Your choice of photo (of the baby Jesus in the rubble) is surely and most obviously staged. Yet you use it here for effect. That's some kind of hypocrisy right there, too, if you are open, and honest, to consider that.
As a metaphor we can take this further. You are finding it sad and lonely and depressing to be in the midst of a cultural maelstrom. Fair enough. But your desperation leads to picking a side, and adamantly digging in, using that position to portray a sense of moral conviction and authority, convinced beyond doubt that your side must be the right side. But in actuality, such a binary and reductionist position is certain to only beset your agonies deeper in the agonizing gulch.
Think about it. I personally have thought much about this. And so much of what I believed true just a few years ago has now showed itself to me to be patently false. How I have been duped!
I am grateful to awaken to the truth, as humbling as it is, because it means I am alive and still capable of learning, rather than bubbled or blocked and simply surviving.
When you think you know all the answers, it's time to question everything ever more.
Take it or leave it, as you will. Just the same, all the best to you.
And here's wishing you a Merry Christmas (even if you think that's just for stodgy old White people and <gasp> Christians) and Happy New Year (if you're not averse to the old Gregorian White man's calendar).
You know that all nativity scenes are staged, right? That's what this is: a nativity scene. Don't worry too much about my opinions though -- they are well formed and unlikely to change.
Just the kind of attitude I would have predicted and expected in a response from you.
Let me point out to you again where you are decisively wrong, if that's okay? If you can handle it?
A nativity scene is a Christian tradition, depicting the birth story of Christ. It takes place in a manger or barn, amidst animals and their bedding, as well as the visiting Magi and their camels.
But you in all of your post-modern, decolonizing, self-entitled ignorance presume you can singularly in a 2023 moment nix all of that history and tradition and replace this tradition of millennia with a mish-mash of your own, all for the sake of a cheap political reference to virtue signal your supposed righteousness and moral superiority regarding a worldly matter that long predates 1948 and the limits of your pitiful historical knowledge.
So no, your photo does not depict a nativity scene. If anything it depicts a desecration of the nativity scene. And so it is profane and ugly and insulting to those who honour the time held tradition.
But you go girl. And I will quietly watch where it leads you. Though from the words of your little essay that is already sufficiently self-evident. Good luck.
I think it’s pretty easy to pick a position in most things if you have spent some time developing a consistent world view. Thinking of it as a side is reductionist, most things don’t have sides.
On a basic level if I ask what provides the most freedom and autonomy for people in a situation, I can see my way to understanding that situation.
I can see that we need less police and more social workers, less prisons and more rehab centres, less wealthy people and more comfortable people, less colonization and more cultural flourishing, less war and more peace. Less death and more life.
Keep it coming, Nora Loreto. Nobody cares what's in the mainstream press anymore anyway.
just when I was trying not too be cynical, I find a soulmate.....Uggggg.....
I must be hopeful...there are children in this world, family, community...what to tell them???
I feel ya! You capture *me* in this most thoughtful piece. Top o' the season to you!
Thank you for this. It is an excellent piece, and I definitely feel what you say about "the shortest shortest day"
In a hopeless world, you are a source of hope, because you see how it can be better and aren’t afraid to ask us all to be better in it.
Thank you.
I don't know how you got my email. Unsubscribe now and don't send any more.
I didn't get your email. You'll have to find your own way.
Your choice of photo (of the baby Jesus in the rubble) is surely and most obviously staged. Yet you use it here for effect. That's some kind of hypocrisy right there, too, if you are open, and honest, to consider that.
As a metaphor we can take this further. You are finding it sad and lonely and depressing to be in the midst of a cultural maelstrom. Fair enough. But your desperation leads to picking a side, and adamantly digging in, using that position to portray a sense of moral conviction and authority, convinced beyond doubt that your side must be the right side. But in actuality, such a binary and reductionist position is certain to only beset your agonies deeper in the agonizing gulch.
Think about it. I personally have thought much about this. And so much of what I believed true just a few years ago has now showed itself to me to be patently false. How I have been duped!
I am grateful to awaken to the truth, as humbling as it is, because it means I am alive and still capable of learning, rather than bubbled or blocked and simply surviving.
When you think you know all the answers, it's time to question everything ever more.
Take it or leave it, as you will. Just the same, all the best to you.
And here's wishing you a Merry Christmas (even if you think that's just for stodgy old White people and <gasp> Christians) and Happy New Year (if you're not averse to the old Gregorian White man's calendar).
You know that all nativity scenes are staged, right? That's what this is: a nativity scene. Don't worry too much about my opinions though -- they are well formed and unlikely to change.
Just the kind of attitude I would have predicted and expected in a response from you.
Let me point out to you again where you are decisively wrong, if that's okay? If you can handle it?
A nativity scene is a Christian tradition, depicting the birth story of Christ. It takes place in a manger or barn, amidst animals and their bedding, as well as the visiting Magi and their camels.
But you in all of your post-modern, decolonizing, self-entitled ignorance presume you can singularly in a 2023 moment nix all of that history and tradition and replace this tradition of millennia with a mish-mash of your own, all for the sake of a cheap political reference to virtue signal your supposed righteousness and moral superiority regarding a worldly matter that long predates 1948 and the limits of your pitiful historical knowledge.
So no, your photo does not depict a nativity scene. If anything it depicts a desecration of the nativity scene. And so it is profane and ugly and insulting to those who honour the time held tradition.
But you go girl. And I will quietly watch where it leads you. Though from the words of your little essay that is already sufficiently self-evident. Good luck.
You know nativity scenes better than Bethlehem does?
I think it’s pretty easy to pick a position in most things if you have spent some time developing a consistent world view. Thinking of it as a side is reductionist, most things don’t have sides.
On a basic level if I ask what provides the most freedom and autonomy for people in a situation, I can see my way to understanding that situation.
I can see that we need less police and more social workers, less prisons and more rehab centres, less wealthy people and more comfortable people, less colonization and more cultural flourishing, less war and more peace. Less death and more life.
These are easy things to choose.