Instead, I’ve been too busy reading about the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish.

Well, that and my daughter came down with strep and we’ve been busy making fairies and watching Little House on the Prairie. And we’re moving.

But my delay has mostly been bound up because I’ve been distracted by Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and have been happily geeking out for over a week straight.

(And I am not alone: one friend put me onto the children’s book version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and my husband [kindred geek] said, “Oh, and remember that Star Trek episode when Picard travels to the planet which speaks in metaphor, and he ends up reciting the Epic of Gilgamesh!” Made my heart flutter.  My father, from whom I get most of my geekly tendencies, has several copies of both.  The other day, over at my parents’ home, I realized that I’d forgotten my volumes at my OMG study.  I whispered to my little boy with a traumatic brain injury, “Sweet boy Karl, can you ask Opa whether he has some spare copies of the Enuma Elish?” Which he did, clearly enunciating the title, and giving my father extra cause to pour an extra libation in celebration that geekiness carries more truck in our family than a TBI)

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Warning: this is a long post.  But if you want to hear about a paradise, an ark and flood and doves, a tree of life, firmaments being stretched out and so forth that come from literature far older than the familiar tales from Genesis, it’s worth your time to slog through the below, and even more to read up on the links at the far bottom.

Geeks of the world, unite.

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I began fussing with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish because a group of people with whom I work were curious about Noah.

And I can’t, of course, teach about Noah and the Flood without teaching about the different creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2.

And I most assuredly can’t do them any credit if I don’t make a nod to other Ancient Near East literature.

(Utterly unrelated to the task at hand, this little nugget from Gilgamesh [and I love it that my spell-checker knows this word without even being so programmed.  Smart Mac.] caught my little eye.

“Gilgamesh, whither are you wandering? Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Gilgamesh, fill your belly, day and night make merry, let days be full of joy, dance and make music day and night. And wear fresh clothes, and wash your head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, and let your wife delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of men.”

Some say it is the oldest recorded advice in literature.

Just saying’.)

But vis-à-vis Old Testament tales of creation and floods, these two stories shaped the texts we know so well…even though we don’t know these primary texts well.

Or at all.

The Enuma Elish was crafted around the 12 century BCE.

It’s a tale of two divine figures, the fresh-water male god Apsu, and the salt-water female god Mummu-Tiamat (she was called Tiamat for short).  Tiamat is depicted also as a dragon from the sea (think, “Leviathan”).

Their, um, waters mingled, and created more gods.  These ragamuffins made Apsu and Tiamut nuts with their racket.

What is inappropriate may be age-appropriate, I always say, but Apsu and Tiamut didn’t see it that way, and decided the best thing to do to quiet the noise was to kill the kids.

The kids, however, found out about this plot, and figured that doing unto others as they intended to do to you was a good policy, and so they offed Apsu.

Tiamat was displeased, and so according to established family dynamics, she decided to go to war with her children: finish them off, once and for all.

The god-lets realized that they had crossed the line, and like it’s been said, if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Desperate to save themselves, they found Marduk, a warrior, who overcame Tiamat’s threat by blowing a wind into her as she gaped her mouth open to devour him.  Into her mouth he flung an arrow; that and the air which filled her belly, distending it, killed her, leaving only a carcass amongst the waters.

And so he split her body like a shell, pressing the top across the skies, and the bottom to become the earth, and insisted that her waters be held back.  He created constellations, and vegetation, and becomes the Man of the Hour.

That is, until the gods realize that he had assigned tasks: one had to be the sun god, one the star god, one the moon god, and so on and so forth.

The gods began to get irritable, and so to appease them, Marduk struck on the idea of creating humankind by mixing up the blood of Tiamat’s general so that the gods would have servants.

The End.

The Epic of Gilgamesh tells a different tale.

It was written around 2000 BCE.

(We’re still working with Epiphany, believe it or not)

King Gilgamesh was unpleasant.  He was a dictator, a rapist, and capricious.  His people cried out to the god Aruru for relief, and Aruru sends Enkidu, a man-beast, who, according to Christine Hayes, was very Adam-esque.  He was to tame Gilgamesh, but before he could, Gilgamesh, who had heard of this Enkidu, sent a woman (perhaps a prostitute?) to tame Enkidu.

The two fell in love, and Enkidu found the inspiration, maturity, and transcendence to address Gilgamesh.

This decision, however, forces him out of paradise: he clothes himself, he loses his relationship and identity with the animals, and can not return.

Long and short of it is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight, they become fast friends as a result, and against the better judgment of all, they leave town to fight Humbaba, an evil monster god.

