The Bethlehem Baker

On Sunday, January 1, 2012, Dr. Andrew D. Scrimgeour, Dean of Libraries at Drew University, Madison, NJ, will read one of his Christmas stories, "The Bethlehem Baker," at the First United Methodist Church, 23 Willow Street, Mystic, CT 06355.  All are invited. 

He has been writing Christmas stories for some time.  Most recently, December 23, 2010, one of his Christmas stories, “A String of Bulbs Was Our Guiding Star” appeared in the New York Times.  He will be reading for us another one of his stories entitled “The Bethlehem Baker.” 

      You will not want to miss this reading.  So go to bed early enough on New Year’s Eve or stay up all night and straggle into the church, but do not miss this opportunity!

EUGENE A. NIDA

EUGENE A. NIDA (1914-2011)

Celebrating the life of a distinguished linguist and translator may seem trivial to some people.  Today in New York City Eugene Nida's life will be celebrated.  He was born November 11, 1914 and died August 25, 2011. In an ever more complex, connected world there may be no more important task than translation. 

The United States is only beginning to feel the enormity of the issue of translation since English is such a dominate language throughout the world.  Many Americans think of translation as a bit of a nuisance and expense.  Nuisance in that if people are going to come to America they need to learn English.  Expense in that schools (among many private and public entities) need to deal with communicating to people who do not know Englsih well (the Los Angeles Public Schools have over 250 languages spoken by children attending their schools).  It takes money to teach those kids and translation is a very important part of the process.

Nida (pronounced NAY-duh) was a pioneer both in the theory of translation and in preparing people to be translators.  He is responsible for what is called dynamic equivalence translation.  He thought that it was as important to be faithful to the original language and text as it was to make sure the people for whom the translation was being made clearly understood the original.  Merely assuming that a word used in one langage and possible at a different time (as in the translation of ancient texts such as the Bible) is always and in every place to be translated with the same word is not to understand the denotative and connotative elements in languages.   

As reported in one article Nida translated the simple phrase "I am sorrowful" in a variety of ways in one small area in Africa with different languages.  Given the cultural and linguistic differences among those several groups the phrase was translated into what when translated back into English were " my eye is black," "my heart is rotten," "my stomach is heavy," and "my liver is sick." 

The simple solution of saying that translation is merely taking one word in the original language and translating it into one word in the target language often misses the goal of translation, namely to communicate accurately and efficiently one idea/word into another's language's and culture's idea/word.  Translation is not merely finding the right words but understanding at least two cultures.

 

Can you identify location and date?

Share Your Favorite Fall Poem

Share a Fall poem with others.

I am particularly fond of Mary Oliver's poetry.  Her "Fall Song" from American Primitive (Boston/New York/Toronto/London. Little, Brown and Company. 1983) seems quite appropriate for these Fall days.  I quote from a few of the lines.

**
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows....

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out as the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay--how everything livers, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
**

Post 9/11 Thoughts and Forgiveness

Have any of you been stunned by the fact that the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 seems to have come and gone without much new reflection?  There was a burst of energy around the days immediately preceding and for a brief time afterwards. 

Maybe I have just missed those reflections but would certainly like to hear about them.

My thoughts on the occasion of the 10 year anniversary may not be new reflections.  However, they surround the difficulty of forgiving.   First, I think the only way to forgive is to give up the right to revenge.  Second, once we have given that up we need to clearly understand that forgiveness is in part a matter of conscience.  Third, when we forgive we offer a gift that enables us to discover freedom.  Fourth, forgiveness often seems outside my human capabilities.  That is when I look for another source to give me assistance in offering forgiveness.

The legacy of 9/11 must in part draw us to reflect on forgiveness.  What can draw us forward from 9/11 and not backward?

  

Rosary Beads as Necklaces Among Teens

News reports about the use and abuse of wearing
rosary beads in schools around the country

have stirred questions about freedom of religious

expression.  We have seen this issue arise in other

European countries regarding Islamic attire.

The latest case was in Nebraska.  School districts

and individual schools have responded to gang members wearing rosary necklaces not for religious expression but for identification of gang membership.  This has prompted the enforcement of dress codes that prohibit their use.  Those wishing to wear the now popular rosary necklaces as an expression of their religious perspectives  have been prohibited from wearing them.

Have there been any reports of this issue arising in our community?  Do you see a way to find common ground so that the legitimate and illegitimate use can be addressed?

http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/national/girl-banned-from-wearing-rosary-necklace

http://www.womenswatchinc.org/blog/school-bans-little-girls-rosary-beads/

"I'm Only Human"

“I am only human” is the phrase used by super athletes when they have a bad performance in whatever their athletic endeaver is.  Have you used the phrase?  

I have always wanted to ask, “So you were not a human when you achieved all of those other marvelous feats?  What were you?" 

Our use of words, phrases, and cliches to describe our behaviors betray some of our basic thoughts about who we are.  We need to be careful and thoughtful prior to shouting something that under some scrutiny may sound a little foolish.

What do you think?

