Speculation Leads To Hypothesis

Scientists may howl in protest at the title of this post, but the origin of these thoughts goes back many decades. I have long been wondering - and yes, speculating - about the similarity and distinction between events described in our Christian scriptures and natural phenomena that scientists investigate using the traditional scientific methods of cause and effect.

One such series of questions arose out of the description of the ten plagues of the Exodus when Moses demanded and eventually won the freedom of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. (Exodus 7-12). This speculation focused on the question: Were there natural events that might be identified as the cause of the several plagues sanctified by inclusion in the Torah, the most important part of the ancient scriptures of the Jewish people?

A missed opportunity to watch a CD of the lecture on Santorini by Professor Michael E.Wysession in the series on  The World's Greatest Geological Wonders made me turn to the Internet in search of scientific information on the violent explosion of that volcano on the island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean Sea about 1600 BCE. What I learned only increased by desire to search further. There can be little doubt that the Santorini eruption caused great havoc all through the eastern Mediterranean region and beyond. Nor am I the first to wonder if there was any evidence in the Bible of this great disaster that is said to have ended the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete though it was some seventy miles from Thera when the eruption occurred. (http://www.decadevolcano.net/santorini/minoaneruption.htm)

This led to an initial conclusion that there were some details of the plagues of Exodus which strangely reflected what may well have been tales told for centuries by generations of Jewish ancestors which remained still fresh in living memory when the Torah took shape in written form. Nor am I the first by any means to have speculated in this way. As recently as 2006 Israeli-Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and producer/director James Cameron created a widely broadcast documentary on the same subject.  
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus_Decoded)

Of course, there has been much religious and archeological criticism of Jacobovici's work. Not the least is the argument that his datng of the destruction of the Minoan civilization was 150 years later than archeological and geological research has shown it to have actually happened (ca. 1645 BCE). But his assumption that the children of Israel of whom the Exodus story told were really the Hyksos who were thought too have been expelled from Egypt about the same time seems unwarranted

As expected there was some very erudite criticism of this documentary. Possibly the most severe was a comment by a noted scholar, Dr. Ronald Hendel, Professor of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He compared The Exodus Decoded to an Indiana Jones movie or an actor-salesman in an expensive infomercial advertising a product with exaggerated claims selling "a highly dubious bundle of theories about the historical and scientific veracity of the Biblical Exodus."

This debunking of Jacobovici documentary does not  prove one way or another that elements of the Exodus story have no relationship to the Santorini /Minoan eruption. Though many biblical scholars have tried, no one has yet explained what the cause of the Exodus plagues may have been. Nor have scientifically motivated archeologists yet discovered the actual route of the Israelites out of Egypt inthe 13th century BCE.

Between Jesus and Paul

This is the introductory note prepared for a study group of seniors at Glen Abbey United Church, Oakville, Ontario. This study concentrates on the Letter of James in the New Testament.

Paul’s ministry between his conversion and the writing of his first Letter to the Thessalonians lasted about fifteen years (ca. 35-50 CE). Paul’s own version of what he did was briefly summarized in Galatians 1:15-24, but most of what we think we know comes from the Book Acts.  That record was biased toward Paul. Was there any other development in the Jesus movement before Paul?

In the first chapter of his recent publication, Paul and Jesus: How The Apostle Transformed Christianity, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012) James D. Tabor clarified what he believes actually happened: James, the brother of Jesus, was the dominant leader in Jerusalem during the interval between Jesus and Paul.

“This lost Christianity,” as Tabor calls it, “held sway during Paul’s lifetime, and only with the death of James in 62 CE followed by the brutal destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, did it begin to lose its influence as the centre of the Jesus movement.”

Where do we look for this competing form of the Jesus movement? The obvious place is the New Testament itself. Buried late in the sequence of letters is The Letter of James. It is notably different from the thirteen attributed to Paul, only seven of which are now believed to have been written directly by or for him. Only in Galatians 1:18-19 and 2:9 did Paul make reference to James.

In Acts too there are only two references to James, both pointing to his leadership in the movement after the death of Jesus. At the so-called Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:13-21) James was the spokesman for the assembled elders. Again on Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem (Acts 21:18) James alone was named among “the elders.” Tabor believes that this “suppression of James (in the Pauline documents) is systematic and deliberate.” On the other hand, Tabor also believes that both the positive references to James in Acts are ironic because he believes their views of Jesus as Messiah/Christ were so different.

