Jersey Devils

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My trips to the DMV always seem to involve the paranormal. Admittedly, this is sometimes partially my own fault. Against my wife’s advice, I took The Lure of the Dark Side – a book I was reviewing – with its Satanic cover, when I went to renew my driver’s license a few weeks ago. Back when we first moved to New Jersey, and I had to sit for an excessive part of the day in that waiting room, I was reading a book on the Jersey Devil. I first heard of this exotic New World beastie when I was a ghost-story fixated teenager reading some Scholastic October special. Since I lived a state over, in the western end of Pennsylvania, I figured I didn’t have too much to worry about.

The Jersey Devil is an anomaly that involves two distinct aspects. One side of the story is pure folklore; Mrs. Leeds gave birth to a devil in south Jersey and the monstrous thing has been haunting the state ever since. The other side involves the sightings of an allegedly physical cryptid by reputable individuals, especially since the early twentieth century. An unlikely combination of horse-head, wings (often bat-like), and hooves make this one odd-looking creature, based on eyewitness accounts. I have to thank my friend Susan for pointing out the suggestion that this could be a hammerhead fruit bat, although how even a small population of the African rain-forest dwellers could survive in New Jersey without producing a single road-kill specimen would itself be beyond belief. The shape and size of the bats accounts for quite a bit, but the hooves just don’t fit. That, and the Jersey Devil seems to prefer chickens, ducks, and small dogs to the eponymous fruit of the hammerhead bat.

Whatever, if-ever, the real Jersey Devil might be, the story has all the makings of a Halloweenish blend of religion and monsters. There are several versions of the story, but the one most commonly told is that Mrs. Leeds, in labor with her thirteenth child, declared that this one had better be a devil. She got her wish. The child emerged, sprouted wings and flew up the chimney to terrorize south Jersey and Philadelphia over the next several decades. The beast gives the state’s hockey league an instant identity and even led to the breakdown of a priest in the sixth season of Seinfeld. The first season of the X-Files featured a Jersey Devil episode (although it turned out to be a very humanish kind of Bigfoot), and Bruce Springsteen recorded “A Night with the Jersey Devil” for his home-state fans back in October of 2008. Only the gullible take stories of cross-species (cross-metaphysical beings?) seriously, but the story, like the Jersey Devil itself, seems to be immortal.

Where Wolves Dare

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It’s the fall of the year when an old man’s thoughts turn to werewolves. Not that I’ve ever believed there were such creatures, but they do have a pedigree in ancient religious ideas, and even today skin-walkers play a role in some Native American traditions. While I lived in Wisconsin I found out about the Beast of Bray Road, a cryptid that is seen on occasion south of Nashotah, where I lived. Unfortunately I learned about the beastie too late to make any attempts to see it, but the documentation of the creature is in good hands with local author Linda Godfrey.

When I moved to New Jersey, scrabbling for a living tended to outweigh concerns about werewolves. Nevertheless, I did hear of an odd account in a south Jersey newspaper from 1925. According to the Woodbury Daily Times (now defunct), a farmer in Greenwich, south of Camden, shot an up-right hopping, dog-like creature that had twice raided his chicken coop early on a December morning in 1925. According to the paper, hundred of people went to view the unidentified animal and some even photographed it. Now, 85 years later, the story is barely remembered. Was this just another gun-toting Philadelphia suburbanite shooting an annoying dog, or had a “werewolf” passed through New Jersey all those many years ago? Periodically accounts of dogs running on hind legs are posted by late-night drivers in the Garden State, but no photographs or other evidence ever seems to be forthcoming.

Werewolves are less about monsters than they are about struggling with inner conflict, according to many psychologists. Our animal nature, deeply sublimated, sometimes makes a ferocious bid for freedom and otherwise sane individuals believe themselves to have turned into wolves. When I look at my crazy employment history, somehow I can relate. Some day I hope to transform into a fully employed academic or editor who has a steady income and an appreciative employer. My chances of seeing a werewolf, however, may be slightly better. I think I’ll head to Greenwich to poke around a bit, but I’m going to wait for a full moon, Friday the 13th, or a full-time job – whichever comes first.

Read Linda Godfrey's new book

Demo C. Rats

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I just finished China Miéville’s novel King Rat. I’ve been thinking a lot about rats lately. This retelling of the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin has a strong Marxist flavor that intrigues the reader into greater possibilities. Each week as I drive the many miles required as a professional adjunct, I think about the bourgeoisie of academia. Many university programs are simply not possible without the many adjuncts willing to be exploited in order to keep them going. While the adjunct is kept below a certain number of courses so that costly benefits do not need to be paid, full-time faculty are kept below a certain number of courses so that they are free to build the university superstructure. Some teach no courses, do no research, and conduct no administration. It is a fair guess whether they even bother to breathe or not. Yet they are paid full salaries and benefits. Academic fossils paid simply to exist.

