Arbor Day at the Morton Arboretum

My first time at this wonderful place . . a busy day to go because it was free admission in honor of Arbor Day. It has a huge fun children's garden, but the children had just as much fun playing around a low-branched big tree and having lunch in the shade of another tree.

And three days later . . .

This backyard project went really fast, here is with the hardscape completed and a few trees and shrubs put in place. . .

Mud Hole

Our back yard is a big pile of mud as we tore up all the brick pavers that used to be there and are having them relaid into a patio. It will look great when finished, but for now there is mud everywhere!

Park Fun

Our local park is a big hit with Douwe, two slides he can do himself and a bridge that he likes to challenge himself on. Here's a few cute shots from this afternoon.

An Easter Poem

Those of you moms who have often told your childbirth story may enjoy this Easter poem I wrote to celebrate the childbirth experience as a fundamentally gospel event. The first 2 verses are told from the perspective of Mary the mother of Jesus, and the 3rd verse from the perspective of an unlikely sort of second mother to Jesus, a personified Mother Tomb, who has been known to have other nicknames like The Pit, The Grave, Sheol, or 6-Feet-Under.

I wrote it to be read aloud as part of an Easter Sunday worship celebration but that did not get to happen, so I read it in a graveyard instead, which actually turned out to be a more appropriate setting. I read the first verse in the shadows of a tomb the size of a small stable, the second verse at the foot of an oak tree, and the third verse leaning over a tombstone. I wish I had invited some friends to be there for the reading, but it didn't feel lonely, and I must admit I felt less inhibited about reading it with the emotional and physical oomph that it needs.

My English major friends, Sandi? Emily? can tell me whether the linking of the Resurrection Event to a childbirth experience pays proper respects to those Metaphysical conceits we learned about in college. Herbert, Donne? I'm hazy on that.

While of course this poem is a creative work which uses some artistic license, I meant it to honor the Resurrection in a biblical way. If you are one who likes to make sense of allusive references in a poem, Exodus 39:27-28, Leviticus 8:30, Leviticus 12, Leviticus 15:19-20, Numbers 8:14-19, Psalm 22, Isaiah 51:1-3, Isaiah 54:1, Isaiah 64:6 Jeremiah 20:14-18, John 3:1-16, Acts 2:14-36 Romans 8:18-25, I Corinthians 15, Ephesians 1:4-6, Hebrews 2:10-18, Hebrews 9, I John 2:28-3:3, I John 4:2, Revelation 7:9-17, Revelation 19:7-16 are helpful places to look for understanding this poem, and of course re-read the various accounts of Jesus's birth, death, burial and resurrection from the four Gospels.

Enjoy! and may Resurrection News be the Hope that never lets up, lets you go, or lets you down. That barren life-less cave called a Tomb has been miraculously transformed and renamed: Most Fruitful Womb!

GIFT WRAP

Nativity
They brought royal gifts, myrrh, incense, and gold, when they visited,
And oh in such beautiful wrap
Many yards of finely-twisted linen.
I would have swaddled you, my king-son, in this linen at your arrival.

But at your birth we were trespassers in a pole-barn
I was squatting on hay,
Clinging to the rope for support
Resting against a wooden beam between contractions.

I puked in a manger, but the pigs were intrigued.
I pooped on the ground, but the donkeys didn’t seem offended.

My bag of waters broke open with a gush and spurt.
Then I entered the earthy, birth-y power of expulsion, with noisy grunts and grimaces.

Joseph laid fresh straw and sat under me to catch my wriggly firstborn son
As you dropped out of your womb of forty weeks.

Jesus, Savior of the World! just as the angel announced.

You gasped your first breaths,
Howled hello,
Sucked sweet drops of milk from my breast.

Joseph rummaged and found my bag of cloth strips.
(They were clean but stained by several menstrual cycles.)
He used one to wrap the placenta.
He used one to absorb my flow of blood and clots.
He used one to blot the blood and mucus from your face and hair.
He used one to soak up the slop in the manger.
He used the others to swaddle his sort-of son.

