Sarah Laughed

Mother’s Day Missal

2008

Then the Lord said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife will have a son."
    Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years and Sarah was past the age of child bearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old will I now have this pleasure?"
    Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." 
    Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." 
    But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."

Genesis 18:10 – 18:15


When I was 37, I was training for a marathon. My husband and I had worked very hard five years before to have our beloved children, a boy and a girl, five and six years old, respectively. When our son, Sam, was born we knew our family was complete and we never again tried to have children. Now, because we had struggled with infertility, we did not have to work very hard to keep from having more. In fact, in those intervening five years, we enjoyed that special privilege that only infertile couples enjoy. It was a free and wanton lifestyle, I admit and we took it for granted. Then, that infamous fall, a few weeks after 911, I began to feel unwell. I went to the doctor and explained that my racing times were slowing down and asked if I was overtraining. She said: "Pee in this cup.”

At first I was confused but then it dawned on me. I shook my head, blocked the cup with the palm of my hand and said, "No. No no no no no. I can't get pregnant. I'm infertile." I said that. And then I laughed.

The next trip to the doctor was to a specialist. I was not entirely clear on why I needed to see a specialist but it didn't really matter, it was near the Dunkin Donuts where my Dad and Sam and I had coffee on no-school days and so it was no biggie. Until I got into the gown and into the room and the nice young man in a doctor's coat – the man who still had acne and a high voice but managed to scribble the words MD after his name, that man- came in and explained to me that I was a high risk pregnancy. 

"Why am I a high risk pregnancy?" I asked. I was in perfect shape, I didn't smoke or drink, I had never been promiscuous, I hadn't conceived on the full moon or pulled a Scarlet O'Hara on horseback.

            "Because of your age," he said gently. "You are 37 years old."
            I did not laugh. I snarled. "You're saying I am too old to have a healthy pregnancy?"
            “I'm saying being this close to forty, you are a high risk."
            I sat there for a while, letting my blood pressure rise to pre-ecclamptic levels and then hissed, "One of us is as risk, Doogie, but if I were you I'd mind my manners in the presence of my elders."

Being the "older mother", the "non-standard" mother, the "experienced mother" is not all it’s cracked up to be. My mother was forty-two when I was born and she only made appearances at school on Halloween so she could show off her cackle and make everyone think I lived with my grandmother. 

But I, I was never that woman. I was a slender, attractive mother of two, active at school and well respected in the community. I was my husband's child bride and we had "rich man's family" with the prospect of the two children, close in age, liking the same rides at Disney World and going off to college and leaving us in peace while we still had our hearing. Now, I was an "at risk pregnancy" because I did not get knocked up at prom.

Telling my Dad was the hardest part. He was himself thirty six when I was born, so to him I must have seemed ready to be a grandmother. My husband told him several days after we found out. I wasn't saying the words, yet. I was in denial. When I had to leave Disney on Ice (Toy Story) to throw up in the bathroom, it was because the show was that bad, it was not morning-all-day-sickness. But not my husband. Dave was a balding, almost forty, vibrant man who knocked up his wife – again – ha HA!

And my Dad's response was, "No." Like he could just say it and it wouldn't be so. Like we were asking him if I could be pregnant. He was decisive, he was firm and he was openly shocked. My step-mother laughed.

Over the years, the strangest kinds of things have occurred as the result of the late baby. I have had to tell my eldest daughter about her menstrual cycle while poking mashed bananas past perma-sealed lips. I have stood with Dave's grandmother touring a Senior Care Center with a baby in a stroller. I have had one child in the diving pool, one in the 6foot pool and one in the wading pool for three years in a row. And I have not had a good night's sleep since Bill Clinton's first administration. 

Now, forty three years old, a year older than my mother was when I was born, I begin to get the point. I am still very active at the elementary school, I am now, always have been and seemingly always will be training for a marathon, and I am still my husband's child bride, but things are a little different for me now.

For one thing, orientation at school? That should only be attempted after one large margarita. Because first grade teachers, bless them, are WAY too enthusiastic. And we have seen it all. All the other mothers who are dolled up for Orientation in cute little cropped sweaters and snazzy shoes are all a-twitter about the innovative way the children will be learning the denominations of money. I'm sitting in the back thinking, "Oh, no, please not "buying recess" again!" They are all about "what should my child be reading in summer to prepare for first grade?" I groaned, I actually groaned out loud. My goal for the summer is to keep Betsy from eating so much sand that she gets worms. Again. 

"Tell me, Mrs. Foster, may I come in and just watch little Cooper in class on occasion? I just love to watch him learn. It's such a magical time." 

