Tag Archives: jesus of nazareth

ancient egypt, biblical Israel, culture, faith, Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua

Of Time and Faith

June 1, 2014 Carol

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.

TrainTrack Before 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.

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 19^th 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-20^th 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.

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.

I 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

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

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.

culture, Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua

Manners, the phenomenologist, and the church lady

May 15, 2014 Carol

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.

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_dinner2 I 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.

Elitist2 Just 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.

Respect can breed respect.

Christian art, faith, Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua

The Speaking Stones of Easter

April 15, 2014 Carol

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, of course, one of Wendy’s cats.

EasterCat

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

biblical Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua

To Nazareth Village, with thanks

April 1, 2014 Carol

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.

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

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:

“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

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

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 . . .

Capernaum . . .

Masada . . .

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

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

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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cat, faith, Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua

Belief, Doubt, and Cats in Cradles

March 15, 2014 Carol

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)

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

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.

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?

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.

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Jesus of Nazareth, plants, Yeshua

Avinoam Danin and Plants of the Bible Lands

March 1, 2014 Carol

Hemp2

“We botanists consider the new plants we describe as new-born children and love them all. I have now 42 such plants and it is hard to say whom I love more.” (1)
— Avinoam Danin

Satureja nabateorum, new species discovered near Petra by Avinoam Danin

If you’ve read The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, you may have wondered where I found the inspiration for Yeshua’s parable of the caper flower, or the sycamore fig tree. The answer? Eminent botanist Dr. Avinoam Danin, most recently in the public eye with his book, Botany of the Shroud: The Story of Floral Images on the Shroud of Turin.

For much of the time when I was writing Yeshua’s Cat, I was living in isolated rural environments, with no access to academic libraries. When it came to biblical history and texts, this wasn’t a problem. My own knowledge and personal library were adequate. But I found that I wanted more details: what wild plants were native to Galilee? Judea? the Decapolis? Which of them might have provided food for hungry travelers? What trees were native to the different regions? How big were they, and what did they look like? In what seasons did they bear fruit? Have plant species mentioned in the Bible been identified? Might any have inspired parables that never reached us through the gospels? You get the idea.

So, like many writers before me, I turned to the internet, beginning my project with search terms like “indigenous plants of Israel.” It didn’t take long before I identified a site on the Hebrew University server as a gold mine: Flora of Israel Online, moderated by Professor Emeritus Avinoam Danin. Not being a botanist, I found navigating around the site to be quite a challenge at first: if I didn’t come armed with a specific plant’s Latin name, I got nowhere. But once I located a Latin list of Israel’s plants on a less tantalizing website, I was on my way. Each plant on Professor Danin’s site was documented with a wealth of photographs and data.

Tabor Oak, E. Strawberry, Date Palm, Olive, Carob. All photos Flora of Israel Online, Hebrew University

But that was only the beginning. One day I stumbled onto a different section of the site, sometimes called “Plant Stories,” sometimes “The Vegetation of Israel and Neighboring Countries.” Here Dr. Danin allows himself to speak more informally, using personal and cultural anecdotes to enrich his discussion of a huge variety of plants and habitats. From what I could tell, there are few wild places in Israel or its surrounding neighbors that he hasn’t explored.

And hidden among the plant stories was “The Story of the Caper”:

I liked the “tales of the caper” in the Mishnah. Raban Gamliel stated that “There will be trees that will provide fruits daily.” His pupil said “But it is written that there is nothing new under the sun”; Raban Gamliel said “Come and I’ll show you that they already exist in our world – they went out and he showed him a caper. . . (2)

Well, I was hooked, but it only got better–he went on to describe the caper blossom’s transformation through the dusk and night-time, which I used as the basis for Yeshua’s parable told to the young philosopher of the Decapolis (YC, p. 163).

Caper blossoms, all photos Flora of Israel Online, Hebrew University

Interspersed throughout the article I found more reminiscences of his own experience with the caper plant, including his personal practice of pickling and canning hand-picked capers as gifts.

Pickled buds, fruits, leaves and stems of the Capparis zoharyi, photo Avinoam Danin, Flora of Israel Online

Most of his plant stories never found their way into Yeshua’s Cat, although Yeshua’s makeshift meals of kanari berries and locust pods (YC, p. 83) I credit to him, as well as Yeshua’s examples of common knowledge: “If you feast on bitter almonds, will you not die? Where date palms grow, will you not find water?” (YC, p, 172). It still grieves me that I wasn’t able to use his explanation of how to recognize ancient cisterns in order to find water in the desert. Perhaps in the next book.