I would have wrapped you in finely-twisted linen, gift to the world that you are.
But those visitors from the East came months too late.

So I’ll save this linen for your someday wife,
Such fine swaddling for children of your own.


Burial
At your death those Roman trespassers slung you up on a beam of wood
Used rope for extra support.
I squatted in the hay beneath your feet
As you named John my sort-of son.

You sucked sour drops of wine from a sponge,
Howled for your Father,
Then gasped your last breaths.

These linen strips are going to wrap my king-son after all.

Born-again Nicodemus takes them gently from me.
He uses one to wipe the urine and excrement from your legs.
He uses one to mop the mucus and blood from your face and hair.
He uses one to bind up the intestines ballooning from the hole in your side.
He uses one to swab the shredded skin on your back
He uses the others to swaddle his sort-of father.

The time has come to use the finely-twisted linen and myrrh.
No hope now of meeting a wife or firstborn son of yours.


Resurrection
They have come to mask the stench of decaying flesh and feasting maggots,
These weeping women carrying spices on a Sunday morning.
But they are hours too late.

Though my name is Tomb,
I too now have an earthy, birth-y power of expulsion
Didn’t you feel the quake of my grunts and grimaces?
Even the hired watch could not catch my wriggly firstborn son,
As he dropped out of his womb of forty hours
Jesus, First-fruits of the Dead! just as the angel announced

Welcome women, with your gifts of incense
You are too late for burial rites
But just in time to celebrate a raising.

Come and collect these strips of finely-twisted linen.
Blood-stained though they are,
This gift-wrap shall be used again:

Resurrection clothing for all God’s children
Who are sown in me
And most certainly shall (thanks to their sort-of brother)
Be raised imperishable.

Tampa

Took a brief visit to Tampa Florida in mid-March. We stayed a few days with our good friend Bill at his parents place, and enjoyed the two best beaches in the Bradenton area. Then we spent a couple nights in downtown Tampa and explored this city. It was beautiful weather and Douwe enjoyed everything about it . .airplane rides, lots of mom and dad time, pools, beach, streetcars, buses, any ramp anywhere, playgrounds, the list goes on.

SSSS

We introduced Douwe to his first Bible story book in the last couple months. His favorite picture is of the snake in the Garden of Eden, so the first thing he says when we take out the book is Sssss! What are we supposed to do, make him less fascinated with the snake?

So far we are just showing pictures and saying one or two things about the story on each page, but I am looking forward to using this for its stories as he gets older. I was looking for something that pointed each story to Jesus rather than a moral or behavior. The illustrations were very important too, I wanted no eerily-lit pictures of other-worldly humans staring at the sky. Steve had gotten a book like that and he would ask why all the people were looking up at the sky with a dazed look. This one has beautiful colors yet with homely, regular-looking people.

It's called the Jesus Storybook Bible, and I'm thrilled that something like this exists.

Day 40: Blood Not Required

As I look at the cross today, and as I see the blood flowing from his head and side, hands and feet, I am hearing this message:

Jess, I do not require blood. My blood is all that has been required and it is sufficient.

When you long to turn on others and make them pay for their wrongs, ask instead for my blood which gives you the power to say, "Father, forgive them, and help me also to give up my wishes for them to receive vengeance."

When you long to turn on yourself and make your own blood come as a relief from guilt or a proof that life is inside, look instead at my blood which has the power to comfort,,cleanse, revive and heal you.

When the world seems too bloodthirsty for you to bear, drink my blood at the table of communion and believe the promise that the blood of Jesus quenches(already and not yet)all thirst for blood.

And when your Accuser tells you your blood will one day be required, listen instead to this command: "In view of God's mercy, present your body as a LIVING sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord."

Day 39: Wrath Requires Blood

There was a phrase I heard on occasion when I was a teenager: "getting your undies in a bunch," or "getting your knickers in a twist." Here's a spot-on definition of this condition of extreme agitation according to the Urban Dictionary: like the person is all worked up and angry and heated and stuff.

The old English word "wrath" is often used to refer to the seriously "worked up" response that God has when humans ignore him, destroy each other and consistently do the opposite of everything that they were created to do.

