Monday Morning of the Soul
Western society is much indebted to the Hebrew Bible and the culture it has engendered. Nowhere is this more evident than the now hallowed concept of the weekend. Most of our time increments are determined by the movements of celestial bodies – the sun marks our days and years, the moon keeps our months rolling along. But the seven-day week is a bit of an anomaly. We know that the ancient Babylonians experimented with the seven-day idea, but it was the Hebraic concept of the Sabbath that provided us with a regular day off.
Ancient agrarian societies knew no “days of rest.” The old saying, often attributed to nineteenth-century American farmers, states that your cows require milking, even on the Lord’s day. Life in ancient times, for most individuals, was a daily slog, repetitive, long, and repetitive, of struggling to survive. The idea that you could take a break from survival to relax and not work simply did not equate. A break from survival is the same as death. When ancient priests – city-dwellers, no doubt – decreed that Saturday was a special day because even the Almighty needs a little Miller-time, well, the idea caught on. Society, once it had become sufficiently urbanized, could allow one day off a week.
Fast forward to the Christian contribution. Early followers of Jesus were Jewish and therefore already sold on the Sabbath concept. The resurrection, they asserted, took place on Sunday, so it was appropriate to worship on that day as well. A two-day worship minimum had been established. To many ancient folks this looked like laziness with a religious blush. Nevertheless, it caught on. Now many of us in a leisure-based society, with white-collar work that usually can handle being put off a couple days without immanent starvation or over-lactation, live for the weekend. Constraints of doing it for “the man” are off, we are free to be who we really are. Two-sevenths of the time, anyway.
Religions have given the world special gifts. As another dreadful Monday morning forces us out of bed early and focuses our eyes on a distant Friday afternoon, we should remember to thank Judaism and Christianity for their combined worshipful sensitivities. If it weren’t for them, we would have endless weeks of Mondays.
What’s in a Name?
Two of my readers sent me an article yesterday about Lord Jesus Christ, the Massachusetts man who was hit by a car. Lord Jesus survived the brush with death this time. Clearly the angle on this story is the human interest aspect instead of the courtroom precedent or the political scope of its ramifications. In our minds, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that we’ve already come up with a profile for a man named “Lord Jesus Christ.” We’ve already judged him and determined his motives in legally taking such a name. This is a book to be judged by its cover.
From a purely semantic point of view, the victim’s name would probably have more impact with the definite article: The Lord Jesus Christ. As it is, the name differs only in degree from the thousands of Chrises out there, of either gender, or the many Hispanic men named Jesus, or those Anglos with the surname Lord. Not to mention all those Joshuas. Our names are the labels that others immediately use to prejudge us, although mostly our names come from our parents, or sometimes spouses. We are known through life by tags branded on us by parents who have no idea who we will become. As the non-adopted step-son of a second father I changed my name and I know the baggage that goes with such a change. The burden became so great that I reverted to my birth-name after college. I felt like I had been living a lie for much of my youth. What’s in a name?
Our injured man with the newsworthy name has not yet become the savior of the world. Some religious folk are offended by his appellation, yet most of us would be flattered by someone naming their child after us. Why not aim high when it comes to names? If we are to be judged by our verbal moniker, why not select one that states our point of view? With religiously motivated terrorism on the ascendant, however, it gives me pause to think about Lord Jesus Christ being run down. A man was injured here, while crossing the street. It could have been anyone. If it hadn’t been for his epithet, the story would not be national news. More than anything else, this may reveal the significance of the name.
A message from on high?
LOL Cat Bible Commentary, Part 1
It was bound to happen. Here is the first installment of the LOL Cat Bible Commentary.
Genesis 1.1 Oh hai! In teh beginning Ceiling Cat maded teh skys an teh Urfs, but he no eated them.
In teh beginnin
In teh beginnin ub teh dai — Ceiling Cat nawt wurk at nite, cuz datz wen
Basement Cat come owt to do ebil stuffz.
