Driving the Back Roads at Random

    It’s been a number of years so now we can openly acknowledge the story. Even with all the burdensome little asides, we can tell the truth. Try to reconstruct the story from the scattered fragments she left behind.

    She had time to kill, driving the back-roads at random, hurt and wounded, with a sandwich and two cups of coffee. She couldn’t go home to make things right. Or wouldn’t. She’d injured him. Reassured him. Shamed him. Shamed him and caused him to suffer. Hiding her disdain with twenty years of lies. And now the money was gone.

    What is happening here? The two of them, faces close, wedding pose...Flip the photograph and read the message. Reveal what was written even if it leaves us helpless. “My Darling...”

    I have no honest idea. I don’t know who she is. Or was.

    Behind the photograph, a newspaper clipping – something about a fire fifty miles away. Yesterday. For what purpose? Money? It’s always money, right? A significant amount of money. And maybe that was part of it. But she left and she’s not talking.

    Not about the money. Not about the fire. Not about her family. Not about the past.

    Whoever has the discipline of correction – she drives toward life.
    Whoever rejects it – she’s already gone astray.

Proverbs 10:17

I Remember (A Love Story)

    I remember the cafe where we met – with used coffee mugs drifting across the crowded tables, a Moroccan wool rug spread out on the old timber floor and walls crammed with books, occulted, occluded, random, and sheaves and sheaves of paperwork, photographs spilling out of cardboard boxes. I wore a red velvet jacket. You wore red lipstick.

    I remember you said, “People like us have to keep a divided existence. Always. Like a map turned over. We are living out.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “We were never what we were. That was never us.” You said, as if it were sensible. True.

    Meanwhile the days died outside. Nighttime illuminated by flashlights in the distance. The fragility of dawn’s magic flickering, flicking off. Darkness. People came out burred – like those French paintings. Crashing worlds blurring and the lights no longer felt quite so safe.

    The words landed. Believed. Disbelieved. But spoken finality.

    “You don’t really believe all that, do you?” I asked.

    “It doesn’t matter.”

    Then there was some business out on the street – unpleasant noise and displeasure. You jumped and turned away from the door then away to one side. Heart beating. Then, in a rush, move about, and kiss goodbye. You were gone.

Atmospheric Echoes

     I was traveling to Newark when I heard the first reports of the unidentified aerial phenomenon. Strange visions in the sky – coming from major metropolitan centers. I’d been on the bus for six hours and I still had two more hours to go. A long trip toward what? Work or consolation? I would have taken whatever was available. Starting over was starting over.

    In the early days of saucer sightings (Ezekiel 1, 2 Kings 2) there were numerous cases of a UFO or other UAP causing anxiety among the saints, far from home. Lonely. This happens far less often today – with advanced technology and complete memory recovery systems. Radar and full restoration still being perfected. Reports this week of shooting objects in the sky over Beijing. Random images maybe, but the reports made something of them.

    “Marvel not at these atmospheric echoes,” came a voice.

    I stared out the window at the lights in the distance and counted the minutes. How long had it been since… How long would it be until… These were calculations I couldn’t complete. I no longer understood the calculus of human interaction. Addition became division and she was gone.

    UFOs often create electrical force disturbance affecting not only people and animals but sophisticated electronics as well. Injury and short circuits. Rashes. Burns. Depression. Sleeplessness. Heartburn. Aerial sickness. Even radiation poisoning requiring prolonged hospitalization. Death and hell. Extremely dangerous. Technological overload. God and technology reversed and reordered. This could kill you in two to three days and, what is worse, corrupt the data. Context requires more detail, of course (160 GB – do not exceed capacity).

    “What it carries can give you new purpose in life,” came the voice again.

    I dug in my rucksack for my notebook. My notes. Conversational sketches. Character outlines. Parents and stuff. Histories and obscure words forgotten. With pen and paper I could write anywhere. Low-tech. Simple. At home (home no longer), on the bus (for another hour), in Newark. Put down the words, any words, all the words. Order would come later.

