tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86097542167442063032024-03-13T06:16:55.328-07:00TheoxeniaThoughts on hearth and home.theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-19008500347552579792010-04-04T23:20:00.000-07:002010-04-04T23:46:55.108-07:00Eastertide: I have not seen this day beforeWhen I tried to reflect on my day to a friend, I became inarticulate. Did I have a good Easter? Yes! But then I was forced to account for an experience whose nature did not require me to reflect on its nature, as if I could inhabit a body of water for hours without ever consciously being aware of "swimming." (Do babies feel this way in water? Dogs?). Or it was as if I had been swimming in a wide lake, then suddenly hoisted by a bird into the air and made aware of the water's boundaries or boundedness for the first time.<br /><br />And people ask about days all the time, but this hoisting (or vaulting?) was different because of the quality of my day. A day whose character and content were so immediate that I felt submerged fully in them. <br /><br />Were I to list it out, you could examine my words with a microscope, noting the microbes that inhabit them but are not them; you could touch them with a stethoscope for a pulse; you could stack them, file them, or compare them to other words of other days you've had, or heard someone else has had, or could imagine someone having. We could both sort it like that, for likeness. But all for what? <br /><br />I had a day. (This day) <br />and did not know until it passed.theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-275555400788795662009-11-28T15:01:00.000-08:002009-12-27T20:17:14.211-08:00Spectacle, Security, and Dinner Manners<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Old news now, but after reading the NYT's </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/us/politics/28crasher.html?ref=us"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">report</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> on </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); line-height: 13px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Michaele and Tareq Salahi,</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">the two uninvited guests at the White House Indian state dinner, I remembered </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">hostis</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, the Latin word that can mean stranger or enemy (which, indeed, they were). All for celebrity, most say, downplaying the very real threat any guest poses to a host. </span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Doesn't their intrusion seem almost literary? Two uninvited guests turn up in the house that represents national ipseity (our home, our place) two days before the national holiday that celebrates England's New-world occupation. Hostility in disguise.<br /></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The final words of another NYT </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/arts/television/28watch.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">commentary</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Alessandra Stanley are even more provocative:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><blockquote>The Secret Service is a security force entirely devoted to protecting the president and his family from assault and assassins; it is not trained to screen for people who will risk arrest <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>and breach every safety barrier — and sense of social decorum — for something as mundane and flimsy as media attention.</blockquote></span></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">But how flimsy is the desire to become an overnight celebrity? Isn't a state dinner also mundane? I know there's a larger moral question beneath all these details, but I haven't quite reached it. I just love how a simple dinner party faux pas foregrounds all the problems of hospitality. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Salahi's have earned their clout, though who knows at what cost? We'll see what happens after their 20 January subpoenas. </span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-23398350470327457502009-11-25T23:31:00.000-08:002009-12-27T20:20:38.156-08:00"Is there any truly smile?"Eve of Thanksgiving, and I'm thinking on a phrase a student wrote on a paper last week. "The blue gang beats the red gang and violence stops, but there will be no peace when the red gang fights back," he wrote, "Is there any truly smile?" <div><br /></div><div>"Truly smile"--an 18-year-old Japanese student, fresh to American college, translates every thought on paper.</div><div><br /></div><div>His phrase glimmers near the old, impossible claim of Aristotle: "My friends, there are no friends."