Christian Movementarians

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After a distressing day of job-hunting yesterday, I turned to the Simpsons for solace. Often the most intelligent program on American television, as well as being the longest running series, the Simpsons frequently hits religion with a few good-natured and well deserved whacks. Last night I watched The Joy of Sect from season nine. It has been a few years since I’ve seen the episode, and I was pleasantly surprised how it correlates with the overall theme of this blog.

Although the episode ends with a normalcy returning to Springfield after the appearance of a cult called the Movementarians, the parallels between the cult and Rev. Lovejoy’s church are numerous and poignant. This perhaps hits too close to reality for many religious believers — what separates a “cult” from a “church” is more a matter of perspective than a matter of practice or accident.

Even early Christianity had considerable connection to and similarity with Gnosticism. When religions collide, they must emphasize their distinctiveness to survive. Like biological organisms, those that meet the needs of their societies (“the fittest”) survive, while others go extinct. It seems to me that the main cause of religious violence is the need to claim exclusive access to the truth. People are not comfortable believing a religion that might be proven wrong. Like the Simpsons they wish everything will return to normal at the end of the day.

The very definition of normal

Moses and the Calf

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It seems that Moses just can’t get away from that calf. Last week in a manger in rural Connecticut a calf was born. The calf is brown rather than golden, but it bears a distinctly cross-shaped white marking on its forehead. The owner suspects it might be a divine message, but he’s not sure what the message is. The children of the area named the calf Moses.

Does this all fall into the category of coincidence? Or is it indeed a long-awaited sign from on high? It does fall a bit on the C.E. side of the long-expected red heifer, but it looks like it just gamboled out of a bovine White Ash Wednesday service. And it was born in December! In a manger! (Or at least the present-day equivalent of one.) He bears the name of the arch-nemesis of venerated calves — Moses, the solemn monotheist. Even the chair of the Dairy Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison declares the Catholic birthmark to be unique.

All in all, I think the farmer got it right. If divine messages come in the form of calves, we’ve got a serious mixed-signal problem down here. The greatest crime, according the book of Kings, that the Northern Kingdom of Israel perpetrated was the erecting of a set of golden calves. And the sign we get is a denominationally confused calf? Perhaps the appropriate question at this juncture would be, “how now, brown cow?”

Photo credit: Aaron Flaum, Associated Press

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

Robots vs. Ancient Deities

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NasaRob

Yesterday I found myself at my first ever robotics competition. As a scholar more familiar with the offering recipes for long extinct mythological deities than with the practical application of computer technology, I felt a little out of my league. I had gone to support the local high school robotics team, and, well, robots and Halloween seemed a natural combination.

The first thing that stood out was the large NASA van parked in front of the school. Fidgeting over finding a job at the moment, I realized that the money is far more forthcoming for practical enterprises than reading ancient history. It is, literally, for rocket science. So I was crammed into high school gym bleachers with other aging parents, surrounded by kids smarter than I’ll ever hope to be, watching robots compete in exercises too complex for the average Republican. There was rock music blaring and yes, nerdy people dressed like science fiction movie/television characters. I was really feeling lost when I spied the character below.

DrJim

I had no idea that Dr. Jim of the Thinking Shop had relatives in the robotics field! As I saw the bearded Norseman approaching me, I was strangely reassured that there might be a place for me here after all. Religion and NASA do share an interest in celestial realms, and if my generation has been capable of producing kids this smart, there may be hope for the future yet.

Halloween All Year

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Despite the obvious consanguinity with the Dawn of the Dead, I am not a mall person. Last week, however, I had a job interview and I discovered that most of my white shirts would be appropriate garb only for the undead, so my wife forced me to look around the local mall for some new apparel. As we walked down the interior boulevard crowded with people younger than us, we couldn’t help overhearing the conversation of some young women behind us. “Yeah, it’s so cool! He’s a vampire; he’s got fangs and everything!” And they weren’t discussing Edward or Lestat, but a (presumably) flesh-and-blood beau one of them knew. Yes, Halloween season is upon us again.

