'Cause Joshua told me so.

"'Cause Joshua told me so."


It was a cold and stormy night. The goat-herders were huddled around the fire pit. The roast mutton, parched grain, flat bread, all making up the evening meal, all now settled in contented bellies. A couple of wineskins being passed around.

Some jokes. Quips. Gossip. Who's hot on "Shiloh's Idol." What the teaser for the next episode of "The Macabre of Canaan's Conquest" is suggesting. That Joshua guy. He surely knew how to slay 'em.

But these goat-herders felt it was good to be back home. Home in Palestine. Those seventy years were awful. But even though it was "home," these guys didn't quite realize it as "home." They were all born in exile. Bastards so to speak. So they would wonder, why-for. How come. How to prevent it from happening again. The "it" being that disastrous juxtaposition from "us" to "other."

Some ember in the fire pit exploded. The smoke drifting in a new direction. A lull in the conversation.

And somebody eggs him on.

"Hezey, tell us a story."

And so Hezebul leaned forward, thinking for a moment of how to say this.

"Ya' know, ya' dumb grunges of goat-herders, ya' know how we need to be keepin' our goats separate from the others. There's our goats. And there's them's goats. Be damned if they ever get mixed.

"An' ya' know Zeb. Ya', you Zebul, you're nothing but a goat. You gotta know that some of us seen you and that sheep-herder Brub, we seen what you was doin' up there behind the bluff. But hey! You're one'a our goats. Don't that make ya' hitch your britches.

The fire pit red of Zeb's face was mercifully concealed by the reflected fire pit light.

And this is the tale that Hezey told.

Well. it was a long time ago. It's hot. Juicy. Got a lot'a action. Back in the days when men were real men, and women were proud of 'em. When 'strong and courageous' really meant somthin'.

That Joshua guy. Talk about being a dude! Holdin' his arms up and making the sun. The damn sun of all things! Stop dead'n its tracks. But that's another story for another night.

This one's about spies. Ya', spies. Snoopin' about spies. But kinda' being stupid about it.

And remember what I said about there's our goats, and there's them's goats? Well. Those spies were soon gonna' get their hot little goats all mixed up!

'Cause it wasn't long in their snoopin' around that they came across this little business endeavor that could meet a necessary and very pressing need. 'Cause these spies, being out on the road and all, were lookin' to get their rocks off. And 'Rahab's Brothel of Bouncin' Flax' was strategically and discreetly embedded in the city wall.

Seem's the name 'Rahab' sort of means 'The Broad.' And rumor has it she was hot. Really, really hot. And to just think about her was enough for some guys to spontaneously starch their knickers with a splunk of cum!

Knock, knock. And in they went. And it wasn't discussin' the linen business that wore them out that night!

But seems the old King of Jericho got wind of somethin' goin' on. 'Course, lotsa' men seemed to be interested in flax in that part of town, but there was somethin' a little off with these two characters. Somebody else in the Bouncy Brothel of The Broad got wind that these guys were out to 'search out the land' as the folk-tale tellers tell it.

And Old King Dude of Jericho sends a detachment of grunts to fetch these 'spies' and bust up the little party that's goin' on.

But Rahab. Being a prostitute an' all. Can say anything with a straight face.

Boy, was she good or what? She just sweet talks these grunts and tells 'em 'Sure these guys came. Guys come all the time. I never ask where they come from or whether they go. You know. I do the same for you. So we did business. But they've been satisfied and have moved on. I bet if you really beat you're balls, you could catch them. They mentioned something about the river, why don't you head off thata' way.'

And so, my fellow goat-herders, that Flaxy Bouncy Brothel of Rahab weren't named for nothin'!

But this is where it get's steamy.

And you, ya' bunch of intellectual ignoramus goat-herder bastards, here's the little lesson in all of this that you didn't know. And you, Zeb, pay attention. Damn it. This is about you.

I've told you the stories before. Joshua and the Massacre Marching Band. Kill em'! Kill em'! Kill em' all! Raw! Raw! Raw! Kill em'! Kill em' all! 'Cause they ain't "us."

