The Best Gift

1 Comment December 28, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

Standing outside the footprint of a circular chapel next to the ancient ruins of a drinking hall in Ophir, the Orkney Islands, with friends. We’re quoting from the memorable scene in the Orkneyinga Saga where Svein Asleifarson leapt out and killed Svein “Breast-Rope” as drunken vikings staggered back and forth from the Earl’s Bu to the chapel one Christmas season some nine centuries ago. The Orkneys used to belong to Norway and had a close connection with Iceland, which, all things considered, is not that far off. While working on my doctorate in ancient Syrian mythology, I experienced a fascination with Icelandic viking sagas and read several of them (in translation, of course). Traveling to the Orkney Islands was about as close to Iceland as we’d hope to get on a student’s budget, and the atmosphere of these historic islands does not disappoint. We were standing on the actual site of this historical incident one violent Christmas long ago.

Imagining, however, is not the same as condoning. Nearing a millennium later, Iceland celebrates Christmas with “Jolabokaflod,” the Christmas book flood. Armed with books rather than broadswords, the folks of Iceland have built a considerable literary reputation. According to an NPR story my wife and traveling partner sent me, Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country, and giving books at Christmas is a national tradition. Reykjavík is a UNESCO-designated City of Literature. Unlike the United States, a large proportion of the population of Iceland buys books, according to the story, and I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t related to two other Icelandic phenomena as well. Iceland has very little gun violence and it is one of the most ecofriendly countries on the planet. While it is only a feeling, I believe that widespread reading makes a better society.

I remember the experience of growing up and hearing other kids complaining bitterly about assigned reading. Here in this wild west corner of the world, we’re too full of dreams of action to spend quiet hours improving our minds. Guns are easy to acquire and too easy to use against the innocent. We could sure use a Jolabokaflod, it sounds like to me. Towards the end of each year I like to tally up an approximation of how many books I read in the previous twelve months. Although some are definitely better than others, each one is its own gift, a glimpse into someone else’s worldview. And such glimpsing aids in understanding. I may not agree with you, but I know where you’re coming from. And as we enter that long, cold stretch of January and February I feel ill-prepared if I don’t have a stockpile of books to get me through the darkness of this time of year. And one of my fantasies will be a world that can see from the blood-stained ground of Ophir all the way to Reykjavik.

The Santa Myth

1 Comment December 26, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, devotes its resources on Christmas Eve to track the path of Santa Claus across not only across the northern skies, but also around the world. The idea of what must be a devoted group of very serious defense professionals programming the flight track of a fictional character is strangely bemusing. I have an app on my iPhone called Star Walk—it is an astronomy program that I wish i had as a kid standing under the winter skies trying to identify constellations. On Christmas Eve my clumsy fingers slipped, accidentally turning on the program. Although I was indoors, and it was cloudy outside, I glanced around the virtual universe to see what was happening, when what to my wondering eyes should appear? Indeed, the self-same Santa Claus was flying through the night sky on my phone. Do doubt such lighthearted antics put smiles on faces of children and adults alike. They also show how deeply embedded the myth of Santa has become.

Santa Claus is a relatively new deity in the pantheon of cultural gods. Many children earnestly believe in him and some parents use him as a source of moral guidance: you’d better be good for goodness sake. Santa’s watching. Even in a pluralistic world, Santa visits Mecca and Jerusalem and Djibouti, no matter the religion of the people—and my source on this is no less than NORAD, guys who scan the skies for nuclear missiles. If they can’t be believed, who can?

Now as we wade through the discarded wrapping paper and face the inevitability of returning to work, it seems as though something really did come on Christmas. It may not have been a man in a fuzzy red suit, tracked through the atmosphere by fictional computer programs, but we can hope that it was at least a fleeting moment of peace. After all, NORAD’s Santa crossed international borders with impunity, neglecting trade sanctions and sometimes open hostility. Unlike other major figures of the Christian pantheon, Santa does not spawn wars and hatred. He encompasses no strict, dogmatic belief. Maybe it’s because we admit he’s a work of fiction, and nobody really ever lives up to the standard of always being nice. Yet, at least according to NORAD, Santa visited every person on the globe with a sense of peace, a gift that fits no matter what your size.

