__________________________________________________

The maxim holds: the thing that you love most about someone is also the thing that makes you insanely berserk about that same beloved.

For my mother, it’s her determination.

My mother is nothing if not determined.  Determined to be her own person, determined to love her family with every fiber of her being, determined to make that love tangible by acts of presence and kindness and cookies.

Her determination, however, mutates when something material is in her way.

If something is stuck, is hooked, is just visible but some unlucky object is in its way, she’ll pull, yank, flip, push, and smash with astonishing determination in order to dislodge, free, or reach it.

It never occurs to her that some gentle repositioning might accomplish the same thing without all the collateral, not to mention primary, destruction.

It makes me crazy.

And when I see my daughter doing it, it about puts me around the bend.

So not too long ago, I found myself screeching, “AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!  You’re Doing An Oma!  Please Quit Doing An Oma!”

Mom, of course, happened to be there, and heard me.

She’s decided that the phrase pisses her off.

__________________________________________________

Cancer pisses me off.

Pancreatic cancer is the biggest bully on the block.

Just googling it, or googling the only credible cure available, the Whipple, does nothing for emotional well-being.

Not just the cancer needs to be taken down and taken out, but most anything in the near vicinity.  She’ll lose a decent chuck of her pancreas, duodenum, and stomach.

That said, we are one of the few who appear to have a fighting chance.  Mom and I share a PA with uncanny instinct.  Her hunch led us to catch it at a very early Stage One.  We are told that this daunting procedure might just do the trick.

I need the docs to Do An Oma.

For that matter, I need Oma to Do An Oma.

And I wouldn’t mind God Doing an Oma too.

__________________________________________________

We’ve been led to have uncomfortable thoughts and conversations.

She is 75, after all.  You get to a certain age (or even experience certain experiences) and realize that nobody gets out of here alive.  At some point, we will all close our eyes for the last time.

You can rail against death all you want, but it still will close in, and sometimes with nary a neener.

It just Is.

Walt Bouman shaped me with his words, “Now that you know that you’re going to die, there’s more to do with your life than preserve it.”

It’s all true.

And yet, one doesn’t need to concede one to death before it’s time.  I’m sure Walt would agree.

As crotchety Ecclesiastes says in a moment less crotchety than quietly reflective:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

And I am of the mind that it’s not yet my mother’s time to die.

She might be 75, but she’s a damn spritely, damn determined 75.

Instead, it’s a time to heal.

(Though Ecclesiastes might be right that it’s my time to break down, and to weep, in the name of righteous indignation, and against this insidious disease).

I do believe that there’s a time when inevitable death comes as Peaceful Grace and not Triumphant and Taunting Finality.

I’m not interested in preserving my mother into infinity and beyond.

I am interested, however, in protesting death when it enters uninvited and before its time.

__________________________________________________

Some might say that it’s about God’s timing.

I get that.

I get that there are a whole lot of things in the Grand Scheme that I don’t and won’t ever know.

But I also get that I’ve got some things to work with, some knowledge that I have to trust.

I know that God is in the business of life and health and healing, and so where there is that, I want to work harder on its behalf.

I know that saying “It’s in God’s hands” leads awfully quickly to passivity, to quietism.  That is not how I tend to operate, and it sure isn’t how my mother operates either.

I know that death comes in many forms, and resignation to it is but one of its starkest and sneakiest guises.

Death, in the form of pancreatic cancer and all of its implications –for that matter, death in any untimely form–is not welcome here, in this family of mine.

__________________________________________________

In the name of my beloved mother Marge, then, where there is untimely death, I invite you all to Do An Oma.

Do An Oma against death which arrives outside of its season.

Do An Oma against that which surrenders before premature death.

Do An Oma against forces which work against soteria, that is, salvation: health, healing, and wholeness.

Determined Protest.  That’s what it means.

Do an Oma.

The day was a big day at our congregation, and in my own little world.  We’d scheduled a meeting after each service to decide whether the church supported the pursuit of a “congregational renewal” grant.  Pastor Lori Hope and I flip out about All Things Theological, and this grant would allow me to be called as a 1/4 time pastor  to help Pastor Lori and St. Mark’s create a worship community in which theological education would be the blood that pumps through all elements of its vision and action.

Naturally (and understandably), my husband was out of town.

Naturally (and not so understandably), Else and Karl and I got to St. Mark’s a few minutes late for the beginning of the meeting after the first Sunday service.

