The Stories in Which We Find Ourselves

Makes Me Wanna Holla!

2011-12-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

<<Read the sixth episode in the Noah saga.

(based on Genesis 7—a story of creation)

I'd like to think someone, some two or more said yes they would join Noah and his family on the ark. The way the story has been handed down to us leaves just enough room to imagine this possibility, even though the Bible does not explicitly say so.

Or maybe no one came, and the purpose of the story is to make us feel a profound sense of loss, a loss that we often don't feel because we too value our neighbors so little that as long as they are just there somewhere we don't think much of them.

The rains fell... and kept falling. Noah found his way back to the ark and joined his family. The look on his face was enough to break even the most jaded heart. Everyone rushed to line the interior of the door with pitch to keep water out.

The waters rose more quickly than anyone had imagined. Scripture says, "On that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened." Eventually the ark began to creak as it lurched to one side in its docking restraints. Everything that wasn't nailed down shifted and slid. Everyone was glad they had taken Nitzan's advice to store things in bins anchored to the floor. The ship pitched again and broke free from dry dock. They were now adrift.

The way the story is traditionally embellished, by now people had made their way to the ship and were banging with all their might on the outside trying to get Noah's family's attention. In that telling of the story, these who had once mocked Noah, the old kook with his apocalyptic delusions, were now begging to get inside. When I hear that, as one of Noah's sons, I'm immediately bounding to the outer deck, tying a rope around my waste and the shorter end around a sturdy post then venturing out on deck and casting the length of the rope overboard for anyone who can grab hold. I couldn't be satisfied with my own safety inside: at least, I don't want to be a person who could.

I don't know how one should best imagine that part of the story. What I do know for sure for the first time in my life is that Noah's family's first night on the ark adrift was not a happy one. No one was thinking, "At least we're safe." Everyone of them, if they are meant to be anything like the Elohim who loved enough to plan in advance a means of salvation for them, cried their own flood of tears for the lives lost that day.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner... or Not—Episode 4

2011-12-03T13:17:00.001-08:00

<<Read the fifth episode in the Noah saga.

(based on Genesis 7—a story of creation)

There was a lot of back and forth about whether he should, but the decision had already been made. Noah saddled the mare. Though not quite as fast, she was much more sure-footed and not as skittish as her mate.

One of the large heavy doors creaked open, Noah dashed out. Ham move quickly to close it. Watching the water roll back toward the opening, he couldn't help but think that slanting the deck for the first five feet of the entrance was a stroke of genius on his wife's part.

Upon reaching the city, Noah had to ask for directions from the gatekeeper. It had been a long time since he had been within the city walls. He found the meeting hall. The meeting was already underway. Noah pressed into the back. Speaker after speaker got up advocating for "swift retribution against the savages that had perpetrated such an unforgivable atrocity." "This was no time for dallying, no time for hand-wringing, no time for investigating precisely who had done what." "The time to strike was now!"

After the conclusion of the meeting was cast by the city leaders as sufficiently foregone, the floor was open for public comment. Noah waited his turn, and then he spoke, but his impassioned plea fell upon deaf ears. No one wanted to hear about the exorbitant and often hidden costs of war. No one acknowledged that the poor always paid a disproportionate amount of those costs. No one seemed to care about the rising waters of greed, lies and death that would engulf and drown not just those connected to the war but would eventually spill over the walls of their little valley and flood the whole world. Noah's objections and any other concerns raise were merely bumps in the road to an inevitable end.

Noah left disheartened, but he had to make one more attempt. Noah rode his trusty stead back pass the ark. Rain poured. Lightning and thunder clapped, as if to get him to turn in, but he kept riding. He road out over the hills and broke into the treeline. The woods were dark and thick with old-growth. So thick in fact, that the rain seemed shut out for a moment as if Noah had gone inside. Noah did not allow himself to become distracted from his purpose. He knew where to find those he sought. He had grown up a nomad, part of the line of Seth. He knew exactly where they were at this time, the time of the cicadas. That's how they marked the days, by the seasons, by the fields where they pitched their tents with each new cycle and what bounty grew there. Noah drove his horse hard, knowing that just because he could not feel the brunt of storm or see the waters rising did not mean they weren't there.

He was riding downhill at a slant dipping and dodging between trees like a slalom skier. He drove straight toward the nadir of the gorge he was chasing, Fat Horse Squeeze they called it, a short passage that constituted the narrowest portion of a ravine between two walls of rock that obscured one's view through to the other side. As he got up on it for some reason it seemed much tighter now than it had when he was a youth. He thought briefly of dismounting and walking through the pass but now he was upon it and had no choice but to pull up his knees and hope for the best. His beloved mare darted through with ease and delivered them into the clearing on the other side full of empty tents and stray animals lowing. Though midday, the sky was dark with dismay. Shallow pools have begun to form on the clearing floor. Most of the herd had undoubtedly been taken to higher ground.

Noah's people had taken to the caves. Noah dismounted, tying his horse to a nearby tree. He ran up the path that led to where he knew the nomads would be. With eat step happy memories splashed in the back of his mind of growing up free to roam. But now wasn't the time. He recalled once having to climb on his hands and knees up this last bit of ground, but now as a man, it was much easier to take it in stride. He bounded into the cave, the highest and biggest of those around. There they were, his clan, huddled along the walls, with a warm fire glowing in their midst.

Noah paused, looked and listened. There were more than just his people there. He had stumbled into a summit of all outlier clans in the region, both nomads and wild ones. This was better than he had hoped for! He rushed down the path that skirted the wall and led to the base of the cave. Because time was no longer on his side, Noah did not wait until he had made his way all the way down to speak. Picking a still elevated landing beneath one of the torches mounted on the wall, Noah projected his voice aided by the natural acoustics of the cave, "Men and women of the outer regions, please forgive me for interrupting your deliberations, but my message is urgent and concerns the very matter you are discussing. The city council has just voted to declare war on all outliers."

A gasp bounced around the chamber. "Let them come," a large muscular man bellowed defiantly jumping to his feet, "and we will give them such a reception that for generations their descendents will tell of it as the day they learned their proper place in the world," to which a shout of affirmation rose among the ranks.

"No, my friends," Noah contended, trying not to lose the crowd. "This is no time to take solace in boast and bravado. You have seen, nature herself weeps at this turn of events and, at her Creator's command, will do all she can to stop it!" As if on cue, a bolt of lightening cracked just outside the cave opening. "This is no early-season return of the stream that waters your clearing. This is the start of a deluge that will eventually swallow up everything you hold dear.

"Elohim, seeing this day afar off, directed me to build that ark that you may still chuckle about when you walk by or use as a threat in stories to your children about why they better obey. That ark and the community that resides within it will weather the storm that humanity has brought upon itself.

"I must go back now before it is too late. Years ago when Elohim warned me of what was to come, he promised to save me and my household. You are part of my household. The ark isn't just for me and mine: it's for all of us. Let's together find shelter from the approaching storm."

Read the next episode in the Noah saga.>>

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner... or Not—Episode 3

2011-11-26T04:38:00.001-08:00

<<Read the fourth episode in the Noah saga.

(based on Genesis 7—a story of creation)

Pair by pair Noah and Naomi, Shem and Varda, Ham and Ital, Japheth and Nitzan led the walking animals into their stalls or cages 14 clean (as in kosher to eat) animals of each species and 2 unclean (not so kosher) or two-by-two, depending on which part of the biblical narrative you're reading. The flyers found space to roost for themselves.

It had to be more than a little unnerving to escort the first predator across the gangplank. Do you push them? Do you pull them? How much force is too much? If you you tie a rope around their necks and pull, how much lead do you give yourself? Do you dare turn your back to them? Do you think they've eaten already?

Once Noah and his family got over their initial insecurities, things moved at a pretty good clip, until finally they were done. The last cage was latched. The last stall was hayed. The last supper was served. The last cutie-pie cuddled. The only thing left to do was to wait.

Noah's family slept on the outer deck of the ark that night, hoping to enjoy a last bit of fresh air, but no one got much sleep. How could they? At any moment their lives could change forever.

As the sun came up the next day, a crowd began to gather. News had spread throughout the countryside about Noah's new menagerie. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to invite folks in, Noah called from the top deck that he was on his way down. Noah was excited. Curiosity had long since waned regarding the purpose of the ark. It seemed so irrelevant to so many that few even came to mock it anymore.

Noah invited his visitors in. It didn't matter to him why they had come, only that they knew they were welcome to return, even stay. As they toured the ark, several asked questions. "Why collect animals now?" There were those who had heard Noah's stories a hundred years ago and started a traveling exhibition of captured animals and other curiosities called a "circus". As many as fifty years ago, the city's wealth elites and scholars proposed and established what they called a "zoo" for the study and provision of animals. While Noah talked about what was to come and built his boat, these innovators had beaten Noah to the punch. "Why try to compete now?"

"This isn't competition," Noah insisted. "I didn't collect these animals. I desire to start neither a circus nor a zoo, both of which have rather dubious intentions at best. By comparison, one might call this a preserve. I can only imagine that these creatures came because they sensed a possible future in this place. They have put aside their instinctual distrust and predation of one another for the risk of survival. Whether they come to call this home and continue in this way or not, they recognize that their current way of being in the world has run its course and is no longer sustainable."

"That's crazy! Why would an animal come here, stay here, of it's own volition?"

"For the same reason those without share in the labor of the garden out there and those with little participate in the swop meet down at the lake. Shared need betting on shared hope, I imagine. That's what creates community. It's what makes next door residents neighbors. That and a little divine grace to recognize a good thing."

Noah likely had several conversations like this that last week. The way the story has been handed down to us it is pretty sparse on details: no conversations with neighbors, no city dwellers and wild ones, no animal wrangling: just it's gonna rain, better get ready, it rained. Anything else, we've brought to the story. Quite often, people fill in the gaps by imagining the coming of the flood as a great big "I told you so" act of vindication for all the humiliation they imagine Noah suffered. That's one way of telling the story, I suppose. However, I choose to tell it in a way that better matches what I've learned about God's desire to preserve more than punish.

At this point in the story, we can imagine that most of Noah's time was absorbed with caring for the animals and finishing up some projects he had put off. We can also imagine that everyone else was distracted by their own concerns. The one clue we're given is the description that their imaginations were evil—deeply selfish, self-consumed—continually. So I've seized upon the most pervasive and enduring social evil in the world of the Hebrew storytellers who gave us Noah's story: the almost inevitable tendency for strongholds, like cities, forts, empires to claim more and more territory for themselves.

I imagine a subplot in which most of the city and nearby farm folks are preoccupied with the politics of driving nomadic herders and wilderness dwellers off some of their traditional territory because something of value had been found there. The outliers in response were primarily concerned with protecting themselves. Days came and went quickly that week, tensions rising. Finally, word went out that a city-sponsored expedition into the uncultivated lands had been attacked by a ban of savage outliers. This was just the provocation city officials needed to declare war with the full, even if reluctant, backing of the stationary populace.

As the sun set and battle plans were made, a gentle but steady rain began to fall. Most people thought nothing of it. Noah and his family slept inside for the first night since the animals had arrived. By morning, Noah was convinced that this was it. The rain had pick up significantly and showed no sign of abating. This was more than just a spring shower. It takes a while for things to flood: nature has a way of dealing with rain water for a while. Noah felt like he had time to make one final appeal to the various factions that shared his little corner of the world. He had heard that one last public hearing on the declaration of war was to be held in the city that day. Most of Noah's neighbors had planned to be there. A little rain would likely not deter them. Noah did his morning chores quickly. Then told his family his plans.

Read the next episode in the Noah saga.>>

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner... or Not—Episode 2

2011-11-13T12:15:00.001-08:00

<<Read the third episode in the Noah saga.

(based on Genesis 7—a story of creation)

Meanwhile, Naomi, Noah's better half, took her three daughters-in-law around the side of the ark. Sadly, through the years as these stories have made their way down to us, many of the women in them lost their names and their contributions. That's an injustice that has happened all too often. We should lament that. We should also give them new ones.

"Quickly," said Naomi, "help me with these feathers."

"They are huge," Ital gasped.

"Where did you find them?" Nitzan queried.

"High in the hills trekking with my mother," Naomi replied, "the last time I saw her before she died." Each daughter's mind went to her own parents.

Then Varda asked, "What are we going to do with the feathers?"

"Can you see how each one looks like a giant eye? We're going to put two atop each post of the fence I had Noah build fanning out from opposite sides of the gangplank and hope that it drives the animals toward the ramp."

"Oh, like a funnel," Ital caught on.

"Exactly!" Naomi nodded, handing out the feathers.

"The bigger animals could easily topple the fence but the big eyes of creatures that appear to be larger and headed toward them may be enough to make them change direction," Varda added. "Ingenious!"

"The truth is," Naomi postulated, "there is no possible way we could wrangle all these animals by ourselves without a little divine intervention."

"Nonetheless, the funneling fence and giant eyes are really good ideas," offered Nitzan.

"Okay. Each of us takes a different post. I started drilling holes in the tops of some of them the other day to make it easy to just drop the stem of a feather down into it. Those posts to which I didn't get can have the feathers strapped to them with these strips of leather. Ital and I will take this side. Nitzan and Varda, the other. Start with the furthest post, and work you way in, every other one. Then fill in the gaps working your way back out. Save the last two feathers for yourself."

With that, the women set about their work. The rise and fall of the landscape made it hard to judge just how close the animals were, but the intensifying rumble felt in the ground was enough to keep the women's adrenaline climbing. As they got down to their last two feathers, Naomi could see the first animals cresting the closest hill stampeding toward them. They were coming hard--but not quite as hard as one might expect.

Naomi then demonstrated why she wanted the women to save the last to feathers for themselves. She ran out about 40 yards extending the V-shape created by her fence. Having done so, the arms of the "V" were now a little wider than the wall of animals closing in on them. Now, taking a feather in each hand, Naomi began to wave them warding off any animals inclined to come her direction. The other ladies picked up on what Naomi was doing and quickly followed suit. Ital split the distance between Naomi and the last fence post and started flapping her arms about with such furry Naomi mused it was a wonder she didn't take off flying.

Sure enough the battalion of beasts which had been spreading as they marched began contracting as planned. The women smiled and flapped harder. But something else unexpected began to happen as well. As the herd thickened in the middle, it began to slow. And it slowed. And slowed. And slowed until it came to a meandering halt. The entire crash of untamed creatures began milling about within the half corral of Naomi's "V" like a herd of dispassionate cows.

"My, I wasn't expecting that," Naomi panted as she and her daughters stagger into a huddle at the foot of the gangplank.

It was then that Noah and Ham came into the light of the doorway shading their eyes looking down the ramp somewhat perplexed.

"You didn't think the animals were just going to march themselves aboard, did you?" Varda teased her husband and father-in-law. "Get on down hear and let's show them their accommodations."

Read the next episode in the Noah saga.>>

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner... or Not—Episode 1

2011-10-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

<<Read the second episode in the Noah saga.

(based on Genesis 7—a story of creation)

The thing about friendship is that it's often easier to recognize it's absence than it's presence. For many of his neighbors, Noah was just the kindly old kook who lived across the way. Sure he always had a encouraging smile, a helping hand, a listening ear, good humor, sage advice and food to share, but sadly, at their own loss, few labeled that "friendship," although all benefited from it.

Because we place so little significance on friendship itself, more on its absence, it's hard to think of the quiet grace of friendship or neighborliness as being a major theme of the Noah epic. In fact, neighborliness is such a quiet grace that we would likely not have the Noah story if it were not for the dramatic ironies that come in to stir the pot.

