A Husband and Pregnant Spouse Outside of Jerusalem in the Present

Yeshua, Child of the Masses

Yeshua, Child of the Masses

So awe fulled the birthing
of God's presence, new cauled
in humble manger's destiny,

The base and apex of
a starred cave's presents
of all future festivals

Yet abandoned, forsaken to
the crowned world's nails,
every man's cursedness;

Farthest reach of faith
this Apocalypso dancer
crosses the Cosmos,

Morning us night-less;
he compassions Earth
ever peopling Heaven,

Emptying the pitiless bottom
zeroing Apollyon
into ever's Now

Beloved one, Yeshua
child of the masses
point man for us all.



--- A poem I wrote 15 years ago that I think still distills the Good News message. It still warms my spirit during this cold, intolerant, dysfunctional time, though I no longer think the lines are literally true.

Hopefully, the poem will speak to all of you.

May you have a blessed Christmas month, filled with hope, joy, and kindness.

Dan Wilcox

First published in The Green Silk Journal

3 Sons of Abraham

For Hanukkah and Christmas:

Three Sons No Longer Fight

Disking the rock strewn
Objected earth near Bet Shean,
Underneath the Middle Eastern sky
Rows of mean earth riven by the blades,
We cut away our anger, hate, and pride,
Stopping to drink, not from the liquor

Of fanatic corruption but from
The precious water welling up,
Our oasis of Jacob'd sharing,
In this Hanukkah season
Of Christ's mass after
Ramadan.

Allah

We three sons of Abraham,
Muslim, Jew, and Christian,
Fight the true battle
Not each other but
To be found worthy
In compassion
Giving,
And purity--
The true
Submission
To God
Over
All.

Selah



--Daniel Wilcox

First pub. in
outwardlink.net


In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

Bring Hope to a Child in the New Year

"It's not a handout;
It's a hand up! We come alongside children, families, and communities to provide tools, training, and hope so they can become self-sufficient."

"War in Syria has displaced 12 million people. Worldwide, nearly 60 million people have been driven from their homes by conflict."

"13.5 million people in Syria need humanitarian assistance."
World Vision
http://www.worldvision.org/


Sponsor a child in this season of celebration.

Bring hope to at least one in the New Year.



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Still Missing Star and Cradle

Art by Banksy*

Bethlehem's still missing the star and cradle...the news is so tragic, more of the same--

like this poem concerning Christmas in Jerusalem and Bethlehem in 1974--


Missing Star and Cradle

Weird Christmas Eve 40 times past
With no holly, blinking red or green lights,

No 'holy' decorations, only the gaudy glare
Of cold Jerusalem's neon theater sign;

We watched Catch 22 with our kibbutz bunch
After being frisked for bombs at the entrance.

Years explode by while politicians yet pitch
Uncradled in the maze of their doctrinal hype;

The sacred cave's still dark and unstable,
For more unwise men, so starless, misrule.


Daniel Wilcox

First pub. in Danse Macabre
and in poetry collection,
Psalms, Yawps, and Howls





Palestinian attempts vehicular attack, is shot dead
Yoav Zitun 12.18.15, 17:19 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4741130,00.html

"A Palestinian attempted to commit a vehicular terror attack on Friday afternoon during rioting in Silwad in the West Bank. He was shot dead by soldiers. No other people were wounded."

Palestinians in car attacks--run down Israelis and kill them.

--




"Violent clashes broke out between dozens of Palestinian youths and Israeli forces near the Bilal mosque in Bethlehem on Friday. Israeli forces fired tear gas and live bullets at youths."

"The Palestinian activists threw petrol bombs and stones using slingshots to protest against ongoing occupation and escalating violence. Thirty-six people were injured."
https://www.rt.com/in-motion/323842-palestine-israeli-forces-clashes/

"Towering walls and militarized fences now encircle Bethlehem, turning the 4,000-year-old city into a virtual prison for its Palestinian Christian and Muslim citizens. Bethlehem has only three gates to the outside world, all tightly controlled by Israeli occupation forces."
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/bethlehem.html

"Israel has confiscated almost all the agricultural land in the area for illegal settlements, making it impossible for many Palestinian farmers to continue tending their land. Outside the town, the fields where shepherds once watched their flocks are being filled by Israeli housing blocs and roads barred to the descendants of those shepherds."

