The Joy and Sorrow of Symbols, Perceptions, and Ignorance

 I recently wrote some about the search for beauty and those simple moments of purpose, faith, and pure human and natural interaction.

Saturday, a Memorial Sunday liturgy at Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City, I went looking forward to that. Candles, prayers, chants, the rhythms of worship common for millennia in languages living and dead, sung, whispered, shouted from the lips of millions across our globe.

But first, I had to park my 2019 Ford Fiesta in the tiny parking lot behind our more-than-a-century-and-a-half-old church, once a synagogue,  and meander down a narrow alleyway toward the front entrance.

"No Trespassing" signs, occasional police patrols, fencing, even some security cameras do not keep the homeless and drug dealers and their meth-addled victims from finding a way in during the dark hours. And with sunlight comes the inevitable stacks of bottles, cans, emptied syringes, the occasional broken crack pipe . . . and piles of human feces, near the urine splashes and stains against the bricks of our building.

This morning, as I went to light candles and say prayers for my departed parents and other loved ones inside, I had. to dodge two still-steaming mounds. One, protruding well into the narrow alley, would pose a slip-and-fall threat to a child or grandparent (one slightly less foot-sure than I), so I grabbed a stick and tried, with mixed success to move it.

My search for beauty? Now, there was a challenge. Took me well past the mid-point of the liturgy to once more focus. So much for sainthood for this old angry, smoldering, fart. 

What was I supposed to do, I eventually quipped with myself: grab a flower from the altar display and plant it in the remaining pile outside?

What a stack of fertilizer! Why, it could be a blossoming tree within days, right? 

Argh.

So,  there was that.

All a bit of a detour from a sadder, perhaps, definitely more bizarre dive into derailment of human interaction through just plain ignorance, minus intentionally defecating on sacred ground.

Earlier this week, we finally got our new flooring installed by Lowe's contractors. Two men, one a bit older than the other, of Middle Eastern origins and with little English, did a fine job. Arrived with smiles . . . until they saw the T-shirt I was wearing.

It was an old one, a black short-sleeve with a symbol the seller told me years ago was representative of the Antiochian Eastern Orthodox Church, the one I'm associated with here in Utah.

Our church is Greek Orthodox in liturgy, traditions, etc., and its mostly multi-ethnic membership in the U.S. dwarfs its primarily Arabic parishes back in its ancient stomping grounds -- Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iraq, etc. But our Patriarch in still back there, and our Archbishop, although in New York, is Lebanese by birth. 

The symbol on the T-shirt? Your typical Orthodox three-bar cross, though imbedded inside an Aramaic-originated letter. In Hebrew, it is the letter "Nun," and pretty much identical to the Arabic version, pronounced "noon." In Hebrew, it is associated with "faithfulness," "inheritance," "fish," or "seed."

But it eventually was adopted by Arabic Orthodox Christians to evoke the "Nazarene," Jesus, and -- like the Star of David treasured by Israel was used by the Nazis to identify Europe's Jews for death camps during WWII -- the radical Islamic death cult, ISIS, has used the Nun symbol to identify Christians for torture and death.

I knew that thousands of my spiritual siblings in the Middle East have been slain by such terrorists in the "Holy Land" over the past few decades, but the "Nun" use by ISIS was a sad revelation to me.

So, finally, back to this story.

My flooring installers, seeing the symbol on my T-shirt, abruptly became silent. They hurried through their work, wouldn't make eye contact, and said nothing more until the older one, in a monotone, asked me to sign the paperwork. They rushed to pack up their gear and left.

Did the T-shirt offend him? Was he angry? Ashamed? Afraid? 

I'll never know.

But my own ignorance . . . now, that bothers me.

Black Lives Matter. Absolutely. But the BLM Foundation may have far deeper agenda

"Black Lives Matter?" Absolutely.

The phrase and its intent to draw focus to the plague of racism, is not debatable. It's even honorable.

But BlackLivesMatter Foundation, the organization, goes way beyond that. It's stated foundational and core values embrace a whole lot more than laudatory racial justice.

I wept when he was martyred. His message of peace endures

Indeed, it is not too much to argue that its online mission statement, on display in the organization's "About" section (https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/) seems to suggest abandoning the traditional family unit in favor of some sort of "village/utopian nursery; a sort of "woke" bigotry when it comes to law enforcement, the justice and economic systems; and a communal mindset that reminds this student of history (and child of the Sixties) of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.

And, as recent statements from BLM leadership has indicated, there is no room for orthodox Christianity in this new global village, unless it is a faith devoid of moral pillars in areas of abortion, marriage, family, and by extension, sacramental standards. (https://www.gotquestions.org/black-lives-matter.html)

It is part of a trend, a social and cultural devolution that has accelerated over the past decade as materialism, situational ethics, and other "progressive" tenets have captured and enslaved the Western souls of many.

It is no longer a matter of loving individuals, even as you do not sign on to their choices in matters of political, religious, or sexual attraction. Now, you must, to be on the "right side of history," ignore the millennia of human history and culture that has preceded us on what was generally known to be Natural Law and Nature's God.

You no longer are allowed to "agree to disagree." Differences of opinion are "hate speech," and what defines "free speech" has become an Orwellian conundrum. Biology? Na. It is not your genitalia that determine your sexual identity, in the biological sense . . . that, despite our living in an age of "scientific truth," is an exception.

You are what you feel.

You may smile, shrug, and say you while you don't share that illusion, you still value such individuals as friends and co-workers. Not good enough today. No room for disagreement, that's "hate speech". You are bullied online, and occasionally in the physical world, too, to buy into altered reality, or you are a "transphobic" bigot, and should be "canceled."

Perhaps one day, that term will come to have a darker, deadly meaning. After all, the Nazis spoke of "resettlement" and meant death camps. Soviet, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Communism spoke of "re-education" and killed millions of dissidents in prison camps.

If you prefer to persist with the idea of marriage being between a male and a female, and two-parent families as the preferred norm -- previously a no-brainer for all of recorded history? It's no longer allowed to respectfully disagree; you must now promote and endorse the opposite of your convictions . . . or you are a "homophobic" fascist.

Those too young to remember -- or in the case of a new generation of American youth, those who were never taught about history's dark lessons by those ironically designated "free thinkers" who educated them -- seem doomed to repeat the errors of the past, to unearth failed social schemes from the dust bin of history.

So, back to Black Lives. Who can argue with the pure meaning of the phrase? As a grandfather of four bi-racial grandkids, for whom I would willingly give my own life, of course! I hate the climate where my son-in-law has been repeatedly stopped for jogging or driving "while being black," by police who first seen skin color -- not his U.S. Army Captain's bars, or his advanced medical degrees.

I don't want my grandkids to grow up in a world where they, too, will be judged first by the color of their skin before an authority figure learns of the content of their character.

So, yes, peacefully protest injustice. But if you are thinking of donating to BLM, make sure ALL is stands for -- beyond the phrase itself -- is clear to you. Be informed.

Your choice, of course.

As for myself, I will not give to BLM, the organization. Rather, I will seek out local and specifically focused programs not polluted by a potpourri of socially destructive and anti-democratic, and yes bigoted causes trying to hop aboard.