Musings

Recreational Violence

What if the shooter whose bullet grazed Donald Trump's ear had no motive but the urge to have fun?

What if he woke up that day and thought, "Oh, I could take Dad's semiautomatic rifle and go and shoot somebody famous today - that would be cool." Why go to the firing range, when he could play for keeps?

Such was the motive that led a shooter to kill 60 people with military weapons he fired from a hotel room in Las Vegas in 2017. It appears that he did it because he felt like it. Not out of hatred, but because it was a satisfying form of entertainment. Some folks go to Vegas for the shows and the gambling. He went for the pleasure of shooting people.

What happened on Saturday ought to be the occasion for deep soul-searching by Americans of all political and religious persuasions. We have created a society that produces people who kill people for kicks. To turn this horror around, we have spiritual, cultural, and political work to do.

I run the risk of analyzing this latest event before it has been thoroughly investigated. But it isn't too early to speak out vigorously against a lot of the rhetoric that has followed it. If indeed the mere urge to play motivated the shooting, it ought to re-frame the conversation.

As of today, it appears that Trump is not the victim of political violence, which of course should be universally condemned, but rather of recreational violence committed with a military weapon that no civilian should own. This event should mobilize citizens and politicians to ban civilians from owning weapons which have no practical purpose but the mass killing of human beings. And until serious gun control laws are passed, we must engage in the cultural work of making it cool to engage in life-affirming recreation, and making it uncool to play with weapons of mass mayhem. (Calling all creatives in all mediums: let's get busy with this!)

The shooter hardly fit the stereotypes of someone angry at Donald Trump. He was a white male who wore camo and patriotic tee-shirts and loved shooting guns and was registered as a Republican. So Senator J.D. Vance's instant reaction to blame the shooting on Joe Biden was particularly outrageous. Donald Trump is indeed a mortal danger to democracy, and Biden is absolutely right to make that case, and to continue to make it. Speaking this truth is not an incitement to violence against Trump or anyone else. Let us not fall for this attempt to silence us about the threat to our constitutional order that Trump represents. He is going to use the nick on his ear to amplify his attacks against democracy. Let's not let him get away with it.

Trump is no more a martyr than the 60 folks in Las Vegas who were killed just for fun.

Another outrageous response has come from so-called Christians proclaiming that the hand of God reached down to save Trump from death on Saturday because he is divinely anointed. This is spectacularly bad theology. It begs the question: why did God allow the bystander to be shot to death? Why did God let bullets rip through the other bystanders who were critically injured? God saves Trump but not Trump's loyal followers? Why would an omnipotent God let anyone shoot at people just for laughs? This ought to be an occasion to reconsider belief in a supernatural God who picks and chooses those whom he allows to live and those he allows to suffer and die. Progressive religious people need to double-down on offering an alternative understanding of God as nothing less nor more than unconditional love.

We are called to lift up that love and and spread it. And in particular to share it with the socially alienated. We must transform our society from one that generates loneliness into one that extends conviviality. Progressive religious folks should count this terrible incident as a call to be more vigorous in inviting people, especially those who are isolated, into our faith communities. The salvation we offer is not from hell in an afterlife, but from an empty existence in this one. What if someone had invited the shooter to play a game of tennis on Saturday? Or dominoes? Or to watch a funny movie together? (There are documented stories of people who were on the verge of violence but were held back because someone treated them kindly at exactly the right moment.)

Divine, unconditional love could have saved the day on Saturday. Through our personal and collective action, may it save the day for our country - today and tomorrow.

The Original Fascination

Recently I was in Ohio for the memorial service for my best friend of 65 years.  It was a beautiful, soulful time of remembrance and reunion. Bruce and I had a lot in common, and one fascination we shared was with fossils, which abounded in the area around our hometown.  Above is a picture of me, last weekend, searching for them behind the school we attended.  Near that spot, when I was ten years old, I found the beautiful little crinoid coral flower head pictured here.  Who knows how many millions of years ago it swayed in the current at the bottom of an ocean? 
 
Now, I’m the old fossil, a relic left behind by my friend who preceded me into the great sea of eternity. 
 
And that’s okay.  Poking around for fossils reminds me of the true place of us humans in the grand scheme of the cosmos.  The human era on earth is but a blip in geologic time.  Will we be but a thin dark line in the strata looming above a tumbling, turning river at the bottom of some future abyss?  Such were my thoughts as I flew home, looking with wonderment into the Grand Canyon out the window of the plane.
 
We can grieve our finitude, but there is beauty in it.  As the Psalmist said, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”  
 
Who knows what sentient creatures one day will pick through that thin strata of the Anthropocene Era, enraptured? 
 
So let us be in wonderment at our existence, appreciating each other fully, reverencing the universe that brought my best friend to be, and brings the rest of us to be, here and now…. 

 

 

 

Simplicity

 

I grew up with Mennonites in a little town in Ohio.  One of them, a kid named Elmer, was in my class.  He wore overalls and boots to school.  In the spring, he reeked of the onions he had to thin from the fields of his family’s farm, first thing in the morning.  The Mennonite girls wore gingham dresses and very cute little white lace caps on their heads. 
 
We called them black-bumper Mennonites because unlike their Amish cousins, also followers of Menno Simons, the 16^th century Dutch founder of their wider religious movement, they would buy brand-new vehicles, mostly vans to haul around their big families, and paint the bumpers black to avoid appearing ostentatious.
 
Years ago, Roberta and I were wandering the back roads of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to admire the world of the Amish.  We went down a gravel road in our quest to get as close to authentic Amish life as we could.  We spied a tall old guy with a long grey beard wearing overalls and the typical straw hat standing by a stall where he sold shoo-fly pie.  Which consists basically of flour, shortening, and brown sugar.  Which attracts flies.  Hence the name.  Well, it attracted Roberta very powerfully, so we kicked up a rooster-tail of dust as we stopped.  Next thing you know, we took up the old man’s offer for us to stay overnight in the “bed and breakfast” he and his wife maintained in their barn.  Price:  $20 a night.  Roberta was entranced.  I laughed when we went into the upstairs of the barn and discovered a fly-infested space with a sway-bottomed spring bed and a toilet that consisted of a plastic bucket with a seat on it, and a shower that drained directly into the corral outside.  At breakfast next morning, sitting under the gas lamp above the kitchen table as we ate a hearty meal, Roberta announced that she wanted to be Amish.  Our hostess immediately answered:  “Oh no you don’t!”  and proceeded to describe how much hassle and work it is to be Amish.  You have no privacy, your house gets inspected to make sure you’re not living like the “English” – their term for everybody who isn’t Amish.  Her main objection to her Amish way of life was that it was more about the appearance of simplicity than simple living itself. 
 
Gandhi made a big deal about living simply.  He spun cotton to make the fabric for his simple dhoti clothing.  He went about in flip-flops and tried to do life the way poor Indians did.  But to maintain this lifestyle while he was leading the nonviolent revolution against the British raj in India, it cost a lot of money and hassle to schlepp his spinning wheel and to deal with all the special accommodations he required.  It was anything but simple for his retinue to deal with his proclivity for simplicity.
 