One day not unlike every other day for the past however many years, Noah and his family were making repairs on the boat, stocking provisions and teaching swimming classes at the nearby pond. By now they were living out of the ark. It just made sense. There was plenty of room, and it had kinda become the center of much activity there on the Mesopotamian countryside. Of course, they hosted a community garden for those without their own land upon which to grow. They also hosted a monthly swop-meet and daily skills classes of all types, from weaving to building. Little of what they did attracted the attention and assistance of their reasonably well-situated or more affluent neighbors, but they did capture the consideration of those with little. The activity at the ark also garnered the scrutiny of those who lived in the wild lands a few miles beyond the ark heading away from the city. These were people who harbored some real suspicion of the society building up around the city, supported by the surrounding farms, but unlike the nomadic herders, they had not completely abandoned all things related to a stationary life. They simply chose the terms upon which they would interact with either farmers or herders or city dwellers when they had to. Every few weeks one or another small group of wilderness dwellers—"wild ones," as they were called by those thoughtful enough not to call them "savages"—would journey back and forth into the cultivated lands to trade for supplies as necessary.

As usual, there was a lot of commotion around the ark, and Noah was lost in thought considering that at 600-years-old and awaiting his first grandchild he might actually pass on before the tragic loss to come. Noah, who had been bent over spreading pitch on a section of the ark's hull, stood up wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm thinking how hot it had gotten so early in the season, when he noticed the silence behind all the hustle and bustle of people. Where were the birds? Where were the cicadas singing their incessant mating song? There was nothing. Just hush. Not a creature was stirring close-by, except people. It's as if the rest of creation had paused to listen to something that humanity was ignoring or had forgotten to hear.

Noah was disquieted. He looked around not really knowing what he was looking for. His eyes came to rest on a nearby buck of water. He had been watching it for nearly 30 seconds before he realized why. The water in the bucket was quivering at a regular beat as if someone were tapping it. "That's odd," Noah thought to himself, mesmerized by the sight.

Suddenly Noah's fixation was broken by the shout of his son, Shem, hanging on a rope pitching another portion of the ship's hull several stories up above Noah. "Abba! Abba!" Shem yelled, "Look!"

Noah's eyes followed his son's pointing finger. They were good eyes for their age, still strong, but at first, all he could make out at ground level were the shivering tree tops. Again, he was struck by the peculiarity of the moment. "Trees don't normally shake like that," he thought. Then he saw the dust.

It started as haze, the kind that one often sees on a hot day as the heat escapes the ground. As it rose and began to obscure the trees, Noah knew what it was, and he thought he knew what was making it, but he couldn't imagine why so close and apparently getting closer. The trembling in the the water was now in the ground and quickly becoming an audible rumble. Then he saw the tallest of them: first, the giraffe, then the elephant. Then the middlings came into view: the wildebeests, rhinos and hippos, antelope, gazelles and great cats. Finally, smaller creeping things. Some running, some walking, some riding, but all moving quite determinately toward them. And as if instantly, because Noah's attention had been focused on the ground, the sky was thick with flapping wings.

Such a din of noise pressed in on Noah that it stunned him. The sound blew pass him, bounced off the ark at his back and echoed as an singular, indistinguishable, blood-chilling roar in his ears. Noah froze. He couldn't think of what to do.

"The doors! Open the doors!" a woman shouted off to his right. It was his wife. We'll call her Naomi.

One discernible word had broken through Noah's stupor. "Doors... doors..." he mumbled. Noah stumbled forward, not particularly toward the ark, not yet conscious of his own thoughts. His eyes were still on the animals who were coming with all due haste, as if they had an appointment for which they dared not be late. "Doors..." he mouthed again. The motion felt familiar to his lips but it still had no meaning.

"Noah," Naomi's firm fingers gripped both Noah's biceps, "make room for the animals! Go open the doors." Naomi then moved away, motioning to her daughters-in-law, who had come running up from the lake, to change direction and follow her.

Finally Noah got his wits about him. He ran up the gangplank, thinking to himself, "Hope I put cut these doors high enough... from the ground. That's going to be a lot of weight pushing down in the water." Making the top of the ramp, Noah pushed the doors wide, first the left, then the right, and disappeared into the darkness. It took his eyes a full thirty seconds to adjust to the darkness, so he could not work as quickly as he had hoped. "Good thing we built that rail last week around the hole we cut in the floor of the main deck. Those giraffes would be thoroughly cramped down below." He could hear the creak and slap of wood on the deck above him. "That must be Ham or--"

"Abba, what can I do to help," Japheth asked walking in behind Noah.

"Go below and open every stall. Ham has already started upstairs. I have this floor."

"Sure. Then I'll start distributing hay."

Noah now started to work feverishly. He figured he only had a few more minutes before the animals were upon them. All sorts of questions careened through his mind, "Will we have enough room? Have we collected enough water? How about food? How will we satiate the carnivores once the rains come? Oh crap, will the waste systems work? What's 'Plan B' if they don't? Will the cages hold for the most dangerous animals? How do we stay safe in the mist of animals that usually hunt each other? How will we herd every animal into the right place? Is there something we've overlooked? Elohim couldn't have given me a week's notice?"

It was probably the last time for a while Noah was able to hear himself think.

Read the next episode in the Noah saga.>>

Saving Grace—Episode 2

2011-09-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

<<Read the first episode in the Noah saga.

(based on Genesis 6—a story of creation)

So building pretty much proceeded according to spec: 400 some-odd feet long and... wide and... tall. That was easy. Noah's family tackled what they could, and for the really technical stuff, they hired craftsmen. The challenging part wasn't the building: it was learning to extend grace to those who just couldn't see what Noah saw coming.

You see, the way the story has been handed down to us a good bit of emphasis is placed on how long it took for the rains to come, 120 years. Now I doubt it would have taken that long to finish a boat, even the size of Noah's ark, even with only 4-8 primary builders (Mr and Mrs Noah, the sons and the daughters-in-law). Hammering only one board in place every day would have taken less time than that. Even if it had taken 120 years to build the ship that could withstand the deluge to come, there are plenty of people who dedicate their lives to doing the same physical thing every day. That may be tedious, but it's not necessarily challenging. Noah's challenge was in spending 120 years, multiple generations, demonstrating a way of being in the world that, if it were possible, might delay or even avoid the flood of hubris threatening to drown so many.

Because that's what it has always been—humanity's hubris, it's unchecked pride—that has made it vulnerable to psychological, societal and natural disasters, such as Noah's flood. As will be seen in other stories, it seldom takes long for people to begin to push pass the boundaries of what is sustainable. Few are satisfied with enough: most want more. So what do they do? They start taking more than their fair share, first by scheme, later by force. Soon they become convinced that everyone else is just like they are, so they start looking for ways to limit what others can have for fear that there might not be enough for all or to prove themselves better than all the rest. Eventually they start to kill in the name of their group's right to thrive, even at another's expense. It's a vicious cycle that has played itself out down through history time and time again.

Noah could see the disaster toward which his neighbors' behavior was leading. He could also see his pride would be no different than their own if he were to treat his neighbors with disdain, as if they were only getting what they deserved. So each day Noah got up and extended himself in help to his neighbors however he could, inviting them to join him in creating a community that sought the good of everyone within and around them. When it seemed it wasn't working, Noah persisted.

Day in and day out Noah loved on his neighbors, as hard as it was many times. Because you've got to imagine that, after the boat started to take shape and people found out why Noah was building it, they started to make fun of him. Instead of "Yo' Mama" jokes, they would tell "Yo, Noah" jokes. "Yo, Noah's so poor the ducks throw him bread!" "Yo, Noah's so old he gave the first single-celled organism a hand up out the primordial ooze!" "Yo, Noah's so dumb I saw him spinning around with a plank outstretched calling it 'air conditioning!'"

After a while, that kind of thing usually make's a person want to lash out. It would have been easy for Noah to think, "You just wait. We'll see who has the last laugh." And maybe sometimes he did. But through the years he learned to laugh at himself too. Not the "you'll-get-yours" kind of laugh, but genuine laughter. It was kind of funny all he was risking. He hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to amassing status-related things, so in that sense, he was poor. And compared to a 25, 45, even 75-year-old, he was pretty old. The "dumb" label was a little harder to swallow: he thought his spinning blade idea was ingenious. Still, Noah learned how not to take himself so seriously—even if no one else seemed to get it. Again, not all the time—sure, sometimes the ridicule got the best of him—but more often than not over time he met the challenge of seeing his neighbors as more than the sum of their shortcomings.

And by all the evidence, it worked! Noah's imperfect attempts to image the grace he found in Elohim to his neighbors forestalled the flood for 120 years. That's no small feat.

One day, a neighbor dropped by Noah's house and said, "I've been watching you, Noah, all these many years. The older you get, the more set in your ways you become. Almost always you're as thoughtful, kind, generous, hospitable—just plain gracious, that's the word—as anyone can be to folks who've been jerks to you just moments before. How do you do it? On my best day I would have cursed some of these folks out."

"You sell yourself short, Patrick," knowing how much his neighbor believed what he was saying, "and you over-flatter me. There are plenty of times when I lose control and deal with people in a manner beneath their dignity, but there are also times I do a little better. In that way, I guess I'm like one of those artists who work with natural materials that eventually fall apart, like sand castles, you know (what do you call them? my daughter just used the word yesterday)—ephemeral artists! Instead of sticks and stones I sculpt friendships.

"I once had a rock sculptor tell me that, even if he's spent days stacking rocks for some giant sculpture and one misplaced rock causes the whole thing to fall, he doesn't see it as failure because in the process of stacking he's made intimate discoveries about each rock that encourages him to go back at it again.

"I guess the same is true about my relationships with my neighbors. Although I know they don't get me most of the time, every interaction, good or bad, encourages me that everyone needs a friendship he or she can count on."

Read the next episode in the Noah saga.>>

-Special thanks to Troy Bronsink, ephemeral artist in residence in SW Atlanta, for the ending of this episode.

Saving Grace—Episode 1

2011-08-28T04:35:00.000-07:00

(taken from Genesis 6—a story of creation)

"Now it came to pass, when humans began to multiply on the face of the earth... the LORD said, 'My Spirit shall not always strive with humanity, [nor shall my breath remain in humans forever, because they are only flesh and blood].'

"Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the LORD said, 'I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD."

"Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." This is one of the iconic phrases in Judeo-Christian tradition. It is the first time we are given this word "grace"—one of the unique treasures of the way of Jesus. Grace works in two ways. First, by not limiting the good we receive to only what we deserve in light of our shortcomings. For example, even though we poison our land with chemical fertilizers and pesticides that make it hard for anything to grow without more and harsher chemical fertilizers and pesticides, Elohim allows the food we grow to have enough nutrients to keep us alive. Second, grace also allows the good that we are able to do to not be limited to just our own shortcomings. Again, for example, if after years of poisoning the land we decide we want to do better by honoring the natural rhythms by which things grow, we can reintroduce worms to our poisoned land, feed them leftover scraps from our dining table, and before long, they will aerate and naturally fertilize the land, making it again hospitable to all the other good insects and plants that keep the bad insects away.

So when the Hebrew storytellers say "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," they are saying that Noah looked "into the face of God and [saw] the truth of his own dignity."
Like Enoch, Noah had somehow learned what Eve, Adam, Abel and Cain had missed: that his worth was not dependent on his performance. He saw that he had value that could never be lost as part of God's good creation, simply because Elohim had said so, and Elohim's judgment was the only one that counted.

The great thing about being secure in who you are, like Noah, is that you can risk attempts at good that others cannot simply because you're not afraid of appearing foolish. And that's exactly what Noah does in building his over-sized boat, often called an ark, miles from any water. By doing so he ultimately avoids the flood of hubris (another word for pride) that swept so many others to their death.

The way the story has been handed down to us, Noah was the great-grandson of Enoch. When he was born, a strange and cryptic prophecy was spoken of him at his naming ceremony. Family and friends had gathered, when Lamech, the lad's father, took the boy in his hands and said, "His name shall be Noah for he will comfort us in the hard labor of farming the land that God cursed." As you can see, Noah's family was still struggling with the idea that if something were difficult it must be because God was unhappy with them.

Whatever it meant that he would comfort them concerning their work, Noah grew into a person who didn't mind hard work. He wasn't discouraged by what he couldn't accomplish easily. He liked a challenge, which was kind of odd. Most people like easy. Adam and Eve disobeyed, because it seemed easier. They ran when Elohim came looking for them, because it seemed easier. Despite all Elohim's demonstrations to the contrary, they taught their children that God was just waiting to pounce and punish whenever they messed up, because that seemed easier than questioning their own assumptions. People settle for easier more often than not. But not Noah.

The story passed down to us doesn't say what Noah settled into for a living as an adult. It's rather easy to think of him as a builder, but that doesn't have to have been the case. Maybe he was a farmer like his father or maybe a herder like his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Seth and his brother Abel. What we are told is that one day, in the mist of all that human beings could imagine as ways to sell themselves short and live easy, Elohim came to Noah and said, "I've seen the end of things, Noah. I've seen how the way most of humanity is choosing to live ultimately plays itself out. The violence humanity does is not just to each other but to the earth as well. 'Violence is everywhere; I'm making a clean sweep.

"'Build yourself a ship from teakwood. Make rooms in it. Coat it with pitch inside and out. Make it 450 feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. Build a roof for it and put in a window eighteen inches from the top; put in a door on the side of the ship; and make three decks, lower, middle, and upper.'

"I'm going to bring a flood on the earth that will destroy everything alive!"

"Everything?" Noah asked for some much needed clarification.

"Okay, well maybe not everything," God responded, considering the ramifications of such an absolute declaration. "I mean everything committed to humanity's attempts to imagine they know better than I.

"The truth is 'Destroyer' is actually not my role in this story, but sadly that's how I'll be misunderstood for allowing humanity to experience the consequences of their awful choices. You won't believe it, but years from now folks will have this whole mental script of how I got fed up and wiped everybody out. They'll even sing songs, 'It won't be water, but fire next time!' Oh yeah, it'll be real brutal stuff. In fact they'll have a hard time imagining you, Noah, as anything more than a wild-eyed street preacher hurling your prognostications of destruction and vindication like water balloons at wary passers-by. I hope you have a better imagination than that.

"My role in this story, Noah, is to offer a way of escape. I want to have a covenant with you, Noah—promises made to one another—that will spare you and anyone who joins you from chasing this destructive path to its inevitable end. It starts with you building the ship and community in it, with your wife, your sons and their wives. You should also take two of each living creature, a male and a female, on board the ship, to preserve their lives along with yours: two of every species of bird, mammal, and reptile. Also gather all the food you'll need for several months and store it up for you and them."

And as challenging as it all must have seemed to Noah—not only looking at the huge task ahead of him, but also realizing he might be the only one who could see what was to come—Noah did everything God graced him to do.

Read the next episode in the Noah saga.>>

-Story relies heavily upon the work of Jonathan Brink, The God Imagination, which is quoted directly in paragraph four. Scripture quoted or integrated from the KJV, NKJV and The Message renderings for the Hebrew Bible.

Middle School Meditation on the Prodigal Son

2011-07-25T07:41:00.001-07:00

One of my unexpected joys at the Wild Goose Festival was the impromptu opportunity to guide middle-schoolers through the creation of art around the "Parable of the Prodigal Son," perhaps better titled "Parable of the Faithful Father." I am often pleasantly encouraged by the creativity adults find when they free themselves to live in the biblical narrative. However, I was blown away by the questions these kids were asking about the text and the beauty unleashed in their expressions of those questions.

This is a recording of our conversation about the middle-schooler's reactions to the Prodigal and the art many of them created:

It Could Have Been Different, by Carolyn Kennedy

2011-07-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

In our impromptu Stories that Compost workshop at the Wild Goose Festival 2011 we reflected on the biblical narrative of Hagar the Egyptian slave who bore Abraham's first son, Ishmael.

Carolyn Kennedy was one of only two workshop participants who wrote fully developed stories during our writing time. Sadly, I only captured one (technical difficulties). Even more sad, I don't remember the other woman's name, so I can't track her down. All I can remember is that her story angle intrigued me. She was a mature women, real pleasant smile, with salt-and-pepper hair cut in a bob, kinda like Anne Rice if I remember correctly (then again, maybe not). But her smile reminded me of Anne's, and I know I've seen her before. If anyone who was there happens to know who I'm talking about, please let me know.