Mrs. Foster patiently gives the detailed parameters for parent involvement in class… I'm picking my cuticles thinking: because if you come every day you'll screw up his life! Get a JOB, a HOBBY, a HABIT for goodness sake! Find a modifier for your name tag that is not "Cooper's Mommy."

 "Oh, and if you have any questions, you can ask Mrs. Robertson, she is your room mom and she is a veteran at these things."

A veteran. Now I'm a veteran. Because anyone who has seen my eldest knows I've been in the trenches. Because aside from the obvious emotional and intellectual toll it takes on a person to bring three other humans safely and sanely into the world, my body very closely resembles a battle scarred war vehicle. My feet are two sizes bigger, at any rate. And yet, if I were a veteran, I would have free healthcare. Gee, I guess that's not accurate then, is it?

But I smiled. Indeed, yes, it is true, I laughed. Do you know why? Because I could not see it at the time, but just as surely as Abraham and Sarah were given a gift from God, so was I. Just as Isaac was the beginning of something his parents could not know, so my little last lamb is the start of something new.

She can sing the entire Patty Page Songbook. She knows how to call her older sister "stupid" in American Sign Language. She can run so fast that her "colors run together" and every day when I sing, "Whoa, whoa, hey, hey," she answers, "I love you more than I can say."

At forty three when I had envisioned myself working at NPR and wearing Anne Taylor suits, I am now giving up coloring my hair, because who has time for that and when the mail comes I sing the Mail Song from Blues Clues. And while the mothers of middle schoolers I know have pop songs for their ring tones, mine plays the Wonder Pets Theme Song: "The phone! The phone is ringing! There's an animal in trouble somewhere." 

But unlike Sarah, I have companions. There are two other moms in the kindergarten class who have children in middle school as well. And we are old and grey and young and stupid together. We sit in our cars and laugh and try to figure out how to handle our eldest child's first crush. We sit at the dining room after dinner and laugh as we are confronted with pre-algebra, a blank map of the continent of Africa to be filled in, and a book-in-a-bag about circles. It's okay, we laughingly tell one another, to spill wine in the "Sound Jar" and to sign the report card in green crayon. Even at Winter Program when our children sing the dirty lyrics to the Carols because their older siblings taught them to, even then we giggle and snort behind our hands. 

So, here is how I envision the whole Genesis 18 thing coming down: Abraham is out there with the three visitors and they tell him he will have a son with Sarah in a year. She is inside, cleaning up, mind you, having just served an impromptu meal complete with fresh bread to these guys, while Abe is out there shooting the breeze. She hears the prediction that they make and – no doubt about it – she laughed. "I'm way past it," she says, "And Abraham is older than me!" She snorted, you know she did, but to herself. It says "to herself." A girl is not even aloud to laugh to herself! And the Lord gives her the old evil eye and she waves her hands, trying to suffocate the laughter in her throat and says, "No, I wasn't laughing!" 

Then he says, because even the Bible can read like a Seinfeld script sometimes: "Yes, you did! You laughed!"

See, it's her laughter that does her in. It’s not that she doesn't believe or that she's incredulous at the proposition. She does herself in because she has laughter. God knows in that moment that she has the key ingredient to being a mother in your older years. She can laugh, even in her "advanced age" and so God feels confident giving her a child to raise.

So, a year later when she is a new mom, and ten years later when she is older than dirt and still a mom, in fact, long after everyone else has begat and moved on to other chapters, Sarah and her friends are still raising children. And they are still laughing. 

And thank God for that.

 

Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter everyone who hears will laugh with me.”  Genesis, 21:6

Salt of the Earth: An Essay Bent on Redeeming Lot’s Wife

“But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.”

                                                                                                Gen 19:26

I am always bothered by the story of Lot’s wife. It seems to be invoked when we wish to condemn someone’s frailty, their lack of trust or love or inability to adhere to God’s command for them. I disagree.  I would like to try to redeem Lot’s wife.

Lot’s wife walked last. She let the men lead her, she followed in their footsteps.  In all the depictions I have seen of her, she is carrying a load on her back. She is a beast of burden, last on the trail.  No one will know if she falls back but she will catch the men if they stumble. She has put them first on this most important path in their lives. It seems to me significant that Lot’s wife, who has no name, is trailing behind her husband.  They are leaving town, and they are going uphill. Should she not be walking ahead of him?  Should he not be ushering her away from danger and helping her along to be sure of her safe passage?  He has no fear, evidently, of her tripping or becoming weary, of her falling behind for any reason. No, he is hot on the heels of Abraham; he is high tailing it out of town. What if he were to become concerned about her?  What if he were to think, to suspect that she had fallen, had mis-stepped or buckled under her burden? He could not look back to see her, could he? No, the only way Lot can be sure of his wife, of her safety, of her rescue, of her future, of her courage in the face of this terrible test, is to take a place in line behind her. But it is she who is behind him, not because she is inferior to him, but because she loves him. This, to me, is the first indication that there is something more in the story of Lot’s wife.

