The Refectory Manager

The refectory . . . A place to nourish the soul. A place to share the savory comestibles, the sweet confections, the salty condiments of the things that matter. A place to ruminate the cud of politics. A place to rant on the railings of religion. A place to arrange the flowers of sanguine beauty. A place to pause in the repose of shelter. Welcome, my friend. The Refectory Manager

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Location: College Place, Washington, United States

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Closets of safety and refuge.

I chose to go back into the closet today.

I found myself in a little general store in my community. Walla Walla/College Place, WA. An elderly man on one of those scooter thingies looked at me and asked me if I worked there. I said no. He needed help with something.

There was something about his voice. It was rattling dormant synapses deep within me.

A few minutes later, I met him again. Again, he was alone in an aisle. I asked him if he had found someone to help him, for I was ready to go off and find assistance for him. But he assured me that somebody was now helping him.

I moved on.

But that voice. And then it hit me who he was.

I remembered him from my Dad's funeral back in 2001. This elderly gentlemen was one of the "characters" featured in my Dad's diary from Canadian Junior College days from 1941 to 1945.

I went back to him and introduced myself. His memory is fading, as he explained, and so it took awhile for him to connect who my Dad was, who my mother was, and who I am. But it finally came together.

The conversation focused around those 1940's days and some of the people involved. He is a retired SDA minister now.

At one point of the conversation he looked at me and stated, "You are a Seventh-day Adventist." He needed an affirmation just to be sure, because he was talking about the imminent end of time because of global warming thing he had watched on TV at day or so ago. He was emphatic that the Lord was coming very quickly.

I simply responded, "No, I was a SDA, but no longer."

That set him off. "You need to return to the Lord. Shame on you. You need to study your Bible. You need to find someone who can give you good Bible studies. You need to return to the Lord."

I didn't respond.

His end of the conversation continued about how God created all these animals to live in different habitats, and now the habitats were changing because of global warming. And how evil Darwin was. And how I needed to study Genesis and to get ready for the Lord's return.


I listened to him.

He was sincere.

And I did not challenge him. I did not agree with him. I did not disagree with him. I did not want to evangelize to an 88 year old man who is so firmly anchored in his belief system.

But if he only knew I was studying the Bible. Like I have never studied it before.

If he only knew that I was gay, (that would have evoked a volcano of righteous eruption), and that I choose to no longer associate with a homophobic church that discriminates.

If he only knew that I have made a serious study of science dealing with biology, and that now I fully accept and endorse the scientific field of molecular biology and genetics that is commonly known as evolution as a unifying theory of all things living.

If he only knew that I now understand Genesis to be a Mesopotamian myth that was the prolog to a history that had its purpose to justified the House of David as the Righteous Church . . . to be destroyed by Rome . . . that evolved into a Roman form of Christianity.

So I had to force myself back into the closet.

For him.

Not for me.

Because it would be too "in-your-face" for him.

But then, posting this experience on Kinnet is an "in your face" thing as well.

The catacombs in a religious community sometimes become closets of safety and refuge.

The Refectory Manager

Friday, June 12, 2009

And the terrorist stabbed them through their bellies as they made love.

I was reading from "James, The Brother of Jesus" this morning, and came across a reference to Numbers 25: 6-13. When I read that earlier this year, I was so grossed by Phinehas stabbing the man and woman through their bellies while they were having sex, that I missed a major, major, theological point that I swear, still rears its devastating head to this very day.

A zealot struck. Again.

On June 10, 2009, we experienced yet another episode of home-grown terrorism. The latest being an attack on a US Government Federal Park Museum dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust. Such a sensitive symbol of what "zealousness" can do. I have not looked at the assassin's web site, only have heard reports of the "zealous" hatred he has for the "other." The non-pure that threatens his perceived reality. The zealous drive to do god's work.

"Zeal" and "zealous" are words and ideas that have a lethal history. A religious lethal history.

It starts with one of those despicable stories recorded in the biblical book of Numbers. Chapter 25, versus 6 - 13. To the casual reader, it is a story of one of the most macabre murders ever recorded. A man, an Israelite, brings a Midianite woman into his family, in the sight of Moses no less, and even in sight of the whole congregation who is weeping at the temple gate because of a plague blamed on sin. The Midianites were the "other." The heathen enemy. Israelites were not to intermingle, for it would violate ceremonial cleanliness. Moses saw this incident. And did nothing. How could he, for he had married a Midianite. But Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron the high priest did see this. And taking a spear, barged into the man's tent and found them having sex. With his spear, he pierced the two of them, through their bellies. The narrator of this story does say that the plague was stopped.

But it is the next part of the story that is the seed of grief. For the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by manifesting such ZEAL among them on my behalf that in my jealousy I did not consume the Israelites. Therefore say, 'I hereby grant him my covenant of peace. It shall be for him and for his descendants after him a covenant of perpetual priesthood, because he was ZEALOUS for his God, and made atonement for the Israelites.'

