It’s like, weird, man. Like, really weird!

 

Former president and Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance have been called worse: Fascists, Nazis, Misogynists, racists, to name a few. Trump has regularly been labeled a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a rapist, and many expletives. Yet both candidates, along with much of the MAGA crowd, just shrugged them off. But when Minnesota governor Tim Walz said, “These are weird people on the other side,” on MSNBC last month, Republicans took umbrage. 

 “Weird” began as a noun, not an adjective, and meant fate. It’s a direct descendant of the Old English weorðan and a cognate of the German “werden,” both meaning "to become." 

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word’s change in meaning, from a noun to an adjective, and from the eerie world of the fates to the strange and curious:

“The sense of ‘uncanny, supernatural’ developed from Middle English use of weird sisters for the three Fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny. They were portrayed as odd or frightening in appearance, as in "Macbeth" (and especially in 18th and 19th century productions of it), which led to the adjectival meaning "odd-looking, uncanny" (1815); ‘odd, strange, disturbingly different’ (1820)” 

Since the 19th century and especially since the 1960s, “weird” has become an even milder adjective, usually meaning odd or eccentric. In 1960s counterculture, a weird experience was usually a good one. Heck, Al Yankovic made it his trademark. 

Then what is it about being called “weird” that so upsets the MAGA folks? All I can surmise is that they see themselves as the American norm, and to be labeled as deviating from that norm is a shock. 

I’ve never been offended at being called weird. But then, I’ve never been offended at being called a liberal.

 

Image: The norns Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld beneath the world tree Yggdrasil (1882) by Ludwig Burger.

Left-wing Idealists and the Triumph of the Right, Part 1: How Idealists Helped Nixon

 

After social media interactions with idealistic young people who disparage President Biden and who appear to be planning to sit out the 2024 election rather than vote for the man they consider, at best, the lesser of two evils, I’m going back to blogging to look at some recent elections where idealists, sometimes with the best of intentions, have allowed evil to prevail. In the nearly sixty years since Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater and “movement conservatism” in a landslide, the extreme right has made not just a comeback, but in some years a near-takeover, and this year it aims to make that takeover complete. But it can’t do so without the help of the idealists. 

In too many of the elections since 1964, we’ve seen the triumph of money and the Republican Right. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and worst of all, Donald Trump have prevailed in part because idealistic people refused to vote for candidates they considered the lesser of two evils. Yes, all these Republican winners cheated to win: Nixon, by sending Anna Chennault to sabotage the Paris peace talks; Reagan, whose campaign persuaded the Iranian authorities not to release the hostages before the election; Bush, whose “Brooks Brothers Riot” shut down the recount in Miami; and Trump, who may not have “colluded” with the Russians, but publicly invited them to interfere with the campaign, which, of course, they did. 

And the Democratic losers made their share of mistakes: Hubert Humphrey waited too long to break with Lyndon Johnson on the Vietnam War; Jimmy Carter cut off grain exports to the Soviet Union, throwing the Midwest into a recession; Al Gore put a historic first—naming a Jew, Joe Liebermann, as his running mate—ahead of campaign strategy, along with refusing Bill Clinton’s help; and Hillary Clinton slighted Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in her campaign, along with making that “basket of deplorables” remark. 

But even with the Republican cheating and Democratic bungling, all the presidents who did so much to turn the U.S. government over to the moneyed elites and the multinational corporations would have lost without help from the idealists. 

Let’s start with 1968. Lyndon Johnson, who after becoming president after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, achieved things that had seemed impossible, beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed by Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid, all signed in 1965. But just a month after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act,

the first presidential election I got seriously involved with. I turned 16 the day Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy. I was two years away from having to register for the draft, and there seemed no end to the Vietnam War. Lawrence O’Donnell, in Playing With Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics, puts it succinctly: ‘[T]he 1968 presidential election would be about nothing less than life and death. In the nuclear age, all presidential elections were, by implication at least, about life and death because the commander in chief had the power to start World War III in minutes by launching nuclear missiles. But the 1968 election was going to be about the life and death of people we knew.” O’Donnell continues: 

I was in high school in 1968, and I never heard my brothers and their college-age friends talk about career planning. They only talked about how to deal with the draft and Vietnam. There was no long-term planning, no career hopes and dreams. Life was a short-term game for many young men in 1968. It was as if they were prisoners who would only begin to think about life on the outside when they got outside. Their prison was in their pocket, the draft registration card that controlled their lives and blocked their hopes and dreams. 