All that blood and guts. Guts! Piles of bloody guts. Hate 'em. 'Cause they ain't us. And by-goom', we ain't tolerating nothin' that ain't us. And the gods got right in there, egged it all on.

And ya know what? Zeb, you know what?

Rahab weren't one of us!

Ya'!

She was one of those. Those "Others."

Yet, there they were, those damn spies. Shaggin' it up in the Flax.

But Joshua. That Joshua. That Son of Nun Joshua. That implementer of Other. Taking sexuality and gender and ethnicity and religion to make boundaries between us and them. To make it just dandy to massacre, eliminate, conduct genocide, to hate, to discriminate.

But you know Zeb, pay attention. 'Cause this is about you.

At the end of all those stories of Joshua, he had busted those boundaries. He friggin' breached them.

That little tryst with Madame Rahab busted through ethnicity . . . 'cause she was one of those despicable Canaanites. It busted through religion . . . ' cause she was one of those pagans. It busted through sexuality. . . 'cause she was a woman. It busted through sex . . . cause she was a prostitute.

And ya' know what? She weren't massacred!

And she changed the boundaries between us and them. That Other became one of us.

Zeb, you faggot! 'Cause of Rahab, you're sittin' by this fire tonight.

We're supposed to kill ya', ya' know. What ya' did up there behind the bluff! Being the despicable of despicable. Being Other and all. Joshua told us how to do it. Just massacre ya'! Heap up your rottin' guts and pile stones on em'!

And ya'! So what if the discourse of 'othering' is the discourse of murder! Holy! Murder!

Don't matter much if Other is a heretic, infidel, pagan, sodomite, savage, faggot or whore . . . Zeb, you listenin'? 'Cause behind such figures is the hapless Canaanite.

Old Arm-wavin' Joshua used the metaphors of crusade, holy war, genocide . . . the notion of extermination of what is evil and ya', Other.

But ya' know what, ya' hapless bunch of bunglin' goat-herders? Zeb here. We ain't gona' kill him.

'Cause Joshua is also a mirror that exposes othering in our lives. Tells us that what we have done to others, can be done to us.

OK, Zeb, you faggot bastard. So you're one of us now.

Just like Rahab . . . you're one of us.

'Cause Joshua told me so.

[From the Hebrew Bible, Joshua, Chapter 2]

[After reading The Queer Bible Commentary, Edited by Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohace, SCM Press, 2006 (Available through Amazon.com), I can never read the Bible in the same way again. The commentary on the Book of Joshua presented these old classic tales with a context that I have never perceived of them before. Truly, an epiphany for me. And it was this Commentary, and some insightful insights by my friend in Serbia that inspired my re-telling of an old, old story.]

The Refectory Manager

Healing with Tonsorial Surgery

My eye caught the sign in the window: "Open." A little stand-alone building on the east side of College Avenue, just south of the Walla Walla University campus. The south-half of the building . . . an old traditional barber shop.

It was either a haircut or a dog license that I needed, so I made a U-turn as soon as I could, pulled up in front of the shop, got out of the van, and went in.

The barber had his back to me, tweaking some guy's coiffure. No one in the waiting area. In a moment, he looked up.

"Any room for a walk-in?"

He looked so apologetic. "No, I have a 5:30 coming in, what about tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow is fine." I now realized he worked from an appointment register. "When would be a good time?"

"Well, I'm here from 8 until 6, when would you like to come?"

"Oh, gosh, I hope it won't take all day!" I chuckled. "But let's make it first thing. How about 8?" And then I realized, again, I am retired, I don't need to start stuff off at the break of day. "On second thought, let's go with 9."

And so we agreed on 9.

"The last name is James." And he waved his comb and scissors as I turned toward the door.

It has been over 10 years since I have had a haircut in College Place. And I didn't remember that barber from the last time I was there.

This morning, I arrived well before my appointment. He was finishing up his first customer. That customer gave him a tip. The barber explained where exactly that tip was going. Seems he had an account at a local bank to manage the college fund for his grandchildren. It would be going for education.

Somehow, I got the impression that first customer had something to do with education at WWU.

Phone rang. "Bob's Styling Salon. This is Bob." And with a short dialog, an appointment was made for 10:30.

