Category Archives: bible

Quotations of scripture and commentary

Thomas Mann Poignantly Presents Shame in Old Testament Story

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PREFATORY NOTE: I have discovered that I have failed to respond to many comments over the past few years. This is not because I have so many responses! but because I am not completely on top of things, especially the intricacies of WordPress. I will try to do better!

I have a brother-in-law who has been a key figure in the development of my intellectual and spiritual life.  He is better educated, more accomplished, and more successful in all respects than I have been…or will be.  One gift several decades ago from his erudition was the Thomas Mann novel, “Joseph and His Brethren.”  I stumbled across that tome moments ago when perusing my library and it fell opened to a page, a paragraph of which I will quote shortly.  In this fictionalized story of Joseph from the Hebrew Old Testament Jacob has just learned of the apparent death of his beloved son, Joseph. Jacob was so overwhelmed that he proceeded to tear off, not only his upper garments in grief, but was in the process of what his friends and family realized would be a complete stripping of all his clothing.  This was such a profound gesture that the people turned away.  The following is one of the most powerful descriptions of shame I have ever discovered, reflecting the depth and power of this wonderful German novelist:

There is only one right and proper word for the feeling which was at the bottom of their action:  shame.  But one must understand it in its ultimate and often forgotten sense, as a monosyllabic description of the horror we feel when the primitive breaks through the layers of civilization, at the surface of which it is only active in a much softened and allegorical form.  We must regard the tearing of the upper garments in heavy sorrow as being of such a nature; it is the civilized and domesticated form of the original custom of shedding every covering and adornment considered as the badge of human dignity now destroyed and ruined by the extremity of human woe.  It is the abasement of man to mere creature  So it was with Jacob.  In the depth of his grief he went back to the original meaning, from the allegory to the crude thing itself and to the horrible reality.  He did what “one does not do”—and that, rightly considered, is the source of all horror.  For therein the undermost becomes the uppermost.  If, for instance, it had occurred to him to give utterance to the abandonment of his misery by bleating like a ram,, his people could not have felt more nauseated than they did.  (“Joseph and His Brethren,”  Thomas Mann)

Distance, Metaphor, and Edgar Simmons

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Last evening I stepped out into the bitter cold to witness Saturn and Jupiter come close to each other as if they were going to lovingly embrace, if you can consider “embracing” while separated by millions of miles. I can use the word embracing as in “touching” here only with the realization that in reality I am viewing this moment in our cosmic history from a physical distance of millions of miles. Even those two planets, appearing to be in “conjunction” are separated by five plus million miles. It is our “perspective” that allows us to witness this incredible moment in our history, giving us the necessary separateness that allows us to bring delight, joy, wonder and appreciation to the table. Before our perspective took roots in our early childhood we did not have the “luxury” of distance as we were part and parcel of a “moment” that we were immersed in and not able to cognitively/spiritually understand it. At that moment there was no “object separateness”…. to employ a bit of clinical jargon. It is the Biblical “fall” that gave us this detachment without which there would be no human culture. Spiritual maturity can gradually come to us in our “four-score and ten” when we grasp the wisdom of this Great Round of which we are but a part, a visitation of “Grace.”

The abysmal distance left us with a hunger to “close it up,” to find the lost connection and return to the delightful “Garden of Eden.” We pine for the relief from the burden of life in which we are separate and distinct, where culture seduces us into believing its artifice can give us that “Grand Conjunction” where grace awaits us. Culture, certainly language, can guide us in that direction but only if we see…and feel…that words will never suffice; they are but “pointers” to the Ultimate. The Buddhists so profoundly teach us, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

Here I want to share another Edgar Simmons poem which beautifully and profoundly captures the experience of distance:

THE MAGNETIC FIELD

Distance…which by definition
Indicates a separation from self
Is the healing poultice of metaphor,
Is the night-lighting of poetry.
As we allot to elements their weights
So to metaphor we need assign the
Weight of the ghost of distance.
Stars are stars to us
Because of distance: it is in the
Nothingness which clings us them
That we glory, tremble, and bow.
O what weight and glory lie abalance
In the stretch of vacant fields:
Metaphor: the hymn and hum of separation.

