Like a Seal on My Heart

The smooth surface of white skin surprises.

The world sees a splash of brilliant color and form.

When we are together, we allow these marks

Of friendship to peek through the sleeve,

The waist of our jeans, a toss of the hair

And there. There they are,

Raphael’s cherubs, fleur-de-lis, serendipity.

The sad-eyed lady’s drum, water, truth, prosperity.

The stunning beauty of them in indigo blue

Forest green and pitch blackness.

 

If we could peel them off and trade, like dresses,

I could wear yours and you could wear mine.

I could wear the angel, feast day of my birth.

You, my Chinese character for truth.

And you, beloved Dylan’s drum.

I’d put on your watermark, a reminder to me

To dive into the places I fear to tread.

Serendipity, the hallmark of our meeting,

Fleur-de-lis, three petals; purity, light, strength.

They are set on our bodies like a seal,

The way you have set me like a seal on your hearts.

 

The world sees the shape and the color

But they do not see the stick of the needle.

The piercing of the skin, needed to become.

The pain that dug deep, shared in that room,

In this house and in that bar.

On thousands of words sent through the air.

It was there in the sound of weeping,

In the force of our teeth, grit against the drill bit,

Where the ink wasmade indelible.

And now steadfast, dependable, always, always. There.

When the breath held on, let go, held on.

 

I let you go and hold on.

Brave you to the world the way I expose the marks.

Give their eyes a glimpse of the color;

They will see the beauty of you

The blue of your eyes, the center of the daisy.

And you, the brown of your hair,

The mark of your name on the nape.

But I know how the cuts have been made.

How the ink buried deep,

And set you, like a seal on my heart.

 

Sacrificial Lambs

I have always wanted to do a research paper on the slaughter of sons in the Bible. It is a pervasive theme. The first of course is the morally questionable command of God to Abraham to offer his son Isaac on the altar of sacrifice. It is an ethically suspicious story in many ways. The problem of a God who would demand that a father slit the throat of his beloved son is multiplied only by the father who would be willing to do so, no matter how heavy his heart. The message here is one of obedience, which was necessary I suspect for a people whose principle failing in Hebrew Scripture was faithlessness to a god with whom they were unaccustomed. The pre-Israelites were a polytheistic nomadic people who were being recruited to pledge allegiance to the God of Abraham. And it was quite difficult for them to turn their backs on the gods that they knew to worship a god who had not proven himself. Understood within this historical context, one can almost make sense of the drama of the story in conveying how crucial obedience and faithfulness would be. That God “tests” Abraham’s loyalty by insisting that he murder his son is made no less horrific by considering that God ultimately does not allow the deed to be done. That Abraham does not protest, indeed does not refuse to follow through, is an inversion of ethics in which obedience to a higher authority takes precedence over one’s own moral sensibilities, not to mention justice. Interesting too, how this theme of obedience is repeated in the narratives of Islam in which the same Abraham is commanded by Allah to slit the throat of his oldest son Ishmael. That the Biblical traditions contain not one, but two stories in which God asks Abraham to slaughter both sons and in which Abraham is a willing accomplice displays an emphasis on obedience which to me seems a little over the top. Unfortunately, the story is not typically told within this historical context. Rather, the story is told and obedience is lifted up as an intrinsic good, no matter the immorality of the command. I also suspect that a story which highlights the sacrificing of sons as the quintessential act of nobility, would also serve as a powerful tool for a culture that subsists within the context of a war mythology; of  war, which requires that mothers and fathers be willing to sacrifice their sons to some higher, nobler cause. Lift up the sacrifice of sons as virtuous and a society can amass an army in good conscience.

 

There is the story of the slaughter of the first born sons of the Egyptians, innocents sacrificed to the wrath of an angry God. From the perspective of the Israelites of course, whose sons are spared by the presence of blood on the doorposts, it is a saving act of God who acts on their behalf. But what of the Egyptians? Did they not love their sons as much? Did the mothers of these sons not wail in grief?

 

Then there is Herod who in the infancy narratives of Christian Scriptures threatens to murder all male sons under the age of three to protect himself from a rumored future throne thief.

 

But the pre-eminent Biblical story of a father who sacrifices a son emerged when Christianity interpreted the death of Jesus of Nazareth as the sacrificial lamb who walked willingly to the slaughter in the name of redemption. This theological interpretation of an historical moment is central to Christian understandings of the crucifixion. The death of Jesus of Nazareth is given meaning through religious language. No one raised within the context of the Christian tradition can escape this language which describes the life of Jesus as necessary so that his death could occur. God “sent his only Son” that he might die. Jesus is obedient to the Father’s plan of death. Jesus’ death is lifted up as the  cumulative moment of his life. The course of events is inverted. Jesus does not die because of the way he lived; Jesus lived so that he might die. When considering the historical circumstances surrounding the death of Jesus (admittedly portrayed only through the Gospels, a suspicious historical source) historical language is helpful in understanding this event. Jesus lived within Roman occupied Palestine. The Roman Empire was crumbling in the first century. Years of insurrection, riots, disorder and unrest threatened their continuing power and stability. Jesus of Nazareth (among others) emerged within the context of an historical setting in which to appear to be in opposition to Rome was in itself, a death sentence. Apparently, Jesus’ reputation preceded him when he arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover in the week of his Passion. Throughout his itinerant ministry of preaching and healing, he was heard to speak repeatedly of the “basileia,” or reign (kingdom) of God, which he insisted was imminent. He was socially radical, traipsing around the countryside with men and women, married, unmarried, social outcasts, sinners, unholy vagabonds. He entered into Jerusalem for the Passover holy days on an ass, the people hailing him with palms and shouting, “Alleluia! Alleluia! King of the Jews!”