Saul, the rat-man who would be king, has a conscience. He was raised by his human father to appreciate the sense of what Karl Marx wrote. As the novel progresses, the rats congregate around him, wanting him to be their king. I have been an adjunct instructor for five years now. As I have watched my prospects grow slimmer, my work load has increased for less and less payback. I frequently chat with full-time colleagues who appreciate everything I’m doing. This academic year I am scheduled to teach eleven courses, strictly part-time, of course. Otherwise someone might have to pay benefits. This week one of the schools I teach at actually expanded parking privileges for adjuncts. Not to be nice, but because they had to.

Saul, the would-be king. So biblical. So human. At the end of the story he lives up to his idealism, granting rats autonomy without being sure how it will play out in the real world. There was a time when academics were idealists. Universities are now, like all other aspects of “modern life,” businesses. I’m sure that full-time instructors devote very little thought to those who work for table-scraps to support the system that underwrites their comfortable lifestyles. Certainly a university president or dean would loose nary a wink of sleep over those who’ve given themselves over to the task of Atlas, holding up their sky. It is business as usual. And as the bourgeoisie know, every aspect of life is business. What happens when the rats go free? The end of the story has not yet been written.

Escanaba in da Moonlight

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My daughter was ill at school recently and I went to pick her up. It has been a few years since this has happened, so I guess I’m a little out of practice. In the school office there is a Star-Trekish device poking up through the counter where visitors check in. I was instructed to put my driver’s license on the device and an eerie glow emerged from it as they scanned my card. You are not allowed to leave with your own child, even if the school calls you, without being scanned. A New Jersey license is a real hassle to acquire with multiple forms of ID required – this isn’t the Midwest where you just turn in your expired license and they hand you a new one. Every four years you have to prove you are who you say you are. As we climbed into the car, I was glad for the school security, but I couldn’t help remembering.

I grew up in western Pennsylvania where deer worship was the dominant religion. The first day of buck season was a school holiday; I can’t recall if doe opening day was just a half-day or not. We could not graduate without passing a course called “hunter’s safety” which involved detailed instructions on how to shoot rifles and shotguns. My high school – God’s truth – had a rifle range in the basement and you were allowed to bring your rifle to school as long as you checked it in the principal’s office. When I tell others about this they don’t believe me, but when I ask my high school friends they all remember it that way too. Now that my stupidly smiling driver’s license image is floating around the school mainframe as a potential kidnapper for picking up my own daughter, I think about the difference in times.

Kids had guns in my high school in the late 1970s, but they knew that it was wrong to shoot other students. It was a small town, but we were all taught the rules of engagement and we knew that other human targets were outside the scope. Every year there were accidental hunting fatalities (Dick Cheney would have felt right at home), but the schools were used to address that issue. Today I see wind-bag politicians trying to cut back on education as much as possible and I see kids who don’t know any better killing their fellow students indiscriminately. No, I’m not nostalgic. I do not own a gun. It is my belief that children learn from adults, and when politicians say through their words and actions that looking out for number one is all that matters and that bullying (yes, Mr. Governor) is appropriate for getting what you want, I think it is no wonder we find ourselves with children who can’t tell right from wrong. I’m ready to watch Escanaba in da Moonlight and pray to the god of the deer.

Deer God...

Noah’s Newest Neighbor

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This week paleontologists announced the newest dinosaur discovery: Kosmoceratops, a plant-eating, three-ton beast with an improbable arrangement of fifteen horns on its head. Any beast arising from the sea would be jealous. As Kosmoceratops jostles its way onto the ark, scientists debate the utility of all those horns – placed incorrectly for defensive purposes, they seem to have functioned to attract mates. Isolated on a fairly compact land mass, these Cretaceous ceratopsids bloomed into a distinctive species as showy as any other so far discovered. As evolution continues to stir debate in this country, its evidence keeps marching along.

Every semester, four terms per year, I have students work on a project that includes (in part) evolution and the Hebrew Bible. Every semester as I overhear discussion, I realize just how deeply the anti-evolutionary front has its claws in the American psyche. Otherwise intelligent undergraduates studying a variety of subjects: science, business, engineering, psychology, express their doubts about evolution. The reason: the Bible doesn’t affirm it. Nor does the Bible affirm atomic theory, free market economics, or microchips. Evolution hits, perhaps, a little too close to home.