Why does she look back? I wonder. Perhaps she is thinking of the nine. There are nine, at least nine very good people remaining in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham negotiated with God, he pointed out that it would be unfair to destroy them all if even ten were good (Gen 17:32). This always bothers me.  If ten are good, let Abraham search them out and rescue them all. But Abraham only asks if there are ten, he does not say who they are, he does not rescue them.  He rescues Lot.Was he one of the righteous?  I don’ think so; he let his wife drag behind, afraid, unsure, and ultimately frail. So let’s do our Bible math. We know there are at least ten and that Lot is not one. 

Do we also know that his wife is one? Yes. Because she lets him walk ahead of her? No, well, possibly, but not necessarily.  Because she is married to Lot?  If he’s not a good one, she’s not made good by being married to him.  Being married to Lot is not what saves her from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: she is saved by proximity to Abraham, not her husband.  No, we know she is good because she does turn back. 

In the end, God relents and shows mercy on an entire nation because some small number were good.  God looked back, after the pronouncement, and felt pity. “For the sake of forty,” He says, for the sake of ten” (Gen 17-26-33).  So did Lot’s wife, in the final moments before she bridged the top of the hill, look back.  She pitied her neighbors, her family and her friends.  She hoped for God to show kindness one more time.  She hoped for mercy.

We are asked to love our neighbor as ourselves. We, none of us, are perfect. We sin by act and omission, we sin in our hearts, and sin lingers on the doorsteps of our lips (Gen 4:7). And yet we forgive ourselves (too easily perhaps) and go on loving ourselves day after day.  Lot’s wife loved her neighbors in this way.  Her neighbors, the people who lived in the worst town in Creation, flawed and frail and disappointing, she loved them as she loved herself, with indulgent and unswerving forgiveness. 

This is how I know there were only nine good people left in Sodom and Gemmorah: Lot’s wife was one of the ten.  When she walked out of town, she put her husband before her out of concern and respect, when she walked out of town, she still had hope of God’s mercy for the people, even the unholy ones, behind whom she had walked in her time there.  When she walked out, she still had hope – faith - that things would change for the better. Lot’s wife loved unselfishly, she loved at her own risk.  She loved perfectly and unconsciously. She put her husband’s calling ahead of her heart, she spared a moment in defiance of his command to love her neighbor as herself. And yet all of this is not the evidence that convinces me that Lot’s wife was really good. I know she was good because God turned her into salt.

Salt represents an enduring covenant, the preservation of a relationship beyond limits of nature and time. The Covenant of Salt (Num. 18-19) emerges in the Bible, very likely because salt was used in sacrifices, to flavor the sacrifice and make it more pleasing to God. “With all they sacrifices shalt thou offer salt” (Lev. 2:13).  According to Jewish tradition, salt is a food that never spoils and G-d made a covenant with salt at creation that it would not spoil and last indefinitely. Also, salt is considered to be a product of underground waters and G-d made a covenant with those waters during creation that they will be used for sacrifices in the Temple in the form of salt. The salt of Sodom was an ingredient in the incense used in the Second Temple.The returning exiles affirm their loyalty to the Persian king “because we eat of the salt of the palace” (Ezra 4:14). The priestly tithes and the kingship of David are compared to the covenant of salt to show that they, too, are forever. In the Ancient Near East, salt was deemed so necessary that serving it at a meal with friends indicated hospitality and a committed and long lasting friendship. The word “salary” emerges from the word “salt.” God transformed the anonymous and forgotten wife of Lot, therefore, into the most valuable of commodities, and her sacrifice appears to have been delightful and enduring in His eyes.

Salt also represents healing and frequently symbolized long life. Illnesses were treated with salt, newborns were often rubbed with salt.  The Talmud exhorts us to salt in our diets as a preservation of good health. The Talmud tells us that salt and water are the most essential elements of life: “The world can exist without wine but not without water. Salt is cheap and pepper dear; the world can exist without pepper but not without salt.”

Significantly, it also “absorbs blood.”  While it is at the center of the rendering of kashrut food, it is also a strangely symbolic presence at the sacrifice of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Is the blood of those who die at Sodom and Gomorrah purified by the altruistic sacrifice of Lot’s wife? Does her sacrifice offer them redemption?

