{"id":5501,"date":"2012-12-21T09:48:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-21T17:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=5501"},"modified":"2012-12-21T09:48:25","modified_gmt":"2012-12-21T17:48:25","slug":"tis-the-season-for-the-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2012\/12\/21\/tis-the-season-for-the-parents\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Tis the Season . . . for the Parents"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>This, from our creche, not the card<\/h6>\n

This morning I received a mass e-mail from a church headquarters in England. It said in the interest of the environment they were blessing us this year with an electronic<\/em> Christmas card. We were even reminded to consider the environment<\/em> before printing the e-mail.<\/p>\n

I wondered, “Why would I print the e-mail? Unless I wanted another iconic picture of Mary and Joseph and Jesus looking like idiots on drugs, eyes rolled to the sky, with an angel flying by looking about as spaced.<\/p>\n

Sorry to offend anyone, but I’d like to make the point for history being flesh and blood, not sentimentality and child’s art.<\/p>\n

Mary and Joseph were real people. They were likely good people, but not perfect people. Had God been waiting for perfect people, we’d still be waiting for Christmas.<\/p>\n

At just the right time, when the exact number of generations had gone by in Jewish lineage, when world power was at its zenith, the unassuming, unpretentious, unknowing and non-competing Mary<\/em> was selected as first and only, worldwide, “Miss Virgin.”<\/p>\n

Not much is known about her before her now 20 centuries of fame . . . just that she was engaged to a carpenter, could ride a donkey and, as was pointed out later, in the lineage of King David.<\/p>\n

Same with Joseph. He was a good man, of basic honest character, willing to\u00a0divorce the woman he loved when she with child not his, willing to marry her anyway when enlightened that this was of God. (In those days an engagement was already a legal contract.) What he was likely naive to was that if the kingly line was still continuing in Israel, Joseph was in line for the throne.<\/p>\n

And of course his first son would be king after him.<\/p>\n

All this is hidden, and revealed, in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. Worth a look.<\/p>\n

The likely fact is, however, Mary and Joseph had little idea about all this\u00a0and no idea what was happening to them.<\/p>\n

Which, by the way, is about how it is with us. Only the future will reveal what was really going on, the significance of our times, and our possibly having been chosen for “something.”<\/p>\n

Meantime, like Mary and Joseph, all we can do is play our parts as well as we can.<\/p>\n

And hope some future artist doesn’t make us look half dazed.<\/p>\n

(Then again, that might be accurate.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Art can help us see reality, or can distract from reality. At Christmas it can go either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5501"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5538,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501\/revisions\/5538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}