Together they overcome their fears and their disadvantage, and kill Humbaba.  Ishtar, goddess of war and sex (go figure), finds herself attracted to the man behind all of this violence and asks Gilgamesh to marry her.  He, however, doesn’t reciprocate her desire, in part because he’s well aware that she tends to inflict pain on her lovers.

She is displeased.

She vows revenge (trust me, this all has something to do with Epiphany) by way of harnessing the Bull of Heaven, which destroys Gilgamesh’s town Uruk.

But her revenge is short-lived, as Enkidu and Gilgamesh kill the bull and chuck its tail at Ishtar in a spiteful display of victory.

A word to the wise: do not annoy the Ishtars in your life.

In retaliation, she struck Enkidu with a fatal illness, and claimed him.

Gilgamesh was distraught at his death, and set out to discover the gods’ secrets of immortality.  He began a quest, then, and sought Upnapishtim, the legendary immortal human.

Upnapishtim, a very moral man, had been warned in a dream that a tremendous flood was imminent due to the evil of humanity.  He was commanded to build an ark with very specific dimensions, and gather the seeds of all living things to preserve life so that new life could begin after the waters subsided.  Three birds were brought on board and released to see whether land was near.  The dove and the sparrow returned, but the raven disappeared.

The god who caused the flood was reprimanded for the severity of the flood, and as compensation for the destruction, Upnapishtim and his wife were rewarded with eternal life.

This eternal life was not possible to be given to Gilgamesh, who was given yet a parting possibility at youthful living until he died by way of a plant of life at the bottom of the ocean.  He fetched it, only to have it stolen by a serpent.

Crushed by the futility of his quest, Giglamesh returned to Uruk, where he had to face his mortality and die.

Do you see the clear connections between what you’ve read so far and the season of Epiphany?

No, you say? Not at all?  Have I been imbibing of my daughter’s strep medicine, you wonder?

Well, let me help you have an epiphany then.

Clearly, there are overlaps between these two stories and the creation and flood stories in Genesis.  A man and woman in paradise, an ark with dimensions in which righteous creation is saved, firmament spread out keeping the waters above and below at bay, and so on.

Yet while there are similarities between these stories, there are also key differences, both of which reveal (i.e., offer the chance for an epiphany) something of the Jewish/Christian notion of God, and of creation, and of humanity.

Chances are, the ancient Hebrews had heard these stories, not least of all when they were in exile in Babylon.  So the tales were familiar to them.

Christine Hayes, professor at Yale, tells us that the famous first words of Genesis, “In the beginning” would be better translated with the sense of “When from on high,” the beginning words of the Enuma Elish…which are, by the way, “Enuma Elish.”

And she does such marvelous work with the connection between the wind of Marduk, and Tiamat being from the deep, that I’m going to quote her at length here:

Remember the cosmic battle between Marduk and Tiamat: Marduk the storm god, who released his wind against Tiamat, the primeval deep, the primeval water, representing the forces of chaos. And you should immediately hear the great similarities. Our story opens with a temporal clause: “When on high,” “when God began creating”; we have a wind that sweeps over chaotic waters, just like the wind of Marduk released into the face of Tiamat, and the Hebrew term is particularly fascinating. In fact, the text says “and there is darkness on the face of deep.” No definite article. The word “deep” is a proper name, perhaps. The Hebrew word is Tehom. It means “deep” and etymologically it’s exactly the same word as Tiamat: the “at” ending is just feminine. So Tiam, Tehom — it’s the same word, it’s a related word.

THAT’S SO COOL!

But as Christine Hayes points out, these same stories were rejected by adapting them.

Your gods are the moon and the stars and the sun?

Our God made your gods.

Your gods made humans to serve them?

Our God made humans to be in God’s image.  They are in that way sacred.  They are called to tend to creation, not split it, destroy it, and see it as an enemy.

In Genesis, evil need not be seen as inherent in creation.  Instead, God saw it all and called it “good.”  ”Very good,” as a matter of fact.

Instead, evil is a choice that humans have by way of their autonomy.  Hayes notes that although there are all sorts of parallels to the tree of life in Ancient Near Eastern Literature (think of the plant on the bottom of Gilgamesh’s ocean), there is no parallel to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It’s only that tree that humans are commanded to avoid.  She writes:

It’s one of the things about God: he knows good and evil and has chosen the good. The biblical writer asserts of this god that he is absolutely good. The humans will become like gods, knowing good and evil, not because of some magical property in this fruit…but because of the action of disobedience itself. By choosing to eat of the fruit in defiance of God — this is the one thing God says, “Don’t do this! You can have everything else in this garden,” presumably, even, you can eat of the tree of life, right? It doesn’t say you can’t eat of that. Who’s to say they couldn’t eat of that and just live forever? Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[But] it’s by eating of the fruit in defiance of God, human beings learn that they were able to do that, that they are free moral agents. They find that out. They’re able to choose their actions in conformity with God’s will or in defiance of God’s will. So paradoxically, they learn that they have moral autonomy. Remember, they were made in the image of God and they learn that they have moral autonomy by making the defiant choice, the choice for disobedience…

