Bible yes, Bible bill no

My late mother was something of a militant member of the Episcopal Church ... to the extent that’s even possible.

She wasn’t a literalist and was tolerant of people with different faiths or none at all, but she was fierce in her religious affiliation. In fact, that’s probably the main reason she married my father, who was the son of the first priest at St. Andrew’s in Oak Hill.

The marriage was kind of a bust, which indicates that this might not be the best criterion for mate selection.

Among the things that resulted from that union was my existence and the experience of being dragged to church, usually involuntarily, by my mother.

(There’s a vicious rumor that Episcopalians never read the Bible, one which I must now quash: we sometimes do, just in case we make it to “Jeopardy!”)

But seriously, getting brought up in that kind of environment is kind of like being marinated in Bible sauce. Most Episcopalians aren’t fundamentalist and don’t read the Bible as a science book or guide to criminal justice when it comes to stoning people to death for minor offenses, but the book comes with the territory.

A typical service consists of readings from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, a psalm, a reading from a New Testament epistle and a passage from the gospels. Most of the language of The Book of Common Prayer — which is one of the places the English language goes to show off — is biblical.

If you get dragged there enough, it just kind of seeps in, whether you want it to or not.

I noticed growing up that a lot of people I knew seemed to worship the Bible as if it was a divinity but had pretty vague ideas of what was actually in it.

This reminds me of the Bible story in Acts, where St. Paul chides the Athenians for worshiping “a god unknown.”

Eventually, I began reading it voluntarily, regardless of where I was in terms of religious belief. I’ve read it during the times I’ve been observant and during the times it seemed like the universe was random and purposeless. But I always read it.

The stories, sayings and metaphors stuck. I find myself using them all the time (almost as much as references to Bob Dylan lyrics or lines from “The Big Lebowski,” not that I’m suggesting equivalency). They have influenced my life to a great degree.

Biblical literacy is a key to understanding our culture and traditions. The book, or rather books, is/are treasure troves of words and images.

It’s impossible to understand the great speeches or writings of our tradition without a basic knowledge of it, from William Shakespeare to Abraham Lincoln to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Still, I have problems with the recently passed legislation that puts biblical instruction in public schools. It still must be signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice.

To state the obvious, not all students are Christian. But it goes beyond that. The interpretations likely to be presented will probably reflect only a pretty thin slice of diverse biblical traditions.

It’s likely to be tilted toward a nationalistic, white, Protestant, evangelical interpretation. There probably won’t be a lot of discussion of the more ancient biblical interpretations from Coptic, Orthodox or Catholic Christianity. I doubt there will be a lot of the freedom and justice-loving interpretations from African American church traditions or those from Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa or the island nations. There probably won’t be a lot of biblical commentary from the Talmud or Mishnah of Judaism.

And it’s a safe bet that classes won’t resemble those in nonsectarian universities, where the Bible is treated the same as any ancient document, with comparisons with contemporary texts, the historical record, anthropological research, archaeology, textual criticism, etc.

In fairness, it might be good if there was a space for students to learn, without recruitment, about the great texts of world religions.

My life has been enriched not just by the Bible, but by other traditions as well.

I’ve learned much about tradition, education and social order from the Analects of Confucius; about following nature from the Tao Te Ching; about compassion and mindfulness from Buddhist sutras; about the vast nature of divinity from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita; about mercy and justice from the extra-biblical teachings of rabbinical Judaism and the Islamic tradition; etc.

Learning about other faiths takes nothing away from one’s own.

Alas, that was the road not taken.

If I may echo ideas often expressed by my conservative friends (I actually have some), some things should be left to the private sector. This includes religious instruction.

It’s hard to argue with the fact that religions of all kinds flourish without state support in the U.S., while they have declined in industrially advanced nations with established churches.

While it’s good when we bring the values of our beliefs to the public sphere, the marriage of religion and government doesn’t usually result in better government. It results in bad religion.

All of which is to suggest that, if we’re not going to expose students to the varieties of religious experiences, we should leave religious instruction to families and communities.

Or just let ’em get it the old-fashioned way, by being dragged against their will to religious services by their elders.