"Wrath" is cousins with the words "writhe" and "wreath" and "wrought" and even the phrase "worked up:" they all share a sort of twistiness. "Writhe" is to twist or contort in pain, "wreath" is what is formed when straight branches are twisted to form a circle, and "wrought-iron" is what is made when an "iron-worker" heats up straight rods of iron until they soften, and works them and twists them and bends them into swirls and shapes. That is kind of why it is not that off-base to use the slang phrase above "knickers in a twist" to think about God's wrath: like God is all worked up and angry and heated and stuff.

When humans snub God and devour each other and plunder the land and generally disregard the value of life it seems pretty understandable that the Creator of humans and the land and life would get his knickers in a twist, in a very powerful way. The wrath takes the form of a powerful urge to wipe the slate clean, wipe out the human race. The wrath tries a new start for creation and humanity with a flood. The wrath creates and demands response to a complex system of commandments and offerings to urge on the development of an obedient responsive human. The wrath raises up sharp-tongued prophets and brings down arrogant rulers and scatters self-secure cities. It seems like a pretty destructive sort of wrath.

But then we see a richer dimension to the wrath, and we hear the startling news that this re-constructive dimension was always present, from the beginning, but only more recently revealed. This is the wrath that is displayed in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. The wrath of God is revealed in the Garden of Gethsemane when Son-God as first obedient human yet to walk the earth sweats drops of blood to illustrate the extreme effort and pain that is to be found in submitting to the will of Father-God. The wrath of God is revealed when a bunch of thorn branches are worked around each other into a wreath which Jesus accepts as the first and only crown that humanity is willing to place on the head of their King. The wrath of God is revealed when Son-God writhes in pain and gasps for breath as he hangs in mid-air under the curse, rejected by not only all human brothers and sisters, but also Father-God.

And then we learn that all along that scary angry wrath that often makes us so afraid of God is the same wrath that saves us from the curse and trap we have been in since Adam. And then, when we see Jesus show us what God's wrath looks like, we love and run to and worship and praise a wrathful God, who cared enough for his children and his creation to get really get his knickers in a twist and do something about it. And if we go back to the Old Testament and listen to the words of God's wrath with the ears of a Christian we start to understand how his wrath somehow had the ability to show incredible forbearance and restraint at Cain's crime scene, put a mark of protection on him and wait a few thousand years for another wandering human to undergo Cain's full punishment and Abel's full blood-vengeance. How the wrath is bound up with love and pain and a never-failing determination to make sure that Life does not get swallowed up in Death. How the wrath requires blood, because it so fiercely loves life, and how the God of Wrath offered his own blood to satisfy wrath's blood-vengeance requirements and win the ultimate victory on behalf of Life.

Day 38: Blood and the EPA

Hosea 4:1-3 Hear the word of the Lord O people of Israel;
for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.
Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out;
Bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Therefore the land mourns,
and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals and the birds of the air,
even the fish of the sea are perishing.

A few of my other entries have mentioned the theme above, that somehow the land is actually polluted when it has to soak up innocent blood that is shed. One of the GameCube games that Steve had when he lived with us was called Super Mario Sunshine, which put Mario on a mission to spray a liquid all over it to clean it up from the pollution of graffiti. He was falsely accused for polluting the island because a villian disguised as Mario did it. As he cleans up the island spraying the liquid out of a high tech Flash Liquid Ultra Dousing Device, the Shine Sprites are able return to the island to bring their life energy and light so that the island can become a tropical resort destination again.

I liked the game because it seemed refreshing that a 8 year old gamer could shoot a cleansing liquid to fight pollution, rather than shooting a gun to spread more video blood on yet another violent universe.

This game recently came to mind because I am trying to make a case in my head that if there was a life principle built into the created order that the bloodshed of an innocent victim pollutes the world, and that the carrying out of blood-vengeance makes things better, then what if Jesus' blood is the liquid that the world needs to be freed from its mourning and languishing and perishing.