Ceiling Cat
Ceiling Cat writed da Bible. He’z the mos smartess an strongess kitteh ever. An him reely good — he no eat other kittehs fud, an he nebber jumpz on another kitteh in da middul ub teh nite (but for hoomuns dis ok).
maded teh skys
But first him taked a nap. Den Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez so him had place to liv. An den him putted a hole in da ceilin so him kood peep down on teh Urfs. Wait, him nawt maek teh Urfs yet! Ai sowwy, plz to furgive? Kthx.
an teh Urfs
K, nao Ceiling Cat maek teh Urfs. Urfs is where the hoomuns howse iz.
Ceiling Cat no maek teh udder Urfs, jus da wun wif da howse.
but he no eated them
Ceiling Cat can has a hunger after awl taht wurk, Aifinkso! But him no eated teh skiez, cuz den him fall owt, an den dere no moar kittehz to wurk on da Urfs. An him no eated teh Urfs howse, either. Him wanted to maek teh birdiez an teh moal an teh fishiez. An him also want to maek teh hoomuns for to maek his fud.
1.2 Teh Urfs has no shayps an has darwk fase, an Ceiling Cat roed invisible bike ovah teh wawters
Teh Urfs has no shayps
Cuz Ceiling Cat nawt evur maded a Urfs befoar. Him not no wut Urfs shayp iz!
an has darwk fase
Ceiling Cat can to seez in teh darwk, but dere nawt eny shayps to seez. The Urfs has dawrk fase liek teh howse wif no elec…elek…elekt…wif no lytes.
roed invisible bike
Liek him wuz dreemin. Invisible bike is hawrd to be finded in teh dawrk, but Ceiling Cat maded it an him finded it.
ovah teh wawters
Ceiling Cat nawt liek to get him feetz wet, so him no rided teh bike thru taht wawter. Wawters has see monsturs an stuffs.
1.3 At furst, has no lyte. An Ceiling Cat sez, “I can has lite?” An lite was.
At furst, has no lyte
Ceiling Cat nawt need lyte, but him noes taht hoomuns will to need lyte for to maek noms.
An Ceiling Cat sez
Ceiling Cat has to tawk to himself cuz of monokittehism. No udder kittehs arownd yet, not ebben Basement Cat.
I can has lite?
Ceiling Cat reely wanted a cheezburger. But him needed a hoomun for to maek cheezburger. So him has to maek teh lyte for to get noms.
An lite was.
Nao him can to see howse an da Urfs he maded. Den him maded lolz an udder stuffz, but first him taek moar napz.
(Translated into LOL Speek by the world’s greatest CATS! Fan Kthx)
Friday’s Wednesday
The ultimate stag party?
Mythology never ends. Many people live by it today under its name “religion,” and many in the ancient world endlessly recycled their gods until they ended up looking rather unrecognizable from their earlier forms. I was, therefore, intrigued when a friend asked me about Herne the Hunter. Herne is a mythological character about whom I had not heard. The earliest reference to the stag-antlered deity comes from William Shakespeare, and he has been co-opted by the Wiccan community, nicely tying together many of this week’s posts. So, whence Herne?
Shakespeare seldom invented ex nihilo, but rather adapted. Herne, already an established character, was a wrongly accused poacher who was hanged from a great oak in King Richard II’s England. He had been magically revived after a near-death experience earlier in life and had been crowned with fantastic antlers at that time. The horned head has reminded some Celtic mythologists of Cernunnos, a horned chthonian god attested in mainland Europe but not found in the British Isles. Yet others, by virtue of his being hanged on a tree and the similarity of his name to the epithet Einherjar, suggest Herne may have evolved from Wotan, or Odin himself. Woden was involved in the “Wild Hunt” episode of northern and central European mythology, and since Herne is a hunter, well, isn’t the connection obvious?
Such tales as this are instructive of the way that religions evolve. We know very little of the true origins of the story, but later versions become canonical. The present-day version is perceived to be “historical” and all others are merely coincidence or happenstance. Today Herne is a typical ghost story of Windsor Forest, and those who report seeing him say he still wears his supernatural horns. Those who want to discover his origins are left with a handful of books by publishers of the occult and hundreds of unanswered questions.
