BitsBit: A Bithead’s Christmas; Like a Child

Given the day it is, and the subject it is, I’ve posted this week’s Bit’sBit a little early.  It’s called A Bithead’s Christmas; Like a child

I’ve been asked a good question via E-Mail about why the Blogs for Bush connections have been dropped of my pages.

Rest assured, this is a blog design move and nothing more. I have great respect for that site. BFB is revamping their stuff, and will being going to the name GOP BLOGGERS as of the Inuguration date. At some point around that date, I’ll be re-adding their newly redesigned pages to my blogroll, and adding my name again to their roles.

A number of bloggers weighing in on the attacks against Christianity. Among them:

A Collection of Thoughts, CQ, Michele Malkin,PowerLine, and Jeff Jarvis

So says Clapton in an interview today. Apparently, they are currently planning four shows at the Royal Albert Hall. Tickets not on sale yet, but it looks good. All four performances will be recorded, of course.

AP has filed a rather muted report just within the last half-hour.

The charge of ‘political motivation’ is coming… wait for it.

So says an AP report, filed in Richmond. : “Johnny Oates was only 58. Cancer, as you might expect.

If you’re on the move, here’s a handy thing…Weather Underground: U.S. Severe Weather Map

This is a perm page, you may want to bookmark it.
Travel safe, gang.

OK, just in case there was a doubt in anyone’s mind…

Al Al Neuharth?s a bilthering idiot.

Are we clear on this?

Editor and Publisher is running a note about his USELESS TOADY column yesterday. E&P reports the response was more or less evenly divided between support and disdain…. but they failed to mention that you’d expect that from the readers of that leftist rag, in any event.

What Al Neuharth refuses to understand is exactly what Boortz said yesterday. You do have Boortz on your daily read list, right? OK, OK, here’s the link.

“There are people in this country: call them Bush-haters, Democrats, liberals, progressives … call them what you will … but they are dedicated to the idea of discrediting George Bush in any way that they can.  They are dismayed over even the most remote possibility that Bush might actually pull a free, independent and stable Iraq out of his hat.  They know that success in Iraq could change the face of the Middle East forever.  It could be the beginning of the end of radical Islam .. and eventually make Islamic terrorism a thing of the past.  Freedom is the greatest enemy of tyranny .. and those are the two sides battling it out in Iraq; but to listen to the left in this country you would think they’re leading the cheers for the tyranny side. “

Neuharth is among these, and should at once resign his post; he clearly doesn’t have the brains left to walk and chew gum much less run a newspaper. But more, his now publicly stated bias… bias which we all, already knew about, disqualifies both him and his paper from the mantle of ‘impartiality’.

But more… as Boortz says yesterday…

“The obsessive compulsive Bush haters in America have been giving aid and comfort to the Islamic terrorists and insurgents who want to make Iraq a theocratic Islamic state run by a group cloned from the Taliban.  The encouragement these Islamic goons derive from the bleatings of the left in this country might be your most prominent cause for the level of insurgency that exists in Iraq today.”

Last I knew, giving aid and comfort to a sworn enemy of the US is a criminal offense.  Why is Neuharth not in jail over this?

I find myself wanting to take more seriously, the challenge of writing to the subject of Christmas, today, than I have in years past. It’s not clear in my mind as to why, but this isn’t unusual… I never really do have a firm grip on why I want to attack a subject in these spaces. In fact, the writing of a coulmn for me has becomes more an effort of exploring a subject; the codification of random thoughts. The act of putting those thoughts into words on a screen allows me to think about, and RE-think about the subject at hand. My thoughts on a given subject often do not fully take shape until such time as I’ve re-written them twice. Often, indeed… usually, the ideas are already there, waiting to be cast into words, but not fully defined until the act of sitting down and typing them out. I suppose this subject is no exception.

To this effort, some blogs, this time of year will quote the great Gospels of Christ’s arrival, and expound on that. And that’s worthy, and right. Some others will take the secular angle of the holiday and go off on that. That too, is fine, though frankly it’s always for me missed the core of the topic, a little.

But not me, for either of those tacks. Not this year. I’m going to go off the beaten path, for this post, at least in context of this blog, given it’s Christmas, and off the beaten path in terms of the Liturgical calendar, given it’s me. I’m going to stick with the meaning of Christmas, but to point it up, I’m going to turn to something a little later… about 30 years later… for my subject. I trust you’ll see why when I’m done.

