. But this is a mistake.” The reason they travelled so swiftly, he added, was partly divine assistance and partly because they were on dromedaries, “which can really go”.

In truth, the magi theory languished for simple reasons. Medieval folk knew what kings were; magi they were unsure of, except that they were pagan, followed the teachings of Balaam, and dealt in demons. It was not good to introduce devilry into the Christmas scene, even if the Christ-child could defeat it with one wave of his tiny hand. Magi were linked to Persia, of which well-read Europeans perhaps knew a bit; oriental kings opened up a much more fantastical geography, stretching mistily via several different Indias to the shores of the Great Ocean, where mapmakers scattered rivers and mountains more or less as they liked, with an occasional camel or dragon and sultans, wearing turbans, forlornly perched in tents. The farther east you went, in this continent where all exotic place-names blended together, the more venomous and strange the beasts got, the thicker the trees and the vaster the deserts. That men should venture from such places, at the end of the earth, to find the Christ-child, was much more interesting than a short hop from the Middle East. And it was more interesting (as moderns also tend to think) if the wise men were not too wise but, like kings, often floundering and beset.

For so it seemed they were. To begin with, said John of Hildesheim, they were not magnificent figures of men but small, feeble and scrawny. Yes, he admitted, that was surprising; but so men became as you went farther east. (Conversely, the sheep got bigger, with enormous tails.) The kings also set out singly, since they ruled over lands that were far apart, and came together only when they reached Jerusalem.

Conveniently, a lamp-like star guided each of them; but had it not hung before their noses as close as a fish on a line (for kings, not being astronomers, could not read the sky and needed leading), they would never have made it. An Armenian source said they were also led by an angel; in the late 19th century, Edward Burne-Jones put the star in a walking angel’s hands. As the kings arrived in Jerusalem the star or stars disappeared, and a thick fog descended. Their first words in Matthew, “Where is the child that is born King of the Jews?” came out of mist, confusion and panic.

The angel’s warning at Autun

They were taken in, too, by King Herod, who invited them to dine: traditionally on a roasted cock which, in honour of the true king in the stable, rose up and crowed. Herod co-opted them to spy on the child and report back, and they were happy to oblige. Luckily, an angel intervened and warned them not to. They were then told to return “by another way”; starless this time, with no God-assisted steering, they took two laborious years over it, seeking directions from everyone en route. (“And so you see”, wrote John of Hildesheim smugly, “the difference between divine and human operations”.)

Small wonder, perhaps, that though the kings became patron saints of trouble-on-the-road from the 12th century they were not all that popular, because they were not that lucky. Their feast-day, July 23rd, seems to have been usurped in modern calendars by St Apollinaris, who cures gout and the French pox. It was St Christopher who actually kept travellers safe, and it is his image that still swings beside the rear-view-mirror rosaries and fluffy dice; whereas the kings come into play when the tyre is already flat, the speed cop already spotted, or the fine-notice glued to the windscreen by several days of rain.

Myrrh on your clothes

Their names and kingdoms were fairly obscure. For the sake of a good story, though, they had to have both. So they were called Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar (or Caspar), names that never really caught on, except in northern Europe in the high Middle Ages and in posher parts of west London in the late 20th century (“Melchior, give me that phone at once”). They were kings, respectively, of Arabia and Nubia, Godolia, and Tarsus, and hence their gifts: for gold lay so thick in Arabia’s red earth that you kicked it up as you walked, incense dripped from the trees of Godolia, and you could not wander in parts of Tarsus without myrrh, “moist as wax”, clinging to your clothes.

In fact, being kings, they brought a good deal more. Magi might well have only one small, portable gift each; but Matthew’s wise men had treasure chests. In the Spanish-speaking world, by long tradition, they are the Father Christmas figures, the bringers of unlimited money and sweets. In fact, said John of Hildesheim, the kings carried with them all the ornaments that Alexander the Great had left behind in Asia, and all the wealth that had been liberated from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The high-crowned travellers of modern Christmas cards plod across the dunes unburdened and unescorted; but medieval people knew that when kings travelled, ever on the move between their palaces as sport, work or blocked drains dictated, they took their chattels, treasure, beds, dogs and all their servants with them. Some painters hinted at this enormous retinue, hustling and holding back horses at the edges of the scene; some donors had themselves put in it, as grooms or falcon-trainers. There were so many hangers-on, said John of Hildesheim, that they could not get lodgings in Jerusalem and had to camp outside, looking like a besieging army.

Flustered as the kings were, the great treasure seemed to get forgotten (except for a small golden apple that was once Alexander’s, offered by Melchior, which immediately fell to ash because it symbolised, unhappily, Eve’s apple in Eden). Some cartoons have pointed out that these gifts were hardly suitable for a baby, or even for his mother (“Three wise men, and no one brought chocolate?” Mary fumes in one). In the 13th-century “Book of Marco Polo” the Christ-child gave them a present in return: a box which, eagerly opened on the way home, was found to contain a stone. Disgusted, the kings threw it down a well, whereupon it burst into flames; they somehow fished it out, took it home and worshipped it.