So the very action that brought them a godlike awareness of their moral autonomy was an action that was taken in opposition to God. So we see then that having knowledge of good and evil is no guarantee that one will choose or incline towards the good. That’s what the serpent omitted in his speech. He said if you eat of that fruit, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you’ll become like God. It’s true in one sense but it’s false in another. He sort of omitted to point out… he implies that it’s the power of moral choice alone that is godlike. But the biblical writer will claim in many places that true godliness isn’t simply power, the power to do what one wishes. True godliness means imitation of God, the exercise of one’s power in a manner that is godlike, good, life-affirming and so on. So, it’s the biblical writer’s contention that the god of Israel is not only all-powerful but is essentially and necessarily good.

Such epiphanic good stuff in there, good stuff that is perhaps best seen in relief to these formative stories.

Your gods are options, the ancient Hebrews seemed to say, but here is what our God is about, and not about:

It’s not that we are to be in servitude to other gods (what sort of gods are out there, offering themselves to your life, or to the lives of those whom you love, or to our culture?).

It’s not that creation is evil, and to be despised.

It’s not that immortality is where it’s at.

And it’s not even that the world was created exactly as this is written down.

It’s (in part) that God calmed the chaos; provided for God’s creatures; established expectations of goodness and reverence toward God, creation, and each other; and that creation is, at root, good.

As I told my daughter last Sunday, an epiphany is an a-ha moment, and Epiphany, then, is the season of a-ha moments.

My preparation for this presentation last week yielded a bunch of a-ha moments:

A reminder that the Jewish-Christian tradition did not begin in a vacuum; an offering of new knowledge about ancient Hebrew; a gift of renewed clarity that God loves creating and creatures, and…

an affirmation that I am unapologetically and irreversibly a geek.

Web resources:

Christine Hayes, Yale Professor.  Her lectures seen here can also be viewed online.

Dennis Bratcher, of the Christian Resource Institute.

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/religion-flood.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

http://eawc.evansville.edu/essays/brown.htm

We are in Anchorage, Alaska, and the trees are covered with inches of fresh snow from the night skies.  The mountains behind my sister’s house are straining to be seen, but we know that they are lurking behind the clouds.  I’m not sure whether the clouds are purple because of thick moisture, or because they are actually very thin, and the purple hue is actually hinting of the dark mountain bulk.

We are just a shave beyond the winter’s solstice, so Alaskans are on the upswing toward light, minute by minute.  Even so, we still don’t see the full sun until 10-ish, and must wave it goodbye at close to sometime around 3:00, give or take.

For this reason, lights adorn houses and trees here, not only in honor of Christmas, but in honor of light.

It’s awfully beautiful.

Once I heard a truism: that if you have a room filled with light, and a room filled with dark, separated only by a door, when the door opens darkness does not enter the light, but light enters the darkness.

Here, in more ways than one, we are surrounded by light.  We feasted on grilled fresh oysters, king crab, greens with pomegranates, freshly baked bread, and pavlova and rum pudding for dessert.  This morning we opened a bounty of presents, and savored a breakfast that was made with all hands, big and little, helping in the kitchen and at the table.

That said, I am keenly aware that there is darkness.

So the truism isn’t quite true.

I know of sadness, brokenness, anxiety, loss, and regret in my life and others.

And this year, death has made itself known of late in the lives of those whom I know and love, apparently paying no heed to the season.

So it has knocked on doors anticipating opening up to the Christ child, and not to the grave.

The families have no choice but to let death in and then let death go, leaving with their loved ones, leaving the living standing in the doorway, dumbfounded and disconsolate in the darkness.

Dan Swets, Augustana College professor, died in a tragic, fiery charter plane crash a week ago Friday.  I married him and his bride Robyn three years ago, and not even a month back, they celebrated their son’s first birthday.  He has three older, extraordinary children.

Dick English died, also an Augie professor, just weeks into his retirement.  Our first Christmas in Sioux Falls, also under grim circumstances, was made brighter by him and his wife who mischievously left gifts from a Christmas Spirit on our doorstep in the days leading up to Christmas Eve.

I never knew Connie Skovlund, although she went to High School with my father.  She birthed one of my five closest friends, a woman who has made my life immeasurably better.