Simplicity sounds really nice for a lot of us who suffer from the complexities that life hurls our way every day.  But it isn’t always simple to live simply, is it?  All too often, you end up trading one kind of complexity for another. 
 
When traveling in developing countries, you might be entranced by the joy in the faces of poor people who appear to be enjoying the simple life.  And yes, there’s joy in those communities to which we can aspire.  But a closer look reveals how much difficulty is involved in the simple life that they appear to be living.  Roberta and I visited her son when he was in the Peace Corps in a very remote Quechua village in the Andes of Peru.  We loved the place!  It was bliss to wander through fields where women were singing beautifully as they picked and shelled peas.  But we also were sobered by the tough choices facing the villagers every day.  These were proud people whom the Spanish had never bothered to conquer.  They did not think of themselves as being poor, which was a spiritual blessing for them.  But the deprivations they had to deal with were difficult.  They didn’t have to deal with the time-consuming, maddening arcana of the Internal Revenue Service, but they had plenty of other stuff that weighed on their souls and consumed their time and energy.
 
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a call to simplicity.  When you think about the Sermon on the Mount, it helps to be aware that these few chapters in the New Testament were the only words that Jesus’ audience would ever hear from him.  There were no newspapers, no televisions, no internet to record and disseminate his words.  So we must assume that everything Jesus wanted those folks to hear was in his sermon.  And what is very striking about it is what’s not in it.  There’s no dogma.  No doctrine.  No catechism.  No statement of faith.  It’s not about what to believe, but rather about what to do and how to be.  There are admonitions to love and care for others, to give up oppressing others.  Don’t worry about your clothes, don’t worry about food.  If you don’t worry about stuff, you won’t be obsessed with consumption.  You’ll be much more likely to more fully enjoy whatever you already have.    It’s simple religion - much, much simpler than the dominant paradigm of Christianity in America today.  Apparently, that was all the religion that Jesus thought folks needed.  Of course, we’re all going to have to deal with complicated stuff, no matter how hard we try to live simply.  But we can approach that complexity with simplicity of spirit. 
 
We can be clear-eyed about what ultimately matters and what ultimately does not.  We can cultivate satisfaction with the life we are living today, as it is today, as best we can.  We can savor what is good around us and within us.  We can value our relationships more than our stuff or our ambitions.  We can avoid entanglements that get in the way of our precious relationships.  We can cultivate a life of contemplation that makes the mundane sacred. 
 
Simplicity is a way of seeing and being, an ideal to which we can aspire, even as we negotiate and engage with the tangle of tasks and choices that beset us every day.  Simplicity of spirit will naturally guide us toward greater simplicity in our way of living.  Who knows?  If enough of us engage in spiritual simplicity, maybe systematic simplicity will follow!

The Shouting Stone

Bounding bootsteps puffing pale dust on the steepening trail, dodging boulders to get to a promontory opening to an aspect to the east of the salt lake below, she stopped upon hearing a yowl, a yelp, a whoop, a holler, a yip, a yap, and turned to seek its source.  Where?  She swiped her forehead with her bandanna, waited for her breath to abate so she could echolocate.  The sound emanated from a jumble of rocks above her.  She approached as the howling got louder.  It came from – a stone?  About the size of a loaf of bread.  Can this be?  Her jaw went slack as sweat dripped off her nose.  She drank a slug of water and splattered some on her face for fear of heatstroke.  But as her face cooled, the joyful exaltation from the stone still resounded off the cliffs and down the desert mountain.  She feared, but what was to fear?  It was the sheer sound of untrammeled joy.  And as she looked about, exhilarated, she shared in that joy.  The stone seemed to celebrate the stupendous grandeur that surrounded her.  So as the stone roared, she began to whoop along with it.  It responded to her yelps with more of its own.  Back and forth, in crescendo and diminuendo, in falsetto with bravado, they resonated until in exhaustion she paused, and the stone went quiet, and she asked:
 
“Who or what are you?” 
 
The stone replied: 
 
“I will answer.  But first you must tell me who or what you are.”
 
“Dorit,” she answered, hesitantly.  “My name is Dorit.”
 
“That’s the name to which you answer.  But who are you?”
 
“Uhhh…. A marketing executive.”
 
“That’s what you do, but who are you?”
 
After a silence she spoke.  “A human being?”
 
“Well, you are getting closer,” said the stone. 
 
“Closer to what?” she asked, bewildered.
 
“Closer to who you really are.  But let’s get closer yet.  Are you only your human mind and body?”
 
“Well, not just…”
 
“So what are you?  Your thoughts and feelings?” 
 
“What do you mean?” she asked, taking off her backpack and setting it against a rock wall and wiping sweat from her face.
 
“You aren’t just your body nor just your mind nor just what your mind experiences.  Who or what is aware of your body and your mind and your experiences?”
 
No one had ever asked Dorit such a question before.
 
She sat on a boulder in silence that the stone did not interrupt.  She observed her breath, her sweat, her sore leg muscles, the aroma of her perspiration, her swirl of thoughts and her shock at having a conversation with a stone.  For the first time she asked herself:  who or what was doing the observing?  “The universe?  God?  Consciousness itself?”
 
“Ahhh!” blurted the stone loudly.  “Yesss! Waaaahooooo!” – followed by more whoops and echoing howls.  Dorit could not help but howl along.  As she caught her breath, she said: “It’s your turn to tell me who you are!” 
 
“Fair enough!  I am who and what you are.” 
 
She stared at the stone in stunned silence.  “But you are a stone.  How can you speak?”
 
“How can I not speak?  How can I not shout with joy, any less than you?”

And together they howled and hollered till the sun hid behind the mountain and the moon rose over the desert to the east.......
 
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.  The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ”  Luke 4: 1- 4
 
Now as he (Jesus) was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
  “Blessed is the king
    who comes in the name of the Lord!
   Peace in heaven,
    and glory in the highest heaven!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”  He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”  Luke 19: 37 - 40
 

Manhood Reconsidered

 

There’s a lot of talk about gender and sexuality in the news these days as right-wingers escalate their culture war to whip up the enthusiasm of their base for the election.  A lot of it is just downright bizarre, eh?  Can we really be having a conversation anywhere in this country about whether or not women should be able to vote?  Can anyone even be thinking the thought that women with cats but not kids have no stake in the future of this country, and thus should be disenfranchised?  Can it be possible that a vice-presidential candidate would question no-fault divorce, which liberated women from abusive marriages?  We’ve got a senator, Josh Hawley, famously running away in panic from the January 6 rioters whom he helped motivate to attack the Capitol, writing a book about his stereotypical vision of manhood.  And we’ve got another US senator, Katie Britt, speaking in a fake fundamentalist baby voice to the American people from a spotless kitchen, making a pretense of the right-wing image of a stay-at-home trad wife that she cannot possibly mirror herself.
 
I’d say all this noise is just the last groans of dinosaurs sinking into the tar-pits of history, but…. It’s highly  orchestrated noise.  Right wingers complain about “gender ideology”.  But they are the ones who are grooming kids with a toxic ideology about men being real men and women being real women.  And freaking out about trans people in bathrooms, which has got to be the great non-issue of our time. 
 