An early Celtic turnip Jack-o-lantern
(An early Celtic turnip Jack-o-lantern)

I loved Halloween when I was growing up. Despite the innate conservatism of my family, we always enjoyed dressing up, trick-or-treating, and being just a bit scared. When I reached college, however, I discovered that Halloween was perceived by many to be satanic, and I had to dig deeply into the past to argue that it came from Christian tradition and was, itself, nothing to be afraid of. Still, my friends looked at me askance. When I reached Nashotah House, a perfectly Gothic setting for the twilight of the year, I discovered that despite the theological conservatism there, Halloween was a time-honored tradition. My first year there while driving home after picking my wife up from a conference in Madison, I drove the familiar road into campus only to see a single, ghostly white face float across the road in front of us. I was so astonished I pulled the car to a stop to look back and could just make out several of the students I knew, dressed fully in black cassocks and cappa negras, only their faces showing, painted white. They stood alongside the lonely road and “floated” across it as slowly approaching cars rounded the bend. (I guess that, being potential priests, they were not too concerned with eternal consequences of metal meeting mere flesh in the dark of night.) On the campus, until the takeover by a Fundamentalist administration, All Hallows Eve was a bone fide sacral event.

The reason for Halloween’s popularity, I believe, is that deep down people really are frightened. At some level we know that we aren’t really in control of our lives and we seldom have a say about them ending. Halloween, with its dark Celtic origins, is the acknowledgment that it is acceptable to be afraid. Each year as more and more elements appear beyond our control, our pantheon of Halloween specters grows. One of our neighbors’ houses has a fake cemetery in its front yard. One of the headstones reads “The Stockmarket / 2008.” Even with the economy dipping and reeling like a drunken bat, lawns sport larger, more expensive and expansive Halloween displays. Halloween represents the pulse of fear than animates religions. We should all be afraid!

Feline Angels and Demons

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Happy National Cat Day! Well, to you readers in the States in any case. October 29 has been declared National Cat Day, and as a blogger who has frequently posted on ancient cats, I feel a sense of duty to include our feline friends in today’s entry.

Elsewhere on this blog I have extolled the divine nature of cats. The Egyptians revered them to the point that killing a cat was a capital crime, but the evolution of domestication was probably very practical. Domestic cats appear in the archaeological record along with the advent of grain silos, also an Egyptian invention. When the grain attracted rats, the rats attracted cats, and the cats stole Egyptian hearts. Even before the Egyptians, however, archaeology points to associations of cats and humans in Neolithic Jericho, perhaps the oldest city in the world. As early as 9000 years ago, cats were stalking the allies of the city of the moon god. They have been among our most loyal companions.

The domestic cat’s spread into Europe only began in earnest, it seems, when Christianity reached the continent and the cat was no longer considered divine. Perhaps cats had to be profaned before being admitted to the church’s roster of approved animals. Nevertheless, under the influence of a predominantly Christian milieu, in the Middle Ages Europe had come to see cats as the demonic companions of witches and vampires. Did some memory linger of the divine cat of Egypt? Did those dark days of suspected sorcery glance back to the magicians of Egypt and their suspect pets? We will never know the answer as to why cats, long encouraged to join human households, became evil in superstitious Europe. Even my stepfather in the twentieth century America counted to ten after spotting a black cat, and followed the count with a solemn cuss each and every time.

I, for one, cast my vote on the side of the felines. I don’t have cats (allergies and irate landlords, and such), but I enjoy them when I visit those who do. Sure, they rip up furniture and bring unwanted gifts of dead things to you as a kind of feline worship, but with their loving nature I simply can’t see a devil in our everlasting cats.

Swiped from Dr. Jim's Thinking Shop

(Swiped from Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shop)

The Power of Pyramids

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One of the benefits of teaching is the constant refreshment of ideas presented by students to air out the stuffy closets in minds that tend to close around academic orthodoxies. Each field of studies has its sacred shrines not to be disturbed, and none more so than the field of religious studies. That’s why I appreciate the openness of student minds. This summer I was introduced to the alleged Bosnian pyramid that I posted about some months back. Having reviewed the statements of both archaeologists and geologists it is easy to see how what looks like a pyramid might not be a pyramid at all. Some experts even theorize that the pyramids of Egypt took their inspiration from the shape of a natural desert mountain.