It worked for me.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Two roads diverged

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. ...” So begins Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.”

Ever since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the power of crossroads. They have been the subject of poetry, song, myth and folklore.

Examples range from Robert Johnson’s classic blues song of the same name back to the days of ancient Greece, where they were sacred to Hermes, god of boundaries, borders and exchanges, and to Hecate, a witchy goddess associated both with magic and the home.

The image shows up in both the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and the gospels. In Jeremiah 6:16, the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Metaphorically, I think most of us have come upon crossroads where a choice must be made that can have lifelong consequences.

I think West Virginia is at a major crossroads now, one that will have a lasting impact on its future. It has to do with the face we present to the world: will it be one of narrow-mindedness, fear, hatred and bigotry or one of openness, hospitality, solidarity and basic fairness?

Let’s just say that if the West Virginia Legislature is any indication, the jury is still out. We’ve had one delegate embarrass the state by comparing people who identify as LGBTQ to terrorists ... and worse.

The leadership of the majority Republican Party has condemned these remarks, yet they refuse to move legislation ending discrimination — and some have even attempted to pass legislation that would undo local anti-discrimination ordinances.

Still other lawmakers have sought bills that would keep out refugees and immigrants in a state largely composed of the descendants of refugees and immigrants that is also rapidly aging and losing population.


That kind of thing sends a message loud and clear both to young West Virginians who feel they have no place here and to other bright and energetic people who will think two or three times before moving here.

It discourages the kind of employers and investments that would provide good jobs while promoting a good quality of life.

That degree of closed-mindedness says that education isn’t valued here and that we are proud of what — and who — we don’t know.

That kind of thing sends a message that we should continue to be nothing but a sacrifice zone for extractive industries, whether they are those that take away our natural resources or those that strip-mine our public schools.

It doesn’t have to be that way. To paraphrase the last lines of Frost’s poem, we could take the road less traveled by, and that could make all the difference.

(This appeared as an op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

How did that get in there?

I've been known to take (occasionally extensive) breaks from reading the Bible but lately I've tried to follow the daily readings from the Episcopal lectionary. Today's reading from the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament is from Chapter 10 of Deuteronomy, verses 17-21.

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

I guess that would be classified as fake news these days

Time to clear the palate?

There's a big dust up going on at the WV capitol right now over a medical marijuana bill. So far it's generating a lot of heat. (Did you notice I resisted the temptation to make a cheesy smoke joke?)

 Earlier today, there was a public hearing on nasty changes to the SNAP program. I was one of around 20 people who opposed it. The only one who spoke in favor was a paid lobbyist.

There are several bad budget bills floating around. Here's just one example from the senate.

I mostly just want things to be over.

If you just want a change from all that, in the most recent Front Porch program/podcast from WV Pubic Broadcasting, we talk about such burning issues as:

*Is it cool for public schools to teach little kids that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs?; and

*What we think about Mike Pence's rules for having dinner or drinks with someone of the opposite sex.

WV Public Broadcasting also re-released a popular Front Porch program in which I attempt to teach the uninitiated how to speak Appalachian.

(The Spousal Unit noted an error I made in  the podcast while discussing cool forms of Spanish profanity in which I called a verb a noun. I usually don't make mistakes where profanity is concerned.)

A good book

The theme for this little stretch is about the top 10 books that have had the biggest impact on me growing up, in chronological order.


This probably is no surprise but book #1 is...The Bible.

I was raised in the Episcopal Church, to which I am still more or less attached. I wasn't always (or even usually) ((or maybe ever)) excited about going to church as a kid, but some of it must have stuck.

There is a vicious rumor out there that I have made it my mission in life to correct. That rumor is that Episcopalians don't read the Bible. In fact, we do--just in case we ever go on Jeopardy.

But seriously, even though Episcopalians aren't big on literalism, a good chunk of a typical service consists of readings from the Bible. This usually involves a psalm, another reading from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, a reading from one of the gospels and one from the epistles. So even if you don't read it, you wind up hearing a lot of it.