The dinosaurs stomp in the face of Creationism. As much as the fundies try to embrace them, dinosaurs are just too outlandish to fit in any world other than evolution. The God of the Bible doesn’t seem to have a surfeit of humor to have wasted so much creativity on dinosaurs that no human ever got to see. We reconstruct, with amazement, species after flamboyant species, and yet the foes of science keep a finger firmly tucked in Genesis. Serious Bible scholars seldom have difficulties with letting science do its job, including evolution. The agitation arises from another quarter. And with all those horns in front of us, that quarter might be the apocalyptic sea after all.

Blessing Nature

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Today is the traditional Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Yesterday the local Episcopal Church celebrated this feast with the somewhat Anglophile practice of the blessing of the animals. This is not generally an event to which my family pays particular attention – although we are animal lovers the only pets we have are hermit crabs and the spiders and bugs that naturally make their home along with us. Yesterday also happened to be a beautiful day for the local street fair and my brother and his family joined mine for the event. His family includes a dog and we noticed a sign advertising the local blessing of the animals. As my brother noted that his dog might better do with an exorcism, we decided to pick up a free blessing while the offer was good.

Normally animal services are held outdoors. This in itself is a commentary on the true equality of species. Many people feel it sacrilegious to bring animals into churches. Biologically speaking, however, that would exclude us all. Perhaps for allergies or the price of carpet cleaning it may be more expedient to bless the critters outside. After all, animals do fend for themselves out-of-doors, right? As we sat in an informal circle, the priest emerged from his office with his own dog at his side. A makeshift card-table altar had a simple wooden cross atop it to sanctify the area. As soon as they reached the center of our circle, the priest’s dog squatted to defecate on the lawn. It was a lighthearted moment, but it also spawned some reflection.

When it comes to religious settings and ceremonies, many normal behaviors and actions are considered inappropriate. This invisible divide reflects the time-honored division between the sacred and the profane. There is no tangible way to distinguish between the two; sacredness is a matter of cultural taste. Absolutes for sacred and profane simply do not exist. A priest’s dog following the dictates of nature is about as sacred an example of life as experienced by all creatures on this earth as any other. Expelling of waste is one of the characteristics of life as we know it. While some may find dog droppings offensive in sacred settings, I have a feeling St. Francis would simply have laughed.

Your dog did what?

Catskill Waiting

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Catskills epiphany

We’re back from the Catskills and all they imply. One of the more obvious implications was a lack of internet access – one of the many reasons I like to frequent remote locations. I had planned this little get-away with some vague hopes of enlightenment of some kind. The quote from Melville in my last post is more than just nice prose; it is the essence of spiritual striving. I know those aren’t scientific words, but they embody the spirit of several nineteenth century American novelists I’ve read and reread. I did see a Catskill eagle while there, but I returned home still seeking an epiphany.

While briefly away from the constant demands of teaching, the bigger picture starts to come into focus. We visited Ellenville on the day of their Wild Blueberry and Huckleberry Festival – we’d just picked huckleberries ourselves in the mountains outside town – and religious groups were represented aplenty. I had noticed the many churches in this rural region, and one of the feters handed me a tract that informed me “If you have said ‘Yes’ to these three questions [have you ever sinned, lied, or stolen] (by your own admission), you are a lying, thieving, adulterer at heart; and we’ve only looked at three of the Ten Commandments.” And also, John Lennon is dead. Nothing like a little self-righteous judgment with your blueberry pie. Sirens began to blare and a fair-goer collapsed and had to be airlifted to a regional hospital. It was very dramatic.

This is where the big picture came in. When there is an accident, we take astounding measures to save the injured, suffering, or wounded. A fair-goer flown by life-flight to the hospital. At the same time, our society condones, encourages even, an unemployment scenario where even highly trained individuals are cut off from health care and self-esteem as well as income. Left to die a quiet death of desperation. As long as we don’t have to see it, death by redundancy is sanitary and sanctioned. Has this great society ever sinned, lied, or stolen? I have seen that Catskill eagle and I am still awaiting an epiphany.

SpongeBob’s Evolution

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My daughter has, unfortunately, outgrown SpongeBob SquarePants. She was my putative excuse for watching the (literally) brainless eponymous lead character going about his inane adventures. The creator of SpongeBob, Stephen Hillenburg, is a marine biologist and much of the fun for adults watching the cartoon derived from the biologically correct remarks made by the characters about their physiological conditions. Watching the laughing yellow sponge with his inimitable voice was a pleasant escape from the constraint of my own biological existence.