Carolyn is a soft-spoken-yet-hardy mid-western mom and minister who lives in one of those cold northern-most states. I appreciate her telling this story from Hagar the outsider's perspective. Carolyn saves me the trouble of having to write a version of this story myself ;-).

Joseph the Enslaver, by Jay Beck

2011-07-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

I love Jay's voice and visage! It's so untamed, so aggressive. In the opening concert for the Wild Goose Festival Jay spoke of Joseph selling his family into slavery. I found that recasting of the Joseph narrative so compelling that I asked Jay to let me record him telling that story.

Joseph's story was the inspiration of the new Psalter's album, Carry the Bones. The Psalters are amazing musical storytellers and well worth our ongoing support.

The clip ends with a excerpt of the Psalters "Re-member".

Re-membering Forward, by Tevyn East

2011-07-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tevyn East's understanding of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness is informed by the Sioux tradition of vision questing. In keeping with indigenous rites of passage all over the world, Jesus goes off into the wilderness to become attuned with the Spirit-wind that will at times stir, at others cool, still others billow through his life. Hear Tevyn's moving interrogation of what it means to surrender to the whims of the Spirit-wind of God.

The clip ends with a excerpt of the Psalters "Re-member" from the album Carry the Bones.

Multiple Ways to Tell the Story... of Cain & Abel [ages 15 & up]

2011-07-02T21:51:00.000-07:00

The first annual Wild Goose Festival gave me a phenomenal opportunity to collect more stories and to get into thrilling conversations about various ways of unpacking the same story. Those conversations were so much fun that I hope to initiate and record them at various gatherings for the duration of this project.

One such interaction at the Goose took place in the afternoon sun of the festival green with Jay Beck and Tevyn East. Jay is a percussionist and vocalist for the band Psalters out of Philly. Tevyn is a dancer, choreographer and activist whose current project is called Leaps and Bounds. Both are amazing storytellers looking for new and living ways to articulate their faith. Our conversation that afternoon began with the conflict between the Cains and the Abels (the previous story posted).

The clip ends with a excerpt of the Psalters "Re-member" from the album Carry the Bones.

God With Us—Episode 2

2011-03-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

<<Read episode 1 first.

(taken from Genesis 4—a story of creation)

If we are fortunate, we live long enough to regret a few things. Feelings of regret suggest that we have learned a bit along the way and that we would do some things differently were we to have the chance. This is not a bad thing.

Experience teaches, but there are many things we need not learn from experience. As assuredly as there are situations we would love to handle differently were they to come up again, there are just as many choices the results of which we wish we could undo, but we can't. Our choices often set off a chain of reactions that are far beyond our ability to control. We can only choose the seeds we plant and what we feed them, but we don't get to choose whether, when or how they grow.

Humanity doesn't seem particularly mindful of this truth in our story, no more mindful than we are today or have been down through the years. If they were, I'm sure Adam and Eve would have sought to engage their children differently, instead of favoring some over the others, as they do in our story. If we were, I'm almost certain we wouldn't be so inclined to saddle Cain with all the blame for what happens between him and Abel, failing to see every characters contribution to it, although Cain does deserve his fair share of responsibility.

Perhaps Cain's chief fault is that he fails to see what the seeds of anger, resentment and stubbornness he had planted in his own heart and mind would inevitably grow into. Elohim tries to warn him, but he—like us—doesn't hear because he's so focused on what he wants not turning out the way he wanted. Remember Elohim saying, "Why are you angry? If you do well, will you not be accepted?" Elohim was trying to encourage Cain that he doesn't have to worry about being worthy of Elohim's favor. All Cain has to do is be just as careful about the seeds he's planting inside himself as he is about the seeds he's planting in the ground. "Why are you angry? If you plant good seed, will you not be accepted? And if you plant bad seed—seeds of anger and resentment and stubbornness—sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it, just like you work to overcome the challenges to farming." However, Cain doesn't heed Elohim's warning. Here he stands with the fruit of the seeds he planted lying worthless at his feet along with the lifeless body of his brother.

He doesn't have long to regret what has transpired between him and his brother before he has to account for it. Elohim comes to him again and asks, "Where is your brother, Cain?"

"I don't know!" Cain answers indignantly, "Am I my brother's keeper?" And throughout the centuries of asking that question, thank goodness humanity has held onto at least the ideal if not the practice that, yes, we are responsible for each other. Sadly, many have sought to lessen that responsibility by posing very reductive answers to the follow up question of "Well, who exactly is my brother?" Somehow the answer to that question trends smaller and smaller whenever we're not careful to keep the circle as large as possible.

The rest of the exchange between Cain and Elohim can be as easy as the first to interpret as Elohim being against Cain, and perhaps some Hebrew storytellers thought she was, but if we listen carefully, we may hear something quite different. The way Adam and Eve passed the story along is that Elohim starts to listen intently. Suddenly Elohim's ears fill with a sound that is too awful for words, and God says, "'What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand," which is not the same as for Elohim to say, "I curse you." Elohim continues, "When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.'

"Cain said to the Lord, 'My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.'

But Elohim responded, "'Not so!' I didn't say this is how I am punishing you. I am saying this will be the natural consequence of your actions as long as you and your siblings believe anger, resentment and stubbornness—evil—will get you further than the good I see in you. Still, I am always with you. 'Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.'" And the Lord marked Cain as untouchable, "so that no one who came upon him would kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden."

Now that last statement of Cain leaving "the presence of the Lord" sounds very judgmental, as if those grieving the loss of Abel only saw Cain's part in this tragedy and not their own. The phrase may also describe how Cain himself continued to feel as he wrestle with his own grief, still questioning Elohim's unconditional embrace. Grief is a fickle thing. It can shape the way we see the world. It can cause us to forsake our ties to each other. It can drive families apart. The human family had splintered. The farmers went their way further out into the unknown. The herders continued to migrate in comfortable proximity to their once Eden home. There Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters the first of which Eve named "Seth, for she said, 'God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him.'"

The man and the woman may have left the garden, but they obviously hadn't left behind the desire to remake God in their own hyper-judgmental image, like we saw in the story of the talking snake. Seems they were still discovering the effects of eating the forbidden fruit. Perhaps that's why this part of the Hebrew story ends with the commentary that this was about the time "people began to invoke the name of the Lord." In light of this statement, the story of Cain and Abel becomes in part the origin tale of a habit that continues even to this day: humans had begun to claim God as being in support of only their way of life.

Having lost the garden, some seem to have also lost the imagination to conceive that God can be with us and with them too. No wonder Cain killed Abel. What else would people do when the God of their fallen imaginations is seemingly either exclusively for them or irrevocably against them?

God With Us—Episode 1

2011-02-26T16:37:00.000-08:00

(taken from Genesis 4—a story of creation)

The story of the talking snake is often told as the story of how sin entered the world, and perhaps it is—if not in terms of an exact event, definitely the story of how humans foolishly make room for sin time and time again. However, neither change nor changeability were sin. So even though much changes after the man and the woman's encounter with the talking snake, the creation saga says nothing to suggest that before this point the world was static and sterile, unchangeable and unchanging. To the contrary, the way the stories are told, life was full of promise and possibility, action and adaptability. God would make a move (God created); then humanity would make a move (humanity named): Creator initiating, creation responding, creation initiating, Creator responding: round and round it goes. And if the creation stories are given their due, these moves had likely been happening for some time: all creation growing, learning, evolving, changing.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the creation saga is that no matter how poor humanity's choices are Elohim chooses to come with them. They never endure the consequences of their short-comings alone. In fact, Elohim never takes back her initial judgment that, as far as she is concerned, humanity is "good". The man and the woman's choices and misconceptions haven't changed Elohim's mind; the man and the woman just misplace their God-given imaginations for that good. I guess it's true: what we don't use, we lose. But that's not to say it has to be lost forever.

So Eden becomes unwelcoming or uninhabitable. The man and the woman are forced out into the wilderness to make their way in the world, and where is God? Right there coaching them through it.

I can imagine Elohim initiating a conversation that goes something like, "So where are we going?"
"What do you mean 'we?'"
"I'm going with you, of course."
"But your place is there, back in the garden, back in paradise."
"Says who? If anything, I made that for you. But I also made all the rest of this, and my hopes for you out here are no less than in there."

As if to prove Elohim's good intentions, "the man" and "the woman"—who for the first time Hebrew storytellers give the names Adam and Eve—are in short order blessed with children. These children, referred to as Cain and Abel, represent a kind of second generation in humanity's experience. No more hunter-gatherers, for the land which they now occupy cannot sustain this way of life, humanity now must figure out how to survive in new ways, and the new generation does. In fact, they figure out two different ways of doing so—farming and herding.

Now, you may be thinking, "What's so innovative about farming and herding?" What has become so familiar to us as to be considered old-fashion was at one time a brand new experiment. Imagine planning and plotting and cultivating the food you want for the first time, not just eating what happens to grow up voluntarily. It was revolutionary. Before, people would go to an area where berries grew, if they wanted berries. Now they could grow berries where they stood, right next to peaches and tomatoes and cucumbers, and it didn't matter whether anything edible had ever grown in that place before.

Just as extraordinary was notion of herding animals. Before, animals used to roam instinctively in search of food and water, migrating from place to place at will with the seasons. Now, for the first time, people sought to manage, even override, these natural instincts, keeping particularly useful groups of animals together in one place, driving them from watering hole to field according to a schedule and not instinct. The animals chosen for herding were animals of utility: cattle for hide, sheep for wool, goats for milk and all three for meat. There were also horses and camels for riding and carrying supplies. These animals naturally traveled in groups, were not predatory and ate what grew voluntarily.

In some sense, herding and farming seem a natural pair. Those of us who do neither often think of them as going together, because so much of the comfort and convenience of our existence is dependent on a combination of both. It's hard to imagine society without the bounty that both farming and herding brings—from shoes to books. But just like both/and is a choice, so is either/or.

Cain and Abel represent what became competing ways of life. One horticultural (with a preference for farm life and growing plants), one pastoral (with a preference for shepherding and raising animals). One stationary, one nomadic. One that eventually made way for the building of cities and the owning of land and, eventually, the hoarding of resources; the other that preserved ancestral rights to tribal regions and shared resources.

If you're paying attention, it's not hard to deduce at least two necessities over which these two groups, the Cains and Abels, might have come into contention. What are two things both farmers and herders need plenty of? That's right: land and water. And the big question seemed to be: Who had the rights to what? The farmers and the herders fought over it, and the farmers won. The herders, the ones with whom the Hebrews later most identified, weren't too happy about that and expressed their bias against the outcome in the stories they told their children.

The story goes that God had a better appreciation for the labors and produce of herders than for the sweat and yield of farmers. Sure, God had created everything and pronounced it was all good, but by now God was playing favorites. God said, "So what I told everything to be fruitful and multiply? Who cares I pretty much started this whole farming trend by planting a garden and asking Adam and Eve to tend it? Today all that changes! I'm now all for people who raise things and less for people who grow things. I'm not going so far as to say I don't 'love' farmers anymore; I'm just saying that aside from keeping them alive, they're pretty much on their own." So when Abel brought a young lamb before God to thank her for his bounty, God smiled and Abel's flock multiplied. However, when Cain lifted up his fruit before God to thank her for what he was able to eek out of the harsh soil, God seemed to shrug and cultivating the land for the crops Cain wanted seemed to never get any easier.

Not surprisingly, Cain was a little miffed. "Why should God prefer lambs over vegetables?" Cain thought.

And the way the story is told, God said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."

"'Master it.' Master what? What does she mean 'do well?' I'm just as faithful in my work as Abel," Cain muttered. He was so confused.

And his parents didn't make it any easier. "Why can't you be more like Abel and just accept that the time for gardening is past?" they said. "Now we must roam and accept our punishment for abusing the freedom God gave us in Eden. Sure, she promised to be with us, but we still have to roam."

One day Cain was feeling particularly low as he struggled plowing a field, and I imagine that his brother came to him calling himself trying to help. I'm sure Abel didn't mean to reinforce all of Cain's negative feelings, but all Cain could hear ringing in his ears was "Why can't you be more like Abel?" The brothers got into a fight. Cross words were spoken. One thing led to another, and then they came to blows! Cain lost control; Abel wound up dead.

As he lie on the ground panting next to the unnaturally still body of Abel, Cain may not have realized that his brother was dead right away. In that brief moment of introspection he probably asked himself, "What on earth are we doing?" But it was too late—for everyone—to take it all back.

Go to episode 2.>>

Holly Sharp's Art

2010-08-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

Holly Sharp's paintings are now featured with both the written and audio versions of the poem "And It Was Good". WooHoo!

Thanks Holly for being the first.

Adam & Eve Audio!

2010-08-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

Now the entire Adam & Eve Saga is available in audio!

Dramatic readings complete with sound effects and musical score.
Stream or Download them all:

*"And It Was Good" has Holly Sharpe's visual art embedded in it, which is why it is only available as download.

Why Ask? by Nancy Jarosi

2010-08-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

And Phillip said, "Why did you ask us the question when you already knew what you would do?"

Jesus said, "Think about it. I asked the question so you would be part of figuring out the answer. First you used logic, but discovered it is too costly to buy bread for all of these. We don't have the money. Then you saw impossibility. There is a boy with 5 loaves and 2 fish. What is that among so many? Then you saw possibility when I said, 'Make the men sit down.' You believed.

"I asked the question so you would be a part of finding the answer."

The Boy Would Understand, by Chad Johns

2010-08-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

Jesus mopped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The day was warm and he was tired from healing so many. They just didn't get it. He hadn't come to fix all of their problems. He had come to show them the reign of God, to show them how to join with him in bringing it to life. His gifts were meant to empower them, to inspire them to become givers.

Yet they were so young. Like their ancestors, every gift led to a demand for more. Why couldn't they see?

Jesus groaned as he saw the multitude crest the hill. Here they come again. Even so, his heart filled with love. They were his people. Perhaps something new would show them--a miracle of community, of sharing, or offering what little they had to the reign of God.

He looked at the disciples. Something they got. Often they didn't. Peter looked poleaxed as the crowd came on. Dumb as a rock (God bless him) but a heart of gold. There was hope for him yet.

"How can we feed them?" He asked. Would they get it this time?

Blank looks showed back. One small boy offered his lunch.

Jesus sighed internally as his followers smiled at the boy. The reign of God is like a child's heart, he thought. "Have them sit," he said. "Let them gather."

He paused to connect with God. One day, all would know this relationship. He gave thanks. And he was grateful. The boy would understand. Jesus blessed the lunch and watched as the people were fed.

Soon a ruckus arose. Rumor echoed through the crowd. They wanted to make him King again. They didn't understand what that meant. Didn't understand that he already was a king in God's reign.

Another gift. Another demand that he do everything for them. Quickly he gathered the food and slipped away. The boy would understand. And he would continue loving the rest of them until they did as well.

Free or Reduced Lunch, by Kellye Schroeder

2010-08-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

Outings with a large group of kids is not always easy, but as a teacher, its something you have to do. Do I have them all? Where are the lunches? Are they safe?

These thoughts all ran through my mind as we became consumed in the crowd waiting to hear more from this man Jesus. The kids don't really know who He is or get his role in their community, but they don't really need to in their minds. He's interesting and unknown so they're intrigued--especially Michael. Meeting Jesus was all he talked about and as I did a quick head count, I realized he was gone .

As any good teacher would, I began scanning the crowd and as I almost began to panic--there he was. He had pushed his way all the way to the front, practically standing at Jesus' side. What a pesky little kid, but bold you had to admit.