I wound up reading it too and have made it all the way through several times, some parts more often than others. And I've kept picking it up even when I wasn't particularly religious. It really is a great book--more accurately, collection of books--and it's too bad that so many people in this country claim to believe every word literally but know very little about it.

Would that the reverse were the case...

NOTE: El Cabrero is officially unemployed this week and next week, so these posts have been prepared in advance and won't contain links or comments about current events.

A WORD ABOUT A WORD

Rubens' painting of "Jupiter and Mercurius in the house of Philemon and Baucis," by way of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's ongoing series on the Odyssey of Homer. Each weekday post contains a nugget from that great epic that has delighted people of all ages from ancient times. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

A central theme of both the Iliad and the Odyssey is the that of xenia or hospitality, a sacred obligation in parts of the ancient Mediterranean world. In those days, travel was dangerous and there was an acute shortage of Holiday Inns. It was a custom that a traveler could approach a house--generally but not always one of similar social status to the traveler--and ask for a meal and a place to sleep.

The host had a sacred obligation to wash, feed and shelter the guest and to take care of basic needs before asking any questions. The guest was to respect the host, take what was given and not abuse the privilege or outstay one's welcome. Often, hosts and guests exchanged gifts and retained a special bond.

It was a little risky and scary to take a complete stranger in, just as it was weird to put yourself at the mercy of a stranger if you were the traveler. For this reason, the custom acquired a divine sanction. One of Zeus' main titles was Zeus Xenios, or god of travelers and he was said to punish those who abused hosts or guests.

The ambiguity of the situation can be seen in the differing meanings of the word xenos: host, guest, stranger, alien, friend. You can see a little of this in English with the similarity between the words "host" and "hostility."

Abuse of xenia was the cause of the whole Trojan war. The Trojan prince Paris abducted Menelaus' wife Helen when he was a guest in the latter's home. Since all Greek leaders had sworn to uphold the marriage, the stage was set for war when King Priam of Troy allowed the couple to enter the city.

The obligations of xenia could also prevent people from fighting. At one point in the Iliad, the Greek Diomedes and the Trojan Glaucus decide not to fight when they realized that their fathers had been xenoi or guest-friends. They exchange armor instead (with Diomedes getting the better deal).

The Odyssey is all xenia all the time as Telemachus travels in search of his father and Odysseus bounces from island to island. There are very good examples of xenia in the story, such as the hospitality shown by Nestor and Menelaus to Telemachus and that of the Phaeacians to Odysseus. There are also examples of very bad xenia--like the cyclops who liked to eat his "guests" or the suitors of Penelope who abused their status as guests and devoured the wealth that belonged to the family of Odysseus. At one point, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar is abused by the suitors in his own home.

As in the Bible, sometimes divine beings would come disguised as guests--and woe to those who mistreated them. (For that matter, the story of Lot and Sodom in Genesis is really about the abuse of hospitality, not homosexuality.) The importance of hospitality is echoed in the New Testament epistle Hebrews (13:2), where it is said that

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

So just remember, if you want to stay on Zeus's good side, don't devour your guests or run away with the significant others of your host.

Is this a useful blog or what?

MY BAD. Those Gentle Readers who subscribe to Goat Rope via email may have gotten a mistaken post Sunday night. El Cabrero hit the wrong button and published an unfinished draft intended for later this week by mistake.

TOWARDS A GREEN ECONOMY. Here's something about what it may look like.

SOCIAL SECURITY may or may not be wearing a bull's eye again soon, but this memo from the Economic Policy Institute counters fear mongering about it.

POVERTY DAY. On Tuesday, the government will release the latest numbers on poverty, incomes and health insurance coverage. Here's a brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on what to look for.

MALE ANIMALS TEND TO BE SHOWOFFS to a far greater extent than females, with various kinds of wild displays. My guess is that you have already noticed this. Recent research in biology may have found a genetic mechanism that opened the way for all that strutting around.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

AND ALSO MUCH CATTLE

Goat Rope is all about the biblical Book of Jonah lately. Check earlier posts for more.