Balthazar’s gift

The nature of the gifts, though, was less important than the fact that the kings represented the whole Gentile world coming to pay homage. Traditionally one of them, usually Balthazar, was swarthy, darkening over the centuries until Hieronymous Bosch makes him black as coal, his skin contrasted with robes of gleaming white damask. By then he was assumed to be a king of Ethiopia; the darker he got, the farther south he drifted. He was usually calm, silent and in the background, as if no painter of the medieval or early modern age could imagine a negro who was not a servant. The kings were also all the ages of man, respectively 20, 40 and 60. The oldest, with long snowy hair and beard, struggling to kneel to give his present first, was usually taken to be Melchior; Gaspar was the young blade, rosy-cheeked and beardless and, just occasionally, oriental.

Together, then, the kings added up to Everyman; and as such they became a triune symbol of human striving, hope and folly. Over the featureless desert, over the centuries, they have taken on the characters of politicians, bankers, sunglass-sporting sheikhs, officers of OPEC and rock stars. They have carried election pledges, Turkish delight, overdue library books and barrels of oil. At times of austerity the gifts have become aluminium, potpourri and baby oil. The light they see in the sky, big as the sun, has become a digital stock-price display (for gold, frankincense and myrrh), the neon sign of the Ramada Bethlehem (five stars) and, of course, a UFO. And they have got lost, continually; despite the star, they often get their maps out, scratching at their crowned heads and longing, now, for satnav. The angel’s warning to return by a different way was interpreted early on, by some commentators, as a version of the saying of Heraclitus that you could never step into the same river twice in the endless flux of life.

To sea in a bowl

It is therefore easy to see the kings as an example—perhaps the prototype—of the three hapless travellers, who crop up everywhere once you start to look:

Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.

This is Gotham in Nottinghamshire, not New York; but it could be either. Wynken, Blynken and Nod sail out in a wooden shoe, evidently unseaworthy, to catch the herring-fish stars and to fall asleep. The three jovial Welshmen go off hunting on St David’s day, they know not for what:

An’ one said, “Mind yo’r e’en, an’ keep yo’r noses reet i’ th’ wind,
An’ then, by scent or seet, we’ll leet o’ summat to our mind.”

Heirs to greatness

Jerome K. Jerome’s three men in a boat row off down the Thames in the 1880s because they are feeling seedy, and in need of a change—only to find that none of them can steer, or navigate a lock, or simply open a tin of pineapple, without great ado and even physical injury.

There was also, in the Middle Ages, another wandering-kings story in which the three monarchs, out hunting frivolously, came upon their own bodies in three graves, respectively just-dead, decayed and reduced to bones. A favourite imago mortiswas to show the kings, splendidly clad and with hawks still on their wrists, holding their noses as they gazed in horror. The original three kings, it could be argued, contemplated their own deaths in the offering of myrrh; and also confronted them, as all humans do, by setting out at all. For all beginnings are a type of birth, all lives are journeys part mapped, part unknown, and all journeys end, at least in the world of the here and now.

Brothers, stooges, wise guys

The kings were so neatly arranged, by races and ages, that some chroniclers maintained they were brothers, not strangers. The possibility was emphasised by putting them all in the same bed, straight as pins and with their crowns on, as they appear in stone reliefs at Autun, in Burgundy, and in the Louvre.

Certainly, whatever they had been before, they were forged in comradeship afterwards. Having journeyed back together, they preached Christ together, were baptised together (by St Thomas the Apostle, somewhere in India, where he found them all living in virtuous decrepitude), were buried together, and were gathered up afterwards by St Helena, mother of Constantine, to end as a cosy fraternity of bones in a magnificent gold reliquary that still stands behind the high altar in the great cathedral at Cologne. Before they died they had built a wood and stone chapel on the mountain of Vauls, the summit topped with a golden star that turned in the wind.

That scene of the kings in bed, however, suggests an even richer legacy. For, no matter how close, there are three distinct characters here. At Autun, while they sleep, the angel shows them, or tries to show them, the star. With one finger he touches the hand of Balthazar, who has woken up but is looking the wrong way. Melchior, the dotard, is sound off. Between them—the natural place to confine a spry young troublemaker—Gaspar has opened one eye suspiciously. Here we have the beginnings of the chemistry, and comedy, of three: of first, next, last; wise, wiser, wisest; old, middle-aged, young; good, better, best. In a stained-glass window at Canterbury Melchior is pleading, Balthazar expostulating and young Gaspar, gazing at the star, just sensibly trying to establish where they are.

This is the classic rule of three. One man, often the oldest or ostensibly the wisest, declares or does something, setting up the joke or establishing the pattern; the second queries, challenges or contradicts him, while also taking the theme on; and the third, typically the youngest (littlest, poorest, last), disrupts the pattern and trumps them all. The first two may also gang up on the third, making him seem all the more hapless and all the more the outsider, until, like Harpo Marx deliriously playing through the gibes of Groucho and Chico, the third takes sweet, mad revenge. The ruse crops up in the Three Stooges, in all jokes involving an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman, and almost every fairy tale of three sons or daughters ever written. In those it is always the third who wins love, finds the treasure or saves the day, while the siblings trail home disappointed.