Bible Myths
The Bible is the most quoted book never read. That is, many people love to quote it without actually reading it all – yes, even Chronicles and Leviticus! The result is that the Bible itself has become a thing of mystery, a magical source of divine power with which the strong may subdue the weak, or by which politicians might win the most powerful office in the free world. The Bible is more dangerous than any weapon its believers may construct, for it is the source of the mandate, the writing that is so much more than ink and paper.
Over the years so many myths have grown about the Bible that it has become a mythical creature. Students often approach those of us who teach the Bible with amazing stories that defy explanation, or sometimes, that are just fun. This past week a student paper waxed eloquent on how the Bible physically describes Satan. It does not. The Bible tells us very little about what anyone looked like! One Bible myth that I have tried unsuccessfully to substantiate or debunk over the years, however, continues to elude me. It is the story of Psalm 46 in the incomprehensibly influential King James Version.
The KJV was completed in 1611, and William Shakespeare died in 1616. There is no evidence that Shakespeare was among those with any responsibility for translating the Bible, but his influence in England in his own lifetime was enormous. Many years ago a student informed me that Shakespeare made his way into Psalm 46. The forty-sixth word of the KJV translation is “shake.” Counting from the end of the psalm to the forty-sixth word from the end, one finds the word “spear.” So the gematria of the psalm give us the name of the putative translator. This story has all the signs of an apocryphal account of a Bible reader with too much time on his or her hands. If the story is true, I would love to see documentation. Otherwise it is one more monument of the power of book that few dare to read.
More than the sum of its parts
Militant Evangelists
It is not often that the military gets to rebuke an evangelical, no matter how much the evangelist may deserve it. In the world of Christian crusaders few come close to the stature of Billy Graham, a man who has had more than half a century of undue influence on American culture. At a library book sale a couple weekends ago a middle aged-couple hovering over the religion books (where I have professional obligations to hover) were discussing how they’d read all of Billy Graham’s books. When the family business passed to Franklin Graham, however, the scepter failed to be firmly grasped by the blushing co-regent. At the center of controversy since his comments about Islam beginning in 2001, Graham the younger was recently stricken from the (apparently) prestigious Pentagon prayer service roster.
I have to admit that I was surprised to learn that the Pentagon has a regular prayer service. My image of the military is one of beefy guys (and some gals) with ultimate confidence in their weapons and more than enough brashness to go around. They don’t project the down-on-your-knees-before-the-almighty image. “Guided by the beauty of our weapons,” as Leonard Cohen once sagaciously quipped, the military gets first crack at technological advances and heavy metals. The basic components of carnage and devastation. Yet they pray.
The old adage that there are no atheists in fox-holes glosses military service with a divine prerogative, so when these tough guys rebuff a famous evangelist there must be a story behind it. The military’s refusal to dis Islam displays a sensitivity uncharacteristic of most evangelical rhetoric and theology. The Religious Right’s revisionist claims that America was founded as a Christian nation are impotent without their WMD. Even so, the program should continue. “I don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up,” do you?
When Enola Gay comes to play
Bibles and Dolls
To celebrate my wife’s birthday, yesterday we drove to the historic Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania to see a show. The Playhouse has an illustrious history, having hosted performances including such players as Kitty Carlisle, Lillian Gish, Bert Lahr, and Robert Redford. We went to see a production of Guys and Dolls, the musical based on characters and situations penned by Damon Runyon. (My first introduction to Runyon, I must admit, was in the Alice Cooper anthem, Department of Youth.) Although we attended a performance of the musical back in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a couple of decades ago, I’d forgotten how much the Bible moves the plot along.
Naturally, any love story that involves a Salvation Army cadet will have its religious conflicts, but it is Sky Masterson’s knowledge of the Bible that drives Sarah Brown to first give him serious attention. Without the arresting power of the Holy Bible, the love interest would never have sparked. As I frequently tell my students, without some knowledge of the Bible, American society just can’t be understood. Even Sky Masterson’s real name is Obadiah (“servant of Yahweh”).