Ancient Har Nafka Cistern, photo Avinoam Danin, Flora of Israel Online

I suppose this whole blog entry is simply my way of saying thank you to Dr. Danin for being the kind of scholar who is driven by love of his discipline to share what he knows in appealing and accessible ways, so that everyone–not just other specialists in his field–can appreciate it. Whether he will be pleased to find his name mentioned in the context of an imaginative Christian biography of Jesus of Nazareth, I can’t say. But I suspect he is always delighted when his love of Israel’s native plants is shared with new audiences.

Want to read more about Avinoam Danin? Here’s an interview published in 2012.

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ancient roman empire, Christian art, Early Church, Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua

Painted Gospels

February 1, 2014 Carol

Symbols

In the days before Yeshua’s Cat was written, before the wildfire scorched our land, I was exploring the changes that had carried humanity forward in time from the old Earth-based cultures of the Stone Age, through the violent upheavals of the late Bronze Age, and into the time of the Roman Empire. The planned lectures and workshops vanished in the wildfire’s smoke, but something else emerged. I realized that without the art of these ancient peoples we would understand almost nothing about them. So where was the art of the early church? How had my education in early Christian history managed to focus so entirely on words? As a result, I turned to the internet and the local university library and began to search for the visual language of the early Church. (In case you’d like to explore on your own, Picturing the Bible by Jeffrey Spier is a good place to start.)

Wiki_Jesus-NuntiatellaCatacombs — Painted bust of Jesus, Nunziatella Catacombs

For much of the mid-20^th century, common wisdom dismissed the “search for the historical Jesus” as a groundless hope, a fantasy for the unrealistic. But although we may never see a portrait of the flesh and blood man Jesus, the search has proved far from “groundless”: in our time the Earth herself has been yielding up the voices and visions of Jesus’ earliest followers with increasing frequency.

1st C walls under San Clemente, photo Marc Aurel

Anyone who visits Rome today steps into a buzzing archaeological hive. This in itself isn’t so strange; after all, many of Rome’s greatest attractions were literally unearthed from its ancient past. What fascinates me is how these ruins emerge. They aren’t turned up by a farmer’s plow, or weathered out of an eroding riverbank, but excavated from beneath the city’s basements. Apparently, Rome buried itself. And the same can be said of Jerusalem, or almost any other Mediterranean capital.* In Rome, for example, the twelfth-century Basilica of San Clemente that still stands today used the walls of the fourth-century San Clemente as foundations. This earlier church rose on top of a first-century mansion. Stairs of ever-increasing age, exposed in recent excavations, descend from the sunlit world down through the virtually intact fourth-century church and into the bowels of ancient Rome. There visitors can walk along a first-century Roman alleyway and explore a now-subterranean apartment building adjacent to the walls of the mansion used as an early Christian meeting place. And under it all lies the rubble of Rome’s great fire of 64 CE.

Canyons carved into the human past are literally opening at our feet along the Roman streets. We can almost believe we hear the slap of sandaled feet two thousand years dead. Anything seems possible. The past walks with us in ways we never imagined. Beneath the many strata of Roman civilization lies tuff, or hardened volcanic ash. Tuff is relatively soft until exposed to air, and is ideal for tunneling. This Roman bedrock made possible the creation of the lowest levels of all Roman ruins, the catacombs. As long as sufficient structural support was left in place, there was almost no limit to the number and extent of these labyrinthine burial chambers.

Although the most famous are Christian, catacombs existed before the early church period, and provided burial space well into the Common Era for those of many different religions. Their painted burial chambers offer us some of the earliest glimpses into the faith of Christian believers, perhaps even back to the middle of the first century.

Visual art as a way of communicating our experience of the world is always personal, and far more powerful than words. Art strikes human depths directly. When a person chooses images to express the soul’s deepest yearnings in the face of death, non-essentials fall away. The heart chooses whatever makes life livable, hope possible. When we look at funerary art, we meet human beings as they turn their faces toward the mystery of life moving into death. This mystery is what we find in the catacombs.