(O'Donnell, Lawrence. Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics (pp. 10-11). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.) 

While I didn’t have that card in my pocket, it was just a matter of time. I was an enthusiastic McCarthy backer—I sold “McCarthy’s Million” buttons to my Cedar Falls (Iowa) high school classmates. But after Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination and the disastrous 1968 Democratic Convention, I knew that the choice was between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, and that Humphrey was a lot more likely to get us out of Vietnam. 

A lot of idealistic McCarthy supporters sat this one out or voted third-party. While South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who, after Robert Kennedy’s assassination, became a stand-in for him at the convention, endorsed Humphrey, McCarthy sat on his hands, even after September 30, when Humphrey broke with Johnson on the war. McCarthy finally issued a tepid endorsement of Humphrey on October 29. Nixon won the election by about one percent of the popular vote, though he did much better in the Electoral College. 

Julian E. Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, wrote in Politico on April 21, 2016: 

Crucial to Nixon’s victory was that he won states like California, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and New Jersey—all states where McCarthy had a strong following—by just a few points. Though counterfactuals are impossible to prove, it is clear that McCarthy’s active support might have created a different outcome. Humphrey believed it. “A united party working in my behalf,” he noted in his memoirs, “might have changed the electoral outcome. Those states could have been won. … Particularly in California, had McCarthy campaigned early and hard for me and the Democratic Party, he might have turned it.” McCarthy adamantly denied the charge, joking that if Humphrey had been victorious “they probably would have said it was really clever of McCarthy to hold me off.” 

While Zelizer admits that he can’t prove McCarthy’s aloofness elected Nixon, he writes that ‘…’certainly McCarthy’s refusal to help give credibility to the Humphrey campaign within the New Left did not help Humphrey’s candidacy. And the feud also had long-term effects: The Republican Party was able to use the divisions within the Democratic Party to build a powerful and lasting conservative coalition.” 

But we can’t just blame it on McCarthy, whose erratic behavior during the summer and early fall of 1968 should have been a sign that he wasn’t the leader we expected him to be back on March 12, when he had nearly beaten Lyndon Johnson in the popular vote and trounced him in the delegate count. (The upset, plus Robert Kennedy’s entry into the race, persuaded Johnson to bow out of the presidential race on March 31.) Virtually everyone who had finished high school had taken civics class and should have understood that it was either Humphrey or Nixon. And with the racist George Wallace’s third party run depriving Nixon of electoral votes in the Deep South, Humphrey had a far better chance than he might have. But, of course, he didn’t win. Nixon did, with the help of thousands of idealists. 

And with Nixon, we had four more years of war in Southeast Asia, 20,000 more American dead, and surely hundred of thousands more Asians killed.

"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"

 

“Or wait—try All Saints. That’s what they call places when they can’t decide on a single saint.”

-Garmus, Bonnie. “Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel” 

Chemist and television cooking show host Elizabeth Zott, the main character in “Lessons in Chemistry,” is an avowed atheist, but has a soft spot for a Presbyterian minister named Wakely, who isn’t given a first name. Wakely, who gives the eulogy for Elizabeth Zott’s partner, Calvin Evans, later befriends Elizabeth’s young daughter Mad (sometimes called Madeline, but legally “Mad”), who is trying to find information about her late father. She knows he lived in a Catholic orphanage in Iowa, and while Mad can’t find its name in the Sioux City phone book (this is 1962) under “Saint,” Wakely makes the quip about “All Saints.” 

Which is a roundabout way of introducing the Feast of All Saints, celebrated in many Christian churches on November 1. It may be one of the purest Christian holidays because it’s been eclipsed by the pagan holiday it was meant to supplant. If Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster are correct, the celebration of All Saints on the first day of November began in the eighth century in the British Isles, to provide a Christian alternative to the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced SAH-win in Irish). 

Outside the British Isles, the feast had been celebrated in the spring, but by the ninth century the November 1 date spread across the English Channel to the Frankish Empire. By the twelfth century, November 1 had become All Saints’ Day in Western Christendom. 

