Eighth Day (of Eight Days) of Miracles: The Festival of Lights, called Chanukah

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 11:57 PM, White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother wrote:

Relatives of the Rainbow,

Hanukkah ends with the eighth day today at morning's light (darkness ends). Remember eight is the sacred walk of holiness, the path to trusting love (eternity symbol) and it's embracing for each other. We shine our inner light, to find the river of fire, within each of us, we stand here (the ninth direction), between from rainbow colors outside and four rainbow colors inside.

Religions all over the the world share part of the story of Oneness, Jews happen to be the oldest of the flesh, where intelligence leads on the red road. They go towards heaven to shine like a star in heaven to find the blue road, returning once more into the bliss of faithful devotion. We must remember, all the world carries stories of the Oneness. As the ordained people (Jews on the eastern shore of the horizon), who teach us God's laws as we walk upon the earthly world. However there is only one true law, LOVE. This law rules and reigns above all others. Through the trusting of one's heart, we remember our soul within, that guides us, remembering that we are all relatives of the deep blue of heavenly stars. This is written in the prayer cloth with the blue strand of the fringes at each corner.

The festival of lights help us to remember miracles can live in each day if we have faith and trust in forgiveness and have hope for tomorrows dreaming. We leap into evolution with our hearts seeking brotherhood and only through the actions that gift to us miracles, can we find the true path of our hearts.
Today we pray and offer each relative praise in the hopes they find the blue road, the star that shines, the soul within once again. Here inside of you, lies the perfect revelation, eternal knowledge through the songs, we find our way, into everlasting life. Now more than ever it's imperative we attend to the salvation of our hopes and dreams to endure and find our path to eternal life, we know as our souls.

The blue road of the heavenly song leads us towards the perfect unity of waters (blue road of the soul) and fires (red road of the flesh). Here the sacred mix becomes smoke, clouds and an atmospheric embrace, we call home, the blue of Mother Earth, where the lights bring to us a garden of paradise. Here is the TREE of LIFE that extends upwards and downwards to bind us together.

Let us sing this day, forever pave the way to eternal love and guidance that can bring, to us hope and dreams that fill us with everything, it's the place we need to know our waves. Help our souls relieve, the song that helps us grieve and bring our tears to shine upon the world. And through our love this day, it will pave the way into ever more, the song of what we need.

We bow down to say, we love you all the ways, to shine of light from within that guides the plates, the platters to/of yesterday, they roll around to say, we return to lift the waves again. Let us move down the path, to where it's dark at last, the blue road of heavenly stars that shine from within.

White Buffalo Calf Woman sings (christal child, peace) and Holiness David Running Eagle Shooting Star shines, love that binds (lavender child, holiness). House of David, where the Beloved Children find passageway through the house of winds!

elders of the rainbow, alightfromwithin.org, Rainbow Warriors of Prophecy

ps. On Christmas day, we had gas to run our generator for four hours, but it ran for 10 hours. We thank Great Spirit Father River of the Blue for his great miracle. Each day, we shared a miracle. But with so little, we have so much and LOVE is what we beget, abundance of overflowing LOVE.

Last day of Chanukah

The last day of Chanukah marks the end of Chanukah, also known as Hanukkah or Festival of Lights. Chanukah is an eight-day Jewish observance that remembers the Jewish people's struggle for religious freedom.

Candles are lit during the Chanukah period. ©iStockphoto.com/Anyka

What do people do?

The last day of Chanukah is the eighth day of Chanukah. It is known as Zose Chanukah, Zos Chanukah or Zot Chanukah.  It marks the day on which the great miracle of oil occurred, according to Jewish belief. It is a particularly special day because it encapsulates all of Chanukah.
Jewish communities worldwide celebrate Chanukah between the 25th day of the month of Kislev to the second day of the month of Tevet in the Hebrew calendar. Many Jewish people lighting a special Hanukkah menorah, a candelabrum with holders for eight candles, one for each day of celebration, plus a ninth, the shammash or “server”, used to light the others during Chanukah. One candle is lit on the first night, two on the second, three on the third, through to the eighth night when all are lit.

A special prayer is recited during the lighting and while the candles burn it is a time for songs and games, including the four-sided toy called dreidel. Other customs include gift-giving, especially to children, and decorating the home.

Public life

The last day of Chanukah is not a public holiday in Israel but it is the school holiday period. This event is also not a public holiday in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Some Jewish schools in these countries and other countries have a vacation period that coincides with Chanukah.