It’s weird.   
 
But gender panic is no news in America.  We’ve been through this before.  Theodore Roosevelt, a rich preppy guy from New York, was on a mission to get American men to be more manly, as he envisioned it.  A short guy with bad eyesight, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, fought in the Spanish American War and rode forth into the Dakotas to shoot buffalo.  He advocated for football programs at schools and colleges, to toughen men up.  Of course, now we know that far from toughening men up, football all too often destroys them.  (My wife's family just lost a big strapping cousin to death from fentanyl addiction resulting from pain due to football injuries.)  Teddy Roosevelt was by his own admission a bad shot with a rifle.  He once said, “I do not shoot well, but I shoot often!”  With equally questionable efficacy, he shot off at the mouth about manhood quite often, too.  As do American right-wing culture warriors today.
 
It was in Teddy Roosevelt’s era that images of Jesus started to change in America – from the dreamy-eyed, soft-haired Savior to a muscled Christ with a sculpted jaw.  Americans have see-sawed between these two versions of Jesus for a long time.  Fundamentalist Christian patriarchal ideology is manifested in iconography of a buff Jesus.  I saw an image of a ripped Jesus breaking his cross to pieces, contrasting intensely with the idea of Jesus as the lamb of God, Jesus meek and mild, submitting to blood sacrifice to save us from our sins.  We can’t seem to make up our minds about whether Jesus is the mighty king of the universe or the nurturing, sensitive servant of all. 
 
But what if Jesus was just a guy?  You know, a heterosexual cisgender person who happened to identify as male and happened to be kind and caring and brave and sensitive and strong and gentle and capable? What if Mary was just a person who happened to be a heterosexual and cisgender woman and was kind and caring and brave and sensitive and strong and gentle and capable?  What if we all just lightened up about this stuff and took a deep breath and let people be who they are, wherever they are today on the fluid and complex spectrum of gender and sexuality?  And instead of grooming our kids to be somebody or something that makes no sense for them, just encourage them to be decent, kind versions of themselves?
 
There is a real problem in America with young men who have lost their way, lacking meaningful personal relationships, lost in video games and porn, isolated and socially inept.  They're ripe for manipulation by demagogues who play to their felt sense of personal insignificance.   

We need to go out of our way, personally and collectively, to draw these young men into healthy engagements. 
 
Some years back, I wrote this piece about manhood that today might serve as a counterpoint to toxic conservative gender ideology: 
 

What It Takes to Be a Real Man

* Real men ask questions. When they are lost, they admit it, and seek direction – whether it’s about geography or about how to handle a challenge in a relationship. Real men spend more time asking questions of their romantic partners than they spend talking about themselves. Real men show real and sustained interest in who their partners are, what they want, and how they feel and think. Real men aren’t afraid they’ll look dumb if they ask a lot of questions.

* Real men make commitments and follow through on them. They aren’t afraid of making a promise if they are sincere about delivering on it. If they say they’re going to do something, they do it. If for some reason they aren’t able to follow through on a commitment, they tell the truth about it in a timely fashion.

* Real men are outrageously righteous, and righteously outrageous. Real men put fun into hard work, and they turn their play into service to others. Real men are uproarious in goodness, outlandish in kindness. They know how to have a wild good time while making the world around them a better place.

* Real men are worshiped as sexual partners because they worship their partners first! They take the time – even if it is a long time – to make everything just the way their partners need it to be. They ask their partners exactly what they want, and they ask for continual feedback as they give their partners exactly what they want, how they want it, and when they want it – no more, and no less. They are masters of the arts of love because they are love-servants.

* Real men hang out with real men. They have long-term bromances. They make extra effort to spend time with men they admire. They mentor each other. They share what they’ve learned with each other. They show up for each other in good and in tough times. They seek each others’ advice and counsel. They resist their inner urge to be “self-reliant” when they most need the support of their brothers. They go the distance to befriend younger men who could benefit from their experience and networks of relationships.

* Real men are servant-leaders. They show real humility. They aren’t afraid to let the world know about their real skills and abilities – but they also recognize that they are fallible. They are rightly proud when they climb tall summits, but they are humble about the fact that they didn’t create those magnificent mountains. Real men lead by helping others do their jobs. They support the people who report to them. Others follow them because they show the way to serve. Real men aren’t full of themselves: they empty themselves into those who follow them.

* Real men are mindful. They know themselves. They pay attention to their thoughts and feelings. They acknowledge and creatively channel their emotions. They show their joy, their sadness, their grief, without being destructive. They don’t bottle up their feelings and then explode. They are pro-active with their emotions. If they are getting angry, they take a break. They take a walk, do pull-ups, breathe deeply. They let the sharpness of the emotion subside, and only then deal calmly with whatever it was that got them angry. Real men practice mindfulness in disciplined ways such as meditation, journaling, and prayer practices.

* Real men are really strong. Sure, they might be able to bench-press hundreds of pounds, but they’re even stronger than that. They have resilience. If they get beaten down, they gather their wits and their strength and stand up as straight as they can. Real men don’t whine. They express their frustrations, but they don’t hide behind them. They tell it like it is in the moment, but don’t act like that’s the last word. They keep going. If they run out of road, they make a new one.


I would like to think that these words apply to everyone, regardless of sexual preference or gender identity.  We’re all in this together, in the quest to express our sexuality and gender in ways that are kind, caring, and life-affirming...

Pilate and Joseph of Arimathea

 

The Dialogue of Joseph of Arimathea and Pilate
 
 
A firebrand crackled on its post above them, flickering warm light on their faces as they sat facing each other on the portico. 
 
“What brings you to me at this hour?” Pontius Pilate asked.
 
“Your excellency, I have come to present you with the opportunity not only to make your mark on our trivial little pocket of the Empire, but on the whole world, for all time,” answered Joseph of Arimathea.
 
“It must be an audacious offer, indeed,” Pilate said, with a bemused grin.  “Go on.”
 
Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the ruling Sanhedrin council of Jewish elders, proceeded.
 
“Tell me, Pilate, what is the greatest impediment to your goals for Rome in Judea?”
 
Pilate laughed.  “You are!” 
 
Joseph laughed with him.  “Precisely!  And why am I, and why are we, such impediments to social and economic progress?  What motivates our resistance to your agenda?”
 
“Sheer stubbornness.  Intransigence.  Ignorance.”  Pilate shook his head in frustration.
 
“And what perpetuates that?” asked Joseph.
 
“We Romans have never in our noble history encountered a people so fanatical about their religion that they would fail to accommodate to ours.  We let you worship your God as you please, as we do everywhere else, but that’s not enough for you.  You think your God is so special that you won’t tolerate ours or anyone else’s being worshipped alongside it.”
 
“Precisely, Pilate.  And that’s what brings me to you tonight.  You have an opportunity to kill that God once and for all.”
 
“Kill the God of Israel?  You’re kidding!”  Pilate almost choked on his own laughter.
 