The Letter of James was addressed to “to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion.” But this is not a letter; it is a group of sermons on three recurring topics presented in literary form: the testing of faith, wisdom and speech, and wealth. Perhaps most surprising is that only in 1:1 and 2:1 is Jesus named as “the Lord Jesus Christ.” God is referred to more frequently (nine times) but the whole work is more of an ethical essay than anything else.

At the same time, the Letter of James reflects a community under threat, though not imminent martyrdom. Some scholars have speculated that it actually contains messages delivered by James ca. 40-50 CE and edited as a letter after his death in 62 CE.

Tabor lists several 2^nd and even 3^rd century documents that contain very similar messages. All point to a close relationship between Jesus’ teaching and that of James. “The basic elements of the picture they preserve are amazingly consistent: Jesus passes to James his successor rule of the Church.”

Tabor also emphasizes that The Letter of James “speaks positively of the enduring validity of the Jewish Torah” and “an early Palestinian cultural context … directly parallel to the teachings of Jesus from the Q source” (i.e. the common source shared by Matthew and Luke).

Calendar Reform - Again!

Here is an article on a perennially popular subject from my favourte website for geopolitical information.
This article is reprinted with the permission of Stratfor.

The Geopolitics of the Gregorian Calendar

Analysis

January 1, 2014 | 0000 Print Text Size

Analysis

When England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, some 170 years after it was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "It is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on Sept. 2, and not have to get up until Sept. 14." Indeed, nearly two weeks evaporated into thin air in England when it transitioned from the Julian calendar, which had left the country 11 days behind much of Europe. Such calendrical acrobatics are not unusual. The year 46 B.C., a year before Julius Caesar implemented his namesake system, lasted 445 days and later became known as the "final year of confusion."
In other words, the systems used by mankind to track, organize and manipulate time have often been arbitrary, uneven and disruptive, especially when designed poorly or foisted upon an unwilling society. The history of calendrical reform has been shaped by the egos of emperors, disputes among churches, the insights of astronomers and mathematicians, and immutable geopolitical realities. Attempts at improvements have sparked political turmoil and commercial chaos, and seemingly rational changes have consistently failed to take root.
Today, as we enter the 432nd year guided by the Gregorian calendar, reform advocates argue that the calendar's peculiarities and inaccuracies continue to do widespread damage each year. They say the current system unnecessarily subjects businesses to numerous calendar-generated financial complications, confusion and reporting inconsistencies. In years where Christmas and New Year's Day each fall on a weekday, for example, economic productivity is essentially paralyzed for the better part of two weeks, and one British study found that moving a handful of national holidays to the weekend would boost the United Kingdom's gross domestic product by around 1 percent.
The Gregorian calendar's shortcomings are magnified by the fact that multiple improvements have been formulated, proposed to the public and then largely ignored over the years -- most recently in 2012, with the unveiling of a highly rational streamlined calendar that addresses many of the Gregorian calendar's problems. According to the calendar's creators, it would generate more than $100 billion each year worldwide and "break the grip of the world-wide consensus that embraces a second-rate calendar imposed by a Pope over 400 years ago." This attempt, like many of the others, has received some media attention but has thus far failed to gain any meaningful traction with policymakers or the wider public.
Myriad geopolitical elements and obstacles are embedded in the issue of calendar reform, from the powerful historical role of empires and ecclesiastical authorities to the unifying forces of commerce and the divisive nature of sovereignty and state interests. Indeed, geopolitical themes are present both in the creation of the Gregorian calendar and its permanence, and its ascendance and enduring primacy tells us much about the nature of the international system.

