Paul McCartney: Mother Mary came to him

Maryam and Isa
Persian Miniature

The power of Mother - be she Mother Theresa or Mommie Dearest - has been a primary one throughout the ages.

There's a long list of Mothers that are embedded within our collective psyche: Mother Nature, Queen Mother, Mother Hubbard, Wicked Step-Mother, Fairy Godmother, to name a few.  These and others represent aspects of the Mother Archetype, which range from nurturing to smothering, from compassionate to indifferent, and from defending to abusing.

The Mother is so essential that even an abusive one seems better than none at all.  To feel deprived of the Mother seems the cruelest fate of all.  It is a fate that John Lennon and Paul McCartney shared - one that likely drew them to one another.

McCartney's mother, a Roman Catholic named Mary, had been a nurse in the maternity ward where McCartney was born.  She would later ride her bicycle to homes in which she was needed as a midwife.  McCartney remembers her doing so during a heavy snowstorm.  In 1956 when Paul was only 14, Mary (who had breast cancer) died of an embolism following a mastectomy.

Not surprisingly, the very first song that McCartney wrote was called "I Lost My Little Girl."  Years later, he would attempt to resolve this theme with "Let It Be."  The "Lost" was then becoming found. Mother Mary was being resurrected within Paul's consciousness.  Although there were still "times of trouble," all the mournful seeking was morphing into peaceful finding.

McCartney reported that "Let It Be" came to him via a dream visitation from his mother.  This dream had occurred during a particularly tense period with The Beatles.  McCartney stated that his mother had reassured him, "It will be all right, just let it be."  McCartney also said, "It was great to visit with her again.  I felt very blessed to have that dream..."

Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCartney

Blind Men and Elusive Elephants

Blind Men
Appraising an Elephant
Painting by Ohara Donshu

There's an elephant in many a room that we're trying to see, know and even possess.  The trouble is we're quite blind, and blind to our own blindness.

As the ancient tale goes, there were six blind men who each touched a unique part of the same elephant. The tusk felt like a spear, the trunk like a snake, the ear like a fan, the side like a wall, the leg like a tree, and the tail like a rope.

Each was convinced that the elephant was exactly as he, and he alone, had perceived it.  When their conclusions sharply differed, each was convinced that arguments alone could solve this dilemma.

...And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long   Each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong    Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong...

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution gives us the precious right to freedom of speech and religion.  This allows for the freedom to practice one's own faith, as well as the freedom to examine other traditions.  With such freedom comes a great deal of responsibility: the responsibility to remain kind, humble and aware of blind spots while appraising elusive elephants.

Resources

https://allpoetry.com/The-Blind-Man-And-The-Elephant

Bagels, Lox and Penicillin

WW II Poster
Public Domain

Leave bagels and lox hanging around long enough, and penicillin might join that party.  Just what did it take to transform a moldy snack into a life-saving drug?

It took the partnering of Sir Ernst Boris Chain, a Nazi survivor, who was instrumental in discovering "penicillin's therapeutic action and its chemical composition."  He, Howard Florey and Sir Alexander Fleming all received the 1945 Nobel Prize for their history-making contributions.  Chain, a devoted Jew, was especially proud of penicillin's ability to save World War II soldiers who had fought so valiantly against the Nazi regime.

"The Little Rabbi" (aka Jonas Salk) felt that, given their longstanding tragic history, "Jews knew better than anyone else about the meaning of pain."  He was therefore highly motivated to ease humanity's suffering in some way.  Salk's development of the polio vaccine ended up reversing a trend that "had killed or disabled at least a million Americans, including a president of the United States."  He, too, became an international hero.

Those who prefer prevention to cure might rely upon Vitamin C to offset the need for penicillin-type measures.  History often neglects to include the Jewish piece of this puzzle.  Although Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize for his work on the healing effects of Vitamin C, it was Tadeus Reichstein, a Jewish endocrinologist, who first synthesized ascorbic acid in 1933.

If all this isn't impressive enough, Selman Abraham Waksman went on to discover "the wonder drug" that superseded even penicillin.  He coined a new term for it ("antibiotic," sound familiar?) because it so effectively destroyed living microorganisms.  The drug, streptomycin, is estimated to have "saved many more lives since its discovery than were lost in all of the Napoleonic Wars."  Could be why this Jewish doctor won a Nobel Price, an Order of Merit of The Rising Sun, plus induction into the French Legion of Honor...

Resources

The abovementioned information was generally obtained from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture, a book by Rabbi Benjamin Blech.  Rabbi Blech, an internationally-acclaimed writer and speaker on Jewish topics, is one of the first rabbis in history to have conferred a blessing upon a pope (John Paul II at the Vatican in 2005).  

Beyond medicinal: Is cannabis canonical?

Photo by Ame Huckelheim

Now that governmental policy is more in tune with the medicinal benefits of marijuana, the larger question remains: Are there spiritual benefits, as well?

Some say that the answer to this question lies within the Bible itself.

Chris Bennet points out that, right up front in Genesis One, Yahweh declares: I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, and every tree that has fruit in it.

N. J. Weedman cites the 1936 etymological research of Sula Benet (aka Sara Benetowa) from the Institute of Anthropological Sciences in Warsaw.  He quotes Benet as stating in 1975: In the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament there are references to hemp, both as incense, which was an integral pat of religious celebration, and as an intoxicant.

Such references focus upon usage of the Aramaic term "kaneh bosm," as well as the Hebrew term "kannabos" (or "kannabus").  The root "kan" in these terms is said to mean "reed" or "hemp," and the addition "bosm" is said to mean "aromatic."

Although many scholars continue to interpret "kaneh bosm" as "calamus" (an aromatic reed) or as "cane," Weedman cites the Hebrew University in Israel (along with "numerous etymologists") as confirming in 1980 that Benet's interpretation was indeed correct.

Both Chris Bennet and N. J. Weedman cite a number of Biblical references to "kaneh bosm."  These include the following: Exodus 30:23 (showing "kaneh bosm" to be a key ingredient of holy anointing oil), Song of Songs 4:14, Jeremiah 6:20, Ezekiel 27:19 and Isaiah 43:24.

As etymologists and biblical scholars continue to sort things out, policy makers might want to add this to their list of concerns: Is marijuana illegality an infringement upon religious freedoms of any kind?

Resources

http://www.cannabisculture.com/backissues/cc05/kanehb.html

http://www.njweedman.com/kanebosm.html