Not more than a couple of months ago, Paul Freese also died.  He owned a bar in the town I served as pastor, along with his wife Eileen.  Before we flew back to the States from Germany with so-injured little boy Karl and so-tiny baby girl Else, Paul sent me an email saying, “Be sure and let us know when you are flying through the skies so we can stop praying.  We don’t want anything to get in the way of the plane bringing you home!”

They are all buried, now, dust returned to dust, cold bodies taken back into cold winter earth.

And the families are left in darkness.

Unless we recall the darkness, the light seems not brilliant but mocking, even artificial.

That’s the tension that Christmas offers.  Jesus, human and divine, coming into the mess of life, promising light, and water, and life to a world of darkness, and parched lives, and death.

Last night, during our Christmas service, there were several babies crying, mostly of the infant variety.

When, however, the lights dimmed and the candles for Silent Night were lit, then there was modified silence: cooing, perhaps, and astonished eyes that followed the flames, but generally, there was no more weeping.

The light from others calmed those who were sad.

On this Christmas morning, I remember those who are Christmas mourning, and I pray that I may be an ambassador of the light.  I pray that the promise of God incarnate be seen in incarnate acts of kindness, of mercy, of justice, of righteous anger, of righteous reconciliation, of comfort, and of the news that it is dark, but the light is breaking in, and will, in the end, overcome, act by act.

Merry Christmas.  May his light overcome your darkness in this season and all.

He finds himself at Radio City Music hall for their Christmas festival.  I’m excerpting the whole Passage of Interest:

I came in when the goddam stage show was on. The Rockettes were kicking their heads off, the way they do when they’re all in a line with their arms around each other’s waist. The audience applauded like mad, and some guy behind me kept saying to this wife, “You know what that is? That’s precision.” He killed me. Then after the Rockettes, a guy came out in a tuxedo and roller skates on, and started skating under a bunch of little tables, and telling jokes while he did it. He was a very good skater and all but I couldn’t enjoy it much because I kept picturing him practicing to be a guy that roller-skates on the stage. It seemed so stupid. I guess that I just wasn’t’ in the right mood. Then, after him, they had this Christmas thing they have at Radio City every year. All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them—thousands of them—singing “Come All Ye Faithful!” like mad. Big deal. It’s supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can’t see anything religious or pretty, for God’s sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they were all finished and started going out of the boxes again you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette or something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it—all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would’ve liked would be the guy that plays the kettle drums in the orchestra. I’ve watched that guy sine I was about eight years old. My brother Allie and I, if we were with our parents and all, we used to move our seats and go way down so we could watch him. He’s the best drummer I ever saw. He only gets a chance to bang them a couple of times during a whole piece, but he never looks bored when he isn’t doing it. The when he does bang them, he does it so niche and sweet, with this nervous expression on his face. One time when we went to Washington with my father, Allie sent him a postcard, but I’ll bet he never got it. We weren’t too sure how to address it.

I confess: when I have listened to arguments about how high communion cups have been filled, or complaints about who borrowed the church coffee pot without following proper protocol, I have often thought, “Did Jesus really die for this?”

That’s not nearly as colorful as, “Old Jesus probably would’ve puked.”

I strolled downtown last week, Christmas shopping.  I was in a bit of a sad spirit, I admit.  I was alone, and the combination of Christmas glitz and glam, Dean Martin, Mannheim Steamroller, and potential presents audibly crying out, “Buy me me me me me” just about took me down.

And good old Holden came to my mind.

In the face of all that, well, Christmas, missing only angels popping out of boxes, I felt just like Holden at Radio City Music Hall: a sacrilegious atheist.

It’s an interesting term.  One could argue that it’s hard to be religious, let alone sacrilegious, if you don’t believe in religion.

The word ‘sacrilegious’ actually has nothing to do with religion, but has to do with temple robbery, with stealing something that is sacred.

It’s even more interesting since I am hearing an awful lot this year about people purportedly trying to steal the sacredness of Christmas.

For example: the indignant astonishment at people who “take the X out of Christmas….” excepting that X is the ancient Greek symbol for Christ.  Just like the old Prego commercials, “It’s in there!”

More perplexing for me, though, is the trouble caused by the phrase, “Happy Holidays” over against “Merry Christmas.”

I’m seeing complaints about it everywhere: in the media, on Facebook, overheard in conversations.

I know and I appreciate that folks who believe strongly about this term are staking a claim that they believe is about  protecting and honoring their faith.

But I am doing my best to wrap my mind around the question, “Why this claim?” and I’m having a tough time of it.

For starters, it’s not Christmas.

It’s Advent.

Even today, December 19th.

We’re still in Advent.

At the very least, one could argue that it’s a sign of faith to not wish people Merry Christmas…at least not yet.