How We Got Here

At its core, the modern calendar is an attempt to track and predict the relationship between the sun and various regions of the earth. Historically, agricultural cycles, local climates, latitudes, tidal ebbs and flows and imperatives such as the need to anticipate seasonal change have shaped calendars. The Egyptian calendar, for example, was established in part to predict the annual rising of the Nile River, which was critical to Egyptian agriculture. This motivation is also why lunar calendars similar to the ones still used by Muslims fell out of favor somewhat -- with 12 lunar cycles adding up to roughly 354 days, such systems quickly drift out of alignment with the seasons.
The Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, was itself an attempt to address the problems of its predecessor, the Julian calendar, which had been introduced by Julius Caesar to abolish the use of the lunar year and eliminate a three-month gap that opened up between the civil and astronomical equinoxes. It subsequently spread throughout the Roman Empire (and beyond as Christianity spread) and influenced the design of calendars elsewhere. Though it deviates from the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun by just 11 minutes (a remarkable astronomical feat for the time), the Julian system overly adjusted for the fractional difference in year length, slowly leading to a misalignment in the astronomical and calendar years.
For the Catholic Church, this meant that Easter -- traditionally tied to the spring equinox -- would eventually drift into another season altogether. By dropping 10 days to get seasons back on track and by eliminating the Julian calendar's excess leap years, the Gregorian calendar came closer to reflecting the exact length of an astronomical year (roughly 365.24 days) -- it is only off by 26 seconds annually, culminating in a full day's difference every 3,323 years.
But what was perhaps most significant about Pope Gregory's system was not its changes, but rather its role in the onset of the globalized era. In centuries prior, countries around the world had used a disjointed array of uncoordinated calendars, each adopted for local purposes and based primarily on local geographical factors. The Mayan calendar would not be easily aligned with the Egyptian, Greek, Chinese or Julian calendars, and so forth. In addition to the pope's far-reaching influence, the adoption of the Gregorian system was facilitated by the emergence of a globalized system marked by exploration and the development of long-distance trade networks and interconnectors between regions beginning in the late 1400s. The pope's calendar was essentially the imposition of a true global interactive system and the acknowledgment of a new global reality.
Despite its improvements, the Gregorian calendar preserved several of the Julian calendar's quirks. Months still varied in length, and holidays still fell on different days of the week from year to year. In fact, its benefits over the Julian calendar are disputed among astronomers. Nonetheless, its widespread adoption and use in trade and communication played a fundamental role in the development and growth of the modern international system.

Implementation Problems

From the start, however, the Gregorian calendar faced resistance from several corners, and implementation was slow and uneven. The edict issued by Pope Gregory XIII carried no legal weight beyond the Papal States, so the adoption of his calendar for civil purposes necessitated implementation by individual governments.
Though Catholic countries like Spain and Portugal adopted the new system quickly, many Protestant and Eastern Orthodox countries saw the Gregorian calendar as an attempt to bring them under the Catholic sphere of influence. These states, including Germany and England, refused to adopt the new calendar for a number of years, though most eventually warmed to it for purposes of convenience in international trade. Russia only adopted it in 1918 after the Russian Revolution in 1917 (the Russian Orthodox Church still uses the Julian calendar), and Greece, the last European nation to adopt the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes, did not do so until 1923.
In 1793, following the French Revolution, the new republic replaced the Gregorian calendar with the French Republican calendar, commonly called the French Revolutionary calendar, as part of an attempt to purge the country of any remnants of regime (and by association, Catholic) influence. Due to a number of issues, including the calendar's inconsistent starting date each year, 10-day workweeks and incompatibility with secularly based trade events, the new calendar lasted only around 12 years before France reverted back to the Gregorian version.
Some 170 years later, the Shah of Iran attempted a similar experiment amid a competition with the country's religious leaders for political influence. As part of a larger bid to shift power away from the clergy, the shah in 1976 replaced the country's Islamic calendar with the secular Imperial calendar -- a move viewed by many as anti-Islamic -- spurring opposition to the shah and his policies. After the shah was overthrown in 1979, his successor restored the Islamic calendar to placate protesters and to reach a compromise with Iran's religious leadership.
Several countries -- Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran among them -- still have not officially adopted the Gregorian calendar. India, Bangladesh, Israel, Myanmar and a few other countries use various calendars alongside the Gregorian system, and still others use a modified version of the Gregorian calendar, including Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, North Korea and China. For agricultural reasons, it is still practical in many places to maintain a parallel local calendar based on agricultural seasons rather than relying solely on a universal system based on arbitrary demarcations or seasons and features elsewhere on the planet. In most such countries, however, use of the Gregorian calendar among businesses and others engaged in the international system is widespread.

Better Systems?