Southern Comfort

Leave a comment December 21, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

Once upon a time, long before Hurricane Katrina, the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature held their annual meeting in New Orleans. It must’ve been an incongruous sight: the Big Easy filled with right proper professional religionists discoursing eruditely. While there, my family purchased the Cajun Night Before Christmas, by Trosclair. A cute knock-off of Clement Moore’s “A Visit from Santa Claus” (‘Twas the Night Before Christmas), the story unfolds of a fur-bedecked Santa visiting a destitute, but grateful family on the bayou. Each year I try to reach deep in my southern roots to find an accent that accommodates the poem, and read the story the week before the holiday comes. A number of factors have suggested that perhaps this year Christmas might catch many people on a more subdued level. Crushing poverty is a reality, guns are too readily available, and the one percent don’t get close enough to humanity to contract the common cold. Even the effects of Katrina have refused to dissipate completely. Her sister Sandy visited the Big Apple, and things still aren’t quite right.

Big Apples and Big Easies may seem to have little in common, apart from how much money is available to assist in hurricane recovery. They both also participate in Christmas, being havens of Catholicity. Yet after the hurricanes some in New York and New Jersey were without power several days, but parts of Louisiana were simply abandoned. The will to help the disadvantaged seems to have improved since 2005. Considering changes at the top, this isn’t necessarily a surprise. Nevertheless, tragedy throws into sharp relief what we consider human decency. Too bad it takes a disaster to make us more human.

What sticks with me about the Cajun Night Before Christmas, apart from the flying alligators, is the profound hopefulness that the poem conveys. Those with so little take so little to improve their lot. Yet those with too much insist it is their right not to be taxed at all. Those who live in a shack don’t expect much from Santa. They have learned through the disappointment of experience that double standards are endemic in life and while some are unbelievably rich, the poor are happy with just the smiles of children. Ironically, Santa is the great equalizer here. While the children of the wealthy may expect and receive more, the children of the humble are also allowed a portion of hope. As I remember New Orleans, in the palmy days before Katrina, it was a city that knew Mardi Gras was far more humane than Lent, and that even a city marked my radical inequities (let those with eyes to see read) could come to a joyous accord when sins are about to be atoned. And even if he has to commandeer alligators, Santa will visit the poorest children the night before the holy days.

Christmas Incorporated

3 Comments December 18, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

A number of years ago I wrote a short book on holidays for children. Like most of my books, it was never published. I wrote it when I learned that good books explaining in simple language whence various American holidays came appeared not to exist. The literary agents I contacted quickly showed me why. In any case, I remain curious about holidays and so I read Penne L. Restad’s Christmas in America: A History. There’s a wealth of gifts in this brief book. I’d researched the subject a little bit myself, so I already knew some of the origin stories, but if you’d like to know why we have Yule logs, egg nog, or why Santa prefers red, this is the book for you. As I’ve noted in previous posts, Christmas is a fairly recent star in the constellation of American holidays. In fact, those of us who work for secular companies know just how few holidays Americans officially celebrate. Having lived three years in the Scotland, I know how seriously holidays are taken in at least one corner of Europe.

Christmas didn’t really catch on in America until the nineteenth century. Industrialization was beginning and more and more was expected of the worker who made the robber barons wealthy. It is no accident that the American Christmas had many of its origins in New York City where much of the industry ran non-stop. Restad, however, makes a very good point that Christmas has always been both pro- and anti-commercial. Owners of large retail chains saw the opportunities to sell goods to time-stressed individuals while the giving of presents often promoted a selflessness uncharacteristic of those who stand to profit from consumers. Restad notes the increase in goodwill that Christmas generates in society as a whole. Indeed, I have seen more people giving to the homeless during the past two weeks than I had seen so far this year.