Lucy in the Narnia books was given a vial with a magic potion, she only needed to pour a few drops of blood on a wound and it would magically heal.

I'm guessing, imagining, hypothesizing this: the perfect obedience of Jesus did not by itself redeem the fallen world, the passion pain and suffering is not the part we focus on, not the moral example, not even his willingness to experience dangling in mid-air as rejected and forsaken by God and all the people. Maybe the power to redeem the world was actually in the blood. God's blood, innocent blood in reality, but pronounced to be the blood of a guilty faithless ignorant disloyal lying cheating adulterous murdering human, God's blood went into the ground.

And as it soaks into the ground, just like Lucy's cordial, it starts reversing the curse that the land was under since Genesis 3:17, and not only that, it starts undoing the infertility of the soil so radically that the earth enters its most fruitful and fertile stage ever: now it is able to accept the seed of a dead human body and in three days give birth to a resurrected human. First-fruits and more to come later! What if there is that kind of cleansing, fertilizing, healing potency in the blood of God-made-flesh?

What if that song is literally true: There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb?

And what if that blood streamed down Mount Golgotha in a little trickle and soaked down into that Valley where Exekiel had to preach the gospel to a pile of bones. Those bones that can only admit: 'We are dried up bones, our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.' What if the blood of Jesus is power to say this even to a pile of dried-up bones? "I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves, and bring you back from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act."




And here's a song those resurrected bones might sing on the land that eagerly produces food again:

Psalm 126
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

Day 37: Making Love can turn Bloody

I was not around then, but during the Vietnam war I think there were people trying to protest bloodshed and violence with this slogan: Make Love Not War.

It is easy to assume that God is eager for an excuse to kill people because of the laws in the Old Testament that require the death penalty for various human behaviors, especially sexual intercourse that takes place outside of set relational boundaries. People who had extra-marital or incestuous sex were stoned to death. It seems kind of harsh! If sex is just making love, how could God be so mad when people are overdoing it a bit with who and when they love each other? When people make love instead of war, doesn't that count for an improvement, at least a little? Why do they have to get the same punishment as murderers? Is God just setting up an impossible situation where we get in trouble no matter what, whether we love death and violence, or if we love life and people so much that we get carried away with the "urge to merge" and "need to breed" as the singing Producer Leo Bloom likes to call it? What is so harmful about sleeping with that first sweetheart, or maintaining a friends with benefits relationship, getting some play on a trip to Europe, or skipping through the middle-age blahs with a hot young mistress?

I stumbled upon two different sexy Richard Gere movies in the last week while flipping channels, once during a midnight snack, and another while folding a load of clothes. In Unfaithful, Gere co-starred with Diane Lane as the cuckolded husband of a woman who decided to have a brief affair to add some passion and excitement in her nice but boring life. In An Officer and a Gentleman, Gere co-starred with Debra Winger in a movie about small town girls trying to catch an Air-Force officer for a husband to get a ticket out of factory life, and officers-in-training using the girls for some pleasure after a long intense day of training. In both movies, someone dies from what might be called crimes of passion. While these movies were probably popular for their steamy "intimate" scenes (I was watching the edited-for-tv versions), both were seriously if inconsistently passing on the message that sexual escapades can get somebody killed. A casual roll in the hay is not a celebration of life, it is a decision inviting bloodshed.

When God sets limits on our choices of sexual encounters it is not because he hates the pleasure of life, it is because he loves it so much. It sort of sounds like a cliche to just say that, but now that I'm a mom, I believe it even more. He loves safe, healthy and protective communities where any children that are made during sex are whole-heartedly wanted, women are protected physically and economically for their vulnerable role of hosting life in the womb and nurturing young children, and men are crystal clear about which woman and children they are committed to serve with the sweaty lifetime labor of provision and protection.

If baby Davey dies today because his great-grandma neglected to take him out of the car in the winter weather because she is tired and old and forgetful and Davey's mom isn't there because she is high on drugs because she has been self-medicating since age 12 because her grandpa started having sex with her at age 7, because he and grandma raised Davey's mom when she was little because her mom had not been around because she too had been drinking heavily and promiscuous with various men ever since that grandpa (her father) had sex with her, incest is bloodshed. It may take three or four generations before people start actually dying, but the blood will be shed.

