Peace

In 1958, Gerald Holtom, a British textile designer, created a symbol that today is known as the Peace sign. While we generalize it's use in modern times, it was originally intended to protest nuclear weapons in England. A group called the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War first used the peace sign on their banners during a 52 mile march from London to Aldermaston, a town known for atomic weapon research. In the 52 years since, that sign has been officially known as the CND logo. CND is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Most folks call it a peace sign, but I've also heard it called a 'chicken's foot logo'. The idea came from Holtom's knowledge of semaphore signals, a visual method of communication using flags. The signal for the letter N is to hold the arms downward at the 4 and 8 o'clock positions. The signal for D is to hold one flag vertically overhead, and one flag downward, making a vertical line. These letters, for Nuclear Disarmament, are combined in a circle and the result is the international peace sign.

I think it is also interesting that the hand signal for 'Peace', where one holds up two fingers with the palm facing outward, was originally the 'V for Victory' sign used by Winston Churchhill during and after WWII. The idea of using a 'V' as a psychological rallying symbol originally came from Victor de Laveleye, the Belgian Minister of Justice in 1941. Laveleye, on the BBC, stated "the occupier, by seeing this sign, always the same, infinitely repeated, [would] understand that he is surrounded, encircled by an immense crowd of citizens eagerly awaiting his first moment of weakness, watching for his first failure." In modern times, this same sign has been modified, originally by the military, but in pop culture by Robert Deniro's character in 'Meet the Parents', where the two fingers point to one's eyes and then outward to mean 'I am watching you'. But somewhere along the way, back in the 1960's, hippies and counter-culture elements transformed the hand symbol to mean 'Peace'. It is a good mental stretch to think about how a war's victory sign comes to mean 'peace' worldwide.

A friend of mine has the following quote as her signature file: "Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there." That is pretty thought provoking, I think. I searched and found that those are the words of Byron Katie, or properly Byron Kathleen Mitchell, a California woman who, in a time of despair, reached a point of enlightenment and ended up writing a book (The Works) about it. She claims that she doesn't belong to any religion or tradition, but from what I have seen of it, it is most similar to a Buddhist path, in my opinion. My thinking contrasts the two ideas: If peace means being submissive to a bully, and not striking back, then that certainly is different than the 'victory' message. Perhaps that is not a fair example of how things would begin and end with one person, but I believe that is the reality if one did nothing in the name of peace. I'm not sure where the line is. What would the Dalai Lama do? How much violence would he absorb before striking back? The answer just might surprise most people. While the Dalai Lama practices ahimsa, the avoidance of violence, he readily admits that it does not always work. He believes that war can bring positive outcomes and that ahimsa cannot conquer terrorism in the world. I believe it is reasonable to practice ahimsa, almost all martial arts are defensive and teach avoidance first, but it would be naive to think that peace can be achieved solely by non-violent techniques. Perhaps Roosevelt was right when he touted that one should walk softly and carry a big stick. Ronald Regan revised this idea in his era, but does military might really make peace, or just subversion where violence erupts at a later date? Many believe, rightfully so, that today's terrorism problems can be traced back to the policies of the Big Stick era.

Things just aren't black and white-they are not clear cut and you can't always know what method to use to bring lasting peace in the world, if it is possible at all. Perhaps Byron Katie's quote is better suited as a mental exercise, that we should find peace within ourselves. I suppose in the end, it's a personal thing and we each have to decide for ourselves how much responsibility to take in our own lives for our own peace.

Peace Out

Holiday or Holidays: A Greeting for the Season

So many Christians today are opposed to the phrase "Happy Holidays!" or "Seasons Greetings" and while I suppose people have a right to feel any way they want, I hope to provide some additional food for thought from another perspective.

One's religious beliefs are a private matter and you simply don't ask a stranger or acquaintance, someone you meet in a store or at the park, what their beliefs are. They may be Christian, most people in this country are indeed Christian, but they may be Jewish, Muslim, or perhaps they are Native American and observe the traditions of their ancestors. You simply cannot tell by looking at someone what their beliefs are or what their religious faith might be. You may even think you know, but never assume. My beliefs are so personal that I rarely even share them, in toto, with my family. In the absence of knowledge, saying 'Happy Holidays' is a friendly way to let the person know that you wish them well, without invading their privacy.

I have friends of many faiths, including some of no faith. If I say 'Merry Christmas' to everyone, that ignores and disrespects the people who are non-Christians, as a reverse example, 'Happy Hanukkah' would have little meaning to my Christian friends. Some people celebrate more than one holiday already, and some even celebrate two separate religious holidays, for example, I know someone who celebrates Hanukkah because she is Jewish, and yet her husband is Christian. Their son is being exposed to both holidays. I have friends who celebrate Kwanzaa and Christmas. I also have friends who consider themselves pagan and even a few friends who claim to be atheist. Atheists need love and attention too, it is just that their intellectual side suppresses their spiritual side, and well, I still think they deserve well wishing along with everyone else, even if they don't celebrate anything but the moment. I strive to be tolerant of everyone and be all-inclusive.

