Category Archives: Jesus of Nazareth

Yeshua and the Mystery Religions

Anyone who has studied the history of religions is aware of the shift in human consciousness that began sometime in the last millennium BCE and lasted into the early centuries of the Common Era. During those years human religious practice moved dramatically away from old communal forms and took on more personal expression. Individual human beings began to approach their gods in increasingly distinctive ways, and more and more spiritual teachers emphasized the value of individual human lives. Even C. G. Jung tried to explain the phenomenon in his Psychology and Religion West and East.

Ancient Sumerian gods
Ancient Sumerian gods

 

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Buddha
Zarathustra
Zarathustra

In India the sage Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, offered seekers a Middle Way to enlightenment between the extremes of asceticism and worldly sensuality. In Persia Zarathustra introduced the idea of the freedom of individual human beings and the importance of their choosing to labor with the God of Light, Ahura Mazda, against the forces of darkness and ignorance.

 

 

Prophet Hosea
Prophet Hosea

In Israel the prophets emerged, offering ethical virtues such as compassion and mercy as alternatives to the old sacrificial system; Hillel the Elder followed in the 1st C BCE with his Golden Rule, and his famous statement that “whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world, and whosoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

 

Jesus of Nazareth, born around 4 BCE, brought a unique gospel of love and life to humankind, known for two millennia as Christianity.

Early catacomb images of Jesus performing miracles
Early catacomb images of Jesus performing miracles

All around Jesus, throughout the ever-spreading Roman Empire, Mystery Religions were attracting followers by the tens of thousands. In each of these Mysteries, individual men and women found hope of eternal life through initiation into secret knowledge unavailable to those outside their communities. Dionysian, Eleusinian, Cybeline, Isaic, Mithraic, and Orphic mysteries were but some of them. In many instances the secret knowledge was imparted through the initiate’s participatory experience in the death and rebirth of the god or goddess.

Serapis-Osiris,Persephone and Hades, Mithras, Dionysus
Serapis-Osiris,Persephone and Hades, Mithras, Dionysus

In the process of writing The Cats of Rekem, the third volume in the Yeshua’s Cats series, I wandered into the jungle of Greco-Roman Mystery Religions. I won’t try to offer an explanation of why they exploded into the ancient world, but they were spreading like wildfire across the Mediterranean basin in the years before and after Yeshua’s life. Early Christians were well acquainted with these religions, and in many cases they came to the Church from them.

Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries
Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries

Numbers of people have written countless volumes of material about the relationship between early Christianity and Mystery Religions, some scholarly and accurate, many biased and inflammatory. As a writer of historical fiction whose characters are rooted in the beliefs of their day, I came up against the question of Mystery Religions in a very personal way. In particular, I found myself needing to understand exactly how Yeshua’s original message differed from the message of the Mysteries. And I didn‘t want to expound the same old Christian apologetics and bland assurances that no overlap ever existed. It obviously did.

Christ as Sol Invictus, mosaic from 3rd C Vatican grottoes
Christ as Sol Invictus (unconquered sun), mosaic from 3rd C Vatican grottoes

So I dusted off my books on Greco-Roman culture and began to refresh my memory. I took notes, and made charts. I even drew up a spreadsheet. I concluded that there were many, many apparent similarities between the practices of the early Church and the Mystery Religions; in fact, there were far more similarities than differences—baptism, equality of men and women, depictions of mother and child, separation of the community from the wider society, hope of immortality through the death and resurrection of a god or founder, ritual commemoration of that same founder’s death and resurrection. The list goes on and on.

But this left me with two troublesome questions. First, did these obvious similarities in the early Church really reflect Yeshua’s message? And second, allowing for the possibility that they might not, how did Yeshua’s message itself differ from the Mysteries? I even went so far as to wonder what he might have said to one of the Mystery devotees that surely crossed his path.

"Christ and the Adulteress," Cranach the Elder
“Christ and the Adulteress,” Cranach the Elder

In the end I isolated several radically new ideas in Jesus’ message that found no parallels in the other religions of his day. In some cases these ideas didn’t survive very long in the young Church. Here they are, as I see them:

  • He preached a loving God who sought reconciliation with humanity—not justice, or retribution, or punishment
  • He brought this God into direct relationship with human beings, without priests or organized religions between them and the Deity who loved them
  • He offered his listeners a simple choice: accept God’s love and embrace the freedom growing out of that love, or turn their backs and lose themselves in their own darkness
  • He preached a peaceful, non-violent approach to life
  • He didn’t call for a system of initiates vs outsiders: the thrust of his message was always of mysteries revealed, hardened hearts opening to understanding, and truths simple enough for a child to grasp
  • Perhaps in contrast to the Mysteries, (which were celebrated in darkness) he characterized his message as one of light, revealed in the light of day for all to see
  • Rather than the emotional frenzy common to the Mysteries, where initiates agonized and suffered, imagining themselves suffering with their dying and rising god, he offered his followers a death accomplished, and new life freely given: where such participatory agonies have entered the Church, I suspect they may have come by way of the Mystery Religions, not Yeshua’s words

The first two hundred years of the Church were violent and chaotic, and the records are conflicting. Many stories lie outside the scope of the Bible. I believe that there’s room to question traditional understandings of the Church’s message–and to question the way the Church has interpreted the words of Christ.

But don’t take my word for it: look for yourself! If there’s a mystery, it’s hiding in plain sight.

 

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A Christmas Greeting from Yeshua’s Cats

Last year after publishing The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, I wrote an additional piece of the story that I sent out in my Christmas newsletter. Here it is again, for the first time in a public posting.

For those of you who have the paperback edition of TGATYC, this new piece would be inserted at the top of page 124, just after “. . . filled with laughter.”  For those of you with the Kindle edition, it’s in Chapter 15, Magdala, just after Mari muses about the nature of the festival of lights, and before Yeshua starts speaking on the last night of the feast.

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“Night Sky Christmas,” C. L. Francisco

One night after everyone had gone to bed I finally asked him. “Are your people celebrating the return of the sun’s warmth when they celebrate their festival of lights, son of Earth?”