This story is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We’ll use Luke’s version for the purpose.

In Luke 18 it reads:

15 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 17 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Now, all three versions add a little something to the story, and I suggest you read them yourself to get it all. Most times that Christians hear this text or read it, a child is being baptized. The apparently intended thrust of reading it in those situations is to make a loose connection with the Children being accepted by Christ. And, that’s a valid angle for the story.

But, think about the story line, here, so you can get the flavor of what I’m going to describe to you. There’s a far bigger angle that many miss.

Christ has been playing “superstar” for a while, now. He’s been attracting flat out huge crowds wherever he goes. The disciples are starting to become concerned for the (human) well being of Christ. Children are, then as now, a source of some stress to adults already under stress, so the disciples decide, wordlessly to give the Lord a break. But Jesus says.. “Hey… No.. Let ’em come… It’s OK. ” Apparently, seeing some remaining resistance in their eyes, he reinforces the command with a statement that must have shaken them badly. “It’s to the likes of these as belongs the Kingdom of God.”

Now, It’s not hard for us to imagine what’s going on in the minds of the disciples…. They must have felt a little put back… While not saying so, they must have figured they had an inside track to Heaven. (Shrug) It’s human nature.

The passages don’t record if they said anything, but you just know what they’re thinking, here… “Comon, Jesus… We’re tryin’ to give you a break here! And you elevate these lowest of low, mere children, into the ownership of heaven? You raise a polite nothing to a path to heaven and eternity? What’s THAT about?”

And you know, Jesus knows it too. He knows full well what they’re thinking, because watch what he comes back with: “I’ll tell you the truth;”, he says, “Unless you change… Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”

But what does he mean, here? He’s talking, I’m afraid, about how you lose touch with happiness and the sense of wonder, as you become an adult. That loss prevents us from seeing the Kingdom of heaven as it is.

For most of us, the happiest times of our lives was when we were children. When we’re younger, we have less in the way of cares, and troubles. Let’s admit, too, that as we get older, we become aware of, and allow more and more sadness into our lives.

It’s true; It’s a hard world out there, and being adults we’ve come to understand this, in a way of understanding that only long exposure and experience… and lots of scar tissue, can bring.

It seems that every year we have more worries and concerns.

Oh, yeah, do we EVER worry. We worry about our health, and those concerns increase with advancing age. We worry about our jobs, about our investments, our savings, about the future in general. Retirement is a concern. Will we have enough? We’re too fat, we’re too skinny. We’re too tall, we’re too short, our once wavy hair is still waving… Only, it’s waving bye-bye. We worry about the future our kids will have and the normal growing up problems, but we also worry about the future that we’ve left our kids. We look at the news, and we wonder what kind of a world have we left them? We even worry if we worry too much.

We’ve seen marriages and relationships we thought would pass the test of time, pass away, instead. Things we had hoped would come to pass, didn’t, and those we’d not dreamed, in our wildest nightmares would happen, did. We see loved ones die. Jobs disappear. Hearts get broken.

And friends, those are just the hum-drum… The everyday worries that every generation has had, since Cain bopped his brother’s bean with a rock. Then you get into the problems particular to us and our times; AIDS, oil shortages, cancer, drugs, the way our own technology seems to be spiraling out of our control…And Islamofacists. Ah, yes, there’s nothing at all, to my mind, like the specter of 3000 plus people dying on national television, in Washington, NY and Pennsyvania… while we watch, to remind us that we’re not in control.

And yes…. it’s all about control, if you think on it for long. All these things I’ve listed are worries about things we cannot control, try as we might.

The list of these reverses, these scars, gets longer as the years progress, and it starts eventually, to break down the positive outlook in every one of us… Each according to their ability to resist. Each step, each worry, each bit of emotional scar tissue, if you will, moves us farther away from the relative joy of our comparatively carefree childhood.

By now the sharper among you will notice where I’m going with this; This is where Christmas comes in. This is why Christmas holds a special place in our hearts, and our traditions.

You see, even for the not-so-religious, it is a time of renewal of our fragile human spirit. All of the hurts, small and large, become less pronounced, and fade under the soft glow of the lights, the candles, the fireplace, and the smile of the children.