One aspect of Christmas that I hadn’t expected to find in Restad’s treatment was the early emergence of the “prosperity gospel.” Of course, it wasn’t called that in the early twentieth century, but in the millennia since the Christmas story actually originated, some in the church began to take their own righteousness far too seriously. Seeing that clergy who knew how to tug the soul-strings just right could easily gain wealth, they started to suggest that God wants you to be rich. They seem to have overlooked who was born in a stable because there was no room in the inn. Search the Gospels and your search will be in vain if you attempt to find words to console the rich. The “prosperity gospel” is as much a lie today as it was when it began, back in the days when dubious clergy looked for a way to excuse their comfortable lifestyles while many of their flock suffered want. Christmas in America shows itself to have a little bit of the social gospel built in, for it is clear that even the Devil can site Scripture for his own purposes.

Faith and Freedom

2 Comments December 17, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

Schadenfreude is not my usual response to the downfall of a religious leader—with perhaps the exception of televangelists. After all, religious leaders are only human. Occasionally one crosses a very serious line, as the news about Nechemya Weberman, a Hasidic counselor who was found guilty of molesting a girl under his profession care, reveals. The sad part of this situation, apart from the tragic consequences for his victim, which are very serious in their own right, is that the Satmar Hasidic community insisted that it should have had the right to do its trial in secret. Sects that take their cue from the Bible are seldom fair to women. The Bible, after all, is not a very female-friendly tome, no matter how much feminists may try to rescue it from its androcentric world. Religions based heavily on the Bible feel they have the right to judge by their own standards—something a secular court can’t understand. It is back to the paradigm of the two swords here.

What are we to make of the civil crime that violates no religious laws for any one sect? What is wrong in one book is all right, or at least forgivable in the other. For a secular crime committed in a closed religious community in a country of religious freedom, who is to decide? These questions are decidedly more than rhetorical. Any religion that says women are here to serve men—and there are a disturbingly large number of such religions—can claim that God trumps gent d’armes every time. What’s more, they believe the decree is eternal and they are violating the divine will if they don’t keep to it. This situation is nothing new; at least as early as Tiglath-Pileser III, and probably earlier, ancient religions sometimes had to compromise under the hegemony of a higher power. But they were only biding their time until the political situation would grant their autonomy once more.

It is simplistic to suggest that the two swords represent the two hemispheres of the brain, but we do have a rational versus emotive issue here. Rationally, would an unseen force endowed with a human personality demand the unfair treatment of some people simply because of an unexplained favoritism? It does not seem likely. But religions are seldom logical. “Credo quia absurdum,” Tertullian is remembered as sighing—“I believe because it is absurd.” Theologically profound? Certainly. Helpful in society? Not so much. Freedom of religion is a classic ouroboros, a serpent biting its own tail. Religions are free to declare their own beliefs, but their own beliefs may challenge the very authorities who grant them that privilege. Secular authority may have the ability to put to death, but resurrection is the prerogative of religion.

Rachel Weeping

3 Comments December 16, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

“In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” I just can’t get it out of my head. The tragedy of Newtown, Connecticut is the madness of Herod repeated over and over again. I stand outside my daughter’s room and weep as she sleeps, terrified of what we’ve become. For the right of one person to own guns, twenty-eight are dead. The balance of power is way off-kilter, like a fishing vessel in a perfect storm. Those who protest are those who are unarmed who wish to remain that way. The bravado of the NRA says, “I would protect them, if I were there.” If I were there. I would feel no safer. Where was the NRA in Stockton, California, Iowa City, Iowa, Jonesboro, Arkansas, Littleton, Colorado, Red Lake, Minnesota, Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, Blacksburg, Virginia, DeKalb, Illinois, Oakland, California, or Newtown, Connecticut? Polishing their rifles in readiness, no doubt.

The time has come to put an end to easy access to guns. Life was more civilized in the days of the flintlock and musket—at least people had time to react or flee before another shot was loaded. Instead we tell people they will be safer if they can squeeze off forty-one shots before that crazy idiot shoots another. Drop to your knees and beg for mercy, you’ll be safer. While you’re down there, say one for a nation that loves its firearms more than its children.