God was not adding to the death toll with the laws and consequences about sex in Leviticus, he was trying to turn the people from the "urge to merge" onto a common fastlane to bloodshed and death.

Day 36: Blood on the Court

In eighth grade, I participated in a grade school volleyball match at the community gym called Roosevelt Center. During a time out, when our coach finished her words, we all put our hands together to say 1,2,3 Let's go! My hand came out with a little gash on the back of my left hand below the thumb from someone's very long fingernail. I was up next to serve and I made a fist and lobbed the underhand serve. The leather ball got a good bit of blood on it, it was a few serves before I noticed I was bleeding. I was really embarrassed when I realized my blood all over the game ball. I still have a scar on my hand there, so that must be why I remember that game so clearly.

In one of the NCAA college tournament games on Saturday night, the tv announcers were mildly alarmed because one of the basketball players had some blood flowing from his arm and neither the refs nor any of the players were noticing. Finally a player from the opposite team held up the guy's arm to show him. He was escorted to the sidelines where there were medical trainers with rubber gloves that could to tend to him and bandage him up.

The CPR refresher class Jeff and I took last month included a segment of training called Universal Precautions, which is all about protecting one's self in a occupational or first-aid situation where someone's skin has been broken and blood is flowing. Rubber gloves, masks, goggles and sharps containers might all be required to protect first-aid helpers, co-workers, and garbage collectors from the contamination of disease that can be passed on through blood or other bodily fluids.

As a teenager I worked Chicago Farmers Markets, and one Saturday morning at the Lincoln Park Farmer's Market near Halsted and Armitage, the fire department came out and cordoned off a section of the parking lot where a man had tripped and fallen and bled on the parking lot. The rumor was going around among the marketers and farm workers that the person who had injured himself had AIDS, and since there were lots of kids and dogs running around close to the ground, that must be why the yellow tape was put up on a 6 foot perimeter around the site of the blood. I remember wondering if the guy was embarrassed that his bloodshed was being treated as seriously as a hazardous material spill situation.

There is a lot of talk in Leviticus, and consequently in other parts of the Bible, that caution people to "get off the court" until they stop bleeding. People with open wounds, chronic skin irritations, bodily discharges, women who were menstruating or post-partum, were labeled ceremoniously unclean, defiled, or impure, whichever English word is in a particular Bible translation. They had to undergo some time away from the rest of the people, some special cleansing rituals, and be pronounced clean by the priest before they could get back in the game of community life. If they were not careful, someone elso might come in contact with them, and then that person too, just by touch, would remain unclean too till sunset.

It is mysterious to me that in Leviticus, blood of dead animals is sprinkled on clothes and on altars and on priests to cleanse or purify them, but blood flowing from a healthy or wounded human or animal defiles whatever it touches. Is it a matter of Universal Precautions and Public Health, or is there another principal that the people are supposed to be learning?

Warning: "A Desperate Housewife's Bloody Lenten Devotional" is an informal collection of personal experiences and perspectives of a housewife, intended primarily for enjoyment by other women who regularly stand by a laundry tub scrubbing stains. No facts were double-checked, and the opinions presented may not be representative of those held by the established Christian church. Since this housewife is known to have deficiences in the following skills: submitting to religious authority figures, keeping the realms of fact and fantasy separate, and maintaining exemplary mental health, it is important to consult with your local credentialed male church official for the most accurate, time-tested views on the Bible and reality.

Day 35: Mas-sacrificial Blood

Massacre
Sacred
Sacrifice

These three words all seem to share a root: "sacr", but from my dictionary (merriam-webster.com) look-ups I can't tell for sure if massacre really does.

Some excerpts from the merriam-webster.com definition of "sacred": dedicated, set-apart for the service or worship of a deity, devoted exclusively to one use, consecrated.

And from "sacrifice": the act of offering something to a deity, esp: the killing of a victim on an altar. destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else.

