Advent

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

It’s the holiday season, for sure. While Christmas items appeared even prior to Halloween, here in the Pea Patch it was a modest — if not downright Grinch-like — offering by California standards. My son-in-law’s tradition of turning the family home into a gingerbread house of lights and decorations on the weekend after Thanksgiving finally put his competitive neighbor over the edge. Fearful of heights, he’d put the kids up on the roof year after year, but now that they’re big enough to object, he was forced into hiring a handyman to decorate for him.

The stores were all decking the halls when I left, and bell-ringers, anxious to get an early start on what promised to be meager contributions, manned their pots at door entrances everywhere. Now, back in the country, I find things aren’t so garish. The decorations have yet to go up in the town square, and besides this week’s snow, the first of the year, the one nod to the season seems to be a good stock of egg nog in the dairy case. Still, fa-la-las can’t be far off. This IS the most anticipated season of the year, even when times are tough, and kids everywhere have their little advent calendars to prove it.

Advent is a Latin word, adventus, that means “coming.” For Christians everywhere, some sort of advent activity precedes the celebration of the nativity. Early on, candy makers discovered the profit in little candy-filled calendars during the Christmas spending glut, and they come in all sizes and shapes now. I saw one for dogs the other day, a small puppy treat behind each paper door. Still, I approve of advent. The rest of the world may think advent is just a month of anticipation, but not me. I’d like to see it start on January 1st and end on December 31st.

It’s a hopeful thing to anticipate the coming of something wondrous, whether mystical or mythical, real, imagined or anything in between. I’m a patsy for this kind of thing, as should anyone be who has tasted the Great Mystery for even a moment. There is always something coming, if you believe that the universe is conspiring to bless and delight, excite and inform you. And surely this last month of the eleventh year of the twenty-first century is THE advent month that may rightfully claim that name. Something is surely coming. It’s right around the corner.

It’s interesting to listen to speculation about 2012, at this point. We’re so close to the turning of the calendar year we can taste it, yet we’re so far from what we’d hoped to be by this time, that our eyes burn when we think about it. There’s been a rash of 2012-ain’t-no-big-thing articles, which are helpful in bringing down the temperature on world-end scenario fright. That’s welcome. Given the challenges we have before us in this nation, let alone the world, we could use a little calm, a little control over the continual drama that tries to tug us into the swirling drain.

It’s calm before the storm, in my estimation, but not a storm that eats puppies alive and squashes humans like bugs. There is a storm of awareness coming, and we can already smell the ozone of lightning strikes; we can feel it coming on with a vengeance. If my instincts are sound, there will be more awakening in this coming year than in all of the last decade — more secrets revealed, more history corrected, more myths surrendered and fantasies broken.

Like the onset of adolescence, this may be a bit disconcerting — you know, waking up one morning to find body parts with a mind of their own, the face in the mirror no longer recognizable, and dozens of irregular thoughts wafting through our ever-buzzing brain. Oh, wait — that was THIS year, you say? Never mind, the really juicy part is coming right up. You know you’re waiting for it, even eager for what’s coming. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have signed up for the Shift of Ages.

On the political front, I’m a creature watching and waiting. This weekend, I’m waiting to see if the game of “dares go first” the US is playing with other big polluting countries can produce an agreement, and a glimmer of hope, for the reduction of greenhouse gas. China has so far ignored our “I’ll do it if you will” challenge. If 2012 comes with any kind of global bitch-slap, it should surely chastise nations that ignore something as dire as global warming, putting all species in harm’s way, including the only species with the choice to take action. All eyes should have been on Durban, South Africa, this week, where world leaders at the UN Climate Summit found themselves surrounded by thousands of climate advocates protesting American indifference to our global emergency. There are other big polluters — China, India, Brazil — but none with the hubris to declare themselves a superpower and leader of all things vital to the civilized world. It’s surreal that after all the scientific warnings and the myriad examples of tragic, costly weather extremes in the last decade, we are still playing politics with global warming. Yes, all eyes should have been on Durbin, directed there by an alarmed press. They weren’t.