Days like this it feels like God has us in his sights. The longer I ponder this the blacker my thoughts grow. We may blame the madman, but it is society that allows this to happen. Herod was king, and even the mother of God fled. But what of those left behind in Bethlehem? They paid the price for a man in love with power. I see a man in a cage, being sprayed by an upright ape holding a firehose. The man is one of the most vocal supporters of the NRA, but now he is the inferior being. “It’s a madhouse!” he cries. Yes, Mr. Heston, it is a madhouse indeed. Only those aren’t apes outside the cage, and those are firehoses in their hands. On further reflection, perhaps they are truly apes. Rachel is weeping for her children, while Herod reloads.

Slaughter of the innocents, 2.0

Bleak December

9 Comments December 15, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

Tragedy follows on tragedy in 2012. Maybe the world really is ending this year. Not even a week after a man accidentally shot his own seven-year-old son in western Pennsylvania, a gunman kills twenty school children, six adults and himself in Connecticut, and still the “Religious Right” advocates our God-given sanction to own guns. Various commenters rail that guns don’t kill people—please allow the evidence to disagree. Loudly. Violently. Twas the fortnight before Christmas and all through the school… Nightmare before Christmas indeed.

As a nation we have outlived our need for guns. The only real threat out there is other people who have guns. Even a simpleton can see that it is an insane spiral because no one trusts the other guy. A miniature arms race. A cold war within a nation, state, town, or school. Like the journalists who write the sad stories for the papers, I think of Virginia Tech, Columbine, and children who will never grow up. Wikipedia has an entire article entitled “School Shootings.” America has its own sub-page. I think of other children scarred for life because some people think that it is our right to “protect” ourselves. From what? Still, they’d swear it on a stack of Winchesters. Having been shunted around from job to job and apartment to apartment, I’ve lived next to many people that I found unstable and thank local laws that they were unarmed. The sack on Santa’s back this year is a sack of serpents, and it has been opened and there’s no way to get them back in.

If the Church wanted to make itself relevant again, all denominations would band together and demand stricter gun control. No, it won’t stop every madman from massacring children, but if the Christian community really believes the Gospel it claims, it is far better to die than to kill. The next world is supposed to be better than this. The mother of the shooter, Nancy Lanza, appears to have been the owner of the guns. Probably they made her feel safer. She is now cold in the morgue because of them. Along with a classroom of children in the school where she worked. As the families of the murdered face Christmas this year, they will think that 2012 is the year the world ended. If only it would. But then, nature, and gun-ownership-rights activists ensure a future much more bleak than that.

Nikodem Nijaki’s photo of shoes on the Danube Promenade

Fanpire Club

4 Comments December 13, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

It has become an odd world indeed when thousands of people look to vampires for family values. Although I’ve not read any of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, I have been curious at the reception they have received. A literary agent said, a few years back at an event I attended, that publishers want vampires. There is no end in sight. Perhaps it is my inherent trust of scholars that led me to read Tanya Erzen’s Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It. Why would a religious studies scholar write about Twilight? Because Erzen realizes, as many scholars are beginning to that: 1. vampires are very religious monsters, and 2. many more people care about books like Meyer’s than they ever will about scholarly minutiae. I, for one, learned that I’ve missed out on a huge part of pop culture by insisting that my fictional reading must have at least an attempt at depth. Erzen ably points out that there may be truths beneath the surface even here.

When I first became aware of the Twilight books, I was surprised that no one seemed to be making the connection with Dark Shadows. I grew up with the subtle, sensitive vampire who was deeply conflicted. The books that serialized the television series were not profound either, but they evoked an angst that bespeaks a religious need deeply buried. Erzen is able to dig some of this out of Twilight as well. By interviewing fans for whom Twilight has become an ersatz religion, Erzen can show that even squeaky clean Mormon men can’t possibly live up to the vampire standard. The fantasy that has engrossed so many is an image of selfless love. As if Edward Cullen were a less chaste, and more undead Jesus. After all, he gives Bella eternal life and his love never grows cold. The values fit rather well with Latter-Day Saint theology, and provide a model for mortal family values.