Wikipedia's photo of the "Bosnian Pyramid"

As we were winding up our classroom discussion of Egyptian mortuary cult and its awe-inspiring pyramids, another student asked me if I had heard of the Okinawa pyramids. I hadn’t. Back in my student days I recall a professor entering my Egyptian Religion course after having just read a book on the mystical power of pyramids wherein the author claimed that dull razors placed under a small-scale pyramid would come out sharpened the next morning and other such nonsense. We all had a good laugh and got onto the serious business of comprehending the fascinating world of Ptah and Atum. When I first heard the phrase “Okinawa Pyramids” I had to fight down the immediate flash of embarrassment of unrestrained academic laughter should I be found even considering such a proposal.

I have always, however, listened to those willing to ask about even the most anomalous incidents of history. Two years back I had a student share the “helicopter hieroglyphs” of ancient Egypt with me, despite a fully understandable reading of signs that can look like a helicopter to the uninitiated. The Okinawa Pyramids, however, were different. As the student whipped out his laptop and pulled the images up from the internet, I was intrigued. These were not pyramids, but rather monolithic blocks 60–100 feet below the surface of the ocean near Japan. My amateur study of geology has taught me that many species of rock naturally have squared fractures along various planes and facets, but the number of offset angles and the profusion of the squared edges forced my mind open just a bit. What is more striking yet is that there is no Wikipedia article on this formation at all, despite its discovery in the 1980s. Most intriguing of all is that the complex seems to have sunk at the end of the last ice age, thus predating even the pyramids of Egypt. Even the stepped pyramid of Djoser.

Is there evidence of a pre-civilization civilization under the coastal waters of Japan? I am not qualified to decide. I feel safe in saying that whatever is there is not a pyramid, but I am impressed by the photos and the relative silence about them even on the web. Since the best photos are copyright protected, I’ll provide a link for anyone wishing to creak open a dusty mind-closet and wonder about the implications.

Biblical Lyres

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lyrelyre

The head of Ur’s bull harp stares at me from the article announcing Penn Museum’s “Iraq’s Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery” exhibit down the road in Philly. Despite recent questions of the ethics of laying off yet more academics, this exhibit beckons to those of use who’ve only ever seen pictures of the famous finds from the ancient world that we’ve spent our lives reading about. Penn’s museum is famous for its holdings from Sumer, and I’m trying to scrape together the change to go and take a gander.

Still, I was not surprised to see that the biblical angle was tied into the article as well. “The royal tombs of Ur (the city believed to be the home of the Bible’s Abraham) date to 2,600 to 2,500 B.C.” it reads. The article doesn’t go as far as to state that Abraham, not historically attested, if he ever lived, dates to at least a millennium later than Sumer’s heyday. No, Abe never strummed that beautiful bull-headed harp nor thought on Isaac as he stared at the “Ram-in-the-Thicket.” The only way to get the paying public in, however, is to play the biblical card. Were it not for Abraham, however, Sumer would likely have remained the orphan child of early antiquity.

Among the great civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Sumer failed to make it into the Bible. Its Mesopotamian successors Babylonia and Assyria marched into Holy Writ when they sacked Jerusalem and Samaria, and even the Hittites merit a mention with Abraham’s poignant loss of Sarah. Sumer was a civilization that stood on its own. No Bible story was necessary for any to see its greatness, yet there was no public interest without biblical bating. Nevertheless, this is a road-trip worth the taking. It will be nice to see the glory of Ur, even without Abraham lurking in the shadows.

Who Inherits What Now?

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Grading exams is not my favorite activity, so when forced into it by psychopomp and circumstance, I attempt to select appropriate axe-wielding music to accompany the venture. My music collection is modest, so often I have to go back to the classic eras of rock for something that fits the mood. Recently I selected Rush’s 2112. I have a long, if tangential connection to this album. Afraid of its pentagram imagery and heavy metal sound (to my young ears) when it came out in the mid 70s, I only listened to it when my older brother put it on the stereo, and then only furtively enjoying it. Looking back now, I often wonder how any of us survived the 70’s styles and outlook — they feel dingy and hopeless in many corners, while sloppy and simplistic in others. Some of the music, however, has proven timeless.