Today the New Jersey Star-Ledger announced that two researchers from Princeton University may have discovered the oldest animal fossils ever recorded. It seems that for a while, some 635 million years ago, the earth was undergoing its Cryogenian Period when the planet surface was all but completely frozen. The earliest discovered animal fossils were discovered from after that period. Princeton geoscientist Adam Maloof has recovered what appear to be animal fossils from 650 million years ago, 15 million years before the big freeze. This find had been anticipated by genetic scientists who had suggested that such early animal forms likely existed prior to the appearance of the earliest sponges 520 million years ago.

For now the new finding shifts the fossil record back by about 90 million years. There will be massive gaps to be filled in by scarce traces left in inaccessible rock. Creationists will no doubt gloat that the fossil record is now even more full of holes than ever. This is frequently the quality of ambiguity that they suggest will topple the evolutionary lie. The truth, however, faces the opposite direction. The oldest creatures found are ancestors to the common sponge, pushing SpongeBob’s ancestors back many millennia before those of the Adam who discovered them. It seems to be the silly yellow sponge who will have the last laugh.

Gee, did I really cause all this?

Sobek to the Beginning

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From some of my earliest reveries, Maine has been my favorite state. This strange feature had to have been gleaned from books since I never visited Maine until my early twenties. Since that time I’ve returned as frequently as possible; however, over a decade spent in Wisconsin made the trip somewhat daunting. So last night, still dealing with lingering intense emotions from the county fair, I decided to watch Lake Placid, the 1999 horro-comedy set in Maine. The movie is generally brainless escapism, and even the scenery is that of British Columbia rather than New England. It had been years since I’d seen the film, so I was surprised when Kelly Scott stated in defense of Hector Cyr that crocodiles were worshipped as gods by many ancient peoples, making them more prayed to than Jesus. This was, naturally, a healthy dose of celluloid hyperbole, yet it did bring to mind Sobek, the Egyptian deity mentioned by name in the film.

The ancient Egyptians venerated many animals as possessors of god-like qualities. Crocodiles, naturally dangerous to humans as well as to many large mammals, would suggest themselves as a form of divinity. Sobek was never a major focus of the Egyptian collective of gods, yet the mummified remains of crocodiles and the striking iconography of the deity attest his cult. The ancient Egyptians had no way of knowing that the crocodile had withstood the pressures of evolution for millions of years, a striking example of a body plan and lifestyle requiring no improvement. Few creatures have the staying power of the crocodile, an animal capable of feats more incredible than the fabricated beast in Lake Placid.

While Jesus has nothing to fear from crocodile worship (or, apparently, the Beatles), religion grasps, even unwittingly, to the unchanging. In a culture shifting so rapidly that our eyes barely have time to focus before something completely novel is thrust before them, the stable image of the crocodile may still serve as a useful symbol of something our religious forebears knew that we should continue to recollect. Stability is worthy of admiration. In a bizarre way, throwing Maine together with crocodiles may be an antidote for melancholy, but only in the right environmental conditions.

Trashing the Bible

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For the past month any free time I’ve had apart from class preparation has gone toward helping my daughter get ready for a presentation at the 4-H County Fair. Now, the morning after the close of the fair, when prize dairy cattle and model rockets and treasured family pets have all been transported back home, I am left with that sense of purposelessness that follows a period of intense preparation. Four minutes of public exposure translated into hours, days of often emotional planning, trouble-shooting, and dreaming. Although I grew up in a small town, farm life is as foreign to me as Cambodian politics. When I’m at the fair, however, spending long hours wandering amid animals, and go-carts, and community college recruiters, somehow being outdoors feels like being truly human. Perhaps it helps that the local 4-H is part of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. My regnant, reluctant employer channels enormous resources into helping the youth of the state transform into the future.

One of the vendors at the fair was the Gideons. Each year they have a table piled high with cheap New Testaments bound in flimsy plastic made to resemble jaunty orange leather, and the unwary soon find themselves with the Gospels and Paul tucked away in their bulging samples bags. It is curious that the Hebrew Bible, apart from the Psalms, is so dispensable in the cause of conversion or enlightenment. The motivation of the Gideon movement, ironically, draws on the book of Judges for its very label. An occupational hazard, I already have more Bibles than any decent human should, nevertheless, the Gideons always wish me to take on one more, if only a truncated version.

