Happy New Year of the Rabbit!

Today is New Year’s Eve in the Western world, but as I have done in previous years, I am posting this after the new year has already begun in East Asia. So, in true Japanese fashion, I am wishing each one of you a Happy New Year! 明けまして、おめでとう御座います!* 

The new year, 2023, is the Year of the Rabbit according to the zodiac of China/East Asia. The Chinese New Year doesn't begin until January 22, but for a long time now Japan has celebrated January 1 as New Year’s Day, although many of the ancient traditions are still maintained to varying degrees.

As most of you may know, in East Asia there is a sign for each of twelve years rather than twelve signs in one year as in the West, and each sign repeats in a twelve-year cycle.

It is easy to guess what year a person was born in if you know their sign, so in Japan it is common to ask for a person’s zodiac sign rather than asking their age. If a young senior citizen says they were born in the Year of the Rabbit, you could easily guess they were born in 1963, not 1951 or 1975.

“People born under the sign of the rabbit,” according to this website, “are gentle, sensitive, compassionate, amiable, modest and merciful, and have strong memory. They like to communicate with others in a humorous manner.”

My father was born in the Year of the Rabbit (so as you might guess, he was born in 1915), and the characteristics given in the previous paragraph seem to have fitted him well. How do they seem to fit those of you who were born in, say, 1939, 1951, or 1963?

What can we expect in the Year of the Rabbit, 2023? Early this month, I received a special issue of The Economist titled “The World Ahead 2023.” Every year they publish this sort of special edition, which I always find interesting and helpful.

This time, though, I didn’t find editor Tom Standage’s “Ten trends to watch in the coming year" to be particularly beneficial. The first two were “All eyes on Ukraine” and “Recessions loom,” but perhaps most any of us could have predicted the same things.

I did, though, think that these words from his final paragraph were thoughtworthy.

In retrospect, the pandemic marked the end of a period of relative stability and predictability in geopolitics and economics. Today’s world is much more unstable, convulsed by the vicissitudes of great-power rivalry, the aftershocks of the pandemic, economic upheaval, extreme weather, and rapid social and technological change. Unpredictability is the new normal. There is no getting away from it.

So, yes, what the world will experience in the year ahead is quite unpredictable—although to a large degree, that is true for every new year.

I asked ChatGPT what the world could expect in 2023. It quickly replied, “It is not possible for me to predict with certainty what will happen in 2023, as the future is always uncertain and can be influenced by a wide range of factors.” That was pretty much a no-brainer.  

But the “chatbot” did suggest four “potential developments” that could take place in 2023, including, “It is likely that there will be continued progress in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology, which could lead to new products and services that change the way we live and work.”

That is consistent with what Economist editor Standage mentioned as one of the expected ten trends in 2023. Apple is set to launch its first virtual reality headset, which they suggest may be the next “best thing” in the “metaverse.”** Will they change society as much as iPads/iPhones have? We'll see. 

Regardless of what might happen in 2023, the Year of the Rabbit, I pray that it will be a good year for you—and for the world at large.

_____

* If you don’t have Japanese fonts loaded on your computer, you may not be able to see the Japanese words in this sentence.

** As envisioned by Octavia Butler in her 1998 dystopian novel Parable of the Talents, by 2033 such virtual reality headsets were being replaced by the superior Dreamasks. 

They’ll Know We are Christians by Our ??

In this last blog post before Christmas, I am writing about the central message of Christmas and also writing about what I want both those of you who are Christians, as well as those who are not, to read and think about deeply.

Christmas is the celebration of love. This past Sunday was the fourth Sunday of Advent, and the theme for that last Sunday before Christmas was love.

There are various Advent traditions and practices, but according to the Christianity.com website, the selected Bible passage for Dec. 18 was the third chapter of John, with those best-known words of the Bible, 

The longstanding practice of giving Christmas presents is largely rooted in the gifts of the Magi who came from afar and presented gifts to baby Jesus. But the first and greatest Christmas gift was none other than God’s loving gift of Jesus himself to humankind.

Christians were long known for their love. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” is one title given for a gospel song written in the 1960s by Peter Schottes, a Catholic priest.

In the 1970s and ’80s, I enjoyed singing that song with Christian friends and fellow church members in Japan. Here is its second verse and the chorus:

We will walk with each other, will walk hand in hand,
We will walk with each other, will walk hand in hand,
And together we’ll spread the news, that God is in our land

And they’ll know we are Christians,
By our love, by our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.*

The lyrics of that gospel song are loosely based on words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of John: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (13:35, NIV)

In addition, though, until perverted by its alliance with political power, Christianity from its beginning was a religion of love for all people—and it still is when it is faithful to Jesus Christ.

Some Christians are now known for their hate. In my Dec. 10 blog post, I introduced Octavia Butler and her two dystopian novels. I have just finished reading the second of those, Parable of the Talents (1998).