In jokes among the three, or in jokes set up in three, whoever says the third line blows a metaphorical raspberry and gallops away:

How do you make a Venetian blind?
I don’t know; how do you make a Venetian blind?
Stick him in the eye with a hat-pin.

Bathos is most neatly done in lists of three, and the kings have a little list capable of infinite permutations: gold, frankincense, digestive biscuits; gold, diamonds and the deed to a condo in Florida.

It is largely because they can be used this way—and are wandering haplessly, and on lurching camels, to boot—that the kings have enjoyed such long popularity, lasting seamlessly into a secular age. No one has fun with the shepherds, although in medieval mystery plays their rough humour was often endearing. They were not characters; and, most important, they were not indubitably three.

For those who feel deprived of the mystical significance of the kings, however, there is a more profound dimension to the rule of three to ponder. For three encompasses everything: past, present, future; here, there, everywhere; earth, sea and air; positive, negative, neutral; this, that and the other. Through these trinities the kings, who might be any Tom, Dick or Harry, wander in search of answers (yes, no, maybe) to mysteries even older than that of Father, Son and Holy Ghost: the birth of light, the dawn of life and the primacy of love.

At times I want to believe the old maxim that “what goes around comes around”, but all too often history [both private and public] has shown me otherwise.  An old Jesuit used to tell me that “old sins have  long shadows”, but that was when I still had some belief in what he referred to as  ‘sins’.   As I age, I grow ever more conscious about how “full of myself” I once was and perhaps still am,  how insensitive, how arrogant, and yes sometimes, how hurtful.  I am fully aware of how little self-control I had and still have in some areas of my life, and how often I have not behaved as I would have wanted to behave.   However I still have little time for ‘institutionalized escapism’, the twaddle of Joel Osteen and the dogmatics of black and white thinking.  I don’t believe even as I still believe.

I reject the academic mythicists who tells us that Jesus did not exist, and that he really is just another legend invented by Paul and others. I believe there was a Jewish man called Jesus, and I believe we can demonstrate that historically.  I do not believe that we can say much about ‘Jesus Christ resurrected’ or Jesus Christ divine and human, other than to observe that there has long existed many communities  who believed and still believe that to be the case.

Carroll, whose  reflection I include below, has long been regarded as more of a secularist than a Catholic, just another renegade priest who has lost his faith. How dare he question the sacred deposit of faith, some argue, but I would have it no other way, which by this time you all know.

From The New York Times:

Jesus and the Modern Man

Retrieving the centrality of Jesus can restore the simplicity of faith.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/opinion/sunday/can-i-stay-with-the-church.html?mwrsm=Email

You know that you are in a different stage of life when the first fifteen minutes of a semi-annual lunch with old friends begins with a bionic update. “I’m still playing hockey even though I had my knee replaced”  or “my hip replacement wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be”.    Then of course there is that  painful  search for “what’s his name’, you know, he was in Bar Ads with us and went on to be CEO of X.”   Only the willfully blind refuse to  recognize  that our hourglasses  are well beyond their meridian.   Next comes  the moment of shared fear, “have I told you I had my kidney stones out, but did I mention that  I put it off for over a year because I was afraid of the impact of the anesthetic on my heart”.  Oh for the joys of this next stage of our pilgrimage into unknowing!  Finally there comes the references to this or that obituary, “did you read about Jane’s death? how old was she?, and what ever happened to her sister Susan?”   Of course there are many among us who do not want to know any of this, who do not want to be reminded, who carry their own fears and limitations like a Hindu ascetic.  But who do they think they are really kidding? Don’t they realize everyone knows just by looking at or listening to   them, and that they are hiding  things only from themselves.  Bah humbug on Mooney and all his works!

This week I attended a small diner at which Garry Kasparov spoke. Remember him, he was the World Champion and Chess-master at the age of 22 who then went on to try to run against Putin  for President of Russia.  Kasparov was born in Baku, his birth name is Weinstein, and like his prophetic fore-bearers, he screams out to anyone who will listen that  when you think about Putin, you should remember Hitler in 1935.   To say he painted a depressing picture would be an understatement. He may not despise Obama, but almost, and he did not mince words. The diner was held at Grano, a small Italian bistro in mid town Toronto where the food is usually good, but the Kasparov  lecture only brought on nausea. Unless things change, he predicts the fall of the rest of the Ukraine, then Georgia, and even unto Latvia and Estonia.   While we focus on ISIS, the East  falls apart.  To my surprise he informed all of us present that Putin has absolute power, and unlike his predecessors from Stalin to Gorbachev, there is no Central Committee to reign him in.

So happy Sunday!