Here's a little weekend thought. If you like critters, you should love Jonah. Two of its main actors were animals (the great fish and the worm that killed the gourd vine). Without the first, there would be a good bit less artwork and folklore. And without the second, the whole point of the story couldn't have been made

But it is also a part of the Bible where God uses his speaking role on behalf of animals. In explaining to Jonah why he didn't want to wipe out Nineveh, he says

And should I not want to spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

El Cabrero wonders how Nineveh would have fared if they had more goats than cattle. The little ones are pretty cute though.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WE NEED MORE JONAHS

Sistine Chapel version of Jonah, courtesy of wikipedia.

The Jonah jag continues at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

If the biblical character Jonah happened to compete in a beauty pageant, he would probably not win the Miss Congeniality award. He's grumpy, quarrelsome and disobedient. He tries (unsuccessfully) to escape to the ends of the earth to avoid the prophetic call. He gets all bent out of shape because God didn't wipe out the city of Nineveh, yet he throws a hissy fit after his beloved gourd vine dies.

I love him. And I think we need more people like him.

Allow El Cabrero to explain. Our world is all too full of people who think they have a message from God to deliver. And you know what? Most of the time, they don't. Maybe we should make a new rule: if we think the universe wants us to deliver a message, we should try to resist it as long as possible. If we try to escape to the ends of the earth to avoid it and still can't (with some kind of great fish adventure in between), then maybe, just maybe, we really have something to say. Otherwise, it was probably just us.

STILL TRAVELING...regular publication to resume June 30.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FATHER MAPPLE'S SERMON

It'a all Jonah all the time lately at Goat Rope. And no discussion of that little gem of a story would be complete without at least a glance at that right whale of a book, Moby-Dick.

If ever a book ran away from its author, that would be the one. After making a name for himself writing travelogues, Melville masterpiece, unappreciated in his time, is vast and almost cosmic in scope. And of course he couldn't get by without a number of references to Jonah.

Prior to taking off on the Pequod, Ishmael visits a chapel at New Bedford to hear a sermon by the former whaler Father Mapple. And the topic was...you guessed it.

According to Father Mapple,

Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters- four yarns- is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over us, we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us!

You can find the whole sermon here. But it's way better to read the whole book.

NOTE: El Cabrero is still traveling. Links will resume the week of June 30th.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

JONAH AND THE WORM

Gustave Dore's version of the fish with the eating disorder. How come nobody painted the worm that killed Jonah's gourd vine?

The theme at Goat Rope lately is the biblical story of Jonah, possibly history's first short story and one of its best. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier links.

Everybody remembers Jonah and the whale, but what about Jonah, the gourd vine and the worm? That's like the coolest part.

After the whale episode and successfully preaching repentance to the Ninevites, Jonah gets mad at God and pouts because the latter did not destroy the city. He even wants to die. Specifically, he's mad at God precisely because

thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness...

God, sounding a bit like a psychologist, asks

Dost thou well to be angry?

As Dr. Phil might say, "How's that working for you?"

Jonah eventually made a shelter for himself outside the city and rested beneath the shade of a gourd vine. However, God wasn't quite finished with him. He prepared a worm to kill the vine (kind of the same way he prepared the great fish). That was the last straw for the ever-grumpy prophet. He REALLY wants to die this time.

But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" "I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."

At which point, God delivers the punch line:

But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

I think the best way to read the story is to see the whole thing as a practical joke played on Jonah in order to teach him a lesson about compassion, although I'd be surprised if he saw the humor in it.

STILL ROAMING. Back with links and such Monday.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

JONAH OUT OF THE BELLY

Gustave Dore's version of Jonah preaching repentance in Nineveh.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is the biblical book of Jonah, a little gem of a short story. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts.

Yesterday's post summarized the plot of Jonah up to the point where he got vomited out of the fish's belly. Today, we resume the story.

I highly recommend you give the original a look. It's well worth the time, even if you ain't got no religion. It's that good a story. Here's one online version.

After rejecting the first call of God and doing the whole fish thing, Jonah once again gets the call to go to Nineveh and deliver the message of repentance. This time he does.

At least he can take a hint, even if it has to be a pretty major one.