    In March of 1978 a man from Beijing reported a secret rapture – not preceding (better than “preventing” as the KJV has it) a “beam of light.” Hit me. Hit me. A hit waiting to happen. In 1977 a dog died in Salto Uruguay. Coincidence? How many others were carried away and never seen again?

    “Rise now. Right now,” said the voice again. “All over the world the prospect of being taken to heaven rises higher and higher. Are you one of the chosen?”

Biblical Limericks – Family Values

We will observe and strictly enforce
everything that Jesus said, of course;
our family values
are strong as long as you
say nothing of his words on divorce.

Matthew 5: 31 - 32

I Could Fill the Silence of a Thousand Years

I could fill the silence of a thousand years
with the hymns and anthems of
false guilt and recriminations,
songs of accusation
and betrayal.

I’d scream down the sun, set fire to the soil,
a scorched earth ruination
for missing gods and absent boys,
for leaving and taking,
abandoning.

Give feast to crows and ravens of varied kind;
let coyotes eat what’s left
of broken bones and my failed flesh.
Leave me nothing.

Pray, friends, if you will, but I’ve forgotten how.
The wind has ceased its blowing;
the spirit, it no longer breathes.
Their laughter is stolen;
her love is gone.


**
While written in first person, this is not me, but a good friend of mine. If prayer is something you do, pray for him.

Slut Shaming the Samaritan Woman

I don’t’ know what it was that I was listening to the other night – some Christian program trying to sound hip, trying to sound cool (but only sounding like a cheap imitation of Rob Bell’s NOOMA series…) talking about the woman at the well (John 4: 1 – 42).  In his talk he (whoever he was) described her as a woman of low reputation, a base and debased sensual creature running from man to man hoping to fill the lonely void of her life. He supplied some inner dialogue for her, “Maybe this one will love me. Maybe this one will stay.”  He called her a whore.  Flat out, used that word: “Whore.”[i]

She was a whore.  You can see that, right?  Because she was at the well at about noon- instead of going in the cool of the morning or the evening like everyone else…. She must have been a social pariah – a whore. She was a whore. You can see that, right?  Because Jesus knew she’d had five husbands and because the man she had at that moment was not her husband. 

The assumption is that she’d been married five times – and divorced five times because she’d been unfaithful. It’s obvious that she’s a whore, right?  But there were plenty of other reasons that a husband might divorce his wife - in fact the bible is pretty vague:  “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her…” Deuteronomy 24:1  The school of Sahmmai said that this “indecent thing”  meant some sort of “unlawful sexual behavior,” while the school of Hillel argued for a much broader definition which included cultic offenses, failure to complete household tasks, and childlessness (Wall, 218).[ii]

According to Raphael Patai, barrenness was and is one of the most common reasons for divorce (if not the most common reason) in the Middle East – even if it’s not mentioned explicitly as such in the Bible (Patai, 120).[iii]  What if she had been divorced by five husbands, not because she was such a slut, but because she was unable to bear children?

And all this ignores the fact that women could also divorce their husbands.  Perhaps this was the case.  Perhaps she divorced them because they were unfaithful, unable to provide for her, because they were abusive.

So where does this slut shaming come from?

No matter what choices she’d made up to that point(good, bad, or otherwise), no matter how she’d been treated, there’s no word of shame in this chapter.  No condemnation. Jesus does not say to her “go and sin no more…” Jesus does not shame her.  Why should we?
 

---

[i] And it isn’t just this particular program that I was listening to.  See also this sermon by John Piper-  http://www.soundofgrace.com/piper84/040884m.htm - John Piper

[ii] Wall, Robert W. “Divorce” The Anchor Bible Dictionary Ed. David Noel Freedman Vol. 2 Doubleday, Garden City NY, 1992.

[iii] Patai, Raphael, Sex and Family in the Bible and the Middle East, Doubleday & Company Inc, Garden City, NY, 1959.