Naturally, I used the time between the end of that meeting and the beginning of the next service to try and be all places at all times and dash to Target to pick up a need.

Naturally, Karl looked suddenly really, really tough as we got him out of the van.

Unnaturally, I had luck when the aisle we were in was right next to the container aisle.

I had a split second to decide whether I would end up purchasing by default a bucket with pastel hearts or rainbow stripes.

I opted for the rainbow stripes.

And, in case one is ever desperate to get checked out quickly, simply holding a used plastic box with a very ill looking child clears out a check-out lane like no other.

That bucket worked faster than Moses’ staff.

Poor, sweet Karl.

So naturally I couldn’t get back for the second meeting, naturally I couldn’t reach my mother who was on her way to church, naturally I couldn’t reach anyone at church, and naturally, as I’m calling my father while driving, poor sweet Else is holding our new purchase in front of K, all the while caressing and calming poor sweet Karl as he throws up again, and again, in the back of the van.

Mom is finally reached, and comes over to play with E-girl, and when Karl seems to be zonked enough for me to run to clean out the buckets, I flush the yuck, and naturally, the toilet continues to run.

So noticing this constant sound after I’d crawled back in bed with Karl, I roll my eyes at Mom and whisper a request to her to please jiggle the handle.  I warn her that she might need to lift up the back to jostle those doo-hickies back into place.

So she did, loyal E-girl there to help her.

Suddenly I hear two surprised screams, and water, spraying water.

Naturally.

I took a look at Karl, did a quick cost-benefit analysis, and decided that I needed to quietly leap out of bed to see what the trouble was, for I was sure that there was trouble.

There stood Else, dripping wet, surprised and grinning.  There stood Mom, dripping wet, surprised and grinning, but her arms were stuck under the tank cover.  ”I opened it and this hose just popped off, sprayed me and everything in sight, and it only stops if I squeeze the tube, but I can’t get my arms out now because they are stuck under the cover, and so rather than standing there surprised and grinning, would you take the cover off your mother’s arms?”

And so, naturally, there we stood, mother-daughter-granddaughter, belly-laughing and not a clue about what to do to fix the matter, and fully aware that at any moment, poor sweet Karl could throw up again.

And in my sphere, all of these, every last bit of it, is natural.

Right before the Toilet Incident, Mom told me that she still remembers when she was a young girl and it dawned on her that a person could have a broken leg and scarlet fever at the same time.  ”How is that fair?” she said she remembered thinking.  And it raised for her some of her first disturbing questions about God.

Rejoice in the freedom and grace of Easter.

Anna

This past week, Christians celebrated Passion Week, a week oddly named, apparently, given that Jesus was on his way to death on Golgatha.

The word “passion,” however, comes from the Latin passio, and means (get this) suffering.

Isn’t that fantastic?

The word we normally associate with burning love actually has its root in suffering.

Anybody who has ever loved anyone or anything (Twins fans, anyone?) though, gets it.

Love and suffering go hand in hand.

Maundy Thursday recollects the Last Supper when Jesus offered new mandates, or commandments (the word comes from the Latin mandatum, giving us Maundy Thursday).

One of those commandments was “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Hmmm.

Now I’ve always found it bothersome that in the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creeds, Jesus jumps from Mary’s arms into Pontius Pilates’.  I realize that they were written for other reasons, but frankly, an awful lot of important stuff happened in that in-between time, like Jesus feeding, healing, forgiving, breaking boundaries, welcoming, teaching, announcing, visiting, and extending mercy.

In these actions, he loved us.  Passionately.

That said, Jesus did end up in the arms of Pontius Pilate, with his own arms splayed wide.

Why?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

(And by the way, I sure wish that people would hold up placards of John 3:16 and 17 at sporting events).

Suddenly that commandment to “love one another as I have loved you” loses its veneer and compels us not just to walk like Jesus, but to be like Jesus, propelled toward feeding, healing, forgiving, breaking boundaries, welcoming, teaching, announcing, visiting, extending mercy, and dying.

Today Christians sit on the cusp of Easter, the event that gives us our name. It is Easter that gives Jesus his title of Christ.

Calling ourselves Christ-ians means that we commit to being ambassadors of Jesus’ agenda, not our own.