Another “Dust Bunny” Paean With a Poem

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The “dust of the earth” which the Bible tells us we were created from is increasingly such a meaningful image to me.  Yes, it is probably because I’m closer daily to that point where I will become what Hamlet famously described as, “the food of worms;” but in the meantime I increasingly appreciate and even revel in my existential status of being a “dust bunny” of sorts.  This earthiness that each of us share, a commonality superseded only by That which undergirds the whole of this “goodly frame,” is a playground for each of us, a playground which, however, does involve occasional bumps and bruises..  The following poem by Ross Gay, described prominently in his biography as “a gardener,” so beautifully describes one poet’s intimate connection with and respect for this Earth.

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you. If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

The Prophet Pogo is Speaking to Us!

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I’ve been banished to my “penalty box,” which is the sunroom of our house.  My precious doggie Petey has been banished also, and he is actually the reason for this “banishment.” An harpsichord tuner is arriving shortly and he will need quiet to pay his professionally keen “listening” skills to the tuning of this lovely instrument.  Petey would not permit this, having so much to say to any stranger with his raucous voice. And after all, this “penalty box” is one of my favorite places to set and watch the spring morning unfold, with Petey and I exploring philosophical intricacies!

“Limits” is on my mind so often with this pandemic that besets us.  And even this visit from the tuner brought this to mind when my wife reminded me, “gloves and face mask” when he arrives. This same precaution is relevant anywhere I go, even to Wal Mart where I patiently wait in line with others in queue to “get stuff.” And even there, the queue will be donned with the same PPE I now have at my side.

Having a religious upbringing, of which I’m so proud, my mind goes biblical at times like this. The gods are speaking to us collectively and sternly telling us, “Limits!” (But I prefer the simple term “God” even though I occasionally I will refer to them with the plural pronoun.) Any people will get wayward here and there and will need a lesson like this, painful and deadly thought it might be.  This god-sent “pestilence” is a message from “On High” that we need to look at ourselves closely…and I don’t mean look at “them” more closely unless we look at ourselves with equal intensity.  In the words of the prophet Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

I just watched a promo on TV about History Channel’s new three-part movie about U.S. Grant.  The narrator pointed out that when Lee surrendered to him at Appomattox in April, 1864, it was a solemn occasion.  Grant did not “rub it in” to the vanquished South and his opposing general, U.S. Lee. There was no taunting or jeering as the diplomatic graciousness of Abraham Lincoln had filtered down to Grant and his troops. It was a grievous occasion and Grant knew that merriment from him or his troops was not called for.  I am reminded of a similar moment of graciousness to a defeated foe in the Spanish-American War of 1899 as a U.S. ship had blown a Spanish ship out of the water.  The American troops broke into raucous cheer, happy to see their hard and dangerous work had been successful as the Spanish ship, the Vizcaya, went down in flames.  The captain of the American ship, John Woodward Philip, chided his cheering troops with these famous words, “Don’t cheer boys.  The poor devils are dying.”

Our history offers us many examples of graciousness and respect in moments when our leaders could have responded differently. The humility needed in the moment requires deep-seated respect for boundaries, for the “other” even when our hearts are bursting with “the thrill of victory.” Those two events in our history reveal vividly the emotional/spiritual courage of leadership in a moment of crisis.  These men had boundaries.  I even remember a similar humility in the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1969 when, devastated with shame and humiliation he solemnly and graciously stepped into that helicopter, turned around and waved good-by , allowing Gerald Ford to take his place. Nixon was a broken man as our government had stepped in and firmly set a limit for that very fragile man, telling him, “That’s enough.”  May our leaders always be able to muster up the courage and demonstrate the dignity that is required of all leaders.

This is a moment in the history of mankind when we can dare to tell ourselves, “It is not just about me/”

Thoughts About our Endemic Obtuseness

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The “deep state” is often brought to the table in this pandemic by the Conservative voice. Technically, “it” is present also with our Progressive voice; for there is always unacknowledged intentionality in each of us, in all groups and individuals, as none of us know objectively what we are doing, saying, or thinking. But this “dilemma” proffers us an immediate ruse, individually and collectively–simply choosing to disregard the presence of subterranean depths in our heart. W. H. Auden had this problem in mind with the poetic quip, “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.” Satchel Paige, the brilliant, talented, and eccentric pitcher from baseball’s “Negro Leagues” in the mid-20th century often advised, “Don’t look back; whatever is there is gaining on you.”