            “Yes and no, little mother,” he replied, turning his head and smiling as he opened his eyes. “We measure the years by the seasons of the moon, not by the sun’s path, so none of our holy days takes note of the sun’s movement, not even this one. No, this week we rejoice in events almost 200 years past, when a great man named Judas Maccabeus cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem from the pollution of a pagan altar put there by foreign conquerors. Our many lamps call us to remember that the One’s light can dispel even the deepest darkness.”

            He rose to his feet and reached out his arm in invitation, so I leapt to his shoulder, wrapping my tail around his neck. Together we walked out under the winter sky and stood on the hill, watching the stars touch the great sea with their cold fire.

            “Yet, little leopard,” he continued as if he had never paused, “you are right when you wonder if we are also welcoming the sun’s return. Just as stars grow brighter in the long nights, each light that burns in winter’s darkness whispers of that hope. Together with all Earth’s children, our hearts grow full when we see the sun begin its long journey back to the heights of heaven. This too reminds us of the One’s faithfulness.”

            I curled around his neck more closely to dispel the night’s chill, but I said nothing. I only purred with pleasure at his closeness. I sensed that words still lay unspoken in his heart.

            “Sweet Mari, my mother told me that I was born on a night like this, when the stars danced in a black sky, and the breath of humans and beasts alike clouded vision with their brief mist. Joy filled the night and sang in the heavens at the wonder of my coming into the world. All things were made new under that sky, she said.”

            I rubbed my whiskers against his cheek, and he continued.

            “I can almost hear the heavens singing on such nights. The One’s face shimmers behind the host of stars like a distant oasis in the heat of a desert’s summer day. And yet the chill of a winter night and the searing heat of the desert’s noon both lie quiet in the hollow of his hand.

“As do you and I.”

 

"Shepherds' Star," C. L. Francisco
“Shepherds’ Star,” C. L. Francisco

 

May you all have a blessed Christmas!

 

The Temple of Bast at Bubastis

A number of early readers of A Cat Out of Egypt have expressed an interest in learning more about the ancient temple of Bast/Bastet at Bubastis. These are readers after my own heart! If you don’t try to understand the world a character lives in, you have little chance of understanding who that person is. Ancient Egypt is a truly an alien land for English-speaking people of the contemporary Western world, even moreso than ancient Israel–thus ACOOE’s many detailed descriptions of ancient Egyptian customs. I hope you’ll find their culture as fascinating as I did.

EgyptDeltaMapWhen I decided to feature an Egyptian temple cat as Yeshua’s childhood companion, I chose Bubastis for three reasons: first, because it was a temple dedicated to the cat goddess Bast/Bastet; second, because descriptions of the temple in the mid 5th C BCE have come down to us in the writings of the historian Herodotus; and third, because Bubastis lies in the general area of the Nile delta where many Jewish settlements existed in the 1st C CE, which made it a likely location for Yeshua’s family.

Bast relief from Bubastis
Bast relief from Bubastis

I decided to refer to the Egyptian goddess Bast/Bastet as “Bast,” rather than “Bastet,” because I wanted to call to mind her earlier persona as a lion goddess. She was usually called “Bastet” by Yeshua’s time, a diminutive form of her original name “Bast,” emphasizing her less threatening aspect as a domestic cat. But she never lost the connection to her earlier self–a self capable of terrifying rage, who stood between the forces of chaos and the sun’s daily rising, as well representing the more fertile and nurturing aspects of a lioness.

The major construction periods archaeologists have been able to identify at Bubastis begin in the Middle Kingdom (roughly 2000 BCE) and continue through the Hyksos dynasty in the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. The entrance hall, festival hall, and hypostyle hall were all likely to have been built during those years, although they probably replaced earlier structures which can’t be identified. Invading Persian forces in the 6th C BCE inflicted heavy damage on many Egyptian temples, including Bubastis. The repairs and new construction undertaken during the 30th Dynasty (Nectanebo and others, 4th C BCE) were probably made necessary by this period of warfare.

David_Roberts_The_Temple_Of_Kom_Ombo_
“Kom Ombo,” Roberts

Here is a passage describing the temple at Bubastis as Herodotus experienced it around 450 BCE, a hundred years before the addition of the sanctuary hall by Pharaoh Nectanebo:

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“Holy Tree,” David Roberts

Save for the entrance, it stands on an island; two separate channels approach it from the Nile, running in contrary directions as far as the entry of the temple; each of them is a hundred feet wide and overshadowed by trees.

The outer court has a height of 60 feet, and is adorned with notable tall figures. The temple is in the midst of the city, the whole circuit of which commands a view down into it; for the city’s level has been raised, but that of the temple has been left as it was, so that it can be seen into from without.

A stone wall runs around it; within it is a grove of very tall trees growing around a great shrine wherein is the image of the goddess; the temple is a square, each side measuring an eighth of a mile. A paved road of almost a half mile’s length leads to the entrance, running eastwards toward the marketplace; this road is about 400 feet wide, and bordered by trees reaching to heaven.

Below you can see a 19th C artist’s rendition of the hypostyle hall at the temple of Hathor at Dendera, which was roughly contemporary with Bubastis.

Temple_Dendera
Like many 19th C efforts, the first major excavation at Bubastis by Edouard Naville was not systematically done–although even then the temple was little more than a field of uneven ground, suggesting the scattered and fallen remains buried beneath the surface. In the photo below you can see clearly the raised ground of the city surrounding the temple area, just as Herodotus described it. The people of the Nile delta made a habit of building up the mounds upon which their towns and cities were built to keep them above the level of the Nile floods, but the monumental nature of their stone temples made such mound-building nearly impossible for them.

Naville's Excavation, 1887-1889
Naville’s Excavation, 1887-1889

Unfortunately, major artifacts from Bubastis were carried away to Western museums with little regard for their original placement, although, as ongoing arguments continue to point out, their removal may have preserved them from exposure and vandalism. Many lesser objects were simply cast aside, leaving them vulnerable to theft and weathering. Recent scholars have struggled to piece together the temple’s appearance, both before and after Nectanebo’s changes (350 BCE). Most agree that his major contribution was a new sanctuary area, probably replacing an old one, at the western end of the temple.