Back in Britain, it wasn’t called All Saints’ Day, but All Hallows, or Hallowmas, from the Old English “hālig,” meaning “holy.” Merriam-Webster notes: 

“All Hallows' used to be a bigger deal—one 17th-century source notes that ‘the three grand days are All-hallown, Candlemass, and Ascension day’—and since important feast days usually started the night before with a vigil, the evening before All Hallows' gained its own notoriety as All Hallows' Even or All Hallows' Eve. All Hallows' Even was shortened to Hallow-e'en by the 16th century. The word Hallowe'en began to lose its apostrophe in the 18th century, though we still have some evidence for the apostrophized version.” (“The Origin of 'Halloween.' Or 'Hallowe'en'?”) 

In Celtic tradition, Samhain was a time when the line between the living and the dead became blurred, and the souls of the dead could visit the living. Some of the traditions of Samhain, such as wearing masks, carving vegetables (often turnips) into lanterns, and telling ghost stories, began to be celebrated on Hallowe’en. The Christian celebration added souling, where people went through the town asking for cakes, “soulcakes” in exchange for prayers for deceased relatives, which became the ancestor of trick-or-treating. 

Today, Halloween, without the apostrophe, is virtually divorced from All Saints’ Day. We usually celebrate All Saints’ Day on the Sunday following November 1. And of course, it isn’t just for people who “can’t decide on a single saint,” but for all the saints, known and unknown. In the traditional Episcopal lectionary for All Saints’, the first reading makes it clear:

 

Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10,13-14

(a commemoration of patriarchs, prophets, and other heroes of ancient Israel.)

 

Let us now praise famous men,

and our fathers in their generations.

The LORD apportioned to them great glory,

his majesty from the beginning.

There were those who ruled in their kingdoms,

and were men renowned for their power,

giving counsel by their understanding,

and proclaiming prophecies;

leaders of the people in their deliberations

and in understanding of learning for the people,

wise in their words of instruction;

those who composed musical tunes,

and set forth verses in writing;

rich men furnished with resources,

living peaceably in their habitations --

all these were honored in their generations,

and were the glory of their times. 

There are some of them who have left a name,

so that men declare their praise.

And there are some who have no memorial,

who have perished as though they had not lived;

they have become as though they had not been born,

and so have their children after them. 

But these were men of mercy,

whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten.

Their posterity will continue for ever,

and their glory will not be blotted out.

Their bodies were buried in peace,

and their name lives to all generations.

Image: Fra Angelico (c.1395-1455), The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs

Frank Tracy Griswold, R.I.P.

Frank Tracy Griswold III, tenth Bishop of Chicago and 25th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, died March 5 at age 85. A scion of a prominent Philadelphia family and a descendant of two American bishops, he was instrumental in guiding the church into an era of inclusion, including the ordination of women and members of the LGBT community. Although very much an Anglo-Catholic, he helped negotiate the church’s full communion relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church. And even before he was bishop, he participated in the revision of the Book of Common Prayer.

I like to think I participated in his elevation to the episcopate. In 1984 I was a member of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, a struggling parish on the West Side of Chicago, when Bishop James Montgomery announced his impending retirement and called for a bishop coadjutor—one who would become diocesan bishop on his retirement. Bishop Montgomery had been socially liberal—he had worked with civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr.—but he was theologically conservative. He opposed the ordination of women, though he did permit other bishops to ordain women in the diocese.

After Bishop Montgomery made his announcement, all the parishes in the diocese were given a chance to weigh in on the candidates for bishop coadjutor. And for me and the other St. Martin’s vestry members, one Frank T. Griswold stood out among the rest. We learned that he had been a member of the group that wrote the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and had been a major contributor to Eucharistic Prayer B. While I wasn’t a member of the diocesan convention that elected Frank Griswold, St. Martin’s delegates supported him.

