Martin Luther King Day

Today, January 16 th 2012, is Martin Luther King Day in the US, a national public holiday marking the 15 th January birthday of the civil rights’ leader awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964, who was murdered in 1968.

From his most famous speech, after a sustained campaign in Birmingham Alabama 1963 the civil rights’ supporters marched in Washington:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Watchnight

John Wesley adopted the Moravian Bohemian Watchnight tradition into Methodism in the 1740s, as a Christian alternative to drinking celebrations; he adapted a traditional Covenant Prayer for such services of recommitment and New Year’s Eve became a popular night to renew the faith:

I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth,let it be ratified in heaven. Amen. 

~ Renewal of the believer’s Covenant with God

Merry Christmas!

Christmas pudding

Good tidings we bring, to you and your kin -We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Now bring us some figgy pudding and bring some out here!
~ 16 th century English carol

Traditional pudding recipe:

• 1/2 cup plus flour
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup suet
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 pound mixed dried fruit (currents, raisins and sultanas)
• 2/3 cup bread crumbs

The ingredients are mixed and steamed in a greased bowl for @ 4 hours. Traditionally coins and trinkets were dropped in as each person gave it a stir and made a wish! Served with rum or brandy sauce, or fresh cream or custard sauce….

A Christmas Carol, 1951 movie

In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family.

~ from A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Christmas tree politics

Whilst for most people around the world erecting a Christmas tree is a symbol of joy and peace, on the border between North and South Korea a decorated tower is once again a symbol of conflict. North Korea is a strictly secular dictatorship so a visible South Korean ‘tree’ is seen as a Christian propaganda mission:

 Thou bidds’t us all place faithfully Our trust in God, unchangingly! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, How sturdy God hath made thee!

~ from O Tannenbaum traditional carol

In His Steps: What would Jesus do?

The 9 th best-selling book of all time was first published in 1897- In His Steps: What would Jesus do? by Charles Sheldon.

It is a novel about a pastor who challenges his congregation to go a whole year without making a decision where what Jesus would do was their first consideration, and the things which happen because of this:

“What I am going to propose now is something which

ought not to appear unusual or at all impossible of execution.

Yet I am aware that it will be so regarded by a large

number, perhaps, of the members of the church. But in order

that we may have a thorough understanding of what we

are considering, I will put my proposition very plainly, perhaps

bluntly. I want volunteers from the First Church

who will pledge themselves earnestly and honestly for an

entire year not to do anything without first asking the

question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ And after asking that

question, each one will follow Jesus as exactly as he knows

how, no matter what the results may be.”

Mow Cop & Methodism

At a high point on the Staffordshire-Cheshire border in England stands Mow Cop Castle, a summer house folly built in 1754, and the site of the birthplace of the Primitive Methodist movement.

In 1807 Hugh Bourne and William Clowes held a 14 hour prayer camp meeting there and this became the Primitive Methodist Church:

TO THE GLORY OF GOD: Camp meeting near this spot on May 31st, 1807, began the Religious Revival led by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes known as Primitive Methodism.

~ Memorial stone erected on the hill:

The Primitive Methodists were seen as superstitious and ‘unseemly in England’ by the Methodist Church which was conservatively competing with the Church of England. All branches of Methodism in the UK amalgamated in 1932. Mow Cop is now owned and maintained by The National Trust.

O Good Old Way, how sweet thou art, may none of us from thee depart, but may our actions always say: we’re marching on the Good Old Way.

~ Primitive Methodist revival hymn

Armenian Christmas

Armenia marked in green

The Armenian Apostolic Church, the world’s oldest national Christian religion, celebrates Christmas on January 6 th in accordance with the Armenian calendar.

 Qristos tsnav eev haitnetsav, Orhneal e haitnutun Qristosee : Christ is born and revealed, Blessed is the revelation of Christ.

Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion in 301, when Saint Gregory the Illuminator converted King Diritades ( or Tiridates ) III after enduring years of torture and persecution from the king:

Baptism of Tiridates III

In the 4 th Century Emperor Constantine made December 25 the festival of Christmas to supplant the pagan winter festival, but the Armenians kept their tradition and celebrate by being annointed with Holy Muron Oil and with sweet Gata Bread, blessed by the priest:

Ingoodfaith- the Christmas posts

Good King Wenceslas

Las Posadas 

Nikolaos the Wonderworker

Christmas at Fezziwig’s from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Winter Solstice

Armenian Christmas

Christmas tree politics

Yule Tree

Epiphany

Christmas Time 1864 by Eastman Johnson, co-founder of New York Metropolitan Museum of Art

Christmas is forever, not for just one day, for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away- like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf. The good you do for others is good you do yourself…

~Norman Wesley Brooks, “Let Every Day Be Christmas,” 1976

The Cheese and the Worms

The Cheese and the Worms is the story of a 16 th century European miller, Domenico Scandella also known as Menocchio, whose religious views were seen as heretical during the Inquisition, as told by Carlo Ginsberg from trial papers.

Menocchio’s crime was to read books and express his own interpretation of Genesis, that God was created from chaos, at a time when only Catholic Church scriptural interpretation was allowed:

I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels, and among that number of angels, there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and among that number of angels there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time, and he was named lord with four captains, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. That Lucifer sought to make himself lord equal to the king, who was the majesty of God, and for this arrogance God ordered him driven out of heaven with all his host and his company; and this God later created Adam and Eve and people in great number to take the places of the angels who had been expelled. And as this multitude did not follow God’s commandments, he sent his Son, whom the Jews seized, and he was crucified.

When Menocchio continued to express his opinions publically he was seized by Catholic officials, and imprisoned. He was freed three years later but continued to discuss theology and in 1599 was briefly tried and burned at the stake.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

Pope Clement VIII

Occupy Wall Street Movement

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

~ Jesus, New Testament Bible, Matthew 6