The map below reflects a possible plan of the temple area at the time of the Roman conquest of Egypt (30 BCE):

Temple of Bast at Bubastis, map by C.L. Francisco
Temple of Bast at Bubastis, map by C.L. Francisco

The festival road, probably lined with sphinxes, approached the temple from east, where it entered the towering pylons that formed the temple’s main gate.

Similar pylons at temple of Isis, Philae
Similar pylons at temple of Isis, Philae

In front of the pylons, two matching granite statues of a Hyksos king (1500 BCE, below) guarded the approach to the temple. Two columns with palm-leaf capitals stood within the gate, which opened into the entrance hall. The entrance hall itself apparently had no columns, much of its space being filled with statues of various pharaohs, including two monumental statues of Ramesses II standing against the inner wall of the pylons. Both the entrance hall, and the festival hall, an enclosure honoring Osorkon II (9th C BCE), were probably built by Osorkon I and/or Osorkon II.

Beyond the festival hall was the great hall of columns, or hypostyle hall. The hypostyle hall may have been partially divided into two different segments, but the chaos of the fallen columns makes it difficult to say with any certainty.

Fallen columns at Bubastis
Fallen columns at Bubastis

Scholars also disagree as to whether the hall of columns had a ceiling or only epistyles connecting and securing the columns along their tops. There were certainly two types of granite columns discovered–a smaller set with Hathor-head capitals, and a larger set with palm leaf and lotus bud/papyrus capitals. You can see both types of shattered capitals in Naville’s photo above. Below are two intact capitals now in museums.

At the very western end of the temple stood Nectanebo’s 4th C BCE sanctuary hall, entered through a second pair of pylons. The sanctuary hall contained the large central shrine of the goddess Bastet, as well as 7 – 12 smaller shrines along the side and back walls, dedicated to other deities. Most of the sanctuary hall was built of red granite, with floors of basalt. The walls, doors, and ceilings were ornately carved, as was the shrine of the goddess. Stars covered the ceilings.

Starry sky, Hathor temple ceiling, Dendera
Starry sky, Hathor temple ceiling, Dendera

The goddess’ shrine, or naos, was carved from a single piece of red granite, approximately 12 feet high and 5 feet wide, with gilded wooden doors opening inward. Based on its available interior space, the goddess’ statue within the naos would have been 4 – 4 ½ feet high. The image would certainly have been overlaid with gold, if not cast of solid gold, and decorated with precious stones, turquoise, and lapis lazuli. Priests dressed her daily in rich clothing.

 

Bast ointment jar
Bast ointment jar

Since the temple map above was created to illustrate the temple as it is described in A Cat Out of Egypt, the chamber of the Great Cat is shown on the map. In reality, there was no such chamber, so far as anyone knows, just as there was probably no Great Cat. But there was a House of Life, as well as gardens, pools, and probably small free-standing temple buildings. Every temple also had its practical buildings, including housing, kitchens, laundries, animal areas, and temple workshops. Bubastis was known for the ointments and perfumes created by its staff as an expression of the goddess’ reputation as Lady of the Ointment Jar, and Mistress of the Embalming House, as well as being renowned for its oracle. There was also an apparently thriving trade in cat mummies at the time ACOOE took place.

"Ezekiel's Vision," Raphael
“Ezekiel’s Vision”

Bubastis even appears in the writings of the Prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 30:17), when he warns various nations of the wrath to come : “The young men of On and Pi-beseth (Bubastis) shall fall by the sword, and the cities themselves shall go into captivity.” Scholars have speculated that the revels accompanying the annual temple festival at Bubastis may have been responsible for Bubastis’ licentious reputation. Herodotus describes the festival briefly below:

The manner observed in the festival of Bubastis is this: men and women embark promiscuously in great numbers, and during the voyage, some of the women beat upon a tabor, while part of the men play on the pipe, the rest of both sexes singing and striking their hands together at the same time.  At every city they find in their passage they bring the boat to land, and some of the women continue their music, but some of the others either provoke the women of the place with opprobrious language, or dance, or draw up their garments; and they do this at every town that stands by the shore. When they arrive at Bubastis, they celebrate the festival with numerous sacrifices, and consume more wine than in all the rest of the year. For the inhabitants say this assembly usually consists of about 700,000 men and women, besides children.

 The feline narrator of A Cat Out of Egypt has her own ideas about the festival.

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To get a more detailed–and accurate–view of the discoveries at Bubastis, I recommend the ongoing blog of the Tell Basta excavation team.

Click on the following link for a downloadable pdf of the British Museum’s publication, A Naos of Nekhthorheb from Bubastis.

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Tour de Fat and a Gospel of Love

 

Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan

“Follow your folly!” That’s the traditional slogan of Tour de Fat, New Belgium Brewing Company’s annual Labor Day weekend bike extravaganza in Fort Collins (I’m guessing  the name is borrowed from their Fat Tire Golden Ale). For those of you who don’t follow such things, Tour de Fat is billed as a Halloween-like costume extravaganza–on  bicycles–with beer, bands and fun, all hosted by New Belgium Brewing Company.

Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan

Its overall purpose, apart from fun, is to encourage muscle-powered (as opposed to gas-powered) transport. All proceeds go to ecological and sustainability non-profits.

Not being a CSU student, or a cyclist, or actually living in Fort Collins for several years, I didn’t pay much attention to Tour de Fat. But for the last couple of years I’ve been living near the city park where much of the craziness takes place.  I suspect that its huge local success is partly due to CSU and the fact that Tour de Fat falls early enough in the academic year not to be overshadowed by academic pressures, but I think half of Fort Collins must turn out as well.

Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything from skateboards to unicycles and tall bikes crowd the streets, ridden by a truly bizarre assortment of contestants (yes, there are contests, too). My personal favorites in last year’s bicycle parade were the bucket-helmed bike jouster and the bearded senior on a yellow glider bike. But as soon as I say that, I remember the rolling occasional table with human lamp and the infinite variety of cross-dressing ballerinas and fairies. Everyone wears a smile and a good time is had by all.

Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan
Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan

 

 

 

 

 

Except perhaps for some of my more conservative Christian neighbors. I’m not sure exactly what sets them off about the Tour de Fat. Maybe it’s the beer, or the irreverent humor, or the amount of bare skin, or even the fun–but when I commented on the festival atmosphere, I felt like one of those cartoon characters bent backwards by the gale force of someone’s anger. I distinctly heard the words “pagan,” “heathen,” “godless,” “perverts,” and “shameless,” along with a predictable flow of tedious filler. I wriggled away as quickly as possible, making soothing noises as I went. They weren’t inviting dialogue.

Our encounter set me wondering, and not for the first time: How is it that Christianity  so often takes on the sour and condemnatory face of believers like these? Where did it begin? It was certainly with us by the time of the Puritans. And let’s not forget the Inquisition. Or the Albigensian Crusades. Or even the early Church Councils that declared minority beliefs to be heresy. How did intolerance overwhelm the good news of God’s love for all people?

I thank God for Pope Francis whenever I think of him, although I’m not Catholic. His all-embracing love for humanity is a stream of living water in a thirsty land, even if I don’t agree with everything he says. Hate has taken root in too many of our churches:  hate of the Other, of those    unlike ourselves. This is the same hate that drove Nazi Germany, Bosnian and Cambodian genocide, and still drives the appalling atrocities of ISIS. I’m not sure that there is much qualitative difference between one person’s hate and another’s: there is degree, and opportunity, and restraint or incitement, but the root emotion is the same. None of us is altogether free of it.

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Photo, Dawn Madura, The Coloradoan

A mirror might be a useful devotional tool as we consider Jesus’ warning that a hate-driven insult is as cruel as murder. There may be a difference in degree, but not in essence.

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Author C. L. Francisco’s blog — home of Yeshua’s Cats!

 

 

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Of Time and Faith

 

Pre-Dynastic Egypt, photo NYTimes
Pre-Dynastic Egypt, photo NYTimes

My recent immersion in ancient Egyptian art (for A Cat Out of Egypt) has reminded me of the many hours I’ve spent roaming happily through the art of the Ancient Near East–as far back in human history as the Stone Age years (roughly 50,000 to 10,000 BCE). Just in surveying the history of Egypt, I’ve traveled through so many cultures so quickly that thoughts on the nature of cultural change have finally stopped me in my tracks. So today I want to share with you some of my wandering thoughts on time, change, and Western culture, born of encounters with the work of long-dead artists.

TrainTrackBefore Einstein turned science on its head, people in Western culture tended to picture time as a single line which connected the beginning and end of all things. This is no longer the case, at least among scientists. The idea of linear time emerged from the early cultures of the Ancient Near East and was essential to Judaism’s understanding of reality. Judeo-Christian culture embraced linear time as its own, and structured history and reality accordingly. Wherever the Church—and later Western culture—extended its influence through colonialism and conversion, linear time was a non-negotiable part of the package.

Chartres Labyrinth, photo by Maksim
Chartres Labyrinth, photo by Maksim

But many cultures prior to Judeo-Christian contact tended toward circular or spiraling ideas of time. These ideas took various forms, from the cyclical rebirth of the entire universe to models more directly reflecting the turning seasons and skies. Cycles of death and rebirth were generally part of these worldviews, but for those of us firmly planted in a linear model of time appreciating these other models can be difficult.

 

Oddly enough, I can offer an example of time as a circle/spiral from my own experience. I’ve always thought in images. So if I thought of time, I pictured it, just as I did everything else. For as long as I can remember, at least back into my elementary school years, whenever I’ve tried to recall memories in sequential order, I’ve imagined years as circles in an ascending counterclockwise spiral. Winter begins each new circle at the top, moving into spring on the left, summer at the bottom side, and fall on the right, all rising toward a new winter and a new circle on the upward spiral. The spiral’s circles are formed of rather misty mosaics of memory-images from the seasons and events of the year. I offer this example simply to suggest that if a thoroughly Western child of elementary-school years could spontaneously create such a circular model—one that persists on into adulthood alongside a standard linear model of time—then cyclical time might not be all that alien to any of us.

"American Progress," John Gast, 1872
“American Progress,” John Gast, 1872

Linear time as the Church concretized it in Christian doctrine defined history as the stage upon which God acted to lead Creation to its divinely ordained conclusion–thus contributing, if indirectly, to the Western idea of progress. Also moving onto the stage at some point was the idea of a divinely chosen people whose own culture set the standard for all other peoples. By the 19th C, Western culture was producing theories of cultural evolution with “primitives” on the bottom and privileged Western society on the top. Immeasurable pain and violence were inflicted on other cultures as a result, and the damage is ongoing today. Although most reputable scholars rejected such ideas of cultural evolution by the mid-20th C, similar notions do still linger in the popular mind. Almost any person raised within a Western worldview is, at the very least, a carrier of embryonic presuppositions regarding progress and “primitivism,” whether they wish to carry them or not. It’s in the air, in our mothers’ milk.

Akkadian victory stele, 2250 BCE
Akkadian victory stele, 2250 BCE

So what does all this have to do with my journeys through ancient art? Well, I found myself asking, “Why do cultures change?” When Stone Age humans began domesticating animals, was it “development,” “progress,” or simply change based on circumstances we can’t see clearly today? Cultural change that led to dynastic civilizations and large-scale warfare can only be called progress (with any certainty) if where we stand today is the intended and best possible result in an overall plan of history. When Neolithic groups moved toward urbanization and the beginnings of metallurgy, was it progress, or simply change? What other paths existed in prehistory as possibilities—what waves had not yet collapsed? In Western Asia and Eastern Europe cultures adhering to traditional ways disappeared—or were wiped out by the widespread wars, plagues, and famines of the last half of the Bronze Age. And here a possibility began to grow in my mind.