On November 16, 1986, my wife Kathleen, a Roman Catholic, and I participated in a joint Episcopal-Catholic service. It began at St. James Episcopal Cathedral, where Episcopal Church bishops Montgomery and Griswold, and Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Bernardin signed a 12-point covenant between the two churches. We then processed to the Catholic Holy Name Cathedral for the joint service. Bishop Griswold later wrote of the service: “The Episcopal diocese of Chicago entered into a covenant with the Roman Catholic archdiocese in 1985, shortly after I was ordained bishop. In the covenant we agreed to share resources and to collaborate wherever possible in areas of ministry, evangelization and service to the poor and needy.” 

As Bishop of Chicago, Griswold welcomed women into the clergy. His Anglo-Catholic credentials helped ease that transition—by 1997, when he left the Chicago to become Presiding Bishop, 41 of the diocese’s 146 priests were women. In 1994 he was one of 80 bishops to sign a statement declaring sexual orientation to be “morally neutral” and that “faithful, monogamous, committed” gay relationships were worthy of honor.

His election as Presiding Bishop brought him to the center of the worldwide Anglican struggle over the role of both women and the LGBT community in the church. In 2003 he presided over the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in the church. “I see no impediment to assenting to the overwhelming choice” of the diocese’s constituents, Griswold said.

In the midst of this controversy, he presided of the 2000 General Convention’s ratification of ''Called to Common Mission,” the compact with Evangelical Lutheran Church, which allows Lutheran pastors to serve in Episcopal churches and vice versa. Again, his High Church background was surely a factor in its passage. And he was co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission from 1998 to 2003.

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, his successor as Presiding Bishop, praised Griswold as a “peaceable diplomat,” who navigated the church though controversial times. “That journey was not easy, but he led from the heart he knew. And sometimes that heart prompted surprising humor, slipped in slantwise,” Jefferts Schori said. “We give thanks for his steady and sacrificial leadership, his deep wisdom and lightheartedness, and his care not only for this chafing church, but for all God’s creatures.”

Originally written for The Tower, a publication of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in Elkhart, Indiana. Photo credit, Randy Greve via Wikimedia Commons.

The Feast of the Presentation, Candlemas, and Groundhog Day

 

The Feast of the Presentation, also known as Candlemas, celebrated February 2, forty days after Christmas Day, marks the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, as told in Luke, 2:23-24 : “When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.’” (NRSV)

 Under Mosaic law (Leviticus 12:2-8), women were considered unclean for forty days after giving birth to a male child and sixty-six days after bearing a female child. Once the period of purification was complete the woman would bring to the priest a lamb for a burnt offering and a pigeon or dove for a sin offering. But “If she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf, and she shall be clean.”

 Luke doesn’t mention that Joseph and Mary could not afford a sheep, but his audience would have been aware of it. But Luke’s focus isn’t on the ceremony, but on two elderly people in the temple. The first, Simeon, had received a revelation from the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Holy Spirit, he enters the Temple, and when Joseph and Mary bring Jesus to be presented, he takes the infant in his arms and utters one of the most beautiful short prayers in the New Testament, which is best rendered in the poetry of the King James Version:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
    according to thy word;
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
    which thou hast prepared before the face of all people,
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,
    and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

 Simeon blesses the child, but gives a prophetic warning: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Luke follows with the story of the prophet Anna, “the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher,” and “a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.” (KJV) She recognizes the infant Messiah as soon as his family enters the temple.

 While Luke’s aim is to convince his readers that that Jesus is the Messiah, the solemn feast of the Presentation has since become comingled with Roman, Celtic, and Germanic traditions. In ancient Rome, the festival of Februa, the Etruscan god of purification and the underworld, took place on the February 1. February 2, falling midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, is the first Cross Quarter Day, when the Celts celebrated Imbolic, which marked the lactation of ewes and the anticipation of the spring lambing season.

 Christians celebrated the feast with candlelight processions and the blessing of candles, reminding us of Simeon’s prophecy that Christ will be “a light to lighten the Gentiles,” and the day became known as Candlemas. It marked the end of the Christmas-Epiphany season. And as English folklore tells us,

 “If Candlemas be fair and bright,

Come winter, have another flight.

If Candlemas bring clouds and rain,

Go winter, and come not again.”

 But it’s the German version of this European belief that we know best. According to German legend, if a badger poked its head out of its den and saw its shadow on February 2, winter would continue for weeks. A cloudy day, when it could not see its shadow, meant the end of winter. When the Germans came to Pennsylvania, the groundhog replaced the badger, and the tradition caught on. Happy Groundhog Day, and a blessed Candlemas!

