The Safest Place to Hide

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One of the most poignant stories in religiously motivated violence, at least in the consciousness of Americans, was the series of disastrous events of 9/11. In the wake of that event, several previously assumed privileges of United States citizens came under scrutiny and were subject to curtailment. I know that on the rare occasions when I fly I feel demeaned by some uniformed stranger telling me to partially undress and explaining that if s/he has to feel me up it will be with the back side of the hand, to protect my modesty. Still, I never complain. Freedom has its price, they say.

Another place where we have funneled our abundant national resources is the Department of Homeland Security. We are willing to pay quantum-sized price-tags to feel safer at home. Then today’s newspaper announces that a fugitive from justice has been working at Homeland Security for two years. A woman nationally wanted for insurance fraud, arrested once after the bulletin was posted, was just now discovered to have been working for Homeland Security. Having watched concerned parents have to go through extensive background checks and even fingerprinting to accompany their kids on a school fieldtrip, I’m not sure that this news makes me sleep any more securely. If we can’t find a criminal who is a government employee (politicians excepted, of course), who has presumably undergone a background check (regularly required for those of us subjecting ourselves to applying for job openings), well, maybe we ought to address the religious violence issue instead.

A friend once told me of an acquaintance who’d failed a test to work in a fast-food restaurant who went on to be hired by the Transportation Safety Administration. So that guard reaching a latex glove toward me may not have had the wherewithal to attain to fast-food service, but will be keeping terrorists off our airplanes. If religious leaders would lay down their ungloved hands and seek to understand their enemies perhaps none of this would even be necessary.

Special Babies

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Roman Polanski has been in the news quite a lot lately. While I haven’t been following the story, his name is perennially associated with Rosemary’s Baby in my mind. In my youth I feared this movie and made no attempt to watch it until I reached my 40s. Like other works conceived by Ira Levin it features a threat to what we value most; the original Stepford Wives is still almost too scary to watch. While Rosemary’s Baby remains a good psychological thriller, the counter-Christmas theme became quite evident the last time I viewed it. I won’t worry about spoilers since the movie was released in the 1960s, but if you’re still waiting to watch it and want a surprise ending, you might want to turn to another post at this point!

The 1960s were times not only of a strong counter-culture but also a period of fear. Many popular evangelists were warning of the coming of the Antichrist and the Time article entitled “Is God Dead?” is featured in the movie itself. Although it is unclear until the end, upon first watching, who fathers Rosemary’s baby, the child-spawn of Satan is presented with many of the trappings of the first Christmas as Rosemary herself makes the discovery. In fact, Christmas comes as Rosemary is pregnant, and the film carefully accentuates the contrast between Mary and Rosemary. The suffering of the expectant mother still makes the film difficult to bear at points.

As Christmas nears in this very commercial and recession-ridden season, many lawns are sporting “Keep the Christ is Christmas” type displays. Isaiah is being taken out of context and the Religious Right continues its attempt to make Christmas a political petard. Babies represent new beginnings. And while Rosemary’s baby was born six months after (diametrically opposed to) the celebration of the birth of Jesus, in both cases the infant represents a radical change. Any human parent knows that babies are special and that knowledge demonstrates that a young Roman Polanski recognized a theme that would scare audiences for at least forty years.

Algernon Sydney v. Estelle Walker

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A headline in yesterday’s paper read “Mom expected God to provide food, daughter testifies,” regarding a New Jersey court case on child endangerment. Back in 2006 an unemployed mother decided, based on what her religion dictated, that God would sustain her family. Her children nearly starved to death after eleven days without food. In a society where those who take their religion literally like to wear it on their sleeves, and politicians receive excessive adulation for their piety, this case is a splash of ice-water honesty. Reality is, people starve to death. Many of them children, many of them religious.

The non-biblical adage “God helps those who help themselves” can properly be traced to Algernon Sydney, a seventeenth-century British philosopher. Quite apart from this noteworthy comment, Sydney was also aware that taking the verses of the Bible out of context you could prove just about anything. He famously wrote, “If you take the scripture to pieces you will make all the penmen of the scripture blasphemous; you may accuse David of saying there is no God and of the Apostles that they were drunk.” Found guilty of treason for his own words taken out of context, Sydney was sentenced to death. Today many people believe his words are biblical.

