What would Jesus wear? and other puzzles of the day.
I am struck, as I watched the processional elegance of the College of Cardinals in a rare tv soundbite, that Jesus wouldn't have been caught dead in one of those outfits. Can we really imagine the Man responsible for the Sermon on the Mount being willing to appear in highly tailored, archaically symbolic, expensive vestments? Jesus was a Carharts and denim kind of person. For the wedding feast at Cana he would have pulled out his best clothes- clean and simple- but he wouldn't have been down at the local Pakistani tailor's shop getting fitted for an ermine trimmed robe! Maybe it's a small thing, but I struggle with this dissonance.
Okay on a wierd note, I heard a radio interview with the religious comic, Fr. Guido Sarducci, who was purportedly in Rome observing the proceedings to replace John Paul. He, in his fake Italian accent, stated that he was forming the People's Catholic Church in which everyone would be the Pope and would each take their own name and announce it when the new Catholic pontiff was chosen. He asserted that he had already picked his name which would be Benedict the 17th! The radio interviewer asked him if there was a Benedict the 16th, and Fr. Guido said 'no, I'm a gonna be the first pope to skip a number! I lika the 17. It's a young and lively lika the teenager." (or something to that effect.)
So what do I hear today? Cardinal Ratzinger is selected as pope and chooses Benedict 16 as his name! Oh My Gawd! Does that mean Fr. Guido Sarducci will be the next Pope after?????? Stay tuned.
Zipping across the planet, I've said before that we take for granted that things in the future will be largely like things in the past. Tell that to my Grandmother who was born in the era of horses and buggies and died in the era of moonlandings! But my point is that we worry about the wrong things. We're worried about Social Security? Well that assumes that twenty years from now things will be similar to today.
There are so many things that could lead to drastic change- and have in the past- that it's silly to make easy assumptions. For example: bird flu and Marburg virus remind us that there will be another outbreak of incurable disease creating a pandemic. When? Who knows. For example: the conflicts between China and everyone and the US for resources can turn nasty. When the Chinese are allowing super nationalistic themes to become the drumbeat underneath their economy, I suspect there will be physical aggression in the next ten years. And that's not to mention Pakistan and India! Who are armed to the teeth and vulnerable to the same problem of external forces shaking their sanity. What about geological stability? The earthquakes on the southern end of the Ring of Fire appear to make shaking on this end more likely. What's your elevation, tsunami watchers? OK. There's also the little issue that we have hit the peak year for oil production this year and it's a long slippery slide from now to the end. Is it a bell curve? Hello? We can all see that consumption internationally increasing and doing it fast. We'll use the dregs faster than lightning- greased lightning, of course. But we're all gonna be saved by genetic engineering- of ourselves or our favorite food source. Hmmmmm.....could be a problem. Read Enough! It'll scare ya.
Back to Jesus. He was one of the most extraordinary humans ever- maybe the most extraordinary. He would have made a lousy pope.
Okay on a wierd note, I heard a radio interview with the religious comic, Fr. Guido Sarducci, who was purportedly in Rome observing the proceedings to replace John Paul. He, in his fake Italian accent, stated that he was forming the People's Catholic Church in which everyone would be the Pope and would each take their own name and announce it when the new Catholic pontiff was chosen. He asserted that he had already picked his name which would be Benedict the 17th! The radio interviewer asked him if there was a Benedict the 16th, and Fr. Guido said 'no, I'm a gonna be the first pope to skip a number! I lika the 17. It's a young and lively lika the teenager." (or something to that effect.)
So what do I hear today? Cardinal Ratzinger is selected as pope and chooses Benedict 16 as his name! Oh My Gawd! Does that mean Fr. Guido Sarducci will be the next Pope after?????? Stay tuned.
Zipping across the planet, I've said before that we take for granted that things in the future will be largely like things in the past. Tell that to my Grandmother who was born in the era of horses and buggies and died in the era of moonlandings! But my point is that we worry about the wrong things. We're worried about Social Security? Well that assumes that twenty years from now things will be similar to today.
There are so many things that could lead to drastic change- and have in the past- that it's silly to make easy assumptions. For example: bird flu and Marburg virus remind us that there will be another outbreak of incurable disease creating a pandemic. When? Who knows. For example: the conflicts between China and everyone and the US for resources can turn nasty. When the Chinese are allowing super nationalistic themes to become the drumbeat underneath their economy, I suspect there will be physical aggression in the next ten years. And that's not to mention Pakistan and India! Who are armed to the teeth and vulnerable to the same problem of external forces shaking their sanity. What about geological stability? The earthquakes on the southern end of the Ring of Fire appear to make shaking on this end more likely. What's your elevation, tsunami watchers? OK. There's also the little issue that we have hit the peak year for oil production this year and it's a long slippery slide from now to the end. Is it a bell curve? Hello? We can all see that consumption internationally increasing and doing it fast. We'll use the dregs faster than lightning- greased lightning, of course. But we're all gonna be saved by genetic engineering- of ourselves or our favorite food source. Hmmmmm.....could be a problem. Read Enough! It'll scare ya.
Back to Jesus. He was one of the most extraordinary humans ever- maybe the most extraordinary. He would have made a lousy pope.
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