On top of all that, I’m left to wonder, what is gained in foisting a Merry Christmas, even once it really is Christmas, on a Jew, say, not to mention a sacrilegious atheist, anyway?

How would we Christians feel if some Jew lobbed a “Happy Hanukkah” our way, and added a spurious glance which clearly questioned our American credentials and faithfulness to God if we said, “Happy Holidays” to them back?

Why is this an issue?

And so I think again of Holden, and wonder if Jesus is puking.

But fine, if I have to think about Christmas in Advent, let’s roll up our sleeves and peek at Christmas in the texts, with the help of the magazine Sojourners.

Its editor Jim Wallis writes:

What is Christmas? It is the celebration of the Incarnation, God’s becoming flesh — human — and entering into history in the form of a vulnerable baby born to a poor, teenage mother in a dirty animal stall. Simply amazing. That Mary was homeless at the time,a member of a people oppressed by the imperial power of an occupied country whose local political leader, Herod, was so threatened by the baby’s birth that he killed countless children in a vain attempt to destroy the Christ child, all adds compelling historical and political context to the Advent season…

In Jesus Christ, God hits the streets.

It is theologically and spiritually significant that the Incarnation came to our poorest streets. That Jesus was born poor, later announces his mission at Nazareth as “bringing good news to the poor,” and finally tells us that how we treat “the least of these” is his measure of how we treat him and how he will judge us as the Son of God, radically defines the social context and meaning of the Incarnation of God in Christ. And it clearly reveals the real meaning of Christmas.

The other explicit message of the Incarnation is that Jesus the Christ’s arrival will mean “peace on earth, good will toward men.” He is “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.” Jesus later calls on his disciples to turn the other cheek, practice humility, walk the extra mile, put away their swords, love their neighbors — and even their enemies — and says that in his kingdom, it is the peacemakers who will be called the children of God. Christ will end our warring ways, bringing reconciliation to God and to one another…

Making sure that shopping malls and stores greet their customers with “Merry Christmas” is entirely irrelevant to the meaning of the Incarnation. In reality it is the consumer frenzy of Christmas shopping that is the real affront and threat to the season. [Old Jesus probably would've puked]

Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season. [Old Jesus probably would've puked]

Imagine Jesus walking into the mall, seeing the Merry Christmas signs, and expressing his humble thanks for how the pre- and post-Christmas sales are honoring to him. How about credit cards for Christ? [Old Jesus probably would've puked]

While we’re at it, here’s another point of clarification: The arrival of the Christ child has nothing to do with trees or what we call them. [Old Jesus probably would've puked]

Evergreens and wreaths, holly and ivy, and even mistletoe turn out to be customs borrowed from ancient Roman and Germanic winter solstice celebrations, assimilated and co-opted by the church after Constantine made peace between his empire and the Christians.

Upshot seems to be that Merry Christmas means more than Facebook graphics with snowmen and Christmas trees and happy faces–none of which are Christian symbols, anyway–asking us to repost if we agree that sacrilegious atheists are stealing our sacred holiday.

Instead, Wallis is making that case that Merry Christmas means actively working on behalf of the poor, actively standing up against legislation and legislators which and who harm them, actively working for peace and reconciliation even when searingly painful and apparently hopeless, actively caring for the incarnate world on behalf of the least of these.

Now, so that you don’t think I’m a complete snarky scrooge, there is room for merriment.

I think Holden is right about Jesus getting into the kettle drummer.  A syncopated downbeat, contra schmaltz, contra glop, contra bogus litmus tests of committed faith, euphoric in announcing a different and unexpected rhythm, Jesus is into that.

I do believe that God loves the stuff of life: earth, laughter, wine, butter, lovemaking, sunlight, art, babies’ burps, love letters, ocean sounds, flannel sheets, puns, eskimo kisses, hard rolls, potatoes pulled right from the dirt.

God is not opposed to merry Christmases, or any other time of the year, for that matter.

And, for what it’s worth, neither am I.

I am not, despite the last two blogs, a curmudgeon.

So to you Christians, I earnestly wish you a blessed Advent.

When the time is right, I’ll wish you an earnest Merry Christmas, in all senses of the term.  I am kicking off the season in Alaska, where I will celebrate with my sister and her family.  Our annual Boggle Contests (I will lose) coupled with ample Cosmopolitans, and snow, and moose noses on her windows, and Christmas goose or offerings from the Alaskan waters, and trees be-twinkled with white lights and real candles, and gentle singing of Silent Night in the deep black night of Anchorage, will come together and create long-lasting merriment.

To you others, perhaps especially you sacrilegious atheists, I wish you earnest happy holidays.

I look forward to making the world merrier, and happier, with you all.

And there are a lot.