But salt is also a symbol of “a complete break with the past.” Salt is sown into the ground of a conquered land to represent a fresh start. Elisha purifies water the water of Jericho with salt (2 Kings 2:20). The transformation of Lot’s wife marks a new beginning, as well.  The site of the sinful people of Sodom and Gomorrah subsequently becomes the location of the Salt of Gomorrah, which was part of the incense used in the Second Temple.

Lot’s wife, anonymous and forgotten, looked back in mercy and knowingly brought about her own destruction.  Frail and humble, selflessly loving and senselessly hopeful, in the eyes of God, Lot’s wife had value beyond gold. She became more real in that moment, she realized her essence.  Salt of the earth, was Lots’ wife.  Without her and her kind there is no flavor, there is no preservation, there is no covenantal water, no “forever and ever amen.” Lot’s wife, whose name we do not know, whose absence brought the number of good people under the agreed upon minimum, Lot’s wife was the 10th good person.

So highly esteemed was this person, and yet her grandsons were conceived in incest and became the Moabites and Ammonites. I believe that those are the sons of Lot, who wavered in his faithfulness and was immoderate in drink. I believe there are other heirs of Lot’s wife.

There is a certain Jewish legend that the world exists on the merits of a certain number of truly righteous people.  They do not know who they are. They do not know one another.  We as mortals do not know for certain when they are among us. The number remain constant, when one dies another is born, because the world exists in their merit. They are called “the Righteous” and they are privileged to “receive the Divine presence.”It is believed that one among them will be the Messiah. They number is subject to some debate. The Babylonian Talmud says that there are no less than thirty six of them, but the aggadah sometimes says the number is thirty, and it has been divided into fifteen and thirty. There is no knowing, however, if the number is actually ten.

At times of great peril to the Jewish people, these righteous ones, the lamedvovnik, emerge to employ secret powers to defeat the enemies of Israel and then disappear as miraculously as they appeared. In one Midrash a town sneers at the wealthy miser on the hill all his life.  After his death, the coffers of the local soup kitchen dry up.  There are stories of the lamedvovnik rescuing and hiding European Jewry during the Shoah.

The Lamed Vovnik are said to emerge in the Babylonian Talmud, but I believe they emerge in the Torah: with Lot’s wife. We never know her name but we know that without her, all of her world tipped into chaos.  She loves selflessly, she loves absolutely and she loves unconsciously. And it is only after she is gone that we learn that she was a lamedvovnik, one of the truly righteous.  Perhaps we can only see righteous goodness in retrospect, when things are returned to their true essences.

Let us all make an effort to redeem Lot’s wife. She looked back, not because she was frail, but because she was essential.  Let us all hope for the fate of Lot’s wife. Let us all hope to be the salt of the earth.

Resources:

Cohen, Abraham, ed. Everyman's Talmud. New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1995.

Edithae, Thames and Hudson Publishing (London: 1983).

"Lamed Vav Zaddikim." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 12. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 445-446. 22 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Northwestern University - CIC. 23 Nov. 2009 

Rabinowitz, Louis. "Salt." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 17. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 708-709. 22 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Northwestern University - CIC. 23 Nov. 2009 

Jobes, Gertrude, Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols, The Scarecrow Press, (New        York:1962), p. 967, p. 1391-1393.

Kestecher,  Natalie, “Double Life”  - Producer, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Resound, August 29 , 2009 (#117)- The Secrets Show, cic November 21, 2009. http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/resound_2009_august.asp

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[1]
                        [1] Rabinowitz

[2]
                        [2] Ibid.

[3]
                        [3] Eerdmans, p.286-287.

[4]
                        [4] Cohen, 247.

[5]
                        [5] Rabinowitz, 711.

[6]
                        [6] Encylopaedica Judaica

[7]
                        [7] Ibid.

[8]
                        [8] Encyclopedia Judaica

[9]
                        [9] Encyclopaedia Judaica

[10]
                        [10] Ibid.

[11]
                        [11] Ibid.

[12]
                        [12] http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/resound_2009_august.asp

[13]
                        [13] Ibid.

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 [CH1]by whom?

 [CH2]with whom?

 [CH3]from whom?

 [CH4]I think there's only one man, Lot. I think Abraham is still in his place, where he was in Gen 18:33.

 [CH5]Why can't he look back?

 [CH6]I think there's only four of them, so what's wrong with Lot going first, the kids second & third, and Mom bringing up the rear? That's how we do it when we go hiking.

 [CH7]The angels rescue Lot and his family and no one else, so I assume that they are the only people found to be righteous in S & G. That's only four, and only one male, so no minyan and S & G goes up in smoke. If there had been ten, then God would have spared S & G according to his promise, but there weren't even 10.