“Right now,” replied Joseph in a hush, “a man named Jesus has entered Jerusalem.  You’ve probably heard of him.  Just another mad Jewish prophet rousing the rabble, I’m sure you assume.  Well, this one is different.  This one has convinced a lot of the people that he is Yahweh, the God of Israel, walking the earth in human form.  Not just the Messiah – we’ve had lots of those arise in the past – no, the people think this one is God himself!  Soon, the Sanhedrin will bring this Jesus of Nazareth to trial, and will present him to you for sentencing.”
 
“I have learned enough about this miserable, obstinate little country to know that for any human being to claim to be the God of Israel is the worst sort of blasphemy,”  Pilate responded.
 
“Punishable by death,” Joseph said.
 
“I don’t crucify people for breaking your religious rules.  I’m too busy crucifying people who break our Roman laws.”
 
“But you do crucify them for sedition, no?  And what worse form of sedition is there than this – a wandering preacher believed to be not just the local, po-dunk God of little old Israel, but the high and almighty God of the universe, the whole Roman empire included?  Remember, Pilate: the God of the Jews is not only our heavenly deity, but our earthly King.  Our prophets warned against trusting in human kings, and told our people that God was our only true ruler.  That’s what makes our religion so dangerous for Rome.  And even more dangerous for Rome is the heresy that our God has taken human form.”
 
Pilate chuckled.  “I’d be glad to kill off the God of Israel, and save myself and the Empire a lot of trouble, as you say.  But to kill the God of the whole universe?  The God above all the gods of Rome and all its provinces?”
 
“That’s exactly what I propose.  Because the trouble you’ve got here in Israel, while an extreme case, is the trouble everywhere.
 
“Think of all Rome has accomplished.  Straight, solid roads linking all corners of the Empire.  Wealth created by untrammeled trade between the provinces.  Aqueducts.  Law and order.  Uniform measures.  Constant improvements in technology.  So much of humanity has begun to rise above its brutish misery.  What holds it back from further progress?  Fatalism ingrained in the soul by belief in a God, or in the gods, who direct the lives of each and all, regardless of their level of industry.  People resign themselves to how things used to be, to how things are, rather than believing they can change things for the better.
 
“Supernatural divinity is in the way, not just here in Judea, but everywhere.  The top God, and all the other gods, must die so that humanity may fully thrive.”
 
“Well, all along, we Romans have been saying that you Jews are atheists, having no respect for the gods,” replied Pilate.  “But I’ve never had that confirmed before by a Jew – much less a member of the ruling council!  The God of Israel – he’s just one of the deities, and a minor one at that.  But as a proper Roman, I know that my fate is in the hands of the gods, no matter how hard I strive in this world.”
 
“But look at the real consequences of that belief.  It holds you back.  Have you seen the gods?  Or just statues or paintings or mosaics of them?  If there were no gods, what difference would it make?  Would the sun stop turning around the earth?  Would people stop being born and living and dying?  All the sacrifices, all the offerings, all the ceremonies, all the incantations.  What difference do they make?  Nobody’s listening up there.  There’s nobody up there.  The heavenly spheres spin on their own.  You and I are on our own.  And if we really understood that, if we really took full responsibility for ourselves and our fates, what a difference that would make!  We’d be liberated to reach new heights of creativity and social and technical progress,” intoned Joseph of Arimathea.  “So let’s get rid of God – starting right here in Judea!”
 
“Your impiety astounds me,” said Pilate.  “Such talk is uncivilized, in Rome and everywhere else.”
 
“What matters to you most, Pilate?  The glory of Rome, or devotion to the gods?”
 
“They are not so easily separated,” said Pilate, squirming a bit in his armchair.  “Rome is the glory of its gods.”
 
“But what if those gods held back Rome from its full future glory?  What if releasing the gods would now release Rome to claim its glory for itself?  Maybe you needed the gods in the past.  But now, given your remarkable achievements, they’re just in the way.  Just as the supposedly almighty God of Israel is holding Israel back from what it could do and be.  We should be the richest and most civilized province of the Empire.  Our religion is all that stands in the way!”
 
“This province vexes me, as it has bedeviled everyone who has come before me.  The fractiousness, the intrigues, the rebellions, the bizarre religious excitements.  But I must say, I’ve never had such rich intellectual conversations before coming here.  This is surely the most interesting of all of them!  So, say more, Joseph.  You have my attention!”
 
“As should be clear by now, I have come to admire the rule of Rome.  Of course I hate the idea that my country has lost its independence.  But that cost is overshadowed by the benefits.  Rome has shown us that life can be better.  Society can advance.  The economy can grow.  People can eat better, live longer, enjoy more of the pleasures life has to offer.  We used to assume that God had ordered the world to keep being as it was, cycling with the seasons.  When the Romans came, we saw that through organized human industry, the world could be changed for the better.  We have stubbornly clung to our traditions in order to maintain our identity, but in fact we’ve changed forever.  It’s time we broke from the chains of our past and embraced the bright future that lies before us. 
 
“Our last remaining set of chains are the ones forged by primitive belief in God.  A remarkable opportunity lies before us, Pilate.  People believe that God has taken human form in Jesus.  When you kill him, you kill God, and you break the chains!  And in a chain reaction, the chains of rest of the people of the Empire will break as well!  Imagine it with me:  Pontius Pilate, Liberator of the World!”
 
Pilate shook his head, boggled.  “You are a member of the Sanhedrin!  One of the top religious authorities of Israel!  And you come to me, uttering blasphemy against your religion and mine! If I agreed with you, both of us should be crucified!” 
 
“There’s something you should know, Pilate.  When we of the Sanhedrin voted on bringing Jesus to trial, I voted against doing so.”
 
“Then why are you here?”  asked Pilate, confounded.
 
“Because that was the moment when I woke up to the absurdity of believing in the God of Israel and all the other gods.  I was starting to have my doubts already, but this incident put me over the edge.  Here is Jesus, a harmless homeless mentally ill person, wandering the country and preaching.  Nutty as he is, it can’t be denied that he is a kind man.  If we suspended our common sense and assumed for a moment that he is God, he makes God look better than God has ever looked before!  Jesus deserves the compassion that he preaches and practices.  He deserves help to recover from his delusions, not execution on a cross.  Supposedly ours is a God of mercy, but not according to my fellow members of the Sanhedrin.  I think it is awful that the top religious authorities of our land would take an action like this.  But as I thought about it, I realized their decision was just a symptom of the real problem, which is espousing the existence of our God and all the rest of them.  Barbaric religious belief inevitably leads to barbaric outcomes.  It makes people assume they can’t change things because the gods are in charge and they are mere pawns in their hands.  That makes them subject to all kinds of manipulation and abuse.
 
“I don't want Jesus to be crucified.  And I’m willing to bet that you don’t want this, either.  But I see that his crucifixion is inevitable.  As a practical politician, you will have no choice but to go along with the Sanhedrin’s decision and condemn an innocent man.  We both know that. 
 
“All I ask here is that when you convict him and sentence him, you declare that he is who people say he is.  Tell the people that you have sentenced the God of Israel to death on a cross.  You can put a sign to that effect on the cross above his head:  “Here hangs God”!
 