In this current “deux ex machina” that is before us, blame is an immediate, self-serving escape from the sense of responsibility that it demands. Blaming China, or perhaps the “deep state,” or Obama, or some version of “them” only hampers our nation’s ability to address this crisis. Prophetic voices in a crisis like this become from beyond the pale, not from within it; the Reverent William Barber is a notable example. But Indian novelist and political activist, Arundhati Roy, last week also had a prophetic word for the world, describing this pandemic as, “a portal” through which we might find a turn-around in the very nature of how we grasp the world:

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And, in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (from interview on Democracy Now)

This Indian wisdom brought to my mind a “war-horse” of many conservative pastors, 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

 

 

Metaphor Can Provide Balance to our Life

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In another blog of mine I recently explored my literary approach to Holy Writ.  This “literary approach” is a view of life itself, reflecting a late-coming appreciation of the fluidity of life, its ambiguity and complexity, nuance and use of the metaphor in finding meaning in it. Seeing life as a metaphor requires detachment in a sense but with this detachment one is permitted the opportunity for a more meaningful connection with it.  That is because this detachment involves a degree of what Carl Jung called individuation in which the ego is dis-enthroned and one is allowed to see life more clearly with less of an ego-oriented interpretation of life.  The blinders we all live with are not removed but they are not as successful in keeping us in the dark.

Approaching life in this manner, does not mean that one has to be a book-worm such as myself.  One does not have to even be literate.  It requires a degree of humility in which one realizes that his view of the world is finite, that forces beyond his conscious understand flow through him and contribute to his opinions and viewpoints.  This unconscious dimension of life does not diminish the validity of one’s viewpoint it just means that one has to realize that his certainties might not be as certain as is his first inclination to think.

Following is the text of the blog post about Holy Writ:

The Bible is Holy Writ.  Dismiss it, curse it, scoff at it, take it literally, take it metaphorically, don’t take it at all but it still falls culturally and historically into the category “Holy Writ.”  Therefore, it has value regardless whether or not you think so, though that “value” for you personally is for you to determine.  It might be that you “value” it not at all and if that should be the case you will never find me arguing with you.  I would have at one time but somewhere along the line I managed to “get a life.” In this blog, an evolving enterprise of mine which is gradually taking a different shape, I am exploring what the Bible and the Christian tradition is to me.  This is now a very personal endeavor as I am much less controlled by the “party line” that I was given as a child, this “party line” usually having an important role in the early stages of one’s faith.  But, “When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things.”

“Holy Writ” falls into the general category of literature.  In my youth to consider the Bible as literature would have been tantamount to heresy as it would have appeared to be presenting it as “mere” human endeavor.  But approaching it as literature reflects the evolution of my alter-ego, Literarylew, which materialized when I came to understand and experience life in fluid, metaphorical terms. This means that I now have the liberty…and the courage…to see Holy Writ…and certainly the Bible…as having layers of meaning none of which necessarily have to be excluded.   Some see the Bible, for example, as a literal historical document in which a literal, concretely existing deity dictated it word for word.  I have better things to do than to quarrel with anyone who approaches it that way though I admit that having a close personal relationship with some of them would probably bring me face to face with differences of opinion in which boundaries would have to be set, risking conflict.

A literary approach to the Bible facilitates a personal interpretation and application of the truths being presented.  If one approaches what he reads literally, he sees it only as an “owner’s” manual and the God that I see in the Bible is not an “owner” but one who offers a relationship with Him, a relationship which facilitates more open, honest, intimate relationships with our fellowman.  If God is our “owner” then we are a mere object and we will then be inclined to see and feel ourselves only as an object and to subsequently view our world and our fellowman as an object.

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

Who Am I?

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This question has haunted humankind for eons.  Most people resolve the issue readily be donning the “suit of clothes” proffered by their family/community but for many of us that necessary “fig leaf” ceases to work at some point and we begin to wrestle with the essential issues of identity inherent in the question.  I realize now that assuming an identity in my youth was challenging, even very early before I was even conscious.  The angst did not really become conscious until pre-adolescence, then it beat the hell out of me for several decades, before I gained the maturity to begin to wrestle with the issue with an increasingly mature spiritual grasp of the matter.

Now let me reassure you, if you get to even middle age and give too much thought to “who am I?” you might go to your physician and seek a pharmacological easy way out!  For the quest to answer that question is a process and the answer will come in realizing that the process…like all things that are “process”…will never be completed.  This involves real work, spiritual work, spiritual work that cannot be resolved by the “well-worn and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness” even if they come from your favorite holy book!