Suddenly, Michael reached into his bag and pulls out his lunch sack and offered it to a frowning friend of Jesus. Michael was offering them his food, and I thought about how insignificant that small amount was but what a big sacrifice it was for Michael, who had so little to offer coming from a poor family. Still he was willing. Who could have guessed how his view of life changed with the feeding that followed.

To some, it was just a free lunch; to Michael, having a small role in something so out of the ordinary. I knew he would never be the same.

Compost

2010-08-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

I remember Jesse Schroeder by his smile--humungous, almost giddy. But that was not the only thing physically memorable about him. At first glance, I was immediately struck with physique envy. Jesse is built like Superman, which is what made his grin so oxymoronic. Most buff guys look mean. It's like they all got together and decided they couldn't smile in any picture anymore. I really shouldn't stereotype because 3 of the gentlest guys I know look like action heroes. Jesse reminded me.

Jesse participated in our inaugural Stories that Compost workshop. Toward the end of June, he wrote me with most exciting news. He had gone home to share the experience and practice retelling stories with his emergent village cohort in Columbus, OH. I so wish more of those who participated would follow suit (hint-hint, clue-clue!).

They read the story of the feeding of the 5,000 in Luke 10 and John 6, asked the three questions we use in our workshop to unpack a story and then rewrote the story and shared. He passed along some of the retellings that came out of the experience.

I'll share a different one each week for the next few weeks. Hopefully by then, I'll have more to share from some more of you (HINT-HINT, CLUE-CLUE!).

A Series of Graciously Unfortunate Events—Episode 3

2010-07-31T05:48:00.000-07:00

<<Read episodes 1 & 2 first.

(from Genesis 3—a story of creation)

Download a dramatic reading of
"A Series of Graciously Unfortunate Event - Episode 3" complete with sound effects and musical score!

"The woman you gave me made me do it!" the man blamed God and the woman.
"But—" God sought to interject.
"Be a man! You could have said no!" the woman retorted.
"Still—" Elohim tried to get a word in.
"Besides, that snake tricked me!" the woman passed the blame.
"Enough!" God commanded their attention. "You both were wrong. And as you can see, it's already begun to cost you. Look at yourselves. You're running from me. Me. I'm the one who loves you no matter what. 'You shall die' wasn't 'I'm going to kill you.' And listen to yourselves. Blaming. Resenting. That can't seem right."

Then Elohim turned his attention, "Don't go slithering off, deceitful one," he said to the snake. Now how the snake got to that exact spot after all that running and hiding, I do not know, but that's how the story's been handed down to us. At this point the narrative in Genesis transitions into poetry again:
"Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel."
To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children,
yet your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you."
And to the man he said,
"Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
about which I commanded you,
'You shall not eat of it,'
cursed is the ground because of you;
in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return."

So the man and the woman, symbols of all humanity in our story, imagined they knew better, which led them to eat of the one forbidden tree. "And what does God do, inflict immediate capital punishment on that very day as promised? No."* In this sense, the snake hadn't lied. Seems like he understood something about God that many often miss. "God not only doesn’t kill them, but rather God makes clothes for them, mercifully shielding them from their shame at being naked in one another’s presence."* Does that make God a push over? No, again. "God does let them suffer consequences for their behavior, but not lethal ones. God pushes them out of the nest, the garden in which they have lived. Now, they must go from being hunter-gatherers in a beautiful garden to agriculturalists who must struggle with thorns and thistles to produce food by the sweat of their brow, entering into the harsh realities of marital and family struggle in a harsher world, out of the garden, east of Eden. Having tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will no longer have access to the tree of life"* and consequently will someday return to the dust from which they were originally created. And that's how this particular series of graciously unfortunate events ends.

People make sense of this story in many ways. Some feel compelled to want talking snakes and magic trees to be fact for the purpose of believing in them or railing against them. Either way, its the argument—the reasoned legal defense—they seem to want to prepare for, much like the man and the woman in the story. Still others like to think of this story as humanity's great fall ("The Fall") from grace, but it's hard to imagine us falling from or losing what we could do nothing to earn and very little to keep. Thus, I am among those who see this heart rending myth as a classic coming-of-age story filled with deep ambivalence. "Their departure is truly ambivalent, because although it is the result of the disobedience of one command (don’t eat from the forbidden tree), it results in obedience to a former command which never could have been obeyed from within the garden (be fruitful, multiply, fill and subdue the earth)."*

Nonetheless, the man and the woman's losses are painful, and because they persist in similarly behavior, as we will see, it causes great suffering. In addition to losing the garden itself, a lie was deeply embedded in the human psyche that has since changed the way people see themselves (and how they think their Creator sees them). Humanity loss the innocence of believing in their capacity for goodness despite their screw ups. But it is a loss that can only be remedied by owning up to our shortcomings, not by covering up, running and hiding like the man and the woman did.**

There are many concrete experiences that are comparable to the series of graciously unfortunate events found in the third chapter of Genesis. We could go back to the ecological scenario I hinted at earlier and tell the story of short-sighted hunter-gatherers who pick virtually all the fruit from all the trees in their valley during the first month of the growing season, leaving little to sustain themselves for the rest of the season and storing nothing for winter. It wouldn't be long before those who had done this would be forced to relocate for lack of food.

Or we could be more contemporary and imagine a father with a "daughter whom he loves with all his heart. When she comes of age, Dad gives her a beautiful sports car. Dad tells her to drive safely and stay in her lane, but soon she crashes into a tree and totals her vehicle. Dad gives her a stern lecture, and a few months later, replaces the sports car with a modest economy car, more of a starter car, you might say. Then she takes her new economy vehicle off-road and gets stuck in a muddy field. Dad pulls her out and requires her to take a drivers’ ed class before she can drive again. She finishes the class and then a few weeks later she speeds around a corner, recklessly loses control, and drives herself into a river, and the economy car is totaled. At this point, Dad decides she isn’t ready for a car and gives her a bicycle instead. Then she crashes her bike into a tower and breaks her arm. Dad again comes to the rescue and rushes her to the ER. In each case, what does the father do in response to his daughter’s foolishness? Disown her? Lock her in a dungeon? Condemn her to eternal conscious torment? Not even close!"*

However, he does allow her to suffer loss. Imagine how tempted he is to reclaim his almost adult daughter as "Daddy's little girl" forever, excusing her from all the wrong she'll ever do, letting her gorge of the tree of a life that shelters her from the consequences of poor choices and condemning himself to a life of cleaning up after her incessant messes. Instead he says, "No, I won't do that; I'll let her grow up and live with the consequences of her behavior, even though it hurts to see her struggle."

Perhaps the story of the man, the woman and the talking snake isn't about them after all. Perhaps it's about an ever gracious Creator who patiently bears with a careless and shortsighted humanity time and time again.

*Non-dialogue quoted passages that interpret Genesis 3 as a coming-of-age story are taken from A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren.
**The language of "imagination" throughout the story and the explanation of what was lost in the garden comes from conversations with Jonathan Brink, author of Discovering the God Imagination.

A Series of Graciously Unfortunate Events—Episode 2

2010-07-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

<<Read episode 1 first.

(from Genesis 3—a story of creation)

Download a dramatic reading of "A Series of Graciously Unfortunate Event - Episode 2" complete with sound effects and musical score!

What a great image, attempting to sew fig leaves together to hide one's shame. Like the leaf of any tree, once stripped from its branch, fig leaves eventually become dry and brittle and crack and crumble into uselessness. Still, maybe it's human nature to try to hide, even defend, our foolishness.

And that's what the woman and the man continued to do in deed and in word. They must have asked themselves over and over again, "Why? What were we trying to accomplish?" Somehow the answer seemed so lame, so insufficient after the fact. How very much they had risked. The things they did all day. Unbelievable. The new things they discovered every day. The good, hard work and the delirious thoughts they would think and inventions they would come across—creation. It was the most amazing thing, to every day continue the creation that God had started. It was hard work, but good work. This was their true life’s work. They both knew it.

It was agonizing. The thinking. The mulling over everything in their minds. "What if I had just walked away?" the woman must have asked herself. "What if I had just said no" the man must have thought. "What were we thinking?" The waiting must have been agonizing as well. "Of course someone is going to say something, not the least of which, God. What will he say?" As many times as they told themselves that today would be no different, that nothing had changed, that the world was the same—waiting there on the rock, as the sun rolled away from them, a pain stabbed their eyes and they could not catch their breath—and they knew the truth—it was they who had changed. "We need to get our story straight? Maybe we should come right out and tell him. Yeah, that would be best. Honesty. Yeah."

But the resolve to be entirely forthright must not have had enough time to set in, because before he realized what he was doing, the man was up and running. "He’s coming!" the man screamed in a tone he’d never used before, yet as it reached the woman’s ears it did not seem strange or foreign. She understood it’s terror all too clearly. She felt like she should grab something, take something with them, but didn’t know what. She had never thought of any thing as valuable—not worth losing—before and didn’t realize that was what she was doing now. In frustration she gave up, finding nothing of value, feeling like she had misplace the one thing she would need.

They struggled to keep their fig leaves properly situated. Running clothed, perhaps even running away, was all new for them. They were down the embankment and sprinting hard. The woman took the ravine in one leap not breaking her stride. The man followed. They looked into the darkness ahead of them, the dense trees the sun had abandoned momentarily. They looked into the darkness, picking up the pace, faster, trying to get beyond the light, needing the shadow of the trees.

They made the tree line, not stopping until they were well inside the grove. The man collapsed against a tree, the woman on the ground. There hearts were pounding, lungs burning, exhausted in a way they’d never known before.

The early evening rays returned again to the grove, melting the shadows around the man and the woman as they clutched the earth, on all fours and, maybe for the first time in human history, puking their insides out. They said nothing for some time. Either working things through in their minds, figuring, trying to find a way out, find the next step or trying not to think at all. Trying to keep their minds in neutral, hearing only their own breathing and feeling the sun burn their skin.

The man rolled over on his back, coughed and spit to one side. The woman sat up and leaned against a tree trying to brush the vomit from a modestly placed leaf. “This is ridiculous,” she said.
"And?” said the man, accusing the woman with his tone, almost hating her.
“And what? That’s what I’m saying. Why are we running, hiding? Ridiculous! And what are we going to do now?”
The man rallied a little, feeling some camaraderie, knowing she was as desperate and angry as he was. "We will... well, we know... we know what is going to happen next," the man said. Then he explained, "There will be a trial. We will be found guilty and then we will be put to death" (Well, probably not, but that is how they act later on.) The man paused but felt compelled to go on, not letting 'death' hang there, finding meaning and finishing his sentence. “....and then...”
“And then? There is no and then. Once we have death that will be it. That is all we will have.”
“You don’t know...”
“I know; you know too.”
The man did know. They both knew. Well, not exactly knew. To the extent that they knew anything about death, they knew its precursor—dread.

Then they heard the question they had been dreading. God spoke, "Where are you?"
And the man blurted out in fearful response, "The woman you gave me made me do it!"

Well, that was odd. How is "The woman made me do it" an answer to the question "Where are you?" Immediately the man really does turn it into a trial, by trying to defend or justify his actions. Perhaps that's why so many people tell this story that way. They obviously identify with the man and the woman's misconceptions of who God seeks to be in the story more than they see what the Hebrews storytellers might have learned about God over the years of telling the story.

-Most of episode 2 contributed by Russell Rathbun.

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A Series of Graciously Unfortunate Events—Episode 1

2010-07-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

(from Genesis 3—a story of creation)

Download a dramatic reading of "A Series of Graciously Unfortunate Event - Episode 1" complete with sound effects and musical score!

So even if we come of age and no longer insist that our early creation stories are scientific or historical accounts about specific individuals and particular incidents, they still remain quite useful in helping us find ourselves. In that regard, they are invaluable. Take for example the third story in the Genesis saga, the one about the man, the woman and the talking snake. I've never heard an animal talk and don't have to believe that they did at one time to imagine that a story about a talking snake has something important to say to me. Again, we don't have to make the Bible something that it's not to recognize its value.

With that in mind, it's okay to admit that the Bible doesn't provide many details about those early days of humanity. What details we do know, we know by literary excavation, corroborated by science. For instance, the description the Bible gives of a young humanity supports much of what archeologists tell us about ancient human society. In a valley such as Eden, our forebears would have been what anthropologists call hunter-gatherers, which is exactly how "the man" and "the woman" in the first three chapters of the Bible are indirectly described: "God said, 'See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.'" Eden is described as fertile and well supplied with fresh water, which would have offered suitable habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna. Everything our ancestors needed for survival, education and enjoyment would have been readily available.

Scientists tell us that this birth of civilization likely occurred in the area of North Africa often referred to as the Fertile Crescent. This matches up nicely with the biblical description of Eden. In describing the great river that flowed out of Eden, the Bible names four tributaries or smaller rivers that branched off from it—Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates—the last two of which still exist as a part of the Fertile Crescent today. What science isn't able to tell us, however, and what good science never tries to do is guess at the reasons for it all. That's where the stories from the Bible come in.

Exactly when or how long humanity called the valley of Eden home, the Hebrew storytellers don't say. What we do know is that there came a time that those living in the valley had to leave, and the leaving was a traumatic experience. It was so traumatic, in fact, that the only way the Hebrews could later describe it was in the most fantastic ways.

The story goes that one day "the woman"—she still doesn't have a name—was out and about by herself. Now lots of folks have tried to take issue with this over the years in telling this story, but I think its quite ridiculous and offensive to suggest that "the man" was too insecure to be left alone. Goodness! The woman deserved to be alone sometime. What was she supposed to do? Sit and hold the man's hand all day? If she never went off by herself, they would never have gotten any work done. And wasn't work part of why they were created?

Well, the woman was out and about, likely working, when she caught a glimpse of those two most unique trees in the center of the garden. By now she was pretty use to seeing them. They weren't hidden or unfamiliar, but every time she laid eyes on them, she couldn't help but rehearse the warning that God had given in naming them.

It's at this part of the story that we are traditionally introduced to the talking snake. He is usually depicted being in the forbidden tree, munching on a piece of fruit. But that doesn't have to be the case. He could have alighted on the branch of the tree next to where the woman was standing (since the snake was talking, we might as well make him fly). He may have even sidled up next to her as she stood aloof daydreaming. He could have even have been a familiar acquaintance with whom she was out on a stroll. Either way, most important is, of all the possible images, Hebrew storytellers chose a snake, invoking all the craftiness listeners would associate with it.

Abruptly the serpent speaks, "'Did God say, "You shall not eat from any tree in the garden"?'
"The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die."'
"But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and good looking and that eating from it made good sense, she had some and gave some to her husband, who had joined her, and he ate.

That's it. Just a little back and forth, and… BAM! Yet another human does something stupid. Whether we call it abuse of the freedom they'd been given, taking liberties out of context, living below their dignity, disobedience or sin, it's plain stupid! Trying to get out of life what God had not put in it. Screwing up the the very goodness Elohim created by imagining they knew different.

Immediately their consciences got the best of them. The eyes of both the woman and the man were opened, and they saw themselves naked, vulnerable, exposed. Well that wasn't what they'd bargained for. Shame, distrust and fear set in. Isn't that how it always is after the fact. We know we were wrong, but instead of this knowledge changing us, we narcissistically assume it's everyone else who has changed towards us; perhaps that's one way eating from the tree of our stupidity makes us mortal after all.

In their newly found self-consciousness, the woman and the man "sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves."

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Being Human

2010-06-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

(from Genesis 2—a story of creation)

Download a dramatic reading of "Being Human" complete with sound effects and musical score!

In the second version of the creation myth from Genesis, instead of both being created at the same time, man is created first without woman. The story goes that once Elohim had made man, he said to him, "Now that you're here, we have planted this garden for you, called Eden. It is your home. 'You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.'"