ST-slavesI considered the course of events in recent centuries when Traditional, or Earth-based, cultures encountered Western civilization. One thing I had never considered before now demanded my full attention: African Traditional peoples, Native Americans, South Sea Islanders, Aborigines—these peoples did not progress, or develop, or evolve—their cultures were annihilated. They were not in the process of change when first contact was made. Change was not offered to them as an option. Whether they were killed with weapons, pestilence, starvation, or all three together, their cultures were extinguished. Greed for land and resources, brutally efficient weaponry with the sense of power born of it, and the tantalizing possibility of “might makes right”—these human factors undergirded the conquest of “new worlds.” Would it be unreasonable to suppose that these same human factors sealed the fate of indigenous peoples whose lands adjoined the Fertile Crescent and the civilization it cradled?

Bound Captive, Early Dynastic, Egypt, photo NYTimes
Bound Captive, Early Dynastic, Egypt, photo NYTimes

This line of thought led to disturbing questions often debated among academics—but for me, these questions have become personal. What is progress? Does it really exist? Why is change a good thing, if an existing situation is good already? Is it possible that unlovely traits like greed, abusive power, and fear have always been the most common motive forces in human change?

 

 

Movie "Avatar," idealized indigenous people
Movie “Avatar,” idealized indigenous people

Now that the Western world is beginning to perceive the number and variety of plagues spawned in its long shadow, some people have begun to look with yearning and regret at Earth’s remaining Indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, when we look we tend to see through the lenses of our own worldview, darkly. We do not see these fellow-humans as people who belong to themselves, with their own lives and concerns, but as solutions to our problems, romanticized projections of our notions of a paradisal age.

Perhaps wisdom remains for the healing of the Earth. Perhaps sustainability is something we can learn. Perhaps if we ask with respect, elders may share their wisdom. But first we of Western culture need to look to our own house.

Stained glass window "Jairus' daughter" by Annemiek Punt, photo Beckstet
Stained glass window “Jairus’ daughter” by Annemiek Punt, photo
Beckstet

Professor and historian E. Glenn Hinson first introduced me to the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest and philosopher of the first half of the 20th century whose reflections on God and history led to repeated censures by the Catholic Church. But the one piece of his thought that burst into my world like a supernova was his assertion that God has given the future of the Earth into human hands: if we don’t take responsibility for our world, God won’t step in with an exasperated sigh and clean up the mess. In the Apostle Paul’s words, we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). “Progress” does not necessarily reflect God’s will, nor does God necessarily “will” what is happening in our world today. Christ has pointed the way in love, and the Holy Spirit strengthens us as we labor, but if we don’t work for the salvation of all God’s creation, humanity’s end times may be grim indeed.

 

 

 

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Manners, the phenomenologist, and the church lady

In the unaccustomed calm after finishing A Cat Out of Egypt, I’ve been thinking about a process I use in diving into ancient cultures, and how much a part of my thinking it’s become. A great deal of what makes writing fiction possible for me is a discipline I learned from Dr. John N. Jonsson, an extraordinary professor from graduate school: phenomenology. Never heard of it? My recent reflections can take care of that!

Alice

After a meeting not long ago with some seriously incompatible new acquaintances, a friend clapped me on the back and said, “Hey, great job with the chit-chat! You must have been doing your phenomenologist thing, acting like you believed every word they said. I didn’t know what to say.”

The comment completely blindsided me. I had taken on a different persona, hoping it might get me through the conversation without offending anyone, but it was a role I had learned growing up among remnants of the Old South—not as a graduate student in world religions. Far from employing a phenomenologist’s skill at participant observation, I had donned the mask of a Southern lady. Yet, my actions looked to my friend like phenomenological techniques.

Photo by evietom
Photo by evietom

If I vastly oversimplified the definition of a field phenomenologist, I might say it’s someone who observes the behaviors and practices of another culture while suspending her own cultural bias. As a participant observer, she learns by blending into the observed culture, accepting it as if it were her own, attempting to experience all its phenomena with the eyes of one born to it. She applies no preconceived standards of right and wrong, true and false, good and evil. A phenomenologist does her best to understand a culture and its people on their own terms.

 

Vonette_Bright3 I grew up among Southern Baptist seminary faculty families, where gentle wives from all across the Deep South, born in the early decades of the 20th century, dedicated themselves to being helpmeets and hostesses for their reverend-doctor husbands. In the company of the most accomplished of these ladies, voices were never raised in anger or disagreement, and guests in one’s home were treated like Abraham’s visiting angels. Peculiarities, absurdities, poor manners, and even rudeness were met with smiles, tolerance, and seemingly rapt absorption. These paragons of Southern virtue never succeeded in converting me to their vision of Southern gentility, but I knew the drill—and I can still produce a recognizable facsimile on demand, as long as I don’t have to keep it up for too long.

The more I think about it, my Church Lady and a working phenomenologist do have things in common. Each would greet a manure-encrusted ascetic with the same apparent obliviousness to his odor and appearance. Both would discuss the certain existence of winged hippopotami without batting an eye if the subject were seriously introduced. Neither would contradict beliefs that they personally believed to be nonsense. Each would do her best to allow others to hold center-stage. Dedication to inconspicuousness and the ease of others characterize both roles. Intelligence and focus are essential to both, and each employs a certain amount of deceit, even if benign.

But they are certainly not the same. A skilled phenomenologist blends into her environment with a kind of protective coloration that allows her to appear to belong where she does not. But a Southern lady actively controls her environment with a mixture of charm and solicitude learned at her mother’s knee. The phenomenologist is a loner looking in, but the lady nests securely in the heart of her society’s hearth and home.

An ocelot's protective coloration
An ocelot’s protective coloration

I suppose I was disturbed by my friend’s remark because my actions had been unconscious: I had unwittingly taken on the manners of a Southern lady, and used those manners as a phenomenologist would—as protective coloration. I certainly can’t claim the identity as my own, since I’m no longer living in the vanished culture of the Old South, and in any case, I never abided by its rules. Yet neither was I acting as a phenomenologist, attempting to submerge myself in our visitors’ world in order to understand it. I simply adopted a persona to keep the peace and avoid unpleasantness.