I’m also waiting to see what the politicians in Washington, D.C. will make of Bernie Sanders’ proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. There are only a handful of citizens in this country who think putting campaign spending into the hands of corporations is good policy, moral, or even legal. This needs addressing right now, if we want to protect the coming election from big-money assault, but so long as the House is well-stocked with Republicans and the Senate is evenly divided, this is unlikely to win politicians’ hearts, even though the majority of the public will likely support it. After November of 2012, there might be a chance to pass such an amendment, which must be approved by a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate in order to be submitted for consideration by the states. Amending the Constitution requires ratification by three-fourths of the states, and getting the states to agree on ANYTHING has been a challenge since 1776. Still, populist momentum will be in play for the 99% that no longer want the corporations’ hands in their pockets. By the time this amendment comes to the floor, perhaps the loudest voice heard will be that of the people. You can read about Bernie’s aptly named ‘Saving American Democracy Amendment’ here.

Having patiently waited to see if the project on which Obama “wasted all his political capital” was worthwhile, now I’m watching to see how the newly implemented ‘medical loss ratio’ shapes up for both patients and insurance companies. Surely the president knew that his Affordable Care Act was going to take so long to be put into place, piecemeal, that most Americans — with, unfortunately, the attention span of a gnat — would give up hope of seeing change that might reflect in his favor. Knowing that, he pushed ahead anyway, and just this month the portion of the legislation kicked in that directs insurance carriers to spend 80 to 85 percent of premium payments on actual patient care, as opposed to overhead expense. Should they fail to do so, they will be forced to rebate the amount they under-spent on care to their customer. In a season when accountability is on everyone’s mind, this would be very welcome news if it had any reasonable press at all. It doesn’t. Still, with millions upon millions in profit at risk, it should not take long for the shit, as they say, to hit the fan. This will shake the ground beneath the insurance carriers until their teeth rattle. With any luck, we’ll notice.

Note, if you will, that all three of these topics — climate change, campaign finance, health care — fall under a subheading of Corporate Manipulation. Note, as well, that the public is firmly behind validating climate change and, by vast numbers, in favor of correcting the Supremes’ egregious ruling on corporate “personhood.” These topics are not hampered by point-counterpoint debates among the great unwashed; opinion has been settled in the majority’s mind, but ignored by the minority’s will. And if the public actually understood the connection between the quality of their health care and the profit margin of their insurance carrier, they’d be furious at that as well. I never have understood how we missed this pivotal point, except that the elemental conversation took place in a political climate where monkeys were flying out of Glenn Beck’s ass. With that kind of entertainment available, real facts had little chance to surface.

My newest bumper sticker reads, “We already have death panels in America; they’re called insurance companies.” Sounds a little tired, I know, but where I live, that point was never made. Perhaps it wasn’t made in your neighborhood, either. To fully appreciate that your adult child can be covered on your insurance for a few pivotal years, that you can’t be bounced out of coverage due to preexisting conditions and that your carrier MUST spend the majority of the money you send them each month on YOU? That’s real progressive change.

And yes, there’s more. The Republicans are distressed because the left has muddied the word “capitalism.” Actually, the Republicans are the ones that muddied it, the left doing very little to stop them, and then having the temerity to point it out. And pointing it out is the game, these days, pointing it out so someone else gets that little light bulb above their head and tells their friend, who talks to their friend, yadda ad infinitum. Pointing it out so that what’s coming is not only logical but welcome, not only necessary but desirable. Pointing it out because going on the way we have been can no longer be tolerated by decent, thinking people.

It’s advent. We’re counting down days to Christmas, to Hanukkah, to dates that represent high holy days for true believers and for those who bought little candy-calendars. We’re counting down to a new year, one that’s been long awaited as a critical turning point for humankind and the planet. We’re anticipating something happening, something on the other side of light bulbs popping on over people’s heads, of hearts opening with compassion and awakening.

Maybe what’s coming will simply be a growing awareness that the planet is smaller than it was, and that we humans must become larger than we’ve been if we are to continue living here. Perhaps each of us will finally understand that we must look beyond boundaries to understand our global connection, yet act in local venues as global representatives of love and peace. To fully acknowledge our broken government, finally aware that tomorrow CANNOT look like yesterday? To count the planet as a beloved Mother and global citizen, with rights of her own? To care for our brothers and sisters, without thought to their religion, gender, race? Worth waiting for, don’t you think?

It’s coming, in this advent season — a new thing, one that we’ve long awaited, one we can approach prayerfully, or joyfully, or both. Maybe it’s as simple as a change of mind, a change of heart. And who knows? Maybe as Uranus stations direct, turning to kick over the Zero Point domino, we’ll find that it’s already here!