Passionate followers of Jesus know that we are called to reflect our GOD.  That’s what following Jesus is, isn’t it?  Not just watching where he goes, but going there too, and doing likewise?

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

Passionately.

The tale is tragic, the music somber, the services haunting.

These three days ground my understanding of who God is and what God is up to.  They are where I begin and end my thinking about God, and they thread themselves throughout everything in-between.

To Christians, it reminds us that God suffers, that God shares our pain, that God took death within God’s being.  There is nothing that has not touched God.

To Jews, however, it is a tale told with accusatory blame.

Christians say that we each killed Jesus.  The Good Friday standard hymn “Ah, Holy Jesus” says it well:

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus hath undone thee!

‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;

I crucified thee.

The texts say that the Jews killed Jesus.

Tradition does too, no matter what we say in our creeds about Jesus dying under Pontius Pilate, a Roman.

That’s right.

The Romans killed Jesus.  Crucifixion was a Roman means of torturous death.  Crucifixion itself was not a Jewish matter at all.

This is not to say that there was no measure of Jewish involvement in Jesus’ death.

Most scholars acknowledge that some Jews played some role in the the death of Jesus.

But the Jews who cried for his demise were those who were most threatened by Jesus’ presence: those in power.

Neither the average Jews-on-the-street nor the Pharisees had anything to do with the death of Jesus.

There were, however, those Jewish leaders in power, not unlike some Christian leaders in power, who were threatened by Jesus’ message and threatened by those who were identifying him with kingship, with Messiahship.

People in power don’t like Jesus.

Jesus’ death was mostly political.

It was partly religious, but even here, it was related to religious power, and a religious power that was directly tied to Roman power.

But “The Jews” did not kill Jesus.

The Christian tradition, on the other hand, has killed Jews by saying so.

http://www.americancatholic.org/newsletters/sfs/an0399.asp

In December, 1967, John Updike was writing “Talk of the Town” for the New Yorker, and he spent most of that “Talk of the Town” column talking about the “Umbrella Man.”  He said that his learning about the existence of the Umbrella Man made him speculate that in historical research, there may be a dimension similar to the quantum dimension in physical reality.  If you put any event under a microscope, you will find a whole dimension of completely weird, incredible things going on.  It’s as if there’s the macro level of historical research, where things sort of obey natural laws and usual things happen and unusual things don’t happen, and then there’s other level where everything is really weird.

My father sends me an awful lot of good stuff for blog ponderings.  Far too long ago, he sent me a link to a New York Times video about the Umbrella Man.  It’s a short film by Errol Morris, an interview with Josiah “Tink” Thompson, quoted above.  He’s an academic-become-gumshoe, and while not all people agree with his methods or his madness, he raises curious questions, and I like people who raise curious questions.

The video is all of 6:36 minutes long.  Worth a coffee break.

Mr. Thompson became intrigued with the story of the lone man holding a lone open umbrella on the day that Kennedy was shot.  The mystery man stood precisely at the place from which the fatal shots rang out.

The whole matter was a mystery that one didn’t know existed until you caught a frame or two of that fateful day and noticed in them one black umbrella held by a man in a long black trench coat, precisely at the place from which the fatal shots rang out.

I’m not going to spoil the short tale for you.

But I am going to share a few of my gleanings from it.

It is extraordinarily easy to observe something, or to be taught something, and assume that it is true.  Evidence points to it, common sense points to it, and sometimes there’s even a thrill connected with believing it.

And so you act on your belief.

Sometimes, however, there’s a quirky element to history that one can never assume to know, and because of the buried unknowns, it turns out that you couldn’t be more wrong.

—————————————————

Studying history is a great way to ramp up one’s humility quotient.  Just when you think that you know something, you find out that you may sort of know it, but that you don’t, really.

I just got done working with a group interested in studying something about Noah. (My initial post about this gathering and the geek-high fun I have had with it is found here).  Last Friday, I brought in my biblical ringer, Dad, to teach them about the historical context in which the story was shaped, and written, and edited.

(He was so good that I’m expecting that I lost my gig with them to him.)

It’s easy to get grumpy about elements about the Noah tale (for instance, my husband raised the good question about whether Noah had a moral responsibility to trump God’s command and gather as many life forms as possible on that there ark of his).