I was then invited into the chair. As I got settled, covered up with the drape, collared with the paper tape, and felt the preliminary assessment of my hair by the resistance to his comb, "My, you've certainly got a head full of hair!"

Well, I knew that. That was why I was there.

I could see a plaque on the wall with his name. His full, formal name. And I could see it was for recognition for his work with a special education program to support educational needs of inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary.

Something was firing a very faint synaptic event deep within a memory.

There was something about the physical appearance of the barber. A small man, probably 10 years my senior, a full head of creamish-blond curly hair. I thought I was back in the 70's.

Our conversation wandered. Where had I gotten my last haircut. In a little town in Texas. How glad and appreciative he was that I returned today, for I could have gone anywhere else. What had brought me to his shop. How it has been nearly 10 years since I was there last. How he used to be up in the Pen, how he has been in College Place since 1960.

And it then clicked!

A flood of memory.

A 16 year old boy. Chosen to be a delegate by the Village Church, to represent the Church's MV (Missionary Volunteer) program at the North Pacific Union Conference Youth Rally held in Portland, OR in the spring of 1962. An adult sponsor of the Church's MV program. A barber. His name was Bob.

I leaned forward in the chair. He stepped back.

"You know?" My mind was trying to fit it all together. "Do you remember sponsoring the MV program for the Village Church for the Walla Walla College Academy students way back in '62?"

He looked at me with a kind of vague, questioning stare. Where was this going.

"I remember, one of our sponsors was a barber, his name was Bob, and I remember a talk he gave to us once. There is only one thing I remember, but I have never forgotten that picture in my mind. Maybe it was you? You, that sponsor, started off his talk with the statement 'My first memory was running, running down a railroad track.'"

He bend around me. Looked at me in awe. "That was me." He paused a moment. "I was running from my father."

Our conversation bounced around incidents of 45 some years ago. The other two College Place barber shops that don't exist now. How I was the photographer for the Academy annual for the 1962-63 year and how I had made arrangements to stage the group picture of the officers of the "Boys Club" in his barbershop. President in the chair, the others gathered around with the razor, lather, comb, clippers. (And the officers of the "Girls Club" were similarly posed in a beauty salon). How he likely was the one who took the picture, since I was one of the officers in the picture and couldn't take it myself. And how he now wants a copy of that picture, and how I can tell from my computer database just which box that old annual is packed in.

And there is another part of that memory.

It was the very first haircut for me in College Place. October, 1961. Bob was not in that shop at that time, but he knew it well.

Fifteen. So young. So immature. So inexperienced. So naive.

So Canadian. So different.

So very different.

Like in what erupting hormones were doing to the orientation of my life's perspective.

And when my turn was called, how I climbed into that big old barber chair. Told the barber just how I wanted the flat-top to be. Anxiously wondered how this new place, this new experience of living in the United States, this new Academy, this new life would all work out.

When I thought he was finished, there was no attempt to undo the paper collar, take off the drape. Instead, I could hear a noise of banging and swishing. And then. Hot. Hot lather brushed onto my neck and around my ears.

Some powerful shot flamed through my back. I knew nothing of adrenalin. And in the next moment, the pressure of the barber's finger wiping away the lather, and the tingle of a straight razor on my neck. The adrenalin exploded. Never in my life had I experienced a sensation like that.

I left that barber shop a 15 year old man.

Shaved. Neck, around the ears, bottom edge of sideburns.

Touched. Touched in a way I had never been touched before.

The whiff of scented talcum. The exhilarating pain of a razor burn.

Forty some years later that sensation is as real now as it was then.

A return to College Place.

The healing therapy of tonsorial surgery.

The healing touch of touch.

But you can't tell just by the feelings.

The Refectory Manager

Achan' for a Stoning

Such as it would seem to the casual observer. But just which of the stories I have been reading this past week is believable.

This past week has seen a circular firing squad on just who is to blame for bonuses. Those CEO bailout bonuses of the stench of obscenity. The epitome of capitalistic raping of the working class. But of course, it was all an essential part of some divine will . . . you know, how "he" helps those who help themselves. The religion of prosperity. Or is it the prosperity of a true religionist.