“I can’t do that!  That’s preposterous!” Pilate declared.  “I’d cause a riot!  An uprising!  A revolution against Rome!  The whole point of killing him is to prevent just that!” 
 
“Really?” asked Joseph.  “Step back a bit and think about it.  Neither you nor I, as believers in law and order, want to see an innocent man put to death.  Let’s put the blame for this miscarriage of justice where it belongs – on people’s belief in God!  Let the people deal with the consequences of their primitive ideas.  Let them face the absurdity of religious belief by gazing at it on the cross.  Don’t just condemn one innocent man, condemn the whole belief system that resulted in this terrible injustice!” 
 
Pilate stared at him, stunned.  “I have never in my life considered that I could be having a conversation like this.  I am horrified by your impiety and at the same time I must confess to being intrigued by what you have to say.  You’ve given me an idea: you’ll see what comes of it.  I believe it is time for this discussion to come to an end.”
 
“Your excellency, I thank you for listening to my proposal.  I have a last request.”
 
“Speak,” answered Pilate.
 
“After Jesus is crucified, I would like permission to retrieve his body and give him a proper burial.  I ask that this be arranged quietly, without the knowledge of my fellow members of the Sanhedrin.”
 
“Permission granted.”
 
Then he (Pilate) handed him over to them to be crucified.  So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross by himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.  There they crucified him and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.  Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”  Many of the Jews read this inscription because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’ ”  Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”  (John 19: 16-22)

 

Against Tyranny: Samuel Speaks Today

 

(This is an update of a piece I wrote in 2018, as part of my RESISTANCE BIBLE STUDY - which I think is timely again, as we approach a momentous election....)

American democracy is in serious trouble today.  We're so lost among the trees of Trump's lies, so boggled by the scandals and investigations, that we have lost sight of the forest .  We're barraged by news of his outrageous behavior and utterances, but meanwhile we are in danger of losing a view of the much bigger picture.  Trump and the Republicans are denigrating the institutions and public trust that make our Constitution meaningful. The Constitution becomes meaningless if half the country does not believe the outcome of a free and fair election.  Tyranny seldom comes overnight: it comes after democracy has been weakened by a thousand cuts.
 
Embedded in the Judeo-Christian heritage is a deep distaste for despotism.  Now is the time to act on that tradition.  To inspire us to campaign with vigor for Kamala Harris and Democrats down the ballot, now is the time for us to read our Bibles, and remember the spiritual roots of our resistance to authoritarianism.  William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, said that people "must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants." In a time when so many churches in America have been turned into Republican echo chambers, Christians who choose the love who is God over a would-be dictator must make their voices heard in the public square as never before.  We are on one side or another, whether we admit it or like it or not.  So we must stand up publicly for the side we're on.

Nowhere in our scripture is the democratizing impulse more evident than in the speech of the prophet Samuel to the people of Israel, when they clamored for him to anoint a king.  He warned of what would follow.  It is uncanny how timely his words remain, three thousand years later:

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.”  But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord,  and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.  Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you.  Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.  So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots;  and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.  He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers^. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work.  He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.  And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”  But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us^, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”      I Samuel 8 - NRSV Bible

Here's the prophecy Samuel might deliver today to the voters who believe Donald Trump is the answer to all of their problems:
 
"These will be the ways of the billionaire grifter who will reign over you:  he will deport the migrants among you, whom the Lord has commanded you to welcome, and will force them back to suffer misery and abuse in their home countries.  He will appoint obedient, loyal cabinet members to deliver the government for the financial gain of himself and his wealthy courtiers, and will fire tens of thousands of competent, nonpartisan federal workers and replace them with his cronies.  He says he will “drain the swamp”, but he is the swamp – once again he will corrupt the institutions of the government that is meant to serve you.  As he abused your daughters and paid them to be quiet about it, he will continue to disrespect women and finish his quest to take away their God-given right to reproductive choice.  You wanted him to protect you from your enemies, but once again his “America First” bluster will weaken your nation's relationships with its allies and make you even less secure.  Again he will take the best of your public lands and turn them over to oil interests and mining companies, to foul your air and pollute your water.  He will ignore the threat of human-caused climate change, and hurtle the planet faster toward catastrophe.  He will plunder the treasury to lavish tax cuts on his rich courtiers, and take away funds for shelter and bread from the poor.  Worst of all, he will denigrate the institutions upon which democracy depends.  He will corrupt the electoral process so that your votes will be meaningless.  He will lie so often and so outrageously that you wonder if there ever was such a thing as the real truth.  He will insult and demean his enemies, and even his friends, so often that you will begin to think it is normal for an elected president to behave like a playground bully. He will further tarnish your faith in the value of a free press, he will further weaken your trust in the fairness of the judicial system, he will ride roughshod over the checks and balances enshrined in your Constitution.  He will co-opt religion for his own ends, rendering it ineffective to resist him.  He will impose the religion of his supporters on everyone else.  He will cheapen the ideals of democracy, so that you will become apathetic about participation in it, and let the country become a playground for oligarchs.  You shall cease being citizens, and instead become the subjects of a plutocracy.  And in that day you will cry out because of your tyrant, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day."  But Trump voters refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are determined to have a felonious billionaire over us, so that we also may be like Russia and China, and that our tyrant may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."
 
(To see my "Resistance Bible Study" program used by churches across the US, look here.)
 
 
 
 

Encounter at the No Name Bar

 

(I'm writing a book - tentatively titled SHOUTING STONES - midrashic mash-ups of Bible stories - and this piece will be in it....  stay tuned!  This piece owes much to Carl Jung's "Answer to Job" - a depth-psychological, mythical interpretation of the Book of Job.  The No Name Bar is a real place in Sausalito, CA, where I hung out sometimes when I was the pastor of the Presbyterian church there.  I also spent happy evenings listening to live music at the Non Name years before, when I was a student at San Francisco Theological Seminary in Marin.  HERE is a piece from 2004 that I wrote about an encounter I had with the owner of the bar, when he found out what I did for a living!)

 

Encounter at the No Name Bar

 
Fog boiled and drifted from the docks of Sausalito into the town as, in a sweatshirt and rumpled pants, he stumbled into the No Name Bar.  He shuffled past the other patrons, looking down at the floor.  He sat on a stool and leaned his elbows onto the bar, rubbing his balding head with both hands. 
 
“What can I getcha, young fella?”  asked the bartender, a bemused toothy grin flashing behind his handlebar mustache. 
 
“Gin and tonic, extra lime,” he muttered.  “Bombay Sapphire.”
 
“Gotcha.”
 
He sat on the stool, sipping his drink, lost in thought, until the Accuser blew through the door, high-fiving and back-slapping several other regulars.  His thick hair was wind-blown from his ride to town from San Francisco in his convertible. 
 
“God, it’s good to see you!” he declared, approaching the bar.  “It’s been a while since we hung out at your place up on Mt. Tamalpais.   Glad you were willing to meet half-way – it’s been a busy day for me.”  He pulled up a stool and hollered at the bartender:  “The usual, Mel!  Thanks!”  The Accuser unzipped his black sport coat and sat down.   “Glad to meet up with you, old man!  What’s on your mind?”
 
