Easter can be a celebration of hope for everyone

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday April 13th, 2009

A few years ago Europeans ended up in North America. I know the Vikings were here first, but let's ignore them; they actually just made this an outpost and moved on. Europeans came to stay.

Now the thing is, we were bullies. I blame alcohol and gunpowder for giving us an inflated sense of self-importance.

For the most part, the people who settled here were also very religious -- often more religious than the people they left behind -- and persecuted for it.

We still feel that echo in our society today. Like it or not, all of our government, all of our moral code, all of our legal code, and most of our holidays are based on the Christian faith. I think that the best thing we can do as a culture is admit that; and live into it, so that we might make some real sense out of it.

At Christmas we have fights about manger scenes and decorated trees. We change Merry Christmas to "Happy Holidays" and we try to fight against our heritage instead of asking where we have been, where we are now, and where we should be going.

Canada was Christian; unambiguously so. And because of that, Easter was a big civic holiday. From a Christian point of view, this is the major festival of the church celebrating when Jesus, because of his relationship with God, came back from the dead.

Now, if we really wanted to understand our heritage as a country we would ask where Christians got this idea for a celebration from . . . they stole it. Pagan cultures, and just so you know "pagan" was the Latin word for "rural," always celebrated the spring. This was true whether we are talking about ancient Rome from whence Christian culture came, ancient Chinese culture, or ancient Druidic culture. Winter is harsh, scary, dark and lifeless. But when the sun comes back, and the crocus bloom, there is something to celebrate.

In Ancient Rome there was a celebration for the rise of the Sun. Why not borrow this, and make it the rise of the Son, and keep a lot of the same rituals? In fact, most springtime pagan rituals are present in our current Easter celebrations, whether inside or outside of church. Kindling the new fire was part of spring in most cultures. In church we light a new Christ candle, in Wiccan and pagan religious observances today they light bonfires, and in Moncton we light barbecues. It is not so different; we are all trying to say the same thing: Spring is here.

Rabbits are symbols of procreativity. Eggs are symbols of birth. Lilies are symbols of growth. Easter, as a name for the weekend was even taken from the Druids who worshiped the goddess Eostre, the mother goddess who brought new life back into the world each vernal equinox, each spring.

That is where we have been; but let's look at where we are.

Canada is as multicultural a place as you could get. Even smaller cities like Metro Moncton are becoming increasingly diverse. We have representatives of every race, of every religion, of every culture and of every class within our bounds. At the same time, we exist within the civil framework of Christianity, so how are we going to reinvent that framework so it fits not only who we have become, but where we are going as an increasingly intermingled society?

I have already hinted at that by suggesting we return to the original meaning of Easter -- which was spring.

We do not have to abandon anything to do this, we just have to see it in fresh ways and add more to our celebrations. Spring means new life, and this fits with the Christian conception of what it is about, the Hindu conception of what it is about, the Buddhist conception of what it is about, the secular humanist conception of what it is about, and even the Molson beer ads.

I am serious about that. Molson beer ads pretty much define our civic identity in this country. I am Canadian. And the best spring ad they ever had was saying we have two seasons in Canada, winter, and patio. . .

The reason that we can reclaim this as a season and holiday that is important to every single one of us lies in looking behind the concept of new life. What is it we are really celebrating? We are celebrating hope.

I am building on last week's column where I suggested that there is a lot that seems to go wrong with the world, both collectively and individually. I said last week that we need to counter that with optimism, with positivism; it is too easy to let the negative state of mind influence what we think and do.

Well, in trying to heed my own advice and have a positive outlook for the week, I realize that at the core, we need something even deeper, we need hope.

And there is no reason not to have hope. Everything around us displays a sense that there will always be something new, something different, and something better. Sure it might take more than a lifetime, and there might be a lot of disasters in between. But we as a society would do better to live out of hope.

"God's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land," vouched Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the night before he was assassinated.

He never saw it, but Obama became the first black president -- by running a campaign with one simple message, hope. By claiming he stood for "change we can believe in" Obama suggested that something better was on the horizon.