</div><div><br /></div><div>We seek friendship beyond revenge--the bloods and crypts, Israelis and Palestinians, Angles and Algonquian--but does any friendship exist beyond gratitude? My student hopes for an end to reciprocal violence, which we rightly denounce, but how often we dismiss the violence that hides under thanks, under reciprocal gratitude? My obligations to you outweigh my will. My love for you breaks my self into parts. My face seeing yours will match it, leaping into place with a grin. </div><div><br /></div><div>Beyond reciprocity, "is there any truly smile?" </div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-77928340671580222462009-11-18T20:45:00.000-08:002009-11-18T21:14:06.237-08:00Radical Food Politics: Beyond DietAt the NASCO Conference in Ann Arbor last week, I was supposed to be attending a series on how to start your own co-op, but I managed to sneak out for a session on radical food politics. It's an interestingly baggy term, but associated, of late, with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food">locavore</a> movement, <a href="http://journalism.berkeley.edu/faculty/pollan/">Michael Pollen,</a> organic, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hls6CDw6dVM">Gentically Modified Foods</a>, <a href="http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/lacto.html">lactofermentation</a>, <a href="http://mujeresparapensar.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/vandana-shiva.jpg">Vandana Shiva</a>, etc. (See <a href="http://www.grist.org/kingdom/food">Grist magazine</a> for a weekly food politics update).<br /><br />The room was packed. If you dangle the word "radical" in front of a co-oper, she's going to bite. Actually, the people in the room already knew a lot about food, and most of them wanted to push it further with the group, in the moment, since that seems to make the best conference sessions.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the level of proficiency in the room seemed to overwhelm the discussion leaders, so the initial set up was a bit shaky. The most important question I took was this:<br /><br />How do we take food politics and apply it against other oppressive structures (race, class, gender, et cetera)? How do we move beyond diet prohibitions or prescriptions into something more radical?<br /><br />It hit me this morning that the presenters were on to something: how do our politics change when the question "what are we eating?" develops into "yeah, but who are we eating with?"?<br /><br />Any thoughts?theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-33820943783858036942009-11-15T01:01:00.000-08:002009-11-20T18:22:43.009-08:00Quatrain for Emilya gift--the cost to get,<div>and gotten, hard to hold,</div><div>and held, the very rift--</div><div>could we--imagine--weld</div><div><br /></div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-18087960166499237132009-11-14T01:31:00.000-08:002009-11-14T01:41:08.084-08:00Bread Day!Scott makes bread for the co-ops every Friday. I think she usually turns out 20 loaves, though her ultimate goal is to provide one loaf per person per week (and there's nearly 70 of us!). Today's loaves had a flaky crust that shed small pieces when you brought a knife to it--the best any of us had ever tasted.<div><br /></div><div>Four weeks ago, Scott invited me over to talk about fermentation. We had a lengthy conversation in the kitchen, her elbows dusted with flour while a mass of dough rose, continually threatening to drip off the counter (in the slothful way that dough drips, I suppose). </div><div><br /></div><div>The counter couldn't hold it all. </div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-82340281420677455302009-10-10T09:29:00.000-07:002009-10-10T10:22:26.734-07:00RMMLA Food PanelAt the <a href="http://rmmla.wsu.edu/">Rocky Mountain MLA</a> this weekend I participated on a panel called "The Meaning of Food: Cultural Values and Culinary Choices." The panel took four very different approaches: <br /> 1. a BYU professor's close reading of hospitality/food rituals in Cormac McCarthy's <span style="font-style:italic;">The Road</span>. Levinas and Derrida showing up in the poignant 'world's last Coca Cola' scene<br /> 2. My attempt to wed hunger to environmental justice in works by James Agee and Richard Wright.<br /> 3. A UT Austin grad's look at the role of traditional recipes, mother-daughter relationships and Indian-American acculturation in the "desi" chic-lit <span style="font-style:italic;">The Hindi Bindi Club</span><br /> 4. A BYU grad's articulation of the varying performances of "egalitarian social leveling" in religious food rituals in Sikhism, Judaism, and Christianity. <br /><br />What struck me the most about this last paper, presented by Josh Goldberg, was his insistence on the latent potential behind religious rituals and traditions. Those elements (including food laws, feasting practices, and cup sharing) which are only waiting to be activated and re-membered and have the ability to dismantle social and cultural power structures. I was excited to meet a new friend. If you are interested in his work, find him on <a href="http://mormonmidrashim.blogspot.com">Mormon Midrashim</a>, one of the more provocative blog ideas I've encountered. <br /><br />The discussion after the papers was also fruitful, several people comparing our approaches to different meal courses or cooking approaches. One woman