Rush

After the instrumental prelude, the first words on the album are from the Bible: “the meek shall inherit the earth.” This particular statement is among the most easily ignored in the Gospels, just as the meek are easily ignored on the earth. With all the trumpeting and bellowing that sound from self-righteous commentators beating their religion beneath them like an over-taxed war-horse, it is plain to see how the meek might simply get in the way. This particular verse from the Sermon on the Mount, however, is one of the reasons that I cannot give up all faith in traditional religions. It sets the perfect juxtaposition between greed and selflessness out in full light for all to assess. Thus say the priests of the temples of Syrinx.

There was a time when rock became self-righteous to the point of caricature; but Rush’s 2112 was not such a place. The meek inheriting the earth is sticking it to the man unlike any other biblical dart can. And it is probably a good thing to queue up when I’m having to face the onerous task of grading exams once again.

I’ve Been Meming to Tell You . . .

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There’s a tag game going on among the blogging community in an attempt to get a new meme going. Perhaps in payback for my researching memes for years, I was tagged by Dr. Jim of Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shop to reveal something about myself you wouldn’t normally guess. Now, I’m not much of a tag player, but I am a good sport, so I’ve been trying to think of something I wouldn’t mind letting the world at large know.

A little background first: I am a pacifist. When I had to register for the draft back in the Dark Ages I learned how to sign on as a conscientious objector. I don’t kill bugs in the house. Even the scariest looking ones I capture in a jar and release in the wild. In Wisconsin we used humane mousetraps and any captured rodents received a complementary automobile trip across a river a few miles away so that they couldn’t tunnel their innocent way back into our kitchen. I believe life is a good thing.

So far anyone who knows me could have guessed most of that. The new meme to be added is this: I am a good shot. With guns. I am not some gun-slingin’ ranger, but on the occasions when I’ve been invited to heft a sidearm and let fly, I’m not a bad shot.

melvin-purvisHow far back does this go? It’s hard to say. I am related to Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover’s “Little Mel,” probably the most famous FBI operative in history. Purvis was responsible for tracking down such characters as Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and John Dillinger. Less famously, he married my father’s aunt. My cousins who saw his house before he died (apparently shot himself accidentally while cleaning a gun) tell me that it had a grand entrance hall lined with guns. Well, I’m related by marriage, and as much as I’d like to blame my short stature on him, it just won’t wash.

Little Mel with J. Edgar Hoover

Little Mel with J. Edgar Hoover

Probably more to the point, I grew up in redneck territory. The first day of deer season was a school holiday (not kidding here), and my high school had a rifle range in the basement. This latter point is unbelievable in the shadow of Columbine, but it is true. When I worked as a janitor in the school I saw the (by then disused) range with my own eyes. All boys were required to pass a course on gun safety before going to high school. Every week we sat in the Junior High School auditorium with Mr. Meade, the very masculine gym teacher, while he lectured about the parts of a gun, how to use one, and general safety issues. I shot my first rifle before I was twelve.

A typical day in seminary

A typical day in seminary

Well, there you have it. A pacifist who knows how to shoot. Now, I’m not sure if anyone on my blogroll plays tag or even if most of them read my humble attempt at a blog. If you’re out there reading this, I would tag my following colleagues: Wulfila of the Lonely Goth’s Guide, Alan of Feeling Finite, James of Kethuvim, Stephen of Biblische Ausbildung, and Daniel of O. McClellan. Let the meme-pool remain ever refreshed.

Clothes Make the God

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What is it with gods and clothes? Today’s news announces that Rob Halford, the Metal God, vocalist of Judas Priest, has just revealed his own Metal God Apparel line. Now, I try to be equitable, but isn’t metal all about sticking it to the establishment? Isn’t designing your own line of clothing the most establishment-worthy enterprise ever? Where have the rebels gone?

Whip not included

Whip not included

No sooner are people getting the hang of things in Eden than God marks designer clothes first on their list of accessories. Gods seem to be impressed with dressing the part. The Bible details what priests, and especially the high priest, will wear in the temple/tabernacle. Such location-specific wear indicates a very deep awareness of sacred space that pervades most religions. More than that, however, the clothes themselves are highly symbolic. Although modern readers may not be able to come to any consensus on the “symbology” (oh that word!) of each and every ephod and tinkling bell, we can be assured that nothing about the priestly garb was accidental. Indeed, Exodus informs us that God selected the fabrics himself.

