The Free Seeker

The Voice of Liberal Religion in the Tri-State

Jack Wilkinson, Editor (Cell Phone)  304-521-9201

March 24, 2010

PROGRAM FOR SUNDAY, MARCH 28, 2010

Mike Mitchell on the AIDS Task Force

            Here is a topic that has dropped off our radar screens, yet which remains important.  Discreet sexual behavior has become in the past few decades a new  imperative.  I'm sure we are all interested in any new medical initiatives or public health strategies.  I wonder, too, how AIDS themes are faring in the current theatre.  As UU's we tend to be supportive of multiple life-style choices.  Please come to listen and respond, preferably in that order. 

FUTURE SUNDAY PROGRAMS

April   4th:      Open Discussion

April 11th:      Matt Christiansen:  "Autobiography"

April 18th:      Bill Rice of the Sierra Club

April 25th:      Jim Lewis representing West Virginia Patriots for Peace

May   2nd:      Open Discussion

May   9th:       Jacqueline Muth on "Occupied Minds Inside Occupied Palestine"

May 16th:       Bart Herman on "The Gospels Revisited"

May 23rd:       T. B. A

May 30th:       Picnic

OTHER MEETINGS IN OUR BUILDING

Beginning April 7th The Buddhist Meditation Group will meet Wednesdays at 6:30 P.M.

Beginning April 3rd the CUUPS Group will switch from Thursdays back to Fridays, 6-8 PM.  "All are welcome," says Jann Kerr.  "We have presenmtat6ins of the traditions of the Earth-bound religions, and we have drumming every other week. 

RETROSPECTIVE OF LAST SUNDAY

            The presenter was Yours Truly, Jack Wilkinson;  the topic was "Causes of the Holocaust."  The thrust of the argument was that the Nazis marked the Jews of Europe for extermination, and the world (including Jews themselves) did little or nothing to stop it.  I base my findings largely on Ben Hecht's autobiography, A Child of the Century and partly on notes by Pierre Van Paassen.  The great blessing to come out of all this was that a small group of Jews got up on their hind legs and fought on their own behalf for the first  time since the Bar Kokhba revolution in 122 CE. 

            For the failure to stop the Holocaust I blamed nine entities, and I could have blamed even more. 

FIRST:  I blame Hitler and his Nazis. 

SECOND:  I blame the Jewish victims themselves for going too easily to the slaughter. 

THIRD:  I blame Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Palestine Jews, who went to Warsaw, Poland and  told the Jews there not to come to Palestine, because they would turn it into a ghetto.

FOURTH:  I blame the British , who in rewarding the Jewish Army in World War I for bringing about the Turkish surrender that ended the war issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 promising to midwife Jews into their own independent state in Palestine and in 1923 were mandateed by the League of Nations to create such a Jewish stat e.  However, the Brits reneged on their own promise and on the League's mandate and for the next 30 years dragged their feet while they built up the Arabs and bore down on the Jews with the object of destroying them before their obligation could be fulfilled.  Well, it was the Irgun, which began as a small force of 400 in 1937 that ultimately forced the British out and reopened the ports that the Brits had closed to Jewish refugees. 

FIFTH:  I blame the Big Three, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, who wantonly ignored the Jewish plight and who by their negligence sent 6,000,000 Jews to their deaths.  They refused an offer from the Rumanians to ship 70,000 Jews to Palestine 5 months before the Nazis came and killed them.  Then, adding insult to injury they issued the Moscow Declaration in 1944 that decried 62 categories of victims of German atrocity without mention of the word 'Jew.' 

SIXTH:  I blame King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, who advised Roosevelt to send all the Jews to Central Africa where they wouldn't bother anybody, and if they refuse to go, then kill them on the spot. 

SEVENTH:  I   blame the 33 organizations of New York Jews who refused to sponsor a pageant about the Jewish victims, "We Shall Never Die," if any of the other organizations were also sponsors. 

EIGHTH:  I blame David Ben Gurion, Socialist leader of the Hagganah, the official Jewish army, who after a truce between his group and the Irgun invited the Irgun ship Atalena into the harbor at Tel Aviv , and when they dropped anchor opened fire on it  and sank it killing and wounding many of the soldiers on it and blowing up its arsenal.  Luckily,  Menachem Begin , commander-in-chief of the Irgun, escaped death to later become Prime Minister of Israel, but for David Ben Gurion this was an act of unparalleled cowardly treachery, and I am appalled that this blood-stained Judas should have become the first Prime Minister of the new state of Israel. 

NINTH:  I blame the German people, who almost to a man, woman and child became Adolph Hitler's cheering section for his bloody massacres. 

            On this main thrust of argument I received no rebuttal.  When I suggested the Jews enjoyed a functional superiority over other groups, I found general agreement.  Heath Bozoni added the example that they had more than their fair share of Nobel Prizes.  I also talked about what I called a kill-the-Jews virus which especially seemed to  infect Mohammedan Arabs.  There was, however, the appearance of contention when someone raised issues that were not in the talk.  Some people wanted to dwell on the plight of the Palestinians, which I don't disagree with.  However, as I pointed out, these are the same Palestinians Arabs who conspired with the Brits to annihilate the Jews and whose leaders during World War II were high Nazis.  Randy6 Miller pointed out that I had misidentified Ahmadinejad as an Arab.  Beyond that there was no essential disagreement with my presentation, although some seemed to be rebutting what they imagined or wished I had said.

            However, I would have liked a little more outrage at what the world did to the Jews between 1917 and 1947, or have we all become Ahmadinejads?

HOMILY:  "My Elevator Speech" by the Reverend Jack Wilkinson

            UU's sometimes hold workshops in which they act out being asked to explain their religion.  The ideas is to get out a few sound bites before the elevator gets to the floor where you or your interrogator need to get off.  This is my elevator speech.

            "As a UU my personal religion, as scaled down to my personal specifications, is called "What comes next."  I deal with things as they occur.  I manage.  That's my part of the equation.  As for the part that is not me specifically, it is fundamentally wise, friendly, and honest.  However, besides being these neat things it is also complex.  In fact, complexity is on my side of the equation too, because I am a part of human nature.  Therefore, through the working out of the complexity on both sides of the equation I suffer and learn, and also I enjoy and hope. 

            Now the elevator has stopped, and my startled and confused interrogator steps off.  The point is that whatever our answer it is of the moment and subject to change, and it is something we have to wring up out of our own guts. 

LIGHT FROM JACK'S LANTERN

            The notion of myth came up last Sunday.  Someone said, "It's a myth," meaning, "It's a lie."  Well, not exactly.  A myth is usually not a lie but rather a deeper truth than could be uncovered by empirical statements. 

            Let's take the part of the Hebrew story where Moses takes his people out of Egypt and keeps them in the wilderness for forty years.  This appears in Exodus, but there are no corroborating documents in the field of history.  However, the Decalogue (10 Commandments) exists.  It had to come from somewhere.  That's where myth comes in.  When the mythic part of the story says that Moses went up on the mountain, well, maybe he did and maybe he didn't.  Going up on the mountain can be a metaphor for deep meditation.  Also, was he exactly 40 years in the wildnern3ess?  Maybe, and maybe not.  Forty years can be an iconic time frame for a people, like Jesus's forty hours in the wilderness as an iconic time frame for an individual.  The number forty could well symbolize metamorphosis, time for the Hebrew people to change from a slave mentality to the mentality of a free people. 

            Myth addresses spirit and soul conditions before it describes the4ir manifestation in nature.  History in ands of itself leaves scant evidence of ancient times.  Myth takes it to the next level.