More striking is Erzen’s revelation that fandom does not equate to feminism. The women who are empowered to love in unorthodox ways are very much controlled by their men-folk in Meyer’s universe. As Erzen points out repeatedly the ideal lover here is an obsessive stalker with a penchant for abuse (although mostly unintentional). Freedom for women comes at a cost. They may be offered the best in some fields, but even today women do not find equal representations in positions of power in our society. CEOs? Evening news anchors on major networks? Senators? Presidents? Our society is one that talks the talk of equality, but stumbles when it attempts the walk. Vampires cannot exist without victims. Even in the most “advanced” societies in our world, women must struggle in a hierarchy for which the architects, contractors, and supervisors are mostly men. Perhaps women find vampires so fascinating because it matches their experience of a society that takes far more from them than it is ever willing to give back.

Chrismahanukwanzadan

5 Comments December 12, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

Happy holidays from a pluralistic world! Whenever I see the “Keep Christ in Christmas” signs that crop up this time of year, I think of the wonderful profusion of holidays that people from most faiths can share without being territorial about it. After all, the Pagans got there first—the Christian Christmas predates Jesus by centuries, it turns out. So when my daughter wished me a happy Chrismahanukwanzadan—from a mix of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Ramadan—I had to smile. Seems like some in the younger generation are really starting to get it. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but a holiday that celebrates people getting along is worth the effort. Being possessive of our holidays rings of hollow triumphalism—I feel happy because I have something that you don’t. Is this really the spirit of this secular season of giving wrapped in many confessional names? I’m sure shepherds and Magi didn’t exactly share a Weltanschuung.

Those who despair the lack of Christmas have not spent much time with history. As a cultural holiday the celebration of Christmas is younger than the United States, at least in this context. From the beginning Christmas was a pastiche of traditions from different religions celebrating aspects of Odin, Sol Invictus, Jesus, and Zarathustra, at the very least. Bringing these religious figures together into a season that represents the human need for light amid a dark and cold time of year, who would want to exclude others from their own holiday traditions? Having stood in the bleak fields of the Orkney Islands in a massive stone circle aligned to the winter solstice and constructed over a millennium before the birth of Christianity, I have to believe Christmas is one of the earliest expressions of human desire and certainly not limited to Christians.

What makes a holiday holy? Is it exclusive rights like those slapped on every movie you pop into the DVD player? The trademarking of an idea someone else thought of? Religions have a long history of forsaking the spirit of the law for the letter—its most familiar name is dogma. No matter who came up with the idea of doing what we can to bring a little light back into the dreary world around the time when night seems unending, it is a cause that any person of any religion, or none at all, can fully appreciate. Instead of marking territory, should not those who claim Christmas as their own be glad to share it with all? If the one who’s birth the church proclaims at this time of year in no way improves our outlook to others we might wonder if there should be cause to celebrate at all. My answer, such as it is, is Happy Chrismahanukwanzadan!

A holiday in anyone’s book

Freud’s Nightmare

1 Comment December 10, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

B movies are a guilty pleasure. Weekends sometimes allow for guilty pleasures, when I can check my mind at the door, take a seat near the screen, dim the lights and grab the popcorn. 1950‘s sci-fi reflects paradigms that have ossified in some people’s brains, it seems. It has been many, many years since I watched Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. I was a child the last time I saw it. As an adult the message is strikingly different. The year is 1958, and my parents haven’t even married yet. Millionaire Nancy Archer has a run-in with an alien in a “satellite,” but he only wants her for her jewelry. Meanwhile her cheating sleaze of a husband, Harry, is making out with the redhead at the local, and plotting to kill his wife for her money. So far the story is fine, if tragic. Then the woman, enlarged by radiation, breaks free from her chains, rips the roof from the bar, and grabs her husband. To the local sheriff, there’s only one option—shoot the “monster.” He unloads a riot gun into her, and, hitting a transformer, electrocutes her. The crowd, aghast, run to see if her trashy husband is alive. The wronged woman they ignore. The metaphorical elephant in the room. Role end credits.