Damon Runyon was anything but a saint. His lifestyle was diametrically apposed to that envisioned by his fictionally pure Sarah Brown – a heavy drinker, smoker, and perhaps womanizer, he was a friend of crime bosses and a noted gambler. But Runyon, like most Jazz Age Americans, knew his Bible. One of his famous phrases derives from the book of Ecclesiastes: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s how the smart money bets.” From the quiet streets of an artsy hamlet in Pennsylvania to the glitzy lights of Broadway, the Bible still makes itself known. The smart money is on the one who learns to spot it.
An unorthodox sort of prophet
The Danger of Books
Yesterday the Hunterdon County Library booksale began. I did not grow up as a reader. As a child, television was my primary source of information. For reasons unclear to me, I took to books when I started junior high school. Suddenly I couldn’t get enough of them. I lived in a town with no bookstores, so I usually depended on what I could find on our periodic trips to Goodwill to look for clothes. While my mother was looking for apparel for my brothers and me, I hovered over the quarter-a-piece book bin, buying up to a dollar’s worth of used books at a time. I kept my books in a ratty old suitcase under the bed. There were no bookshelves at home, nor any room for them. Besides, I liked to keep my books separate from other aspects of my life. Perhaps it is an illness, but from that day on, I have not been able to resist the draw of books. It is perhaps natural that I would go into higher education (although my field might have been chosen a bit more wisely). In any case, yesterday I drove to Flemington, New Jersey, with, at least to judge by the traffic, three-quarters of the population of the county.
One of the books I purchased had a slip of paper tucked between the leaves. When I got home I read on it, “The naked witches have been regarded either as a jokey press gimmick or as a complete non-event. The truth of the matter is that the witches played a very important role in a whole series of monster invocations.” Intrigued, I wondered what the source of this unusual quote might be. Then I was struck by the religious imagery implicit in the piece: witches, no matter how defined, are a religious subject. Monsters, as I have frequently noted, share intense neural territory with religion. And invocation? It is a liturgical term! I can only wonder what the original context of this quote might have been, but the book in which it was stuck was in no sense religious. I am a very eclectic reader (so it is perhaps unusual that I would go into higher education) and no books I purchased had anything to do with religion. It seems that religion never fails to find me.
My devotion to books often reminds me of the day when Amazon used to include bookmarks when you purchased from them. My favorite bore a quote from Erasmus: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” It sometimes drives my wife to frustration that I still wear clothes I purchased before we were married some twenty-two years ago. My informal student evaluations on Rate My Professor sometimes comment on my out-of-date fashion sense. The reason is, however, that I buy books before clothes, and yes, even food. And when you buy used books at a library book sale, you may learn that naked witches invoke monsters, and that may be valuable information. And my clothes are never in a condition Goodwill would consider accepting when I’m finally forced to relinquish them for lack of functionality.
The Passover-Easter Complex
Some years back I completed an unpublished book for young readers on the holidays. This project was undertaken because most holidays have a religious origin and because I could find no comparable source for kids to learn this information from a reliable source. Unfortunately publishers have showed little interest. Rather than waste the effort it took to write the book, I have been installing segments here, on the Full Essays page of my blog. Since it is Easter for many Christians today, I have added the next installment: the Passover-Easter Complex. It begins like this:
No doubt the most complicated set of holidays are those that surround the changing of the seasons – the solstices and equinoxes. Among even those holidays, the Passover (Jewish) and Easter (Christian) complexes are especially complex. Like most major holidays these celebrations have very interesting roots. Problem is, it is hard to know where to begin! We’ve already started with Mardi Gras, but that is kind of a festival on its own. To really get started, we have to turn back to the calendar (again?).