Sometimes, however, be it about Noah or any other story, even those of us who consider ourselves liberal and progressive thinkers become literalists, looking only at the obvious facts, and not considering whether there is more to the story, an alternate rendering, a different truth.  A person can get mad at what it says, rather than asking, “Why does it say that?” “What else could be going on?”  ”Maybe the writer just had a bad day and like a Dante precursor just decided exactly what he’d do with the whole shebang, just wash ‘em down the drain?”

To some degree, we’ll never know.

Some things, though, can be said, a number of things that so rarely are said, and so after talking about Assyrians and Babylonians and Northern Kingdoms and Southern Kingdoms and Priests and Yahwists and Compilers and Editors and Dashed Hopes and Raised Hopes, Dad helped us begin to rediscover Noah.

The point is, of course, in short, how do we know what we know?

And what don’t we know that could change everything?

And yet if we know that we will never know, why do we begin?

And yet, in the absence of knowledge, how do we act?

Plain truth is that we are active, if we are not dead.

Passivity is only a different form of action, a different response to information: in this case, information that we don’t know it all and never will.

The Umbrella Man suggests that we will never know it all, and that acting on our ignorance (either because we are ignorant of our ignorance, or we are fully aware of it and recognize that we will never fully overcome it) will lead us down the wrong path, sometimes.

But what’re you gonna do?

——————————————————

We are creeping up on Easter.

It could be that a dead guy is alive again.  There are some good reasons to believe it (my favorite is that in the four gospels, all concur that women, whose testimony wasn’t even admissible in any legal trial, were the first witnesses.  Crazy way to make a persuasive case for a dead guy rising, in the first century.  Even today, come to think of it…).

There are some good reasons not to believe it (my favorite here is that dead people tend to stay dead).

Maybe ancient dudes were sitting around a camp fire making up eschatological whoppers.

Maybe deep in the history of time there is a powerful force of creation and of well-being, a jolt of life that can never been seen but can be glimpsed, intuited, and yet has a mystery that is so grand that even the word “mystery” fails.

But you have to act.

You might be wrong.

But you have to act.

As for me, I picked up my palm branch today, and stood under it.

I might be wrong.

But waiving a palm branch in honor of a guy who fed the hungry, healed the sick, taught (and was taught by) women, challenged authorities, forgave, and threw his life toward the conviction that death does not have the last word, but life, and life shared, does, is so quirky that it might just be weird enough to, in an inexplicable quantum physics sort of way, make me say that there might just be something to it.

The palm branch is now my symbol that I do not know it all, but I stand underneath it anyway.

Even though it’s not nearly as practical or stylish as an umbrella.

It seems to me that it might not be so dumb, then, to bullet out a few broad descriptors.

1.  OMG is a blog. I write, and I invite readers to submit questions about theology, religion, Scripture and the intersection of any or all of these with, well, most anything else.  I’ll throw back a few responses, and when possible, even an answer.

2.  OMG is a study into which you are invited.  If you have a question, or a series of questions, which call for more in-depth, persistent, or personal conversation than the blog can offer, I welcome you to come to OMG by way of walking through its door or by visiting via Skype.  Hourly rates can be found here.  I have worked with curious people from age 10 to, well, older than that; with people seeking to find their theological belief system; with couples wanting to identify and work out of a similar notion of God for their relationship, their family, their finances, and so forth; and with groups of friends who have together similar gnawing questions and want a place to think them though.

I also offer the possibility of continuing education for clergy, providing a chance to hone your sabbatical or CE area of interest.

3.  OMG is a consultant. I have had the privilege of working with congregations to help in the discernment of their collective theology, which then helps develop a clearer formation of its mission.  I have also worked with therapists to provide a space to consider the connection between psychology and theology.

4.  OMG is a workshop giver and keynote speaker. I have offered or will offer keynote and workshop presentations to a wide variety of groups in a wide variety of places. To name a few: the South Dakota Synod Pastors at their Spring Conference in 2011; Presbyterian clergy at their New Church Development Conference in Tampa, Florida in the summer of 2011; Episcopalian female laity and clergy at the February 2012 Womankind Conference in Richmond, VA; and Pennsylvania Lutheran and Episcopal clergy at their Spring Conference in 2012.

5.  OMG is me.

I’d love to be of service to you, to your congregation, or to your organization.

And if you haven’t already, please like me on Facebook, follow me on twitter, and/or subscribe to my blog.

Peace to you!

Anna

This thoughtful question showed up in my box in response to the piece I wrote some time ago about the author Anne Rice, who decided a while back that she was no longer going to go to church.