Now, this may sound strange at first. In the mist of so much vibrant, luscious life, why would God need to bring up death? Well, the reality is that all gardens have limits, and like any living system, if overtaxed, they can be depleted to the point of no return, and the land and the people and creatures dependent on them will die. This was likely a lesson the Hebrews had learned the hard way. Thus, it was important to remember that though there was plenty for everyone it would only remain so if everyone only took enough to meet his or her needs and not too much. In this sense, the creation accounts may be the first ecological cautionary tales. If nothing else, they are definitely tales advocating moderation.

Elohim wasn't done. He looked at the man and said, "'It is not good that the man should be alone.' Let's make him a partner to help him." So, as what may come off initially as a cruel prank, Elohim now forms the animals from the dust of the ground, and brings them to the man as if to say, "Pick a helper." But that wasn't what it was. Elohim told the man to name the animals. So the man looked about for a while. There were so many different types of animals, some walking, some swimming, some flying, some climbing. There was so much commotion that the man didn't know which one to start with.

Suddenly one particularly friendly animal ran up to the man. It was about thigh high, covered in fur and it wagged not only its tail, but its whole body. It stood still for a moment, ran around in a tight circle then stopped again directly in front of the man. It stood there fidgeting with it's tongue hanging from its mouth, until it emitted the oddest sound, "Arf! Arf!"

In awe, the man stood, tilting his head from side to side as if trying to consider the odd creature from different angles. Finally his lips begin to fidget as if trying to accomplish something they had never done before. He looked as if he had almost figured it out, but then paused for a moment to reconsider. Then working up the gumption again, his brow furled in concentration as he pointed his finger at the animal, formed his mouth and uttered, "D- d- d- dog!" in nearly perfect English, right? Of course not! He spoke whatever language people spoke where he was at the time. He wouldn't even have spoken Hebrew, the language of the people who gave us this story.

As I thought about it, I tried to guess what it was that the Hebrew storytellers imagined when they told this story. Perhaps they were making a joke, thinking of how difficult it would have been to name every single different animal. Can you imagine? "Bird, fish, cat, deer, little-furry-hoppy-floppy-eared thing 1, little-furry-hoppy-floppy-eared thing 2... little-furry-hoppy-floppy-eared thing123—dag-rabbit where do these things keep coming from!"

Or imagine if folks were trying to give every animal an actual name, "Alright, so that's Jaya, Kari, Melvin, Evan, Leah, Roger, Jocelyn, Ivan, Leslie and Leroy—did we miss anyone?"

Then it occurred to me that it really doesn't matter what the animals were called way back when because by time the story made it down to you and me, no one could remember what those original names were—which is in and of itself a bit of useful information to hold onto. Like everything else, language evolves. Words pass out of use. How we talk about things today, won't be nearly as appropriate or useful tomorrow. As human beings, we will always be challenged to find new names to better describe the world around us.

(Wow, that's a lot to have to learn. Imagine if humanity had to learn it all in one day! Makes one think learning the importance of such things probably took a good bit of time, trial and error. No wonder the Hebrews finally wrote them down. They're not the types of things you'd want to leave solely to memory—particularly if you can't even remember the name of your favorite pet!)

Finally, in the story Elohim ends his lesson about not being alone by putting the worn out man to sleep. He had worked himself into a tizzy trying to come up with so many different names, and along the way he still hadn't found anyone to partner with. While the man was asleep, Elohim did a little minor surgery. He reached into the man's side and took out a rib. After closing up the spot so as not to leave a scar, Elohim then fashioned the rib into a woman.

When the man woke up and saw the woman lying there, he jumped up and exclaimed, "Wo-man! Where'd she come from?" Elohim replied, "I made her to be a partner for you, from one of your ribs no less."

When the woman woke up and didn't seem anxious to go anywhere, the man fell to his knees and uttered the first recorded prayer of thanksgiving, "Thanks be to God for this 'now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.'" And still in the naming mode, he proclaimed, "She shall be called 'Woman' (because, for one, that's all I can say every time I look at her, and too) because she was taken out of man." Then the man grabbed the woman's hand and didn't want to let it go.

And that's how the story goes. Not very cohesive, I know. Kind of a hodgepodge of things. Why pick these particular things to remember? I do not know. I guess they are just as good as any. Maybe they had something to do with some particularities of what was going on in Babylon at the time the story was written down. Whatever the case, if these things have anything to do with being fully human, we'd probably do well remembering them today.

Why Too

2010-06-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

(in reference to Genesis 1 & 2—a story of creation)

Download a dramatic reading of "Why Too" complete with sound effects and musical score!

Did you know there are two creation stories in the Bible? Really, there are! The first is the creation poem with which most are familiar: "In the beginning... God said ,'Let there be... in our image...' and it was good." The other starts by covering the same ground in a much shorter fashion that offers a distinctly different rationale for why and when things came into being. The second creation story begins:

"In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground—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. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden."

Some might say, "That discrepancy right there proves the Bible isn't worth the paper it's printed on!" However, rather than weakening the integrity of the Bible, such contradiction early in the narrative seems to me to strengthen the text with a credibility that only diversity can bring. For one thing, scripture immediately assures us of what it is: a collection of richly assorted perspectives—perspectives of God's consistent desire to connect with humanity and the often surprising lengths to which he will go to make connection possible. It doesn't stop there. Scripture also immediately resists our modern desires to make it what it is not: a cohesively written legal constitution to be used to build cases that prove others wrong about God.

Divergence is not a bad thing. By telling the same story different ways we accomplish different things. For example, by telling of creation in an easy to remember poem Hebrew storytellers (those whose stories make up the majority of the bible) could dazzle the imaginations of each new generation of Hebrew children with the wonder of creation and their place in it. By telling the story another time, focusing specifically on the creation of humanity, Hebrew mothers, fathers and rabbis (teachers) were able to teach each new generation important things they had learned about what it meant to be truly human.

Stories remind us of things. The stories of creation in the Bible were first written down at a time when Hebrews desperately needed to be reminded of whose they were. The stories were written down during Babylonian Exile, which you will hear about in detail later. Suffice it to say now that the Hebrew people had been conquered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and many of them had been carried away from Israel (the Hebrew homeland) into Babylon as captives. While captive in Babylon, the Hebrews were introduced to the Babylonians' stories which, as far as the Babylonians were concerned, explained why they were so strong and why they were created to rule other people. According to the Babylonian creation story, in the beginning, there were many gods. They were a contentious bunch, always getting into fights with one another about who was the greatest. One of gods, the one named Marduk, got into a battle to the death with the sea goddess Tiamat and her mate Kingu. Marduk prevailed, and proclaimed himself king of the gods. After killing Tiamat, he cut her body in half. "Not knowing what to do with the body, he used the top half to create the sky and the heavens and the lower half to create the earth. But Marduk still needed someone to populate the earth and tend to its upkeep, so he created human beings out of the blood of the other dead god, Kingu." Uuugggghhhhh!

"Given this story of how humans were created you can guess what kind of value human life had in Babylon—not much! But even worse than how humans were made was why humans were made.... 'After Tiamat had been slaughtered and the world made, it seems that the other defeated and demoted gods had too much hard work to do, too much menial labor. So Marduk created human beings as cheap slave labor to do the dirty work of the lower gods.' And to make sure that the gods did not have to pollute themselves by having too much to do with these slaves, these products of the blood of Kingu, Marduk ordained certain people—people like the high priest, the king and princes, the priests and priestesses and the lords and ladies of the high court [of Babylon]—to be the images of the gods on earth. Where these people [the royal bearers of the image of the gods] could not be, idols would be erected and the idol would image god to the people.

"So there were two kinds of people in Babylon. When the elite of the land looked into the mirror they would see a veritable god! These people would simply exude divinity! Marduk and the other gods would rule through them. But what would anyone else see when they looked in the mirror? They would see a nobody—an insignificant, expendable nobody—a mere slave of the gods."*

Either the Hebrew exiles could believe what the Babylonians told them about who they were and why they were created, or they could remind themselves of their value in the grand scheme of things. They chose the latter.

The true God, Elohim, also referred to in Genesis as YHWH (yah-way or je-ho-vah), in whose image the Hebrews believed humanity was formed, would never create someone for the sole purpose of being a slave. Elohim was a God of equity... Elohim was a God of community... Elohim was a God of duty... And since Elohim was, the Hebrews remained confident that, even in the mist of a society that was not, humanity could be too.

Yes, humanity, every part of it, could reflect the image of God. Not just one person, of one gender—Adam—or one special group of people—Hebrews—but all of humanity. That's what makes the Hebrew stories so special. Unlike the stories of some, the Hebrew myths didn't privilege just the Hebrews. They were stories that embraced the common humanity of everyone. In fact, the word "adam" found in both creation tales means "humanity," not "the first man God created." It was long after the story was first recorded, or at least later in the series, that some people began to think of "adam" as a name for a particular individual.

So through the Hebrews we discover that, however it came to be, life as we know it emerges in a fertile valley, on the shores of an ancient river. And what came first and when and how and the time frame seems completely beside the point when we allow ourselves to become captivated by the beauty of why: to reflect the endless virtue that makes life possible!

How much better a creation tale is that?

*The story of Marduk is taken from Subversive Christianity.

Forget Me Nots

2010-06-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

(based on Genesis 2—a story of creation)

Download a dramatic reading of "Forget Me Nots" complete with sound effects and musical score!

"Finish telling us about the beginning of things, Grandpa!"

"All right, honey. Everybody, gather around. Yes, yes, you there and you and you. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, I remember. We had come to the end of the sixth day."

"Did it actually take seven whole days for God to make the world?"

"Honey, no one knows. We weren't there. I imagine God could have just as easily done it in one day or a million, as in seven. All I know is that seven is how my grandfather told the story to me, and he said it was the same story his grandfather told him, so it's the story I pass on to you. There are some very important things to learn from that first week.

"So 'in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' And when we say, 'in the beginning,' all we can reference is our own; we don't know what may have happened before us. What if there were another whole history of a totally different kind of people before us?

"'God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and take responsibility for the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every living thing that moves upon the earth."

"'God said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food."' But that wasn't all God said. He didn't want us to think everything was created just for our benefit."

"Of course it wasn't, Grandpa. Everybody knows that!"

"You'd be surprised, little one. God went on, '"To every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food."' So it was. 'God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.' And that was the sixth day."

"Sure, but what happens next?"

"God was done with making things, at least for that moment. He had been working for six days straight. It was time to take a rest. So he did. God rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done. And God said to humanity, 'You should do likewise. You can't work all the time. Well you can, but it won't help you. At some point, you have to trust beyond your own abilities. But as sure as I exist, you'll forget. Because you will work and see that you can accomplish many things, you'll be tempted to think you can do everything yourself. So you'll have to do things to remind you that there are more possibilities than just those you can create. This Sabbath, this day of rest, every seventh day, is your first reminder.'"

"But, Grandpa, even though it was God's seventh day, it was only humanity's second!"

"I know, honey. It's a story: you can't over-think it. At least, when you do, don't miss the point.

"Well, what to do? As you say, this was only humanity's second full day, and already there was so much to remember. Remember to be fruitful. Remember responsibility. Remember to share. 'Remember the Sabbath day.' That was a lot.

"Then again, are they not all parts of the same thing? You see, everything was created to do something: 'Sun.. rule the day.' 'Moon and stars... rule the night.' Land and sea bring forth. Creatures do your thing. Humanity be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, take responsibility for it. But when we do what we're made to do, little one, there is a tendency to think what we've done belongs to us. 'I live here: so this is my land.' 'I grew this: so these are my trees.' So before humanity could do much to claim as their own, God said, 'Watch me. I made everything. In that sense, it all belongs to me. But I share it freely with you. And not just you, with every living thing. Free for all!'

"And amazingly, there was enough. And as long as people kept Sabbath, they remembered.

"Is that why we gather every Saturday by the river with neighbors for the big picnic, Grandpa?

"Exactly, little one. In fact, I hear your father calling us now. They must be ready to light the altar. Come children, let's move that direction."

"This is the bull," the man declares to those who are gathering, "we will share in feast today as we gather in rest and remembrance of God's provision for us. Before we eat, we offer it back to the Lord as a symbol of all we owe to him for the great gift of life. And we light this fire as a symbol of God's spirit, a gift back to us which transforms us from lifeless masses who at best serve only ourselves into nourishment for all we meet. Now eat, drink and enjoy the life we've been given. Shalom!"

"Shalom!" the gatherers reply. Then looking at each other, "Shalom," again. Some clasp hands; others embrace, kissing each other on both cheeks.

"Grandpa, can we go swimming with the others in the river?

"Certainly, my dear." The child holds the man's hand as they walk to the river.

"Grandpa, look at those beautiful flowers! They're so pretty. I love the tiny blue petals. I'm going to pick some."

"It's also okay to leave them there as a gift to everyone else. If you pick them, they dies before we finish swimming. If you leave them, everyone can enjoy them time and time again."

"Okay, Grandpa." Then turning to the flowers, "See you later, little flowers; I'll remember you."

The child skips on. The two join the others already in the water. The children splash about in fits of laughter and joy. The adults smile and remember.

Some time later, the child wades over to the man. Everyone is slowly drifting back to the place where the food will be served.

"Grandpa, did God give us any other reminders how much we need each other?"

"Certainly. After giving Sabbath, God said, 'I have another reminder for you. It's called marriage. I have placed within you a sense of incompleteness: a craving for companionship: a longing for someone to see you as you really are, shortcomings and all, and still want your good. If you remember and are fortunate, you will share such love with many friends. However, there may be one in particular whom you find so completes you whereas to make you a better person. Now that's someone you'll want to keep around! Should you find each other, don't be afraid to commit to each other, to marry. Make vows. Keep them. In so doing, you'll remember that through commitment to each other humanity thrives."

"Is that why you married Grandma, Grandpa?"

"Something like that. The same for your mom and dad. Somewhere along the line humanity got the notion that multiplying made more sense within the commitments of marriage. Families made our communities strong. They were the perfect place to practice seeking the good of each other so as to learn how to seek the good of all God's creation. So we marry. And as long as we do, we remember.

"Now you go on and see about your little brother and sister. And don't forget what Grandpa told you."

"I won't, Grandpa. I won't."

"Gay Dogs... Don't Listen," by Sarah Durant

2010-05-08T09:50:00.005-07:00

This is part allegory, part midrash, part conversation concerning the story of Lot on the eve of Sodom's destruction. Thank you Sarah for the story of your sister's dog.

"I Shall Ascend Above the Clouds..." by Ray Atkins

2010-05-08T09:50:00.003-07:00

This is less midrash and more a brief telling of the story of Babel (targum). Thanks Ray for your eyes.

"Is God Mean?" by Tim Seitz

2010-05-08T09:50:00.001-07:00

Tim Seitz, a wonderfully creative yet meek soul, offered this beautifully simple window into the subversive nature of God, as seen through a paradoxical understanding of the flood. Doesn't scripture say something about using the simple to confound the wise.

I Hear Dead People, by Mike Stavlund

2010-05-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Mike for offering this heart-rending meditation on the individual cost of our corporate malfeasance.

Mike blogs here about participating and creating in our Stories that Compost workshop. He chose this art by Jon White to illustrate his thoughts.

A Brief Exchange

2010-05-07T14:52:00.008-07:00

Here was my contribution to our communal exploration of Exodus 1. Like I said, barely 7 lines. (However, I did in talking to Brian McLaren later that day discover why writing is such a labor for me, as much as I enjoy it. It seems that extroverts struggle to write because writing is such a solitary--introverted--process. Extroverts by nature find collaborative processes easier to engage in. Go figure.)

"I can't submit," Pharaoh resolved.
"Ramses, you must," Moses pleaded.
"I can't."
"Why, my brother; why?"
"Because I killed all those babies. I keep thinking about their little bodies lying at the bottom of the river to become food for crocodiles."
"Elohim is the morning star. She does not hold you hostage to your yesterdays, but with the rising of the sun extends to you new mercies."
"It's not that. I can accept that I knew no better. But there are those who did. How come they did nothing? I cannot submit to a god who would do nothing."