Easter, like Passover, is a “moveable feast.” That doesn’t mean playing musical chairs while you eat! It means that the dates change depending on the moon, so to figure out the date you have to (you guessed it) look at the sky. (Actually, these days you can look on the web or in many books used by churches to figure it out. But work with me here, let’s pretend it is, gasp, before these things were invented!) Two days of the year have an equal amount of day and night all around the world, when the earth stands up straight on its axis. Marking the beginning of spring and fall they are called the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. (“Equinox” means “equal-night,” “vernal” means “green” or spring, and “autumnal,” duh, “in autumn.”) Back when people had no TV, this was a big thing! Not only was it cool to have equal day and night, in the spring it meant days were finally getting longer and warmer. For ancient people it meant that light was winning the struggle with darkness.
Eternal Dampnation
Does anybody have Noah’s telephone number? New Jersey has just experienced the wettest winter on record. Since the day records began, we’ve never had this much rain. That fact came home to me yesterday while driving the fifty miles to Montclair in a tremendous downpour. I had just purchased new windshield wipers, but the cap had fallen off the driver’s side blade. Driving on a truck-infested interstate where traffic continued to fly by at above posted speed limits, I realized with horror that at each passing swipe the rubber insert that actually swipes away the moisture was creeping out of the top of the wiper fixture. There it was, just at the top of my field of view, thrashing about like a demon-possessed snake, while my field of view grew smaller and smaller. I was in lane three of an eight-lane highway and couldn’t get over to make adjustments. In a nightmare I envisioned the slippery snake making a terminal bit for freedom and flying over my head as metal scraped glass and I drove blind into whatever lay ahead.
Well, the wiper stayed intact long enough to get me to the university. The rain did not abate, however. Even with battered umbrella and longsuffering raincoat, I was soaked below the knees by the time I squished into class. Unfortunately we studied the flood myth a few weeks ago. A few years back William Ryan and Walter Pitman, a couple of geologists, uncovered the fact that the Black Sea had been flooded by the Mediterranean some 7500 years ago. They posited that this sudden increase in sea-level around the Euxine Sea led to the dispersion of a world-wide flood myth. Their book became a best-seller and even Robert Ballard got in on the search for Noah’s homeland.
Hearing people talk about New Jersey’s incessant rain, I have no doubt that a major sea change was not necessary for flood stories to begin. As water levels rise, perhaps to the delight of whales and other blubber-laden beasts, the rest of us fear being perpetually covered by overwhelming waves. That is enough to start the story of a flood. Especially when your windshield wipers aren’t working on the Garden State Parkway.
Is it damnation or just New Jersey?
Heavenly Visitors
With Passover hard upon us, I was a little disturbed to receive a letter on Friday that read, “A heavenly visitor will pass your house…” Having been raised on the sturdy fare of Exodus, I knew that heavenly visitors more often take the form of marauding angels than of jocular Santa Clauses. It seemed an ominous warning. Of course, it came from the Saint Matthew’s Churches that sent me such good wishes of divine promises of prosperity some months back, so I had to assume it was a purely coincidental biblical reference. The folks at Saint Matthew’s Churches are, after all, Bible believers.
Perhaps because of that fateful letter, I dreamed, in good Genesis style, a dream two nights ago. I dreamed that I found a dollar coin on the ground at a family outing. A few feet away lay another. And another. Wherever we went in that Morpheus-bewitched town there were silver dollars unclaimed on the ground. My trousers were being dragged down with the weight of the lucre in my pockets. I couldn’t believe my good fortune! Then I awoke, still employed only part-time, still worrying every minute about whether we can meet all the bills. Perhaps the dream was a message? Should the Saint Matthew’s’ folks be right, prosperity was headed my way. Saturday’s powerball jackpot was in the double-digit millions. I very rarely play the lottery, but since state education in New Jersey needs all the help it can get, I offered up a dollar to see if Saint Matthew’s’ prosperity was at hand.
No. Not even one number came close. Perhaps there is a secret clause in the prosperity gospel contract. Perhaps those who prosper must hold certain conservative views on social issues. The views, say, my mother holds. Yet she lives in a trailer on a severely circumscribed income. That doesn’t seem to be it either. Last night I awaited another dream. Instead, the next-door neighbors were holding a loud party until 3 a.m. Perhaps celebrating Palm Sunday? Or perhaps that was the heavenly visitor passing over for Passover a couple of days early? Either way, I didn’t sleep well last night knowing that something was just outside my window.
