GAZETTE COLUMN: Mary and Joseph – a Christmas Meditation by John P. Flannery

            We live so much of our lives in a world of distorted fantasy, too many people wrongly projecting how they see the world, shadow figures reflected on a wall, taken as real and true, but not real at all.

Too many people these days take comfort in these illusory projections – and it’s a self-verifying system of bias that allows too many citizens to do less and less – without regard to what’s best for the common welfare.   

            The best example of cognitive dissonance is the middle class defending the filthy rich that exploit them, by unbridled greed and selfishness, destroying their jobs, promoting insecurity, and transforming benefits into misty vapor. 

Too many middle class project a holograph of the wealthy as heroes rather than the self-aggrandizing overlords they’ve become.  They call them “job creators,” when they’ve done exactly the opposite.  Despite the evidence, too many insist that the wealthy want to employ us all and share the profits that they have horded for years – and the cover story is that evil government has reined in their creative freedom that simply awaits release for our eternal benefit.  Poppycock!

            These same folk insist we should all subscribe to belief in an “invisible hand” with supernatural properties that makes all things right in our economy.  They don’t question why this talismanic nonsense – the “invisible” hand - failed to make its presence known to protect us when our economy crashed in 2008.  Still they are steadfast in their belief in the economic beneficence of this palsied hand – like the members of some long gone primitive culture that trusts in totems carved from woodland trees.

            They save the worst of their projections for the most fragile.  A poor homeless person, who spent last night in a park near Leesburg, doesn’t exist unless we see him walking to McDonald’s with his bed roll of papers and bags, and, if we do see him, it is as likely the deluded observer will fault the poor for failing to do “what he should have done” to save himself.  Similarly, the aged should have planned better for their retirement and medical care.  Heaven forbid that we would think to open a public building on the coldest of evenings so that the homeless might not die of exposure to the elements.  Or that we should care to protect the aged who have contributed so much to their communities and now must fear for their security.

            It is sweet irony that we live in a county that prides itself on being a hot bed of Christian activism – at least when it comes to condemning and circumscribing personal freedoms (and then how they hate).

            The meditation of the Christmas season that tells us who we are is the answer to this question: How many people would open their door after dark to an unmarried pregnant woman and give her and the apparent father shelter for the night?  Of course, we’re talking about Mary and Joseph and, when they knock, as was true in the original account, no one knew she was going to give birth to Jesus or that this unborn child had any significance.  Yet they finally found shelter. Would they do as well today in Loudoun County?

In this County, it’s a nice question, whether it would matter if Mary was dark-skinned (as she likely was) or if she was shabbily dressed?  Do you think it is unlikely that Mary would get shelter if Bethlehem were Leesburg and Nazareth were Mexico?

On Saturday night, a neighbor I’ve always respected told me that he has all this room in his house.  He said he feels badly about the homeless and would have them in his home.  He said he doesn’t require much privacy any more.  He just feels badly that he has space that could shelter others.    There is no question in my mind that he would give shelter to Mary and Joseph – as he would shelter anyone else.  There are many other friends and neighbors in this County who would do as much.  I have seen them do amazing things.  These are the people of heart and soul that are the future of this community and the nation and it is by their character that we fulfill our constitutional promise as a people.