From "massacre": the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.

One horrific biblical event that has been the subject of famous paintings is labeled by the church Massacre of the Innocents. After Jesus's birth, King Herod was troubled when travellers from the East came to his palace and asked to honor the new king that was born. He had his researchers give him a birthplace and age estimation for this rival king and made sure all the babies within that estimate were killed. Jesus' family had taken refuge in Egypt, so Jesus did not get killed as a baby.

Egypt was also home long before to a mass slaughter of infants under King Pharoah, who was troubled that his Hebrew slaves were becoming too strong and numerous. He winnowed the demographics by commanding the Hebrew midwives to kill any newborn boy upon birth. They evaded that command, so Pharoah gave authority to his own people to throw the boy babies in the river. Moses did not get killed as a baby, because Pharoah's daughter found him floating in a basket.

Unfortunately, Hebrew children were not only massacred by paranoid kings who were trying to wipe out any potential rivals. The children were in trouble if they had parents who were REALLY into the ritual of sacrifice. When Moses established the rules and regulations of sacrifice, there were many things that could become sacred or consecrated objects to be used in one of the various public offerings: birds, sheep, goats, bread, oil, cereal grains all were acceptable. Human children were not. But there were other nations living around the Hebrews who had rituals that seemed to kick it up a notch when it came to worshipping their gods. Fertility rites, prostitute-prophets, and an Ammonite god named Molech who was pleased when a parent consecrated a human child on the altar.

Here is a portion from Jeremiah who is passing on to the people of Judah and Israel a message from the God they are supposed to be loving and worshipping:
Chapter 32: The people of Israel and Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth; indeed, the people of Israel have done nothing but provoke me with what their hands have made, declares the LORD. From the day it was built until now, this city has so aroused my anger and wrath that I must remove it from my sight. The people of Israel and Judah have provoked me by all the evil they have done—they, their kings and officials, their priests and prophets, the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem. They turned their backs to me and not their faces; though I taught them again and again, they would not listen or respond to discipline. They set up their abominable idols in the house that bears my Name and defiled it. They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molech, though I never commanded, nor did it enter my mind, that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin.

To this day, every time I hear the word "rash" I associate it with the tragic Bible story that I learned in 4th grade: Jephthahs' rash vow. This mighty warrior made a bargain with God that if God helped him defeat the Ammonites he promised to consecrate in a burnt offering the first creature that came out of his house to greet him on own property back home. Did he own a bunch of dogs? Slaves? I don't know what he was picturing when he made that promise. But as he was heading home to celebrate the victory, it was his daughter, an only child, who ran out to greet her dad. How ironic, he defeated the Ammonites, but his misguided religious fervor had this result: his daughter was sacrificed just like the Ammonites sacrificed their children to Molech.

When humans are in blood, children are not safe, even in their own homes, even if they have religious parents.

Day 34: The Bloody Song is in My Head

About once a week lately, the Supertramp chorus pops into my head so here is the link to the song, and below are the lyrics so it can linger in your brain today too. Anyone else a fan of rock music that gives prominent place to a Hammond organ?(This is a shameless digression, but speaking of that, Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum is one of my favorite songs ever. Is it because of the Hammond organ, or because the organ's melody bears an uncanny resemblance to a famous composition by Bach?)

Back to Supertramp:

So you think your schooling's phoney
I guess it's hard not to agree
You say it all depends on money
And who is in your family tree
Right, you're bloody well right
you know you got a right to say
Right, you're bloody well right
you know you got a right to say
Ha-ha you're bloody well right
you know you're right to say
Yeah-yeah you're bloody well right
you know you're right to say
Me, I don't care anyway!
Write your problems down in detail
Take them to a higher place
You've had your cry - no, I should say wail
In the meantime hush your face
Right, quite right, you're bloody well right


Bloody is a beloved coarse word in British English, used most often as a modifier of intensity in the stead of "very" or "sooo!", or just thrown in wherever possible into a sentence to add color. As in: He's not just crazy, he is bloody crazy! Foul-mouthed Americans use the F-bomb in a similar way, as one of the comments on the to the You-tube link above testifies . . WarDr0id doesn't just love this song, he f--in' loves the song. I personally think the F-bomb is most effective only when used very rarely as an expletive, because the cathartic or "pay attention!" benefit of expletives wears out with overuse.