Here I want to share a lovely poem from a lovely soul that I left behind in Fayetteville, Arkansas just over two years when I moved to Taos, New Mexico, Sue Coppernoll.  I did not know her well, but well enough to know she was a fine poet and a keenly sensitive spirit whose spirituality, like mine, had its roots in very conservative fundamentalist Christianity.  Here Sue so eloquently captures the fragility of an identity, particularly in its early formulation, and the resolve she had to “carry on” even when life dealt her hard blows.

MEMORY

Words

Worked out with toothpicks

On the royal blue carpet

On the living room floor.

 

First

My name,

WILLIE FAYE

Biting my lip in concentrated effort

Laboriously arranging wooden sticks

Into recognizable patterns.

 

I’m Real!

I have substance.

See, there I am,

Right there on the floor.

WILLIE FAYE

That’s me, I exist, I AM.

 

My baby sister crawls

Onto and through

My toothpick words.

 

My heart is broken.

 

I gather up the scattered sticks

To begin again

The construction of my self.

 

WILLIE FAYE

 

 

I wish I’d have gotten to know Sue better.  This poignant expression of a child’s heart just past the threshold of coming “on line” into conscious existence is riveting.  And the child at that point is so vulnerable and the mirroring from “momma” and the rest of the family and world is so critical.  But this validation is never perfect and even then Sue recalled having the experience of clinicians call “ego integrity,” allowing her to repair the damage to a particular disappointment.  And though, as noted above, I do not know Sue well, I did get to know her well enough to know that life dealt her more than her share of the Shakespearean “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir too” and that she has continued to employ that “ego integrity” and is today a beautiful soul and a beautiful woman.  In the terms of Judeo-Christian tradition roots that she and I hailed from it is the “Spirit of God” that provides that “ego integrity” which is a Presence described in the New Testament as that “by which all things cohere”

A Perspective on “Enlightenment”

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WordPress and Facebook introduce me to so many interesting people from different walks of life who I would have never met otherwise. I would like to introduce you today to a young Korean woman, Wanyoung Kim, who can be found on Facebook and is stunningly intelligent and erudite.

Recently she declared on Facebook, “You can be mentally Enlightened, but it is really the power of Christ that heals a person.” I was puzzled as this declaration reflected a dimension of Christian faith that I had not noted before with her postings. So I responded, “I agree. But, I’m curious how you would define ‘Christ’? This is not a cynical question. I just know that you are a very thoughtful person.”

Ms. Kim responded with:

A friend of mine (name omitted here)once described Him as the Internet of all hearts and minds- I cannot say it more succinctly than this. To believe is to know that his suffering accounted for all grievances of every heart and mind that walked upon this Earth in world history. ‪Christ is a man of sorrows himself like me, one can say. The heart of Christ is to see Him in every human being including myself- to empathize with the pain I see of a stranger in the street and this empathy is a healing act where a collective feeling of sharedness which in itself is a unity to the Other reassuring them we all are part of this suffering of Christ. I become Christ my self.

Ms. Kim does not see Christ through the narrow prism that I was taught as a child in conservative Arkansas as a Baptist in the fifties and sixties. And as I read her insightful observations some ancient part of my soul…which I often refer to as “literallew”…wants to denigrate her thoughts immediately. But “literallew” is increasingly buried under the Light of what I now see as Spirit of God which wants us to interpret the scripture and not merely regurgitate it as we have been taught. And this is not merely an intellectual enterprise but a gut-level enterprise that cannot be taught with “book learnin’”. It requires a willingness to have a heart that is “petal open” as Toni Morrison once put it; or, in the words of Shakespeare, a heart that is full of “penetrable stuff.” And this is scary for it subjects one to the flow of life and deprives him/her from the cold, sterile “certainty” that I was told was available and strived for so desperately and never was able to obtain.

Christ is not a “thing” that can be reduced to our “ideas” and thus captured by our ideology, as noble as that ideology might appear to be. He was, and is, an expression of the “Wholly Other” and can be known only when we are willing to experience our own finitude which can only occur when we come face to face with the Otherness that faces us daily with each one we meet and even with this beautiful world itself.  Eckhart Tolle reports He is the “Presence” which is the only thing that “is” if we can separate ourselves from our compulsive thinking.