asked us to consider the act of hospitality in opposition to control (and the attempt to maintain it). As well as the difference between concern for "presentation" and concern for "welcome"--two things that need not be in opposition but often are (Martha/Mary?) <br /><br />Worth the jaunt to <a href="http://rmmla.wsu.edu/download/Snowbird/CliffFall_s.jpg">Snowbird</a> <a href="http://junophotos.com/gallery/images/Cliff%20Lodge%20Atrium%20In%20Snowbird,%20Utah%20IMG_7944.jpg">Lodge</a>, as was the snowy mountains. <br /><br />Also, I would not be here without the generosity of the UO English Dept. and the willingness of Paul W. to share a hotel room with a total stranger. Many thanks to them.theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-41076474086927541692009-09-08T14:47:00.000-07:002009-10-13T10:32:33.503-07:00"A Small, Good Thing"In the August 2009 Index, Harper's reported that 94% of the world's blogs have <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> been updated in the past 4 months. That makes me a casualty of statistics, a condition I try at all times to avoid.<br /><br />To remedy the effect, I'd offer Raymond Carver's "<a href="http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/english/courses/eng201d/asmallgoodthing.html">A Small Good Thing</a>." This little tale is one of the best of Carver's 1983 collection <em>Cathedral</em>. (Many of the stories are similarly compelling; none so poignant). I had somehow forgotten the ending until I reread it this summer in the Bozeman library, where I was suprised to be crying. ("Why in Montana? I thought, "Why in the library?") <strong>(spoiler)</strong> Carver's plot and bare style at first distract from the growing hunger that the two characters experience, but he reckons their loss deeply in the final sentences. The baker's bread responds to their grief by substituting for their's son body, as a funereal meal or even mourners at a wake. Presence in spite of absence. Presence that replaces absence. Archetypal stuff here. <strong>(end of spoiler). </strong><br /><br />If you enjoy the piece, you might also watch Robert Altman's adaptation in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Cuts">Shortcuts</a>, a long-winded all-star film. Lyle Lovett, of all God's critters, plays the infamous baker.<br /><br />In other thoughts, I'm imagining a series on weddings, a cultural site--event!--never lacking in food and hospitality. More soon.theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-78834225454590319902009-05-29T00:27:00.000-07:002009-05-29T01:19:01.359-07:00Pregnancy as Absolute HospitalityTwo weeks ago I attended the UO Philosophy conference on Pregnancy, Childbirth and Mothering, a well-timed (Happy Mothers Day, SB) and often overlooked subject in philosophy (That's right: few Western philosophers ever bore children). Frances Gray, a lecturer from the University of New England in Australia, had a provocative paper called "Original Habitation: Pregnant Flesh as Absolute Hospitality"<br /><br />Her idea took Derrida's concept of absolute hospitality (The host provides a place for an Other without requiring reciprocation, reparation, a face (unlike Levinas), or even a name. The act of hospitality always involves a potential disruption of the self) in dialogue with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of flesh and embodiment. <br /><br />Gray hoped to discuss pregnancy outside the two discourses that currently dominate the subject--religion and science, the former in the trope of the sacred mother (Mary, Gaia, &c) and the latter in terms of bland anatomy. The result was a exploratory meditation on how pregnant flesh provides temporary space for a complete and utterly unknown Other. How does our way of knowing change, she asked, if no one enters the world except through the phenomena of pregnant flesh? of two beings' "assymetrical dependency" on each other? Why has this phenomena been overlooked as the basis of ethics? <br /><br />Though I doubt Gray would be comfortable with it, I can imagine pro-life advocates appropriating her thoughts, emphasizing the exchange of hospitality between the mother and unborn fetus/embryo/child. Part of me doubts, however, that many pro-life advocates regularly engage with Derrida or Merleau-Ponty, so perhaps she has nothing to fear. <br /><br />What I found most compelling about her argument was Derrida's formulation of hospitality's desire in the context of pregnancy: "Come over me. Overwhelm me. Disrupt me" etc.<br /><br />Now if only I can send the card I bought for Mother's Day.theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-55071706004947318922008-12-22T22:42:00.000-08:002008-12-23T08:48:10.059-08:00Keeping up with AdventI didn't think it would come to this. A long year had made me eager for reflection. Then again, a long year extended further on.<br /><br />Babies come and go every day. Why is this one so important? <br /><br>Why are any?<br />Why is it so hard to hold the idea of 6 billion one-time babies in the mind?