The Canticle of Saint Patrick

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left…

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

My Festival of Lights (part one)

The last several years Jenny and I have commemorated Hanukkah, getting a little better at it each year (having not been raised to celebrate Hanukkah I am learning as I go). Often when people find this out they question why we would do this, as we are not Jewish (if they even know what Hanukkah is at all). My response is that the event which Hanukkah celebrates is a part of redemptive history and there is nothing about it that should make it exclusively a Jewish celebration; this was a miracle that God did, and I want to celebrate those. But they do have a point: we are not Jewish, which means that when we celebrate Hanukkah in the light of Christ we will celebrate it a little bit differently.

I’m still trying to figure out how this celebration plays itself out in the long run for my family and, hopefully, for other that will eventually join us. I’m still learning about the history of it and the foreshadowing that is present within the story. Over the coming weeks I hope to learn more, and to help in doing that I am going to tell the story of Hanukkah here. It’s actually a pretty long story, so I’m going to do it in parts. Here is part one:

PART I: FOREIGN RULE
Antiochus III, also known as Antiochus the Great, became the 6th ruler of the Seleucid Empire in 223 BC (ish) at the age of 18, and ruled until 187 BC. During his reign Antiochus fought many wars with an eye toward expanding his kingdom. In 198 BC Antiochus defeated Scopas and ended Ptolemaic rule in Judea.

The relationship between the Jews and the Seleucid king was overall cordial; the Jews paid taxes and accepted the Syrian authority and the king allowed them to lead relative autonomous lives, especially in regards to their faith. This friendly relationship was not to last, however, as the king’s successor and son, Antiochus IV, called "Antiochus Epiphanes" (God’s beloved) ascended to the Seleucid throne. A historian of the time, Polebius, called him “Antiochus Epimanes” (madman). At this time Roman influences and taxes began to take their toll on the Jewish people. Antiochus IV looted the temple in Jerusalem for its gold, gold whose purpose was the upkeep of the temple and charity toward God’s people. He sought to unify his region under one state religion and began persecuting and massacring the Jews. He suppresed Jewish laws and removed the High Priest, Yochanan, replacing him with a Greek sympathizer. Antiochus IV desecrated the temple by ordering the sacrifice of pigs on the alter and in 167 ordering a statue of Zeus be erected in the temple of Yahweh.

At this time the Jews were not only facing an external struggle to maintain their faith, but an internal one as well. Over a 100 years earleir Alexander the Great had conquered, well, just about everything and in so doing spread the Greek traditions and beliefs whereever he went. In the preceeding century the Jews has assimilated much Greek culture, watering down many of their distictive beliefs and practices.

PART II: THE MISCALCULATION

Some Early Christmas Cheer (or whatever)

My relationship with Santa has been a bit like riding a Christmas roller coaster over the years. There has been twists and turns, hills and valleys, and times when we have just been plugging along as calm as could be, content with our relationship, only to hit a surprise curve or sudden plunge. The roller coaster has more or less settled into a nice, gentle, “It’s a Small World” type of ride in recent years, though with the relatively recent addition of a child to the family I anticipate some bumps and curves ahead.

When I was very little I was, as most kids are, quite fine with Santa. I think I even wrote him a letter or two back in the day. I honestly don’t remember a time when I really believed in Santa, though my parents would insist otherwise (I DO remember a time when I used to humor them about my belief in Santa though). While we weren’t exactly tight, Santa and I had a good, working relationship ion my childhood.

But then I started to grow up. Santa and I gradually became more and more cold toward one another as I didn’t like the way he was infringing on Jesus’ big day. Along around college time I came up with and admittedly mean, albeit I think funny, nick name for the big guy: Satan Clause. The right jolly old elf wasn’t laughing about that one. Besides, the guy was starting to creep me out. “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake,” that just screams dirty old man to me. “He knows if you’ve been bad or good SO BE GOOD FOR GOODNESS SAKE!” Scary and threatening I say. It was about that time that I saw a clever little display protesting the commercialism of Christmas:

Ha. Still makes me laugh a bit. But seriously, we are kidding ourselves if we think that Jesus is the reason for the season. These days, your credit card is the reason for the season. But back in the day Jesus wasn’t the reason either-Mithras was. Mithras is a nasty little pagan bull-god whose birthday happens to be on December 25th, and he knew how to throw a good party. So good, that all the newly converted Catholics still wanted to party so the Pope let them, just so long as the celebrated Jesus’ b-day instead.