But seeing Christ in non-linear terms requires an ability to see ourselves in non-linear terms which for most of us requires a radical transformation in self-definition and view of the world. It requires a transformative shift of perspective which brings to my mind the notion from the Apostle Paul, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” It is much easier to just tenaciously hang onto the  way that we have always seen and experienced our world. As W. H. Auden put it, “And Truth met him, and held out her hand. And he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

But I’m aware that what I’m writing now is “nuts” to nearly anyone from my youth that might happen to read this. This does not make any “sense” to a linear mind that is confined to the time-space continuum. But I have learned that it is very possible to escape confinement in that prison and still respect it and those that live in therein. And I, too, can still live within its confines which is known as “reality” even as I revel in the freedom which Christ represented and offers today.

 

A Witty, Ironic View of the Bible

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I love people who think out of the box.  And Megan Amram not only thinks outside of the box, I think she thinks outside of the box that the box is in!  Yet, there is “method to her madness” and she can make us laugh at ourselves.  At this link she certainly demonstrated another viewpoint of the Bible.  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/bible-system-updates

Jesus Taking on the Religious Establishment

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Yesterday, I paraphrased the teachings of Jesus as simply, “Get rid of your stuff!” Today, I’d like to elaborate on that theme a bit, hypothesizing about his view on the human race.

You see, what happened was that Jesus came down here and pretty soon found this a bewildering place. Often in his youth he would exclaim to his parents, “What the hell! This can’t really be happening! Why don’t these people get their heads out?” Mary and Joseph would often roll their eyes as they watched him grow up and periodically express his frustration with the human race. Much later when Jesus’ frustration became more intense they began to worry and once Mary even anticipated the mother of Hamlet and said, “Oh what a noble mind is here o’er thrown.”

It took a few more years of maturity but it dawned on Jesus that the problem was that people invested in the material world to the exclusion of the spiritual world. Even worse he realized that this was also true for the religious establishment of his culture, that the Jewish religious tradition was nothing but pomp and circumstance, summarizing one visit to Sunday School when he was 13 with the words, “Yada, yada, yada.” (You see, Jerry Seinfield was not the originator of this expression.”)

So decades later Jesus saw the potentates of the religious establishment together in the village plaza and overheard their conversation enough that he understood them to be sincerely discussing ways in which they could improve attendance each Sunday at the synagogue and also trying to be subtle in their comparison of the size of each others phylacteries. (Yes, Jesus did note that this probably had Freudian overtones.)

So Jesus was in a pissy mood that morning and decided just to saunter up to this august group in which he had no standing in the first place. “Hey guys,” he said, “Just a thought here. I see you guys are having a good time with this religious thing you got going on here. You really get a charge out of this ‘holy’ thing and you succeed in teaching your congregations to drink the same kool-aid. But may I suggest that you simply get over your self which will require getting rid of your stuff, certainly including this religious falderal which amounts only to the dissonant racket of ‘sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.’ If you don’t catch my drift, I’m saying your worship services and spiritual practice have become simply a lot of noise which provides you and yours a whole lot of satisfaction but does nothing for the world outside of yourself. Now forgive me, but I can’t help but liken this particular little tete-a-tete you are having this morning as reflective of the circle-jerk that I see at most of your Sunday morning dogma-fests.” He paused a moment and listened to the deafening silence and noted the apoplectic visages. “Anyway, just a thought here. Excuse me. Carry on. Talk amongst yourselves as you were doing. Oh, and have a nice day,” and he walked away.

So Jesus resumed sipping privately on his cup of latte as he watched these religious elders out of the corner of his eye. He saw them intensely discussing something and he knew it was him, he knew that he had put a bee in their bonnet; but he didn’t care. Occasionally he would catch a furtive glare from one of them as they continued to angrily discuss what he had said and they were gesticulating wildly. He occasionally heard words like “bastard” and “son of a bitch” and something about “probably was born in Kenya”, a reference which Jesus, even with his omniscience, did not understand.

After a few minutes, he saw them coming his way and he thought with amusement, “Uh oh!”

They approached him and the leader of the group announced, “Jesus, we don’t appreciate what you had to say and no one had asked you say anything in the first place. We are left with only two choices—a)ignore you and let you continue in your lunacy or b)to vote you off the island.”

Jesus interjected, with a wry smile, “And let me guess which one you have opted for!”