God help the man who speaks the truth

Perhaps the reality is that people do not want to own up to responsible religion. Believing that God dabbles almighty fingers into the realms of physics, biology, and chemistry every day, violating the laws of nature, they suppose that our little planet is the focal point of a grand cosmic scheme. Meanwhile, a glance at the paper reveals evil perpetrated in the name of God, and a glance at history reveals sensible thinkers facing the gallows.

Live and Let Love

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The vote on homosexual marriage comes up in New Jersey today, and headlines are tense with anticipation. The New Jersey Star-Ledger’s assonant alliteration announces “Same-sex showdown” on page one. Protesters for and against are both shown in photo-ops as the sides line up for this epic battle of morality. Or is it?

“Same-sex” is a phrase I find offensive. One of the uncontested realities of life is that gender is much more complex than is usually supposed. Intersexual individuals (sometimes still called hermaphrodites) make up a larger part of the population than most citizens are consciously aware; studies suggest that in the United States the number may range from 50,000 to 5,000,000. Worldwide the number is likely higher. If the big guy in the sky wants to make gender straight and clear, we are receiving mixed messages.

If we are honest about this, we need to admit that what is on the docket is not morality but power. Apart from a few purists who have no choice on what to say in the matter, people are now widely aware that sex is not just for procreation. Studies of animal populations demonstrate this, and any number of people who use birth control, for whatever reason, also know it. Once sex is released from its procreation-only bounds, then where is the moral qualm within committed, loving relationships? The Bible says much, much more about adultery than it does about homosexuality (but don’t tell that to televangelists or Republican elected officials). Both are eligible for the death penalty.

One of the groups shown protesting in the paper is Torah Jews for Morality. They hold a sign reading, “Gay Union A Rebellion Against the Almighty.” One wonders what they are afraid of. The Torah is only binding on those who adhere to Judaism, no matter what Christian groups say. This is one point on which Paul and Jesus actually agree.

If we follow logic rather than emotion on this issue it is clear that all that is preserved by refusing marriage to homosexual couples is the privileged status of heterosexual couples, whether they engage in adultery or not. Society turns a blind eye to infidelity while going ballistic over committed homosexual union. So pick that gnat out of your teeth and get ready for swallowing a camel.

Towers of Babel

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Yesterday I ran across a graphic on the Awilum blog that juxtaposed the tower of Babel with the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest structure, to be completed next month. Perhaps it is a “guy thing,” but I can’t stop being fascinated by very tall buildings. An inveterate acrophobe, I avoided New York City until I was in my twenties and I was gritting my teeth the entire visit the first time I went to the top of the Empire State Building. Although they frighten me, I can not keep away from them. Driving through Chicago while living in the Midwest, I always kept a wary eye on the Sears Tower, lest it should fall my way. When the Society of Biblical Literature met in Toronto, I braved the CN Tower and even stood on one of the thick glass plates that give a bird’s eye view of the ground far, far below. Now there is an even taller building that fully deserves the name “sky-scraper.” At 818 meters, the Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates soars far beyond other efforts at the ultimate masculinity. It will be nearly twice as high as the Empire State Building when it is completed.

Gnu view from Wikipedia

Joseph Campbell, the late mythographer from Sarah Lawrence College, has had an enormous impact on the study of myth. As a specialist in Ugaritic mythology I find many points of disagreement with his assessment of mythic symbiosis, yet he once said something that has stayed with me ever since. In his Power of Myth video, he states that societies show their values by their tallest buildings. This statement is perfectly justifiable — the amount of resources required to erect enormous buildings does show a dedication to a quasi-divine purpose on the part of a society. Campbell’s example was the medieval cathedrals, and for anyone who has visited a medieval town this is easily affirmed. (St. Vitas Cathedral in Prague and St. Andrews Cathedral in Scotland confirmed this for me.)

The Hebrew Bible, however, casts another view on tall structures. Buildings such as the Tower of Babel are the ultimate in a Judaic assessment of hubris. Genesis 11 makes short work of Babel, stating that God has to stoop down to see this great effort, yet he feels threatened by it nevertheless. Our towers today demonstrate our conspicuous consumption, yet I can’t help but be impressed. Where some see only shifting sand atop endless pools of petroleum, other visionaries see the tallest structure on the planet. Just thinking about it, I find myself clenching again. I don’t plan a visit there anytime soon, but it is in the neighborhood of Babel, for those who speak the language.