The misogyny of this story escaped me as a child, as did the sexual innuendo. I was only after the cheap thrills of cheap special effects. So I turned to The Incredible Shrinking Man, released a year earlier in 1957. Scott Carey, after sending his loyal wife Louise to the galley for a beer, is hit by a radioactive cloud while on his brother’s boat. An accidental dose of insecticide some months later sets him to shrinking—a freudian fear for all men. As he grows smaller, his will to dominate his wife—now a giant to him, increases. Many scenes end with a tiny man leaving his wife in tears. Even when he is supposed dead, but in reality is too small to make himself heard, Louise is reluctant to leave, in case he still needs her help. Like a short beer, I suppose. The spider scene, which no doubt caused nightmares when I was a child, follows on his monologue about having to dominate his new, tiny universe. The little man shrinks into non-existence with the realization that “to God there is no zero.” What he doesn’t say aloud is, “as long as one is male.”

These are the 1950s to which some political commentators (and not a few voters) wish us to return. Men fear being dwarfed by women. Call it radiation, or call it social regress, or call it paranoia—the message is all the same. Man must dominate. Women who overshadow are a threat. In the earlier film, Scott Carey is a passively shrinking man. By the next year, when Nancy Archer grows, it is now an “Attack.” Fast forward half a century. Dreamwork’s Monsters vs Aliens makes a parody of Nancy Archer, and Susan Murphy’s fiancé, Derek Dietl (who is clearly modeled on the smug, self-righteous newscaster in Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman) ends up alive, but shamed. The male alien who seeks to dominate her is destroyed. And the male monsters feel somehow less fierce in her presence. As this year’s political posturing clearly demonstrates, there is still a long, long way to go before true equality appears. Many men are clearly stuck in the black-and-white fifties. The full-color, larger than life Ginormica will hopefully better reflect the paradigms of the future.

Accidental Abortion

3 Comments December 9, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

There comes a time in life when you realize that if a small town you know makes it into the news headlines, it is likely tragic. So it was when I read this morning that a man in Mercer, Pennsylvania—just a few miles from where I grew up—shot and killed his 7 year-old son, by accident. I grew up in a part of the country that has a love affair with guns. This may have been understandable in the days when a stroll to the outhouse could mean chancing a bear or cougar encounter, but these days bear sightings are rare and cougars, well, almost unheard of. The man was trying to trade in a couple of guns at Twig’s Reloading Den. Climbing back into his truck, the handgun discharged, killing his son. This is very tragic, yet the officer making a statement said something chilling. The man thought the gun was unloaded but, “This happens all too often where people think the gun was empty.” All too often. All too often.

I grew up in western Pennsylvania, and if Facebook is anything to go by, it has become consistently more Evangelical since I left. And that is saying something. In my younger days I wore a large cross around my neck and took my fair share of ribbing for being religious. Now I see those with whom I attended school posting on all manner of conservative causes, including the contradictory anti-abortion and loosening of gun control. This is not a phenomenon restricted to western Pennsylvania. At Nashotah House it was alive and well. Several students kept guns in their dorms, protested against the violence done to the unborn, yet called killing heretics “retroactive abortion.” It was their smiles when they said such things that frightened me. Wait until they grow up to kill them.

Like any insecure person I sometimes think a gun for protection might be good. I especially think this when I’m in the grizzly bear habitat of the Pacific Northwest, miles from civilization. I picture myself shooting into the air with a rifle that out-Thors thunder itself, a mighty man. Yet the only time I actually saw a grizzly bear I immediately jumped out of the car to snap a picture or two. I dream of going back to the days before guns were invented, but this evil genie has been let out of the bottle. There’s no getting it back in. Are we vulnerable without guns to “protect” us? Yes. But my reading of the Bible my Evangelical friends so often cite insists that turning the other cheek is the way to show that you believe it. A seven-year-old is dead not far from my hometown. His father was trying to sell guns at a store that doesn’t even buy guns. The boy died in the gun store, and yet my fellow Americans feel safer knowing they’re armed. I hope your hometown stays out of the news.

Feel safer?