Jonah goes to Nineveh to deliver his cargo, warning that God will destroy the place in 40 days unless they got their act together. They actually listen, fast, and dress in sackcloth and ashes. The local king sends out the word for everyone to do the same, including the animals.

If that was the case, there probably weren't any goats around.

Any ordinary prophet would have been happy about this, put "Mission Accomplished" on his aircraft carrier, and headed home. But not our boy. The Bible says

it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

He throws his first temper tantrum of the story, complaining that the reason he didn't want to go there in the first place was that he knew God would go soft and spare the Ninevites. He asks God to take his life.

I think he may have had issues.

STILL GONE. Regular features should resume next Monday. Well may the US go when I'm gone.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

JONAH IN THE BELLY

Carving of Jonah from the Worms Cathedral in Germany, courtesy of wikipedia.

Herman Melville said it best in Moby-Dick:

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.”

The little biblical book of Jonah is a whale of a tale even if it is flea sized. I highly recommend checking it out. It would only take a few minutes and you don't have to be religiously inclined to enjoy it. (For more by way of background, check out earlier posts in this series.)

Here's the Goat Rope condensed version. God tells Jonah son of Amittai to go and prophecy to the people of Nineveh and urge them to repent of their sins. If Jonah was a good prophet or even a nice guy, he would have said, "Here I am, Lord, send me."

But he wasn't.

Instead, he gets the hell out of Dodge and hops on a ship bound for Tarshish, which was in Spain. In biblical times, that was the ends of the earth. It would be like El Cabrero fleeing to Siberia to avoid having to prophecy to the flatlanders of Ohio (some of whom are cousins).

God is not amused and sends a storm that threatens to sink the ship. The sailors assume that some god is offended and cast lots to find the guilty party. Jonah fesses up and says they ought to throw him overboard to save themselves. Reluctantly, they do so. The storm stops.

Everyone knows the next part. The Bible says

Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Notice it says fish, not whale. From the line above, this may have been a special model, but let's not ruin a good story with literalism.

In the belly of the whale, Jonah prays and God relents. As the King James Version puts it,

And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

That's what most people remember, but there's a lot more to the tiny story.

About which more tomorrow...

STILL GONE. About another week to go. Y'all hold down the fort, OK?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FORTHTELLING VS FORETELLING

Benjamin West's Isaiah's Lips Anointed with Fire, courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero is traveling at the moment but the blog goes on. The theme is one of the world's first short stories, the biblical book of Jonah, which sits among the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament.

The terms prophet, prophetic, and prophecy are badly abused these days. Some folks consider themselves prophetic any time they rant. And other folks of the fundamentalist persuasion are under the impression that ancient Hebrews had nothing better to talk about than things that would happen 2,500 years later. These folks torture the Bible until it confesses that the end of the world is at hand.

In reality, the term is applied to a large number of people in the Hebrew Bible over centuries, so it's hard to come up with a single definition. According to the Oxford Companion to the Bible,

In general, it may be said that prophets were men or women believed to be recipients through audition, vision, or dream of divine messages that they passed on to others by means of speech or symbolic actions.

The major Hebrew prophets aimed most of their thunder at the rulers and powerful people of their day, calling them back to the Covenant and to God's demand of justice for the poor. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it,

Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profane riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet's words.

For a really good introduction to and overview of the topic, check out Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination.

Most of the prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible contain teachings attributed by the prophets with some accompanying narrative. The book of Jonah is unique in that it is all story. And it's a good one.

More on that tomorrow.

STILL TRAVELING. Regular posts with links and snarky comments about current events should resume June 30.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BIBLICAL ANATOMY

Innards courtesy of wikipedia.

The book of Jonah is a nugget of a short story within the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament. But before diving into that whale of a tale, a little biblical anatomy may be in order.

The Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament share the same books in the case of Protestants, although the order is a little different. Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians include other books.

Probably just because I'm used to it, the way the Protestant Old Testament is organized makes sense to me. It can be divided into the Torah, historical writings, wisdom books, and prophets.

The Torah or Pentateuch is the name commonly given to the first five books. They deal with the creation, the story of the family of Abraham, slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, the covenant on Sinai, wanderings in the desert, and various laws.