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/&sa=U&ei=YO84VIekBsWUgwS46IHgAg&ved=0CAYQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNHgGWqhyZ0TwlJvOdUGRf5ledZvVA

How Does Islam Relate to Christianity and Judaism?
Are they rivals, complementary developments or different expressions of a similar religious experience?

http://deadatnoon.com/

I am just returned from a few days stay in hospital for a relatively minor procedure. I arrived at the break of dawn on Wednesday and was ushered through two operating theatre visits and an imaging session, all in a matter of hours. In at 6 AM, back to my room by 5:30 PM, two nights in residence, and home all done in a little more than 48 hours. The Doctors and Nurses at Credit Valley Hospital warrant kudos on all fronts, so a public thank you to them. Believe it or not, through all of this, I had lots of time to observe, reflect, wonder and marvel, for it is seldom I find myself confined to such passivity for so long while still relatively conscious. There is so much the system can do to keep us all going, it is really quite impressive. Nevertheless I still wonder how long can we afford all of this, should we continue spending so much ushering us “boomers” to our next stop, and at what cost to the broader community , to education, to social services, and all the other ‘ethical goods’ [imperatives] that demand our attention? I think the time has come for an open and honest discussion, and I know it will not be easy. Oh yes, it will exist in academic circles, in some organs of the press, and in various commissions and studies, but will it ever get down to you and me

The would be governors of all thought and action: the Lawyers, the Clerics and the Politicians will forever cling to the status quo. You can hear them already, if you dare to open this door, the floodgates will surely open. Hitler and Stalin will be resurrected, and Frankenstein remembered. The clerics love moral absolutes, and so get ready to hear them all come out in force. All life is gift of God, and only God can decide when we arrive and when we leave. I suppose that means all of our children just happened along, and good Christian Medics never argued the philosophical principle of “double effect’. Let’s just keep Daddy comfortable, knowing as we do that that much pain killer will hurry him along. Suffering is not the great of evils, they will proclaim, it is also redemptive. It is how Christ wrought our salvation. Who are we to be different, perhaps our redemption demands that we too suffer. And yet if we reflect, we all see that these absolutes [thou shalt not kill inter alia] are not so absolute: justified homicide, stand your ground laws, so called just wars, and of course capital punishment. are tolerated. If you think carefully you can examine all the other so called imperatives with similar results. What’s up with religion and science. I happen to believe in both. Have the clerical or legal classes ever shut down medical experimentation? Who determines the boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not? History in this area tends to point out that the legal, clerical and political establishments say no to everything in the beginning, just as a matter of course. Believe me, I do not write to offend any of you. I too believe that life is a gift of God, and I too am aware of the excesses we have lived through in the past two hundred years. Neither have I taken out membership in the Hemlock Society. I just think it is time to think again about a good death, look up the definition of euthanasia.

Allow me to share my mental meanderings, and try not to condemn me to hell in advance. I think there are many ethical goods which God calls us to live out in our lives. I also know that sometimes such ‘goods’ compete with one another. This prompts me to pose the following question to myself. Should the community of which I am a member spend unrestrictedly to keep me alive even unto the detriment of the well-being of the larger community? A few years back a successful Newfoundlander friend of mine living and working in Toronto came down with a virulent cancer. To keep himself alive, he spent many millions of dollars at Sloan Kettering in New York and at various medical experimental stations around the world looking for a cure. In the end he died and left his widow with almost nothing, a situation made all the worse because his life insurance company found a way to avoid even paying his life policy. Now I am old and humble enough not to condemn my friend, but I could not do what he did because I think it is morally wrong. Remember I am still Catholic and Christina, and I do not believe death is the greatest evil to be avoided at all costs. I believe it is but a gateway, and I believe in an afterlife. But even if I did not, I still think such behaviour not morally optimal.

Let’s take all of this a step further. What about spending an inordinate amount of time and community resources on keeping someone long lost to dementia but physically breathing? Community resources are not endless or inexhaustible. If we give to this, we take from that. My good friend and Jesuit Priest Dan Phaelan had a stroke at 55 and was kept alive on a machine for 5 years, long after his brain activity was barely discernible because the law and the church would not allow the plug to be pulled. I have problems with that sort of thing. I don’t have answers, I have problems. Unlike what many of us were taught, moral positions and moral absolutes like all human knowledge do develop and at times evolve. Its past time to get these things on the table and for ordinary folks to weigh in and be made to think.

My rant today was prompted by my hospital visit, and so I now share what I was thinking about while they rooted around for those kidney stones. I could not help but notice the man in the room across the hall from me as his distress was beyond loud. I later learned that he was in the final stages of lung cancer, and had also been suffering from dementia for about 10 years. One of his sons came into my room uninvited, and spoke to me for about half an hour. I do hope I was sufficiently compassionate, not always easy when you have tubes coming out of every orifice . I initially felt intruded upon, but I softened, and our conversation made me reflect on the impact on this family of these diseases, and what the past ten years must have been like for all of them. Looking over into my neighbour room I also thought about how much all this must cost. He does not know who he is or who we are, the son said with just a hunt of a tear , and that prompted ever more questions about why we continue to do it this way? I am also wise enough to continue thinking past the emotional impact of hearing a man die. Returning home I decided to finally read an article written by a most interesting woman, [see the link above] an article I had put aside for consideration some time back after I had read an article about the author in the Globe and Mail. I do not hold myself out as an evangelist for her position, but I think we must revisit the issue. To ignore it would be morally indefensible and dumb. For the sake of balance I have also included the current RC view as articulated by the US bishops.