Background

Chanukah commemorates the successful rebellion of the Jewish people against the Syrians in the Maccabean War of 162 BCE, but the military associations of this festival are played down. What is really being celebrated is the survival of Judaism. After the Jewish people's victory they ritually cleansed and rededicated the Temple, then re-lit the menorah or “perpetual lamp”; hence one of the other names for this celebration, the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah means “dedication” in Hebrew).
The story is told that although there was only enough consecrated oil to keep the lamp burning for one day and it would take eight days to get more, the small bottle of oil miraculously lasted for the entire eight days. It is for this reason that Hanukkah is also known as the Feast of Lights.

Symbols

The eight-branched Chanukah menorah, or candle holder, is an important element that symbolizes the tradition of Chanukah. It relates well with why the holiday is called “the festival of lights”. The menorah is lit from the left side to the right and people say blessings when the menorah is lit. There are many different styles of the menorah – in many cases the ninth holder, known as the shammash (helper candle), is in the middle or to the left side.

The dreidel is a popular toy symbolizing the Chanukah period. It is a spinning top with a different Hebrew letter inscribed in each of its four sides – the four letters form an acronym meaning “a great miracle happened here”. Some popular songs associated with Chanukah in English-speaking countries include “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” and “Chanukah, Oh Chanukah”. Some songs in Israel include "Hanukkiah Li Yesh" ("I Have a Hanukkah Menora"), "Kad Katan" ("A Small Jug"), and "S'vivon Sov Sov Sov" ("Dreidel, Spin and Spin"). http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/jewish/last-day-chanukah

Eight Days of Chanukah with Lyrics -Hanukkah Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leemhE6_ayc

The Miracle of the Eighth Day
(A Hanukkah Sermon)

by Jan Vickery Knost

First Parish in Norwell
December 9, 2001

Text: "And they celebrated the rededication of the altar for eight days. And offered burnt offerings with joy and offered a sacrifice of deliverance and praise."
The Apocrypha, 1st Book of Macabees

The Jewish Festival of Hanukkah comes so near Christmas that people want to merge its meaning with the various festivals of light that occur around the same time in the Christian calendar. Notwithstanding the wish for ecumenism, it would be a mistake for us to do so. Truth to tell, the sun does sink lower in the skies each day as we approach the Solstice; it does prompt people to find ways to hope for the sun to return to its zenith. But to mix Hanukkah's celebration with the Solstice, Christmas or Ramadan would be to miss its true meaning.

Hanukkah is a celebration of religious freedom. It commemorates the renewal and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 165 B.C.E.,. three years to the day after it had been profaned by the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes. (IV) His purpose in desecrating that sacred altar was to insult the Jews and drive them into submission.

Let me relate the story again. Antiochus was known to his friends as "Zeus Manifest". He was a dictator. He wanted to bring Greek values to the Jews. He had already accomplished this in other parts of the world. Although he did not care about the religious practices of his peoples, he did insist that they worship the Greek god, Zeus. For the Jewish people he added other demands.

After waging war and finally conquering Jerusalem, Antiochus took firm control. First he sold the position of High Priest of the Temple to the highest bidder. When riots broke out the army was brought in to kill and plunder. The King then made the temple a place no Jew would enter by making it permissable for worshipers to sacrifice swine in praise of the Greek god, Zeus. They were also forced to eat that same meat forbidden by the Jewish Torah. Finally, Jews were forbidden to practice of circumcizing male children.

When the members of the Jewish community condemned the King's action as an abomination, he OUTLAWED the practice of Judaism, a crime punishable by death.

This is what happens when a tyrant does what he or she wishes. It's gone on down through history and it's not nice. On with our story.

In a town near Jerusalem, a Syrian officer demanded that the Jews there make the mandated sacrifice to Zeus. A village priest named Mattathais refused. He killed the officer and fled to the hills. Mattathais died an outcast in the same year of 165 B.C. But his son, Judas Maccabeus, (Who was nicknamed "The Hammer") gathered a band of rebels and began what history has come to call "The Maccabean Revolt". He defeated the general appointed by Antiochus and forced a treaty of peace. Then, on the 25th day of the month of Kislev (Which we know as the month of December), Judas rebuilt the altar of the Temple. He restored it with a Rededication and a Feast of Lights which we call......Hanukkah.

Ever since that time Jews the world over remember that occasion as a reminder of the privilege of being able to practice religious freedom. The Menorah (which holds the candles) is a symbol of the kindling of the light for eight days. And, as we have heard, the ninth candle commemorates the miracle that at the time that the celebration of eight days was ordered, only enough oil was on hand to burn for one night. Miraculously the oil lasted the entire eight days of commemoration, thus the eight blue and white candles.