Image: Jacopo Tintoretto, "Presentation of Jesus in the Temple," circa 1590.

"God in man made manifest": The Feast of the Epiphany

 

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;

but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.

-Isaiah 60: 1-2 (NRSV)

Today, if you mention January 6, most Americans will think of a mob storming the U.S. Capitol. It was an unhappy coincidence, for January 6 marks the solemn feast of the Epiphany, a day of hope and triumph for Christians: the story of wise men from the East who followed a star to the city of Bethlehem and honored the infant Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And of Herod, who attempted to trick the wise men into revealing this infant King to him, but was foiled by an angel of God.

Matthew calls the wise men Magi: plural of magus, from the Persian magush. And, of course, a cousin of the word magic. Matthew does not give the number of these magicians from the East, but because of the three gifts, tradition holds there were three. They were likely Persian Zoroastrians, early monotheists, who had a unique connection to the Jewish people.

Cyrus the Persian, the only Gentile to be recognized as a messiah by the Jews, conquered Babylon and set the captive Jewish people free. And it’s clearly no coincidence that Matthew uses the term “magi.” He was writing to a Jewish audience, who would have recognized the connection between these Persian visitors proclaiming the new Messiah and the liberator of the Babylonian Captivity. And that may be one reason the first reading, Isaiah 60: 1-6 begins by proclaiming “your light has come“ in a time of darkness and ends with “They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”

Christopher Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth and Bishop of Lincoln) in his 1862 Epiphany hymn, “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise,” writes of the liberating effect of the revealed King:

Manifest in making whole

Palsied limbs and fainting soul;

Manifest in valiant fight,

Quelling all the devil’s might;

Manifest in gracious will,

Ever bringing good from ill;

Anthems be to thee addrest,

God in man made manifest.

 

Later on, the Magi received names: Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. They became kings: Caspar, of India; Balthasar, of Arabia or Ethiopia; and Melchior, of Persia. Yet for Matthew, they were Magi: members of the Zoroastrian priestly class, who came to do homage to a new Messiah who would bring light in a time of darkness.

Image: Pietro Perugino, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1496-1500.

 

Saint John the Evangelist and Marcus Borg's "Post-Easter Jesus"

 

"Nathaniel said to him, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, 'Come and see.'"
-John, 1:46 (NRSV)

In the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, the Gospel reading for Christmas morning is John 1-14. For me, who had a secular upbringing, the reading initially seemed out of place. Why do we read the Prologue to John's Gospel on Christmas? There was no mention of Bethlehem, or Jesus' earthly birth. And later in the same chapter, we have Nathaniel make the quip about Nazareth, a remote town in Galilee. Philip doesn't say, "The man was born in Bethlehem--he's a proper Messiah," but "Come and see."

We celebrate the author of the Gospel According to John on December 27, the Third Day of Christmas. Like the other three canonical gospels, the earliest manuscripts of John are anonymous. Ancient tradition has attributed it to John, one of the Twelve Disciples, identified with the anonymous "disciple whom Jesus loved" in the gospel. Artists usually portray him as a beardless young man. In "The Da Vinci Code," by Dan Brown the author argues that the beardless figure on Leonardo's "The Last Supper" is actually a woman, whom the book identifies as Mary Magdalene. But it's clearly the figure of John, as any historian of Renaissance art can explain.

But back to my initial question: Why do we read the Prologue to John on Christmas. It's a reminder that Christ was, as we say in the Nicene Creed, "eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God." If Matthew and Luke write of Jesus' birth on earth, John tells us the eternal Christmas story:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being  in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 

 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John [the Baptist]. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 

 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1-14 (NRSV)

The late theologian Marcus Borg made a distinction between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus. The three synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--focus on the pre-Easter Jesus--his earthly life, mission, death, and the reports of his resurrection. And while John gives us stories from Jesus' earthly life, they don't follow the pattern of the first three.  Without the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who expands his ministry to Gentiles. With John, Jesus is "the Way, the Truth , and the Life"(John 14:6).

Image: John the Evangelist, miniature from the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany, Queen consort of France (1477-1514). (Wilimedia Commons)