TRADITIONAL RC MORAL POSITION

On September 12, 1991, a statement was released by the Administrative Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the statement centered on euthanasia. Since this statement is addressed both to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, I would like to reproduce it here. As it calls us to reject euthanasia, may it give us much food for thought. Here is how the letter begins:

“Current efforts to legalize euthanasia place our society at a critical juncture. These efforts have received growing public attention, due to new publications giving advice on methods of suicide and some highly publicized instances in which family members or physicians killed terminally ill persons or helped them kill themselves.”
“Proposals such as those in the Pacific Northwest, spearheaded by the Hemlock Society, aim to change state laws against homicide and assisted suicide to allow physicians to provide drug overdoses or lethal injections to their terminally ill patients.”
“Those who advocate euthanasia have capitalized on people’s confusion, ambivalence, and even fear about the use of modern life-prolonging technologies. Further, borrowing language from the abortion debate, they insist that the “right to choose” must prevail over all other considerations. Being able to choose the time and manner of one’s death, without regard to what is chosen, is presented as the ultimate freedom. A decision to take one’s life or to allow a physician to kill a suffering patient, however, is very different from a decision to refuse extraordinary or disproportionately burdensome treatment.
“As Catholic leaders and moral teachers, we believe that life is the most basic gift of a loving God – a gift over which we have stewardship but not absolute dominion.”
“Our tradition, declaring a moral obligation to care for our own life and health and to seek such care from others, recognizes that we are not morally obligated to use all available medical procedures in every set of circumstances. But that tradition clearly and strongly affirms that as a responsible steward of life one must never directly intend to cause one’s own death, or the death of an innocent victim, by action or omission. As the Second Vatican Council declared, “Euthanasia and willful suicide” are “offenses against life itself” which “poison civilization”; they “debase the perpetrators more than the victims and militate against the honor of the Creator” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, No. 27).”
“As the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said, “Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, or and old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying.” Moreover, we have no right “to ask for this act of killing” for ourselves or for those entrusted to our care; “nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action.” We are dealing here with a “violation of person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity” (Declaration on Euthanasia,” 1980).”
“Legalizing euthanasia would also violate American convictions about human rights and equality. The Declaration of Independence proclaims our inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” If our right to life itself is diminished in value, our other rights will have no meaning. To destroy the boundary between healing and killing would mark a radical departure from long-standing legal and medical traditions of our country, posing a threat of unforeseeable magnitude to vulnerable members of our society. Those who represent the interests of elderly citizens, persons with disabilities and persons with AIDS or other terminal illnesses are justifiably alarmed when some hasten to confer on them the “freedom” to be killed.
“We call on Catholics, and on all persons of good will, to reject proposals to legalize euthanasia. We urge families to discuss issues surrounding the care of terminally ill loved ones in light of sound moral principles and the demands of human dignity, so that patients need not feel helpless or abandoned in the face of complex decisions about their future. And we urge health care professionals, legislators and all involved in this debate to seek solutions to the problems of terminally ill patients and their families that respect the inherent worth of all human beings, especially those most in need of our love and assistance.”

I enclose an article from a respected English Medical Journal, “The Lancet”, co-authored by a medical man I admire for the great work he has done in his field. I know him to be a great humanitarian, and the article very movingly depicts the impact of the horrors of war, and personalizes the madness through the life-story of a Palestinian family. Who is not touched by this sad tale? Who among us does not long for a resolution to the underlying problem, and the establishment of a Palestinian state which can live in peace with the Jewish State? But I now must also acknowledge my bias. I am very pro and loyal to the State of Israel. It set out to be the best of the best in both political and social justice, and it will find its way because of who and what it is, even as it sometimes makes mistakes. I am not a great a fan of the incumbent PM, but I am loath to play Monday morning quarterback given what he has to face daily.

This particular year we also remember the one hundred anniversary of the 1914-1918 conflict, and we do well to acknowledge how those colonial superstars, Britain and France, imposed artificial boundaries opon the old Provinces of the Ottoman Empire. We do well to learn about Gertrude Bell and all the others, about what evolved and how and most importantly why. We also need to learn more about the multiplicity of ancient religious beliefs and systems that still exist in the area. Our knowledge of history is very limited, most of it cantered on Westerns Europe and North America, and too many of us have no idea that we have no idea at all. Within Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Christian, Zoroastrianism, there are multiple offshoots and significant varieties and variants. This week we heard about the Yazidis , but they are but one of many. I diverse along this path to make a simple point, and I quote Jennifer Aniston, “its complicated”. In fact it is so complicated that it does not invite simplistic explanations and solutions like the ones we so often hear from the Chattering Class and the Talking Heads. Would that it was an either or. It just isn’t. Further, other than the extreme Christian right, few of us understand the lure and power of religious fanaticism. Alas, let’s not forget that not too long ago Catholics and Protestants went at each other with great regularity and equal conviction about who owned truth.