 [CH8]Yes, because the angels save her. Of course that might have just been because Lot was considered righteous, and she was his property.

 [CH9]??

 [CH10]Okay, now you've got something!

 [CH11]I don't think you've established that she did it on purpose to sacrifice herself.

 [CH12]If she was the 10th good person, why didn't God spare S & G and "all those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew upon the ground", as previously stipulated per the Lord's and Abraham's agreement?

 [CH13]Yes, I think you have a great idea, that Lot's wife is one of the lamedvovnik, and how do we know? Because God turned her into this very precious substance, salt. I like this because it turns the idea that what happened to Lot's wife was a punishment because she did something wrong, right on its head. Also it kind of references all those Greek stories of virtuous women being turned into symbolic items to protect them. And then you nail your readers with that Matthew quote, which is great. But I couldn't follow the first 2/3rds of your argument, about her place in line, and her being one of the 10.

As for theology, I think you might be able to see this as feminist theology--recovering women's stories--or as ideological criticism--"Ideological criticism is a way of taking steps to correct points of view and attitudes found in scripture, tradition, and ourselves when those attitudes serve the desolation of life and the subjugation of human beings."  (Williamson & Allen, Interpreting Difficult Texts) You could say you want to recover midrashic techniques for the purposes of a Post-Shoah theology.  You could investigate Rabbi Schaalman's Covenantal Theology and use that. You could say you were challenging metaphors within the ScripturesJulia O'Brien has a great book called Challenging the Prophetic Metaphor). But, actually, I think what you have here is a sermon or a bible study, and I think it's too bad you can't go with either of those. Sorry. I'm not much with the theological foci either. 

iWidow

You’ve heard of NFL Widows, Fantasy Baseball League widows and Consulting Widows, well, I am willing to bet you know more than one iWidow as well. Look for the woman staring wistfully off into space while her husband stares unashamedly as his hand in his lap, she is an iWidow and he is Type A+Man.*

I have read that iPhone use creates actual addictive patterns in the brain.  You send a text or a message and you await a response.  That sort of “ping” back from another person releases a charge of dopamine – a little happy moment in your brain – and your behavior has been reinforced.  Let’s call that iPavlov.   But what the hell, right?  Who cares if the guy is constantly checking the scores or updating his fantasy baseball stats.  Big deal, right?
 
Yes, big deal.  For many reasons.  
 
1) The iPhone is the new Other Woman. The average working man takes his iPhone everywhere.  He does not take his wife with him when he travels for work, he can’t. But even when he is home, he goes on runs, he goes out with friends, he goes shopping or to the movies and he may have to leave the wife at home, but he takes the phone.  And it’s always on, he is always receiving information from it.   Ask any iWidow if she’s ever been “waved off” in favor of a message on his hand-held device. That  app is called the iDntHvTym4U. When she looks at her husband across the room, the average iWidow is thinking, “Gee, that used to be my hand in his hand.”  
 
2) Where we used to wander, now we Mapquest.  “How many times have we used it on family vacations to find a place when we were lost?”  How many of those times would you have found it anyway? How many adventures have you missed by being precise and correct?  He checks the weather and the train schedule, as if knowing them changes them in some way. He will or won’t be at the station before the 7:35.
 3) Where we used to wonder, now we Wikki. We don’t say, “I wonder” anymore because we can Google. If we wonder, then we are asking and if we are asking, well, let me just look that up on the amazing internet which I happen to have surgically implanted on my palm right here… ahah!  There is no more imagining an answer, there is no more debating various suggestions at an answer, there is only The Answer.

 4) Where we used to have conversations, now we chat. I laughed one day to see this man listening to his buddy on the train. The buddy was talking about some frustration at work when the friend glanced down at his iPhone - his “I-Phone” in this case - and exclaimed, “I’ve got bars!” and never looked up at his buddy again.  Bars indeed, bars erected between himself and his now seething buddy.

5) “We” has been reduced to” i.” Type A+ Man and his family are for a walk.  The wife and the kids are talking, the kids are complaining about having to read Milton, about having to run in PE, and about the weather. They are all walking along, they are seeing and feeling and looking and while Type A+ Man is doing those things as well, he is also having another experience: he is getting sensory data that they are not. His experience of right now has more data points in it, his mind is fractured, the memory he takes from these moments will be different than any of his family, he will get home and have had a different afternoon.

It is, I guess, an essential characteristic of high powered type A+ Man that he would like to have access to information all the time.  If a question occurs to him, he wants to know the answer, he wants it now, he opens his palm and his palm tells him.  There is no walking without knowing how far or how fast. “I’m higher than I was” or “I’m warmer than I was” becomes, “We’ve gone up forty feet from the trail head and its ten degrees warmer.”  His senses don’t have bars here, I guess.

