Nasty Little Man

Sister Joan takes on the "war on Christmas" fraud

Sister Joan Chittister of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie is one of the great voices for social justice in the Christian church. In the latest issue of the National Catholic Reporter, she writes on the faux war on Christmas hysteria.

Here's my favorite line:

Say you're a Christian and you believe in the death penalty and nobody blinks. Say an evergeen tree is not a sacred Christian object and the world descends into spiritual spasm.

Something else she said caught my attention:

To be frank, for some rather established historical reasons, I don't really care where people come down over whether or not a decorated evergreen tree is a "Christmas tree" or a "Holiday tree." At the same time, the thinking behind the question may be more important than the answer itself.

This reminded me of when the Taliban blew up the giant Buddhas. As a Zen practitioner, the destruction of the Buddhas was of less concern than the suffering mind of the Afghans who destroyed them. I'm sure other practitioners would agree. In fact, there was greater outcry from the art community than the Buddhist community.

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 2:42 PM