While wandering back to my daughter’s club tent after a trip to the bustling food tent, I passed one of the numerous trash receptacles mandated by any such large gathering of people in a disposable culture. Glancing in for a place to toss my greasy napkin, I spied a Gideon Bible, its optimistic orange cover partially smudged by cotton candy and other ambiguous substances. The tableau gave me a moment of reflection amid the noise, energy, and enticing aromas of church and firehouse cuisine. To someone, the Bible was that extra bit of unwanted, cheap, fair promotional junk. Although not a Bible-worshiper, the image left me just a little sad. Those weeks of intense preparation for my daughter’s presentation are brief compared to the decades I’ve spent trying unsuccessfully to cobble a teaching career out of the Bible. Sometimes symbolism can be cruel and ironic all at the same time.

I Think, Therefore I Believe

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This week in Time, an article by Jeffrey Kluger explores the intelligence of animals. Quite apart from many examples of how bonobos can string together relatively complex concepts using symbol cards (thus evidencing more intelligence than New Jersey’s current governor), the article demonstrates that many animal species display what we would recognize in other humans as intelligence. The article then develops the corollary that if animals think then perhaps they sense emotion as well. Having raised my daughter on Kratt’s Creatures and Zoboomafoo, none of this was new to me. I may be no scientist, but watching closely how animals behave, it has always been obvious to me that we are more like points on a continuum rather than a “special creation.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is what lies behind the human obsession with its non-animal status. As Kluger states, “For many people, the Bible offers the most powerful argument of all. Human being were granted ‘dominion over the beasts of the field,’ and there the discussion can more or less stop.” Unfortunately for our animal companions, the use of the Bible to repress others does not stop at human beings who don’t share your religious views. Many use the Bible as an excuse to do as they please to creatures who demonstrate similar emotional responses to people in similar situations and who, increasingly we realize, also think. Kluger’s article opens with an interview with Kanzi, a bonobo. One of the inevitable conclusions is that this great ape is able to think ahead and make plans. Evolution on this point has apparently skipped many Neo-Cons.

For years I have been telling my students that animals display behaviors that we label as “religious” in humans. The difference is that we are able to ask other humans what they are thinking and thereby gain somewhat direct access to their thought process (if they are telling the truth). Because we fail to share language with animals, we assume we are superior thinkers. To me this does not stand to reason. Animals are as fully members of this planet as humans are. Our desire to exploit them is more a reflection of human dominionist tendencies than a reflection of their lack of intelligence. We may even have animals to thank for the basic tenets of religious thought since religions are better described as evolved than revealed.

Maybe not the best sign of animal intelligence, but consider the Neo-Cons...

My Animal, It’s a God!

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Preparing to enter the Egyptian segment of Ancient Near Eastern Religions, I always have to shift gears to their unique portrayal of the gods. Unlike the Sumerians, who preferred an anthropomorphic divine world, the Egyptians reveled in theriomorphic and Mischwesen deities. Almost earning the title of ancient hippies, the Egyptians felt a deep connection between the world and their gods – as well as living by the mantra “life, health, peace.” Their connection to the earth resulted in gods in animal form or human bodies with animal heads. Having read several attempted explanations, it still comes down to the fact that we don’t know why Egyptians mixed the divine and the animalistic.

Egypt was a culture that bloomed in harsh surroundings. Whether they fully realized it or not, their civilization was survival on the very brink of inhabitable space. Surrounded by desert, much of ancient Egypt was just that thin stretch of land within the fertilizing reach of the Nile’s flood zone. Beyond that, in the “red land,” few survived. Yet the desert is not completely barren. Animals better adapted to heat and aridity survive there. The Egyptians had an appreciation for the divine attributes of animals that are in some way more clever than humans. It is the nature of divinity to be more than human.

The Egyptian ideal of life in harmony with a fragile environment is one that the world could stand to relearn. Instead of proclaiming superiority over mere animals, they recognized that animals know some things that people have not yet learned. How better to display the mysterious power of the gods than to utilize the mystique of the animal world? Sure, a human with a beetle for a head may seem more like a horror-film gone awry than religion, but when the superiority of the scarab is realized, religion will naturally follow.

Paranormal Prophets

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At the suggestion of a friend, I watched The Mothman Prophecies last night. Very loosely an updated version of the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the movie both satisfied my monster movie habit and my interest in things biblical. As a monster flick, it was satisfying in maintaining tension, never clearly showing the creature. As a representation of prophecy, it falls into the camp of Nostradamus.