Some days there seem to be more questions than on others.

I am speaking from experience.

For individuals, couples, or groups who are curious about gaining more knowledge, about clarifying beliefs, about identifying new congregational directions, about wondering out loud, consider spending some time with OMG.

Until the end of December, one-hour individual and couple sessions, either on-site or via Skype, are $60.00 per hour, plus tax.

Although I don’t fit under a tree, and certainly not in a stocking, an OMG gift certificate does.

Contact OMG for more information at anna@omgcenter.com, or at 605-275-1004.

Below is a link and then the full text of a piece I wrote for our Sioux Falls local paper, the Argus Leader. It was published this last Saturday.

http://www.argusleader.com/article/20111112/LIFE/311120037/St-Homobonus-clarifies-money

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For the same reason that I savor the change of winter to spring to summer to fall to winter again, and the rhythm of the morphing seasons in the church, I enjoy delving into the lives of the saints. The habit anchors me in traditions far wider and deeper than my immediate world and is a reminder that it’s not just about me, or even just about me and Jesus.

I’m thinking about saints these days, with All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 and the post-dated celebration Nov. 6 in worship.

So given an opportunity to write this week, naturally, I flip to the calendar of the saints.

Here’s one new to me: St. Homobonus. His name means “Good Man,” in Latin.

He lived from 1111-1197, dying on Nov. 13, the day of his commemoration.

Son of a wealthy businessman, he inherited significant monies and a significant desire to do business well and honorably. He gained a reputation not only for his commercial success, but most notably for his donation of the better part of his profits to the poor.

He has since become the patron saint of business people and tailors … though curiously, not the poor.

(Interestingly, if you google “Homobonus,” you’ll find his plastic statue in packaging that promises that with it, you’ll “make a fortune!” Another site marketing the piece says, “It’s a tough economy. We’ll take whatever edge we can get.” Perhaps they’re missing the point.)

The more I look into him, the more I realize that Homobonus caught my attention because of All Saints’ Day, but also because of recent headlines on the economy and the Occupy movement.

Homobonus did not see money as evil.

He also didn’t see it as an end-unto-itself or as something that was his because he earned it; nor did he see that he needed to sacrifice his principles to gain more of it.

He saw money as a gift to be given to others because it was itself a result of gifts that were given to him by God.

As we think on money, the economy and political decisions regarding it, we would do well to remember St. Homobonus. His life reminds me, at least, that “my” money isn’t just about me, nor is it mine, and that it does have something to do with me and Jesus, and in fact something wider and deeper than my immediate world.

Last week, I got this query:

Hello Anna,

As I walked to work this morning I saw posters for a “Hell-oween” event…I called the number on the poster and learned that it is going to be a haunted house similar to “Hell House”  which highlights “real-life” terror such as abortion, suicide, homosexuality, etc.

I am concerned, and frustrated. You can’t argue, you can’t call them out publicly, but at the same time I can’t just sit here.

What would your response be? As a human I fear for the teenagers that enter on Friday night and walk out with such intense, misguided understandings.

First, I apologize that I am only now getting to it: sick kids have dominated my thoughts this past week, and their yuck has been frightful enough!

I know of these houses.

Whenever I disagree with somebody, I try to get into their mindset.  It’s a trained habit, forcing me to move out of a reptilian, amygdala-fired reactionary frenzy and toward a thoughtful, perhaps even mindful, consideration of what is being presented and why.

It’s practiced caritas.

So, in the spirit of charity (which stems etymologically from the word caritas), people who create these houses of horror think that they are saving souls.  They think that if people would only “have eyes to see” the eternal consequences of their “immoral” choices, they would abstain and therefore regain their place in heaven.

While many of us find this “evangelism technique” distressing (to say the least) many of us would not hesitate, say, sending our children to a talk against drunk driving given by someone terribly maimed by their decision to do just that.  It’s not Schadenfreude, but rather cause-and-effect made manifest with the goal of averting disaster.

How much more, they figure, ought we literally scare the hell out of people?

We are doing it for their own good!

And let’s face it: it gets people’s attention.

Young people’s impressionable attention in particular.

But here’s the thing about young people: they are in the process of maturing.

And they are ripe (that’s the meaning of the word ‘mature’) for owning their own opinions, their own beliefs.

They are beginning the process of emancipation from the obligatory acceptance of Authority’s opinion, a move which frees them to learn not only that there are other ways of thinking about matters, but that it is acceptable to think!

And so I see these houses as an opportunity to empower them with the gift of some questions at exactly this fortuitous moment in their development into adults.

These questions, for example, aren’t a bad place to begin:

1. Where in Scripture does one see this notion of God’s desire to eternally damn people?

2. What is going on in those texts, and in the time in which those text were written?

3. Where do you see in Scripture contrary notions of God?

In other words, what does a teenager love to do as much as anything, but question authority?

