Nativity Poem
Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)
I’ve posted this before, but its worth repeating.
Joseph Brodsky said about himself, “I’m Jewish; a Russian poet, an English essayist – and, of course, an American citizen.” Although born into a Jewish family, during the siege of Leningrad he was apparently baptized at the age of two in a country parish. He began writing poetry as a young man, and incurred the disapproval of the Soviet authorities. In 1972 he was expelled and, with W. H. Auden’s help, came to the United States. While he learned English and wrote essays in that language, his attempts at poetry in his adopted tongue were unsuccessful; he is thus known in English through skillful translations. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. Starting in 1962 and continuing until his death he wrote an annual Christmas poem. While his own relationship to the Christian faith was ambiguous – he once joked that he was “a Christian by correspondence” – it is clear in his poems that he understood the implications of the Incarnation. He believed that “Christmas deals with the ‘calculation’ of life and the existence of the individual”. The following poem, written in Russian by Brodsky in 1989, was translated by the Irish poet Seamus Heany (himself the Nobel Prize for Literature 1995) and published in 2000 in The New Yorker.
Imagine striking a match that night in the cave:
Imagine crockery, try to make use of its glaze
To feel cold cracks in the floor, the blankness of hunger.
Imagine the desert – but the desert is everywhere.
Imagine striking a match in that midnight cave,
The fire, the farm beasts in outline, the farm tools and stuff;
And imagine, as you towel your face in the enveloping folds,
Mary, Joseph, and the Infant in swaddling clothes.
Imagine the kings, the caravans’ stilted procession
As they make for the cave, or, rather, three beams closing in
And in on the star, the creaking of loads, the clink of a cowbell;
(No thronging of Heaven as yet, no peal of the bell
That will ring in the end for the infant once he has earned it).
Imagine the Lord, for the first time, from darkness, and stranded
Immensely in distance, recognizing Himself in the Son
Of Man: His homelessness plain to him now in a homeless one.
It is not by accident that I like living in Greece, A big part of it is I have an appreciation for the 
Orthodox clergy are inherently conservative and resist change – and as evidence of this remember that the 
The fourth possibility is what is happening in Central America and parts of South America (especially Brazil). What was once virtually a Catholic monopoly has now been transformed into a multi-denominational landscape. In particular, the evangelical and charismatic churches have made serious inroads. Unlike the US, this is not necessarily correlated with the political spectrum, for just as the Roman Catholic church has its conservative and socialist wings, so do the new churches. Interestingly, this has forced the Catholic Church in Latin America to up its game, and become more lively and attractive. Could this happen here in Greece? While the government of Greece makes it challenging for new churches, it is not impossible. I suspect the Orthodox Church of Greece would fight hard to retain its privilege, but it is hard in a liberal democracy to stop people voting with their feet.
Good morning! Many of you know me. I am Bruce Bryant-Scott, a 55 year old heterosexual male, born and raised in 1960s and 1970s Anglophone culture in Shawinigan, Quebec, which was as binary as all get out. I started as a child in the United Church of Canada but was confirmed in both the United Church and the Anglican Church in 1975, just before the great Plan of Union finally fell apart. I think you’ll notice that one of those confirmations really took. I have been ordained thirty years in June. I studied at the Toronto School of Divinity, on the campus of the University of Toronto, in Trinity 
College, and at Harvard University. As mentioned, I am now undertaking a PhD in theology at the University of London, in England, and I hope to defend my dissertation “Unsettling Theology” this Fall. In Toronto I learned just enough Greek and Hebrew to know that all translations are problematic. Thus when people say that they rely on the Bible, I have to ask which translation they are using, because the translations always inscribe the biases of their translators.
between as well. It is a claim that all of creation and its purpose is oriented to Jesus. Now, when we see these kinds of binary opposites, I suggested that in Genesis 1 we might read it not simply as those opposites, but as everything along the spectrum of sexuality and identity. It was not a particularly good argument, but I thought that this was something we might consider. The Bishop heard this, of course, which is why I think he suggested I might be a good speaker.
Some of the things that emerged as he and you talked were:
Last week you had Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy, a professor at the University of Victoria. Her points, among others were:
Let’s talk about Queer Theory. According to some, it initially emerged in 1990 and by 1994 was all the rage in the Humanities, although I was sort of aware of it already in the mid-1980s. Newish, but not new. The church and seminary, of course, got there later than everybody else, but by 2000 or so scholars were being appointed to major positions who were well acquainted with it.
