Gaza and Christmas

Forgive me!

It is Christmas for the Christians.  It is a religion that I grew up in, but I cannot say I stayed with the narrow interpretation.  I can also say I did not stay with a narrow dogma of any religion.  Yet, one cannot ignore the egregore of a higher power and designer.  It is the dogma that I mostly have problems with, and in reality, I think these days the way the religions treat women, makes a huge difference in my book.

I’m with the former Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong:  Women hold up half the sky.  This has nothing to do with today’s feminism and the crazy interpretations thereof or the fight against the traditional gender roles with its ruptured and fractured defective wanna-be philosophy.   It rather has to do with a writer like Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her book Women who Run with Wolves.  Estes’s book deals with archetypes, in this case ‘Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype’.  This is not a visible characteristic of a mad wild-haired harridan but has to do with what we call soul.  In archetypal psychology, Estes recognizes that soul is not lost.

That is the take-home quote:  To retain as much consciousness as possible.

Going through the normal news cycle today, I came across this:

A Palestinian child was killed today by the explosion of a landmine left behind by the Israeli occupation army in the al-Rashaydeh area, east of Bethlehem.

The Ministry of Health reported the death of 7-year-old Muhammad Al-Rashaydeh in a brief statement, attributing it to the landmine explosion in the same area.

With the Christian background, I glommed onto the near Bethlehem description where the teaching goes that Jesus was born.  There is this well-known song:

Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.

If you sing this song this Christmas in your churches and gatherings, please think of Muhammad Al-Rashaydeh, a child violently flung into deep and dreamless sleep, near the town where, according to tradition, a true peacemaker was born.