TIMES
EAGLE
NORTH
COAST
VOL17NO2 50CENTS
In a dark timi
aje byins ro su.
-Theodore Roerhko
DECEMBER 1995
This issue of the North Coast Times Eagle is dedi
cated to Juanita Huebner, writer, artist, poet and unrelent
ing activist who has many times saved this newspaper
from extinction by organizing fundraisers to pay the printer
(who must always be paid). She is the Eagle’s savoir as
well as its savior.
She recently skirted death and is recovering. Her
poem “The Silent Keepers of The Box” is reprinted from
last December’s pages in tribute to her courageous and
unfailing heart.
a
-MPMc
THE SILENT KEEPERS OF THE BOX
we are starting out from our pure silence
into a box of old broken moons and paragraphs
written quickly by the tongue of technological fury
under the luminous absence of the heart.
some of the words we read have bloodied arrow-tips,
others look now like burned flowers,
and still others hide at the bottom of the box
with trembling wings, remembering.
we shall not move from this box
until the mouth of this universe listens
to the full circumference of dignified eyes
and walks blind down the soul’s corridor
feeling Its way along each vein
without a compass, boots, nor a knife.
we will pry open the lid for more light
only after expectation sweeps
Its scattered debris of arrogance and war
into sad, little piles of thorns,
and when solitude is left to whisper ancient cords
like minor, beautiful waves washing over the bones of the dead
like a long rain crying out from a blue silence.
-JUANITA HUEBNER
ETCHING BY JUANITA HUEBNER
BORN TO BE A REBEL
BY MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER
The claim is that a baby was born two millennia ago
without benefit of sexual intercourse, which must have severely
tried the faith of the father and perhaps greatly surprised the
mother. No one is absolutely certain when the infant appeared in
a stable among farm animals, his temporarily homeless parents
and, old testaments say, angels and other celestials. The baby
was proclaimed the Son of God by three travelers known ever
afterward as Wise Men, although in his lifetime none of the
world's religions recognized him as blood or spiritual kin to any of
their deities. He had no brothers or sisters who are known about
(this is disputed), and he seems to have been encouraged in his
own omnipotence as only children often are.
Not much is known about the child’s early life until he
reached 30. Like his father (or the earth-person who seems to
have resignedly accepted his paternal role), he became a car
penter. Only one incident of his childhood is chronicled: he is
said to have to thrown a few moneychangers out of a temple,
which betrays an early example of his essential naivetE.
He emerged from obscurity when he was 30, and until
his death three years later he roamed around preaching radical
ism, sedition and revolution. He was unusually popular among
the impoverished and discontented, attracting followers of home
less and unemployed, mentally unstable and physically disabled,
sexually and politically deviant, and other assorted pariahs. He
eventually came to the attention of authorities who were greatly
concerned about his disruptive effect upon the lower classes. A
paid informer from his inner circle (called apostles) betrayed him
and he was executed after an inconclusive trial.
His place in history and myth is principally as a religious
figure. However, a significant number of scholars challenge that
he was the son of any but a humble carpenter. They claim he
was a political activist, specifically a labor organizer in an era
when workers had absolutely no political or personal rights or lib
erties. These revisionists refute that he was executed for reli
gious preaching — as even contemporary times show, religious
radicals and cult founders can be tolerated within a society while
labor agitators are frequently imprisoned or murdered.
His execution is often cited as evidence of this theory.
He was crucified on a cross, which was the normal method for
dispatching criminals and enemies of the state, replaced in later
periods by the gibbet and electric chair. However, nails were dri
ven into his hands and feet instead of suspending him by the
usual rope bindings. The specific use of nails is proof enough,
the revisionists insist, that he was arrested and executed for his
attempts to organize carpenters and others of the working class
in what would later be known as a labor union, and that he had
no intention of founding a religion.
Some of his later followers, though adherents of him as
Son of God, have acknowledged that he antagonized the law
and order establishment of his day. They admit, in the words of a
few, that he attacked “the very roots of his society,” and that “he
was a problem to his mother and to his entire generation.”
“He was the most radical leader who ever lived," a 20th century
disciple has written.
Although the revolutionary nature of his preaching
caused his execution, his later proselytes adapted the status
quo to their creed, which ultimately became its most effective
instrument of perpetuation By structuring a theology on the claim
that he was the Son of God, his successors enjoyed an advan
tage most temporal systems lack (and religions enjoy): they did
not have to deliver on their promises. Indeed, for two millennia
they have kept their flocks docile with extravagant suggestions of
everlasting life beyond the grave of the flesh, which surpasses
anything secular organizations can offer
— and the sweetest part is they don’t have to prove any of it.
The first generations of his disciples eagerly martyred
themselves (incidentally providing immensely popular spectacle
for mass audiences while supplying abundant food for circus ani
mals). The farther west succeeding generations moved the cen
ter of their expanding religion the increasingly lighter his skin and
hair in evocations of his image, and his radical ardor was soft
ened to a benign, implicitly feminine expression.
He is called the Prince of Peace, yet in his name his fol
lowers have warred incessantly against peoples of differing
beliefs and against each other as sects rise and claim them
selves his only true disciples. In his name genocide was waged
against the original inhabitants of the Americas and Europe was
made a cemetery in the name of Reformation 1700 years after
his death. In the most grotesque excess of theology, a bizarre,
vengeful sect that confused him with grim ancient gods he dis
placed almost succeeded in exterminating the religion of his par
ents which had refused to accept him as a long awaited messiah
2000 years before.
His presence might be useful again, but not in the sce
nario of Armageddon some of his more fervent disciples yearn
for; nor would it help if he (or she) posed as a messiah, buddha
or guru. Humanity, as it has so often before, could use
a few good prophets— revolutionaries armed with visions
instead of weapons and hatreds. Unfortunately, false prophets
emerge in unsettled periods who create great mischief and mis
ery, whose violent and vengeful ambitions obscure quantum
visions of universal suffrage and prosperity.
Perhaps it is time to reexamine his real message to
humanity. Instead of a Son of God predestined to die to defer
human responsibility for its sins of greed, rapacity and butchery,
we have an ordinary carpenter who, for reasons that have been
lost due to his deification, felt compelled to fight the slavery and
injustices of his era and attempted to raise up the poor and dis
enfranchised into a powerful force of revolution. If that is what he
was, then he did not die to save our souls: he lived to make us
free and was put to death for that heresy.