Jesus raising Lazarus, Via Latina catacombs

So why are these earliest of Christian testimonies so little known? Why have these painted gospels made so little impact on how Christians understand their faith today? Perhaps it is because our own worldviews get in the way. So an American tourist in Rome snaps a photo of Nike (Winged Victory), and calls her a Christian angel. Another sees a faded catacomb painting of Hercules with the three-headed dog Cerberus and identifies him as the Good Shepherd (with peculiar sheep). We see what we expect to see, squeezing everything into familiar molds. Or perhaps most people just haven’t had the chance yet to truly experience these painted gospels for themselves.

Early Christians chose dramatic images of Jesus and the Old Testament when they painted their tombs. Those appearing most frequently in the 3rd century and earlier are below:.

Jesus the Good Shepherd, who cared unceasingly for his flock:

Early catacomb images of the Good Shepherd

Jesus the miracle-worker, who healed the sick, raised the dead, and controlled the elements:

Early catacomb images of Jesus performing miracles

Jesus the wise teacher:

Jonah’s sojourn in and emergence from the fish’s belly:

Early catacomb images and tomb carvings of Jonah

Daniel’s deliverance from the lions:

Early catacomb images of Daniel in lion’s den

The three young men protected from the fiery furnace:

Early catacomb images of three men in fiery furnace

Early Christians also painted images of themselves on tomb walls, using two motifs more often than others: women and men with arms raised in prayer and praise; and small groups of Christians gathered around shared ritual meals.

Early catacomb images of Christians gathered together

The paintings in the house church at Dura Europos in Syria (dating from about 230-250 CE) are the only Christian images of similar age that have been discovered. The paintings there depict the good shepherd, Jesus’ miracles, the Samaritan woman at the well, and the women at the tomb, as well as Old Testament scenes. Also like the catacombs, they portrayed contemporary believers in positions of praise (orants).

Dura Europos, Jesus healing the paralytic

No crucifixes, no suffering martyrs, no images of sacrifice appeared in the early years. These came at least 500 years later, with the developing doctrines of the church.

Possible crucifixion or possible orant figures, Santa Sabina, Rome, 6th C

But what does all this have to do with people like us, living two thousand years later? What impact might it have? Let me paint you a picture with words.

The Christian faith whispering from the dark walls of the catacombs shows us a young man of their own culture–robed, beardless, often holding a wand in his hand–reaching out with compassion and power to touch and heal the human pain around him. He stops the flow of menstrual blood that has made a woman ritually unclean for years. He commands death to release the dead Lazarus, and death yields to him. He sits as a teacher in a circle of disciples, speaking words of life. A strong man with bare legs, he stands among a flock of sheep, carrying a lamb across his shoulders. He betrays no weariness or impatience, only watchful care.

The faith pictured here is in a loving, powerful, and wise man sent from God to point the way and guide his people. They relied on his healing power, his love, and his commitment to their well-being. His God-given power was stronger than death, stronger than the destructive powers of nature, and stronger than human malice.

Early catacomb image of women serving a meal

The believers in these painted gospels were neither theologically complex nor concerned with church structure. Women appeared in positions of leadership as often as did men. No canon of scripture had yet been established, although Paul’s letters were circulating among believers by the 50’s–when there were already growing Christian communities in Rome. Church hierarchy was only a spreading shadow on the horizon, and authority was fluid. What we now consider to be the four gospels were written between 70 and 100 CE, and did not become authoritative until much later. Communities of Christians followed their own personal experience and oral traditions, and suffered at the whim of Roman emperors.

By the third and fourth centuries, the increasingly hierarchical church forcibly silenced dissenting voices. Orthodoxy narrowed to a fine line. A few men concentrated all the power in their own hands. Congregations became sheep in ways they had never anticipated in the early years, and their shepherds were not always good. Too often fear, shame, and guilt discouraged the sheep from straying. Bloody sacrifice–Jesus’ own, and that of the martyrs–became a cornerstone of church doctrine where it had never been before. Bishops formulated creeds, damning those who did not confess Jesus in precisely their words–along with all followers of other faiths. The groundwork was laid for the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Like the Romans buried Rome, the church buried itself. But unlike Rome, what the church buried they rarely considered fit to use for new foundations. Whether these developments, and those that have followed in the centuries since, have anything at all to do with the message of Jesus of Nazareth is a question more and more people are asking today. In the end each of us may need to dig through the rubble of time and consciousness to find our own buried treasure. But one thing seems clear: the treasure is there. Perhaps our perceptions are at fault.