Rex Murphy writes well, and yesterday he held forth in The National Post in defence of the State of Israel. It would be good to put his article alongside
The Lancet article. However both lack sufficient nuance. I really don’t envy those who are trying to walk through these minefields, its more than complicated, it’s a mess. Alas I also lament that Canada has lost its former position as an honest broker when such problems are debated on the international stage. In his recent book Joe Clarke summed it up very well. Under Mr. Harper we sound much more like the right wing of the Republican Party than we do like Pearson,Trudeau,Clarke,Mulrooney and Chretien. Were you aware that we recently were not elected to the Security Council? Would Pearson have ever gone into Afghanistan? I think he knew too much history. If he did anything, it would be by proxy, and not by Newfoundlanders.

I end where I began, the Chalmers piece. We do well to read it and feel it, but it is not an accurate picture of anything but human suffering. It camouflages more than it intends.

A tapestry of Palestinian life: remembering Samar Alhallaq
Jan Chalmers , Iain Chalmers
On July 20, 2014, our friend Samar Alhallaq, who was aged 29 years, her 6-year-old son Kenan, her 4-year-old son Saji, and her 8-month unborn child were killed in Gaza, together with five other members of their wider family. An Israeli shell demolished the residential building to which they had fled in trying to seek shelter from Israel’s attacks.
We came to know Samar and her little boys when they came to Oxford, UK, during the summer of 2013, to join Samar’s husband Hassan. Hassan was the third annual scholar awarded the Gaza Oxford Brookes University Scholarship, which was established after Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008—2009. Hassan won the Technologies Prize awarded by Oxford Brookes University’s Department of Computing and Communication for outstanding achievement in the Masters Degree of Science in eBusiness.
We saw quite a lot of the Alhallaq family last summer, and, despite not having any language in common, Kenan and Saji seemed to get on well with Millie and Layla, our grandchildren who live with us. On one of the family’s visits to our home, we introduced Samar to the Palestinian History Tapestry Project, which has been set up to extend friendship and support to Palestinian women.
The Palestinian History Tapestry Project is a charity that was established to create a tapestry based on individually embroidered panels. Each panel is sewn with traditional Palestinian cross stitch and illustrates the life and times of the Palestinian people. The patterns used in Palestinian embroidery are traditionally based on geometrical shapes and stylised images, but they also sometimes include designs that reflect daily life and events. Samar, who had been taught to embroider as a child by the older women in her family, became interested in this project and thought she might like to contribute. She stitched a small panel entitled Samidoun, which means “We Are Steadfast” (figure 1). It is based on a symbol used to express solidarity with women hunger strikers in Israeli prisons.

Figure 1 Full-size image (143K) Photography Theo Chalmers
Samidoun (We Are Steadfast), embroidered by Samar Alhallaq, 2013
Samar said that she liked the idea of spreading Palestinian history worldwide through stitches made by Palestinian women. On her return to Gaza, she met up with Jamila Alza’anin—the second Gaza Oxford Brookes University scholar—who was working voluntarily to commission panels for the Palestinian History Tapestry Project. Jamila was delighted when Samar offered to help her coordinate the contributions of the various embroidery groups in Gaza. The beautiful panels the groups produce depict various tableaux, ranging from historical events to scenes and activities of daily life, such as the roof tops and local produce of Gaza (figure 2) and women celebrating together at a Henna party (figures 3).

Figure 2 Full-size image (211K) Photography Theo Chalmers
Gaza Roof Tops
This panel shows the Great Omari Mosque alongside some of the natural produce of Gaza—oranges, pottery, dates, and fish. The panel was designed by Adham Jaber and embroidered by Hekmat Ashour, from the Atfaluna (Our Children) Society for Deaf Children in Gaza.