Old Lies

2 Comments December 4, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

Much of my exposure to literature has come through my daughter. I didn’t really grow up in a literary family. We had a prominent television and not much money for books, so I was headed for a typical American predilection for TV as some form of intelligence. When I began reading, it was what I could discover on my own and the required reading of English classes. Needless to say, I missed a lot. My daughter recently had to analyze a poem of Wilfred Owen. Although my wife had a book of Owen’s poetry, I never really had reason to read it. Like Joyce Kilmer, Wilfred Owen was a poet that was killed in World War One, only one in a long list of poets and dreamers that have been slaughtered in pointless conflicts. The poem that she studied was “Dulce et Decorum Est.” The poem describes a gas attack during which one soldier is unable to get his mask on in time and the gruesome death that follows.

The poem led to a family discussion about the cruelty of chemical weapons, and larger still, the pointlessness of war. Throughout history wars have been waged by the rich and powerful for reasons that may ultimately benefit some of their subjects but which, if not for the pride and prejudice of the powerful, would perhaps have been resolved without recourse to more efficient ways of killing. I always remember the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon,” where the Enterprise encounters a planet at war waged by computers and those who are calculated as victims report willingly to death chambers. This, they claim, is a more humane way to fight. In a Kirkesque maneuver, the man who gets me cut-rate flights and hotel rooms destroys the machine telling the people of Eminiar VII that if they have to face the grim cruelties of war they will find a way to stop fighting. Futuristic thinking indeed.

Today we have robots that can fly and attack, killing our enemies without putting us at risk. These are the grandchildren of mustard gas and a myriad of creative and horrid ways that people have devised for killing others. Wilfred Owen was killed just days before the war ended. His poem exposes the lie of Horace’s line, “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—sweet and decorous it is to die for one’s country. If I hear Owen clearly, it is the “dulce et decorum” to which he objects. Until we find humane ways to solve our differences, even in the Kirk Model, there will be wars. Death fought over effortless solutions of those in power will never be sweet or decorous. Although poets often die young, their lives remain as symbols pointing the direction ahead for the rest of us mortals left to reflect on their words.

Seeking Sava Savanovic

4 Comments December 3, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

According to the Associated Press, Sava Savanovic seems to have risen from the grave again. In the world of professional vampirologists, I am a mere hack, but when local Serbian officials start instructing villagers to stuff their pockets with garlic, I know enough to sit up and listen. The Balkans and eastern Europe claim the lion’s share of vampires, but the idea is an ancient one that some scholars trace back even to the Sumerians. While the AP report seems very tongue-in-cheek (as opposed to teeth-in-neck), there is no doubt that ancient fears are as hard to kill as actual vampires. It is no surprise that vampires found their resurrection in the western world as the Enlightenment was catching on. The emphasis on reason and science alone leaves many people very cold. We all may be lemmings headed for the cliff, but we don’t want to be told so. And when the scientists pack up all their equipment and head home, there are still unexplained noises in the night.

Sava Savanovic may have been a historical person, but not one approaching the stature of Vlad Tepes off to the north and a few centuries earlier. A little closer to home, Peter Plogojowitz, an actual Serbian peasant, was staked for being a vampire in the eighteenth century. Fortunately, he was already dead at the time. The story is recounted in Gregory Reece’s Creatures of the Night and the account remains one of the earliest documented Balkan vampire records. The Enlightenment was under full steam and yet, and yet…

Interestingly, the report on Newsy shows a Fox News reporter declaring with certainty that no vampires exist. Given the track record of Fox News of catering to causes near and dear to Neo-Con hearts, it is hard to accept that people believing in fairy tales only inhabit the darker regions of the Balkans. No, vampires do not just crave blood. The ancients often believed that they were after reproductive fluids in order to generate more of their kind. A more recent version is the fiend who drains others of their money so that they may live in their remote castles far from the reach of the unwashed populace that has to work for a living. Perhaps we should be envious of those fearing Sava Savanovic—he can be frightened away by garlic and crucifixes, after all. The modern American vampire fears nothing but death and taxes, and the latter they’ve already defeated.