Wealthy Jerusalem home of the Herodian period

* The Wohl Museum of Archaeology in Jerusalem has excavated similar subterranean houses of the Herodian period from the hillside overlooking the Temple Mount. Although currently the museum has no website of its own, many pictures of their discoveries are available online . . . .

cat, pets, Wildfire, Yeshua

The Wildfire that Birthed Yeshua’s Cat

January 16, 2014 Carol

A number of people have asked me to share more about the wildfire that resulted in the death of the young cat whose memory lies behind Mari in The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat. This is the story of that wildfire.

Killing drought followed years of plentiful rainfall. Temperatures spiked into the 100’s and refused to drop. Creeks ran low. The odor of pine resin hung heavy in the air. A dry lightning strike—and a rancher who didn’t take it seriously enough—provided the critical mass, and two weeks later wildfire had consumed 40,000 acres of forest, pastures, and homes.

FireCloudSB2 We dismissed the first smoke rising behind the buttes as nothing more than a wayward cloud, never imagining that the storm building there would explode into a holocaust. The days that followed dragged by in anxious succession. Winds dropped, and then blew up again out of nowhere. The fire turned back on itself, only to gather strength and roar off in another direction. Waves of rumor obliterated facts.

One night we drove out to watch the fire’s progress from a nearby ridge. News pictures of fire-lit nightscapes are commonplace now, but for us 8 years ago the scene was nothing less than apocalyptic. Small refugee animals fleeing the fire choked the dirt roads as we steered a path among them. I remember the porcupines best, humping their way in unseemly haste through the sullen light. Lines of flame spreading across the black ridges looked like flowing lava. The images presented themselves to our visual processors as nonsense, unreadable data. Nothing in our lives had prepared us for this.

PineRidgeNight4

First we evacuated the horses, just in case. We found carriers for the dogs and cats and set them by the doors. When the call came, we were as ready as we could have been, but we had room for little but the animals, basic clothing, toiletries, and our computers. Then for a week of endless days we waited in a small motel on a busy highway 30 miles away.

IMG_3972 Dark ravine roots Why our home didn’t burn will always remain a mystery. The firefighters abandoned their efforts in the face of high winds and encircling fire. We were advised to expect a total loss. But in the end, the flames stopped as if by divine fiat all along the wire pasture fences that enclosed our buildings. Sap melted out of the old redwood paneling in my house from the heat, but only the land burned—the land and something deep in the flesh of my small black cat.

Morgan, cat of quiet pine groves that she was, probably hadn’t ever been in any building other than my house, and certainly never a motel on a busy highway. For a week she hardly came out from under the bed. No matter what I tried, she refused to eat, and she probably didn’t drink. By the time we returned to the still-smoldering ruins of our forest, she had a urinary infection. No medication touched it, and she grew steadily weaker, until at last the vet tested her for feline leukemia. The results were positive: she’d probably been born with it. All options vanished. The vet’s theory, and a sound one from what I’ve heard, was that the physical stress of her changed environment roused the sleeping disease into burning life. She might have stood a better chance if I’d left her behind to survive the wildfire on her own.

Within two months of the fire, Morgan was dead. I buried her in the charred grove where we had planned to build a small chapel. Beneath boughs once sweet with resin, in smoke-filled light and brittle shade, I laid her under the endless sky. And I grieved.

DoorwayIntoForeverSm2 — Morgan in her last week with friend Toby (Photoshop design, “Doorway Into Forever”)

But the grief had really begun when the vet first placed the figurative black cloth on his head and passed sentence of death. A dead forest surrounded me. My gentle cat was fading away in my arms. Eventually I gathered courage and resumed my walks beneath beloved trees, now wasted skeletons streaked with amber tears.

I remember shutting my heart against the echoes of pain that surely must lie in ambush along those charcoaled aisles. But as weeks passed, only woodland stillness reigned. Blowing ash darkened the sun—smoke without fire, forest lives airborne—but already the forest’s heart was turning to the east. Life was emerging from death.

Blasted meadows were greening. Tenacious pines, seared but stubborn, drank deep to gather strength for life. Fire-crimsoned cones dropped seed. Seedlings broke the fragile soil. *

I found comfort in the cycle of life, and even in death..

Somehow over the next five years, Morgan’s death, questions about the Creator’s on-going involvement in non-human nature, the timing of Jesus’ coming in human history, and the redemption of the suffering Earth—all came together into the creation of Yeshua’s Cat. The spiritual doubts that had plagued my heart for years ripened and bore sweet fruit.

I’ll continue the story of this journey in a few weeks. Come back soon!