Here’s how I think I’m going to, dare I say in light of the reason for this discussion, take a stab!! at this question (I crack me up!): I want to first consider the manner in which Anne Rice makes her point, and then consider her point.

Anne Rice didn’t just say she was going to find another way to relate to God.  She did say that, that is true, but she managed to give quite the raspberries to the Church–awfully broadly defined–in the process.  You can some of her find her splattered fruit here.  Let me show you just two of her ripest selections found on his page:

“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”^[61]

“In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”^[61]

How does she really feel?

Like I said in my original blog linked above, I do understand why a person would leave organized religion (and let’s be clear, it’s not always so organized).

I respect that position.

But it’s hard for me to respect splattered fruit.

The congregation which I attend is not quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and, near as I know, infamous.  Or, rather, perhaps it is infamous, because it was in our basement that the movement to repeal our state’s food tax was born, and it is in our sanctuary that we welcome gay couples (not to mention dyed-in-the wool Democrats and Republicans), and it is from our sanctuary that we bring church to prisoners and give away a lot of money to foreign and local “undeserveds.”

What perturbs me about Anne Rice’s comments is that they are not nuanced, and seem to indicate no small measure of ignorance about the powerful and rich tradition under the name of Church which defines itself precisely over and against her notion of what it is, through and through.

How do I really feel?

It’s a good moment to think through the matter, though, as there are a number of issues swirling about the Church proper these days.

Can you imagine Anne Rice’s reaction to Santorum and the Birth Control Coverage controversies?  And in the spirit of candor, I’m guessing I’m largely with her.

This is where we come to the point about her point, or, rather, points.

First, the matter of what Church is.

The Church is fallible.  It has been the bastion of hate, condemnation, myopia, ignorance, and bigotry.   It should be held accountable for the awfulness that has been done in God’s name.

But it is not monolithically so, anymore than feminists, gays, and Democrats (most, but not all, of my friends fall into one or more of these categories, as do I) are monolithically infallible.

And as much as I sympathize with all of these groups, we can find instances when they (like the Church) have claimed the Corner of Truth when they can’t, in truth, park there.

Groups, and I don’t care which one you are talking about, are as fallible as are individuals.

Which brings me to my second point.

I’m all for praying alone (that is, in theory.  I’m a lousy prayer, as I’ve ‘fessed up to before.  But theoretically, I’m all over it).  And I’m all for private spirituality, for meditation, even for the occasional lazy Sunday morning worship of God on St. Mattress, as a late friend of mine called it.

But an individualistic relationship with God alone seems to me to risk living out in microcosm what one might critique with the church in macrocosm: that is, a sense that the individual person or group has it right, and doesn’t need another opinion, and that you really don’t need any past, any present, or any future but your own.

Consider another one of Anne Rice’s statement’s:

“I think the basic ritual is simply prayer. It’s talking to God, putting things in the hands of God, trusting that you’re living in God’s world and praying for God’s guidance. And being absolutely faithful to the core principles of Jesus’ teachings. I loved it.^[64]

Did you note that sentence I bolded?  I’m curious how she knows what those core principles of Jesus are.  The best scholars I know continue to poke around to learn about them.  And these thinkers didn’t discover them simply by sitting in a room talking to God.  They engaged history and each other.

Which brings me to a fusion of the above:

There is a new pulse in the Church, a new vibrancy, across denominational lines, often referred to as the “Emerging Church.”

I find it refreshingly Jewish.

Participants and observers of this movement (and it is a movement, as in fluid, changing, alive) notice that people want to know more, they want to do more, they want to engage more.

The liturgy is central, but not entire.

Rehearsed dogma is out, curiosity and grounded claims are in.

Belief in action is the name of the game, which, necessarily, implies that you have to know what you believe in order to act accordingly.

It is not a new denomination, but it is a different way of thinking about Church, and it is, to quote the esteemed questioner, a different way to relate to God.

Keep your ears and eyes open for glimpses of its presence.

Meanwhile, part of me wants to say that it is no skin off my nose if someone chooses to leave the Church to worship God in isolation from congregational community.

Another part of me says that I feel a huge gouge in my nose if someone chooses to leave the Church to worship God in isolation from congregational community.

Jesus gathered people in from isolation into community.  He brought together those who came from disparate traditions and said, “You are welcome here.”