<br /><br /><u>Things I learned this Advent:</u><br />1. Jews have the Torah along with two other books, the Mishna and the Gemara. Some say Xians don't have the full story, yet that sounds like something the Xians might say. <br /><br />2. Reading takes time, but mostly love. If your religion is based on a book, it will always be spiraling, splaying, and interlocking with other texts. Be comfortable with that, even if it means wrestling with all things canonical, apocryphal, dogmatic, poetic, or heretical.<br /> <br />3. Classical Judaism reads the scripture four ways: literal, metaphorical, homiletical, and spiritual. In the spiritual or Kabbalistic mode of reading, you take the leap in believing that God created the world using the Torah. <br /><br />4. Commandments are. They don't need human reasons to be (though humans usually do). Proving that following a commandment is beneficial (for instance, not eating pork is good for digestion) does not get at the spiritual truth that comes from obedience. Obedience does not require benefits. <br /><br />5. Advent is more buoyant than Lent because it ends with a baby. Lent ends with a crucifixion. (Alright, I know there's more)<br /><br />6. Mary's suffering: Jesus life:: Jesus' suffering: Xian life (That's an oldy, but goody, ala the late middle ages)<br /><br />7. Nothing good comes easy or free. No gift is free. Does even <span style="font-style:italic;">agape</span> carry obligations?theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-31366540912824801142008-12-10T11:07:00.001-08:002008-12-10T11:17:52.735-08:00Advent ConspiracyThis <a href="http://www.adventconspiracy.org/">website</a> might interest some of you.<div><br /></div><div><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eVqqj1v-ZBU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eVqqj1v-ZBU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-59697269923722241012008-12-05T21:37:00.000-08:002008-12-05T21:44:34.211-08:00Advent SonnetInspired by the story of Abraham and a little backlogged in paper-writing, I hope this poem can do double duty. Tell me the first word that comes to mind after you finish it. <div><br /></div><div>Hemingway Sights the Incarnation</div><div><br /></div><div>When I saw Christ seated at the right hand</div><div>of his father, he was buckled. He flew</div><div>down a fresh-paved interstate. The Ghost read</div><div>from the backseat. They came to my tent. They</div><div>knew me. Would they eat a piece of game? We ate.</div><div>They said a son was due. That if my books</div><div>had women, one might laugh. They left, of course.</div><div>I shot. They spun, crashed. Not quite procession,</div><div>union. Three for one. Was that it? <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">So long</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">a life that we owe God a death</span>. I flushed</div><div>at flesh pinned under form, but they had gone --</div><div>leaving books and words behind, only signs. </div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-35689318391936010412008-12-02T02:10:00.000-08:002008-12-02T03:46:21.135-08:00Where do Babies Come From? Pt 2. or The Cave<div>Today's Reading: <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=95212874">Genesis 19:30-38.</a> If you want to know the story of the strangers in Sodom to see what all the fuss is about, read all of <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=95212907">Genesis 19</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Genesis 19:30 <br /></div><div>"Now Lot went up out of Zoar and settled in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar; so he lived in a cave with his two daughters."</div><div><br /></div><div>This story is the strangest story in the entire Bible, but it has some familiar scenes. Like Abraham in yesterday's reading, Lot is sitting at the city gate. We don't know why, but he's waiting. In a portal-- a place between places, danger. He is prone to strangeness. He falls to his knees before the strangers, he insists they come to his home, but (here is where the similarities break off) he shows them a more remarkable hospitality than Abraham. When the men of Sodom ask to sleep with the strangers he offers his daughters. "They're virgins!" he screams above the men surrounding his house. </div><div><br /></div><div>This story is not for children. </div><div>But then, it's quite about children.</div><div>Where to go from here?</div><div><br /></div><div>We're told that only four refugees make it out alive of <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106823101662716286838.00045cf6211bdaaf6eaf2&ll=31.297328,35.870361&spn=2.637777,4.899902&t=k&z=8">two sister cities</a> (how close to <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=44.038738,-123.011856&spn=0.277408,0.612488&t=h&z=11&msid=106823101662716286838.00045d0df6fcd311ff6cb">home</a>?); insult to injury, one of these four becomes salt. </div><div><br /></div><div>It gets worse.</div><div><br /></div><div>A widower and two motherless daughters (who have each lost their fiancés<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> </span>to sulphur) go to Zoar, the nearest but smallest town. </div><div><br /></div><div>Of course no stranger goes unnoticed in a small town, but what to do with these? They are aliens, marked from the second they walk in the gate, maybe burned from the fire they fled. