Last December we celebrated the birth of the kid that got killed a few days ago, and with Passover, we celebrate kids who got the death penalty for things that a pharaoh did (while the pharaoh got off free without a scratch on him), and y'all wonder why I'm still skeptical, quoting a Christmas carol intended to counter-argue the skepticism. The words to that carol were penned in 1863 and we're still awaiting the results. The kid that was supposed to bring peace on earth was said to have been born slightly over 2,000 years ago, but begged to differ when he said that he didn't bring peace, he brought the sword.
Oh, I know it's drizzling here and it's easy to blame the dour outlook on the weather on a day supposedly for sunshine, flowers, fluffy bunnies and colorful eggs, but just yesterday I added a video in my Mother Machree & Co. post--a video of the Irish Rovers featuring the late Jimmy Ferguson singing a witty ditty about "The Orange and the Green" ---and today, on CBS' 60 Minutes, The Troubles were dredged up again with blame being laid squarely on the Boston College's Belfast Project to remind us all that there was a reason behind Sinead O'Connor tearing up the Pope's picture on Saturday Night Live... and the Orange and the Green are really no laughing matter.
Peace on earth--it's a good thing I wasn't holding my breath for THAT to happen.
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It's a good time to mention a debate about Islam on Twitter a couple days ago, where the assertion was made that it's overdue for a Reformation like what happened in Christianity, that Islam needed a Luther. I pointed out that when Saud deposed the Arabian ruler to create Saudi Arabia, his house established Wahabism as exactly that reformation. I was told that wasn't even close to being similar, and I pointed out the similarities as follows:
1. The Reformation affected only Roman Christianity but didn't affect the Orthodox; Wahabism affected only Sunni Islam in Islam's Holy Land and didn't affect the Shiites...after I pointed out the error of presuming that Islam is monolithic first.
2. When you get to the brass tacks of any religion, it boils down to establishing for a given ruler a Divine Right to Rule. It's essential that believers believe without question a ruler's rule, and that's what the Wahab Reformation was all about: a fellow Muslim was deposed which would have been regarded as an act against Allah without what Wahabism preached. King James Stuart I would have continued to have extreme difficulty with the Puritans if he hadn't re-"translated" the Bible with particular attention paid to how Paul's Epistle to Romans was carefully worded. In ancient Egyptian history, a queen was deposed mercilessly when she ran afoul of the high priests. Gautama was a prince who ran afoul of the ruling Hindus of his time, so don't try to tell me that Buddhism is an exception. There are NO exceptions.
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Monday UPDATE on this and related time/history theme: Charlie Rose's interview of Kazuo Ishiguro about his latest book, "The Buried Giant", has an impact on what's written in time and what is preferred to erase from history, what's forgiven and what isn't. And what was once forgiven resurrects to again be unforgiven. There is no such thing as "history written by the victors" although the victors certainly attempt to destroy competing accounts of their own accounts of what happened...or those combatants, now seeking peace, agree on hatchets to be buried...Sinn Fein notwithstanding, Turkey re: Armenians notwithstanding...etc...
As time travel goes, you don't have to be a timelord to remain stuck in time like the Civil War re-enactors do, or like the Northern Ireland Protestants do, or like all people who hold long time grudges do, or like the Hatfields and McCoys did...much like the fictional Brigadoon of yore...never going forward. And you don't have to be a timelord to move forward in time either.
Time travel into the future is too often a matter of personal choice than of any miracle of science.
But holding one's constitution together over time might very well be. Whether for real or in fiction.
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