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All In The Family

May 22, 2025 by Peg Leave a Comment

The Book of Ruth has four pages. One paragraph of one page is perhaps the Bible’s most often recited passage by brides and grooms: 

“Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you;
For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people, and your God my God;
Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.”

Ruth 1:16-17

These beautiful promises were made by Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi. The family and cultural inter-connections are closely intertwined. Ironically, Naomi, her husband, Elimelech, and their two sons, Mahlou and Chilion, were originally Ephrathites who lived in Bethlehem in Judah, what is now not only the birthplace of Jesus but also Palestine. A further historical irony is that just as today there is famine in Gaza, part of Palestine, in Naomi family’s time “the judges” (the government?) “ruled there was a famine in the land”. So, Naomi and her family left Bethlehem and “sojourned” to the country of Moab that was in what is now the country of Jordan.

Naomi’s sons both married Moabite women but then both sons and Elimelech died. Thereafter, times were hard for Naomi and her daughters-in-law when Naomi heard that, “the Lord had visited his people (in Bethlehem) and given them food”. So, Naomi, Ruth and Orpah decided to seek new lives in Bethlehem. While Orpah turned back to Moab, Naomi and Ruth ventured on to Bethlehem where Naomi’s husband still had a wealthy Israeli kinsman named Boaz. Ruth and Boaz eventually married and had a son named Obed. Obed fathered Jesse who fathered Israel’s most famous king, David. The genetics of the Israeli-Palestinian Naomi, the Moabite (Jordanian) Ruth, the Israeli-Palestinian Boaz and the Israeli King David are closely related. They are all of Semitic culture and history and are all deeply embedded in the general genealogy and geography of the area. In essence, they are all related, leading to possible fratricide or genocide if indiscriminate slaughter should occur.

Yet, according to many authorities that is exactly what the Zionists of Israel are doing today as a matter of government policy. As former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, recently stated in an interview on BBC, what Israel is doing in Gaza is, “very close to a war crime”. And more evidence of Israel’s intent comes from Israeli Cabinet Members, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have publicly called for the “conquest and depopulation of Gaza”.

More graphically, as recently reported in The Washington Post’s World View Newsletter by reporter Ishaan Tharoor, former Israeli Defense Force general and current head of the Democrats Party in Israel, Yair Golan, stated:

“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state among nations if it doesn’t return to behaving like a sane country. A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set the expulsion of a population as a goal.” 

As for America, with the cooperation of Egypt and other allies, we should immediately force massive amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza through Egypt. America should also guarantee the accessibility and safety of impartial international journalists into Gaza so the world can witness the facts on the ground. And, the immediate cessation of America’s enablement of the killing and destruction by Israel in Gaza should be a priority.

Not only are the descendants of Ruth and Naomi responsible for and entitled to humane treatment, the United States, as part of the human family, must help assure such outcomes.

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Filed Under: Gavel Gamut, Middle East, Religion, War Tagged With: All In The Family, Ben Gvir, Bethlehem, Bezalel Smotrich, Bible, Boaz, Ehud Olmert, famine, fratricide, Gaza, genocide, Israel, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Jordan, Judah, King David, Moab, Naomi, Palestine, The Book of Ruth

Smoke

April 23, 2025 by Peg Leave a Comment

 

           Photo by Peg Redwine
Photo by Peg Redwine

 

Pope Francis will be buried in a plain wooden coffin outside of Vatican City at the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. Six other popes are buried there also, although none after the 17th Century. St. Mary Major Basilica is not within Vatican City. Vatican City is impressive by design. Michelangelo’s La Pieta is there as is the breathtaking Sistine Chapel. The Pontifical Swiss Guards, all of whom looked to be first round NBA draft picks, are stationed in and around St. Peter’s Basilica and appear to have been chosen by their opaque facial expressions. Even non-Catholics are awed by the pomp and circumstance of Vatican City. In short, it is the antithesis of a wooden coffin. However, its ostentatiousness brings Pope Francis’ humility into sharp contrast.

 

Photo by Peg Redwine
Photo by Peg Redwine

The first pope I remember was Pius XII (1939-1958) who was succeeded by John XXIII (1958-1963), Paul VI (1963-1978), John Paul I (1978), John Paul II, (1978-2005), Benedict XVI (2005-2013) then Francis (2013-2025). Naturally, Francis, the most current, stands out as the best-known and most accessible to us in 2025. The modern media age makes all world leaders more ubiquitous and familiar.