I did a very little bit of research on the etymology of the term "bloody," and read varying opinions as to whether "bloody" has origins in oaths referring to the blood of Christ, like the expletive "Zounds!" ("By the wounds of Christ" . . .shortened to "Christ's Wounds" shortened to "St's Wounds" shortened to "Zounds!" Time's effect on language is fascinating.)

Anyway, enjoy the bloody Supertramp song.

Day 33: Humans Are In Blood

I am still not ready to respond to that article by Mr. Bell called "God does Not Require Blood." There are some things I have read in the Bible lately that I have to work through first. But I think I can at least say this: Humans are in blood. Macbeth said "I am in blood," and he knew he had entered a point of no return, entering a realm of bloodshed that he couldn't just walk away from.

When the first family broke fellowship with their Creator and Friend in the Garden of Eden, they chose a path of death and bloodshed. Abel shed the blood of a lamb to offer to God, and Cain shed the blood of his brother because he was envious of God's response to Abel.

The great king David, even this man who was known for being so close God's heart, was in blood. He killed one of his best soldiers to cover up the fact that he slept with the soldier's wife. His children were in blood. His son raped his daughter, his other son killed that son. That other son was eventually killed by another one of his best soldiers for a plot to take over David's throne. And another son was killed by his son Solomon for a different plot to become king. And Solomon put to death the soldier that killed the first son that plotted to take over David's throne.

I recently saw Paul Thomas Anderson's movie Magnolia for the second time since it came out ten years ago. The first time I saw it I said to Jeff as the credits were rolling, "Wow. I have to watch this again because it has something important to tell me and I didn't quite catch it yet." When I saw it again last fall, this is what it told me:

Humans are devouring each other. God's intervention may seem strange or scary or bloody, but things would be worse if he did not step in.

All the characters in this movie are somewhere on a path to death, and most of them are on a frightening and lonely path because their closest family relationships have become the source of their greatest pain and suffering. In the end, when there is a rainstorm of frogs, it might be a considered a reoccurence of one of the ten plagues. But by then, things seem so hopeless for all the humans, that the frogs are a relief, an interruption, a sign that Someone out there is not about to let them all continue on the course of devouring one another and dying a lonely permanent death. It is an outstanding movie.

I have also been thinking a bit about the novel Lord Of the Flies. I bet I haven't read this book since highschool, but if I recall correctly, its main message that humans, even children, when left to themselves, will eventually exterminate one another. The human race is in blood.

In 2nd Samuel 14, there is an story-within-a-story about the excruciatingly tight spot a parent is in after one child kills another. David is in that tight spot, and hears the plea from a woman pretending to be in the same dilemma. My husband is dead, she says, and I had two sons. One son killed the other and now the blood-avengers are after him. If they get their way, there will be no one to carry on our family name. The story is only a rhetorical device to persuade the king to restore Absolom from banishment. But listen to this strand of her argument: "Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him."

Is she giving a straight witness about the character of God, or is she twisting a reality to make her case stronger? It seems to me like a tight spot that humans have put God in: he loves his children, yet they insist shedding one another's blood. He wants children around to notice and praise Him, but between the ones that are killed and the ones who deserve execution for murder, there is no one left. How does he maintain his good reputation for upholding justice and at the same time preserve a people who will live long enough to spread his good reputation? It seems like a very tight spot. Excruciating.

Day 32: Blood's Better Word

I'm not ready to respond to the article I mentioned yesterday, that will come eventually. I want to get this other stream of thought written down . .blood's better word.

My whole curiosity that drove this writing project came from reading Hebrews 12:24 sometime in the past year and asking myself, what did Abel's blood say, and what is the better word that Christ's blood says? Here's the actual verse, which is hard to put by itself because it is a part of a long sentence that is part of a longer "not to that, but to this" pair of paragraphs. Anyway, here's the verse "and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."