Now here's what Paul Harvey calls "the rest of the story". The last days of the festival have special importance. In a book titled Jewish Days, Francine Klagsbrun gives us an insight that is a wonderful theme. Hanukkah came to be a festival that was of special importance to women.

Some Jews dedicate the eighth day of Hanukkah to a figure in the story named Judith. Legend has it that she had more courage than all the men in her town. An Apocryphal story apparently written during the Maccabean era - but set in a time centuries earlier - involved the Assyrians. King Nebuchadnezzar sent his general to conquer Judea.

Of course the Jews resisted. So he lays seige to the town. And just when the people are about to surrender, Judith steps forward. She goes to the enemy camp. There she beguiles the general into believing that she can pray to Yahweh and help the general and his troops to subdue Judea. She stays three days, leaving each night to pray. This makes the guards accustomed to her departures.

On the fourth day, the general invites her to a banquet. Since he plans to seduce her, he dismisses his servants. When he is finally drunk and asleep, Judith takes his sword . . . and hacks off his head. With the head in a sack she returns to her home and when the Assyrian army finds its general decapitated, it flees in confusion. Israel wins a great victory and Judith leads the people in dancing and singing praise to Yahweh for defeating the enemy "at the hands of a woman." (Judith 16:6)

The second admirable Biblical theme is about Hannah, daughter of Mattathias and sister of Maccabeus. The Syrians decreed that all Jewish brides must spend their wedding nights with local rulers who raped and shamed them. In rebellion at her wedding feast, Hannah stripped naked before all the guests. When her brother sought to kill her for her wantonness, she demanded that they take up arms against the Syrians to save the honor of all Jewish women. According to the legend, it was Hannah's action which sparked the Maccabean Revolt.

Finally, there is the story of Miriam. It is hard to believe that she is remembered because it was Miriam who encouraged her seven sons to die for their faith. Seven sons. But die they did when they refused to eat pork. Antiochus's men tortured and killed each one of them for this. It is written that when the youngest son's turn came, the King urged his mother, Miriam, to persuade the boy to save himself. Instead she pressed him to follow his brothers' example. Kissing him she whispered, "Say to Father Abraham, `Do not pride yourself on having built an altar and offered up your son Isaac. Our mother built seven altars and offered up seven sons in one day. Yours was only a test but hers was real." With her sons gone, Miriam died, as well. In the Apocryphal Book of Maccabees she is blessed as one "who deserves to be remembered with special honor."

These are only a few themes that are linked with the season of Hanukkah. We need to remember that the faith journey that brought liberal religion to the fore had its roots not only in the Protestant Christian tradition, but in the Judaic tradition, too. So when we celebrate and guard religious freedom we need to remember how Hanukkah serves to remind us of others who fought for it two thousand years before us. So, too, with our sisters and brothers of the Counter-Reformation which began in the 1500's.

So you see, it is not difficult to appreciate some of the more positive elements emerging out of the Judaic tradition. Art, music, poetry, literature, drama and sacrifice were themes lived again and again by our spiritual neighbors of the past.

Today we are free to doubt; to question; to argue; to resist. We recognize no ecclesiastical hierarchy that tells us to do or believe this or that regarding our religious faith. And if we look into Scripture we can find similar parallels written in an effort to describe and to understand the religious aspect of the human condition.

There is no doubt that the troubled times we are in give us no measure of quiet when the Middle East seethes with hatred, vengeance and retaliation. It is not unlike the time when sincere but misguided Christians went to the Holy Land during the Crusades in order to rid the world of the pestilence that threatened Christianity's authority. The politics of the day notwithstanding, I would urge you to accentuate the positive about the season of Hanukkah. Permit it to be another way of remembering how our spiritual mothers and fathers won religious freedom in New England in that time of theocratic autocracy in this free land. Let us remember. Let us remember - with gratitude.

I would close this venture with some lines of poetry written by my friend and colleague, the Rev. Anthony F. Perrino:

I am the Hanukkah-Christmas Spirit
That comes with the month of December:
A winter-solstice spell, perhaps,
When people forget to remember--

The drab realities of fact,
The cherished hurt of ancient wrongs,
The lonely comfort of being deaf
To human sighs and angels' songs.

Suddenly, they lose their minds
To heart's demands and beauty's grace;
And deeds extravagant with love
Give glory to the commonplace.

Amen.
http://www.firstparishnorwell.org/sermons/miracle.html

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"When we cease walking in labor, we toil not, but live in joy, the divine presence of heaven, the soul, within does shine over living rivers of water. Let the stars shine, in the house of the throne, where kinsmen are known, and rainbow colors come home, "White Buffalo Calf Woman, your Twin Deer Mother Understands, your heart needs a command!

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