Judas Priest, meet High Priest

Judas Priest, meet High Priest

So I’m not so shocked that the Metal God has made his preference known in the line of apparel appropriate to wear to the worship of this particular deity. As I watched a motorcycle club in their well-worn leather roar past me in my timid mini-van this weekend, I was reminded of the power of clothes. We may not be born with the body we want, but if we dress it up right, others might be made to believe that we’re gods too.

Of Cats and Goddesses

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During one of my periodic forays into current Asherah lore on the web, I discovered a new breed of cat. Well, actually, I didn’t discover it, I just became aware of it. Because of a misspelling on a website I learned that the Ashera (trademarked name!) is the most expensive cat in the world, retailing for $22,000. A blend of three species (the mind boggles), the African Serval, Asian Leopard, and domestic cat, this feline comes in at least three varieties, including the especially appropriate Royal Ashera. If you’ve come into an inheritance and want to waste a few grand, take a look at Lifestyle Pets to see the wonder.

According to Kirta she has a temper!

According to Kirta she has a temper!

Curious, I searched to find if anyone would tip a hand as to where the name of the cat was derived. Choosing the name of the queen of the Ugaritic divine world seemed a little too much coincidence for me, but then again, homophones happen. When the Prince of Egypt, Dreamworks’ answer to The Ten Commandments, was released, I had several people ask me why the Israelites were singing about “Asherah” after they crossed the Red Sea. I had to watch the movie very closely, but I figured out that they were singing “I will sing,” which, in Hebrew, sounds suspiciously like “Asherah.” I never did discover Ashera’s origins.

Cats, however often maligned as associated with witches and vampires and other creatures of the night, are certainly among the most divine of domesticated pets. If I were free to purchase an animal companion the Ashera would be in the ranking (after I’d won the lottery, of course). Whether intentional or not, who would not want to own a cat named after the only goddess to be mentioned in connubial relations both to El and perhaps even to Yahweh? (The latter association, like the naming of the cat, is entirely open to question!)

Devil Went Down to Jersey

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I have to confess to being a fan of Weird NJ. For those of you not fortunate enough to live in New Jersey, Weird NJ is an unconventional travel-guide published twice a year, celebrating the strangeness of the state. Ironically, I discovered Weird NJ while living in Wisconsin. I was attending the 150th birthday celebration of a couple of friends (combined ages, not paranormal!) where one of the gifts was the then recently published Weird Wisconsin. After the original magazine had caught on, books about individual states were commissioned and this was the first one I’d encountered. My wife knows that look in my eye, so on my birthday that year I had my own copy. Even though it is written for a decidedly non-academic readership, I learned more from it than most textbooks I’ve read. When New Jersey loomed large in our future, I added the book version of Weird New Jersey to my growing collection and soon came to rely on it as a repository of local folklore and interesting places to visit.

Thanks to Matt for permission to use his art, see Matt Can Draw for more!

(Thanks to Matt for permission to use his art, see Matt Can Draw for more!)
This short flight of fancy relates to religion in a very decided way. Within the pages of these publications many locations (popular with teenagers, I’m guessing) bear the moniker, “Devil’s —“ where the space may be filled by any number of nouns: Footprint, Kitchen, Pit, Pathway, Tree, or even Tea Table. This decided interest in naming places after the dark lord seems whelming, even for New Jersey, home of the infamous Jersey Devil. The need to have an evil entity to explain the darkness in our lives is very powerful. Certainly it is not limited to New Jersey as the well-known examples of Devil’s Tower, Devil’s Lake, and Devil’s Postpile attest (although mistranslation may frequently be responsible). Those cultures bound by a monotheistic outlook mark their fears with the Devil.

A relative latecomer to the Bible, the Devil had not been available for earlier attributions of evil. Thinkers of the pre-diabolical period reached widely varied conclusions as to who or what caused the troubles they experienced. Some blamed God while others simply accepted the vicissitudes of circumstance. (Then again, they didn’t have New Jersey as a frame of reference.) Once the Devil entered the picture, the problem of good and evil took on a sharper focus. That sharp distinction, however, frequently belies human experience where issues and situations are seldom as clean cut as they seem.