All in the Family, by Mark van Steenwick [for ages 15&up]

2010-05-07T14:52:00.005-07:00

This is a contemporary midrash inspired by the fact that Moses' people were an immigrant people who had fallen out of favor with the dominant culture, simply because of a fear of what their increasing numbers might portend. Because of language and content, it is for maturer audiences (15&up).

With Child

2010-05-07T14:52:00.003-07:00

Here is a story inspired by the Moses story, but re-contextualizes it to address more contemporary concerns.

I would desperately love to know the name of the women who composed this. All I remember is that she was caring for a baby of a different ethnic heritage than herself, which led me to believe her story was deeply personal.

Survivor's Guilt [for ages 12&up]

2010-05-07T14:52:00.001-07:00

Here is another piece for which I again cannot make full attribution. All I know is that it was composed by Dave. Thanks, Dave (please send me your last name when you have the chance).

Update: Dave finally contacted me (6/11/10) to let me know his last name is Huth. He's a communication professor in western NY state and can be found online at http://salamanderslam.com.

Beloved Conspiracy

2010-05-07T14:51:00.003-07:00

I place these wonderfully conspiratorial pieces together because they seem two insightful parts of the same whole.

The haiku (the 2nd audio) was composed by Cathy Norman. I do not have a name for the first author. If anyone remembers her name, please forward it to me.

Update: We now know the first story was composed by Nancy Jarosi!

Census, by Glenn Zuber

2010-05-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

True to form, I started recording late when Glenn stepped to the mic to share his story. I count on Glen's graciousness to send me a complete copy of his story. Until then, I am haunted by his last line. Speaking of Pharaoh, Glenn said,

"...When he saw the strength and numbers of the Israelites, he saw a competitor, a threat, instead of people who added to his kingdom."

"What About Our Needs?" by Russell Rathbun

2010-05-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

With the inaugural Stories that Compost workshop (transFORM East Coast Gathering, 1 May 2010), I began to collect midrash on the biblical episodes I've been re-telling. The workshop was an amazing success thanks to Russell Rathbun, the co-facilitator, and the participation of nearly 30 intrepid souls, several of whom got up in the moment to tell their stories!

One of the most memorable moments for me was witnessing the reaction to Russell's declaration that the Bible's wonderful stories of faith--though useful, formative and important--are not precious. The astonishment which quickly melted into relief is a mental snapshot I shall never forget. Russell then assured everyone that, try as we might, we cannot break the Bible, which set everyone free to explore.

Then Russell read an excerpt from his new book Midrash on the Juanitos to help us understand the rich tradition of Judeo-Christian midrash in scripture:

"Idiot John continued... 'The rabbis, when they read, walk into the text. They bring themselves to it and step across the edge of the scroll onto its body, bouncing a little, believing it will hold their weight. And then on hands and knees crawl through the furrows of words, examining, brushing away dirt, not unlike a botanist examining growth patterns and evidence of the soil's mineral content, water content and whether there is deep clay below the cracks in the soil from which the words emerged. It is the cracks, the gaps, that allow them a way in. The Midrash is the exploration of the gaps. Stories and parables, proverbs and legal case studies come from mining these gaps. The text is changed by their having been there. There are footprints left behind, indentations, great hollowed out places and covered over, smoothed out portions. The tents of opposing camps are set in the text side by side. Conclusions leaned up against refutations, some decaying, some flourishing. Having once been a oral wisdom that required a speaker--and what is an individual speaker if not a unique interpreter--the text was not allowed to pass into stone, to become hardened, but was kept alive and fertile, even malleable. But with deep and unknown roots.'

My head hurt. 'What the hell are you talking about? Did you memorize that? Or do you just love your own metaphorical meanderings?'"

With that, we set to work on our own midrash based on Exodus 1. I completed perhaps 7 lines. However, in the same 7 minutes Russell composed this wonderfully incisive piece of flash fiction, full of his customarily eloquent mix of wry humor and critical analysis. In all the best ways I envy my brotha, and thank GOD for his company in this adventure.

Pentecost, A Poet's Tale

2010-01-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

(from Acts 1 and 2—a story of incarnation)

"What in the world is going on? I've never participated in a Shavuot ("Festival of Weeks," a holiday commemorating the grain harvest and the teachings of Moses given at Sinai) so full of energy."
"I know. Isn't it great? It's as if God were about to give the Torah (teachings) to us all over again."
"I imagine this is exactly how it felt at the foot of Mount Sinai when Moses presented the Torah to the people for the first time. There had to be such a sense of promise. For the first time our people had tangible ways to practice being God's shalom (peace and good will) in the world."

"Isn't that Peter, the follower of Jesus, up there speaking?"
"It sure is!"
"Isn't he an uneducated Galilean fisher? Isn't his native tongue Aramaic? Where did he learn to speak Greek so eloquently?"
"Greek? What do you mean? That's the finest Leshon HaKodesh ("The Holy Tongue," Hebrew) I've ever heard. And to think that he'd be so bold as to use it for such a public occasion is magnificent! Praise Elohim!"
"What are you two talking about? I know both Greek and Hebrew. What you are hearing is Arabic, the language of the eastern scholars."
"What?"

"You know what is happening, don't you?" a bystander interjected. "Each of you is hearing what is happening through the language of your own imagination. Even when you know multiple languages, your dominant language, the language of you imagination, is whichever one you think in.
"Wow! We expected something special to happen today, but never this. Amazing."

"Expected something to happen? What do you mean? Who are 'we?'"
"Those of us who have pledged our allegiance to Jesus over Caesar."
"So you are a disciple of Jesus."
"Yes, I am."
"You said you were expecting something to happen. What did you mean?"

"It's just that as we counted the 49 days of the grain harvest we knew something was brewing. It was as if the spirit Jesus promised were being distilled in us.
"It all started at the close of Sabbath during Passover. We were devastated. The one to whom we had pledged our lives had been executed just two days before. Still it was time to engage in the Counting of the Omer (the 49 day ceremony of introspection and thanks that commences with an offering of a certain measure of barley). We felt as lowly as the livestock that eat the barley of the seven week harvest we would begin that day, but we gathered anyway in the upper room at the house of Gideon here in Jerusalem for the blessing of the Omer. The traditional blessing was made, 'Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us to count the Omer.' However, the spirit of the season was not in us, at least not that night.
"The next morning the miraculous and unexpected happened. News soon came to us that Jesus, the Messiah, had risen! It was a harvest gift unmatched.
"Needless to say, we were now ecstatic. Those 40 days spent with the Master after the resurrection were like the coming of rain after a famine; or more in keeping with the season, like the answer to prayers for dew after the rain, so the barley can be harvested and the wheat can grow. But then he was gone again, and the revelry in our spirits went with him.
"I was there when he ascended. I heard the strange man and women who reminded us that we would see him again. Nevertheless, our sorrow for having lost him again, even under these best of circumstances, was palpable.

"Some remembered that he had told us to tarry together in Jerusalem for a while, so we decided to presume upon our friend Gideon's good graces once more. This time, however, it was not to mourn, but to hold fast for just a bit longer to the feelings of camaraderie we felt in each other's presence.
"In deference to that old adage about throwing guests out with the leftover fish, one might expect that Gideon's good graces and even our own tolerance for one another would shortly run thin; they did not. Each time a family was tempted to leave, Gideon deterred them with the most sincere expressions of gratitude for their remaining just a little while longer.

"As a poet, it was a most wondrous thing to witness. Being there inspired many a verse in me. It was like watching the creation of the garden in Eden. I saw why she has so often been referred to as a mother who opened her arms and gave of herself so freely, willingly for the sustenance of her children. Not only that, it was as if a grapevine with a multiplicity of branches and shoots that would typically run in disparate directions from one another or contend with one another as a tangled canopy competing for sunlight suddenly, mystically found itself pruned of selfish intent and began to bear the most cooperative, luscious fruit in nourishment to one another.
"Perhaps it had something to do with the character work we were doing in observance of the counting of the Omer. Instead of focusing mainly on good works, as is our custom, each day we would nurture the grains of others-interestedness within ourselves, as Jesus admonished. With this heart for others we embodied the way of he who washed the twelve's feet. As a result, each day saw increasingly more inspiring demonstrations of patience, joy, gentleness, meekness, self-control, peace, kindness, faithfulness, love.

"Then this morning we gathered for one last breakfast together. I sat in the window just soaking in the warmth of the spirit in the room. Jacob the formerly Self-Pitying (the one over there who walks with the limp) came into the courtyard with some more kindling. Peter the formerly Cowardly and John the formerly Self-Absorbed had just gotten back with a fresh portion of last night's catch. Mary the formerly Needy was showing some of the young ladies and young men how to kneed bread. Martha the formerly Busy—surprise, surprise—was sitting down talking with some of our newest friends. Hadai the formerly Lazy came back into the house with another pair of hot wheat loaves to set aside for each family's Shavuot offering of First Fruit. The dining room and the adjoining courtyard were filled with activity and vibrant energy.
"When all was prepared, we blessed the food and ate and savored every moment and morsel. In fact, the best of the meal was not the nourishment delivered to our stomachs but the grace of feasting on the fruit of each other's spirits. If this were the beauty, peace and good will afforded us in the kingdom of God, I dare say I would never tire of bearing witness to it. That which can produce joy out of sorrow, boldness out of timidity, comprehension out of babel is, indeed, a more excellent way than either the hardships of Roman occupation or the dubiousness of Jewish self-rule!"
"And in that moment it was as if the very heavens laughed and clapped for joy, creation witnessing the reincarnation of it's beloved. A mighty wind rushed through the house carrying with it the sweetness of spring that ignited the spirit in that room leaving in its wake a trail of flame, as if emanating from our heads. We became, as Jesus foretold, candles and torch lights to shine before men—even in the brightness of day—that all might see our good works and know that they originate with the One who calls us her own. We had been filled with the Spirit and confidence of God.

"We gathered up our loaves, two per family, and like the yeast that leavens them, we permeated the crowds that gathered here in front of the temple in hopes of sharing our joy on this day of thanksgiving. It was then that what you hear started to happen. As we joined in the festivities, members of our party began to speak with those around them, and what came out their mouths—or at least what was heard—was not the common language of Palestine, but languages particular to those with whom they were talking. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians, Asians, Egyptians, Libyans, Cyreneans, Cretans, Arabs and visitors from Rome—both native Jews and gentile converts—in their own languages they heard of God’s deeds of power. It's as if God were intent on the message of a kingdom greater than Caesar's being carried into all nations, even today, by the very Jews who have gathered here from all parts of the earth!"

"What an amazing story. If I had not heard it so beautifully put, I would have likely said the lot of you were filled with wine!"
"You might say we are. We are once old but now renewed wineskins, filled with the new wine of the Holy Spirit, ready to share with any who would also receive it."
"Well, how 'bout a drink! I'd love to hear more about this Jesus who inspires you with hope in the days of Caesar."
"Certainly. Let's have at it. All of you are welcome to come. Drinks all around!"

The Pursuit of Respectability—Episode 2

2010-01-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

<<Read episode 1 first.

(from Ezra, Nehemiah and Isaiah 56—a story of inauguration)

One would think that the vehement exclusion of one group—foreigners—for the sake of increased respectability would be enough, but as is often the case with this kind of thing, respectability is seldom satisfied with the exclusion of just one group of 'outsiders.' To do it once is to become addicted. It didn't take long before the ever more respectable Israelite insiders had compiled for themselves a growing list of outsiders to pick on: foreigners, Israelites married to people of foreign descent, the children of mixed marriages (all of whom coincidentally were longtime residents of the land these returnees from Babylon were trying to reclaim) had to go; those without land, women, children born out of wedlock, eunuchs (sexual minorities), weren't banished but were afforded few or no political rights. Only the most respectable could have full rights in the temple assembly. Only they could retain God's favor. At least that's what Nehemiah, Ezra and those most like them had come to believe.

Not everyone agreed with Nehemiah and Ezra. Among what was left of the tradition of the school of the prophets from Elijah and Elisha's time, there was strong dissent. It came from those who had been disciples of the prophet Isaiah, whose writings now make up the third movement of the Book of Isaiah in the Bible. In the great tradition of their teacher who had stood boldly against the excesses of Israel's leaders before seeing them carried off into Babylonian captivity, these students now spoke out with poetic potency against the excesses of the ever so respectable elite who had returned from Babylon:

"Thus says the Lord:
Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my deliverance be revealed.

"Happy is the mortal who does this,
the one who holds it fast,
who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it,
and refrains from doing any evil.

"Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’;
and do not let the eunuch say,
‘I am just a dry tree.’
For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.

"And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
and hold fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered." (Isaiah 56:1-8)

It was a gracious yet pointed rebuke. These disciple prophets, who are commonly collectively referred to as Third Isaiah, proclaimed their message in the streets of Jerusalem and throughout the Palestinian countryside. They also wrote it down allowing the scribal and priestly classes to refer back to it. They start by acknowledging how just Ezra and Nehemiah's initial reforms, the Sabbath reforms, were. In doing so, they save us from the temptation of labeling those we disagree with as evil. Third Isaiah also makes it clear that what God favors is justice, not cultural respectability. They define justice as keeping Sabbath and turning away from evil. In appealing to Sabbath practice, the prophet is invoking the heart of the ethical tradition of scripture. To keep Sabbath is to return thanks to God, but not in word alone. It involves making sure everyone has enough and no one has too much. In so doing, one celebrates the gifts of the Creator by keeping them circulating rather than concentrating (Exodus 16:16-19). Sabbath also involves weeding out poverty wherever it takes root by periodically releasing those who groan under the burden of debt (Deut 15) and by allowing the poor to glean the fields of the wealthy free of charge (Ex 23:10-12). At length, Sabbath is a refusal to allow a system of slavery to ever take hold among a people liberated from Pharaoh, by putting limits on work, on accumulation and on privilege.

When deeply embraced, Sabbath practice eventually subverts any prejudices one may secretly harbor. So as for this business of excluding 'outsiders' from God's favor, Third Isaiah sees it ultimately incongruent with a Sabbath ethic. 'Let not the foreigner say… Let not the eunuch say… For this is what God says…!' And God's promises are so inclusive, so embracing, so opposite the exclusion that the ever more respectable elites of Israel had drifted towards. Whereas the respectable kept drawing smaller and smaller circles of who were really in God's favor, Third Isaiah paints a picture of a God who keeps redrawing the circles wider and wider, so that they could eventually include you and me. How beautiful is that?

Third Isaiah's message from God excited some and dismayed others. The people debated it for a while, but sad to say, Third Isaiah's vision of a radically inclusive Israel was rejected by the ever more respectable who finally reestablish political control over Israel. These gentry who had returned from Babylon eventually pushed the peasants and foreigners off the most fertile land. They allowed the gap between the rich and the desperately poor to mount. They excluded all but those who were most like themselves from having a public voice in the future of the nation. And how much favor did their pursuit of respectability curry with God? Never again in the biblical narrative is Israel completely free of some type of foreign occupation.

And what, you may wonder, happened to the rejected message of Third Isaiah? Four and a half centuries later, a young Jesus of Nazareth preaching his first sermon dusted off an Isaiah scroll one day in synagogue and began reading from the heart of Third Isaiah's message. And when he was done, he added: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). The struggle for inclusive justice, against an exclusive respectability, had begun anew. Indeed, it is not overstating the case to say that Jesus may have staked his entire ministry on the vision of Third Isaiah. Not only is Third Isaiah invoked in Jesus’ inaugural sermon at Nazareth, but also at the culmination of his struggle with the public authorities (the Ezras and Nehemiahs of his day) in the Jerusalem Temple. In the midst of his dramatic 'cleansing' of the temple courtyard Jesus quotes directly from Third Isaiah's first poem of protest against Israel's elites, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" (Lk 19:46 = Is 56:8).