I managed to catch a few snippets on the teevee of the excoriation of AIG CEO Liddy. Heard a little more on the talking-head shows, and read a little more in the blogosphere. Seems nobody could be outraged enough. Even those who precipitated this catastrophic debacle were blustering the feigned rage.

And the way it seems to work, the "worse" the CEO is, the greater the reward. Apparently, it is the redefining of the American Way.

And then another story I was reading. Except this wasn't about any CEO screwing up. It was just a regular Joe. A grunt of some sort that was doing a little extra-curricular stuff in an organized massacre. Seems this guy got his mitts in the till so to speak. Helped himself to some proceeds. Maybe he thought they were some kind of bonus for himself. But then, when finally confronted, in front the Theocracy's human instrument of administration and his excoriating peers, he admitted that he "coveted them and took them." The plunder . . . a beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of sliver and a wedge of gold. Couldn't be anywhere near 178 million or whatever the alleged atrocity was cited as being. But nevertheless, enough to nearly bring a nation down.

In America, and as some would insist it being a "Christianist" nation that has fallen short of both God's divine plan and that of the mischaracterized "Christianist" founding fathers, an old old story is sort of being replicated. In an America on the precipice of an economic suicide because of greed . . . and because of a system that "coveted them and took them." The "them," in this case, being the fake wealth of the speculation on intangible derivatives of the stuff of sheer greed. An America now in peril of economic survival.

Last week, it was the pious, the pompous, the sanctimonious hypocrites of a derelict U.S. Congress that were doing the excoriating . . . as if they were all innocent victims soiled in this hog-wallow of slop gone sour.

A few millennia ago it was Joshua who was doing the excoriating. That Joshua. The son of Nun Joshua. And oh so politely. "My son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and give him the praise." [I can just see Faux Noise just droolin' all over themselves, closing in on a tight shot of the squirming Achan. You can read the whole thing in the Bible, the Book of Joshua, chapters 6 and 7 for the story of the destruction of Jericho and the aftermath with Ai.] The story continues. In some civil way, Joshua, like an amiable old buffoon cajoles Achan, "Tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me."

And Achan replied, kind of like in feigned mocking wonder, just like toxic CEOs of today protesting their badness while justifying their ill-gotten gains, "It is true! I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of sliver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them.. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath."

Achan was talking about the loot he stole from Jericho, after the walls fell down and they had massacred every living thing in the city with the exception of Rahab the prostitute and her family. And how his sin resulted in a debacle of a defeat for Israel when the next city, Ai, was to be sacked.

And unlike toxic CEO's of today, who can thumb their pimpled noses , and snort what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine too, and haul their ill-gotten bountiful booty looty to unnumbered mail boxes in the Caymans, they have no fear of the fate of Achan.

Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor. Joshua said. "Why have you brought this trouble on us? The Lord will bring trouble on you today."

Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them. Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day.

According to some notorious loud-mouths from the religious right, it is those gays, those abortionists, those feminists that will bring American to its knees . . . God's punishment for certain.

It had to be "that beautiful robe from Babylonia."

An ancient nation of Israel brought to humiliation and defeat.

Achan just had to be gay. A beautiful robe. Why else, would the religionists of today argue, would God punish a whole nation with defeat . . . and execute the stoning of the perpetrator?

Stone the bastard. He coveted a beautiful robe.

And they did.

America . . . now at its knees. Perilously threatened.

Some would think that America's current situation is a divine punishment . . . those gays, those abortionists, those feminists.

So. Are those CEO's with their symbolic beautiful robes of privilege and their covetousness of silver shekels and gold wedges gay?

Apparently not.

For unlike poor Achan, they are rewarded. Some may be stoned . . . but it's not that kind of stoning.

And so one wonders just which of the stories I have been reading this past week is believable.

Such as it would seem to the casual observer.

You really can't tell just by looking.

The Refectory Manager

Hiding My Sin in Paducah

I am running illegal.

Splashed all over the door on the rental truck I'm using to move to College Place, WA, is GVW: Under 26,000. The USDOT truck number is just below that. I am 27,520 pounds.