Sunday Morning Football

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There is a Baptist Church in East Orange, New Jersey that celebrates Football Sunday to draw the menfolk in. Complete with a tailgate party after the service, this event may boost numbers, but the winner of this divine gridiron has not yet been determined. Not being a fan of football (or any other sport — oh, the heresy!) this particular tactic would not appeal to me, but knowing that when guys get together the topic of sports always seems to come up, well, it just makes sense.

According to the canonical Gospels, Jesus never played football. (The Gospel of Judas, however, does mention a quarterback-sneak, I believe.) The few times I’ve watched games on television (generally under duress) I see a bunch of men trying their physical best to beat some other guys up. Rampaging after a pig-skin (definitely not kosher), they attempt to score and prevent the other team from doing so. This is my amateur analysis of what I am told is a very complex game.

Rewind. Stop. Replay. The Baptist Church. Founded to protest against the vicissitudes of the Church of England, the Puritan-inclined Baptists wished to establish a church free from the constraints of the formalism inherent in the staid worship of either Roman or Anglo-Catholic England. Breaking from tradition was an honored principle here. Like our football heroes, they joined a team against the competition for that Super Bowl in the sky. Will the men stick around for the post-season slump? Maybe not, but as Notre Dame has always known, the divine man is a big fan of the Catholic team.

Notre Dame's famous Touchdown Jesus

What Would Dinos Eat?

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A recent edition of Science Illustrated ran an article about a potentially revolutionary understanding of mammalian evolution. Reponomamus robustus, a large mammal from the Cretaceous Era has been found with dinosaur bones in its stomach. The implication, of course, is that this early mammal may have eaten dinosaurs instead of the conventional reverse of the scenario. Science is open to such radical ideas, but my thoughts turned to the culture war being waged on automobile bumpers across the United States.

Several years ago the Jesus Fish or ichthus symbol began appearing on the backend of cars in what seemed at first to be a “baby on board” tactic with a don’t-ram-me-I’m-a-Christian subtext. Some drivers, however, associated the Jesus Fish with an evangelical power play, a showing of numbers that indicted all other drivers as “non-Christian,” and therefore, by implication, accident-worthy. The Darwin Fish showed up soon thereafter, a counter-symbol for those who seemed to be declaring that Christians could be evolutionists as well. Sensing a challenge — which always appears as a threat in neo-con eyes — the Jesus Fish or Truth Ichthus swallowing the Darwin Fish swam onto car posteriors. Then the dinosaur eating a Jesus Fish came out, and I am certain that I once saw a Jesus Fish eating a T-rex on some oversized vehicle hind-end.

A friend once asked me why I spent my time arguing with those who are so obviously wrong (the anti-evolutionists). The unfortunate answer showed up in the White House at the turn of the millennium and the radical restructuring of society encouraged by the “religious right” gains credibility from the sheer number of people willing to adorn their cars with Jesus Fish. The real victim in this volley of statements in chrome is a guy who said nothing about evolution and who, I’m sure, would be amazed at how misrepresented he is. As the love-hate relationship between Jesus and dinosaurs continues to wax and wane, I’m staying out of it, but I’m more frightened by the fish than by the dinosaur.

Sects Sells

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Once again the headlines tell the story of a child molested by a “celibate” priest now suing the church as an adult. That money dropped in the collection plate goes to cover the cost of sin. The disclosures continue to find the light of day not only in the Catholic Church, but across the religious organizational spectrum. It is an extremely unfortunate situation, but I can’t help wonder if religions are naturally susceptible to sexual expression.

Sexuality and religion go back a very long way. I have suggested elsewhere on this blog that some of the earliest evidence for religion, all the way back to the Paleolithic era, is sexual in nature. One of the blatant aspects of our own cultural conditioning is that we can no longer see the connection. We inhabit a post-Victorian world, a world that strenuously repressed sexuality and removed it from the sphere of human discourse. One of my favorite examples of this is when the standard classical Hebrew-English dictionary (Brown-Driver-Briggs, for those of you who need to know!) makes reference to sexual activity in the Bible (and it is abundant), the editors delicately slip from English to Latin, so as not to offend the sensibilities of clerics and other gentleman-scholars reading the entry. This antipathy to the human condition can be traced even further back to the Greeks who felt that the physical body was much more base than the spiritual, or intellectual aspect. Sexuality was a source of embarrassment and perhaps even shame.