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Now</span> who are the three strangers? <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Now</span> who will greet <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">them</span> with kneeling? feed them? tend the scrapes and cuts they earned from running through the desert? weep, for even a moment?</div><div><br /></div><div>The story of Lot makes me miserable. </div><div><br /></div><div>Where to go from here? </div><div><br /></div><div>Lot is afraid. He chooses to live in a <a href="http://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/prog205/images/tis_carlsbad_caverns_natl_park_nps_carlsbad_new_mexico.jpg">cave</a>. What shame. What fear.</div><div>His daughters have no other plans. Everyone they know has died. The women of Zoar insist they should cheer up. They're lucky to have a living father who can provide for them. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here's where I turn to Derrida to make some sense, because I do not know where else to go from here. This passage is from <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Of Hospitality, </span>a book of lectures given in 1996,<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> </span>and describes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_the_King">Oedipus</a> on his first entrance to Thebes. </div><div><br /></div><div>"The first moment, then, is the arrival of the arrival, Oedipus. Without knowledge. Without the knowledge, the knowledge of the place: where he is, where he is going. Between the profane and the sacred, the human or the divine. Isn't this always the situation of the absolute arrival?" (35)</div><div><br /></div><div>Not quite an Oedipal moment, the sisters incite something stranger. Who is arriving now? Two children. Two sacred, profane children. </div><div><br /></div><div>Two children whose children figure into the story of Abraham's children. Children human and divine. Conceived in strangeness. Born in <a href="http://campus.belmont.edu/honors/FestalIcons/15thNovgorNativity.jpg">caves</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unlike a Greek tragic hero, Lot has no fatal flaw. Unless one counts leaving the portal: choosing the <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=95216765">plains</a> over the other side of the mountain, choosing to welcome strangers over treating them with indifference, choosing a hole in the ground over an inhospitable village. </div><div><br /></div><div>But can we blame him? them?</div><div>Their family saga quiets down after this chapter. One imagines a cave could be liveable, and that Lot, his daughters, their sons pass a small life in their hole.</div><div><br /></div><div>But who is left to kneel? To welcome this grotesque family to a real bed, a fit table? <br /></div><div>Merely us?</div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-39280270248920523962008-11-30T21:57:00.000-08:002008-12-02T03:47:00.878-08:00Where do Babies Come From? Pt 1 or Trees!Reading for the Day: <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=95111616">Genesis 18: 1-16</a><div><br /></div><div>Genesis 18:1 -- Now the LORD appeared to [Abraham] by the oaks/terebinths of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This passage always leaves me with questions--what is a <a href="http://www.biblepicturegallery.com/pictures/Trees/Terebinth%20tree%20la.htm">terebinth</a>? Just how big was the tree? Why does Abraham bow to the strangers? How does he recognize the LORD--by their clothes, their bearing, their wings? </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I imagine a grove tucked into a wide, spare landscape. Scrub brush, dirt, and dry rocks. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Sun hot, air heavy, you lower your head and let the afternoon pass. You scan apace from <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>your tent door. Shadows out past the terebinths. Figures flicker in the distance, <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>unannounced. You squint, blink, wipe your eyes. Guests are coming. You do not let them <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>come. You run to meet them at the trees. Jowels shake, belly bounces, you are old and <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>bounding. They walk steady on. You're thighs tremble, ankles cracking. You're close <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>enough to see them smiling. Yes, these are guests. These one two three. They have come to <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>me. Your clothes fall to the ground, a lump with your body, and for a time you pant <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>and <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>pause. "Do not pass your servant by." </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The hot road will dry where you held your forehead. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The scene of this meal has been a favorite for artists, most notably in Orthodox iconography. Rubalev's <a href="http://otac.govori.svojoj.djeci.googlepages.com/PresvetoTrojstvo-Rublev.jpg">icon</a> is perhaps the most famous. Note the slender tree, the mountain that could be a wave, the half-calf's head on the table. Something holy in this meal. Chagall's <a href="http://www.musees-nationaux-alpesmaritimes.fr/pages/page_id17998_u1l2.htm">rendition</a> is vivid as usual. His tree seems a burning bush. I love his stately strangers' faces. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamre">some</a>, the trees were the site of a Canaanite cultic shrine (read: ancient tree-huggers?). But here, a pagan site, holy strangers come. And near these <a href="http://www.luffman.us/bobjones/images/abraham%20terebinth.jpg">trees</a> outside the tent, barren Sarah conceives enough to laugh, a suppressed chuckle. Out of earshot might it expand and rise from chortle, cackle, guffaw, to tears in her eyes?</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>We get the <a href="http://www.genesisland.co.il/index.html">joke</a>, though. Because while one of the strangers quotes Sarah saying, "Shall I indeed bear, when I am so old?" we know she actually wondered, "After I have become old shall I have pleasure, my lord being also?" </div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, Sarah, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pleasure</span> is where babies come from!<br /></div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609754216744206303.post-27169449892201529592008-11-29T23:35:00.000-08:002008-11-30T00:50:47.241-08:00WelcomeFriends, Family, Sundrie Purveyours of the Interweb, <div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Welcome to this page, this site, this intended, meager lode. A hairline fissure next to other online places, but a place nonetheless. I am glad you have come. My ambitions for this blog are nearly none. For now, it will serve as a marker for Advent season 2008. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I came to Advent five years ago with equal measures of surprise and delight. Brought up evangelical, with a Precious Moments nativity on the mantle one month out of the year, I never knew much of Christian holidays besides Christmas and Easter. Nor during college did the evangelical university I attended promise much in the realm of tradition. Yet tradition found me, next to Phil Stoakes and Warren Rankin in the bass section of a Methodist church choir. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Come Christmas time, I saw more changes than a poinsettia decked-stage or garland strands near the sanctuary ceiling. The communion table put on new colors, and the Pastor took to matching. The scripture readings shifted. Someone had tossed a handful of candles on the stage. The choir sang only the first tunes from the hymnal's Christmas section (although Wednesday nights we still agonized over notes of an impending cantata). Suddenly, the holiday was not jolly and jiggling red velvet. In fact, it began to look a lot more Jewish. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The few things I know about contemporary Judaism I have heard from Jewish friends, and while I cannot claim to be an expert on Jewish culture, identity, or history, I have read and loved one of their sacred books (the one Jewish and non-Jewish followers of Christ hijacked and canonized with a book of their own--remember?). This book is where Advent begins. Without the Hebrew Bible, you'll have to forget your shepherds, angels, magi, untune the Magnificat, and disband the animals huddling around the stable. The genealogies wither along with wizened Elizabeth and Zachariah. No dreams, no journeys, no "no room at the inn," no births. Simply, our book cannot be read apart from theirs. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When we read the stories of the Jewish Bible, we get a sense at just how strange a turn the Christian Bible makes. The Jewish men (and woman?) who wrote these words were profoundly connected to their literary tradition, and their method of reading--interpreting Jewish stories as types of the story of Jesus--has informed literature, art, history, politics, and culture for centuries after. But Advent is not so concerned with what happens after Jesus as much as it is what came before him. Its tune is waiting and preparation, and the stories it celebrates have characters that do just that--wait, prepare, wait a little longer. Christmas doesn't happen overnight.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>With that said, I hope to read the Hebrew scriptures again this December. While understanding and insight are integral to reading, my first aim when I hold a book in my hands is always pleasure. Whether this is your first or fiftieth Advent, please join me as I try to make a little room for Christmas. </div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span></div>theoxeniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864522715737672802noreply@blogger.com2