Today, the Gregorian calendar's shortcomings have translated into substantial losses in productivity for businesses in the form of extra federal vacation days for employees, business quarters of different sizes and imperfect year-on-year fiscal comparisons. The lack of consistency across each calendar year has also created difficulties in financial forecasting for many companies.
Dozens of attempts have been made over the years to improve the remaining inefficiencies in Pope Gregory's calendar, all boasting different benefits. The Raventos Symmetrical Perpetual and Colligan's Pax calendars feature 13 months of 28 days, while the Symmetry 454 Calendar eliminates the possibility of having the 13th day of any month fall on a Friday. In 1928, Eastman Kodak founder George Eastman introduced a more business-friendly calendar (the International Fixed calendar) within his company that was the same from year to year and allowed numerical days of each month to fall on the same weekday -- for example, the 15th of each month was always a Sunday. This setup had the advantage of facilitating business activities such as scheduling regular meetings and more accurately comparing monthly statistics.
Reform attempts have not been confined to hobbyists, advocates and academics. In 1954, the U.N. took up the question of calendar reform at the request of India, which argued that the Gregorian calendar creates an inadequate system for economic and business-related activities. Among the listed grievances were quarters and half years of unequal size, which make business calculations and forecasts difficult; inconsistency in the occurrence of specific days, which has the potential of interfering with recurring business and governmental meetings; and the variance in weekday composition across any given month or year, which significantly impairs comparisons of trade volume since transactions typically fluctuate throughout the week.
In 2012, Richard Conn Henry, a former NASA astrophysicist, teamed up with his colleague, an applied economist named Steve H. Hanke, to introduce perhaps the most workable attempt at calendrical reform to date. The Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar (itself an adaptation of a calendar introduced in 1996 by Bob McClenon) is, as the pair wrote for the Cato Institute in 2012, "religiously unobjectionable, business-friendly and identical year-to-year."

Click to Enlarge

The Hanke-Henry calendar would provide a fixed 364-day year with business quarters of equal length, eliminating many of the financial problems posed by its Gregorian counterpart. Calculations of interest, for example, often rely on estimates that use a 30-day month (or a 360-day year) for the sake of convenience, rather than the actual number of days, resulting in inaccuracies that -- if fixed by the Hanke-Henry calendar, its creators say -- would save up to an estimated $130 billion per year worldwide. (Similar problems would still arise for the years given an extra week in the Hanke-Henry system.)
Meanwhile, it would preserve the seven-day week cycle and in turn, the religious tradition of observing the Sabbath -- the obstacle blocking many previous proposals' path to success. As many as eight federal holidays would also consistently fall on weekends; while this probably would not be popular with employees, the calendar's authors argue that it could save the United States as much as $150 billion per year (though it is difficult to anticipate how companies and workers would respond to the elimination of so many holidays, casting doubt upon such figures).

Obstacles to Reform and a Path Forward

Most reform proposals have failed to supplant the Gregorian system not because they failed to improve upon the status quo altogether, but because they either do not preserve the Sabbath, they disrupt the seven-day week (only a five-day week would fit neatly into a 365-day calendar without necessitating leap weeks or years) or they stray from the seasonal cycle. And the possibilities of calendrical reform highlight the difficulty of worldwide cooperation in the modern international system. Global collaboration would indeed be critical, since reform in certain places but not in others would cause more chaos and inefficiency than already exist in the current system. A tightly coordinated, carefully managed transition period would be critical to avoid many of the issues that occurred when the Gregorian calendar was adopted.

Agenda

George Friedman and Robert D. Kaplan on Geopolitical Forecasting (Agenda)