Israeli Army bulldozed this Palestinian's orchard

*BETHLEHEM, West Bank (RNS) The Palestinian Authority has asked municipalities to tone down their public Christmas celebrations this year amid escalating violence between Palestinians and Israelis."

"Hanna Amireh, who heads a government committee on churches in the West Bank, confirmed the Palestinian Authority is requesting “a certain decrease” in festivities following the deaths of dozens of Palestinians since mid-September. The majority of them were killed during clashes with Israeli forces or carrying out terrorist attacks, according to the Israeli government."

"Amireh said the government has asked the municipality of Bethlehem, the town where Jesus was born and where official Palestinian celebrations of Christmas take place, not to set off holiday fireworks this year and to limit the festive lights and decorations that traditionally adorn the town to two main streets."
November 30, 2015
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/11/30/palestinian-authority-limits-christmas-celebrations-west-bank/
--

"Several stabbing attacks against Israelis occurred in and around Jerusalem Monday. In one instance, two Palestinian girls with scissors wounded a 70-year-old Palestinian man, thinking he was Israeli. One of the girls was killed by police.
The two girls, aged 14 and 16, stabbed the man with two pairs of scissors on Jaffa Road, a main thoroughfare between East and West Jerusalem. The attack caused wounds to the victim's head and back."

"The 16-year-old attacker was shot and killed by an Israeli police officer, while her 14-year-old accomplice was shot and wounded. Police said the two girls were related."
https://www.rt.com/news/323141-palestinian-israeli-stabbings-jerusalem/

*Art By Banksy
http://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/bethlehem06.html


Oh unholy night, where is the starred light?

Daniel Wilcox

"The Grinch and the Grouch," a Friendly Christmas Story

Heard the story of a modern Quaker mother telling her bright young son how important reading is?

The mother helped her child onto her lap and asked, “Remember when we read The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr.Seuss?”

“Yes!” and the small boy grinned. Christmas was one of his favorite vacation days along with 4th of July. Little did he know that originally Quakers didn’t celebrate Christmas or any other holy days.

“Well…” said his mother, while he squirmed a bit trying to get more comfortable on her lap, “that’s more than a deep 'holy' water in the ground— “

“Mommie, you're so funny.”

"Guess what, there’s another writer who’s funnier than the Dr. His name is the Grouch, not the Grinch! The Grouch Marx said, ‘Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.’”

The boy got a confused look on his face, then burst out laughing.

His Friendly mother's eyes twinkled like stars, “So that’s why we also ask questions of each book we read, especially religious ones. We want the Light, not all that darkness."

He grinned wide, pondered, and then exclaimed, “Yeah, I remember, because of all that dark dog, Ma." ;-)

The mother herself laughed uproariously. Later, while her son took his daily nap, she pondered, Could warm family times, even ridiculous humor, be worthship?

Look up!

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Worst of Years and ONE again

The Worst of Years

Too long ago, back when we were hopeful teenagers, aspiring adolescents with the great world and the beckoning future before us all, and longed-for love in our hearts, a song came on the radio, one of impassioned reminisce, of missed regret, of measured pleasure, even past hope.

The popular tune wasn’t my style and the theme wasn’t Christ-like, but its haunting melody and a few lines did stick with many of us.

“When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for small town girls…”*

Yes, I remember a few of my first dates, and a rural Nebraska girl:-).
Anyway the song’s chorus then says, “It was a very good year”
and the final lines end with “But now the days grow short in the autumn of the year…”

Not much like my life at all—not in its worldview, ethics, or ending.

But all in reverse…

This last year has been “It was a very sadistic year…” or “It was a very worst of years.”
Sometimes for most humans a year hurricanes in like that—a real lethal tsunami/tornado
or other natural disaster, a devastating death or grievous disease, a broken relationship,
lost communion, a descent into hades, tragic times where one reaches so low,
plummets to such an abyss, that an individual wishes he had never been born.*

George Fox experienced such a deep despair at one point of time in his life—called it the “ocean of darkness.”

We all (at least most of us, except the relentlessly ‘sunshine’ few) eventually face what Ecclesiastes says,
“…before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; 2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain,3 in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed,

4 and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— 5 they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man
is going to his eternal home,

and the mourners go about the streets— 6 before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, 7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

8 ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is meaningless!’"
Ecclesiastes 12

Not the most hopeful meditation is this during the Christmas season, is it?