Type A+ Man has to know for sure right now and he has to compare to last time. He keeps track of how far and how fast. He has an app for accumulated miles that calculates the times, the distances, tells you how many calories you burned, and the weather. It knows how much vitamin D you absorbed, it keeps a record of pounds per square inch on your right knee since the injury and it has a nifty little chart to show you that, based just on the miles you’ve walked since you loaded the app, you are this much closer to walking all the way to the moon.  And you know what?  It does that automatically just by being on.

Well, now he knows how far he’s come, how fast, how long, how many books he’s read and how many classes he’s taken that might add up to a PhD in literature in which institutions in the United States.  But for your average type A+ iPhone carrying executive, that is just not gonna be enough.  No, he has to share it now.  He has to Twitter and to Facebook, he has to email it to his buddy who is also virtually walking to the moon. And then, after he’s checked the facts, established his prowess, posted and emailed his conclusions and received the comments and return email, he chuckles and shares it with his family.  

Only they don’t laugh.

Because none of this has actually happened. To them. They are still on the walk.

Remember the walk?

The iPhone saves, sorts and compares every little thing he has asks it to and gives him a nifty interface.  And all that time the experience his family was having on the walk? He missed it. And what did his family learn? He brought along his personal ego boost, his handheld affirmation.  His family was simply the jumping off point for a solipsistic tour of cyber credibility that ended with them feeling inadequate and, finally, disconnected. The message is subtle and possibly unintentional: what satisfies the family, what contents them, what they settle for, is just not enough for him.  Their conversation doesn’t hold his attention.  Their experience of the world is too one-dimensional, their world is too easy, he needs more of a challenge.  Not only is he not sharing in their experience, he is not sharing in it because it is inadequate.  How can they help but wonder if they are also inadequate in his sight? The app for that is called iSolation.

*In this article I use flagrantly sexist language, placing the blame squarely on a man holding an iPhone. It goes without saying that the genders of these people are not relevant, only their relationship to one another. Or lack thereof.

If You Need Anything

There is an old joke in my family. When you went to the family farm in Missouri, the grandparents would set you up in a bedroom and then send you up to bed. On your way up the stairs one of them would call after you and say, "If you need anything, you let me know what it is and I'll tell you how to get along without it."
    This line still cracks us all up. Sharing in the joy of that house is one of the great privileges of my life. I am the last of my generation, more than twenty years distant from the first and while a few followed after me in subsequent years, we are growing ever fewer in number.
    My grandparents retired on 90 acres in southwest Missouri to a house which was mostly kitchen. There was a living room with a piano and an organ, there were two recliners in front of the TV in the "TV room" and there was a screened-in porch the size of a small house through which you just passed on your way to somewhere else. Upstairs, there were bedrooms, but they weren't like other bedrooms. They were rooms full of beds. Full as in "you'll have to walk over this bed to get to that one" and "don't let your leg get stuck between the bed frames." My sister and I always shared this one double bed that had a big depression in the middle so that no matter how tightly we clung to the sides with white knuckles, our behinds slid together in sleep and we woke with a start and a whisper of revulsion to grab on to the side and pull away again. I don't know how many hours of our lives were spent wondering which great aunt's or uncle's butt made the abyss in that mattress.
    But the heart of the place, the room you were passing through to and the location the dog would drag you to with his gentle teeth on your arm: that was the kitchen.         
    It was about as large as my living room now. It was white, in theory, though every cabinet door was painted a different bright earthy tone and every door handle was a funny black pounded metal thing. The counter crept all the way around the room from the stove about five feet to the sink under the window and then miles over to the loudest fridge in America. And all along the way there were things. Some of them were things a good suburban girl knew – like a mixer or a can opener. But then there were canning supplies, which looked horribly medical to me. And there were cans of things my cousin Craig convinced me were parts of calf fetuses. They turned out to be pickeled peaches, I think. Anyway, we ate them. One of the best things about that kitchen was the window over the sink. Grandmother had bird feeders outside her kitchen window and when squirrels or crows would come to her feeder, she'd squirt them with her dish rinser. Also grandchildren making too much noise in the yard on Sunday.
But the best part of that kitchen was behind her, under the stairs and frequently stretching out to hold eighteen people. It was the kitchen table. It was the only eating table in the house, there was no dining room. It was a plain wooden table with plain wooden chairs and behind it on the wall was a huge mirror. It was placed there so that Grandma Craig could lean crookedly against the counter with her ankles crossed and drink coffee and see the faces of the people she loved, both those facing her and those facing away. And so that we could see her. Granddad sat at the head and some hapless grandchildren stretched down the table, but Grandma Craig rarely sat for more than a few minutes. Grace, maybe, and "Pass the…" but then she was up and standing at the counter, visible and participating from the altar of our bounty. She was coltish, even in her eighties, with long legs that had a poetic stride and a strong jaw, a quick and gorgeous smile and eyes behind glasses that cried and smiled of their own volition, as if the rest of her face were in the present but her eyes were reliving the past.