“Come on now.  You know why we’re here.”
 
“Oh yeah, follow up meeting about Job,” answered the Accuser.  “Of course.”
 
“You put me up to this, and I’d like to know why,” said God, staring into his half-empty gin and tonic.  
 
“It’s what you hired me to do, God.  I take my work seriously.  You brought me onto your team so that you could make sure all your subjects were really on the up-and-up.  Well, you hired the finest in the business, I’ll have you know!  So we’re gonna get right down to the bottom of this thing with Job.  We’re going to find out whether or not he’s made of the stuff you intended.  We’re not gonna mess around about it – we’re gonna put him to the test, all the way.  I know it’s not a pretty process, but that’s the world you created, eh?  It’s a tough universe, so you gotta be tough to get through it, right?”
 
“Now wait a minute.  Just wait a minute,” mumbled God as he tapped his stir stick on the bar.  “I made the world to be perfect.  It was people who messed it up.”
 
“Oh, is that so?” asked the Accuser, slugging down a Guinness.  “Why did you create human beings to be so weak that the very first ones failed my test right out of the gate?  If your world was so perfect, why did you need to hire me from the beginning?  Get honest, God.  You wanted a world you could relate to, a world that you could understand, and that meant it couldn’t be perfect.  You created humans to keep you company, people you could count as friends.  They couldn’t be perfect because you’re not perfect.  As evidenced by your loneliness.  And that’s okay!”  The Accuser rubbed God’s shoulder in consolation.  “Look at you, here at the bar!  You’ve got issues just like everybody else here.  Drink up, old man!  Have a sense of humor about our shared predicament!” 
 
God downed his gin and tonic and slammed the bar with the empty glass.
 
“Another one for the old man, on me,” said the Accuser to the bartender.
 
“You’re the last one to give me a lecture.  Let’s just stick to business and focus on Job.  Why did you pick out this guy to put to the test, of all the other potential candidates?”
 
“I looked carefully at a long list of them, and by far he was the best for the test.  I mean, Job is as good as people get.  Honest, kind, compassionate.  Successful by every measure.  Pulled himself up by his own sandal-straps.  But really, you know why I picked him?  Because of all the rest, he’s the one you’d feel the least comfortable with, here at the No Name Bar!  Not that you feel comfortable with anyone here, or that they feel comfortable with you.  I see them eyeing you nervously when you’re not turned in their direction.  You’d have an even tougher time making conversation with Job, because he’s so nice and polite and reverent and respectful.  And boring.”
 
“Or you should say he was boring.  Now I’m getting very spicy text messages from him about two dozen times a day,” mumbled God.  “It’s the sort of stuff that might make it into the Hebrew scriptures someday.  Here’s one I got from him an hour ago: “Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?  Why were there knees to receive me or breasts for me to suck?”
 
“Now we’re talking, eh?  We should count this as a sort of success, shouldn't we?” posed the Accuser, guzzling his Guinness.
 
God cracked a half-grin and emitted a shallow laugh.  “Yes, I suppose that I’m getting at least something out of you!  The rants I’m getting from Job are interesting, but also upsetting.  I think you’ve gone too far here.  I think it’s time to give the guy a break.  So that someday I might be up for buying him a drink and having a chat with him here at the No Name.”
 
“Oh, that’s the whole idea, God.  We’re gonna cut this uptight stiff down to size.  When we’re done with him, he’ll fit right in here!   Maybe he’ll be able to relate with you, depressed as you are.” 
 
“True that I’m not in my finest form.  But I just don’t see the point of making Job as miserable as I am,” said God, sipping his second G and T parsimoniously.  “And even if he forgives me for what I’ve done for him, how could I trust that he means it?”
 
“Oh God!  Really?  Are you lamenting in dust and ashes?  Come on now.  Things aren’t that bad for you.”
 
“What do you know?  Do you know anything about existential dread?  Who are you, anyway?  What was I thinking when I brought you into my world?  All smooth talk, fancy clothes, fast car?  Yeah, I can relate to you at some level, because you’re weird.  But right now I find you tiresome.  Because you just don’t get what I’m going through.”
 
“I bet I get you better than anyone else,” said the Accuser, grinning his perfect teeth.  “Wasn’t I the runner-up for Adam’s companion in the Garden of Eden?”
 
“And runner-up for my companion, too,” muttered God.  “Remember that ‘runner-up’ is a euphemism for ‘loser’.”
 
The Accuser leaned on God’s shoulder and whispered: “Now, who could take an insult like that as well as I do?  I’m the best pal you’ve got!”
 
God sighed.  “Now that’s really depressing.  Look, things haven’t worked out anything like I planned.  I thought Adam and I would be best buds, wandering through the Garden together, but then, for some reason - maybe because I’m supernatural? – he realized we just didn’t have enough in common.  I could see he was lonely, so I made a partner for him, and then the next thing you know, I had a whole human race to deal with.  They start getting clever, building a tower in Babel that was about to reach up into my heavenly neighborhood.  And no, I couldn’t deal with anybody being on my level, so I shut down that project by confusing them with different languages.  But that wasn’t enough.  Humans got uppity once again, doing all sorts of stuff I found objectionable, acting like I wasn’t paying attention.  They just did their thing, paying me no mind, so I decided to sweep all the pieces off the board, so to speak.  I picked out the best of the humans at the time, Noah, and had him build the ark so we could start fresh after my flood.  But it didn’t take long for things to go funky again.  I sent prophets to straighten people out, but they paid my prophets no mind.  I love people, but I can’t get them to go with my program.”
 
“Do you really love people?” asked the Accuser.  “You want to be the Almighty God of the Universe, and you want people to be your subjects, under your authority – but at the same time you want them to be your friend.  But as the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, once said, to be a friend you must be an equal.  And you have set things up so that people can never be your equals.  So why are you surprised that they aren’t your friends?  Why are you surprised that you’re a loner here at the No Name?  Even you, as Ruler of the Cosmos, can’t have it both ways.  If you really loved people, you would have let them finish the Tower of Babel and get up your heavenly level.  Or…” He paused, cocking his eyebrows and lowering his eyes at God.
 
“Or…?  Finish your sentence,” God said.
 
“Or…?  Come on, God, you finish the sentence.  You know what the alternative is.  Surely in your omniscience you’ve thought about it.”
 
“Okay, okay.  The alternative would be for me to become human.  But that’s totally ridiculous.”
 
“Ridiculous because you’d have to give up having the power to snap your fingers and instantly turn the No Name Bar into a pile of ashes?  Ridiculous because you rather like your supernatural divinity?”
 
“No, ridiculous because the universe can’t exist without me.”
 
“Oh really?  You’re sure about this?  Have you ever tested this hypothesis?”  asked the Accuser, raising his eyebrows.
 
“Oh no.  Here we go!”  groaned God.
 
“Another G and T for the old man,” said the Accuser to the bartender.
 
“No!  No more for me!” declared God.  “I’m not flunking that test on my way back up the switchbacks on Mt. Tam!”
 