I have heard horror stories that if I pull into one of those side-of-the-highway weigh stations, I could be fined and/or have to unload the excess weight on the spot. Then I hear stories that I should just whistle on by, only the big boys with a commercial driver license and with actual bills of lading and log books and air brakes and stuff like that need to stop. And if I'm caught, just play stupid, dumb and ignorant! 'Cept I can't lie. That is a skill I never acquired.

So I choose to hide my sin by taking the scenic route to get around them. Tough to do in parts of the western USA.

This morning, after making reference to my trucker's edition of the road atlas that indicates where scales are located, I make a left turn off of US 287 to hit a little road that will put me on some local county roads that I can use to skirt the weigh station.

Except the county roads turn out to be single lane dirt pathways, hardly graded, and soaked with a three day drenching rain. I can't think of a faster way to submerge myself to the axles in grief than to try a short cut like that!

So I keep going. At least this Texas FM road is paved. (a "FM" road is a "farm to market" secondary road). Finally I find a place to safely pull off to see where I am at and what kind of mess I have gotten myself into. GPS's really do help!! Most of the time!!

The paved road continues on for 25 miles to Paducah, TX. There I can turn west, get to Matador, turn north and get back on US 287, and bypass the weigh scale.

Paducah!

I had no idea there was a Paducah in Texas. Of course I had heard about the one in Kentucky, and the jokes that go with it about being from Paducah of all places. Like it is the pejorative for hicksville or something.

So I am headed for Paducah! This is a scenic adventure. I am excited!

As I bounce along, to my right, I notice the grading for an old, long-ago abandoned rail line. The ties are randomly scattered on each side. They are bleached white, of all things, so old, so rotten, so weathered by years of a blistering Texas sun. I wonder why it was so important to run a rail line along here, and then to just rip it up.

And the abandoned railroad right-of-way goes to Paducah.

This part of Texas is under the flyways for many flights to and from the west coast that use the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Several weeks ago I was on one of those flights. It was at night. I could look down at the little sprinkling of lights that were scattered over the dark earth like sequins on a discarded rhinestone cowboy's black jacket. I remember thinking at the time if one in ten of those little flickering lights represented a gay or lesbian individual. And so alone. So lonely. So isolated in the fly-over part of the country.

And now I was entering one of those little clusters of light.

Boom! Classical Pops on the XM Satellite radio lets rip with a tune I don't know the name of but the words take me back to summer camps of yore.

The ants go marching one by one.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants go marching one by one.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants go marching one by one;
The little one stops to suck his thumb,
And they all go marching down into the ground to get outof the rain.
Boom, boom, boom!

Somebody has provided an alternate set of words.

We ants go marching two by two,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll all be dead before we're through,
Hurrah! Hurrah!

But oh!

The decay. The destruction. The dereliction.

Ants or no ants, this town is the living macabre!

A crumpling house on the right side. Old cars and beat up junk all around. A teenage boy in a red pull-over sweater, standing on his front porch, drinking from a supersize fountain cup. Equally dilapidated houses on the other side of the road. A skinny dog tethered on a chain.

The farm businesses with their abandoned inventory of rusted stuff. The little stand-alone service businesses, all closed up. Multi-story hotel, can hardly read the weathered glyph on the brick.

Nothing had a new nail driven in since Hoover was president.

I arrived at the main intersection. Main street went to my left and right. Mostly to my right. The street was double wide so the parking was in the middle. A lot of pickup trucks doing 69.

My eye caught the hand painted blue and white sign for a restaurant on store-front window. A red and white sign in the door: Closed.

At least three signs for "First" church of this or that. Good planning. Take care of the contingency now before the "Second" church shows up.

The dearth was depressing. A town of the living dead.

And then I came by the school. Had to be the last thing of civic pride for the community. Small athletic field. Bleachers with about 6 rows of seats. A big trailer with "Dragons" painted on the side, something to throw the football gear into, and hook onto the back of the school bus when the team headed over to the next county to sting the hinnies of whatever it was that was over there.

And my eye caught that dead railroad right-of-way, leaving the far side of town. Ghoulishly railroad ties strewn as abandoned litter.

The Classical Pops marching ant song had come to an end. Mercifully.