Jesus Lets Himself Go
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper
Carpentry is hard work, as Jesus must have known. The occasions when I head to the basement and chew through wood with an electric saw and nail boards together through pre-drilled pilot holes always leave me feeling like I’ve burned a few calories. Not to mention walking everywhere. No Hondas, Volkswagens, or Smart Cars in those days. A guy could sure build up an appetite. My wife pointed me to Newsweek’s blog this week, where a story about the portion sizes portrayed in paintings of the last supper over the past millennium is posted. The conclusion drawn: the food servings have continued to escalate in size as food production and acquisition have become easier.
This is not so surprising, given that what people value is what they portray in art. As I’ve mentioned before, Stephen Prothero, in his book American Jesus, demonstrates that portraits of Jesus reflect the self-perception of the society in which they are produced. Few attempt to make a life-like representation, largely because no one knows what Jesus might have looked like.
Jesus as an ordinary guy
Now, if we gently push his chair back into that fateful table one more time, we might wonder how an overweight Jesus might appeal to those who struggle with weight issues. More of him to go around, as the saying goes. I’ve viewed much religious art in my time, but I’ve never seen a love-handled Jesus, let alone a chunky savior. And perhaps that is the biggest miracle of all, given that he eats more each passing year.
Grounds for Sculpture
Few people would deny that religion and art share a common heritage. Some of the earliest human art was religiously motivated (I would contend that cave paintings and Paleolithic figurines were religious objects), and much of the contemporary art scene derives its inspiration from religious motifs and constructs. Not all art is religious, however, and not all religions are friendly toward art. Nevertheless, there is a tangible connection.
This weekend was uncharacteristically warm and sunny for a New Jersey March. This led us to take our visiting family to Grounds for Sculpture, one of New Jersey’s often overlooked treasures. Built on the remains of the old State Fair grounds in Hamilton, this park houses an impressive array of outdoor sculpture that is contemplative, innovative, puckishly funny, and even a little weird. It reflects the human experience. My family and I have been there multiple times, appreciating the sculpture from new angles, discovering new pieces, and seeing it all through the eyes of others.
Taste in art is highly personal and individualistic. Just like religious sensibilities. Both art and religion seek to make the human soul accessible to others through profound expression. Several of the sculptures in this unique garden bear biblical titles or suggestions, but they may be enjoyed as secular pieces of expression as well. Here is where art is superior to religion: it does not insist on any single way of expressing the truth. Sometimes, it seems, art may actually attain what religion only aspires toward.
Monet listens attentively to a dilettante
Asherah in Australia
It has been one of those weeks dominated by a lady from my past. Asherah. Just when I thought I could forget her and get on with my life, she has reappeared with a fury. The problem is, I haven’t kept up with where she’s gone over the past few years and we all know what kinds of problems society has out there. Turns out she’s in Australia. At least according to a comment left on one of my old posts about Asherah. The author of the comment provided a tip that led me to abovetopsecret.com, a conspiracy theory website. One of the threads is from Brian Leonard Golightly Marshall, a man who claims to be the messiah – apparently he’s returned with his spouse Asherah, in her form of Mary Magdalene. Also, he states, Prince Charles is the anti-christ.
The internet has provided a forum not only for the serious exchange of ideas that help shape the future, but also a soapbox more massive than any other. In general I don’t believe conspiracy theories – just this week my daughter came home from school with news about Disney’s alleged subliminal smut, leading me to recall the hysterical claims made about the New World Order. The more things change, the more predictable they become.
So, is Asherah down under, waiting for a new apotheosis, or has the collective imagination of the internet just taken over? I’m not the one to judge. Nevertheless, while doing a little web research on Asherah I discovered that Asherah greeting cards are now available. They’ll have to wait until I find a job, however. Maybe once that happens I’ll also be able to afford a trip to Australia to see the goddess I’ve researched for so many years.