 

Thousands of Jews would have made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the city of the Temple in which all the lambs for the Passover meals must be ritually slaughtered. The streets were overflowing. The people were impatient, tired, hot. Pontius Pilate was nearby to ensure there was no trouble. And what did Jesus do? Indeed. He entered the Temple and took his famous fit. He turned over the money changers' tables, shouted about his father’s house becoming a den of thieves and through the eyes of the Romans, threatened to instigate revolt and rioting. Given this historical interpretation, the guy didn’t stand a chance. But if one can interpret this behavior on the part of Jesus (not only during Holy Week, but throughout his entire ministry) as exemplary of a commitment to an ethos, to a way of life that placed a seeking after justice and the alleviation of suffering as paramount to a virtuous life, Jesus can be understood in a whole new light. His obedience was to himself and to his own inner understanding of what it meant to be a human being living a noble and moral life.

 

Strange how, when I am covering this historical interpretation surrounding the death of Jesus in class, it always seems to take place during Holy Week. I suspect some students go to Good Friday services with a new perspective. And for once, I think it is a perspective that potentially enhances their faith, rather than causes doubt. To think of Jesus of Nazareth as a human being who refused to betray his own ethical imperatives brought me so much more admiration for him when I was introduced to this perspective in divinity school. I am far more impressed by Jesus the man, than Jesus the god. An emphasis on his commitment to justice, to the alleviation of suffering, to prophetic criticism against institutionalized hypocrisy, to standing in resistance against poverty, social ostracism and rejection is so much more active and courageous than the portrayal of Jesus as passive, willing Lamb who went to the slaughter in obedience to a God who would dare ask for it.

Intellectual Infatuation

In the fall of 2001, I was assigned to teach Comparative Religious Ethics for the first time. I had no textbook as yet and so I started looking for one by conducting Google and Amazon searches. I typed “comparative religious ethics” and the same book appeared as the first hit for both searches because the book’s title is Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach, by Darrell J. Fasching and Dell DeChant. I had been intrigued by “narrative theology” and was equally intrigued by the prospect of “doing ethics” from a narrative approach. I ordered the book and liked it so much; I ordered it for the class. I dove in and took my class with me. We were in school just a few short weeks when September 11th arrived and the collective consciousness of a nation was forever changed. Teaching comparative religious ethics during that semester became more challenging than I could ever have expected.

 

The book and its ideas gave me the ability to lead my students through their confusion and their questions and offered analyses for the dynamics that are entailed in violence that claims a religious root. My students loved the book and since 2001 I have been using it every time I teach the ethics course. It is the book that students will not sell back to the bookstore when the course is finished.

 

In December of 2001, I did something I had never done before; I wrote to the author of a book to express to him my deepest gratitude and admiration. I told him that in addition to the intellectual challenge and critique the book offered, it gave my students and me something one rarely finds in a textbook. It gave us hope. He sent me another one of his books and since then I have bought two more.

 

Several weeks ago, at my invitation, Darrell Fasching came to Charleston. He offered a public lecture on campus and made classroom visits to my two ethics classes. For me, it was like geek prom night. After one of the classroom visits, I was speaking to a student who said that he was “infatuated with the book and its ideas.” I said, "What a great word!" and thought about that all weekend.

 

There have been times in my life when a teacher or thinker has had that affect on me. Like falling in love; when it happens, there’s no mistaking it. One listens to a lecture or reads a book and there occurs a “stirring of the mind,” likened to Socrates’ description of Eros as a “stirring of the loins.” The mind wakes up. It is excited and stimulated. But the odd dynamic is that rather than experiencing the imposition of ideas from outside oneself, it is experienced as an affirmation, an awakening to what seems to be already a part of one’s knowledge and self. It is as if the truth or wisdom of the words already existed in the core of one’s being and rather than a welcoming of something from without, it is a recognition of something within. The words resonate with a deep truth already known but never articulated, and like a lover to the beloved the response is a wondrous, “yes.” One desires to make the thought one’s own; to incorporate it into one’s very being so that as through the lens of one’s own experience, the thought itself becomes transformed and re-interpreted. And like an object of desire it becomes a part of oneself.

 

It has been pointed out to me that by its very description “infatuation” is transitory and destined to fade. I would argue that sometimes infatuation is the way love begins. There are those writers and thinkers whose immediate attraction does not sustain. It indeed, is a momentary fascination. But there are those others whose immediate resonance grows into a lifelong love affair of the mind. And like greeting and embracing a loved one who has been away, when one returns  to the book or hears the speech, it is understood in an even more profound way; and one is smitten all over again. And the love deepens.

 

As I shared these thoughts with my class last week, a young vibrant female student piped up from the back of the room, “Well, I gotta admit, I got a girl crush on you!” Another student added, “We all do.” Well, I doubt that, but it was a moment of openness and spontaneity and generosity of spirit that I will never forget. To be that for someone is to be a beloved of the mind and for a teacher there is no greater affirmation or heartfelt embrace.

 

I spoke too, of those in my life with whom I have been intellectually infatuated but with whom the fascination has grown into love; Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Abraham Heschel, Dorothee Soelle, Richard Niebuhr, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza and a few others, but most recently  Darrell J. Fasching. The intellectual attraction began in 2001 but it has grown; it has grown into a love of the mind sustained by an intellectual “yes” and affirmed again and again by a recognition of speech and thought characterized by truth, wisdom and beauty. He is my teacher and I gotta admit, I have a crush.