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A candle in the window

December 14, 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The other evening, I put a candle in a lamp and placed it before my window. The road running by my house can be very busy with vehicles moving briskly along. Yet, in the darkened evenings, with no street lights, a passenger might glance over and see it; the driver might catch sight of it peripherally.  

Maybe, there should be lights in all the windows. The evenings dim so early at this time of year, as the cloud dull sky hurries in the dusk of day. We are hounded by the terrors of our times and how lost seem the ways of healing. Yet, we and our other species on this earth, never altogether let go of our early childhood love of laughter, fun, optimism. That single flame in my window and other windows signals a wish to promote light in the heavy night, the heavy world.

Many of the old, idiot guard running the planet are just that: old. There is a lot of grey hair in the parliaments, government houses, seats of power. They can’t live forever. There’s the beginning of optimism.

Surely, young people don’t really want the world to end. Don’t really want life on planet earth to be snuffed out by the stupidity of some of it. Surely, they can have a different view of the place of money in everything; how turning around the way we make money is the most important thing now:

Not highways but intelligent, subsidized public transportation; not oil and other fossil fuels but hydrogen, wind, solar; not tailings ponds; not pipelines; not new refining plants…

Bringing an end to “confined animal feeding operations” for dairy when the cows are  not allowed to graze; turning the cows back out to the fields, keeping them healthy and off hormones and antibiotics. Keeping their milk safe for use.

Bringing an end to how we raise beef and how we dispose of the waste, which currently causes about the same amount of pollution as fossil fuels. Now, use of animal waste is excellent as fertilizer and pesticides instead of chemicals; is used world wide and is very profitable. 

Bringing a time of raising fewer beef.

Bringing all our torture of the animals we consume to an end.

India and China are the leaders in the field in Asia of biogas, which is a clean source of energy as fuel and electricity made from animal waste. Across Europe, “gas production of anaerobic biomass conversion is a famous technology. Biogas is a clean, efficient and renewable source of energy. Germany… as one of the largest producers of biogas,  has 4,300 plants producing 1,600MW of electricity.” (International Journal of Recycling of Organic Waste in Agriculture)

A candle in the windows is begging for more light in the minds of humans. 

Michael Moore’s latest film, Fahrenheit 11/9, presents an interview with a lady who simply shows how Donald’s presence in the presidency came to be and what the future could bring, comparing it all to Hitler’s rise to power and the turmoil that ensued.

This week, Donald, with a temper tantrum that reflected his childhood, declared that he would “shut the government down” if they did not agree to his demands for $5 billion to build that wall across the US /Mexican border, siting border security.

Shut the government down? And then, what? Marshall law? President for life? He has already suggested that, more than once. Like his many other indiscretions,  he performed all this for the whole world to see.

Well, it has worked out just great so far, hasn’t it.

I like Christmas, the season of light in the darkness. When did Christmas begin to come under fire? Begin to be a part of our political correctness? We are so accepting of the celebrations of other cultures; why should Christmas be a burden to them?

Christmas is suffering a tear down even from within. Once again, all the struggling over the story, the existence, the truth of the matter of Christmas.

Christmas is not the problem. What followed are the problems. Jesus lived and walked the earth and was crucified. The Romans wrote about him at the time. There is enough secular evidence of Jesus’ life.

How his life was interpreted; how the weaknesses of his followers who wrote about him failed later generations, are the problems. Strip it away.

This celebration of the birth of Jesus with its attending miracles, as it were, of angels and the star (which has been confirmed), the whole joy of it. Let it stand. We cannot rid ourselves of miracles any more than we can disprove so many myths and strange tales coming to us from so long ago. Their credentials are their longevity. How many of our stories will still be told in two thousand years?

Gather old loves and new friends to your heart. Light the candles and sing the songs. We’ll need miracles in the New Year.

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