Vegetables were not an option in that house, they were a prerequisite. It went without saying that the half acre vegetable garden did the lion's share of provision for guests of the farm, even in fat years. I ate more of everything my kids can't identify than I care to recall. It is all the rage now to hide nutrition from children. There are books and articles and websites about sneaking vegetables and fruits into recalcitrant eaters. I myself give my son a chocolate milkshake in lieu of a meal every day because he only eats things that start with “p” and have been processed at least four times before reaching his face. But in that house, vegetables were not a secret, they were a sacrament.

"Look at that corn," Granddad would say as he passed a huge tray with two dozen ears on it. "Sweet as candy," was the refrain. And you know what? It was. Then he'd pass all the empty cobs to someone's plate and say, "Shayshine, did you eat all that corn! My goodness you're gonna grow big!"

"Those peaches turned out nice," he might say. Or, "Jeanette, did you and Linda eat all those big ripe strawberries and just leave us these little ones? We're gonna need some ice cream to make them worthwhile."

But the main event was tomatoes. Tomatoes in that house were holy ground. They were grown with zen-like care. They were coddled and comforted, they were cultured and cared for, they were prayed over and policed. And they were manna from the wilderness. You could cut them up and put them in a sandwich. You could slice them into a salad. It was theoretically possible to boil, peel and put them in a sauce. But what God intended was for you to eat them here and now.  Like an apple. With salt. Amen.

See, in that house, you could feel God like a presence in the room. He was there on the stairs. He played the organ and read aloud at night. On that particular property He may have smoked a pipe but I know for sure that He sat on the patio with the elders, walked in long, disjointed strides with Grandma Craig out to the Thinkin' Rock. He turned the handle of the ice cream churn like the rest of us. And He was sitting at that table as sure as ever I was. Every grace in that house, no matter how silly it seemed, started out addressing Him, never in a loud voice, He was inches, not miles away, and never without humor or love. He wasn't frightening, He was neighborly, He wasn't theoretical, He was family. And every single time I can ever remember His being addressed in that house – every one – the prayer started with Thank You. They were grateful, they were blessed and they knew it. No morsel of food, no member of the family, no moment in time passed without thanking God. I was always surprised when it ended and we all said Amen, because you half expected a voice nearby to say, "You're welcome."

Now, when it got dark and all the fireflies had been chased and screamed at and Granddad and my father had walked out to the barn and back, leaving a fragrant trail of pipe smoke, then it must be time for bed. There was the parade through the one tiny and inconvenient bathroom. There was the begging for one more morsel before bed, and there was sometimes the quiet, sighing sound of the organ or piano. Then, the little ones were sent up to clamber into their various sleeping arrangements and fall asleep in the terrifyingly absolute darkness. But before you went up to sleep, one or the other of the Grand's would call up after you, "You let me know if you need anything, and I'll tell you how to get along without it."

Maybe this was depression era wit or wisdom, there was certainly much learned in our family from that time, but for me, born thirty years and a hundred lifetimes from the Dust Bowl, there was another message entirely.

I don't know, I can't know, what my Grandparents prayed for. But I know how they taught me to pray. They never seemed to ask for anything to change. They never prayed for release from strife, they never prayed for mercy, they never prayed for a change in the world because God made the world and He knew what He was doing.

No, they prayed for Him to "show them how to get along" in the world. They prayed for Him to show them, to teach them, to touch them in a way that would make them fit for the world He created. If it seemed too hard to them, they never asked Him to make it softer, they asked Him to make them stronger. If it seemed dark, they asked not for light but for vision. If they felt broken or sad or lost, they asked Him to hold them in His hand. If they needed something, they let Him know and He showed them how to get along without it. 

America's Livingroom

Yes, of course the Obama's should have a creche in the East Room. The East Room is American's living room, and just like your living room or mine, what is displayed there says a great deal about the people who live there. In the case of the East Room it says that Americans elect Christian presidents. That is a reliable representation. If we're uncomfortable with that fact, then we had better get busy nominating a Muslim or Jewish Presidential candidate, or an atheist.