I’m not a psychologist, but it is pretty clear what occurs when strong feelings and drives are repressed for a long time. The early Christians who believed Jesus’ second coming to be imminent did not wish to be caught in flagrante delicto. Sexuality was to be avoided since time was short. When this became formalized and priests, probably very decent people overall, were forced to relinquish their sexuality, it was assumed that it would simply evaporate into the ether and harm no one. We have known for decades that this is naively wishful thinking. As the margarine commercial used to say, “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”

What's Mother Nature hiding?

Ancient sects were not sexually depraved. Stephanie Budin (The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, Cambridge, 2008) has done a good job showing that the case for sacred prostitution in the ancient world has been grossly overblown. Nevertheless, sexuality had a natural place in ancient religions. Any number of nervously giggling teenagers who’ve just discovered the Song of Songs in the Bible know that! The problem arises when our religious culture refuses to acknowledge the obvious. We bottle it up and try to keep it hidden, but when it finally appears the price tag is very steep indeed.

Sacraments and Sea Cucumbers

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Directly across the fold from each other on pages 4–5 of today’s New Jersey Star-Ledger are two articles that my brain comprehends as related by more than mere proximity. On page 4 the headline reads, “In sunless depths, marine life thrives.” In an Associated Press article bi-lined New Orleans (where many of my colleagues are currently enjoying the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting), scientists reported that over 17,000 deep-seas species have been found below the point where sunlight ends. What was thought to be a barren zone just decades ago, it turns out, is teeming with organisms adapted to living without light.

One page 5 the headline reads “Bishop admits barring Kennedy from sacrament.” In a ploy that has become distressingly frequent of late, the Roman Catholic bishop claims that Representative Kennedy’s political views on abortion effectively excommunicate him. I find it unconscionable that clergy feel that they have the right to direct public policy when they are not publicly elected officials. Any clergy attempting to coerce officials democratically elected are guilty of abusing their putatively divinely appointed trust. The millions of Catholic laity who privately support freedom of choice they may rhetorically chastise from the pulpit or by some papal bull but they do not deny them the sacrament. Let’s be honest here, this is about politics, not theology.

I have been reading Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah, perhaps the scariest book I’ve ever read. In it Blumenthal demonstrates how the Catholic Church got onto the pro-life bandwagon in the intricate political maneuverings of the “Religious Right.” They quickly learned techniques up to and including lying to get their agenda across. It should distress all members of a democracy that their leaders are being led by dishonest clerics of all stripes. Those who mix their religious views with politics seek to end the religious freedom that allowed them to be born in the first place. They practice late-term religious freedom abortion.

What does this have to do with the wondrous world of the great deeps? They represent, to my mind, two forms of life that thrive far from the enlightening rays of the sun.

2012

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As the economy rolls along like a marble on a pebble beach and the stock market continues its own bumpy road to recovery, apocalyptic thought is again on the rise. It is when times are bad that apocalyptic comes in most useful. Individuals who feel that this world has run out of possibilities generally look to a new future world where things will be radically different. That’s why people flock to movies like 2012 and dream of a new day, a new era.

That’s the way it has always been. Jews being tortured to death under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid tyrant, looked for that day when Michael would take on the “Prince of Persia” and the new world would gush in and overtake this one. Almost two centuries later the early Christian movement, suffering at the hands of Roman emperors such as Nero and Diocletian, reveled in the visions of Revelation — the new world coming. Rental property is free in the New Jerusalem! The earliest exemplars of apocalyptic thinking appear to go back to the ancient Zoroastrians. This early Iranian religion (which may have originated in Afghanistan) took comfort in a dualistic world where good and evil constantly struggled until a cosmic conflict would result in the ultimate destruction of evil. It helped to explain why things could be so bad for good people in the here-and-now.

2012, however, derives from concerns that the Mayan calendar seems to have run out of space at that time slot just over three years from now. Otherwise intelligent people panic; this is an apocalypse of the secular kind! Experts on the Maya (among which I am not) explain that the Mayans use(d) many calendars (there are still Mayans around). Their large-scale, 5000 year calendar may run out on December 21, 2012, but that doesn’t mean the end of the world. In fact, that calendar only began on August 11, 3114 BCE, about 4.5 billion years after the creation of the earth. It was not meant as a road-map to the cosmos. The real apocalypse is in the minds of those suffering from their own private ills in this world. Ever since Zarathustra spoke, people have had an alternative, better future to anticipate.

