Dear WeatherCat observers of the seasons turning,
The 2019 Winter Solstice occurs on Sunday December 22nd at 4:19 am UTC. Here is a listing of when it will be happening for towns nearby you:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20191222T0419&msg=December%20Solstice%202019This morning presented me with this ominous sky shortly before sunrise:
I find myself drawn to such scenes as they surely would have been experienced by ancient peoples performing their rituals at the start of winter. In the cold of early morning, I feel a connection with those people, certainly cold, suffering from any number of ailments, and wondering if they would survive this coming winter. They certainly had strong motivations to seek whatever spiritual intercession they were hoping for.
We live in times where spirituality and religion are derided and devalued. Under such conditions it is easy to dismiss ancient religions as silly superstitions and myths. Yet are we demonstrating our own wisdom in doing so? After all, undeniably those ancients are our ancestors. If their religious practice was a vain folly - how did humankind survive to bring about our modern world?
I therefore am forced to a somewhat radical position. If human spirituality has ever been of value, it must have somehow always been of value. In so far as it was sincere, a human attempt to connect with forces beyond our control to influence our future must somehow not be in vain. Moreover, the religious traditions of today cannot be seen making ancient faith as vain and empty. Instead somehow the spirituality of today represents the answer to the spiritual longings of ancient times.
In our modern world, there is a curious confidence that reason alone is sufficient to not only assure survival but steer us to happiness. It on that confidence that many dismiss religion has irrational and ultimately more destructive than constructive. Yet, upon what is that confidence founded? Modern science is at best only about 500 years old. The secularization of society is really no more than about a century old. The oldest religious site thus far discovered is
G?bekli Tepe and is at least 12,000 years old. For all of its detractors, religious practice has guided human activities and aspirations for a period at least 100 times longer than our supposedly rational secularized world. It doesn't take much time glancing over the news headlines before doubts set in about exactly how rationally our modern world is managed.
It is said: "there are not atheists in the foxhole." We are facing extremely difficult circumstances: locally, nationally, and globally. Yet, the folly of the secularization of Christmas continues unabated no matter what the somber realities we face. The question should be asked: who's practices are ultimately more in vain: the struggling practitioner of faith?, or the
"painted clown" spreading a vacuous insistence of merriment whatever the circumstances? Perhaps we all need to spend a little time in the cold before dawn during this season of great change.
Edouard