And these houses try to gain authority by scaring the hell out of them.

So the teen has an opportunity to own what they believe, and why they believe it.

They also have the opportunity to learn how arguments are made.

Those who use this approach to make someone come to their understanding of God use coercion via fear as a primary tool.

“Believe or die” can be effective…though the integrity of the effect is questionable.

And so here are more questions:

1. Why use fear as a way to convince people to act or believe in a certain way?

2. How does fear as a catalyst for belief shape the nature of the end-result belief?

3. How does this method reflect the group’s/person’s understanding of God’s essence, or at least God’s way of engaging?

And then I wouldn’t hesitate asking yet another set of questions:

1. Why these terrors?

2. What do they seem to have in common?

3. What sort of terror might those who consider having abortions, or those who have suicidal thoughts, or those who fear coming out, be experiencing here and now?

4.How might we be complicit in their terror?

5. What of other terrors like starving children, the ill, the destitute?  Or of terrors such as greed, monopoly of power, of apathy, of ignorance?

6. Are we as ready to offer help and compassion as we are to condemn?

In short, it seems to me like these “Houses of Horror” are horrible indeed.

But for different reasons than they like to think.

And one can redeem them by inviting those who might be influenced by them to steer clear of the anxiety they produce, to remain calm, and to ask the questions.

One more thing:

Today is Reformation Day.

The key piece of the Reformation is that we are saved by grace and not by works.

That also suggests that we are also not damned by them either.

And it seems to me that that notion, the notion of grace for all, is more frightful to some then hell.

Maybe across the street from your friendly neighborhood “Hell-oween,” you could hold a Counter-Event , a “House of Heaven,” on All Saints’ Day, tomorrow.  You could call it, “Hello, even’ you?”

I’ll stick with my day job.

I’d never heard of the things, but wowza.

You don’t want to meet one in a dark alley, or anywhere else for that matter.

Here are several links to give you an idea about why a whole show was dedicated to rogue waves:

Discovery Channel

Another Discovery Channel

Damninteresting.com

Wikipedia

US News

So a ship sails peacefully on the blue, when out of this very same blue, a 70-to-115 foot tall wall of inviable power appears.

One can do nothing but wait for impact.

No escape.

No hiding.

No pleading.

No mercy.

The wave will sink you.

Until 1995, scientists doubted that rogue waves were anything but the inspired legends of captains and sailors who had spent too much time on the open sea.

But that year they changed their minds.

Off the coast of Norway, an oil rigg measured one of these fluid behemoths to be 76 feet high as it hit the structure.

And the legend became the documented phenomenon.

Now, not only was my friend taken aback by the awesome power of these rogue waves.

Not only did it cause her to rethink a tentatively scheduled cruise.

But she pointed out that life provides its own rogue waves.

You’re sailing along, and then you look up and have only a moment to realize that your whole life is about to be overcome.

And there’s nothing you can do.

You will be tossed into the sea.

In Scripture, the sea is a symbol, a metaphor, for chaos.

(Were I to have a natural personal totem, suffice it to say that it would be the sea)

The presence of God’s power shows itself when the sea is controlled and calmed.

There’s an image circulating about on Facebook (I got it on the Nebraskans for Peace page), and it looks like this:

Rogue waves, this confluence of power, this convergence of energy from unrelated directions, this concentration of destructive forces, threaten us all, and are threatening precisely because they are beyond our control or our perception…at least until the moment right before they stare down at us, and announce that we are about to be thrown overboard.

And, true to the metaphor, sometimes the power of the chaos isn’t believed by anybody.

But in point of fact, the chaos is there and, assuming that the wave doesn’t take us down, down, down, we need someone to rescue us, to pull us out of chaos.

Insofar as someone does just that, sending in the Coast Guard, the lifelines, plucking us out of the water and leaving the broken timber and sunken treasures behind, they’re calming the sea, and stewarding God’s presence, extending a hand to someone who is otherwise drowning.

That said, another way of looking at rogue waves is this story from Perth, sent on to me by my husband.

So here’s a guy with the best of intentions to do himself in, and a rogue wave comes in and saves him.

There’s an interesting thought: sometimes rogue waves might be the very thing that rescue us. Southern and Roman Catholic author Flannery O’Connor understood this idea: in fact, she built a literary career on it.  Sometimes it is precisely concentrated chaos that throws us onto shore.

And then yet a third take, also from my husband: perhaps there is something to be said about rogue blessings, a wall of tremendously overwhelming grace and undeserved forgiveness and unmediated love and unexpected reconciliation and awesome, joyful surprise.