This town knows nothing of the economic crisis of current events. It has been in an economic crisis for decades.

Wikipedia paints an even more dismal picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paducah,_Texas

And about that one dilapidated house in ten that might be the dwelling, the abode, the home, the castle of a gay man or lesbian woman? Yes, what about it?

Would the demographics even hold for this part of Texas, this part of the USA?

Why would a gay or lesbian stay in a place like this?

Does any one of those "First" churches offer any respite what-so-ever to the soul-need of an isolated gay? A lonely lesbian? A denizen of a horribly dilapidated closet.

The curious in me asks.

And then there is my sin. Of skirting the law with an overloaded truck of stuff. Through Paducah . . . Paducah of all places.

A sequin of light visible to a night-time passing jet overhead.

But one can never tell for sure, just by lookin'.

The Refectory Manager

Transcendentalism and a Spiritual Journey Pit Stop

Sometimes a friend needs to let rip with a rant.

And his e-mail late last night was just that.

His struggle, his frustrations with the dichotomy between message and messenger. Between fundamentalism and progressivism. Between the myth, the fantasy, the near-idolatry of literalism with the longing for an entity that is infinitely bigger than our petty little human notions of deity, ever on the edge of idolatry.

His realization that Plato of yore and Spong of now are lifting the veil, changing the paradigm. Salvaging and moving on.

He thinks he may be a transcendentalist.

I responded to him about my experience with transcendentalism.

To be something akin to a transcendentalist is something that entices me, on both a spiritual and intellectual level. But even though I have read considerable about them, and of them, I still don't really know just what the "is" "is" in being a transcendentalist. When I first became acquainted with that movement, I just thought of them as some kind of eccentrics back there in the 19th century. Intellectual, uppity, cerebral, eccentrics that thought they were just so much better than anybody else. And of course, they were non-Christian which made me dismiss them right out of hand.

I still find them very intriguing. Like they are on to something that most of us poor ignoramuses have no capacity to understand. Kind of like those Gnostic Gospels from the 1st century AD. But there is something deep within me that wants to "flirt" with this transcendentalist thing like it is forbidden, or naughty, or dangerous or something. Kind of like that psychological drive that some people have to do insanely crazy/risky things.

And so I can't call myself a transcendentalist 'cause I am not sure just exactly what one is yet. But I do suspect there is a fair degree of humanism in transcendentalism and some transcendentalism in humanism.

The Ranter responded in the morning.

Just a quick note before I leave for work. I have found one of the best summaries of transcendentalism in that little book you had sent, 'The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.' [I had sent him the script for the play as a birthday present some time back.] It's in one of Henry's exchanges [Henry and Ellen, Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter, are out in a row boat] with Ellen

E: My father says God has put everything here for men to use.

H: Oh? Did the good Father put us here to root and snort and glut ourselves like pigs? No, the pigs are better; pigs may be the most respectable part of the population: at least they consume the rubble instead of contributing to it. (In the distance, the WHISTLE of a a railroad TRAIN). Hear that? There goes a carload of two-legged pigs, off to market... emasculating the landscape with their tracks...

E: I rather like the railroad. Far better than a horse and carriage.

H: Why?

E: It's smoother - and much faster.

H: And dirtier. And uglier. Thank God men haven't learned to fly: they'd lay waste the sky as well as the earth... chop down the clouds!

E: (Somewhat puzzled) Is that in Transcendentalism, Mr Thoreau?

H: (Laughs) No. Yes, it is - in a way. Take your father. Do you love the man?

E: Of course.

H: Why?

E: He's my father.

H: Is he beautiful?

E: Dear me, no!

H: Does he create beauty? Paint? Play a musical instrument?

E: No.

H: (Pointing up, then down) Can he fly like that bird? Or swim, like that fellow down there?

E: He can swim a little. He used to. But not like that fish.

H: Nevertheless you love him.

E: Of course.

H: Your love transcends what your father is - and what he is not. Everything is capable of going beyond itself (E frowns a bit) Damnit, I've lost you. Put your hand in the water. (She does) Can you touch bottom?

E: (Reaching down) It's too deep.

