Signposts

Staggered by loneliness, and in need of some kind of grounding, I hauled my carcass out of bed Sunday morning and walked down the road to the nearest church, which just so happens to be Catholic, which just so happens to coincide with my religious preference.

Now, I live on the south side of Hanford with immigrants who speak little or no English. This particular mass was in Spanish.

This would irritate many people I know, but I was perfectly happy.

I sat in the pew and tried to imagine what it would be like to be poor and Hispanic.

I looked around me. There was a peace, a calm, that is characteristic of Catholic churches (a side note: My brother, a genius for ferreting out hokum, can no longer tolerate big Protestant churches with jumbotron screens, multiple sound engineers and super-hip worship bands)

But I fancied there was something else too: The poor seem to be happier than the rich.

I saw a film recently in which somebody asked the Dalai Lama to explain this paradox, particularly in reference to the millions upon millions of abject poor in India who by some miracle seem to be almost cheerful.

His answer was simple: In their striving after riches, many make themselves miserable even as their possessions increase.

The poor, on the other hand, only have to worry about the basic necessities of life.

I sensed in this Spanish mass of immigrants – me the only Caucasian in the building other than the priest – a blessed immunity to the hardscrabbling desperate Yankee climate of getting ahead, getting more, rising to the top of the heap.

That is part of my cultural heritage, something I struggle with all the time. The pressure to be perfect, to succeed, to make bucks, to have a spotless house, to impress my middle class friends, on and on, ad naseum.

But these folks: Who do they need to impress? They’re mostly poor. They back each other up.

Contrast that with the lone Yankee consumer who desperately tries to salve his lack of connection by rooting endlessly through piles of stuff (That would be me, on occassion.)

This culture of acquisitiveness eventually infects Hispanics as they become assimilated to American culture.

I remember growing up in McFarland, a poor San Joaquin Valley farming town, and being friends with farm worker parents whose two daughters went to college.

When the daughters returned home after life at UCLA, you could see the disdain on their faces, hear it in their voices, as spoke to their uneducated parents.

Lamentable.

In this movie, the Dalai Lama went on to suggest that people caught in the trap of acquisitiveness are “mentally poor.”

And the best part was, he said it with a laugh.

I’m not Hispanic, I’m not poor and I find myself living in the status, wealth, power, beauty, and pleasure-obsessed culture of America.

But experiences like Sunday’s mass remind me that there is another, better way.

Ahh, Christmas. That time when American hokiness reaches a crescendo.

I went out looking at Christmas lights with a friend tonight in Bakersfield. Of course, we went to Haggin Oaks, now considered the wealthiest part of town and therefore the locus of the biggest, baddest Christmas displays.

Now I try hard not to be a grinch, but sometimes, when the hokiness is overwhelming, it just cries out to be skewered.

First off, the sheer number of cars backed up to look at the light displays. Then, a drive-thru Santa with assistants hawking lukewarm ch0colate water at a buck a pop.

Then the displays. Christmas in Hawaii, with sunbathing  penguins and Yuletide seals. Disney figures everywhere. Chris Kringles inside plastic globes, inflated ten feet tall, on a teeter totter with reindeer on the end.

Then, inevitably, the warbling sounds from the bottomless pit of Christmas jingles: Jack frost roasting on an open fire, jinglebell rock, Parumpumpumpum, home for the holidays.

Each song done a thousand different ways: The supermarket sound, the elevator soud, the heavy metal sound, the jazz style, the breathy seductive sound, the crooner-nostalgic sound.

All orchestrated by mass-marketed corporate America.

Think about it: What are these electrical orgies? They are commodities, and the people looking at them are consumers, searching for ever bigger and more outlandish displays.

More lights? You betcha. Music? Yep. Strange themes? At your service.

The people driving by are like the jaded kid who got 39 presents last year and throws a tantrum because he only got 38 this time.

Forget human contact. There is none, except with people in your own vehicle. And in there,  inevitably, is a great divide between the passengers who see the hokiness and the passengers who don’t.

Clashing like Eskimos and Cubans.

There is no communion with people supposedly living in the Haggin Oaks mansions behind the lights. Supposedly. This night, they were driven away by the megawatt brilliance of their own extravagance.

Probably in a hotel room somewhere watching cable TV, looking forward to the day after New Years, wishing they hadn’t set up their display, but unwilling to forego it because they might go unrecognized while Neighbor Bob and his 10,000 light display hogs all the glory.

America has been awash in hokiness ever since World War II. People have been trying desperately to mass produce and consume themselves into an oblivion of triviality.

And they would darn near succeed, if it weren’t for all those darn reminders of harsh reality creeping in.

Economic crash. Terrorism. Massive debt.

Great problems, indeed, and not to be celebrated. But if you want to combat the hard realities, don’t drown them out with hokiness.

Eventually, we came to one Haggin Oaks house, somewhere off the main drag. Few cars came down this dark way. No bells. Few whistles. No drive-thru Santa here.

On this street, one house with only thing: A tiny manger scene painted on a plywood cutout. Lit by a single floodlight.

A still small voice in the middle of a shouting throng.

Again, I have to pay my debts to my atheist friend, Jeff.

On the last post, he pointed out the terrible treatment that ancient Israel meted out to other nations in the name of God. Things like dashing infants heads against rocks, etc . etc.

Now, clearly, this view of God conflicts with who Christians understand God to be in  Christ.

So what are we to say about this? Did ancient Israel abuse its status as God’s chosen people?

I have long struggled with how to understand the harsh destruction that Israel rained down on its enemies in the Old Testament.

One thing I do know: Such behavior is anathema to the Christian, whether he or she is contemplating how America treats its enemies or whether one is contemplating the state of Israel.

Many ultra-orthodox Jews are still operating under the assumption that God has authorized the Jews to annihilate their enemies (observe Israel’s bombing of civilians in Lebanon in an attempt to get to Hezbollah a few years ago)

Many Americans feel justified in doing anything that furthers (to them) the noble cause of America against what it perceives to be corrupt foreign nations.

I cannot begin to explain what Israel did under the old covenant. All I know is that, seen through the revelation of God in Christ, it is a terrible tragedy to claim the mantle of God for the destruction of one’s enemies. It is a repudiation of the Gospel.

It is tragic when the modern state of Israel secularizes but retains this mantle. Is it any different from the United States eliminating the Native American nations, or Serbian Orthodox Christians wiping out Muslims in Bosnia, or Muslim terrorists wiping out Americans in the name of Allah?

These paths of ideological superiority over others are not an option for Christians.

I guess the miracle is that even though modern Israel has largely repudiated Christian Revelation, God has not abandoned them completely.

Just as he never truly abandoned the “heathen” nations in the Old Testament. After all, Christ came for all men and women, not just Jews.

May Christians proclaim this radical message clearly as the world spins its way toward greater levels of violence, self-centeredness and bloodshed.

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