Our American Family

OUR AMERICAN FAMILY

I witnessed this small exchange this morning, September 11, 2011, after church in Mystic.  Two women were standing near the corner of Willow and Church Streets talking about the services they just attended. One went to St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, just a block away and the other had just come out of the First United Methodist Church Mystic.  The Catholic parishioner said, "We sang a beautiful hymn by Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." The Methodist parishioner said, "Our sermon was about forgiveness.   An example of the meaning of Christian forgiveness was cited in the sermon telling about Pope John Paul visiting the person who attempted to assassinate him.  The Pope knelt before the person and offered him forgiveness.”

This interesting intersection of religious traditions, the Roman Catholic using the Luther hymn and the United Methodist tradition citing the story about a Pope was not missed by the two women. They were comforted by the blend of the traditions that at one time might have seemed impossible.

          Along this same line an article appeared in the September 11 New York Times online. It was entitled, In Rockaway, Muslim Bagel Man Prospers Since 9/11.* It said, "For all Rockaway’s quaintness, in the Queens of Latino pizzerias and kosher spring rolls, no one seems surprised at the notion of a Muslim guy selling an archetypal Jewish food to Roman Catholics."

          We need to share more of these stories of acceptance.  We have had enough battles across religious traditions.  We need to lift up positive examples of how our country has mixed and matched the best of our religious heritages. 

Share your examples of ways our differences can sustain us and not divide us.

* In Rockaway, Muslim Bagel Man Prospers Since 9/11. New York Times By ANNE BARNARD Published: September 8, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/us/sept-11-reckoning/queens.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2 

9/11 What is in a name?

Reflecting at the 10 year anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center is an important exercise.  A short article in The Christian Century from a year ago is a simple way to begin this conversation. 

  Whatever perspective you bring, and it is clear there are many, I think the simple question about our naming of this event is important.  We all know the importance of naming especially when it comes to a new baby in the house.  Selecting a name always generates conversation.  We know from stories in antiquity that it was an important activity.   

Share your thoughts and open your eyes to what others are saying.  

** 

Why do we call it 9/11?

The Christian Century Nov 02, 2010 by Rodney Clapp

Despite all the attention given to re­membering the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, little attention has been given to one conspicuous aspect--the event has no name.

We don't refer to the issuing of the Magna Carta as 6/15 (the date in 1215 when the document was published). The horrible event of Novem­ber 22, 1963, is called "the JFK assassination," not 11/22. It's "the Challenger explosion," not 1/28, and "the Oklahoma City bombing," not 4/19. Nor were these events referred to or identified by their date of occurrence in the confusing early days and months after they happened.

Our reference to 9/11 is empty of substance. We aren't explicitly referring to anything about 9/11 except that it was September 11. So what's in a name—or, in this case, what's in no name?

On some fuzzy, sub­con­scious level, it may be that 9/11 caught on because 911 is the emergency phone number—the digits to be dialed in case of extreme crisis. If the attack had occurred on 9/10 or 9/12, perhaps we wouldn't be referring to this disaster by the date.

In any case, nearly a decade after the attack, we are still debating just what it meant or means. Was it a battle in the clash between Islam and Christianity? Was it Islam's declaration of war on the West? Or something else?

What 9/11 means is still debated. And surely it's better that we adopt no name for it than adopt a specious and misleading name. To come up with a name that suggests the attack was a case of Islam versus Christianity, or Islam versus the West, would be a de­structive act of misnaming. What happened on that day was an attack by one group of Mus­lims. All of Islam did not attack the U.S. on Sep­tember 11 any more than all of Chris­tianity attacked Okla­­homa City when the extremist Chris­tian Tim­othy Mc­Veigh bombed it on April 19, 1995.

But just calling it 9/11 may leave the event too wide open for misinterpretation. It is ominous that more Ameri­cans now think of 9/11 as Islam's attack on America than did so in the early days and months following the attack. (In those early days, politicians across the political spectrum were careful to indicate that al-Qaeda was not representative of all of Islam or the Islamic world.)

Failing to name 9/11 effectively may confirm the as­sumption that "everything changed" on 9/11. In the days and months after 9/11, many pundits declared the death of irony and heralded a day when American culture would become forevermore deeper and more serious. That didn't happen. We're now no less addicted to mass-produced spectacle and ob­sessive but shallow celebrity culture than we were before 9/11.

Failing to substantially name what happened on 9/11 also helps underwrite the open-endedness of Amer­ica's war on terrorism. The 9/11 event becomes a blank check for that war, a war that lacks a specific goal.

A military response is not the only or the most important response that 9/11 should elicit. Economic and social problems in the Arab world create important differences between the Arab world and the West. These problems and differences cannot be successfully ad­dressed simply by the blunt club of military means. Many of those problems resonate at the religious level, and if the religions of the world—including Chris­tianity—are to prove to their detractors that religion is not inherently and finally a force for violence, they will have to demonstrate that by means more constructive and complicated than backing one "side" or another militarily.

So let the stunned silence end. It's time to substantially designate the meaning and significance of 9/11. For the sake of peace and the sake of the world, let the real naming begin.