False Profits

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December’s edition of the Atlantic Monthly features a disturbing article by Hanna Rosin entitled “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?” What is disturbing about this article is not the insinuation that many conservative Christian groups have caused far more problems than they’ve solved (“guilty as charged”), but the utter duplicity of the movement. The deception begins with the claim of the Prosperity Gospel pundits that they are holding true to biblical principles. In reality they rewrite the Bible to make it fit their vision of personal gain at the expense of the weak and needy. You can hear the sounds of Amos and Micah being ground beneath their wingtip heels.

The Prosperity Gospel is a particularly virulent disease in the United States, a nation of incomprehensible contrasts. The clergy of the Prosperity Gospel (churches of this stripe are among the largest and fastest growing in America) demand tithes on the part of their sometimes poor but always hopeful congregants. Most of them are being set up for failure. But it will be failure with a smile. As I read Rosin’s article, I was saddened that a growing number of those buying into this “Gospel” are those among the exploited Hispanic community. The message they are being given is the worst kind of blasphemy. One such believer, according to Rosin, claimed “the rich are closer to God.” A message farther from the actual Gospels would be difficult to concoct.

Prosperity Gospelers, decidedly not mainstream Christianity in theological outlook, judge a book by its glitzy cover. Its leaders, often fabulously wealthy, hold out unrealistic hope to their gullible and disappointed followers. It is so easy when a congregant looses everything simply to blame it on a lack of faith. This bogus idea of material payoff for spiritual righteousness is not only dangerous, but it is redefining the religious scene in North America. The article follows the story of Fernando Garay, the leader of Casa del Padre, a Prosperity Gospel church. When asked by Rosin about buying a house (a sign of God’s blessing) he tellingly replied, “Ten Christians will say that God told them to buy a house. In nine of the cases, it will go bad. The 10th one is the real Christian.” Americans have a fondness for snake-oil and entrepreneurs. Now the hucksters are the ones claiming the right to define what Christianity really is. It is a religion that even Jesus would fail to recognize.

Asherah Overcomes

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In the constant struggle of humankind against nature, we often find things out of place to our refined sensibilities. With the advent of autumn we frantically rake the fallen leaves into Brobdingnagian piles and anxiously await the colossal vacuum truck to come by and suck them all away. Leaf litter just doesn’t fit the suburban image. Or perhaps there is a dead tree that threatens to fall on our artificial habitat. We call the tree removal experts to have it taken out. All animals reshape their environment. We humans recreate it.

Long ago I argued that divinized trees in the ancient world do not necessarily represent Asherah. I stand by that assessment — asherahs were apparently constructed of wood, but it does not follow that all wooden cultic objects are asherahs — this does not meet the logical requirement of sufficient condition. Nevertheless, the book of Deuteronomy suggests that in times of necessity any tree might serve as an asherah (16.21), although this is soundly condemned. Perhaps the power of the tree represents the feminine vitality of the goddess. Like a tree, Asherah often outlives humans.

Photo credit to Christopher Chung

This picture appeared in today’s paper. A crew trying to remove an out-of-place tree near an expensive home had a little trouble as the tree pulled over the crane, and not vice-versa. Seeing the all too masculine crane truck dangling helplessly in the air while the tree holds its ground, I thought again of Asherah. I do sympathize the homeowners, but my sense of wonder is temporarily restored. Perhaps nature still has the means to prevent humans setting things in their own preferred order. Perhaps Asherah still lurks at the edge of the forest. Let’s hear it for the trees!

Sky God Redux

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This week’s Time magazine includes the periodic feature of the 50 best inventions of the year. Flipping through the pages looking at techno-gadgets that leave me vacantly spinning in my office chair, I was surprised to see that invention number 49 is the work of our hypothetical sky gods. The undulates asperatus cloud has been receiving high profile attention of late, and now it is seeded on Time’s greatest inventions list! When I last posted on undulates asperatus, it had been written up in Wired. Prior to that I had seen a feature on the cloud in the New Jersey Star-Ledger some months back. Having written a(n unpublished) book on weather terminology in the Bible, I have had my head in the clouds for several years now. To find the humble collections of condensed humidity making the news is a strange but welcome validation of my work.