The trouble is, that isn't going to happen any time soon. Just the rumor of Islamic leanings brought Obama down in the poles during his election. Before his aisle crossing jig in the Senate, the only thing most Americans knew about Joe Lieberman was his religious affiliation. Grandiose language and litigation to the contrary, American's are Christian, they vote for Christians and they put Christians in the White House. So there is no call to act all shocked and shaken when we wake up in December to find a creche in the East Room. That's America's living room, we put it there.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm grateful. If I brought my mother back from the grave today nineteen years after she passed away, and said, "Mom, there is an African American in the White House, gays can marry in Iowa and white males of Irish Catholic extraction can get into Chicago's best public high schools"... she'd keel over dead again. I am grateful indeed for all these blessings. But I worked for them, I prayed for them and most importantly, I voted for them. If you don't want a creche in the East Room, then don't vote for a candidate who owns one.

Look, I don't think we need to have a Christian president, I have no preference one way or another about his faith, his race, or his gender. I like brains, brains and liberal social policy. If my party - or any party- nominates a candidate who spouts my agenda with reasonable credibility, appears to be surrounded by brilliant people and appears to understand them when they talk, then I will absolutely go out and vote for her.

For now, I've got a great man in a good place and a promising future rising with the sunrise... over a creche. Big deal.

A Star in the East Room?

Over the course of the last few months writing this blog, I have written about the separation of church and state more than any other topic. The separation of powers is the defining characteristic of American Democracy, it indisputably makes our government strong, fair and resilient. And it is a gigantic pain the tush. Here’s a classic example. “Should the Obama’s have a crèche in the East Room this holiday season?” The White House is exactly that little piece of real estate where church and state collide: it is a federally funded, nationally registered publically held piece of property. It is also someone’s home.

When we ask if the President should put a nativity scene in one of its rooms, our concern is, “Will it make America look Christian?” No, it will make the Obama’s look Christian; it will make America look like what it is: a country governed by the people, and for the people. We didn’t write our laws to oppress people, we wrote them to safely set them free – to worship, to speak, and to print their opinions, for starters.

It would be un-American, not to mention profoundly unkind, to tell the people who live in publically funded residences that they can’t put up a religious representation that accurately reflects their beliefs. The East Room has been used for diplomatic purposes, for weddings and for funerals. It is a place that reflects the realities of American and in fact human life: struggle, joy and sorrow.

Our Constitution guarantees us a right to practice religion freely within limits. With its notorious reindeer ruling, our Supreme Court has maintained that tasteful and fair representations of religious belief may be present on public grounds (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1983). We fought a vicious war to defend a Jewish family’s right to place a menorah in their window. Christian scripture tells us to stand up and be counted as Christians. What does the presence of a crèche scene in the East Room say about America? That we’re not afraid to be ourselves and to let our brethren be themselves as well. I’m comfortable with that message.

Minarets Don’t Frighten People. People Frighten People

A representative of the “rightist” Swiss political party that sponsored a ban on building new minarets in Switzerland recently said that the ban was motivated by a fear that Islamic fundamentalists had “the political will to take power.” He need not have worried, by passing this legislation, he handed that power over to them.

Switzerland has long had a reputation for tolerance, and for refuge for the persecuted of other nations. Radical Islam now evidently dictates Swiss public policy. And it is a policy of fear. Curbing the religious expression of just one faith does not say, “We abhor the violent extremism of a minority of the faith.” Rather it says, “We will let our fear drive us to curbing freedom of religious expression.”

The Swiss want to curb extremism in their midst but they have gone about it in exactly the wrong way. A recent study of violent extremism in the United States found that "Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation."

It is not by suppressing religious expression, buy by engaging it that extremism and radicalism is suppressed. Diversity is normative. The more varied we are, the less likely it is that any one extreme group or view point can dominate the public stage. The more communal our experience, the less extreme we tend to be. Religion and religious expression has a prominent place in that dialog.

Nor is the politics of fear a new story. In 2006, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “The idea of a society where no visible public signs of religion would be seen- no crosses around necks, no sidelocks, turbans or veils - is a politically dangerous one.” A country’s government should not work as a “licensing authority” nor should it presume to dictate “public morality.” He argued that a government should not be the sole arbiter of a society’s identity.

That fact of the matter is that minarets don’t frighten people. People frighten people. If minarets are dangerous because they are used by fundamentalist Islam to perpetrate violence, then the Swiss had better take the crosses down from the church towers, lest we are reminded of the Klu Klux Klan. But that's extremist talk. The vast majority of Swiss Muslims are not fundamentalists: they don’t “adhere to the codes of dress and conduct” of fundamentalist Islam and they are mixed into the Swiss population as seamlessly as any other group. At least until now.