But isn’t that what manners have always accomplished? The dilemma in my meeting was that no common etiquette existed for all parties involved. We came from different worlds, although we lived only a few miles apart.

In a time of increasing multiculturalism, rapid change, and widespread individualism, few can rely on old standards and manners to smooth social situations. In a sense, we are all being asked to become self-taught phenomenologists flying by the seat of our pants. But no one living in an urban area is going to learn the social cues of every group they might encounter, from street people to suburban Episcopalians to recent immigrants, to American-born ethnic minorities.

Dear Abby and Miss Manners have been the butts of endless jokes for many years, and rightly so. They have tried to wrap outdated rules of etiquette around America’s diverse population like straightjackets. But what alternatives do we have? Those of us who find ourselves in conversation with people whose ideas and behavior seem at best bizarre, and at worst . . . who can say?

Going back to our meeting, what did my friend see me doing? I was listening. When I asked questions, I did so for clarification, not attack. I didn’t contradict statements I knew or suspected were wrong. I was patient. I expressed interest in our guests’ lives and doings. I complimented them on their successes, and when I was stunned into speechlessness, I just smiled. Consciously, I was mimicking a Southern lady on her best behavior. But unwittingly, perhaps I was just giving our guests room to be

Complimentary_dinner2I am not offering the Southern lady as a model for us today. Like anyone fulfilling a social role, she helped maintain the status quo of her society—which in the South meant preserving the privilege and power of select white men at the expense of women, minorities, and working people. Life in the South could be bitter for the disenfranchised. I am saying that my rather haphazard reenactment of a remembered role resulted in unexpected success with both guests and co-workers.

Elitist2Just as so many of us have lost our sense of connection to the Earth and our non-human relations, we have also lost touch with our extended human family. Individualism may have brought us relief from oppressive social control, but it has also divided us from each other. Dualism, with its gulf between the human and natural worlds, may have fueled industry and urban growth, but its unforeseen results have been devastating. When we see the world around us as nothing more than raw materials for our own consumption, we shouldn’t be surprised that “real” humans become fewer and fewer, until often the only one who truly matters is oneself.

One basic assumption of phenomenology is that common patterns underlie all human behavior, and that if we understand each culture well enough, we can identify those commonalities. But understanding comes first—and it will never come unless we grant other people’s behavior the same respect we give our own. Maybe at the end it all comes down to variations on the golden rule: however you hope to be treated, offer that same consideration to others.

Let It Be, by Andy Saczynski
Let It Be, by Andy Saczynski

Respect can breed respect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Speaking Stones of Easter

 

“If the people were silent, the very stones would cry out.”                                                                       Luke 19:40

The stones are speaking.  Are we listening?

The memory of stone.  People have spoken of it since humankind first wielded tools to chisel its surface.  What stories might be locked in the smallest of river stones, the bedrock beneath the plains’ rich soil, the mountains crushed into gravel for our roads?  Certainly we find there the record of the earth’s transformations, the bones and footprints of long-dead species, delicate traceries of plants, massive forests.  But what about human lives?  Have stones absorbed the fleeting touch of our lately-come species, the storms of blood, tears, laughter, prayer that accompany our kind wherever we wander?  Do stones remember us?

Stones of Easter: Bread. Photo C.L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Bread. Photo C.L. Francisco

I love stone.  I have loved it from earliest childhood.  I love the weight and feel of it in my hand, the warmth of it beneath me when I rest from walking, the magic of its kaleidoscopic patterns.  When I can I travel to mountains and canyons and deserts to spend time in its company.  Stone is alive, sentient in some way I can’t explain.  I feel it most strongly in wilderness, where human busy-ness is limited—but it has also caught me unawares in urban alleys.

Stones of Easter: Wine. Photo by C. L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Wine. Photo by C. L. Francisco

I am unlikely ever to hear a stone speak in human words, or a tree in propositions, or a dog in iambic pentameter.  A stone communicates in the manner of stones, just as a dog communicates as dogs do.  My experience of the speech of stones is deeply non-verbal, partly visceral and partly emotional, untranslatable.  Sometimes I take a photograph or pick up a stone when I feel it; other times I simply let it be.  The imagery comes later.

Stones of Easter: Flesh. Photo by C. L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Flesh. Photo by C. L. Francisco

I am not a professional photographer, or even educated in photography.  In the past I saw the images in a camera’s eye as an imagined canvas, in terms of shape and balance, tension and flow, light and dark.  Now I find myself photographing scenes that pulse with the energy of subtle presence, and I let the rest take care of itself.  Sometimes my pictures absorb a hint of that power, sometimes not.

Stones of Easter: Blood. Photo by C.L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Blood. Photo by C.L. Francisco

What is a photograph?  At its simplest it is a record of objects seen, events observed, people known.  But like history, a photograph participates in the awareness of the one who watches and records.  And like a scientific experiment, the photographer’s participation is a variable that must be considered. The same scene taken by different people with identical cameras at roughly the same time may be distinctly different—based on something I call “soul,” for lack of any better term.  At times the camera’s eye appears to mediate an exchange of understanding?  meaning?  relationship?  being?  between photographer and subject, and this fleeting touch (or lack of it) marks the photo.

The Stones of Easter: Release. Photo by C.L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Release. Photo by C.L. Francisco

What are the stones saying with their images?  I believe they are communicating their presence, no more.  “Look at us!” they cry.  “We are alive, in ways you have forgotten you ever knew.  We are—as the trees are, and the waters, and the atmosphere that shields the Earth from the extremes of space.  Truly see us—see all of creation—we who have been dismissed by your arrogance as mere commodities.  See us, before only stones remain to see the sunrise.”

The Stones of Easter: Tomb. Photo by C.L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Tomb. Photo by C.L. Francisco

Slipping unseen along the fringes of consciousness, the temptation is always there—to “clean up” the images, make them perfect, adjust their proportions to fit more neatly into Western ideas of beauty.  Sometimes I make changes without thinking, and then I have to destroy the image if I can’t undo the edits.  We have an implicit understanding, the stones and I—that their images will remain as I find them, removed only from their matrix, and, at most, adjusted for contrast.  After all, they are the language of stone, and much is inevitably lost in translation.