No Yuletide cheer, that’s for sure.

But then the original Christmas was no summer picnic: A king slaughtering innocent infants, a baby being born
in an animal trough, living in an occupied country under ruthless soldiers, living below the poverty line…

Before we can consider any Good News, we do need to face the darkness of the ocean of existence.

Any thoughts on all that is wrong, tragic, senseless, meaningless, and damnable about this life?

--
Now that life’s been stated in all of its negativity, here is a poem on Jesus’ birth,
the hope in which many of us live to counter the overwhelming ocean of darkness:


One


So awe fulled the birthing
of God's presence, new cauled
in humble manger's destiny,

The base and apex of
a starred cave's presents
of all future festivals

Yet abandoned, forsaken to
the crowned world's nails,
every man's cursedness;

Farthest reach of faith
this Apocalypso dancer
crosses the Cosmos,

Morning us night-less;
he compassions Earth
ever peopling Heaven,

Emptying the pitiless bottom
zeroing Apollyon
into ever's Now

Beloved one, Isa, Eashoa, Jesus
child of the masses
point man for us all.


First published in The Green Silk Journal,
also in the book collections Psalms, Yawps, and Howls,
and selah river
--

*The American novelist John Steinbeck wrote he wished during all of his life that he “had never been born”!
Yes, really, he speaks of this in one of his writing notebooks.

When I first read his statement, at the age of about 47, I was flabbergasted. It’s true, by that time I had had some very bad tragic years, but I never ever wished I hadn’t ever been born. Later as I aged and went through the loss of all hope, I did at times “wish I had never been born.”
Very devastating hopeless outlook.

Thank God, for the hopefulness of some thinkers such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Howard Zinn.

*"It Was a Very Good Year" lyrics by songwriter Ervin Drake


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

To Us a Baby Is Given

Toward an Understanding of Childhood...

What is an infant?

Don't ask theologians or become entangled in illusions and delusions, long-winded metaphysical splits/spit;-) of religious thinking.

What if we didn't focus on abstract philosophical doctrine, but viewed each baby as a gift from God, just as Christmas does?

Instead, most traditional churches claim the doctrine of original sin-- that all babies are born guilty sinners. In contrast, New Thought religion declares all babies are born divine. What a philosophical split!

What does either doctrinal extreme have to do with the real living being who is birthed from her mother?

Human beings at birth are neither divine nor depraved. A baby is a natural offspring of a primate species. But uniquely (probably unlike any other species of life, even dolphins and chimps) a human being has the potential to grow spiritually--to relate to her Creator, and to create, bring newness and improvements into existence since she has been created in the image of God.

What a wonder a baby is! I recently held my first grandchild. Experientially, the moment was blessed. How perfect her tiny living body. What a true gift from the Divine.

But a little later, when she got hungry, wow, what lungs and what a puckered face she suddenly developed!

I must admit, I don't think something called a "soul" enters a baby at conception, or for that matter anytime later.

At conception a new life begins with amazing characteristics from the genes of her/his ancestors. At conception, the life appears to have no awareness. But brain wave activity begins early in the womb.

Even after birth, however, a baby is sort of an eating and pooping blob;-) She has awareness, but probably not much except she wants to be fed, and fed now!

Then gradually her awareness grows month after month. Finally she becomes self-conscious. Then later her sense of conscience develops.

Finally, an awareness of her finiteness and the mystery of existence comes into her consciousness.

No, a baby doesn’t come into the world a walking, talking, mentally active philosopher/theologian/moralist/saint.

On the contrary she is a living breathing consciousness at the most simple level.

As she grows in the next 6 to 7 years in her consciousness, self-awareness, and her ethical conscience develops with a sense of ought, then she will become a moral and spiritual individual who acts. Sometimes she will fail, sometimes "miss the mark."

But even then she is still an innocent child struggling to function and to understand and to fulfill needs and desires and hopes, and the demands of the big people in her life.

Is not this the stage that Jesus referred to when he said those who enter the Kingdom of God must do so as a little child? And where he said to people to let little children come to him for of such is the Kingdom?

And this was my own personal experience—when so young. I don’t remember being a sinful-driven child that fundamentalist Christians claim all babies and small children are.