So much for respectability. Ezra and Nehemiah assure us that even the most respectable can do wrong in the name of God at times.

*Episode 2 is in substantial part a paraphrase of the writings of Ched Myers.

The Pursuit of Respectability—Episode 1

2010-01-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

(from Ezra, Nehemiah and Isaiah 56—a story of inauguration)

With the completion of the wall around Israel's capital city, Jerusalem, there arose a wave of national pride. It had only taken fifty-two days of focused effort. The repatriated exiles, the returnees from Babylon, were excited about being recognizable as a nation again, no longer the conquered and displaced people whose gentry had been carried off into bondage and whose peasants had been left to eek out subsistence on the surrounding lands. And as is often the case, as the returning gentry felt better about themselves, they also felt better about how God felt about them. The possibility of God's renewed pride for Israel was exhilarating. Had he not already extended his favor by allowing them to return and restore the temple and the city walls?

Though the total city had not been rebuilt, the 3 most important symbols of a promising future had been. The first was the temple, a symbol of God's abiding presence. Now the walls and gates. Walls and gates are symbols of a nation's self-determination. Like the walls of your bedroom which define the space you call "yours" and the door to your bedroom which limits access (even if it stays open all the time), Israel's walls and gates said, "This is our city, and we decide who gets in." Gates and walls also give a nation the ability protect itself as necessary. And wasn't that what God wanted? Wasn't that why he had allowed them to return: to redefine themselves and to protect that renewed vision?

That is exactly what Nehemiah, former cup-bearer to the king of Persia appointed governor of Israel, and Ezra, former scribe to the king of Persia commissioned as high priest, believed. Once the physical walls that defined who Israel was as a nation were complete, these two men believed it was time to erect by analogy the cultural walls that would help define the restored Israel further. After 70 years in exile, who were they? They were the people of God's favor, were they not? Okay, but what does in mean to be the "people of God's favor"?

What does God favor?

This is a tough question to answer because it is not always the same thing. It's not that we don't have definite clues. It's just that there is always the temptation to trick ourselves into believing that God is in favor of whatever we favor at any particular time.

Our understanding of God seldom exceeds the limits of our own perspective. One way to understand this might be to make an analogy. For example, if I'm looking at a globe, appreciating the particular topographic features of my own country, it would be very easy for me to assume that since the land I love is a certain way, surely other countries that I can't see from where I stand must be quite similar. I may wonder, "If God saw fit to shape my native land in certain ways—to give it certain features and certain natural resources (a certain form of government or a certain religious heritage)—isn't that a sign of what he favors? Isn't that what all land God favors looks like?" But from where I stand, just looking at my own country on my globe, I can't see what other countries look like on the other side of the world, so my appreciation of all the many different ways land (or even people) can be shaped is limited by what little I can see. This is true of anyone.

Nehemiah and Ezra were also limited by what they could see. One such limitation was their preoccupation with respectability. They were respectable people multiple times over. Not only had they both been officials in the court of the most powerful king in that part of the world, which gave them both a great deal of personal respectability, they were both descendents of a long line of respectable Israelites, cultural heros and heroines immortalized in Israel's stories. To add to that, their families possessed land, title and position in Jewish society that, if they were successful in reestablishing the pre-exile social order, they would be able to reclaim. These were the ways in which they defined respectability: position, possession, parentage. They had grown up seeing this type of respectability rewarded and had learned to value it. So, naturally, when they opened the book of Moses (Torah) to hear how their forebears had understood God's favor, what stood out to them was what sounded like God's shared preoccupation with this same type of respectability.

When they read, "It is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you, and from their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness" (Leviticus 25:44-46). They thought they heard, 'God favors Jews not gentiles,' but they missed, "The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien [stranger, foreigner, gentile] as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt" (Lev. 19:34). When they read, "The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give you... if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God.... But if you will not obey the Lord your God... cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your cattle, and the issue of your flock" (Deuteronomy 28:11,13,15,18). They thought they heard, 'God favors the wealthy,' or that 'wealth is a sign of God's favor,' but they missed, "Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.... Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought... and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt" (Lev. 15:11,9). When they read, "The equivalent for a male... twenty to sixty years of age... shall be fifty shekels of silver.... If the person is a female, the equivalent is thirty shekels," they thought they heard, "God favors men over women." And maybe they did hear it. Maybe some of their ancestors shared the same limitations and preoccupations Ezra and Nehemiah had.

To celebrate the completion of the physical walls and to communicate the need for the building of an analogous wall of respectability, Nehemiah and Ezra called the people of Israel together—all who they believed could understand the message they wanted to communicate—and read to them out of the Torah. Once they were finished reading together, Nehemiah and Ezra commissioned the Levites to lead out in small group discussions of the value of respectability and how they as a people might achieve it and thus truly earn God's favor. When all was done, the people began to weep with guilt. They obviously figured they had done some things wrong. If nothing else, they had not been as respectable as they were now hearing they should be.

Like the sincere people that they were, these elite of Israel who attended the reading began to look for ways to become more respectable (...and therefore retain God's favor). The first thing they thought they could do was to start observing the cultural holidays and feasts that had been forgotten while in exile. They did. It was great! So they began to make all sorts of promises regarding things they would do or remember. Good things. Just things. Particularly ways of demonstrating the Sabbath ethic of enough: appreciating God's provision by resting from work each week, giving the land time to rest every seven years, forgiving debts, routine sharing of their harvest with those in need, those without and those in vocation, participating in the rhythmic communal practices that remind one of this type of justice. Good things. Just things.

But then came a practice that seemed out of place, that seemed off key. The ever more respectable Israelite elites "found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, because [years ago] they did not... [help] the Israelites with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them—yet... God turned the curse into a blessing. When the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent." How odd, how random, to embrace a 1000-year-old grudge as if unto the Lord.

Nehemiah went as far as to record:
"In those days also I saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab; and half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but spoke the language of various peoples. And I contended with them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair! And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, 'You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves....'
"And one of the sons of Jehoiada, son of the high priest Eliashib, was the son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite; I chased him away from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, the covenant of the priests and the Levites.
"Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign.... Remember me, O my God, for good."

How did the respectable Nehemiah and his ever more respectable fellow elites of Israelite society get to where they were assaulting people and asking God to bless it?

Go to next episode.>>

Everything Costs Something

2010-01-20T14:40:00.000-08:00

(from Exodus 4—a story of liberation)

If you've every heard the story of Moses, you may have gotten the idea that all the confusion in Moses' life happened before the burning bush, and that after the burning bush, everything was pretty straight forward: Moses goes home, tells his family what he has to do, packs his bags, goes to Egypt and gets the job done. There may have been some struggle along the way—some things Moses had to contend with—but Moses is often depicted as a man crystal clear as to his purpose and mission. However, that was not the case, as Aaron likely learned a few nights later when he met up with his brother's family at Mt. Sinai while they journeyed toward Egypt.

"So what did Zipporah say when you told her?" Aaron inquired upon sharing his own story and hearing of his younger brother's remarkable encounter with God.
"She was all for it—until she found out what it would cost."
"What do you mean?"
"After Jethro, Zipporah's father, gave us his blessing, we spent the rest of the day preparing for the journey and left the following morning, early. We kept a good pace. As desert dwellers, Zipporah's people know how to travel. By the end of the day, Geshom, our son, was very tired. We made camp, set a fire, and Zipporah and the child laid down. As I stayed awake and prayed, the Lord spoke to me and said I must circumcise my son here at the outset of our pilgrimage, even as Abraham did, as an act of faith and covenant.

"The next morning I told Zipporah what the Lord had asked of us. To my astonishment, she flatly refused. 'You will not cut my son! That is not a custom among my people. It may be something mothers among your people allow, but I will not. And if you try to make me, I'll go back to my father and leave you to return to Egypt by yourself.'

"I had no idea what to do? Zipporah had never denied me before. She was so resolute that I just decided to drop it. I figured we could talk about it again at another time. I saw no reason to force the issue. Zipporah had already left her family for me, something she could never have anticipated. We were on our way to Egypt in response to the Lord's command. That was enough for the time being. Or so I thought."

"The next morning I woke up, and it felt like a boulder was lying on my chest. It felt as if God were trying to kill me. I couldn't breathe; I couldn't talk; I could barely move. I was scared to death. I was only able to reach out and swat at Zipporah. She woke startled by such a violent call into a new day. When she perceived how I moved and grabbed at my chest, she began to howl with fear. She didn't know what to do. She kept asking, "What's wrong? What must I do?" She cried out to God on my behalf. Then in the mist of her prayer she ran out the tent.

"My eyes rolled around my head as I rolled around the floor of our tent, snatching momentary glances of the crimson ceiling and the purple blankets and the brown earth and the white light of day... and... and... I thought I glimpsed Zipporah returning. I could have sworn I saw her brandishing a flint knife. I became even more afraid, now of what she might do to me! Instead she seemed to be moving toward Gershom. I thought she was losing her mind. I summoned all the strength within me. I rolled over to my hands and knees. The ground teetered beneath me as I struggled to rise to my feet. I gripped my chest even tighter and dropped to one knee, using my free hand to brake my fall. I groped toward her but topple over. I watched in initial horror as my wife tears the clothes from my sleeping son's body, takes something out of her mouth that she's been chewing, applies whatever it was liberally to the boy's midsection, waits a moment and then proceeds to quickly peel the foreskin from his private with the knife. Once done, she immediately applied a salve to Geshom's wounded pride. I don't know which hurt more at that moment, my chest or the sight of my son being circumcised unexpectedly.

"Zipporah then did the weirdest thing. She throws the boy's foreskin at me. It lands and clings to the big toe of my right foot, and she screams at the top of her lungs something like, "You bloody husband!" After that, she turns, runs and falls into an embrace of Gershom who by now is writhing in discomfort on his sleeping mat.

"The surprising detail of this observation slowly brought two awarenesses to my attention. First, that my chest was no longer hurting. Second, that despite my gratitude for the first awareness, I was far from pain free. Perhaps in sympathy for my son or perhaps because my wife snuck a kick in, my loins were throbbing!

"Wow. That's some stuff," Aaron replied, stunned. "All that over brit milah (circumcision)."
"Yeah."
"Who would have thought that circumcision was important enough to almost lose your life over."
"I don't know, but I've been trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps its importance reflects the seriousness of preparation. I've been thinking about everything that has happened in my life," Moses reminisced. "Early on, I was in such a hurry to complete the story of being a deliverer to my people. Now, once I've finally given up on my ability to affect any change for the Hebrews, here comes God saying the time has come.
"I was first tempted to think that everything I experienced and learned in my youth was worthless—whether it was the stories our mother, Jocabed, told me as my nurse or the ceremonies, feasts and social responsibilities I learned to celebrate while with you, even our own circumcisions. I had even labeled hollow the scholarly, political and cultural lessons I learned in Pharaoh's court. It had all begun to seem pretty useless to me as I wandered the desert with Jethro's sheep. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe my timing was off, but the preparation was no less important."
"Well, like the elders say," Aaron chimed in, "'Everything costs something—good or bad.' Either you pay the cost in preparation for the task you are about to undertake, or you pay the cost of refusing to prepare.
"And one doesn't get to choose the terms of preparation or the consequence for remaining unprepared," Moses concurred as he used a stick to poke the fire that warmed their late night conversation. "Each task requires what it requires."

"So how's Geshom feeling after his ordeal?" Aaron yawned and stretched ready for bed.
"Well, let's just say he was relieved when the day's walk had ended."
"Yeah, there's just no comfortable travel in his condition." They both chuckled uneasily at the thought.
"The upside is that the trip can only get better from here on out."
"Sure. Provided we don't wander into any plagues along the way."
"But what are the odds of that happening?"
"You're an eighty-year-old fugitive who was told by a fiery plant to demand the most powerful ruler in this part of the earth let all his free labor just leave, and your only credibility is a staff that turns into a snake and a spokesman who is but a slave himself."
"Well when you put it that way, it does sound a bit absurd, but stranger things have happened."
"Oh yeah. When?"

The Making of Job—Episode 2

2010-01-07T01:37:00.000-08:00

(from Job 2—a framing story)

Well, Lucifer was undone. He thought for sure that the compounding tragedy, one awful hit after the other, would be enough to devastate Job to the point that he would curse God and prove Lucifer right. "Surely loyalty cannot survive such great loss," he thought to himself. But as awful as things had gotten for Job—and things were awful, there is no way to gloss over that or to minimize it—Job was not destroyed. And what that meant for Lucifer was something was wrong.

At the next general assembly, Lucifer was in his seat at the start of the meeting when the sons and daughters of God gathered to report on the generative activities unfolding throughout the universe. God could barely wait to bring up the subject on everybody's mind. "Have you considered our son, Job?" God asked breaking into a broad smile. The room erupted with laughter. "'There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who... [has the utmost respect for] God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’"

Then Lucifer retorted, "‘Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. [Just] stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.’"

God paused for a moment, staring deeply into Lucifer's eyes with a strange mixture of pity and annoyance. "‘Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.’"

So Lucifer left the assembly again, and the Bible tells us that he "inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a... [piece of broken pottery] with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes."

Then in despair Job's wife said to him, "‘Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.’"

But Job responded, "You speak foolishly. 'Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?’"

And the judgement of the Hebrews who first told the story was that "in all this Job did not sin with his lips."

So the stage was set for one of the most dramatic showdowns ever captured in tale. And as with Hollywood or Broadway productions of today, much of the most meaningful action took place not up front, but behind the scenes. Perhaps that's the first big thing we learn about the stories in which we find ourselves. Many of them are attempts to go behind the scenes, to apprehend the unknown, to perceive the unseen, to broach the unfathomable. Why, you might wonder, would one seek out the hidden? Because that is human nature. We seek to organize and give meaning to our lives through the stories we tell. And sometimes that means filling in the gaps with the best we can surmise at a particular moment. We do this everyday when we tell the parts of any story that involves stuff we couldn't possibly know, like what a family member must have been thinking or what a friend did while she was away from us or what exactly two people said to one another that brought them to an historically significant decision—none of which we could know for a certainty.

It also means that we often seek to make concrete, realities that are often intangible. For example, in our stories we may describe what is to us a climactic struggle between opposing forces as a simple conversation between untamed iconic powers, God and Satan, for example. Or we may go the other way with it, making the typical highly dramatic—whichever serves the story best. This is just our human way of trying to get a handle on things that are beyond our perspective. Sometimes the 'goodness' and 'badness' of a situation seem universal and very clear. Other times, we pass that judgement based on our own limited perceptions of right and wrong. We can't forever tell child-like fables in which we speak of good and bad as domesticated animals that do our bidding: "Nice Good, you stay where I can see you," or "You Mean Bad, get back where you belong!" So we weave our interpretations of these very real opposing forces at work in our lives into our tellings of our stories, expecting that the reader forever understands that any story told is always told from a particular point of view.

We tend to use fancy words to describe this very simple and natural and just process. For the Hebrews who first told Job's story, the act of filling in the gaps was a sacred work—as sacred as just getting the facts straight—which over time came to be known as "midrash". In contemporary times, we may say that the author 'fictionalized' part of the story—in other words, 'made it up,' like much of the dialogue in the Job story—but that is not to say the author lied. Fiction is no less true simply because it is imagined. Imagination is how we as humans connect the dots of our individual experiences, make sense of our world and know that we are not alone. As long as we confess this and remember that not every part of every story we tell comes from direct experience, we are fine. It's when we become certain that our particular telling of a story happened exactly the way we tell it and has only one very definite interpretation that we tend to get in trouble—or better yet, become very troublesome to others. However, as we understand and experience more, we should expect to interpret and tell our stories differently, and every once in a great while, we may even begin to tell different stories.

These first couple episodes of Job help us to understand such things and a great deal more.