The Stones of Easter: Searching the Skies. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Searching the Skies. Photo by C. L. Francisco

Many years ago I discovered a new word:  panentheism.  Not pantheism (many gods), not theism (usually one god separate from creation), but pan-en-theism—one Spirit present in all creation, without the great divide between spirit and flesh that seems unavoidable in most Western traditions.  Perhaps this word can suggest a way to bridge the gulf between stones that speak and a planet of dead rock.

The Stones of Easter: Lament. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Lament. Photo by C. L. Francisco

In Christian scripture the apostle Paul describes the perceptions of ordinary people:  “For now we see in a mirror, dimly . . . .”  These words could describe any human being who has lost her sense of kinship with the web of life in which she lives.  We see the world distorted in a bit of poorly polished metal—and ourselves more prominently than all else.  But unlike Longfellow’s Lady of Shallot, we have no curse to excuse our stubborn avoidance of the Earth’s true face.

The Stones of Easter: Emergence. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Emergence. Photo by C. L. Francisco

Stone is patient.  Stone does not envy or boast, and is neither arrogant nor rude.  Stone simply is, demanding nothing.  Stone is not false, but embodies the truth of creation.  Stone accepts human abuse and awaits our healing.  Stone endures all things, is always being transformed, yet is ever the same.

The Stones of Easter: Rolling Stone. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Rolling Stone. Photo by C. L. Francisco

All the photos in The Stones of Easter series* were taken on my brother Don’s mountain during Easter week, 2010, when I was deeply immersed in writing the final chapters of The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat. Starting on the morning of Maundy Thursday and ending on Easter Sunday, each day I packed a lunch and water flask and set off up the mountain with my camera. In a very literal sense, I went in search of a vision.

The Stones of Easter: Gone Away. Photo by C.L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Gone Away. Photo by C.L. Francisco

The result of the vision that met me there is Yeshua’s Cat.

 

And, of course, one of Wendy’s cats.

EasterCat

 

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* Sixteen photos in The Stones of Easter series are available for sale at http://www.zazzle.com/moon_seasons. The original series included 24.

 

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To Nazareth Village, with thanks

NazPan
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

While I was writing Yeshua’s Cat, I watched with interest as Nazareth Village took shape both on the internet and in the town of Nazareth. In case you’ve never heard of it, it’s now an amazing non-profit tourist attraction in Israel, based (as far as I can tell) on careful archaeological and scholarly research. Because their research into 1st century architecture and culture was helpful to me in my writing, I decided that this might be a good time to return the favor.

photo, nazarethvillage.com
photo, nazarethvillage.com

Finding the kind of everyday details about ancient Israel that I needed was difficult without access to a university research library–and I did my writing miles away from anywhere in the Rocky Mountains. So when I stumbled on a small website documenting the process of reconstructing a small 1st C village near Nazareth, I was delighted. I’m grateful to have discovered Nazareth Village during its formative years, when they were actively struggling with bringing a dream to birth, just as I was.

I’m a visual person, and it helps me enormously if I can really visualize the places I’m writing about–and as a retired professor, I have to be sure it’s accurate! Floor plans and ruins will work in a pinch, but accurate reconstructions are by far the best. If you look carefully through The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, you can see the influence of Nazareth Village’s architectural research in three different areas: Yeshua’s skills at home repair, the structure of Keturah’s house in Capernaum, and some of the structural details of the Capernaum synagogue.

Yeshua’s house repairs

Then without waiting for a response he bent to his task, tearing away the rotted cane and broken plaster until he could test the strength of the exposed beam underneath. I lay in the sun and thought my own thoughts while he came and went at his work, weaving cane mats to patch the holes, and mixing the first batches of mud to seal them in place. His strong hands were quick and neat at their work, and I guessed that I was watching him at one of the skills he shared with his family.”                                                                     The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 5

House roof construction. Photo, nazarethvillage.com
House roof construction. Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

The photos above show the construction techniques that resulted in the kind of roof Yeshua was working to repair for Keturah:  support beams, covered by woven cane, and various layers of mud and plaster. To the right is Mari’s view of the interior ceiling before it fell on her head. This was also the roof the four friends tore apart to lower the paralyzed young man.

Below you can see a plastered room similar to the one Yeshua was repairing in the following text:

Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

“It was the morning after I had followed him to the spring, and he was chipping the crumbling plaster and mud from Keturah’s kitchen walls. He was slow to answer me, but I recognized the signs of a lengthy response in the making. I sighed. After all, I’d asked the question. He paused and looked at me where I sat across the room, out of reach of his dust.”                                    
The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 6

 

Keturah’s House

Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

Nazareth Village’s basic house plan (right) was similar to the one I used for Keturah’s house. You can see the entrance into the courtyard, with Keturah’s main room and bedroom. The stairs to the roof would have been at the north end of the courtyard–with the goat.

 

Below are a couple of pictures illustrating the cistern and the runoff channels that carried rainwater to it. The runoff channel on the roof  is mentioned in the text:

“I took refuge on the roof and watched as people craned their necks for a glimpse of his face. From where I sat I couldn’t see much, although I did notice that the crowd parted when several elders, dressed in fine linen turbans and fringed shawls, pushed their way from the street into Keturah’s house. But my curiosity about them died abruptly at the noisy approach of several humans across the roof beyond ours. With a growl, I flattened myself into the cistern’s channel.”                                                                                                      The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 8

Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

 

The synagogue

At last we come to the synagogue. There are numerous synagogue ruins in and around Israel, many dating from near the early first century, and their floor plans are very similar.

Gamla . . .

Image ESV Annotated Bible
Image ESV Annotated Bible

Capernaum . . .

Image bible-lands.net
Image bible-lands.net

Masada . . .

MasadaSyn

 

But Nazareth Village created a reconstruction in three dimensions, and in full scale. Fantastic!