* To read about the devastating effects of salvage logging on the recovery of burned forests, click here.

ancient roman empire, Decapolis, Jesus of Nazareth, Nabataeans, Yeshua

The Decapolis

January 3, 2014 Carol

What exactly was the Decapolis? It was mentioned twice in Mark’s gospel and once in Matthew’s, but described only as a region near Galilee where Jesus’ fame spread. In The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Yeshua and Mari spend considerable time in the Decapolis among the Greco-Roman peoples there.

Decapolis meant literally “ten cities” in Greek, and referred to a loosely knit group of ancient cities in what is now Israel, Jordan, and Syria. No one can say for sure which cities were included in the ten–or even if there were exactly ten–since their relationship was never formalized in Greek or Roman law. As best we know, they were independent cities, each established as a polis, or city-state, with its own local sphere of influence. They supported each other because of their common ties of culture, similar economic interests, and commitment to the Greek, and later, Roman, empires. With the construction of Roman roads they became even more closely interconnected: outposts of the Roman Empire on its furthest eastern edges, islands of Greco-Roman speech and culture, determinedly set apart from the Aramaean, Nabataean, and Jewish populations all around them.

The red dots on the map above mark the eight cities closest to Galilee that were probably included in the Decapolis in the early 1st C. CE. The cities connected by red lines are the ones Yeshua visited in The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, although (except for Scythopolis) they aren’t identified by name in the book. In the paragraphs below, cities where specific events in Yeshua’s Cat took place are identified by small cat silhouettes:

Greek influence in Syria was strongest between the time of Alexander the Great and the reign of the Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes, whose rule ended a century before the Roman conquest in 63 BCE. Most of the Decapolis cities were founded during this period.

When Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the Temple and forbade the observance of the Jewish religion, Israel revolted, led by Mattathias the

Judas Maccabeus, Acre Synagogue, photo Dr. Avishai Teicher

Hasmonean and his five sons, later known as the Maccabees. They overwhelmed the Seleucids and forced them to concede Israel’s limited independence, thus founding the Hasmonaean dynasty, which ruled in Israel until after the Roman conquest. Once the Greeks were defeated in Israel, the Hasmonaeans turned their eyes to the walled cities of Trans-Jordan, and conquered most of the Decapolis by the beginning of the 1st C BCE.

Ancient Roman statue of Pompey the Great

After annexing the Decapolis, the Hasmonaeans forced Judaism and circumcision on the predominantly gentile population of Hippos, exiled the gentiles from Scythopolis, and burned Pella to the ground after it refused to accept the Jewish religion. Circumcision was a point of irreconcilable conflict between Greeks and Jews. For the Jews it was the essential mark of the male believer in the One God; for Greeks it was a desecration of the divinely formed human body.

Hard feelings between the people of Israel and the Decapolis during the time of Jesus had roots both in the Seleucid oppression of Israel and the years of warfare under the Hasmonaeans. Each side had known cruelty and suffering. When Pompey claimed the Decapolis for Rome in 63 BCE, the gentile population greeted him as a liberator, and killed many Jewish residents in revenge for Hasmonaean cruelty. Once the Romans established themselves in the Decapolis, a period of extensive rebuilding began, lasting into the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. As a result, little remains of the original Greek cities.

HIPPOS sat on a high ridge overlooking the eastern side of Sea of Galilee, surrounded on all sides by steep inclines and high fortifications. One thin shoulder of rock approached the main gate on the east, where a fortified road connected the city to the eastern hills as well as indirectly to the sea. Of all the Decapolis cities, Hippos is said to have harbored the greatest antagonism toward Israel for her part in the Hasmonaean wars.

As you read of the blind man Yeshua healed outside the gates of the first Decapolis city he visited, you can imagine that long ridge by which travelers still approach the gates of Hippos.

GADARA, like Hippos, was built on a long ridge with steeply sloping sides. Unlike the other Decapolis cities, Gadara developed an international reputation for philosophy, art, and literature. Pilgrims to the hot springs located below the city also contributed to its cosmopolitan atmosphere. Some scholars believe that the story of the demoniac among the tombs was set in its general locale.

Yeshua’s debate with the young philosopher took place in a wealthy home in Gadara.

_Gadara_BertholdWerner — Gadara’s theatre, photo by Berthold Werner

ABILA is still little more than an excavation in process, with only tantalizing possibilities visible to the visitor. But the area awaiting excavation is immense. The ruins extend across two tells, and appear to include structures going back as far as 4000 BCE.