Figure 3 Full-size image (278K) Photography Theo Chalmers
Henna Party
Women are shown preparing for a wedding, dancing, playing drums, and painting each other with henna. The panel uses a traditional design embroidered by Albeit Alsamed (The Resilient Home) from Gaza.
Our interest in the occupied Palestinian territory and its people is longstanding, and we know the Gaza Strip particularly well. Many years ago we worked there for 2 years in clinics for Palestinian refugees run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and we have returned there at intervals. During recent visits, we have witnessed the dire effects of the restrictions imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007 by Israel, and more recently by Egypt. Since the imposition of the siege, Israel has launched two major attacks on Gaza, in 2008 and 2012. The devastation arising from the 2014 Israeli offensive has been exceptional, however, as we know from speaking to our friends in Gaza. On July 22, 2014, Nafiz Abu-Shaban, Director of the Burns Unit at the Shifa Hospital, wrote: “I witnessed the previous two wars against us in Gaza in 2008 and 2012. None of them was like the present one…Everyone and every place is targeted—civilian houses, handicap homes, hospitals, ambulances, children, women”. Unsurprisingly, many of the hundreds of Gazans killed and injured during this and previous attacks have been civilians.
As one of us wrote in The Lancet after Israel’s 2008—2009 attack on Gaza: “Israel defines itself as ‘the Jewish State’; yet, within the territory it controls and continues to colonise, there is now approximate parity in the numbers of Israeli Jewish people and non-Jewish, Palestinian Arab people (of whom 3•7 million live in the occupied territories and 1•2 million in Israel). For many, Israel will continue to be judged by its attitudes and actions towards the non-Jews whose lives it controls.”
The UK has special responsibilities for what is happening in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory today, because of its repeated betrayal of its century-old promise to protect the rights of the non-Jewish Palestinian people. As we write it is clear that Samar, Kenan, and Saji are just three among hundreds of civilians who have been killed during the Israeli attacks this year. When can we expect the UK Government to require Israel to observe international law and to observe the Geneva conventions?
We are biased in favour of the oppressed and biased against oppressors.
Further reading
Chalmers, 2009 Chalmers I. Gaza a symptom of an insufficie

I am well into a personal memoir of a journey into unknowing. Here’s a peek at AN early note and forgiver the self-obsession

Prologue : Effortless Superiority

The arrogance of confident and effortless superiority moderated by significant personal insecurity and deeply rooted religious mythology defines he who is still evolving. I do not set out to sketch a chronology, and yet of necessity chronology will impose its own structures. Rather I hope to reflect on the major movements of my own time and place, and intuit that some of this will also reflect my generation across the whole of North America. Over time I have come to recognize that the segregated Roman Catholic culture which determined me had the same impact on so many others from New Orleans to San Francisco, from New York to Los Angeles and across all of Canada. Scratch deep inside Chris Matthews, the late Tim Russet, Stephen Colbert, Jerry Brown, Paul Martin and so many others and you will find an unexpected sameness. What stands out above all else is how that culture has been rejected and cast aside. The contrast tween then and now is not always as stark as is evidenced in Quebec, but it exists everywhere. Know too that while I emotionally miss some of it, I am absolutely delighted to see IT confined to the ash heap of history.

Born in the first year after the end of World War Two into that final great flowering of Roman Catholic triumphalism and authoritarianism, my life has been a sometimes tortuous pilgrimage from, through and beyond my intellectually sterile Recusant Anglo Irish inheritance. The birth certificate tells me I was born an English Colonial in St. John’s, Newfoundland , and much of that world view grounded my early life, notwithstanding our newly minted Canadian Provincial status. One does not just become an instant Canadian after many hundreds of years of limited independence, and while proud to call myself one, I never learned the words of our national anthem until late in my teens. In our remote corner of the barely civilized back end of North American, we were more emotionally attached to the British Crown and by dint of the triangular trade to the United States that we ever were to Ottawa or Toronto. I was also born into a semi occupied country at a time in our local history when the over powering and commanding presence of American Military bases had greater impact than our links to the larger Canada or to that little town on the Rideau Canal. I grew up among more American military uniforms than Canadian.
Neither had the Newfoundland of my youth totally rejected the “Fuhrer Princip”, and the Papa Doc who governed us for all of my youth was a type of national socialist, a man not much different from Stalin in attitude, if not extermination, with his five year plans for industrialization. Admittedly we had no gulag or murder, but we did see people exterminated in other ways, and one knew the wages of sin. The other class and religious structures of my 1950’s and early 1960’s were as equally fascist and authoritarian. It was a closed society, fear of rejection and retribution, political, religious and social, meant we were a people who went along to get along. Dissent was disloyalty, questioning was treasonous, and there were significant alcohol issues apparent not in my immediate family but in many of my friends. Underneath people fumed and school boys occasionally did radical things. I remember the journalist and military history Gwyn Dyer receiving the ‘Religion Price’ in his final year of high school, and learning later that he had smashed one of those god awful blue virginal statues he was awarded in protest. Blasphemy! The powers that be at the time pilloried him as emotionally disturbed and psychologically unstable, and he was identified as being “extra muros”, and indeed was put outside the walls. There were other such ‘bad weeds’. I learned my place very early on. I once asked a question to an Irish Christian brother teacher about the recently called ‘Vatican Council’, and was told dismissed it was not something I should consider asking. Intellectual curiosity was not sinful, but almost.

The Roman Catholic environment into which I was born was a very closed society, not that different from the Hutterites and Mennonites, who still commune in central Ontario today. We had Catholics History Books, Catholic English literature, and yes Catholic Science. The power of the clerical establishment was arbitrary and absolute. Life centred around Church and School, pretending as they did to be in control of all aspects of being and thinking. It was an apartheid society grounded in Christian denominational separatism, and pent up energies were often released in gladiatorial combats between denominations on various athletic fields. I was born and grew up in that madness, and forgive me, participated in, enjoyed and relished it. I became an apparatchik in training and remained as such on various levels until the early 1980’s. In time I learned that this closed Catholic society existed in similar manifestations in most of the United States and Canada. By chance I ended up at the age of 14 in school in Connecticut and discovered I was really quite at home in the exact same church dominated culture. The politics were a little different, but the Irish Catholicism which dominated all of North America was triumphalist and equally authoritarian. Many of us lived entirely centred in that Church ordered world, even unto graduation from Jesuit or other such Colleges and Universities. So what happened?

