The children of winter

Winter is blowing into Afghanistan. A very, very cold winter that defeated the Russians. Photographs from newspapers and magazines and television show the abandoned children huddling in snow to keep warm. Pictures showing hundreds fleeing are enough to break your heart. I sit in my warm study…and close my eyes…and my mind becomes flooded with memories of another war, with other children.

Christmas in Korea in 1951 with the children of winter and the profound effect it had upon my life.

I cannot tell you what a joy it is to allow these experiences to flood back into my mind…and to write them down to share with you in this season.

I was there again flying as an aircraft commander of a Marine Corps transport plane, a DC-3…the “gooney bird” as we called it. We had the responsibility of flying wounded evacuation. One of the most famous evacuation sites was a river bottom of hard packed sand, called “inje”. We would fly up the canyon, only a hundred feet or so above the river, land on the hard packed sand, pick up the wounded, turn the plane around and take off again. The wounded were brought to us in the helicopters. The blood was not even dry on some of them; there was life and death in the more tragic dimensions.

The armies of North Korea were pushing south as if they were a mighty tidal wave, sweeping everything before it, including South Korean armies and civilians. The major southern city was Pusan at the tip of South Korea.

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Truth of truth

For this Christmas season, my thoughts are about “truth.” D.H. Lawrence made the observation that there are two kinds of truth. A “truth of facts” that has to do with names, places, dates and so forth, like two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen is water. Then there is a “truth of truth” that is revealed to us through legends, mythology, folklore and even fairy tales.

This truth of truth has to do with the inner world of the imagination and emotions. A truth of truth reveals the inner shape and contour of our minds, our longings and needs. Truth of truth will not qualify as facts but in the inner world of the mind, spirit and soul, where we live and dream, hope, imagine and create, there is another reality where we carve out our own truth.

There are those who want us to live without myth. They want us to live only with the truth of facts, which can impoverish and stunt our lives.

When you see life as a poem, and then picture yourself as participating in the poetry through the celebration of ritual, you will understand what mythology is all about.

Christmas time is a celebration of a truth of truth. It has nothing to do with facts.

I know that December 25 was not the birthday of Jesus. I know that “virgin birth” and all the other biblical Christmas stories were common mythological themes, or motifs, that can be found in all the religious traditions from that part of the world.

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Solstice in the canyon

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Every year on the date of the Winter Solstice we do something very special that has become an exciting tradition for the Edelen Sunday Symposium. We meet in Andreas Canyon, the sacred center of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. Our attendance is usually around 150 or more. The Indian managers go all out in helping us, setting up picnic tables and preparing the area next to breathtaking rocks about 400 feet high.

There is no way I can describe the beauty and wonder of this event. This year it will be on December 20 at 10:00 a.m. There is always a crystal blue sky, a light breeze moving the golden leaves of the cottonwood trees. Ravens and Red Tail Hawks coming in with their spirit messages. Last year, during my meditation, a Red Tail Hawk circled my head for about 20 minutes. Everyone watching told me about it following the program.

The Tai Chi Master, Scott Cole, always opens the program by doing his spectacular Tai Chi on top of the rock, dressed in white, against a blue sky. He later comes down and leads everyone in Tai Chi. Robin Kobaly, a very brilliant botanist, gives a presentation on the plants in the area and how they were used by the Indians.

This is followed by my meditation on the significance of the event.

For thousands of years the Winter Solstice (Dec 22-25) has been the most special time of the year and the most important date in human celebration. The sun has started its long journey home bringing Springtime. Celebrating this event in the month of Solstice, I am part of the line of descent that has been uninterrupted almost from the birth of humankind.

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