Have you ever noticed that it’s the children, in fact, that do us the most healing? Christmas, it’s said, is for the children. Presidential speechwriter and WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan noted recently about some of the qualities of children:

“They are susceptible to wonder. A child can look at a red toy car in the red-green glow of Christmas tree lights and imagine an entire lifetime. A child can play with a new doll and smell good things being cooked and hear sweet music and it can make that child imagine that life is good, which gives her a template for good, a category for good; it helps her know good exists. This knowledge comes in handy in life; those who do not receive it, one way or another, are sadder than those who do.”

Of course, we move away from that ability as we grow older. Our long experience has hardened us to the realities of the world around us, and perhaps jaded our point of view. But here comes Christmas, which gives us, individually and collectively, the chance of looking at the world though the wonder-filled eyes of a child once again… Becoming childlike ourselves in the process, and becoming healed and renewed.

The experience is a far deeper one for those who have accepted the Christmas promise, and it’s meaning. Reacting to that promise includes allowing someone else to run the controls of our lives. Remember I said it was all about control? Well, I want you to think about the features of being a child. It was Randall Jarrell, I tihnk, who once quipped:

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

Well, let’s remember.
You’re NOT in control of much of anything. Someone who knows better, and is by far more powerful than we, is running things. And looking back, I’m sure most of us would conclude that having that situation back would be of comfort to us. Haven’t we all wished to resign from the world of adulthood at times?

I guess this would be a good place to slip in a parallel story. Consider the fictional person of Ebeneezer Scrooge. Think about how the story develops; He’s had some serious emotional setbacks in early life… and those have become a self-feeding, never ending circle by the time we meet him, 7 years after his best friend’s death. All these setbacks have made him cold, and hard, and for all outward appearances, non-feeling. He’s covered with emotional scar tissue. Being hard, is his way of dealing with what he cannot control.

Only after his overnight experience do all these cares get swept away, along with his anger of not being able to control his situation…. The realization comes to him that he never really WAS in control in the first place, so stop fretting about it all… Think about what are essentially the first words out of his mouth as he realizes that the weight of his worries.. Not unlike worries you and I have had, are gone; “I’m as light as a feather….” The weight of that scar tissue… And all the concerns they represent having been lifted off his shoulders…

“…and as giddy as a Schoolboy!”

Like a child.

“I’ll tell you the truth”, he said, “Unless you change.. Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”

Amazing parallels, aren’t they? I’m reliably informed that Charles Dickens was not as a rule what one would call very religious. Yet, in looking at the parallels in these two story lines, I must wonder in all honesty if he didn’t have some help with “A Christmas Carol”.

Now, you’ll notice I took some liberty with the way the Biblical text was quoted. Some liberty, I say, but not very much, really, since it’s long been pointed out by Bible scholars that the word that earlier versions of the text had as ‘change’ were really translated from the ancient Greek word for “transform”. This is a major point, because it demonstrates what the first step is, and whose it is… yours.

And no, change and transformation are not the same thing. The best description I’ve ever thought of to explain the difference between the two, runs along these lines:

If I take a rock, and in the other hand I take a large hammer, and I hot the rock with the hammer, and break it, I’ve changed that rock.

If I take that same rock, and take a small hammer and chisel, and very carefully, perhaps over a period of decades, sculpt that rock into a flower, I’ve still merely changed that rock.

Transformation, on the other hand, is when the rock itself, as a matter of responding to it’s own will, becomes a flower. And of course that’s beyond the normal power of the rock, by any standard we know. What Christ therefore is saying is, that we must become children, as of a matter of our own will. Which is, as I say, impossible by any standard we know…. Which in turn leads us to the source of all things, who teaches us how, and gives us the power to do it.

You see, the externalities I mentioned, the lights, the fire, the children…and that which Dickens writes of… the giving, the being open to what joys are around us, and so on, helps toward the goal of understanding the Christmas promise, but it’s not the whole deal.

At the core of it all… (and this is a connection that, alas, many people never make…) is that the one whose birth is being celebrated every December the 25th, is the one who takes over that long list of worries. THAT’S WHY WE CELEBRATE!! With those worries removed, lives get changed, hearts mended, child-like perspectives restored in a way that the lights, carols and greenery can never do on their own. And the newly remade Children find that the authority and responsibility and all the ponderous weight connected with them, are taken away by the one who said “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”.