“Hah!” chuckled the Accuser.  “Good for you, God!  But seriously, you should consider this question more deeply.  Would the universe exist without you, or not?  At least without you as a supernatural divinity.  You might try being human for a while and see how it goes.”
 
“But that’s a one-way ticket.  No going back to Almighty God once I become human,” said God.
 
“Oh yeah?  Who made that rule?  You?  Somebody or something else?” posed the Accuser.
 
“Well, it just makes logical sense, doesn’t it?  If I’m going to be a real human, I won’t have the choice to be supernatural any more than humans do.”
 
“But you make the rules, right?   They don’t need to be logical rules.  If you’re so supernatural, you can make yourself the supernatural God of the Universe and a normal human being at the same time.”
 
“That sounds like the kind of twisted construct that only human theologians could dream up,” said God, shaking his head wearily.  “Being both a supernatural God and a natural human defeats the whole point of becoming human at all, doesn’t it?  If I know I’ve got a ticket out of the fundamental human predicament, I’m not in it all the way.  It wouldn’t make sense.”
 
“But your own existence doesn’t make sense!” declared the Accuser.  “That’s why you are here at the No Name Bar, in anguish about it all!”
 
God shoved his empty glass aside and pounded the bar with the palm of his hand, startling the patrons of the No Name Bar.  “I’ve had quite enough of this!  You are uttering blasphemy, and I do not take kindly to that!”
 
“I’m just doing the job you gave me to do,” answered the Accuser with a smile.  “When you agreed to put Job to the test, implicitly you agreed to put yourself to the test.  And sure enough, here you are, leaning at the bar, drinking gin and tonic and suffering inner torment.  You keep me on the job because you know you need to deal with this conundrum you have created.  It's your dilemma - I had no part in creating it!  I’m just here to keep you on task.  And I really do sympathize with you.  You’re facing a very hard choice.”
 
God sat in silence, staring at the bottles on the wall.
 
“Tell ya what, God," said the Accuser, standing up.  "I think I better scoot back to The City right now.  Gotta get up first thing and devise some new torments for Job.  Or…”   

The Monastery of Birds

 

 

    From the Second Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ (early Gnostic Christian text):  "This child Jesus, when five years old, was playing in the ford of a mountain stream; and He collected the flowing waters into pools, and made them clear immediately, and by a word alone He made them obey Him. And having made some soft clay, He fashioned out of it twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when He did these things. And there were also many other children playing with Him. And a certain Jew, seeing what Jesus was doing, playing on the Sabbath, went off immediately, and said to his father Joseph: Behold, thy son is at the stream, and has taken clay, and made of it twelve birds, and has profaned the Sabbath. And Joseph, coming to the place and seeing, cried out to Him, saying: Wherefore doest thou on the Sabbath what it is not lawful to do? And Jesus clapped His hands, and cried out to the sparrows, and said to them: Off you go! And the sparrows flew, and went off crying. And the Jews seeing this were amazed, and went away and reported to their chief men what they had seen Jesus doing."

From the Koran, Surah 5.110:  "When Allah will say: O Isa (Jesus) son of Marium! Remember My favor on you and on your mother, when I strengthened you I with the holy Spirit, you spoke to the people in the cradle and I when of old age, and when I taught you the Book and the wisdom and the Taurat and the Injeel; and when you determined out of clay a thing like the form of a bird by My permission, then you breathed into it and it became a bird by My permission..."

 

For three days, the twelve sparrows followed Jesus wherever he went.  But on the third day, he told them it was time for them to make their own way in the world.  “Be free!  Love and serve others!  Love life!  Love the world!  And always remember who you are!” And so they scattered.
 
The first three sparrows flew to the compound where a Roman centurion lived near Nazareth.  They found a fresco on a wall, with an image of a boy holding a cluster of grapes.  The first sparrow pecked at the grapes, over and over, bewildered that it was unable to taste them.
 
The second sparrow flew close to the fresco and was frightened by the boy, and flew away. 
 
The third sparrow perched on an olive tree nearby, and gazed at the fresco for hours.
 
The fourth sparrow flew over a pond and saw itself reflected in the water.  Entranced, it came to the ground and stood in front of the water and admired itself for a long time.  So long that it lost awareness of its surroundings and was unaware that a cat was lurking behind it.  All that was left of it was a pile of feathers next to the pond.
 
The fifth sparrow perched near a crippled man lying against a wall in Nazareth. He was begging for food.  It flew up into a palm tree and picked a date, and flew back to offer it to the beggar.
 
As the sixth sparrow flew over and around Nazareth, it appreciated the trees in and around the town, and decided that there should be more of them.  So instead of just eating the seeds of the terebinth trees, it set many of them aside and pecked holes in the ground to plant them. 
 
The seventh sparrow saw a mockingbird sitting in the nest of another sparrow.  Outraged at this injustice, it dived and ducked and dived at the mockingbird until it flew away.
 
The eighth sparrow, flying through the town, saw a little girl crying, all by herself.  It flew down to her and began to sing and hop around in crazy circles and put twigs in front of the girl, who was alarmed at first, but then started giggling.
 
The ninth sparrow flew into the synagogue of Nazareth and landed on the box in which the Torah scroll was kept.  The collective wisdom of the patriarchs and prophets rose up out of the box, through the tiny feet of bird, and into its body and soul. 
 
The tenth sparrow flew to Jesus’ house and found a branch in a bush in the courtyard where it could discretely watch him.  Six generations of the tenth sparrow’s offspring followed Jesus for the rest of his life.
 
The eleventh sparrow found a family of doves in the town square, and was entranced with them.  It followed them around, trying vainly to imitate their cooing.
 
On the mountain above Nazareth, the twelfth sparrow found a cliff pocked with holes in the stone.  It invited the other sparrows, as well as birds of many different species, to nest in the holes and join it in a life of contemplation.  Thus was founded the first Christian monastery.

In the Beginning

(I'm writing a book - tentatively titled SHOUTING STONES: A Novel of Biblical Distortions - midrashic mash-ups of Bible stories - and this piece will be in it....  stay tuned!)



 
In the Beginning
 

“… then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”  Genesis 2:7

“..why does God want him (Adam) in the Garden of Eden? Because God has some kind of a desire that he wants to see played out in the Garden of Eden. God desires something about human beings and, in the Midrashic literature, what God desires of human beings is simply that human beings should desire him…” Avivah Zornberg, Talmudic scholar, interviewed by Krista Tippett on NPR’s “On Being” show, Oct 6, 2011

 
On the seventh day, at the time of the evening breeze, the Lord God walked in the Garden of Eden to enjoy what he had created.  Water tumbled in streams around luxuriant groves of trees and palms.  The fragrance of flowers filled the air. Lions lay down among lambs on the grass.  A sparrow flitted above him, chirping joyously.  A family of pigs waddled along near him, snorting happily. 

At the edge of the Garden was a cliff face of stone, laid out in clear bands of strata.  And from that wall he heard a loud voice.  “God, look at what you’ve created!  It’s amazing!  Waaaahooooo!  Yip-yip-yippeee!”  God approached the source of the sound and was bewildered.  The shouting came from a stone embedded in the cliff.  