Today, in a more deeply interconnected, state-dominated system that lacks the singularly powerful voices of emperors or ecclesiastical authorities, who or what could compel such cooperation? Financial statistics and abstract notions of global efficiency are not nearly as unifying or animating as religious edicts, moral outrage or perceived threats. Theoretically, the benefits of a more rational calendar could lead to the emergence of a robust coalition of multinational interests advocating for a more efficient alternative, and successes such as the steady and continuous adoption of the metric system across the world highlight how efficiency-improving ideas can gain widespread adoption.
But international cooperation and coordination have remained elusive in far more pressing and less potentially disruptive issues. Absent more urgent and mutually beneficial incentives to change the system and a solution that appeals to a vast majority of people, global leaders will likely not be compelled to undertake the challenge of navigating what would inevitably be a disruptive and risky transition to an ostensibly more efficient alternative.
Any number of factors could generate resistance to change. If the benefits of a new calendar were unevenly distributed across countries -- or if key powers would in any way be harmed by the change -- any hope for a comprehensive global agreement would quickly collapse. Societies have long adjusted to the inefficiencies of the Gregorian system, and it would be reasonable to expect some level of resistance to attempts to disrupt a convention woven so deeply into the fabric of everyday life -- especially if, say, the change disrupted cherished traditions or eliminated certain birthdays or holidays. Particularly in societies already suspicious of Western influence and power, attempts to implement something like the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar may once again spark considerable political opposition.
Even if a consensus among world leaders emerged in favor of reform, the details of the new system likely would still be vulnerable to the various interests, constraints and political whims of individual states. In the United States, for example, candy makers hoping to extend daylight trick-or-treating hours on Halloween lobbied extensively for the move of daylight saving time to November. According to legend, in the Julian calendar, February was given just 28 days in order to lengthen August and satisfy Augustus Caesar's vanity by making his namesake month as long as Julius Caesar's July. The real story likely has more to do with issues related to numerology, ancient traditions or the haphazard evolution of an earlier Roman lunar calendar that only covered from around March to December. Regardless of what exactly led to February's curious composition, its diminutive design reinforces the complicated nature of calendar adoption.
Such interference would not necessarily happen today, but it matters that it could. Policy is not made in a vacuum, and even the carefully calibrated Hanke-Henry calendar would not be immune to politics, narrow interests or caprice. Given the opportunity to bend such a reform to a state's or leader's needs -- even if only to prolong a term in office, manipulate a statistic or prevent one's birthday from always falling on a Tuesday -- certain leaders could very well take it.
Nonetheless, a fundamental, worldwide change to something as long established as the calendar is not unthinkable, primarily because it has happened several times before. In other words, calendrical change is possible -- it just tends to happen in fits and starts, lurching unevenly through history as each era refines, tinkers and adds its own contributions to make a better system. And if a global heavyweight with worldwide influence and leadership capabilities adopts the change, others may follow, even if not immediately.

2014 Annual Forecast Preview

Universal adoption, though preferable, is not ultimately necessary. If the United States were to deem a new calendar necessary and demonstrate its benefits to enough leaders of countries key to the international system, a critical mass could be reached (though the spread of the metric system around the world has been achieved without U.S. leadership). And the Gregorian calendar would not need to be eliminated altogether; Henry believes it could still be used by those who depend on it most, such as farmers, in the same way certain religions, industries, fields of study and states use multiple calendars for various needs.
Will the Gregorian calendar survive? Will this century end with a December lasting 31 days or Hanke-Henry's 38? The current geopolitical realities surrounding calendrical reform tells us that reform would not happen quickly or easily, but history tells us change is possible -- especially during periods of geopolitical transformation or upheaval.

Read more: The Geopolitics of the Gregorian Calendar | Stratfor
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New Year's Resolutions

This year, 2014, I resolve to maintain my efforts at blogging longer than for a single day.

As any reader can see, I failed to make more than one entry in the whole of 2013. No excuses. To put it bluntly,  I just didn't do it. Hallelujah anyway! God is still with us.

There's a story behind that last expression, I shall tell it some other time.

Today, my comments will focus on blogging as an extremely popular means of expression and communicating opinion.

It seems that everyone blogs, even world famous Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman. My son, David, pastor of Central Westside United Church in Owen Sound ,Ontario, also blogs and posts his message on at least two or three websites as well as the local newspaper, the Owen Sound Sun-Times. Many ministers post the themes for their next Sunday'ssermons on their blogs.

I wonder how many blogs like this one are posted but not read by very many peoplpe, if any at all. Perhaps the best way to encourage an audience is to advertise it on several other comunicates sites - Facebook, for instance. (Good idea! Note to self: let your FB friends know about this.)

Why do we do this? Is it merely the stroking of one's ego? A lust for an audience ? Or could be a real desire to communicate something of worth for whoever happens to pass by?

One of the ways I would like to communicate what I have been writing during the past decade, not just for the past year, would be post the notes for the Bible study group of seniors I lead at Glen Abbey United Church next door to our seniors residence. We meet on Tuesday mornings from October to April. In recent months I have been sending out introductory notes and questions for discussion on the Fridays before each session. The group members seem to appreciate advance notice or an opportunity to follow our process if they happen to miss a session.

So begins the keeping of my first resolution of 2014.

Hallelujah anyway! God is still with us.

So What's New About New Year's Day?

Yes, what’s so new about New Year’s Day? It just happens to be number 2013 on the particular calendar our culture follows. This year used to be designated of A.D., the abbreviation for Anno Domini, following the Christian calendar authorized in 1582 by Pope Gregory XII for use in all Roman Catholic countries of Europe.

The British retained their traditional Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar, for another 170 years until 1752. That also included the British colonies in North America and the West Indies.