GERASA, or JARASH, was a strong walled city, but stood in a river valley rather than on a hill. Most of the surviving structures date back to a massive Roman building program begun in the 1st C CE. The Cardo, or main thoroughfare, is one of oldest structures, running east-west through the city, with the marketplace on its west side.

Below are the remains of the market, or macellum, where Yeshua’s parable of the prodigal son brought a tide of change to the people of the Decapolis. This was also the market where Mari trapped Maryam into speaking with Yeshua.

PELLA, of all the ancient cities of the Decapolis, has left the greatest mystery behind. Almost no ruins from the Roman period have survived. Located in the hills on the east side of the Jordan Valley, on a major Roman road, Pella lay in an area with fertile soil and plentiful water, where towns had stood almost continuously from Neolithic times. After Alexander Jannaeus sacked and leveled the city in 82 BCE, it was entirely rebuilt by the Romans. Archaeologists have suggested that after the great earthquake of 526, the inhabitants of Pella might have recycled the rubble of Roman buildings to rebuild the city.

Site of ancient Pella looking toward the Jordan River

SCYTHOPOLIS, or BEIT SHE’AN, is the only one of the Decapolis cities located on the western side of the Sea of Galilee. These ruins have been extensively excavated, revealing almost continuous occupation from the earliest times, although the city’s significance fluctuated with intermittent wars and violent conquest. The Seleucids founded Scythopolis in the 3rd C BCE on the ruins of the ancient city of Beit She’an, destroyed during the Assyrian sack of Israel. During the Hasmonaean wars much of the Greek polis was destroyed. Once the Romans took over, Scythopolis was named the capital of the Decapolis, and a massive urban building program began, which continued through the next 2-300 years. The steep hill, or tell, which rises to the north of today’s excavated Roman city, covers the remains of the biblical Beit She’an, as well as Seleucid and early Roman ruins. Most of the monumental Roman buildings were completed during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE on the flat land to the south and east of the tell, leaving little evidence of the city’s appearance during the time of Jesus, although the main layout of the streets may have been similar.

_BeitSheanRuins

Temples were built on the tell at various times during Greek and Roman occupation, perhaps partly because of Scythopolis’ fame as a major center for the worship of Dionysos. Legends of the time located the tomb of his nurse Nysa at Scythopolis.

Because of the city’s connection to the Greco-Roman dying and rising agricultural god, in Yeshua’s Cat the procession of Tammuz’ devotees witnessed by Mari, Yeshua, and the disciples took place in Scythopolis. The tell was the hill the mourning women climbed by torchlight.

cat, Jesus of Nazareth, nativity, pets, Yeshua

Watching for the Return of the Light

December 19, 2013 Carol

My sister-in-law Wendy Francisco (who did the art for Yeshua’s Cat’s front cover) has insisted that I would find myself adding new pages to the Cat from time to time, and I have equally firmly replied that I never would. Well, Wendy won. Over the last two or three weeks that unmistakable nudge (much like a cat butting her head against your chest) has been growing more insistent.

And, Donna West, it was your kind comment on my post about the cat who inspired the book that pushed the nudge into actual words, drawing me out of the busy-ness of publishing concerns and back into Mari’s world.

So, I wish each of you a blessed Christmas, and as a gift from Mari to you, here are a few new words from her, never published before–perhaps for some later edition.

For those of you who have the paperback edition, this 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.

* * *

NightSkyXmas7b

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.”

C L Francisco

Tag Archives: jesus of nazareth

Of Time and Faith

Manners, the phenomenologist, and the church lady

The Speaking Stones of Easter

To Nazareth Village, with thanks

Belief, Doubt, and Cats in Cradles

Avinoam Danin and Plants of the Bible Lands

“We botanists consider the new plants we describe as new-born children and love them all. I have now 42 such plants and it is hard to say whom I love more.” (1)
— Avinoam Danin

Painted Gospels

The Wildfire that Birthed Yeshua’s Cat

The Decapolis

Watching for the Return of the Light

Home of Yeshua's Cats

“We botanists consider the new plants we describe as new-born children and love them all. I have now 42 such plants and it is hard to say whom I love more.” (1) — Avinoam Danin

Home of Yeshua's Cats

“We botanists consider the new plants we describe as new-born children and love them all. I have now 42 such plants and it is hard to say whom I love more.” (1)
— Avinoam Danin