Past updates
I left the house today at ten a.m. just as the service was starting at my church. I was running late as usual, but sadly, I can't blame Daylight Saving Time for that: just me and my ADHD. I had not gotten very far before I was hit by a strong gust of wind that pushed my cane out from under me and my skirt up above my knees (a place my skirts are never supposed to go). As we say on Tumblr, it was fucken wimdy.
It was also a lot colder than I had anticipated, and my short-sleeved dress, hoodie, and Crocs with thin sandals were not sufficient coverage. For a couple minutes, as I tried to walk in the gusting winds, I seriously considered turning back home, until I had an inspiration: go to the other church, where the service starts at ten-thirty.
There are, as it happens, two Episcopal churches within walking distance of my home, plus another that is two or three blocks further downtown than my workplace. I could easily catch a single bus and get to the little Episcopal church where I went as a child. But on this very windy and chilly day, I figured I could at least show up and make my communion if I let the wind (or the Spirit) blow me to the nearer church.
I was thus early rather than late and got a good spot from which to hear the choir, which turned out to be a blessing. We opened the service with one of my favorite hymns, the English tune "Kingsfold" with the text, "I heard the voice of Jesus say". If you happen to know the piece "Five Variations on Dives and Lazarus" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, then you know the tune "Kingsfold", which is the theme of that instrumental piece; Vaughan Williams collected the tune and arranged it as a hymn. "Five Variations" was playing on the radio as I left the house, so this seemed a very happy synchronicity.
The anthems by the choir were two beautifully done pieces by the English composer Herbert Howells, "Like as the hart" and "O pray for the peace of Jerusalem". The text of the former comes from Psalm 42 and the latter from Psalm 122. Howells is not well known, I think, outside of church music circles, where he is a staple of choral repertoire. His music is luscious, sensuous, and apt to make you feel you want a cigarette and a martini afterward. (It's also tough to learn unless you can count time properly. I learned it.)
We also sang "Amazing Grace," which has deeply personal associations for me that I'm not going to go into right now. But the thing that stuck with me today even more than the music was the curious imagery that links the Old Testament and Gospel readings of the day: a serpent on a pole.
In the book of Numbers there is an incident where the wandering Israelites, not for the first time, complain that they are hungry and thirsty and tired of eating manna, the miraculous food from heaven. The LORD gives them a little nip, as the rector said in her sermon, a little warning bite: an infestation of poisonous serpents. When the people stop complaining about their diet and ask for relief from the serpents, Moses asks God to have mercy, and God gives him instructions for how to keep people from dying of the snakebites. He is to make a bronze image of a serpent and hoist it up on a pole where everyone can see it. Anyone who is bitten will be cured if they look on the serpent raised on a pole.
Yes, this is weird. What is even weirder is when Jesus references this story in the Gospel of John. In chapter three, at the end of his night-time conversation with Nicodemus the Pharisee, he says that "just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." In John's Gospel this "lifting up" refers to the coming crucifixion. And then Jesus says what might be the most quoted verse of the Bible: "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."
This very comforting statement follows directly on the reminder of the serpent-on-a-pole story in the Torah. The implication I see is that just as the poisoned Israelites had to look on the uplifted serpent, the image of the source of their suffering, in order to be healed from it, so believers in Jesus must look upon him "uplifted", that is, crucified (because in John's version Jesus knows everything ahead of time), in order to be healed and experience eternal life.
But what does it mean to look at the uplifted Jesus--to find life in looking on the image of a man executed for insurrection by an occupying army? at a man who was also the presence of God and the bringer of God's love, given the cruelest punishment meted to any kind of criminal? What are we looking at when we look at the crucified Jesus, if Jesus is to us like the mysterious serpent on a pole?
I think that what Jesus is telling us is that we must look at the thing which has wounded us. We must look at all the things in life which have harmed us: the cruelty or carelessness of others, the restrictions of an oppressive society, our own fears and repulsions, our own wrongdoings. We must look squarely at those things and at their outcome: the execution of an innocent man that is also the judicial murder of a loving God. The snakebite is cured by the likeness of a snake. The wound of sin is healed by the suffering of sin held up for us.
Jesus goes on to say, in the remainder of today's reading, that while those who believe in the Son of God will not be condemned, there will be a judgment for those who do not believe, for those who reject the divine light that he brings because they do not wish their evil deeds to be exposed. Those who believe, he tells us, "those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."
We are not required to do "what is good" in order to earn salvation: salvation has already been given, that was in verse 16. But we are asked to do "what is true": to come to the Light as our authentic selves, no more, no less; to bring our deeds both good and not good; to look without flinching at the serpent on the pole, at Jesus on the cross, at our own wounds in the light of God's love and grace. I am helped here by Robert Farrar Capon's discussion of this passage in The Parables of Judgment, which I first read decades ago; it has stuck with me ever since. We are not required to do good, still less to be good. We are only ever asked to look at the Cross and to do the truth, which might well be painful but, in the long run, is far more realistic and manageable than somehow earning heaven through our own righteousness.
In other news, this week I finished Joy Harjo's Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years. I continue to be impressed, moved, instructed by Harjo's poetry and by the history, culture, and sensibility behind it, her tradition as a Mvskoke (Muskogee) native of this land, different from what the speakers of English brought with them when they colonized it. While I am also still reading a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's French poems (yes, he wrote in two different languages, what a show-off), I'm feeling drawn to the work of Seamus Heaney.
While I'd heard of Heaney before--he notably translated Beowulf some years ago--he's been on my backburner for some years now thanks to my beloved Hozier citing him as his favorite poet. Hozier is a man immersed in the language, literature, history, politics, and landscape of his native Ireland--as Joy Harjo is immersed in the native America of which she is a part--and his connection to Heaney seems to be an important part of that, one that I'm eager to explore. Lucky for me, my workplace has plenty of Heaney's work on offer, so while I want to buy his books, I don't have to in order to get started reading him.
On a whim I began yesterday to read A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon. Southon's last book, A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, explored the topics of murder and execution in Roman society, and proved unexpectedly captivating. So is this new book, telling stories of women from the earliest, purely mythical days of Rome to the end of its empire. Southon is British and probably a millennial and witty as only someone who is extremely online can be, using internet abbreviations like "tbh" and "wtf" in her work along with sly pop culture references. I would not be at all surprised to find she has a Tumblr, but I have no proof.
The Sunny report: I noticed the other day that the little naked spots on his upper chest and above his right wing seem finally to be growing new feathers along with all the other areas of his body. He has been letting me preen the incoming feathers on his crest, which has been pleasant for both of us.
That's all for now, friends, see you next week.
Rembrandt's wife is Merri-Todd Webster