Exterior photo by Kluke, Panoramio. Interior photos by nazarethvillage.com
Exterior photo by Kluke, Panoramio. Interior photos by nazarethvillage.com

This was the synagogue I was imagining in the scene below:

“As he and his followers disappeared into the house of prayer on that Shabbat morning, I ran up the smooth bark of a great tree and jumped down onto the stone lip of the mud roof. Rising from the roof’s center were smaller stone walls with cat-sized windows all around. I leapt carefully into a window and crept through to the inside.

Far too much air hung between my feet and the floor to jump through the window. Flattening myself on the sill like a mouse in a crack, I inched my head over the inner edge and crouched there to see what I could see. Many men and women sat on stone steps around the sides of a large room, and directly below my window I could just glimpse ben Adamah’s head where he stood speaking.”                                                                                                                                        The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 6

Drawing by C.L. Francisco
Drawing by C.L. Francisco

To the right is an image of Mari in the synagogue that never made it to the map, probably because I couldn’t quite get past the fact that she didn’t really go in!

 

 

From what I can tell, Nazareth Village is a great success, and visitors love it. Maybe some day I’ll visit it first hand, but for now, I’m grateful for its presence online.

 

 

 

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Belief, Doubt, and Cats in Cradles

 

van Gogh, “Prisoners’ Round”
van Gogh, “Prisoners’ Round”

Doubt can save your sanity.  In a world where reality is determined by consensus, doubt can open unsuspected windows onto new landscapes.  Doubt offers us a key to our psychological cages.  It can be our first step toward making truly independent and informed decisions.  But first we need to realize that doubt is a valid alternative to belief. And here we find the tangle:  many things that we accept as fact—things beyond all possibility of doubting—are true for us only because we have never questioned them.   Yet we have been taught that to doubt them is either absurd or forbidden.

If we do decide to question our comfortable, or crippling, assumptions, we will always do it alone.  No one else can do it for us.  We each venture out across the apparent bedrock of our lives to discover, like Indiana Jones, which stones rest on solid support, and which drop away beneath our feet, leaving us flailing for balance.

Mistaken beliefs from distant history are always easier to see than those closer to our own lives.  Regardless of how unfounded our assumptions may be, if we have never questioned them they can carry the force of divine law.  Consider these examples of “exploded facts” from human history, distant and contemporary:

Egyptian papyrus of god Shu supporting Nut (sky)
Egyptian papyrus of god Shu supporting Nut (sky)

*  The world is flat, and the oceans pour off the edges into infinity.

*  Time is a single line with a beginning and an end.

*  The earth is the center of the universe.

JPTRex1
Jurassic Park 3

*  A woman’s place is in the home.

*  Epilepsy is caused by demon possession.

*  Without the gods to hold it up, the sky will collapse.

*  The universe was created in six twenty-four-hour periods.

*  Dinosaurs never cared for their young.

*  Attaching leeches to a patient drains the illness.

*  The Earth and all its creatures exist solely for human use.

*  Lobotomy is a cure for mental illness.

Photo: picturesofcats4you.com
Photo: picturesofcats4you.com

*  Cats climb into babies’ cradles to steal their souls.

*  Good people prosper and evil ones suffer.

*  Father knows best.

*  Christians in the first centuries all believed the same things.

*  History is objective facts about the past.

*  Women with healing skills fly on brooms at night.

*  Human beings are disposable goods.

Slaves in Belgian Congo
Slaves in Belgian Congo

Chances are good that you experienced a gut reaction to at least one of these examples, because for you it remains a fact—and not exploded at all.

How do such assumptions come into being?  Some, like the flat earth theory, are primarily attempts to make sense of the world as human beings have experienced it.  Some are rooted in the hunger for power and control, others in ignorance, or in fear. Most have far too many interwoven layers to examine thoroughly.  But even the simplest is difficult to unmask and release.

Allowing ourselves to doubt the fundamental ways in which we understand reality can be terrifying.  Most people won’t even consider doing it unless they find themselves in so much pain—psychological, physical, or situational—that the risks of doubt begin to look better than the pain they are living in.

 

Flat Earth Map, 15th C
Flat Earth Map, 15th C

When a person–or a whole culture–begins to doubt the truth of their basic ideas of reality, discards old ways of thinking, and goes on to embrace alternate understandings, we call it a paradigm shift.  The period in which these changes swell and grow is always chaotic.  Sometimes, if the pain is overwhelming, we reject the changes and retreat to the old ways. But once we glimpse the shortcomings of a vision of reality, we are never truly comfortable there again—although we may fight to the death to deny it.  And even if we don’t die in the battle, we close ourselves off to all new life in our effort to preserve the old.

 

So someone who can’t get past the sense of being boxed-in, caged, or trapped might do well to engage in a little therapeutic doubt.  Why should a certain standard of living be essential?  Why should many possessions be better than few?  Why should science be more important than art? Should we believe a thing just because everyone else does—or because no one else does?  Why is a job we hate the only choice we have?

Photo: Melissa Wastney
Photo: Melissa Wastney

If I sound like a toddler pestering a parent with “why’s,” I do it with intent.  What are children doing when they ask “why” a hundred times a day?  They are beginning to structure their reality, and adults are teaching them how. Many of the world’s faiths talk about the wisdom of little children, but too often that wisdom is replaced with blind cultural assumptions.  What might happen if every time a child asked us why, we paused and really tried to give a thoughtful answer?  Some things would remain true (at least in most cases):  “If you touch the fire you will be burned”;  “If you pull the cat’s tail she will scratch you.”  Other things might not hold up so well:  “Because I told you so”;  “Because you can’t, that’s why”;  “Because that’s how it is.”

Perhaps if we searched our hearts in response to their questions, we would raise children who know how to doubt, and how to keep asking questions. Perhaps our children’s simple demand to know why could reveal to us the inadequacies of our own beliefs.  Then we might learn how to doubt while we encouraged our children to question.  Paradigms might shift more gently when motivated by love. But as it is, most of us only learn to doubt when our backs are against the wall, faced with what feels like annihilation—which it is in a way.  But on the other side of that little death is new life and the possibility of creative solutions to old problems.

Question authority—it’s a good idea.

Photo: C.L. Francisco
Photo: C.L. Francisco

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