December and early January historically support many feasts, holidays and festivals. St. Nicholas' Day, Yule, St. Lucia's Day, Virgin of Guadalupe Day, Hanukkah, Christmas, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, New Year's Eve, New Years Day, Orthodox Christmas, and Ashura among others. I'm sure I've forgotten a holiday or two. As Americans, we take pride in being the world's melting pot, and as a predominantly Christian nation, we should also show tolerance. To preach, Christ said "love thy neighbor as thyself". Follow His lead. He befriended and respected many non-believers. To that end, we should also respect the beliefs and practices of others. Of course we don't have to join in their celebration, but to indirectly recognize their celebration and practices with a simple "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings!" is what Jesus would have done, I think. Political correctness is about what society expects. This issue is not about political correctness, but about respect for all mankind, regardless of ethnicity, religion, country of origin, sex, race, etc.

To Christians, I make an additional argument for the use of Happy Holidays or Seasons Greetings. There are three branches of Christianity: Orthodox Christianity, the first Christians, Roman Catholic Christianity, and Protestant Christianity. Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on or close to January 7th. The difference in dates reflects the Orthodox church's continued use of the Julian calendar as opposed to the modern Gregorian calendar. It is interesting to note that Orthodox Christians prefer saying "Christ is born" over "Merry Christmas". Catholics and Protestants recognize multiple holidays during this 'season'. St. Nicholas' Day on December 6th was the original day of gift giving. St. Lucia's Day on December 13th celebrates light. In Mexico, the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe is celebrated on December 12th. In the Philippines, Midnight Mass begins on December 16th and continues until December 24th. It is called Misso do Galo-Rooster's Mass. In many Protestant churches, Christmas Eve is celebrated with communion, nativity re-enactments, the lighting of advent wreaths, caroling, and prayer. In many European countries, the day after Christmas, St. Stephen's Day, is celebrated and is even a paid holiday. Saint Stephen, for those unfamiliar, was the first Christian martyr. In fact, Christmastide is a Christian season lasting 12 days-the 12 days of Christmas-from December 24th to January 5th. In addition to all those Christian holidays in December and early January, there are also the secular holidays of New Years Eve, New Years Day, Boxing Day, and Kwanzaa.

As you can see, this 'season' which has become a melting pot unto itself, even for Christians, is more than just the one religious holiday of Christmas. Saying 'Merry Christmas' is appropriate when you KNOW the other person is a Christian and when Christmas is truly near. Saying 'Merry Christmas' the day after Thanksgiving just doesn't have the same feel or impact. "Happy Holidays" seems more appropo, especially when you are greeting virtual strangers in a mall store. I hear so many people say that the 'reason for the season' is being lost. In my opinion, saying 'Merry Christmas' out of season demeans the holiday and adds to the problem. This special day in the Christian faith is lost to convention, a convention that is the dream of retailers-to draw the Christmas season out longer to line their pockets. Ironically, Christians themselves literally buy into this, and the long term effect is that now Christmas Day is a denouement to shopping season. That's what it is, really, Shopping Season. It starts two weeks before Halloween and ends January 4th or so. If Christians want others to realize the devoutness of the day, then they should start watching their own speech and behaviors. If they feel that 'Happy Holidays' is not special, and that 'Merry Christmas' is special, then relegate tidings of 'Merry Christmas' to the proper time, place, and people, and don't over use the phrase.

'Happy Holidays' is both secular and religious. 'Seasons Greetings' is both secular and religious. 'Merry Christmas' is religious, but becoming more secular. The retailers would love to hear 'Merry Christmas' in October, secularizing the holiday even more, but I don't think this is truly what Christians, those Christians who have a problem with 'Happy Holidays', really want. 'Merry Christmas' was intended to be religious, specifically pertaining to Christianity, but over the years the celebration of the birth of Christ has expanded to include practices of gift-giving(from many festivals, especially St. Nicholas' Day), decorating Christmas trees (a pagan ritual), mistletoe kisses (pagan), Christmas lights (both pagan and St. Lucia), feasts and dinners(both pagan and religious origins), Santa Claus (again, from St. Nicholas' Day), etc. Santa's helper elves are pagan, too, as they originally were helpers of the Scandinavian god Thor .