The Making of Job—Episode 1

2010-01-07T01:27:00.000-08:00

(from Job 1—a framing story)

There is an ancient allegory—perhaps the oldest story in the Bible—which explores the epic struggle between good and bad and humanity's efforts to tell the difference. Like any cherished old story, this story shaped the way those who told it understood the world around them. In fact, there are those who even believe that this story may hold the secret to help us properly value all other Bible stories. Let's tell it and see.

The story goes that one day God called a general assembly of all the sons and daughters of God. This assembly involved hearing reports of generative activities throughout the universe. Reports came in from all over. When it came time to hear the report from Earth, most members of the assembly expected only silence. It had been a long time since the assembly members had heard from her. Her guardian had long since turn his back on the assembly. As had become the custom, when Earth's name was called the guardians of the universe instinctively bowed their heads to whisper a blessing for her, when all of a sudden, the doors to the great chamber where the daughters and sons of God had gathered flew open and in strode Lucifer, the lost Guardian of Earth.

The Guardian assembly was flabbergasted. Who knew? No one had expected him to come. Despite old pangs of resentment, more than one tear was shed at the sight of their long-lost friend. As if nothing had changed in all the time Lucifer had been gone, God asked, "where have you been, our son?"
"Here and there throughout the earth," Lucifer answered with guarded frankness.
"So you've seen a thing or two," God responded, eyes searching, heart longing. "Have you learned anything?"
"Some."
"Some? Have you considered our son Job?"
"I've seen him."
"He's quite a man, wouldn't you say?"
"If you say so."
"What would you say?" God asked, eyes still searching, heart still longing.
"I say what I have always said," Lucifer replied volume rising, as he stood to his feet, looking deeply into all eyes assembled, "Job serves you for the same reason anyone else does: because you demand it, and you favor those who do."
"How dare you? You of all people should know that I make the sun to rise on the just and the unjust alike."
"Justice is in the eye of the beholder. Do you not protect him and his household and everything he has? You bless everything he does so that there is no end to his flocks and herds, food and land. I promise you this. If you were to take from him all he believes to be his, he would undoubtedly curse you."
"So you think?"
"So I know."

"So be it then," God decreed. Then to the members of the assembly she spoke, while also keeping a steady eye on Lucifer himself, "A wager has been brought, a challenge made. Your missing brother still believes that loyalty could never be an act of love but is always an act of self-interest or capitulation. What do you think?"
"He's a liar! He's a cheat! He's a usurper!" the crowd roared back.
"He's also your brother," she protested, and then came silence. "We will give him a fair hearing, for that is what love does." Then to Lucifer she said, "All right then. Take from Job what you will, but do not touch his health. Then we shall see the source of his loyalty to me."

So Lucifer left the assembly in the same strut of arrogance with which he had come. His followers met him upon his return. "The die is cast," he said to his legions. "We have been given carte blanche to wreak havoc in the life of Job. We may do what we want, but we cannot touch his body. So do your worst, my hoard. Go forth and take from him all he holds dear. Show him how fickle life can be."

So in that day, before he even knew it, Job from the land of Uz had lost everything he thought his own.

Now Job had a lot to lose. He was rich. He had three daughters and seven sons. In addition, he had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very, very many employees. Now that may not sound like a lot by today's standards, but if we adjust for inflation and the difference between our time and the time when this story was first told, that would make him a multi-billionaire, maybe even the world's first trillionaire. He was big-time.

But that wasn't all we know about him. In fact, the most important thing about Job was the thing that was up for debate between God and Lucifer. You see, the word was that Job was a genuinely good guy. Not just 'good guy,' as in people liked him, but genuinely good, as in "blameless and upright, one who... [had the utmost respect for] God and turned away from evil." That's quite a reputation. Not the kind of thing that can be said of everybody. As the wise ones say, "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold" (Prov. 22:1). They also say, "The days of a good life are numbered, but a good name lasts for ever" (Eccl 41:14). Again, Job had a lot to lose.

The way the story goes, Job's children used to take turns throwing these huge parties at each other's house for days at a time. They would invite people from miles around. And when one was over, Job would always gather his children and their families and employees and his employees and their families together and recount for them their many blessings, reminding them of their particular responsibilities as people who had been blessed with so much. Then, as was the custom in those days, he would sacrifice burnt offerings as prayers on behalf of each of them.

One day, while Job was at home and his sons and daughters were off at the oldest brother's house, eating and drinking wine, the Bible tells us, "a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell on them and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ While the messenger was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ While that messenger was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.’"

Job was floored. He couldn't hear anymore. He stumbled aimlessly from the yard, into his house. Then like a man possessed, he frantically searched for a knife and a bowl. He ran outside, filled the bowl with water, sharpened the blade of the knife to a fine point, then haltingly, jaggedly, looking down at his reflection in the water, he began cutting off his hair. Then he tore his robe from his body, which is what people did in those days to show their frustration and complete helplessness, and he collapsed on the ground. It is at this point in the story that scripture records one of the most beautiful and heartfelt yet ironic laments that could be uttered. Job worshipped by saying, "‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’"

"In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing."

Making Disciples

2007-01-25T09:11:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since we've posted, but we're back with the new found ability to post documents for download! Here are some thoughts about discipline that are the aggregate of many years of working with kids--my 13 years, plus the experiences of many others who have broadened my understanding of discipline. It's a strategy, one possible way of thinking about growing kids. It is not in any way the end-all of the subject. I hope you find it useful in furthering the discussion of such an important matter.

Big PUN, the notorious G.O.D.

2006-09-08T16:39:00.000-07:00

Michelle Lopez, a wonderful at-home mom from Arizona, recently wrote:

Hi Melvin,

I am on another blog called Emerging Women. We have been discussing "If God Punishes", which has led to interesting thoughts. Obviously, I am rethinking Bible stories for children of preschool/ Kinder ages. One thing I would be curious about, should the focus of traditional stories be changed. I know that traditional stories ie Noah's ark, focused on the evil in the world, and that certainly has taught many "the punishing God". Do you think that in light of Jesus and his ways, that even if that was what was happening, through Christ that changed? If Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world and God doesn't see it any longer, shouldn't we focus on maybe how God cared for Noah and His family? Or in other traditional stories of punishment, can we turn them to focus on "choices made and redemption"? Especially for kids, I think that too much time has been spent focusing on punishment and fear.

For example, just tonight my daughter asked me if God was going to make her blind. She had watched a "Christian" video at my mother-in-law's house. I know I will have to deal with some of that, but I question "Is this really what I want my kids to take away about God?" I have been very careful and yet she is still getting messages like that, and thinks God will make her blind if she is bad. That bother's me.

How can stories be reconciled through the way of Christ? Christ acknowledged the Old Testament but was always concerned with the way that it was interpreted. Have we and are we still doing that with the stories we teach? I hope this makes sense. I would be curious to hear other ideas, or thoughts about this. Just thought I would throw it out.

Thanks again,
Michele

Michele,

You raise great theological questions. I am humbled that you invite me to comment on them, and as in every act of humility I begin in prayer. I have no definitive answers. Nonetheless, I do have a few suspicions.

I'm not so much a dispensationalist so I don't believe things are starkly different after Christ than before. However, I do believe that through Christ our understanding of God has expanded, and we should allow it to continue to do so.

It seems to me that it would never be helpful to dismiss totally "punishment" from our understanding of God; if for no other reason, it would leave us with a skewed (toward indulgence, which is seldom, if ever, healthy) vision of what it means to be a parent. Rather I believe that we should allow God in the way of Jesus to redeem our understanding of what I would be more inclined to call 'discipline' and its function in child-rearing.

Let me rehearse some things you undoubtedly already know, just to give us the same frame of reference for the purpose of our conversation. I believe the goal of child-rearing is to equip our children to make as good if not better choices/decisions than we would--better being more toward God's kingdom, particularly more toward an others-interested love. What discipline does is make it less convenient to grow the way of self-interest--as we are apt to do (path of least resistance and all)--and more convenient to grow in a healthier, more abundant, others-interested direction (the way of Jesus). What happens at times, however, is that some are so determined to grow counter-fruitfully (I know that's not a word, but it should be :-) that they will sacrifice life and limb--theirs and others--to satisfy their self-interest. And what they discover sooner or later is that there is no sustainability (life) in self-interest. Eventually, self-interest ends up gobbling up the very thing one was after. The Apostle John puts it most succinctly, "In him [Jesus] was life" (1:5).

Thus, as Leslie (my wife) and I often say, our job as parents is to say, "No," 2 more times (one from her, one from me) than our children say, "Yes," and "Yes" 2 more times than they say, "No." And in doing so, we must be tireless and irresistible. For example, Les & I have taught our daughters how to ask for things early on. The youngest is 16 months, and her very few words include "up please," "more please," "[point] please". (It's a teacher thing; we got so tired of having students who would just declare a need out loud in class and expect someone to fulfill it!) Well, once our 3-year-old got 'please' pretty much down, she started to experiment. At first it was, "I want... [such-and-such]," and in the moment, if it's something we don't mind her having, it's easy to forget to make her ask properly. However, when we're on top of our game, we'll say no to anything she says "I want" for. Still, like any kid, she has sought to test our resolve. Her newest derivation on what we have taught her is to preface her desires with, "Maybe you should... [such-and-such-and-such]." Because we like to see her reasoning, this has been even harder to resist. Nonetheless, we know she'll never feel compelled to ask if she can get away with anything else. And we know the fruit her life will bear if she learns to manipulate before learning the humility and respect of asking. So tough and inconsistent as it may be at times, we strive to stick to our guns.

The way of Jesus has taught us these things and I believe I see them at work in God's good creation, so I have confidence in using them to inform my understanding of the dynamic between God and humanity throughout the Bible. I see God as Heavenly Parent working tirelessly to grow humanity toward life, yet many of the stories being about children who were determined even unto death (self-destruction) to think they knew better.

This is where I believe common language fails us: because I do not believe that common death (mortality) is one and the same with eternal death (separation from God). Maybe they would be, shy of the work of Jesus reconciling all things. But because of him, we live in hope that our stupidity that may lead to our mortal demise does not have to eternally separate us from the God who gives life.

So when I read the story of Noah, one of the lessons I see in it is that self-interest can't last always. When I read about Pharaoh Ramses, I see a man given the rare opportunity to resist God with resolve and what comes of that. When I read the stories of King Saul and Uzzah (the non-priest who touched the ark as David was returning it to Jerusalem), I see men who had accustomed themselves to exercising prerogatives (from the Latin meaning "before"+"ask") that were not theirs. All real lessons that must be learned. But all extreme examples of chastening which Paul is instructive in letting us know is not the first stage of God's discipline--not to mention that all struggle and/or misfortune is not an act of God's discipline (Bruce Wilkinson's Secrets of the Vine was real helpful to me in teasing this out). Still all these stories teach us that fire really is hot. Blessed is the person, young or old, who can learn from others' belligerence.

I believe the thing we must hold on to is the truth that "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance," and we should tell our stories from that point of grace. What is God doing in these stories to reconcile us unto Himself [unto each other, unto creation or unto ourselves]? How is She loving us back to Herself and discipling us in the direction of good health and sustainability? That is my focus [(communicated age appropriately, of course)]. Fear may be a good attention grabber, like spanking--and sometimes we need our attention grabbed--but neither is a good reconciler or teacher.

I pray some of that helps you continue to process through how best to teach your children. We're all still in process on this thing for sure. What are you thinking in response?

Much love,
Melvin Bray

What do you think, other parents?

And It Was Good

2006-08-31T07:05:00.000-07:00

Download an enhanced podcast of "And It Was Good", complete with audio and visual accompaniment (for viewing in iTunes or on an iPod)!

Learn with me this poem of prose of when the earth was young,
Of mysteries twice forgotten, of dreams yet to come.

Critique of its scientific realism brings little to the matter.
Truth is God sees... says... creates... and invites for us to join her...

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty,
darkness was over the surface of the deep,
and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

God said, "Let there be light."
And there was light.
God saw that the light was good.
God separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light "day."
God called the darkness "night."
There was evening, and there was morning.
It was day one.

God said, "Let there be a huge space between the waters.
"Let it separate water from water."
And that's exactly what happened.
God made the huge space between the waters.
God separated the water that was under the space from the water that was above it.
God called the huge space "sky."
There was evening, and there was morning.
It was day two.

"Let dry ground appear." God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place.

And that's exactly what happened.
God called the dry ground "land."
God called the waters that were gathered together "oceans."
And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, "Let the land produce plants.
"Let them bear their own seeds. And let there be trees on the land that bear fruit with seeds in it.
"Let each kind of plant or tree have its own kind of seeds."
And that's exactly what happened.
The land produced plants.
Each kind of plant had its own kind of seeds.
The land produced trees that bore fruit with seeds in it.
Each kind of tree had its own kind of seeds.
God saw that it was good.
And there was evening, and there was morning.
It was day three.

God said, "Let there be lights in the huge space of the sky.
"Let them separate the day from the night.
"Let them serve as signs to mark off the seasons and the days and the years.
"Let them serve as lights in the huge space of the sky to give light on the earth."
And that's exactly what happened.
God made two great lights.
God made the larger light to rule over the day. God made the smaller light to rule over the night.
God also made the stars.
God put the lights in the huge space of the sky to give light on the earth.
God put them there to rule over the day and the night.
God put them there to separate light from darkness.
God saw that it was good.
And there was evening, and there was morning.
It was day four.

God said, "Let the waters be filled with living things.
"Let birds fly above the earth across the huge space of the sky."
So God created the great creatures of the ocean.
God created every living and moving thing that fills the waters.
God created all kinds of them. He created every kind of bird that flies.
And God saw that it was good.
God blessed them. God said, "Have little ones and increase your numbers.
"Fill the water in the oceans. Let there be more and more birds on the earth."
There was evening, and there was morning. It was day five.

God said, "Let the land produce all kinds of living creatures.
"Let there be livestock, and creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals.
"Let there be all kinds of them."
And that's exactly what happened.
God made all kinds of wild animals.
God made all kinds of livestock.
God made all kinds of creatures that move along the ground.
And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, "Let us make humanity in our likeness.
"Let them rule over the fish in the waters and the birds of the air.
"Let them rule over the livestock and over the whole earth.
"Let them rule over all of the creatures that move along the ground."

So God created humanity in his own image,
in the image of God, God created him;
male and female God created them.

God blessed them.
He said to them, "Have children and increase your numbers.
"Fill the earth and bring it under your control.
"Rule over the fish in the waters and the birds of the air.
"Rule over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Then God said, "I am giving you every plant on the face of the whole earth that bears its own seeds.
"I am giving you every tree that has fruit with seeds in it. All of them will be given to you for food. "I am giving every green plant to all of the land animals and the birds of the air for food.
"I am also giving the plants to all of the creatures that move on the ground.
"I am giving them to every living thing that breathes."
And that's exactly what happened.
There was evening, and there was morning. It was day six.

So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing.
So on the seventh day he rested from all of his work.
God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.
He rested on it. After he had created everything,
he rested from all of the work he had done. [Genesis 1:1-2:3, NIV & NirV]

Like any poem, this one has rhythm and brilliant imagery;
So much for us to learn and hear, to taste and feel and see.

A poet likes to play with words: make light of dark and heavy;
Then speak of rest for One not tired to teach us to live justly.

There's so much meaning one could derive from how the story's told.
But disproving science is not the point of a story that's this old.

One thing we know: poets repeat ideas of great import',
Like counting days and countless good God found in her own art.

Of truth, I know not what to make of all I hear and see,
But there is of late a blessed thought that whispers joy to me.

Of all the things that God could boast and pen by poet's hand,
He said, "It's good," a fleeting phrase written as if in sand.

It was not "perfect," or "great," or "pure," or any grand such thing,
provisional praise for an evolving world that yet was still becoming.

So when my children at times insecure struggle with who they are
"Simply 'good' is good enough," comes God's affirmation from afar. [Epilogue added January 2009]

~The artwork featured with this rendition of the creation poem was created by Holly Sharp.