Bible-Landia

1 Comment November 30, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

It takes a mighty powerful stimulus to get the media to pay attention to biblical scholars. It is no surprise, therefore, when the Society of Biblical Literature meets with the American Academy of Religion each November that, for a few days a year, Bible becomes chic. This year various newspaper articles appeared, perhaps warning Chicagoans what all these crusty professors were doing invading their fair city, but the one that caught my eye was in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle is the purveyor of all that is high-brow and sophisticated, epithets seldom applied to the Bible. The story in November 19’s edition made this clear by throwing in a little scandal—some Bible scholars believe the Bible to be “morally bankrupt.” Now there’s a twist. Nor is it really that hard to understand. Anyone who’s read the Bible seriously will have to admit to having squirmed a time or two at the moral implications. Dashing babies heads against the rocks will be one of those places.

In a society accustomed to seeing in black and white, morally at least, it is difficult to get the religiously convicted to admit that the Bible is a pastiche. Some parts are morally sublime (yes, even in the Hebrew Bible where “love your neighbor as yourself” originates) while others are ethically execrable (can I get an amen from the babies?). It is always interesting to see friends quoted in the media. I taught Hebrew Bible for 18 years without anyone really being that interested (including most students). I guess maybe I wasn’t radical enough. To me the Bible has to be viewed in balance, the moment one falls on their knees before it the corruption has begun. Interestingly, the article focuses on the New Testament side of the equation. That’s where the sexier conflicts wallow.

People arguing about the Bible. Is there anything more representative of American culture? It happens every four years, at least. Ironically the Bible quite often stresses the unity of those who believe. With thousands of denominations mutually excommunicating each other, one has to wonder if the Bible is living up to its full potential. Not that anyone will notice. Amid all the well-heeled, tenured professors, satisfied with their lot in life mill the hundreds who’ve spent thousands earning their advanced degrees. They are the lost generation—those for whom there are no, never were any, jobs. They are every bit as capable, and in many instances even more capable, than their tenured compatriots. The level of concern, at least at a visible level: nil. That, more than anything, indicates to me the true morals of studying the Bible.

Ruby Tuesday

Leave a comment November 27, 2012 Steve A. Wiggins

If you’re reading this, you survived Cyber Monday. Not that I personally remember the Middle Ages—I have no desire to return to them—but there was a time when nearly every day of the year was known by a saint’s name. Even as an Episcopalian, nominally Protestant, I was surprised just how many red letter days there were. Black letter days seemed special by comparison. Now, however, our days are named by the shopping expectations. Not only do we have Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we have the moveable feasts of “shopping days before Christmas.” And many other holidays participate in this bonanza dedicated to Mammon. Halloween is a major cash-generating holiday and Valentines can be counted on for buying love. St. Patrick’s for buying green with gold. Ironically, all of these were once, at some remote time, holidays decreed by the church. Many of them are even older than that, going back to pagan times, but religious nonetheless.

In a sluggish economy such times are indeed anticipated. Still, I don’t hear of the one percenters suffering during these difficult times. “Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette once was supposed to have said. Cakes are celebratory desserts, of course. We make them everyday occurrences with birthdays that should, in theory, keep the river of cash flowing all year long. The great corporate cathedrals require the offerings of the average citizen, and they insist on far more than a tithe. Then the investment firms complain that people don’t think ahead and save their money for retirement. We see many who live long enough to experience want in their declining years. There should be an app for that.

I wonder if there is something much deeper going on. Those who run so fast usually have something from which they wish to hide. There is the story of King Herod who, according to popular reconstruction, tried to buy the favor of his subjects by monumental building. Herod was not a popular king, and he had a reputation for being bloodthirsty when enraged. It is difficult to verify, but the basics of the story still ring true; when his way of running society was threatened he decided to kill the innocents. Such stories, one might hear a pontiff declare, fall within the genre of the folktale, the story told to make a point. What might that point be? Might it not be that each day is itself a gift and that spending money is not the only way to make time sacred? Of course, as long as you’re online, why not just PayPal your way to true happiness?