Pat Duggan from Hartford Connecticut is a very old friend and a devoted film buff. Yesterday he forwarded me the enclosed recommendation, and it is worth passing along.

I saw a film last night and I’m putting out the word – see it – “Ida” from Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski – one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time, maybe years. I had been hearing rumblings from various film festivals but was not expecting a magnificent film – which this is. In luminescent black and white, beautifully photographed, it conjures up Ingmar Bergman in its stationary camerawork, lingering shots, evocative close-ups, metaphysical landscapes, austere silence and stillness. Although it takes place in early 1960s Poland, it has an Old Testament feel. The storytelling is smooth and concise. An eighteen year old girl, an orphan, raised in a rural Polish convent, is about to take final vows. Out of the blue, her superior reveals there’s an aunt she never knew about and she must travel to meet her. Bluntly, the aunt tells the girl, actually, she’s a Jew – and her parents were murdered by neighbors who were fearful of Nazis. The two set out to find the killers and locate the bodies. Their relationship is complex – the innocent, strong, intelligent girl and the disillusioned, chain-smoking, heavy drinking, promiscuous aunt – and their exploits lead to a series of shocking events. Themes touch upon communism, Judaism, Catholicism, identity, guilt, cynicism, corruption, loss of faith, existence – in a very tight, very tense eighty minutes – amazing. While “Ida” casts a cold eye on life and death and evinces a certain distain for the human condition, it finishes with a Hobson’s choice and a morsel of warm hope – only a morsel. Casting and performances – superb. Hope you get to see it – an unforgettable film

Age is supposedly the great terra incognita, but there is little unknown about the creeping  arthritis and the host of other issues I battle daily. What I do know is that all the people who tell me to do anything these days are younger than me. And please save me from those who need to cheer me up with the palliative  that 60 is the new 40.  I was insecure at 40 and don’t want to return there. Further lie to yourself if you so choose, but don’t impose your fantasies  on the rest of us.  Looking back as of today, all I can observe is that  our  generation has done  our best and our worst; we have overachieved and underperformed, and we are either basking in the light of perceived success or sucking our thumbs in the anterooms of failure; and given human nature, probably both. Too many of us seems to regret  what might have been and wasn’t and over compliment ourselves for what was, not recognizing our finiteness and our insignificance.

68 is not a summit from which I choose to look back and marvel about what a fine fellow I really am. What is certain is that I am over the meridian of my own vital parabolas; and what is equally certain is that I now cannot tell how old  anyone under the age of 50 is, they all look 20 something to me.  Further don’t plague me with that old saw that you are only as old as you feel; age is an experience not a feeling. I’m old because I remember more.  Alas what sometimes frightens me is that I also seem to grow ever more immature, still prone to all those infatuations of youth, still competitive even after all these years, still digging holes and then trying to climb out of them, still fearful of failure, and still not grateful enough  for just being live. The only time I am honestly grateful for the gift of life is when I have a sense that  it is about to be taken away from me. Note to self, Wake Up!

 My children think I must be speaking Greek when I reference 78, 45 and 33. They haven’t a clue.  Who and what is a Diefenbaker? what is a miraculous Medal? do you really go around in that black skirt?  They have no idea about my world, what we confronted, what we accomplished, what we rejected and what we held onto.  It is also noteworthy that Increasingly my focus is not backwards on the miles  run, but more on the miles  left, and how few they might be. This is one of the biggest changes I recognize in myself at 68, the deep seated realization that my experienced are now rationed.  How many more times will  the Class of 1952 gather? And if we do gather, how many of us will recognize who the others are?  How old was my father when he died, and will I get that far?

 So, how did our generation do?   Well we have  been  blamed for being selfish and self-obsessed, for being soft,  and for the immense national debt we pass on to our children.   We also seem to be ridiculous about food and wine, buy too many things, and are narcissistic in our focus on self-development.  But to be fair, we were also committed to human rights, gay rights, disability rights, fairness, equity, freedom from religious authoritarianism and intolerance. The majority of us tore the seamless robe that was our cultural inheritance and set out on a new and unknown pilgrimage to a destination still not yet known.  We lived freedom of speech, religion and expression; we just did not talk about it.   I think we will might just  leave this world better off than when we arrived. In sum, not great but not bad either; how hard it is to accept that perhaps we were just ordinary.

 So where to from here? Well, as you know I reject those ideas of an afterlife where some get rewarded and others get punished; and I do not need to reference the will of God to explain away human suffering. I accept the unknown as the unknown, and yes  I still believe.

My focus is narrowing and as the Irish used to say, it is time to make your soul.  My problem is I don’t relate to soul at all.