Sternutation Salutation

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Perhaps it’s the specter of swine flu or perhaps it’s the onset of the autumnal allergy season, but sneezing is unmistakably prevalent. While meeting with one of my students this past week, I was asked why people said “God bless you” after someone sneezed. Immediately my mind went back to the explanation I’d learned in some history class that superstitious folk in less enlightened times supposed that your soul flew out your nose and mouth during a sneeze and wished to ensure a safe transition of a person’s spirit back inside. Others trace the phrase to the period of an early plague when Pope Gregory had Kyries sung at sneezes to prevent the spread of disease (although plague was not really characterized by sternutation as much as buboes). Still others continue the myth that one’s heart stops during a sneeze and the comment is simply a verbal defibrillator of sorts.

In my mind a cough is much more sinister than a sneeze, but we have no standard verbal accompaniment to coughs. The same is true for hiccups, belches, or, God forbid, something even worse. How does the humble sneeze achieve a status so as to invoke the divine? Soul-spewing aside, sneezes are naturally violent events. Some medical experts clock dramatic sneezes at up to 650 m.p.h., inciting the question of how we might harness such energy. Unlike coughs, hiccups, burps, or — ahem — other expulsions, the sneeze solely involves the respiratory tract. In the ancient world breathing is life. The standard measure for viability in the Hebrew Bible is not a beating heart or even a functioning brain (a relief to many Republicans), but breath. Those who do not breathe do not live. The sudden loss of breath via a sneeze could be cause for alarm.

Zeus seconds the motion

Zeus seconds the motion

The humble sneeze is even mentioned in the Bible, although the “God bless you” part is not. In 2 Kings 4.35 Elisha, emulating his master Elijah, revives a dead child. Significantly, when the child reanimates, he sneezes seven times. He is breathing, but not yet out of danger. In ancient Greece it was supposed that sneezes were messages from the gods, a kind of Hellenistic “Amen!” to eloquent rhetoric to which the gods just couldn’t hold their applause. No one knows just when “God bless you” was attached to the sneeze, but it is difficult for those accustomed to remark on sternutation to hold still. Even in classes of 70 students or more, a sneeze out there in the audience is always followed by a “bless you” from across the room. Whether it is a message from God or a harbinger of H1N1 I’m just not sure.

Lost and Found

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As a young lad I was fascinated by the supernatural. This may explain, but in no wise excuses, my choice of a career in religion. As I grew in years and skepticism, this interest began to feel like a security blanket in a college dormitory — an embarrassment to be jettisoned as quickly as possible. Along the way, of course, I’d given away what I thought to be the detritus of childish fantasy, including my collection of cheap, pulp fiction, tending toward the Gothic.

As I grow more ancient, and more observant, I see that sometimes the impetuousness of youth cradles a profound wisdom. Sometimes we do get it right the first time. I still haven’t figured out if that’s the case with me, but it seems to be a hypothesis worth the exploration. Part of my current search for reality is the reassessment of my childhood learning in the school of classical Gothic fiction. The books are no longer as cheap as they used to be, and when I take them out in public I hide them inside a larger, more academic book so that no one really knows what I’m reading. As a friend once observed, people think that those of us who hang out in the religion sections of Borders are immediately suspect. More so the adult toting a beaten-up paperback written for a teen readership a number of decades ago.

One of my lost memories was a juvenilized version of Rod Serling’s Stories from the Twilight Zone. I had shoveled my copy off to Goodwill along with many other shards of my childhood when I “grew up.” The memories of the angst that the very cover generated in me led to a frantic online used book hunt a few years back. Inside the stories seemed flatter than I’d recalled, but the larger ideas they generated were still worth paying attention to. Perhaps the real lesson is that childhood should not be dismissed as wasted time playing and indulging in carefree amusements. Our childhood proclivities, it now seems, preset the trajectories for our lives. So I still have a quasi-career in a religion department, and I have a copy of a book that started me asking the bigger questions.

Anybody else remember this?

Anybody else remember this?