Well, it is. Believe it. That is the message we need to take into every corner of our society if we want to make this world a better place.

We've got troubles, but the sky's not falling

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday April 6th, 2009

I almost always approach this column by trying to think what is going wrong right now, or what I see as a potential problem, and then writing an opinion.

There is no end to what I could write about. To be honest, there is no end to what we think about. There was a children's story when I was growing up about a chicken named Henny Penny who kept telling everyone the sky was falling; which in her experience, it was.

I will leave it to you to go look it up, but the moral of the story is that she and her friends become so concerned with the sky falling that they stopped looking at the world around them and ended up in trouble.

So, the sky is falling, economic woes, the demise of capitalism, continued terrorist threats, prolific nuclear weapons black market trade, human trafficking, global warming, increased crime, you name it.

Did you ever stop to wonder why the powers that be want us to know about these things? I mean, really, anything can be hidden from us pretty simply; the things we find out about are put out there for a reason.

I would like to put forth the argument that the reason is to shield us from the truth that the world is a pretty good place.

Here are some news items that did not make it into regular print this last week.

San Francisco, after rolling out a test fleet of hybrid taxis, has proven they could survive past the 300,000 mile mark. March was the best month on Wall Street since 2002. A Dutch bank named Triodos has been successfully experimenting with micro financing of developing countries. There was some encouraging news about a vaccine for breast cancer. Six thousand rare dolphins, a species thought to be dying out, were found in a river in Bangladesh. Last Tuesday a Russian-European astronaut team began training for a manned mission to Mars. In Massachusetts a toddler fell out of a 40 foot high window in her house; two strangers who were passing by bolted across traffic when they saw the baby dangling and caught her, unharmed. They found a cure for Sickle-Cell Anaemia using stem cells. A bionic eye gave a blind man sight. For the first time ever they managed to sedate a whale and untangle it from fishing rope. They created a biomass charcoal heater which is way more efficient and green conscious.

I could go on like this forever.

And this is my point. News is only newsworthy if it is out of the ordinary, if it is different from the day to day. I have said this before and I will say it again; the day that newspapers report only paragraphs like mine above is the day that I will really be worried.

Why do we focus on the negative? Why are we so sure the sky is falling?

I am not sure I have an answer to that.

But I do believe that whole "you are what you think" credo has a lot to be said for it. Positive thinking is a mental attitude that admits into the mind thoughts, words and images that are conductive to growth, expansion and success.

If you think the world is a good place, if you think you are going to succeed, then you are simply in a better place to begin working towards something better.

I know that not everyone accepts or believes in positive thinking. I also know that there will be times when I think the best and the absolute worst is going to happen. But rarely, and I mean statistically almost impossibly, are we ever in a place where the sky is truly falling.

So let me suggest that the world would be a better place if we tried very hard to remember that good things happen far more frequently than bad. We need to practice the forgotten art of positive thinking. This is not as easy as it sounds. Attitude and thoughts do not change overnight.

There is also, I will have you know in conspiratorial confidence, a lot riding on our sense that everything is going to hell in a hand basket. It helps keep governments and military industrial complexes in power, for example, but I digress.

Why not try it out? Try to at least balance the bad you hear with the good you encounter. Try to stay focused on things working out. Always visualize only favourable and beneficial situations. Use positive words in your inner dialogues or when talking with others. Smile a little more, as this helps to think positively. Disregard any feelings of laziness or a desire to quit. If you persevere, you will transform the way your mind thinks.

Once a negative thought enters your mind, you have to be aware of it and endeavour to replace it with a constructive one. The negative thought will try again to enter your mind, and then you have to replace it again with a positive one.

It does not matter what your circumstances are at the present moment. Think positively, expect only favourable results and situations, and circumstances will change accordingly. It may take some time for the changes to take place, but eventually they do.

Heed the cautionary tale of Henny Penny. If we concentrate too much on the falling sky, we miss the goodness that is all around us. To quote the immortal Louis Armstrong, "what a wonderful world . . ."