A commitment to living in community moves the community to find a way to live together in nuanced fashion, and for people in the community to come together in nuanced fashion.

I think it’s possible.  I know it’s possible.  And I think that where you see gathered diversity, as opposed to gathered triumphalistic uniformity or isolated disdainful piety, you see something of the reign of God.

And there is, indeed, a different way to relate to God.

Pax.

I am somewhat ashamed that I don’t remember how many surgeries he’s had since the accident in 2004; maybe that’s because I hope that each one is the last one.

Today is also Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.

And on this surgery/Mardi Gras day, naturally I’m thinking etymologies.

It might be an odd thing, to some, that word histories are swirling in my mind at this moment, but it is a comforting habit of mine (and a fine antidote to the blaring “Law and Order: Special Victims” showing in the waiting room for our viewing pleasure).  This idiosyncrasy of mine helps me sort through realities from new angles, deepening how I think through the narrow and through the broad.

The words I’m considering are relatives to each other: tenuous and tenacious.

The fusion of Karl’s surgery day, Fat Tuesday, and Ash Wednesday fuse tenuousness and tenacity too.

Tenuous comes from the Latin word meaning “thin,” (tenuis), which has as its root the prefix meaning “to stretch.”

Tenacious comes from the Latin meaning “the act of holding fast,” (tenacitas) ”tough, holding fast,” (tenax) ”to hold,” (tenere).

Every time that Karl’s little body is cloaked in surgical scrubs, and that little plastic mask is placed over his little face, I make a little sign of the cross on his forehead and am reminded, again, that life is tenuous.  There is such a thin (tenuis) line between life and death.

But every time that Karl’s little body is cloaked in surgical scrubs, and that little plastic mask is placed over his little face, and I make a little sign of the cross on his forehead, I am reminded, again, that he is tenacious.  He is tough (tenax) and holds (tenere) forth with mischievous and contagious “joyful defiance.”

I think that Mardi Gras is our tenacious defiance of the tenuousness of life.

And that isn’t all bad.

Traditionally, Lent has been cloaked too, not in surgical scrubs but in dreariness and in the subjugation of joy.

I’ve come to think that sometimes one needs tenacity just to get through Lent.

I’m not opposed to setting aside 40 days of one’s year to reflect on the tenuousness of life, a tenuousness that is starkly marked by many with the imposition of an ashen cross on the forehead.

Marking life’s tenuousness also marks its sacredness.  The cinders smear into forehead grease that life has no business being squandered.

It’s to be savored.  And stewarded.

And one can steward the savoring.

And one can do that with some upward heel-kicking, pancake stuffing, music enjoying indulgence (metaphorically and literally speaking), and by inviting others to join into the festive fray.

At WomanKind in Richmond, a woman announced her church’s new tradition of giving up negativity during Lent.  The congregation is St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg, VA, and you can read about their plot to abandon cranky thoughts here.

They caught the idea of this new kind of Lenten discipline here.  The point of a Lenten negativity fast is that one can develop of habit of moving away from pessimism, criticism, contempt, and impatience (not only toward others, but also toward oneself), and moving toward constructive naming and solving of problems, and hope, and celebration.

That takes tenacity.

It is now 9:14 in the evening.  Poor Karl came through the surgery well, but had deep and awful pain during recovery.  Those were tenuous moments, I tell you what, seeing his little face wrinkled in pain and fear.

I smeared his forehead and his cheeks with tears while I sung “Hush Little Baby” and tenaciously insisted that he get more morphine, and then more, and then more.

And by the time he was wheeled into his room, he was cracking his why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road joke and picking his nose like he was picking a banjo, grinning all the while, and I don’t even think it was due to the morphine.

And then he laughed some more, and napped a bit (as did the mama), and then the grandma came and brought a dino squeeze toy that pelts balls out of its jaws, and then he ate, and then he puked, and then he pretended to puke just to flip out the mama, and now he’s asleep.

And I am finally writing the first OMG blog in a month, the between-two-houses action of moving and painting caught in midstream, the fabulous WomanKind conference and this surgery now behind me, and I am now subsumed by a deep exhaustion, and sipping smuggled red wine from a styrofoam cup.

And I find that I too am caught in the tension of tenacity and tenuousness, of Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, of knowing that, Fat Tuesday aside, life is slender, and so let us be joyful in it.

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)

___________________________________

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.

___________________________________

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