In that prescient book, the U.S. elects a new President in 2032, a man who is an ardent advocate of Christian nationalism. In fact, he formed a new denomination, the Church of Christian America (CA).

The most alarming characteristic of that new church is its horrendous persecution of those considered to be “infidels.” Lauren, the protagonist of both novels, experiences unthinkable suffering at the hands of fanatical CA believers. They, indeed, were “Christians” known for their hate.

Perhaps you have seen the recent news stories about a restaurant that refused to serve a Christian group because of what they deemed was the “hatred” of that anti-gay group toward their employees.

Metzger Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Va., posted on Instagram (here) that they “denied service to the group to protect its staff, many of whom are women or members of the LGBTQ+ community.”

After reading about that happening, I came across a YouTube video titled “Hate Preachers: Bigotry and Fearmongering by Extremist Christian ‘Leaders’.” That video includes several clips of preachers saying almost unbelievable things, especially about LGBTQ people.**

Posted on YouTube eight months ago, that video has had 117,000 views, and when I accessed it last week, the first of the more than 1,600 comments said, “I simply don’t have enough hatred in me to be a Christian.”

How exceedingly sad that this is how some people view Christians now!

During this Christmas week, my plea for all of us is that we will fully accept the love of God manifested on that first Christmas and broadly implement that love. And, indeed, may all of us Christians be increasingly known by our love for all people.

____

* Here is the link to a YouTube video with those words being nicely sung.

** Some of these are affiliated with New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, a relatively new organization you can read about here. 

Novelists as Prophets: The Examples of Celeste Ng and Octavia Butler

Good, creative novels are beneficial for their readers not just for the enjoyment they induce but also for the ideas they produce. This post is about two dystopian novels, one published earlier this year and the other back in 1993.

Celeste Ng is an American novelist whose parents were born in mainland China and in Hong Kong. Ng (b. 1980) became widely known with the publication of Little Fires Everywhere in 2017 and the eight-episode 2020 streaming television series based on that book.

Although I found Ng’s 2017 novel a good read, I was more impressed with her 2022 novel Our Missing Hearts. The title of Steven King’s Sept. 22 review in The New York Times sums it up well: “Celeste Ng’s Dystopia Is Uncomfortably Close to Reality.” 

Following what is called the Crisis, the federal government seeks to make the U.S. great again. This is attempted partly by the passing of the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act (PACT).

Under PACT, questionable books are not only banned, those found offensive are pulped and turned into toilet paper.

Further, because of what is believed to be a major economic/cultural threat by the Chinese, there is considerable opposition to anyone who looks Asian. The main characters of Ng’s novel are a Chinese American woman married to a White man and Bird, their 12-year-old son.

The children of parents considered by PACT to be culturally or politically subversive are “re-placed” in foster families. Consequently, Bird’s mother goes missing in order to spare him from being re-placed.

The impact of Ng’s novel was lessened somewhat by the midterm elections, which turned out to be a win for democracy and a loss for the MAGA voters and the authoritarianism they were (many perhaps unwittingly) supporting. Prejudice against Chinese/Asians, however, may continue to increase.

Perhaps to a small degree, the election turned out as it did because of what can be called self-negating prophecy. Sometimes things don’t happen as predicted because enough people take action to keep those dire predictions from being fulfilled.

In that way, novelists, and especially those who write creative dystopian novels, can be seen as prophets who declare what will happen if appropriate steps are not taken to prevent those dreadful situations from taking place.

Let’s hope that is also true with regard to a second novelist I am currently reading.

Octavia Butler is an engaging Black writer whom I was not aware of until recently. More than thirty years ago she planned to write a trilogy of dystopian novels. The first of those is Parable of the Sower (1993), and it was followed by Parable of the Talents (1998).**

Unfortunately, Butler died in 2006 at the youngish age of 58 before she finished the third volume. I have just finished reading Butler’s chilling first book and have started to read the sequel.

Beginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, Parable of the Sower takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren, a precocious African American teenager—and religious “philosopher.”

In that 1993 novel, climate change, economic recession, and extensive misuse of drugs lead to a total breakdown of society. Beginning in 2024, Lauren experiences horrific loss and suffering, which ends to an extent for her and her companions with the founding of a religious community in 2027.

(Early in the sequel, Butler has Lauren writing about one of the candidates for the 2032 presidential election in the nation still beset by ongoing societal problems. His appeal to the voters is, “Help us to make America great again.”)

Perhaps sometimes “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls,” but they are more effectively written in books by novelists such as Celeste Ng and Octavia Butler.

May we be smart enough to understand what such novelists are saying and proactive enough to help their dystopian novels to become self-negating prophecies.

_____

** Here is the link to “Octavia Butler’s Prescient Vision of a Zealot Elected to ‘Make America Great Again’,” a long, July 2017 article in The New Yorker. June (my wife) doesn’t like to read dystopian novels, but she found this article about Butler to be quite interesting.