Instead, as far back as I can remember, I had very deep desires to do good, to be good, to know God and to love him. And I had a lot of childlike wonder questions about God, life, others…always asking why about everything:-)

Of course the slither of wrong thought, wrong action, wrong living does come to us all, but not yet.

A child's awareness will grow if she is introduced to God and is shown her responsibility to share, to think of others and their needs, even though she still doesn’t voluntarily give outwardly if it is to her own privation.

Finally, the ethical consciousness kicks in mid-childhood. At each given moment, there will be a tussle between her babyhood past (all spontaneous need and desire) and her adulthood future (potentially all give and bliss).

At that moment by moment juncture—that possibility moment--she must make continual ethical, spiritual decisions. She is finite and so will make mistakes and fail. She is learning in her emotions, her mind, her conscience, and her body as she moves through time. Her choices are a much more complicated version of the way she learned to walk and to talk three years earlier--by trial and error.

But now a new possibility rears its ugly or saintly head. If she doesn’t continue to develop holistically, widening outwardly her care, her helpfulness, her compassion, then she slows, stalls, or even regresses backward to a total need/want level. However, since she isn’t an infant but has the outer body and will and growing mental ability of a 6 or 7 year old, her regression hurts herself and other persons.

To try and fulfill life as a growing child, by returning to the barely conscious self-focused life of an infant actually distorts life and will bring harm to others to varying degrees.

Continued growing, in contrast, takes her through new stages of human development and new challenges. Each developmental advance brings new ethical and spiritual choices—either good or bad, advancing or regressing or a combination of both.

As anyone knows, when climbing a mountain, the higher one goes the more dangerous the climb becomes—not because the action of climbing mountains is evil, or because individuals who climb mountains are depraved sinful beings, but because the very nature of going "higher" also offers more options of choosing. Some of the ways are wrong, even could cause one to plummet to the bottom. Some of the ways are right, and lead toward the peak.

If a baby cries when she hungry that doesn’t show she is sinning.

On the contrary that is how God designed an infant, to get the attention she needs to survive. If a 4-year-old child throws a tantrum and takes her little brother’s bottle because she thinks she isn’t getting enough attention from her parents, while her action is wrong and to be corrected, it isn’t wrong yet because she hasn’t developed enough in her conscious awareness and ethical conscience to make altruistic decisions.

However, if at 8, she hides her little brother’s medicine, because she wants all the attention instead, this is wrong because by then her mental, moral conscience has developed enough to know that her action isn't the right way to get attention. And, besides, by this point she should be widening her compassion and care for others out beyond her own needs and desires.

If at 18, she steals her younger sister’s boyfriend to build up her own ego, deep wrong has occurred. By 22 if she joins with her countrymen and demonizes some other country and lies, steals, and kills the enemies, we do have actions of evil,
just as if in contrast,
she joins an outreach organization such as Habitat for Humanity or World Vision and sacrifices her time, talent, and money and inspires her younger sister to do so as well, we have actions of goodness.

Then the two sisters think of a way to get other people in their neighborhood, school, and city to get involved. One such inspired girl, about 13 years of age, raised thousands of dollars for starving, hurting people in a far off country.

See how the ethical growth of human beings happens. A human being is in process from simple surviving to becoming the acting being of ethical truth.

Now that is the beginning of Good News. Reminds me of several of Jesus’ ethical parables…

Go and do thou likewise...please stop talking about babies being guilty sinners…
Think instead of Christmas’ joy—

“Holy infant so tender and mild*,” except when she cries at 3 a.m. and the parents haven’t slept through the night for weeks;-)

Have a Blessed Christmas,

Daniel Wilcox

*”Silent Night” Christmas Carol

ONE

So awe fulled the birthing
of God's presence, new cauled
in humble manger's destiny,

The base and apex of
a starred cave's presents
of all future festivals

Yet abandoned, forsaken to
the crowned world's nails,
every man's cursedness;

Farthest reach of faith
this Apocalypso dancer
crosses the Cosmos,

Morning us night-less;
he compassions Earth
ever peopling Heaven,

Emptying the pitiless bottom
zeroing Apollyon
into ever's Now

Beloved one, Yeshua
child of the masses
point man for us all.*


A poem I wrote a couple Christmases ago through God's Spirit. The verse
still warms my spirit during this cold time, and hopefully will speak to all of you.

May you have a blessed Christmas,

Daniel Wilcox

*Previously published in The Green Silk Journal