In Assisi. Photo by Peg Redwine

But it was not the media that created Pope Francis’ character of humility and grace. The record and memory of the original Francis of Assisi guided the ecumenical kindness and inclusiveness of Pope Francis. When one travels to the town of Assisi in the Papal State of Umbria, Italy, the tomb of St. Francis has the look and feel of acceptance and equality. Pope Francis chose his name carefully.

Pope Francis appeared to open his heart to all without reservation as to status, wealth, sexuality or frailty. As Francis often said, “Who am I to judge?”; the Vicar of Christ indeed. Pope Francis dedicated his leadership of over one billion Catholics as well as his concern for countless Muslims, Jews, pagans, non-believers and other Christians to the causes of peace and human suffering throughout the earth. When the smoke from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel turns white, it will be good for us all, Catholics, atheists and sinners of all beliefs, if a third Francis can be found to lead the way forward.

St. Peter’s Basilica Ceiling. Photo by Peg Redwine

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Filed Under: Gavel Gamut, Religion, World Events Tagged With: acceptance, Assisi, equality, grace, humility, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, kindness, Peace, Pope Francis, Sistine Chapel, Vatican

Ah, Spring!

April 16, 2025 by Peg Leave a Comment

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was one of America’s best-known authorities on the universality and similarity of religions and myths we humans have created and lived by for hundreds of thousands of years. Campbell saw these recurring cultural explanations and superstitions as deeply imbedded in our daily lives. One similarity many of these phenomena have is they often center around springtime. While mankind has left countless records of beliefs in supernatural beings long before Judaism, Christianity and Islam, these three currently ascendant faiths each reflect the significance of spring’s influence, especially in stories of rebirth. The famous prosecutor of the Charles Manson Family, Vincent Bugliosi (1934-2015), even based his understanding of Manson’s motives for murdering people he did not even know on Manson’s convoluted interpretation of the Biblical Rapture myth (Revelation: Ch. 14, 15-20).

In the springtime, Jews celebrate Passover with eight days of special prayers and a Seder supper. The Judaic legend is that God gave Moses the laws of the Torah and Moses passed those commandments for living onto the Jewish people. The Torah is the record of those guidelines.

Christians celebrate their belief in a promised rebirth and their God’s instructions on behaving, as delivered directly from God – the Son, Jesus. Christians have a period of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday and an Easter dinner. The New Testament contains those principles to live by.

Muslims venerate the Quran as the word from their God spoken through Muhammad for a period of time they call Ramadan. Each day starts with a meal, Suhar, then a period of fasting ending with a second meal, Iftar.

Jews and Muslims view themselves as descendants from the same progenitor, Abraham, and worship the same God. Christians also worship that God but further deify Jesus as God. These ostensibly symbiotic religious phenomena have not produced consistently symbiotic relationships between and among the three groups.

Repentance, reflection, prayer, forgiveness, generosity, hope and joy are some of the elements in each of these three religions springtime celebrations of rebirth. For Christians, Easter Eggs are a ubiquitous symbol of what many so-called pagan cultures use to represent these same important rituals.

However, springtime is not just for organized religions. It may be mere coincidence that our government sees springtime as a propitious time to suck tribute from us, but I doubt it. When April 15 rolls around the IRS starts its period of concentrated accounting for any money we may have somehow managed to stash aside. It is time for what President Abraham Lincoln, the creator of the income tax to finance the Union’s Civil War, called “A new birth of freedom”, yeah, right.

Call me a cynic, but I do not see it as a mere happenstance that as most of America is awash in the good feelings brought on by Passover, Ramadan and Easter our government is demanding from us what it wants to spend on its own priorities. I see method in the timing of TAX-TIME and spring flowers. I am even a little superstitious that the first hummingbird that appeared at Peg’s feeder showed up April 15. Its avaricious slurping reminded me of other blood suckers that appear for “rebirth” along with the dandelions.

