{"id":6339,"date":"2020-11-27T18:16:27","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T18:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/?p=6339"},"modified":"2020-11-27T18:16:27","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T18:16:27","slug":"black-friday-vs-good-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/black-friday-vs-good-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Black Friday\u2019 vs. \u2018Good Friday\u2019 Yet Another Indication That We\u2019re Living in BackWord Land"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever wondered why the day commemorating the torturous crucifixion of the Prince of Peace is called \u2018<em>Good <\/em>Friday?\u2019 What, exactly, was good about it?<\/p>\n<p>Conversely, the biggest shopping day of the year &#8212; when people purchase presents at a discount to commemorate His Presence on Christmas Day &#8212; is called \u2018Black Friday.\u2019 Evidently this is because it can take retailers\u2019 accounts out of the red and into the black, metaphorically speaking. But doesn\u2019t this sound just a bit BackWord to you?<\/p>\n<p>In this case, of course, Black connotes prosperity and not the dark mark against humanity that Good Friday actually commemorates. But if you\u2019re a person of African or East Indian descent, the absurdity of this discrepancy may be doubled for you since \u2018people of color\u2019 are the most disadvantaged in our <em>backword<\/em> economy, despite the fact that Jesus, Himself, was most likely a colorful person in a multitude of ways \u2013 including the tone of his skin.<\/p>\n<p>Once I heard an NPR commentator remark that Jesus would be chagrined to know he\u2019d become the patron saint of 4<sup>th<\/sup> quarter profits. If you, too, feel that an excess of material gifts and all the waste this produces are hardly a way to celebrate the advent of an enlightened teacher on the planet, then you may enjoy my Holiday poem, <em>Gifts of Presence. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>I wrote <em>Gifts<\/em> in the early 90s at the request of a friend who wanted me to create a piece about everything wrong with the world \u2013 and to make it funny. <em>Gifts of Presence<\/em> makes it clear that the greatest gift we can ever give to ourselves and each other is, precisely, <em>Presence<\/em>: the light of our own awakened awareness and the beauty and compassion it inspires us to embody and enact:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aSHPo2DsbFo&amp;frags=pl%2Cwn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aSHPo2DsbFo&amp;frags=pl%2Cwn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever wondered why the day commemorating the torturous crucifixion of the Prince of Peace is called \u2018Good Friday?\u2019 What, exactly, was good about it? Conversely, the biggest shopping&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordmagicglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}