Now, I must warn you; There are those who will resist being told all of this… to the point of removing such joy as they find, wherever they may find it, often using the power of governments, and force of arms to have it removed from town squares and schools, mocking, persecuting and yes, even killing those responsible for the spreading of the news of this miracle. It’s a sad truth, that a world used to darkness, you see, will continually fight to see the darkness continued.

That warning given, however, I will say to you also, that it’s no accident, Christmas being called the season of light, and that Christ is called the light of the world.

If I have one wish for this Christmas, it is that you will be open to the light…. With the wondering eyes of a child.

If you ever wanted proof that there is in fact no freedom of speech in Canada, all you need do is look at this absurdity from the CBC .

Norad has announced the NORAD Tracks Santa Website.  Go for a visit.

Mark Steyn is always worth a read. This column is better than most. Say ‘Merry Christmas’ while you still can

Beck this morning makes mention of An Insta-link, with this as the quote:

“For way too long, it has been the mainstream media (MSM) that’s played God with the American public, telling everyone what’s news and what’s not, what to play up and what to downplay. But 2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of media what the public really wanted.”

Billy points out, correctly, that the shift in question started a long time gone, and that it’s just recently that Glaser took notice… or more correctly, that he was forced to take notice.

But isn’t that always the way of things? The actual starting of momentous events are seldom noticed as such at the time, and often, not afterward, either, I suppose.

Rather like the Rock Star that suddenly pops up in the top of the charts, seemingly coming out of nowhere. A look back into your music collection, however shows he’s been playing behind other stars and on the edge of greatness for years, and you never noticed….

So, too, is blogdom today. The threat to the MSM has been there forever. It’s just that the result of this most recent election has forced the MSM to notice the threat.

And by the way, I wouldn’t expect the liberals running and attending USC to take official notice it before the press themselves did, would you, really?

Speaking of James and Outside The Beltway, James links a WaPo story about the attack in Mosul yesterday, which suggests that Military officials are concerned about the accuracy of that attack.

The compound the tent was in was on top of a hill.
The tent was the tallest structure on the hill.
It was visible literally for miles, and could have been attacked from about any angle within range, given the topography of the target and the surrounding area, and the resulting geometry of the shot.

Indeed, the tent, according to FNC this morning, had been attacked previously, but usually to little to no effect, given the Insurgents are too stupid, or in too much of a hurry, generally, to either know how to use their weapons or set their shots. They?d always missed, previously.

This time, they got lucky.

And WAP, I’m afraid, is playing the liberal anti-war line, as usual.
Witness nobody else besides they have run a story even approaching the level of “The Sky Is Falling” that the WAP has here.

I’m not sold; Sorry.

Update

It appears that WaPo got the story wrong. The military is now saying it was a suicide bomber inside the tent, not an attack from outside with rockets, mortars or whatever.  So, the entire “accuracy of attack” angle goes out the window and with it, most of WaPo’s credibility.

This discovery, however, raises new questions. Whoever was involved had clearly gotten the trust to get past normal levels of security. Given what constitutes normal levels of security in such places, I would speculate the person doing the deed to be someone who had been working with our people for at least several weeks, if not months. 

If I’m Michele Malkin, I think I’m busy pointing this out as an example of why stronger immigration security is needed.

Word from the other end of I-90 this morning that the Democrats are claiming an 8-vote victory in Washington State’s Governorship. Outside The Beltway links a story in the Seattle paper to that effect this morning. Says James:

“The Democrats keep “finding” previously uncounted ballots in precincts they control and, coincidentally, the last county to turn in its results is one controlled by Democrats.”

The pattern has been there since before 2000… the ones where they’re finding these “lost” ballots are invariably dominated by the Democrats.

That either means Democats as a rule are incredibly incompetent, or, more likely, they are simply criminal. In my view nobody can fail quite so often without trying. How is it that these ballots simply disappear so often in Democrat party controlled voting districts, so much so that they’re so often a factor? The only logical answer is that they were manufactured after the fact to throw the close race.

And yes, I’m saying they’ve committed fraud on the American people once again.