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Filed Under: Authors, Events, Gavel Gamut, Religion Tagged With: Abraham, April 15, Charles Manson, Christianity, Easter, Iftar, IRS, Islam, James M. Redwine, Jesus, Jim Redwine, Joseph Campbell, Judaism, Lent, Lincoln, Muhammad, myths, Passover, Quran, Ramadan, Rapture myth, rebirth, religions, Seder, Spring, Sugar, tax-time, Torah, Vincent Bugliosi

Peace In Our Time

January 22, 2025 by Peg Leave a Comment

In his Inaugural Address President Trump told us his two main goals were to be a unifier and a peace maker. Most of us can applaud those aims. Also, most people, whether MAGA or Trump Haters realize such laudable and difficult objectives will take some time. Even skeptics must allow for a country as divided as America to be incrementally and slowly to coalesce behind anyone who announces such commendable, if unlikely, achievements. After all, even Jesus has had over two thousand years to reign as the Prince of Peace and the whole world seems still bent on committing either genocide or suicide. Perhaps we should, at least, allow President Trump more than a couple of weeks. While not convinced by his first term nor his actions thereafter, I for one can reserve final judgment. On the other hand, President Trump, in my opinion, has not made an auspicious start.

You may recall, Gentle Reader, that during his first term President Trump sought to restrict all Muslims from immigrating to America. Several of the countries we seek to have peaceful relations with are majority adherents of Islam. The U.S. has about four million Muslim citizens. The earth has a population of about two billion Muslims; that is one Muslim out of every four humans. To have a peaceful world America must have a leader who does not hate Muslims.

At his inauguration President Trump had a Catholic bishop, a Protestant cleric and a Jewish rabbi, but no Islamic imam. There were, also, numerous secular figures involved. While some citizens of the United States might believe that there should be no emphasis on any religious faith in our government based on the First Amendment, it has been an American tradition to involve religion in our inaugurations. This probably does no harm as long as all faiths are welcome. However, the exclusion of Islam from President Trump’s ceremony was obviously by his preference. Such exclusion did not help either national unity or the cause of peace.

What President Trump could do is to begin referring to America’s religious tradition as a Judeo-Christian-Islamic one; after all, each of the three faiths worship the same god and have many of the same rituals. Such a gesture by our new President would encourage the populace and especially the news media to include one-fourth of our world family in our aspirations for unity and peace. I doubt if such a magnanimous gesture by our new leader would escape notice and, I predict it would receive heartfelt gratitude.

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Filed Under: America, Elections, Gavel Gamut, Religion Tagged With: Catholic, Gentle Reader, Inaugural Address, James M. Redwine, Jesus, Jewish, Jim Redwine, Muslims, peace in our time, peace maker, Prince of Peace, Protestant, Trump, unifier

Believe It Or Not

September 6, 2024 by Peg Leave a Comment

How does a new religion get started? Islam fourteen hundred years ago? Christianity two thousand years ago? Judaism twenty-four hundred years ago? The Romans and Jupiter twenty-five hundred years ago? The Greeks and Zeus three thousand years ago? The Egyptians and thousands of gods four thousand years ago? Gentle Reader, these are just my guesses; you are, of course, free to make your own estimates or consult Google as you see fit.

However, my actual concern is the religion of presidential politics as practiced currently on cable TV in America. And I know when these new beliefs began. With FOX News, the new Defender of the Conservative Faith arrived when Donald Trump came down that golden escalator in 2015. As for CNN and MSNBC, their faith in a Liberal Deliverance was restored only a couple of months ago when Kamala Harris arose like the mythical Phoenix from the ashes of Old Joe.

As best I can tell, the liturgy of these conflicted beliefs relies heavily on denigrating whichever candidate a particular TV network does not like. Portentous warnings from talking heads claim that the election of the “wrong” candidate will cause crops to fail and Taylor Swift to become the new Pied Piper of American youth.

These dire warnings from CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and even occasionally, PBS, have become as ubiquitous as commercials and as vociferous as a Pentecostal sermon. CNN convenes numerous panels of “Never Trumpers” who have heard directly from on high that a Trump election will immediately boot America from our Promised Land. And FOX asserts that a Harris win will reign fire and brimstone all over our democratic Garden of Eden, or at least, everywhere but New York and California.

But, just as one religion after another from the dawn of recorded history has appeared and disappeared, we can all pray that this election will end before Armageddon begins. I foresee hope for salvation from this endless cacophony of vapidity, FOOTBALL! As we Americans have done since the first football game was aired on TV, we clutch at the hope our team will rise above the fray. We can seize onto the faith in our champions on the gridiron and set aside the ennui brought on by the gaggle of gloom bearers on TV. Unfortunately, football season only lasts through the Super Bowl in February of 2025. Of course, the networks are doing their best to force us to buy every game and the new Transfer Portal and Name, Image and Likeness rules are sorely testing our faith.