Undulatus_asperatus

Undulatus asperatus from Wikipedia, by Agathaman

Time resists bringing the divine into the description of the cloud, preferring the more neutral term “ominous” to describe undulates asperatus. After having spent several days under the blanket of a nor’easter here in New Jersey with its impenetrable gray clouds, I can appreciate how ominous thick clouds can be. The more I study ancient religions the more I am convinced that major gods primarily reflect the content of the sky. After all, gods were seldom seen in the fields and cities of antiquity, but the sky holds endless possibilities.

Perhaps some editor somewhere will stumble across my conviction that weather matters in the biblical world and will want to take a look at my book. If not, no worries. I’ll just be looking at the sky.

Yarihk Finally Gets a Drink

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594px-Full_Moon_Luc_Viatour

Gnu moon

Yarihk once again makes the news as NASA announced yesterday that they have discovered a substantial amount of water on the moon. I’m still reeling as if I’d joined Yarikh at the Marzeah. Although the local paper only deemed it page 2-worthy, this is a paradigm-shifting discovery! The arid, airless, lifeless, dead rock daily racing around our world has suddenly blossomed with new potential. Water on the moon? It seems as unlikely as satisfactory jobs for all graduate students.

Students are generally surprised to learn that in the Ancient Near East the moon was often considered superior to the sun. Given our knowledge of astronomy and physics it is difficult to look behind the curtain to see that it is not self-evident that the moon reflects sunshine without the subsequent development of a scientific outlook. For ancients the moon provided the gentler light that illuminated night — when you really need some light anyway — and was responsible for generating dew, a necessary source of water in regions where summer rains are unheard of. The benevolent moon waxes and wanes, forming a perfect circle and, by degrees, the crescent shape of the horns of divinity, and finally disappearing completely to start the cycle all over.

At Ugarit Yarikh is a thirsty character in text 114. He marries a foxy Hurrian goddess in the myth of Nikkal, a princess much above his station, then he easily fades into the background from the dearth of textual sources. Some have suggested a lunar connection for El as well, the very head of the gods. If El was lunar, perhaps Yahweh also drove the moon. Whoever is in charge, however, thought to pack water for the journey and as we further explore our nearest astronomical companion we will discover that Yarikh is just as interesting as the denizens of Ugarit had suggested.

Marmots and Briny Deeps

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While driving through Utah some years back, I spotted a large rodent next to the road. Born with a need to announce automatically every land-animal I see while driving, I called out “there’s a marmot!” My wife, half-asleep, said “A Mormon? Where?” We were headed toward the Great Salt Lake with an ultimate destination of Dinosaur National Monument. Naturally we saw many more Mormons than marmots. The story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always fascinated me. The whole concept of the “Great Awakening” and “Burnt-over District” conjure images of apocalyptic vividness where nineteenth-century evangelists are shaking angry fists at the declining modern world around them and are warning of the imminent approach of an angry deity.

I naturally found it interesting when the paper declared yesterday that the Mormon Church has decided to back anti-homosexual discrimination legislation. This doesn’t mean the Latter-day Saints approve of the practice, just that they don’t want gays to be unfairly treated in the secular world. One of the implications of a changing world is that modern readers often lose sight of the fact that the world in which the Bible originated was a very different one than the one we inhabit. “Homosexuality” was not a lifestyle in biblical times, but that does not mean there were not men and women born gay. The real issue was the misplacement of “seed” that vital element that mysteriously led to new people. The only references to same-sex “love” in the Bible commend the depth of friendship. The only problem is where the seed ends up.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is an etiology for the Dead Sea. The major crime of Sodom, as even Ezekiel directly says, was lack of hospitality, not homosexuality. The city that does not extend hospitality to the needy and the traveler is truly wicked. It is buried under fiery brimstone covered with stagnant water. I dipped my pinkie into the Dead Sea and touched my tongue when I was there (this might explain my current state of mind). The saline brew was gut-wrenchingly revolting. So as we parked beside the Great Salt Lake a couple decades later, I decided to repeat the experiment. I was disappointed; nevertheless, if salty lake basins are a sign of God’s wrath we really ought to wonder whether the salinity will lighten up just a bit more now that an act of human decency has occurred in Utah.

GreatSaltLake

NASA-eye view of the Great Salt Lake