H: For the length of your arm. Not for the length of your mind. (Has stopped rowing) Miss Sewell. Why should your reach stop with your skin? When you transcend the limits of yourself, you can cease merely living - and begin to BE!


I [My friend, the Ranter] think that's the point of transcendentalism. Being. Awareness of deeper meaning in things and other people, one that may not be physically palpable or immediately obvious, but that is there all the same. Speaking of God, it's a bit like Miss Sewell not being able to touch the bottom of the lake. I think of transcendentalism as a faith based on mind and reason, rather than myth and fantasy. Where more primitive mind comes up with myths and rituals, transcendentalists appeal to mind. Which is why they didn't seem to object to Jesus and his moral teachings, but did dismiss the miracles, rituals, more fanciful notions about him and organized religion in general. I suppose they were not Christian in our common meaning of the word, but there is something kind, compassionate and good-natured about them that I find quite Christ-like.

Wow! And my response back to the Ranter:

My copy of "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail" is in box 1025, deeply buried in the front area of the truck [rental truck I am using to move to Washington State]. I have thumbed through the script, but have not actually read it. That is where you have a real advantage over me. You have only the actual words to go on.

I can still remember that performance. It did make an impression on me. It was held in a "fire-side" room of some kind at one of the UU churches in the Wash DC area. (The Bethesda, MD congregation). The audience, of maybe 50 or 60 people were evenly split on each side of the room, facing each other. We sat on backless benches. Kind of primitive.

The "stage" (i.e. jail cell) was to my left. In front of the platform jail cell, there was an open area between the two groups of spectators.

The row boat scene was done out in this open area. There was an actual small rowboat, set on a black-draped stand of some sort. And their conversation took place in that boat.

I didn't remember the essence of that conversation at all. It happened all so quickly. The actors were reading the script from the same book that you have. They only had 3 rehearsals, so this was a "reading" and not necessarily a "play" being performed. But even so, they were exceptional. The people chosen for the main characters: HDT, Emerson, his wife, his daughter, HDT's brother, the other guy in the jail cell . . . they really did make it truly come to life.

But I have to confess. Yes. Damn it! I was infatuated with the guy that played HDT. He was probably in his mid twenties, a small, thin guy. Very sensitive, very expressive, and the theatrical makeup gave him a look that I just wanted to leap up there and hold him and hug him and cuddle him and nuzzle him. Yeah. I fell in love with him.

And that brings me to the lesson that I think we are both learning from this little side trip on a spiritual adventure.

There is a difference between the message and messenger.

I fell in love with the messenger (The actor playing HDT). I missed the message.

And on a bigger, more pragmatic scale, to love the messenger is not necessarily to love the message. Hell, one may not even know the message at all. From what I read today, that is a stark problem with evangelicals in the US, they got themselves so wrapped up in the politics of hate: hate against gays, against women rights, against brown people, against HIV/AIDs people, the poor, the welfare cheats, the unions, and on and on and on, they don't even know what the essence of Christianity is all about and are virtually ignorant of the social gospel of Jesus' mission.

To love the message is not necessarily to love the messenger. And that is where the very liberal, progressive churches like the UU's come in, also the point that Spong makes. And Murrey with his humanism book.

And like the messenger HTD, the messenger Jesus is seen as just that, a messenger. Both by the fundamentalists and the transcendentalists. Where the fundamentalists find the messenger to be someone to oggle and google and gush all over with love, love, love like these mindless contemporary evangelical songsfests do, the transcendentalists, humanists, Deists find that abhorrent. I find it totally unnerving to be in, or to watch, these evangelical singing services with people waving their arms in the air and rapturously in love with their very own personal idol of the persona of Jesus. And furthermore, just what persona of Jesus is the one that should be recognized?

So thanks so much for pointing out that little experience from HDT.

Perhaps I have tried to make transcendentalism far too complicated. Perhaps it is basically so simple that I just haven't recognized it,

I will need to read, again, for the first time, some works on transcendentalism. And all of that stuff is in another box, buried deep in the front of the truck.

But it did give me an idea for your birthday present. I think you will really like it.

And our respective spiritual journeys have made a very refreshing pit stop.

The Refectory Manager