The historical writings come next, starting with Joshua and ending with Esther. Note: these represent the historical stories told by and about the Hebrew people from the time of Moses' death to the resettlement of Judah after the Babylonian exile. It's theological rather than "objective" history (whether any kind of history can be objective is another subject) and some versions disagree with each other.

Then comes an interesting collection of songs, stories and wisdom writings that include Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes (which totally rocks), and the Song of Solomon, an earthy love poem that people have tried to twist into a spiritual allegory for centuries.

The rest of the books, 17 in all, are the writings of and about the Hebrew prophets and it's here we'll find our fishing buddy Jonah.

The terms prophet, prophetic, and prophecy are pretty spattered in modern discourse and need a little cleaning off. More on that tomorrow.

STILL GONE. El Cabrero should be in Mexico by the time you read this. The link/current event feature will resume around June 30.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BIBLICAL PARADOX

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has noticed a strange paradox about people's attitudes towards the Bible. On one side, quite a few people seem to be pretty biblically illiterate and, on the other, quite a few people seem to worship it as some kind of textual deity. The weird thing is, there's quite a bit of overlap between two groups.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church, where the Bible is taken seriously but not necessarily literally. Every service consisted of several readings from it, including a psalm, a reading from another part of the Hebrew Bible, and selections from the gospels and epistles. Many of the other words in the liturgy were derived from the Bible.

I couldn't help soaking up a lot of it just by being there, even though I wasn't raised to regard it as a science book or infallible oracle. I had plenty of pals who did, but they often had only the vaguest ideas of what it actually said.

If I had my druthers, there would be way more biblical literacy and way less literalism. It really is a great book or collection of books and, like many BIG STORIES, the themes therein influence our lives and culture whether we're aware of them or not. To miss all that is to miss out on or be misinformed about something that has shaped us all...kind of like Shakespeare only more so.

Reading or hearing it has been pretty much a constant in my life, even while my moment to moment religious (or non-religious) opinions bounced all over the map. I would encourage you, Gentle Reader, whatever your theology or lack thereof may be, to crack it open every so often and give it a non-sectarian look.

That's going to happen over the next stretch at Goat Rope, with a special focus on the little gem that tells the story of Jonah. Stay tuned.

NOTE: El Cabrero is on the road, so the current event/link feature is down.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MAYBE DOWN IN MEXICO OR A PICTURE UPON SOMEBODY'S SHELF

Coptic icon of Jonah, courtesy of wikipedia. Looks more like a carp than a whale to me. And I've seen some almost big enough to swallow a person.

El Cabrero is about to head south of the border for the next several days, but fear not--your daily dose of Goat Rope will continue, minus the links and comments about current events.

Since I'll have limited internet access, allow me to say in advance that I extend my condolences if anything really bad happens and congratulations if anything really good happens.

Otherwise, the theme for this stretch of time is the Goat Rope Vacation Bible School. I've been thinking a lot about the short but charming book of Jonah lately, which is rich in story, associations, and humor, and I'd like to explore it in a non-sectarian manner.

Here's part of the reason for the timing. A good friend of mine who is a regular reader of this blog breaks out in hives anytime I discuss the Bible or religion. But, since this person is going on the same trip, I should be able to get away with it.

Stay tuned.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

COMING TOGETHER

Recently El Cabrero gave a talk on economic matters at a religious gathering. Whilst preparing for the occasion, I was struck by something that may or may not be a coincidence, depending on your viewpoint.

It occurred to me that biblical traditions relating to the economy which emphasize justice for poor people and laborers dovetail nicely with the recent evidence on the impact of the economy on human happiness or thriving (see yesterday's post).

There seem to be two main strands of the tradition that run through the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The first, as mentioned before, is the demand for justice for the economically oppressed, which runs all the way through it.

If you want to put your Bible on a crash weight loss plan, just cut out all those passages. I'm a big fan of several ancient wisdom traditions, ranging from the Greek to the Chinese, but the strong emphasis on economic justice for the poor is unique to the biblical tradition.