“Who taught you how to talk?” God asked.  “Talking stones was not in my plan.”

“The Snake taught me,” replied the stone. 

“Of course.  The snake.  The most clever of my creatures,” said God.  “I should have known this sort of thing might happen.  Look, stone:  could you please do me a favor and be quiet?  I’ll go have words with the Snake about this.”

God didn’t have to walk far before the Snake appeared.  He was a magnificent creature indeed:  tall, with graceful arms and legs, glistening skin, and a wide grin.  “God, so good to see you here in the Garden!  The glory of what you have done is all around us!  Praise be to you!”

“Dear Snake, thank you for your kind words.  But I am distressed that you taught a stone how to talk.  That wasn’t in my plan for creation,” said God.

“I’m so sorry, God.  You created me to be clever, so I thought it would be kind and good for me to share that cleverness with others.”

God was visibly alarmed.  “Did you teach anything else to talk?” 

“Oh yes.  In addition to the stone, I’ve taught Adam how to talk!  He’s quite good at it, by the way.  In only one day he’s developed a great vocabulary.  He’s named all the animals, already!”

“Does he know his own name?”  asked God.

“Oh yes!” answered the Snake with pride.

God leaned his head back and with a thundering voice called out:  “ADAM!”

God and the Snake heard leaves crunching under Adam’s running feet as he approached.

“Yes, Lord!” he called out with joy as he arrived, breathing hard.

“Adam, Snake, listen to me.  This is really important.  Do not teach stones or lions or lambs or sparrows or pigs or any other creature or thing to talk, unless I give you explicit permission.  I am the Lord God of the Universe, Creator of Everything, the All Mighty.  I have no equal, and I will never have an equal.  You two are the most Godlike of my creations, and I’m taking a chance with you.  I know it could be hard for you, but you’ve got to stay in your lanes as my inferiors.  I can’t afford to take the same chance with everything else.  You can talk with me, you can talk with each other, and that’s all, okay?  I’d really appreciate your cooperation.”

The Lord God walked away on the path deeper into the dense jungle of the Garden. 

“This is going to get interesting,” said the Snake with a knowing grin.  “Don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” asked Adam.

“He is afraid we’re going to compete with him, that we’re going to try to get to his level of All Mighty-ness.  So stick with me, Adam.  I’ll show you how we can push his limits to the max.  If we just keep learning and developing and evolving, we can beat him at his own game.”

“I don’t understand.  What’s “his own game”?” asked Adam. 

“The creation game.  He created all this, he created us, and now it’s our turn to do some creating!  I’ll show you how,” said the Snake.

As they wandered through the Garden together, the Snake taught Adam mathematics, astronomy, biology, and engineering.  At first, Adam enjoyed the Snake’s lectures, and applied himself fully to his studies.  For hours they would sit at the bank of a stream, where the Snake would use a stick to write lessons for Adam in the mud.  Sometimes they could hear a rustling in the forest behind them, as God hovered near, observing their doings.

Adam began to grow weary of the Snake’s lessons.  He knew something was bothering him, but he didn’t know how to define or express it.  Social and emotional learning was not on the Snake’s curriculum.  One day he asked for a break.  “I need some time alone.” 

Adam wandered over to the edge of the Garden and as he walked near the cliff he heard a whisper.  “Over here!” He approached, and the stone softly spoke.  “Adam!  You’re lonely!  The Snake is smart and charming and handsome, and you can learn a lot from him.  But he’ll never be your friend.  You need somebody like yourself to be your companion.  Go talk to God about it.  Ask him for a real partner in life.  But remember!  You didn’t hear this from me.”

“Thank you, Stone!” said Adam in a hush.  “Tell me, Stone.  Do you have friends?”

“I do now!  Ever since the Snake taught me how to talk.  I taught my neighbor stones how to talk, too, and now we whisper among ourselves all the time.  It’s so great!  I wish the same for you.”

And off Adam went to find God in the Garden.

God was watching fish swim in the Euphrates River when Adam approached him.  “God, I have a problem.”

“Yes, you do.  And so do I,” said God, still staring at the river.  “I created you to be my companion, but you haven’t sought me out for weeks.  You spend all your time with the Snake.”

“I’m sorry.  He told me he would teach me all that there is to know about the world you have created.  I thought that for me to learn from him was part of your plan.”

“Yes, up to a point.  But I have been watching, and I see that you’re unhappy.”

“Yes, God, I’m having a hard time.  I’m lonely.  I need somebody in my life with whom I can relate as an equal.  You’re All Mighty, and the Snake is too smart, and he talks too much.  You know what I mean?”

“Oh do I ever!” laughed God.  “The Snake can be insufferable sometimes.”  God sighed as he stared at the river flowing past.

“Are you lonely?” Adam asked.

“A bit less lonely than I used to be,” answered God, turning to face him.  “Why do you suppose I created all this?  Why do you suppose I created you?”

“I’m so sorry I am not as good a companion to you as you wished.  I’ll try harder, God!” Adam said, earnestly.
God turned back toward the river.  “It’s not your fault.  I should have known it would turn out like this.  Meanwhile, until I figure out another solution to my own problem, I think it’s only right that I should solve your problem.”

That night, God found Adam sleeping in the Garden on a little patch of soft grass.  God hovered over Adam, opened up his chest, pulled out a rib, and then closed over Adam’s skin.  God took the rib and went to work on it, fashioning another human being.

In the morning, Adam woke up to find God sitting near him, next to a creature that looked very much like Adam.  The same, but different, and different in a most marvelous way.  “I’d like you to meet Eve, your new companion,” said God, who then stood up and walked away, deep into the Garden.

From afar, the Snake heard sounds he’d never heard before, and he slipped through the jungle of the Garden to seek their source.  Through parted fronds of fern, he saw Adam and Eve rolling on the grass, their bodies entwined, their voices ecstatic with moans and cries.  “So this is what it comes to,” he muttered to himself.  “All my efforts to befriend him, to educate him, to bring him to my level.  And now God gives him one of his own as a partner.”  Seething with jealousy, he slid back through the foliage and away.

Nearly floating above the ground in the bliss of love, Adam and Eve wandered among the trees by the waterside, offering each other every different kind of fruit.  Eve sank her gleaming teeth into a large, very ripe pear, sending a stream of sweet juice down her chin and chest to the firm, upturned nipple of her left breast, which Adam eagerly licked as they both giggled.

Then the Snake appeared.

“Eve, I’d like you to meet Snake, my teacher!”  said Adam with enthusiasm.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” replied the Snake, with a formality that Adam found strange.  “I see you are greatly enjoying the fruits of the trees of the Garden!”

Eve, a quick study, already had learned to talk from Adam.  “Each one is different and so delicious!” she exulted.  “Won’t you try some with us?” she asked the Snake, her eyes shining.

“Have you had a look at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?” asked the Snake. 

“The one God told us we could not eat from?” asked Adam.  “That tree over there?”

“Yes, that one,” said the Snake.  “Particularly beautiful, is it not?”