In Rome, December 25th was a holiday celebrating the rebirth of the Sun god, Sol Invictus, who had died three days earlier(on the Solstice). The Roman holiday of Saturnalia was also celebrated after the solstice. It was a time of wild parties and gift giving and Mummers dances. Mummers sang and danced from house to house spreading cheer. It sounds a bit like what we would call caroling. Christmas was not celebrated by the Christian church until Constantine's rule, 300 years after the death of Christ, and while the Catholic Church calculated the birth of Christ as nine months from March 25, (the Feast of the Anunciation ), the exact date of his birth is unknown. Some modern Christian astronomers believe that Jesus may have even been born in September of 3 A.D. when Jupiter and Regulus were close together in the sky and might have seen as the Star of Bethlehem. For the Roman Catholic Church, aligning the Christmas holiday with other holidays already in existence made sense (the pagan masses were used to their festivals and traditions and did not want them to be forbidden), so slowly the Christmas holiday began to incorporate many traditions that did not originate in Christianity. The evergreen Yule tree, the Christmas tree, was a sign of fertility and life. Holly and mistletoe were also fertility charms. The huge Yule log burned brightly, celebrating the rebirth of the sun.

There is a resounding theme apparent to me in all of these December holidays, regardless of faith, they celebrate life-birth and rebirth, light, miracles, gifts, and historical events. They are all positive and cheerful, uplifting days. To recognize only one of those days with a ubiquitous 'Merry Christmas' greeting clouds what Christians like to call 'the reason for the season'. In our interconnected world, we no longer isolate ourselves and live only with those of like beliefs, we live in a worldwide community. To show respect for the traditions and faith of others is to show the love of thy neighbor, and a simple way of doing this is to say 'Happy Holidays' or 'Seasons Greetings' to others during the season of festivities if you don't know their faith.

Peace Be Unto You.

New Beginnings

Yes, I am still alive and kicking. I'm amazed that I still have 'followers' after such a long absence from this space.

Basically, over the last nine months, I poured everything I had into a job, but even so, it apparently wasn't enough as I was fired last month-for the first time in my life. I've always been the star, the go-to person, and now, I am experiencing the other end of that spectrum. The only thing I can do is to move on and to learn from my failings, career and social. I've never been good at playing politics, sucking up to people. My emotions are always on my sleeve, which makes me easy to manipulate. Plus, I tend to think the best about people, even those who act like assholes and jerks. I make excuses for them in my mind, and try to block their influence and in doing that, I allow myself to be blindsided. They win influence, I don't. It is the story of losers everywhere, I suppose, that the victor's side of the story is the one recorded in the books. C'est la vie.

So in my quest of self improvement, I've decided to try to lose some weight and become more fit. This process began two and a half years ago when I stopped smoking after 27 years. I gained 30 pounds from that, and I lost that over the following 18 months, but now I am back on my pre-quitting plateau. I vowed to lose 50 pounds in 2010, and I have lost about 10 pounds with half the year gone. My BMI is close to 27, in the overweight range, but luckily under the obese marker. I just pulled out the Wii and weighed to make sure. I just weighed 199.5 pounds with a BMI of 27.8, up from last month by three pounds. That is where feeding your failure leads! Wii Fit states that my ideal weight should be about 157 pounds, which is where I would be if I lost the 50 pounds I intended with my New Year's Resolution. I have 43 pounds to lose in 6 months, 7 pounds a month, 1.75 pounds a week. That should be a safe loss rate and something I should be able to manage with diet and exercise. I've already given up soft drinks this year, and I am working on swapping out saturated fats for unsaturated fats. I don't believe in 'going on a diet', but I do want to make lifestyle changes. I've used a couple of calculators and figured that my Basal Metabolic Rate is about 2200 calories a day. I haven't been counting calories as to what I am consuming, but I will keep a journal for a week or so just to get an idea. If I can keep my intake between 2200 and 2500 calories, I should be able to exercise and burn off at least 1000 calories a day. One mountain bike ride around the 7 mile 'block' burns just over 700 calories and takes about 45 minutes, so I think with some stretching and a few additional minutes, I should be able to hit that 1000 burned goal. In addition, it is summer, and that means gardening-more calories burned. In a few weeks, I'll need to start splitting wood for the winter-more calories gone. So doing the math, If I consume 2500 calories and burn 1000 from exercise and 1000 from seasonal work, then my net caloric intake is 500, which is 1700 less than my BMR. If I ride my bike or exercise 5 times a week and spend 3 hours a day working, that is 8500 calories a week, equaling about 2.5 pounds a week. Of course, that will be the short term weekly goal that I strive for, not a given.

I want to pass along a few websites that I have found refreshingly useful.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/

From this link you can sign up for daily newsletters concerning topics that interest you. I've been receiving the Diet and Nutrition newsletter and it has a lot of informative articles (like choosing cooking oils) as well as a lot of simple, everyday recipes.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/

Nutrition data is just that, but I like this site because it gives you enough information to make balanced choices about food. They feature an Inflammation Factor chart which is helpful if you suffer from allergies or auto-immune disease. Also, there is a glycemic load chart for those who deal with blood sugar issues like diabetes. If you have a few minutes to check this site out, it will be well worth your time.