The other strand, which is less emphasized but still pretty clear, is that wealth alone does not make a person happy. As Jesus was quoted in Luke 12:15,

Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

This makes pretty good sense from the viewpoint of the social sciences (see Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by British economist Richard Layard). Short version: for people who are poor by the standards of the society in which they live, an increase in economic well being translates to a real increase in happiness.

Consider someone with bad dental problems who is in constant pain and is self-conscious when in public. Having the resources to get those teeth fixed really makes a difference in the quality of life. The same is true for people who live in bad housing, or who lack access to clear water, or who simply can't get by at a basic level on their income.

Once people reach a certain standard of living, the two birds More and Better don't necessarily live on the same branch (see Wednesday's post for a discussion of this analogy made by Bill McKibben in Deep Economy).

I won't draw any theological conclusions from this confluence here, other than to once again say that Jesus and them there Hebrew prophets knew a thing or two about a thing or two.

FOXES HAVE HOLES, BIRDS HAVE NESTS, but Latinos and African Americans are by far the hardest hit by sub-prime mortages.

SOME STATES, like Vermont, are taking action to deal with the high costs of food and home heating. The (old style) Republican governor of that state is also planning to expand farmers markets and urging people to eat locally grown food.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN WEST VIRGINIA, advocates are urging the state to suspend its redesigned Medicaid program.

FEELING SYMBOLIC, MONKEY STYLE. The latest research indicates that capuchin monkeys can recognize and reason about symbols.

RANDOM THOUGHTS, you'd think people would start getting serious about climate change. On the plus side, it's nice to hear that the Supreme Court seems to think the Constitution matters.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

REGARDING DINOSAURS, PEOPLE, ALTRUISM, AND SUCH

Caption: The serpent in the garden?

I've been sitting on this one a while and trying to figure out what to do with it:

PETERSBURG, Ky. — The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away.

It's not the Flintstones; it's a new Creation Museum which purports to show people hanging out with dinosaurs, who were apparently vegetarian in their prelapsarian condition. Here at least, the earth is only a few thousand years old, fossils and geologic formations are the result of Noah's flood, and the demon of Darwinism has been exorcised.

It's ironic that when we literalize good stories we often lose their point and when we try to blend literalistic religion with science we're not doing either any favors.

Meanwhile the real message of the Genesis story is a keeper: creation is good, but humans from the beginning have misused their freedom and in doing so have brought suffering on themselves and the rest of the world.

UPWARD MOBILITY Here's an interesting item from the AFLCIO blog about a report America's declining social mobility. What is eye-catching about this report is the fact that the report was co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, two conservative think tanks not known for undue concern about inequality.

FEELING ALTRUISTIC? It may be only natural. According to this item from the Washington Post, scientists are conducting new research that suggests our concern for others is

not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

Recent brain imaging studies and experiments "are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species." If that is the case, at least some basic elements of the moral sense are not so much "handed down" by teachers as "handed up" by genes.

This is what the 18th century philosopher and political economist Adam Smith called "moral sentiment." Holy Scottish Enlightenment, Batman!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOSPEL OF THOMAS: GREATEST HITS, VOL I

Caption: Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: From me all has come forth, and to me all has reached. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." Gospel of Thomas, 77

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope has been a series of musings on the apochrypal Gospel of Thomas, along with links and rants about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

By way of conclusion, El Cabrero is catholic and orthodox enough to be OK with the decision of the church fathers to exclude Thomas from the New Testament canon.

But it does deserve a wider reading. If nothing else, Thomas provides another example of how very diverse early Christian communities were. And finally, it's good to let the some of the sayings of Jesus in Thomas challenge the reader.

Here's the official Goat Rope selection of Thomas' Greatest Hits:

Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will rule over all." (2)

"Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that won't be revealed." (5)

"Fortunate is the person who has worked hard and has found life." (58)

Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will kill you." (70)

They said to him, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you."

He said to them, "You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine this moment."

The Jesus of this gospel always seems to push the listener/reader back to the present moment, which may not be a bad place to start.