In Robert Eisenman's "James, The Brother of Jesus," Eisenman provides a detailed background on the sectarian factions in and around Palestine in that 100 years before and after the time of Christ. There are numerous references to the "Zealots" in the history provided by Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and some veiled references in the gospels and book of Acts. Eisenman threads the history of these "Zealots" all the way back to Phinehas, the grandson of the High Priest Aaron.

From the Maccabeus through the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, there was this horrific struggle between the legitimacy of the purists, or "zealots" and those who were more accommodating to "foreign" rule, foreign kings, foreign appointed high priests. It was a struggle between the purists and the "other." It was a civil war, the "War of the Jews" as Josephus' biased account describes it. The whole Deuteronomistic history that is so xenophobic, tribal, so filled with incident after incident of sacral war instigated by the Divine Warrior Yahweh. So self-serving in its portrayal of its own history. It leads up to a perfect storm.

The Herodian Jewish "Establishment," in the first century, was permitted to be in power because they were willing to accommodate Rome.

From the Zealots perspective, that was blasphemy of the first order.

The Zealots were the purists. The conservatives. The right-wingers. The "Sicarii" were the ultra-zealots who were the assassins . . . concealing their cycle-shaped knives in the their clothing.

The references in the Deuteronomistic history to the establishment of the "Zadokite" priesthood (the story of the death of Eli the priest and the boy Samuel), and the association of this priesthood with the King David Dynasty of the tribe of Judah, identified this as the authentic priesthood. The priesthood subsequently defended by the "Zealots." After the Babylonian exile, and in that inter-testament era when Palestine was under the influence initially of Greece (The Seleucids) and then Rome (Herod), subsequent foreign-established priesthoods were permitted to be in a sort-of autonomous power under the auspices of the Greek/Roman power. In the first century, under the reign of the infamous "Herod the Great," the Jewish Establishment was known as the Herodian priesthood. In the perception of the "Zealots," (the one's identified with the Dead Sea Scrolls), the Herodian priesthood was blasphemous. In that first century era, a tremendous religious conflict was generated within the Jewish peoples. Because of the sedition of the Zealots against the foreign control of the "kittim" i.e. Rome, Rome ended the influence of the "Zealot" faction of Judaism once and for all. After the fall of Jerusalem, the zealot and Palestinian Christianity (i.e. the Christianity associated with James, the Brother of Jesus, head of the Jerusalem Jewish-Christian church, and the one in conflict with Paul) was annihilated. The Rabbinical form of Judaism was tolerated by the Romans, because the Rabbinical form of Judaism was amenable to "foreign control," i.e. it was allowed to survive under Roman rule. Josephus, a Jew turned turncoat to be adopted into the Roman Emperor's family, told the story of Jewish history with a distinctive Roman flavor. What progressed as a New Testament history was written under the influence of Rome. What progressed as a Christian religion was composed by Roman "Church Fathers." Hence, that so-favorable portrayal of Rome in the gospels. The seeds of anti-Semitism sown in those very same gospels.

But back to the present day zealots that breed American terrorism.

An underlying postulate by these terrorists is that America is a "Christian Nation." Divinely founded. A part of a natural destiny to an apocryphal ending. And ridding America of sin will enable god's will in this destiny.

These zealots are old testament "Christians" who somehow, have this fixation on this purist, xenophobic, cleansing of their perceived notion of evil within our contemporary society. They take it upon themselves to be the enforcers, just like Phinehas in days of yore, and because Phinehas was deemed a "zealot" and rewarded for his actions, these contemporary terrorists see their full justification in their holy war of purity.

Except they are twisted in their history and for just what they should be "zealous" for.

There certainly is a questionable at best Old Testament history of zeal for extermination of the profane and "other" as defined by ancient Israel.

There certainly is a New Testament history of marginalization of Old Testament Judaism.

Present day haters of Jews, blacks, gays, baby-killers, foreigners find their targets in the biblical rhetoric of sacral war and apocryphal imagery.

And so the likes of Phinehas of old, taking it upon himself to enter a man's tent, to spear the man and women through their naked, pressed-together bellies as they "knew" each other, to purge the corporate Israel from the "sin" of bringing a heathen into their presence . . . it is the "ZEAL" of Phinehas, rewarded by Yahweh himself, that gives the justification to contemporary zealots to purge this "Christian Nation" of evil.

There is no denying that the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible have had one significant impact on western civilization, but I must stop and ask, over and over again, what is it that god hath wrought?

If god can "regret that I made Saul king," 1 Sam 15:10, what else does or can god regret?

Is it possible that this god can "regret" that he ever launched such a religious frenzy to appease his "jealousy" that has resulted in millennia of holy wars and unimaginable human suffering?

Is it possible for god to follow his own advice? To love his neighbor as himself?

His "zealous" followers apparently think not.

For these self-commissioned zealots, manifesting such zeal among themselves on god's behalf in protecting god's jealousy against what is the evil "other," have this hallucination of their perpetual priesthood forever.

If there is any miracle in any of this . . . it has to be a miracle that the "Sermon on the Mount" even emerged from this perfect storm of nascent Christianity.

And the second miracle is that the Sermon on the Mount can somehow survive the zealots of this world, in their purification jihad to rid the world of love and tolerance for one another.


The second, will truly be a miracle.

The Refectory Manager