In my A-Z blood post a few weeks ago, I mentioned the Zechariah stoning from the Old Testament. When people are witness to a death or an execution, often those witnesses pay attention to and pass on the last words of the dying person. Maybe some last words are made up, or revised because everyone expects last words to be a profound epigram or a person's worldview in a nutshell. Well I'm going to make a lot of the last words of Zechariah and another person, Stephen (from Acts 6-7), because they were both stoned to death by the people of God for telling those people the truth about how they were "forever opposing the Spirit of God." As the rocks were thudding the bodies of each (do they die from bleeding out or from blunt force trauma?) they were still able to yell out some final words. Zechariah's: "May the Lord see and avenge!" Stephen's: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

Now I am getting the shivers when I think about the difference in those final words. Stephen was not a pansy, he had just been bold enough to give a history speech to all the leaders who would have been well schooled in their history. Reminding these people that their ancestors always cheated on God, and rejected his prophets and so it was no surprise that they were still doing the same thing. Zechariah and Stephen had very similar messages to bring to their audiences. And both died for saying to religious and political leaders what needed to be said. But Stephen has heard a better word that is spoken in addition to the guilty verdict, and can now say it himself. Zechariah called for vengeance, but he was still assuming that God's style of vengeance would play out like the justice code of his community: "when a man sheds innocent blood, then by man must his own blood be shed." But his creative imaginative God kept the exact letter of the code, while also doing something unexpected to turn the whole world of justice upside down. (Remember our tricky Lady of Justice from The Merchant of Venice?)

God became a man, remained innocent of all blood-guilt his whole life, but died willingly with all the blood-guilt of the world on his own head. The Lord saw and avenged the death of Abel, Zechariah and every prophet in between, not by executing the killers, but by allowing a blood-thirsty human race to execute him. He let all this rest on his head: the guilt and curse and the shame AND BLOOD! of a murderer's death. He took on the curse: "May his head go down with blood into Sheol."

Remember when Jesus was saying in Matthew 23 "surely this generation will take upon its head the blood of all the innocent prophets from A-Z?" The only way that makes sense is if our ears hear and understand that he was announcing his own coming execution. And if our eyes catch the grimace of irony on Jesus' face when the mob later calls out "crucify him and let the blood remain on our heads and our children's heads."(The deaf and blind still try to justify anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christendom's general lack of respect throughout history for a people who are our beloved brothers and sisters because of the election.) Jesus, as he was announcing the curse that falls on yet another generation of murderers, was quite aware that he would soon take that blood-guilt on his own head.

Jesus then, at his execution, was able and willing to say this: "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." He and the Father, in that communication, were telling all the witnesses that something new is being revealed about what the Hebrew God is most interested in as he accomplishes justice. The Hebrew God, because he fiercely loves Abel, won't neglect to respond to Abel's blood crying out "Avenge!" from the ground. But God also loves Cain and is reluctant to simply kill off Cain for his murder. When a brother insists upon shedding the blood of a brother, how does a just and loving Father respond? By sticking to the code which shows the most reverence for the life of the victim: eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life, but putting himself in the place of the guilty.

So then we like Stephen, can be anything but pansies when we announce the bad news about how we all not only are blind to God, but we are blood-thirsty, responsible for the death of his prophets who are also our brothers. We can say it like it is, that the mess is really bad and we are one and all responsible for it. But that is not the last word of blood. Blood has moved on to a new contract, a better word: forgiveness. The "blood-guilt" is no longer on your head. Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Even if your fear of bad news and judgment compells you to murder me before I get to the good news at the end of this sentence, here it is: You must take an honest look at yourself and admit that blood-guilt is on your head; but believe this, it will not be demanded of you, ever, because Jesus Christ is willing to let it rest on his head, always. And if the evangelist is killed before the eyes of the blind (with stones in their hands) get opened, he can still call out to his Father with confidence, "My brothers are killing me, but do not hold this against them."

Blood's better word is now crying out from the ground: "Father, release my brothers from the blood-guilt, as you have released me."