First, let’s think about God, and God as Trinity – you know, the Holy Trinity. In the Hebrew original God has many names: El, or God, which is masculine in grammatical gender; Elohim, the 
plural form of the word El, but which takes verbs in the singular male; YHWH, a name considered so sacred by Jesus’s time that it is not pronounced but is replaced with Adonai, Lord. In orthodox Christian thought God is a trinity, three 
hypostases in one ousia, usually translated as persons and substance. Forget the usual problems, and consider the gender. In Greek Father is Pater, and is masculine; the Son, the Word that was made flesh, is masculine; but the Holy Spirit, 
Hagia Pneuma, is neuter. In Hebrew it’s even more interesting. Both Av and Ben, Father and Son, are masculine, but the Holy Spirit is Ruach, and it is feminine. As well, the Logos or Word is considered by most orthodox theologians to be the equivalent of Holy Wisdom or Hochma Kadosh. A Cathedral in 
Constantinople was dedicated to Christ as Holy Wisdom – the Hagia Sophia in Greek, which is also feminine. So, when thinking of God. And considering grammatical gender, we have not only masculine, but feminine and neuter. So right from the get go in ancient orthodox Christian dogma we have a God who transcends and incorporates genders, and is far from binary. If humanity is made in God’s image, arguably we are just as far from binary as well.
the passage comes in the context that sees same-sex desire and same-sex sexual acts as the result of people having abandoned God for idols. Earlier in the chapter Paul describes an early history that is not commonly understood. After the Fall of Adam and Eve they and their first descendants continued to call upon God and sacrifice to the true divine. Only after some time had passed did they begin to make idols out of animals and human figures and combinations of humans and animals. These idols were an abomination to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Israelites were forbidden to worship them. Because the non-Israelites and non-Jews persisted in this, God punished them by having them develop same-sex desires. In the strongly patriarchal societies of the Middle East and the Roman Empire real sex for men was understood to be sexual penetration. Among Gentile Romans it was irrelevant whether the subject of the penetration was male or female, or how exactly it was done, just that it was degrading to be on the receiving end. Thus, because women were on the “passive” side of penetration, they were not of as high status as men. Slaves and lower classes were suitable subjects of higher class sexual penetration. Sex was not only gendered, it was an act of power, class, and “dignitas”. This is why same-sex relations between women was so depraved – it undermined the status of phallo-centric men and the proper relation of men and women, citizen and subject, free and slave.
This was one of the great economic lessons from the Great Depression. The Crash of 1929 was pretty bad, but the US government through the Federal Reserve and other governments through their central banks exacerbated the situation and turned it into the Great Depression through their tight money policies. Banks were allowed to fail and businesses cut back on investment and costs. Money stopped moving, as people were afraid of losses and incurring debt. This is called a “tight money” policy, and political leaders congratulated themselves on running balanced budgets while the economy ground to a halt. As people lost jobs or were afraid of unemployment they sat on their money, in some cases literally putting it under their mattresses in some cases. While some governments attempted to stimulate the economy, the amounts were so low that it did not make a difference. Only with the coming of the Second World War did the economy start moving again with the massive investment in armaments and forces. The lesson was learned; in 2008 no banks were allowed to fail (well, one was, and that triggered the alarm), and the US government even bought out GM. The UK government took over several banks, and the movement of capital was ensured. While there was a short recession, the markets came back, and the economy never reached the level of the Great Depression.
What is true for you?
The earliest view is the concept of Sheol. Sheol is a shadowy existence after death, a place for all the dead, the good and the bad. What is left of the person is a bare remnant, without strength or power. The 
Later on the idea of Heaven and Hell developed. The personality of the dead is less shadowy and more defined. God punishes and rewards the dead; God brings the good into the divine presence, and the wicked go to a place of punishment, of God’s wrath, often called 
This is seen in his resurrected body. It is described as both physical, something you can touch, and yet spiritual, something which will not perish. It appears suddenly in one location and then disappears. It can eat, speak, and be heard. Sometimes people recognize it, sometimes they do not. When Jesus addresses people by name, they know him. In Emmaus he is known to the two disciples “in the breaking of bread.” This is not some kind of Zombie Jesus, as modern day detractors of Christianity sometimes suggest. This is not the reanimation of a dead body, mindless, rotting, and doomed to perish again.This is something different.
The Island Parson 