Yesterday I had some Jehovah's Witnesses call round. No, I hadn't invited them but they thought they'd drop by and share their views with me. Fair enough; it gave me chance for me to offer some thoughts of my own about spiritual and human progress and compare these ideas with theirs. Interesting stuff, and me telling them that the 'writing on the ground' episode was perhaps the most significant thing Jesus did in his time on earth at least made them raise their eyebrows.
These Jehovah's Witnesses were two nice ladies and they had, thank the Lord, a sense of humour about life. We all welcome that, and in our chat while I did point out that as I live in an area with a fairly larger-sized muslim population (and some of the men are very much of the larger size, even if the women aren't so much) I was sure their 'message' wouldn't get through at every door. Not so, they said: most people of all persuasions would talk and share views and even take leaflets. Apparently this pair frequently encountered a muslim woman I had seen on several occasions walking rapidly round the local park in long robes and trainers, a lady who wanted to keep herself in shape, and they would talk to her about religion.
Perhaps they had to walk rapidly alongside to show her the bible, too.
I asked these two JW ladies what they wanted from me, other than to show me their bible. Did they want me to convert? Not at all, they said: they recognised that people have their own way to matters godly (or not) but wanted to share the word of God with me. At this point I explained I had a problem, given the number of gods currently available and how many exclusive words had been issued –– all a long time ago, mostly –– and in many cases demanding lifestyle limitations or commanding actions which were often conflicting and contradictory. The suggestion would be all these gods were separate entities who really liked one lot of people over other another and actively disliked other chunks of their creative efforts. Mind you, I have never bought the premise of an angry God who is easily satisfied with the death of a few humans. When you can build galaxies (assuming he or she, as I also explained to my two visitors, did build galaxies) I don't see why One would be thrilled with the death of a handful of tiny teeny organisms, cosmically speaking.
It would be like me getting very angry about an ant walking on my newly laid lawn. In my omnipotence did I really not see that possibility coming? Would I really have to resort to shouting at other ants to sort the damn problem out?
Now behind me during this discussion was a Christmas tree. Small and sparsely decorated since the last visit of my grandson who thought he would redecorate it by moving all the baubles off and putting them somewhere we haven't found yet. I asked if they believed in Christmas and they said of course not. It was pagan. Or Pagan, if you believe in that stuff.
Yes, I agreed, it was and didn't our northern European forebears have it right, celebrating the return of the sun? Look at it this way, I said: it was cold and dark and you couldn't do anything anyway as nothing was growing, so why not hunker down and have one hell of a good time. The sun was coming back and once things started to grow, you would have no time to eat, drink and take it easy. Soon it would be back to the demanding schedule of planting and hunting and trimming and raiding and all aspects of being wild and woolly.
Good for them. No, of course Jesus wasn't born at Christmas (wow, what a coincidence that would have been) but we northern Europeans need to have a party when the sun showed it was coming back. I even think we know it's coming back so we were never dozy enough to pray for something that has happened few billion times before. No, this was purely party time, and that's what we do up here. Some of us do it pretty well too and have the hangovers to prove it.
Attaching a religious festival to this fun event made a whole lot of sense as it was too dark and cold to do anything but party, so why not pray between courses?
Here we are then, rapidly approaching the shortest day and then, praise be! Our friend the sun returns.
Ra will never have looked so good.
I for one am looking forward to the mornings getting lighter, the evenings staying brighter and even putting the Christmas tree away for another year. I mean there's mowing and planting and raiding to be done when the weather cheers up.
Until then, cheers!
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