And, of course, whoever wins the election will be subject to four years of damnation from some of the disappointed anchors. Those sore losers will likely begin endless recriminations for venal sins they assert just over half of the electorate will have committed by worshipping a false idol. As for us in the captive viewership, maybe the INSP network will have enough Gunsmoke reruns to sustain us until the next two graven images are nominated four years from now.

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Filed Under: Elections, Football, Gavel Gamut, Presidential Campaign, Religion Tagged With: Christianity, CNN, Egyptians and gods, football, Fox News, Gentle Reader, Greeks and Zeus, Gunsmoke reruns, Harris, INSP, Islam, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Judaism, MSNBC, Name Image and Likeness, PBS, Presidential politics, religion, Romans and Jupiter, Transfer Portal, Trump

The Crusade Charade

August 29, 2024 by Peg Leave a Comment

The Crusades were the outgrowth of many factors but they are generally categorized as a series of wars between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims occurring from 1096 to 1291 AD involving competing claims over the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem. The catalyst for the first Crusade was a call to Christians made by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in France in November 1095. Urban declared that God had willed Christians to oust Muslims from the sacred sites. Urban promised remission of sins for any Christian who died in this vital service of Christ. Thousands of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and others “took up the cross.”

Later in the New World, priests, clerics and politicians and plain Americans have spent from the 15th century to 2024 spreading the gospel at home and continuing to attempt to control the beliefs and behaviors of Middle Easterners. Manifest Destiny was based on the premise that the god of Christians had ordained that America must eliminate paganism and not commit the sin of omitting to develop the land. Such “crusades” as the Trail of Tears were the outgrowth of European immigrants and their descendants’ beliefs that their god had ordained that America was the Promised Land for Caucasian Christians and that Native Americans had to be evicted, killed or converted to Christianity. This ingrained racial memory from 1492 until today may influence the justification for our invasions into the Muslim Middle East. Just as Native Americans had to be destroyed to save them, Muslims are still the enemies of Christ who must be saved from their misguided faith.

Most recently the United States has continued the tradition of the Crusades by invading Iraq twice and belligerently engaging Iran and such groups as ISIS, Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and others. America designates these groups as terrorists but they claim to be part of a resistance movement. These organizations are generally Islamic in their religion as were the native Arabs and Persians during the original Crusades. There were Jewish populations in the Holy Land during the time Christian Europeans were seeking to take over the Middle East, but they were a small minority and could not mount an effective resistance to the Crusades.

Today, due to the world’s post-holocaust revulsion of the Nazi atrocities and the beliefs of many American fundamentalist Christians, such as dreamers in the Rapture, the United States is defending Israel’s aggression and is allied with the Zionists against Muslims, especially Iranians. Many of our politicians and much of the national media are on a crusade to support the hegemony of Israel under the guise of its self-defense. Israel has nuclear weapons it developed by spying on the United States and has an extremely modern and powerful military. It has nothing to fear from the rag-tag Muslim militias even if they are backed by countries such as Iran, China and Russia. Israel does not need our military support. And its current aggression in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, to say nothing, as most media does, about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, clearly proves Israel does not deserve our support.

Israel is conducting its own crusade against Muslim countries in the Holy Land. If the United States cannot find the moral courage to confront this decades long injustice, we should, at least, not supply it with weapons and diplomatic immunity. It is long past the time America atoned for its own sins against our native population and that we not repeat those sins in the Middle East. To do so, all we need is to be guided by those principles of our Constitution and the philosophy of that Christian faith many Americans profess. Perhaps, if we make a good faith effort to act in the Middle East as the country we claim to be, we will not be misled by the Zionists among the Israelis into the same type of disaster those holier than thou European Crusaders had to endure a thousand years ago.

 

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Filed Under: America, Gavel Gamut, Israel, Manifest Destiny, Middle East, Native Americans, News Media, Religion, War Tagged With: Al-Qaeda, America, Arabs, China, Crusades, European Christians, Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Holy Land, Iran, ISIS, Israel, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Lebanon, Manifest Destiny, Middle East Muslims, Native Americans, Persians, Pope Urban II, Russia, Syria, Taliban, Trail of Tears

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© 2025 James M. Redwine

 

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