Reports of the “mothman” began in 1966 and continued over the next year. It was reputedly seen near the Silver Bridge, the artery that connects Point Pleasant with Gallipolis, Ohio. After the tragic collapse of the bridge, resulting in nearly 50 deaths, the paranormal prophet was never seen in the area again. While in West Virginia last year, a friend introduced me to a couple from Point Pleasant who stopped into her store. They looked a little embarrassed when the mothman came up in conversation.

Point Pleasant's mothman statue from WikiCommons

Prophecy, in the vernacular, refers to predicting the future. Although some biblical prophets correctly intimate future happenings, mostly the image of prophets in the Bible is that of effective speakers. Prophets are individuals who participate in the reality of the world by adding their powerful words to the mix. If their words regard a future event – fairly rare in the Bible – they affect the outcome because their words have influence in the world. It is a supernatural view of the spoken (or written) word, to be sure, but it is a long cry from predictive ability. It is a matter of perspective.

Interestingly in the movie, Alexander Leek, the specialist on mothmen (apparently there are many), suggests that they see farther because they are higher in the sky than humans. In other words, it is indeed a matter of perspective. Certainly the mothman must go down as one of the oddest cryptids sighted. I give them no credence as prophets, but I will think twice before driving over bridges from now on.

Mythology Gone to the Dogs

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Today’s New Jersey Star-Ledger reports an inter-species religious scandal that highlights the vast difference between god and dog. Last month a Canadian Anglican priest fed a dog a communion wafer. The gesture, a spur-of-the-moment reaction to a visitor who brought his dog to church (somewhat of a rarity in itself) was likely just a reflex to seeing that inevitable lolling tongue at the communion rail. Priests see lots of lolling tongues, mostly human.

In my long years at Nashotah House, where daily communion was a requirement of all faculty and students, I’m sure I consumed several pounds of communion wafer. I also received many stern warnings that this particular food item – if communion wafers can really be considered food – was unlike any other and must be treated with the utmost sanctity. Ironically, more than once I was handed a wafer by a priest with an out-of-control head-cold who’d clearly just contaminated an entire paten full of the sacrament with an eager virus. Within a week most of the student body would be hacking up an holy phlegm, not dissuaded from sharing the common cup. Despite the obvious fact that the ritual had become a disease vector, the mythology of its sanctity lived on.

The history of Christian ritual is a specialized field with experts who know the minutiae of each subtle gesture and the history of each preposition in the Anaphora. The ritual itself has become an object of worship. For some the fate of the wafer has become the fate of the world. This is mythology in action. Nevertheless, I have often received unbelievable hostility from those crowned with righteousness. As long as the right words are pronounced in the right order with the appropriate gestures, it is perfectly acceptable to stab another human being in the back.

I grew up with dogs. With the rare exception of the occasional biter, canines have treated me very well. Some on the verge of worship. If it comes down to choices, I’ll take my chances with the dog with a lolling tongue rather than with the priest with the magical bread.

Belief in dog is not a bad thing

Sharks and Apostles

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There are sharks in the water. For the third day in a week, some New Jersey beaches have restricted access to the ocean because of sharks. As a particularly hot July trundles along, this is not really welcome news. Also yesterday, the Vatican codified revisions to its clergy sexual abuse crisis. According to an Associated Press article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, women’s ordination groups are angry because sexual abuse and the ordination of women are classed together as crimes against the church.

Venus of Willendorf

Even before civilization began, it seems, religion and sexual dimorphism were tied together. Beginning back 35,000 years ago Paleolithic humans carved female figurines. In a hunter-gatherer society where struggle for survival was the best paying job available, the execution of such objets d’art in a brutish, hostile environment reveals religious sensitivities. Stone Age humans knew something that organized Christianity forgot within its first century: sexuality is never far from religion. The Bible itself, particularly the Christian Scriptures, emphasize that celibacy is a putative gift, not something that can be learned or forced on someone. In typical Roman fashion, however, the church quickly mandated celibacy as the norm and ruled that women were the source of evil.

Nothing could be further from the indications of both Paleolithic remains and scientific thinking. Women, long the source of spirituality, were now cast aside in an arrogant aberration of earlier practice. Largely based on the angry writings of one man, the church decided that men alone should determine the eternal fates of others. Masculine men who knew self-control and who could turn off millennia of evolutionary pressures by a sheer act of will. Centuries later, and the Vatican with its own Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the church still can’t get beyond basic reproduction and sexuality issues. I would go to the beach to try to think this one out, but there are sharks in the water.