All this had made me rather cynical toward St, Nick and the phallic symbol we put in our living rooms every December and the holiday as a whole, but then…..I met the man. I met Santa at a Muslim Christmas party; I know, shouldn’t really go together, right? But that’s what it was. A big group of Muslim refugees coming into a church (or more accurately a warehouse with a cross and some ugly Awana banners used as a church) to have a Christmas party, complete with three well adorned phallic symbols and a Santa. The children sat on Santa’s lap, told him their hopes, their favorite school subject, that sort of thing. Then they got a present and very often a hug. There were a few teenage girls who sat with Santa, giggling incessantly the whole time and getting their pictures taken. I saw a community of people who are often lacking in good things come together to receive joy and fellowship from each other and love from the church (the church!). I saw little kids get an extra hug and some extra attention from a caring adult and I got to be part of an event that truly helped people move closer to the love and grace of Christ. Santa wasn’t hindering, he was helping, and at least on this day Jesus was the reason for the season. I gave in:

Oh Santa, you done good. So, what will I tell my daughter about Santa Clause when she gets old enough to ask? And how will I explain the Jesus connection? I really love that little book “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Clause” and of course the letter to the little girl that is the heart of the book. I’m not going to try to pretend that the man actually exists because, well, that’s weird. But, lest I be “affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age” (from the letter) I will gladly embrace Santa from now on.

What about Jesus? Well, to be perfectly frank, it’s not his birthday and I don’t intend to ever pretend that it is. But what I can do is celebrate the miracle of God himself becoming incarnate to establish a new covenant of grace. I can celebrate the miracle of God keeping the lamp burning for eight days so the temple could be purified when there was only enough oil for one day, I can celebrate the miracle of Nicholas of Myra, a man devoted to his faith in God who consistently displayed both courage and generosity. I can celebrate the miracle of a little girl who tried to be born too early but managed to stay put until nearly her due date. I can celebrate miracles, period.

Santa and I still have a little ways to go in working out our relationship, but I think in the end we’ll be ok-as long as he doesn’t spend too much time at the mall or doing commercials.

30 Days in Prison and $1000 Fine. Crap.

I have always been a history buff; in particular I enjoy experiencing the places where history took place. I like walking in the footsteps of those who were there before me and I like to try and take my mind back to historical moments. I went on a bit of a historical misadventure the other day, seeking the opportunity to do all that I had just described, but when I did so I went to a very scary, sad place.

While searching for abandoned historical buildings on the internet (AWSOME places to explore and search for ‘treasure’) I came across a place in Salem call the Fairview Training Center, which had been abandoned since 2000. Since its construction in 1908 as the “Oregon State Institute for the Feeble Minded” it has held many thousands of Oregonians, beginning with 39 adults and children transferred there from the Insane Asylum (yes, that was what it was called). There were several reasons why exploring this place was of interest to me besides the wicked cool buildings that still (barely) stand there. First, as someone who works with the chronically mentally ill, I spend a lot of time and energy contemplating the best ways to interact, treat, and love people with severe mental illness. While I didn’t expect to find any good ideas at Fairview, I believe in the adage that in order to know where we want to go we have to know where we have been. The second reason I wanted to explore this place was that Fairview was pretty equal-opportunity in its incarceration of individuals with brain troubles. It wasn’t just the mentally ill that lived there, there was also the developmentally disabled and epileptics (the term they used when it was first built was “children with idiocy”). You see, had I been born in a slightly different time period, a time that wasn’t privy to the neurological know-how and medication we have now, I could have ended up there.

A former patient explains: "My parents took me out to Fairview and it's like a gateway to hell opened up." In fact, stories of abuse and mistreatment, murder and rape, abound from Fairview. People went missing on a fairly regular basis, either because they ran away and were never seen again, or because they died and were buried somewhere that no one can remember. Others were never buried; they drowned in wells and decomposed there. Like any such place, Fairview is rumored to be haunted, blood running down the walls, mysterious people walking across the grounds, that sort of thing. Personally, my bet is that the latter are just trespassers such as me and my friend.

General consensus of the time was that individuals with mental illness and brain disorders were basically a waste; they weren’t capable of learning, they weren’t aware of their environment, and they weren’t able to give or respond to love and kindness. Sadly, there are many who still hold this view. In fact, I would say that the view is still rather prevalent, only in a muted form. No entertainer with any common sense would make a comedy about an AIDS patient and the humorous way he or she goes about taking her drug cocktail, but we make jokes about mental illness all the time. The Oregon State Hospital is another example of this muted contempt for the mentally ill. It is simply NOT an environment in which most people will be able to get better or progress towards health, but as a society we value it not for its therapeutic function but for its containment function. Now, I’m not a prude, I make crazy jokes just like everybody else, but it’s because people are funny, humanity is amusing, not mental illness.

So anyway, the grounds of Fairview, as they stand today, were equal parts fascinating and sad. I climbed up (and slid back down-fun) what I presume to be a laundry shoot. Inside some of the dormitory (?) building were what looked like cages, though they supposedly stopped using those in the 1980’s. Some of the original buildings were absolutely beautiful, but they are also falling apart. I wanted so badly to get inside, and I could have, but not in a quiet or inconspicuous manner so I thought better of it.

As my friend were making our way toward an actual open door (awesome!) we were stopped by security (lame!) and told about how they were prosecuting and all that jazz. He mentioned also that the Navy was training there with dogs and live ammunition, but I don’t believe him. We managed to get off with a dirty look and an order to leave, which is good because trespassing there is a Class C Misdemeanor with the above mentioned punishments (see blog title). I am still fascinated by the place, and I will be back.

I tried to add pictures, but I'm not that smart.