Just to confuse the matter further, a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus, (c. 470-c. 544) was the person who invented the use of the term Anno Domini (A.D./AD) to refine the date of Easter, not Christmas, the celebration of the supposed birth date of Jesus Christ.

The Chinese have another calendar as do some religious communities such as the Jews. The Chinese have three different ways of numbering their years. Thus, 2013 may be one of the following: 4650, 4710 or 4711. The Chinese New Year won’t begin until February 10, 2013, whichever year it happens to be. The Hebrew New Year, called Rosh Hashana, will not be celebrated until September 5-6, 2013. This will be the year 5773 in their calendar.

To get away from the religious connotations (to say nothing of the prejudices) of numbering years, this year is now commonly designated 2013 CE. The initial CE stand for Common Era (a.k.a Current Era or Christian Era). But the date still retains its religious roots. The date of succeeding years was intended to be counted from the year 1, the year Jesus Christ was born. Christian religious scholars now know that this was a historical error made in the calculation of Jesus birth date. The actual date is unknown, though much energy has been spent trying to ascertain when it occurred.

All calendars, religious or secular, serve the purpose of determining in a crude mathematical way how we account for the passage of time. It is really the revolution of the planet Earth on its axis and its circling of our star, the sun, that accounts for the numbering of days. Since the earliest humans first became conscious that this was happening and interpreted it as the rising and setting of the sun, special meaning has been this natural phenomenon. Religious centres and celebrations were created to mark the changing of the seasons caused by the earth’s revolutions.

Thus calendars became necessary to mark of passing time. Either the summer and winter solstis are really the only natural new years days.

Christmas 2012

CHRISTMAS 2012

In his latest newsletter cum bible study of the Nativity stories, retired Bishop John Spong presents a strong case for finding clues to the birth of Jesus to Mary in very real, human circumstances. Four of Jesus’ ancestors listed in the genealogy of Matthew 1:1-18 were women of ill repute according to the Law of Moses – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Women did not appear in traditional Hebrew genealogies. So this was nothing to boast about in the strict Hebrew tradition.

Furthermore, it was Joseph who discovered Mary’s pregnancy and by the inspiration of the Spirit overcame his reluctance to marry her. His inspiration came in a vision of an angel speaking to him, a typical means of revelation in the Hebrew scriptures.

We may conclude from this interpretation of Matthew’s narrative that from the very first Jesus’ family life was very disturbed in terms of what we often define as “traditional family values.” On the other hand, this gives deeper meaning for me of the considerable distress a great many families are experiencing this year as Christmas approaches. It also reflects how much the names Jesus (Hebrew for ‘God saves’) and Emmanuel (‘Hebrew for ‘God with us’) may mean in the violent  and troubled times like those we are living through right now.

As we sing the familiar carols and read once more the ancient story of the First Christmas, we are reminded of how vulnerable and fragile life can be. This is so in our extended family and for so many other families around the world. We are made aware too that this may have been the case for the Holy Family long ago.

My prayer for you is that in spite of all you will enjoy to the utmost possible the peace, joy and love that Christmas brings. I hope too that you will be blessed in every possible way through the coming year.

-WISE

-WISE

This is not about wisdom. It’s about the suffix -wise, as in otherwise. Any dictionary will tell you that as an adjective or adverb it means something else, different from what is being considered. But what does it mean when attached, - with a hyphen or not - to other words?

Dictionary definitions state that in such instances –wise denotes a way of indicating an alternative manner of dealing with a thing, a position or a direction. For example, this sentence: I laid the planks length-wise indicated the direction in which I laid the planks.

We often insert such adverbs into our common conversation, as in salary-wise, health-wise or time-wise. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (1998) considers that form of speech “inelegant.” I suspect that most people think otherwise.

Indeed, I suspect that the explanation of Webster’s Standard American Dictionary is closer to what most people think. Used as a suffix, -wise creates words that show awareness and concern of a particular subject. A person experienced in some professional field as the media or finance could well be regarded a media-wise or money-wise.

Perhaps we are just being pedantic is objecting to such adjectives. Or is snooty a better way of criticizing those attitudes, as an old-school teacher might demand better grammar and vocabulary in our use of the Queen’s English?

After reading some of the essays written by high school and even college students, I am grateful for my teachers who insisted that I take care with the way I use words and form sentences. Parsing compound complex sentences in senior public school grammar was distinctly unpleasant work. When I describe what that task entailed, all I get to my grandchildren is a stare or an abhorrent reply, “We never do that!”