Rogue waves.

On reflection, one hopes, I suppose, to be spared from, saved by, and blessed with them.

Though I confess that I prefer to think about the whole thing on the prairie while looking at amber waves of grain.

Anna

A baby’s birth isn’t just the event itself, but is a symbol of new beginnings, of uncountable possibilities, of history and hope and peace in a bundle.

Else was almost Petrea.  Petrea was my paternal grandmother’s sister’s name, and is the middle name of my sister.

In the end, she got the first name of my quite fantastic sister; it’s also my cousin’s name and that of my father’s Danish cousin.

Her middle name is Kristine, which was my paternal grandmother’s name; Kris was the name of my maternal grandfather, and is also the name of my wonderful cousin on this same side of the family.

She has another two names following ‘Else Kristine.’ Up until she was a year old, they were Madsen Coning: my last name and the last name of my late husband.  I had kept my name, you see, and yet after Karl and Else were born, we wanted to have one family name.  As a gift, I was willing to take his name once we returned to the States.

But then he died.

And it seemed a bit pointless to change my name, so I changed the kids’ names, and so now we have Karl Overgaard Coning Madsen, and Else Kristine Coning Madsen.

Familial connection is key to me, you see.  To the minds of my late husband and me, names anchor our children in something.  Else and Karl are expressions of whence they came.  Their names recall that they are not random blips; unique, truly, but not isolated incidents.

We know who we are in large part by knowing our history.

In fact, just two nights ago, Else crawled on my tummy with watery eyes, which rarely come.  ”Baby Girl, what is wrong, Sweet One?”  ”Mama,” said Elsegirl, “I miss Papa.  It’s just sad that I am the one who knew him the least.”

And so we spent time, her tiny body burrowed into me so that she could hear and feel new stories about her Papa, so she could know more about him, and therefore about herself.

Else was only eight months old when her papa died.  Her first aware “normal” was chaos.

I think that’s partly to what she owes her depth.  She knows that chaos exists.  She learned that it’s o.k. to ARG at the universe (in our family, the kids are allowed a swear word.  They’ve chosen Scheisse, the German word for “shit.” I don’t think that they know what it means in English, but sometimes the power of cussing comes just because it’s a word that somebody says you’re not supposed to say).  Once one ARGs for a while, one moves on, because otherwise one doesn’t just say the ARG.  One becomes the ARG.

Her depth showed itself early on.

When she was only 18-20 months old, Sweet Baby Girl stopped her toddling across the kitchen floor.

It creeped me out.

She never stopped.

Ever.

So I leaned down, and said, “Else, honey girl, is everything o.k.?”

And she looked at me with big blue eyes, and was clearly shocked at something.

“Mama,” she said, and then slowly, “I remember God.”

I stared at her, and got to my knees, and grasped her shoulders, and looking directly into those eye pools, said, “Tell me!”

And she simply shook her head, “No.”

Else knows things that she shouldn’t know.

She knows about empathy, about compassion, about metaphor, about symbol, about wry humor, and about grace in ways that she isn’t supposed to yet.

She knows about delight, and serenity, and defiance, and righteous indignation.

She knows that when people act badly toward others, there might be something troubling them.  That fact doesn’t excuse what they are doing, and it doesn’t mean that one needs to tolerate it, but it does mean that it might be up to us to offer the kindness to them that they can’t seem to offer to others, or even to themselves.

She knows about acupuncture needles in Karl’s body, and knows to sing to him when he’s scared, and to get toothpaste after he throws up, and to wait patiently until he actually says what we all know he will say, and that we can’t go on hikes or camping as other families, and that none of this is Karl’s fault and so we love him and us through it.

She shouldn’t have to know these things, but she does.

Sometimes, when she knows she’s gotten herself into a bit of a pickle, she will say in rapid-fire succession, “I know I know I know!” And then realizes that were she really to know, she wouldn’t be in a position to protest that she did.

She knows, then, that she could be wrong, and that Mama can also be wrong, and that it is o.k. to be wrong.

Perhaps most of all, however, she knows that she is known.

We have two verbal rituals, my children and I:

Every morning before I say goodbye to them on the playground, I say: “You are my….” and they add “sunshine…” and then I pick up, “and you are a….” and they reply “miracle.”

Every night before they fall asleep, I say to them as they are snuggled into their beds and blankets, “You are beautiful, you are safe, and I love you.”

Imprinted with notions of sunshine, and miracles, and beauty, and safety, and love, the two of them know that they are treasures, and treasured.

And on this, her 8th birthday, let me take this moment to let the world know a bit of my daughter, a child of God, a blessing to this world, and even still a bundle of history and hope and peace.