Speaking of the present,

BOTTOM FEEDERS. Business Week has a great special report in the May 21 issue about how many businesses are squeezing more profits from the working poor. Sample quote:

In recent years, a range of businesses have made financing more readily available to even the riskiest of borrowers. Greater access to credit has put cars, computers, credit cards, and even homes within reach for many more of the working poor. But this remaking of the marketplace for low-income consumers has a dark side: Innovative and zealous firms have lured unsophisticated shoppers by the hundreds of thousands into a thicket of debt from which many never emerge.

Federal Reserve data show that in relative terms, that debt is getting more expensive. In 1989 households earning $30,000 or less a year paid an average annual interest rate on auto loans that was 16.8% higher than what households earning more than $90,000 a year paid. By 2004 the discrepancy had soared to 56.1%. Roughly the same thing happened with mortgage loans: a leap from a 6.4% gap to one of 25.5%. "It's not only that the poor are paying more; the poor are paying a lot more," says Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

MARINES AGAINST TORTURE. Here's a post from West Virginia Blue about two retired Marine generals speaking out against the Bush administration's policy of torture.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Caption: From the Gospel of Thomas, "If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and it will move."

In addition to rants about current events, this week's Goat Rope is a series of musings on the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

If you're familiar with the New Testament gospels and read Thomas, many of the sayings in it will seem fairly familiar and consistent with the picture of Jesus that emerges from Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Other parts will probably seem really strange. And then there are some that are kind of in the middle; they sound like something Jesus might have said or close anyway. This may be because parts of Thomas were assembled very early, possibly before the other gospels, while other parts represent the later theological elaborations of some early Christian community.

As an example of the familiar, verse 94 has Jesus say "One who seeks will find; for [one who] knocks it will be opened."

Then there are passages from Thomas that don't appear in the canonical gospels but could be authentic sayings of Jesus (or at least are similar to what he might have said). For example, in the other gospels, Jesus says "No man can serve two masters." Thomas also has "A person cannot mount two horses or bend two bows" (47). The cryptic command to "Be passersby" (42) could work with the canonical sayings where Jesus sends his followers on the road.

This kind of sounds like Jesus:

"If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and it will move." (48)

as does this:

"Love your brother like your soul, protect that person like the pupil of your eye."

Some scholars think that some of the following brief parables, one of which was quoted here yesterday, could go back the the historical Jesus:

96 Jesus [said], The Father's kingdom is like [a] woman. She took a little leaven, [hid] it in dough, and made it into large loaves of bread. Anyone here with two ears had better listen!

97 Jesus said, The [Father's] imperial rule is like a woman who was carrying a [jar] full of meal. While she was walking along [a] distant road, the handle of the jar broke and the meal spilled behind her [along] the road. She didn't know it; she hadn't noticed a problem. When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered that it was empty.

And then there are the truly strange parts, which lean towards gnosticism and are probably of later origin. Here's an odd one:

Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) domain."

They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) domain as babies?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the (Father's) domain]." (22)

In these verses, salvation is seen less as moving forward to some consummation than as moving back to the origin. When asked how the end will be, Jesus replies:

Have you discovered the beginning, then, so that you are seeking the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be. Fortunate is the on who stands at the beginning: That one will know the end and will not taste death. (18)

And finally, there are some parts of Thomas that just make you think, whatever their origin may be. El Cabrero's selection of Thomas' Greatest Hits will run tomorrow.

But now, back to today's salt mines...

HEALTH CARE. It should come as a shock to no one that two recent studies of health care by the Commonwealth Fund finds the US bringing up the rear among developed countries in the quality of its health care system. Karen Davis, president of the group, noted that “The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a ‘medical home’ for patients."

POWER POPULISTS VS LOSER LIBERALS. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research frequently points out that progressives or "loser liberals" often lose the struggle over ideas by accepting the idea that they want to use the government to redistribute market outcomes whereas conservatives want to rely on the market. "Power populists," by contrast

doesn’t accept the basic government/market distinction that loser liberalism treats as its starting point. The power populists see government policy as determining who wins and loses in the market place.

Both sides use government. The real difference between progressives and economic conservatives is that the latter use government to distribute money upward while the former want to use it to help middle and low income people. Check out his ebook The Conservative Nanny State.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED