Laura Reads Matthew (1:18-25)

 

The Dream of Saint Joseph - Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) - public domain

So, it turns out Mary is pregnant, and she's engaged to Joseph who has not had sex with her. 

We know so little about Joseph. Was he old? Young? At least we know he is relatively kind because he did not want Mary to be shamed, apparently much less stoned. It was likely an arranged marriage. Did he love her, or was she just an addition to his property holdings? 

We know he was convinced by a dream to go ahead and take her as his wife and to accept that the child she was pregnant with was conceived by the Holy Spirit. I wonder how it would affect one's marriage to believe that your wife, out of all the women who will ever walk the earth, was chosen by the Holy Spirit to bear God's son? 

We believe these days that all of us who follow Christ are given the Holy Spirit as an inner guide. So, how does, or should, that affect our relations with anybody else who is also a bearer of the Holy Spirit? I can't say I'm very good about keeping that in mind.

I'm kind of fascinated by the sway that dreams have with these biblical people. Joseph's dream and later on, Peter's dream of a sheet coming down from heaven had massive consequences. I mean, dreams are often just crazy stuff. Why did they give credence to these particular dreams? I've had dreams so crazy that I wake up scratching my head with how my psyche could possibly have conjured up such a wild story. We live in an unenchanted world today, with lots of explanations for why we dream what we do that range from what you've been watching on tv to what you ate for supper. We would scoff at making any consequential decision based on a dream. At least, I would. But, it's stories such as this one that make me wonder if we're missing out on a lot by not letting our world be a bit more enchanted. 

Did Joseph and Mary keep Jesus' origins a secret? It seems they must have. The 3 kings who visited with gifts knew something of his importance, but did they know that the Holy Spirit planted the baby in Mary? Seems doubtful.  If I were not a Christian and didn't believe Jesus was divinely conceived, I might wonder if those wise men knew something about the baby's human father. Maybe they weren't following a star, but following the orders of a wealthy patron who had been visiting and knocked up a pretty girl he met on his travels. Feeling guilty, he later sent some valuable gifts to assuage his conscience. Could the whole story have been concocted to protect Mary from Joseph? He already bought the dream thing. And I wonder - if the divine conception wasn't true, would I still believe Jesus was the Messiah? Couldn't God take a fully human person and make him the Messiah? We believe that he adopts us as his children through the Holy Spirit, so is it such a stretch? 

At the end of the day, I don't think it matters to me whether he was divinely conceived because if I believe everything that exists was created by God, then it's all enchanted anyway you slice it. 

Laura Reads Matthew (1:1-17)

Judah and Tamar, School of Rembrandt, public domain

 I write here in fits and spurts. But, after nearly 2 years of no writing, I feel compelled to do it again. 

I am reading Matthew...again. I think it's my favorite book of the bible. My faith waxes and wanes, but when it grows strongest, it's the words of Matthew's gospel that attract me the most. We don't know for sure who the author of the gospel of Matthew really was. However, we're pretty sure that he was a Jewish writer writing for a Jewish audience. And so, he begins with a geneology, tracing Jesus' ancestry back to Abraham.

My first husband's mother had a framed document that showed their family geneology traced back to both Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. She was very proud of it. At the time, I though it very impressive, but I have since learned that there were quite a few fraudulent such geneologies, giving innocent folk the impression that they had descended from ancient rules who had established Christianity in medieval Europe. In a similar fashion, my grandmother was sure that she was a direct descendent of Gen. Robert E. Lee. She was, like many of her generation, take in by the revisionist history put out by the notorious Daughters of the Confederacy that Gen. Lee was not guilty of the ownership of slaves, much less their mistreatment. She saw him as a hero, not a traitor to the Union. However, I've done the work. I do share a common ancestor with Gen. Lee, but we are not direct descendants. 

It all goes to show that people put much stock in who their ancestors (supposedly) are. Folks feel that descending from someone important makes them important too, I guess. None of us really wants to contemplate the reality that we will be lost among the hundreds of millions of people who have lived and died on this earth. 

It was important to Matthew to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy, and to prove that he had a pedigree of royal descent. But, you have to recognize that the things may have been, well, fudged a little to prove the point. For one thing, Matthew's generation count is off. Also, Luke provides a different geneology. At the end of the day, whether Jesus' geneology is entirely accurate in regards to the prophecies doesn't change whether or not I choose to believe in him. But, then, I'm a gentile in 2025, not a Jew in the first century. 

History is told by the victors. We never really know what is and isn't accurate. I don't put much stock in the idea that scripture was miraculously preserved as accurate. And so, I don't know, and frankly don't care whether the geneology in Matthew was 100% right. But here's what I do care about.

Matthew includes women in his geneology, and all of them have potential sexual disqualifiers. The first is Tamar, who tricks her father-in-law into having sex with her (he thought she was a prostitute) so that she can have an heir to the family's estate. The second is Rahab, a prostitute who assists the Israelite spies who are scouting out the promised land. The third is Ruth who lies at the feet of Boaz to get him to marry her. And finally, there is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who has somehow become pregnant by other than Joseph. They are all not just women, but potentially disgraced women. And we read about them today in Matthew's gospel. They are not forgotten. They are not cast aside. They are worthy, according to Matthew, because Jesus descended from them. It's yet another way that we see the upside-down kingdom of Jesus. The geneology was, ostensibly, to show Jesus' ancestral creds. But instead, we see the backwards creds of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary. If we believe that he is the Messiah, then he legitimizes them, in spite of their stories. 

And so, what might have been the most boring passage in scripture becomes an inspiring one to me. 

Only You Can Stop Forest Fires

Photo by Ross Stone on Unsplash

It's been a minute since I wrote here, but I'm in a writing mood, and I feel like sharing a memory that was sparked today. 

I had the good fortune of being the department office manager at one of my schools. (This mostly meant I manned the room and answered the phone, but it also meant that professors stopped by often to chat.) One day, one of my professors came in and plopped down on the sofa. He was visible exasperated about something, and that was rare. He was usually a model of serenity and a person of extremely few words. In fact, it was because he was such a model of self-control that this encounter was so memorable. "I just don't like him," he said.

I swung around in my desk chair, eager to hear what had transpired between this person and my gentle teacher. It had to have been significant, because I had never heard him say a negative word about a soul. I waited to hear what he would say next.

"I've tried. I've prayed about it. I know I shouldn't feel this way, but he drives me nuts, and I just don't like him."

That was all he said. I waited, but, he didn't add anything. It took me a second, but I slowly realized he wasn't going to tell the story. He wasn't venting about the other person or even the event that caused his distress. Instead, he was acknowledging his own negative feelings and chastising himself for them. He didn't need to enlist my help in criticizing the other person. He didn't need to tell me how I should feel about that other person. He didn't need sympathy about being driven nuts. He needed to make a confession to somebody.

And that was the end of that. He sort of shook his head as if to shake his thoughts away, and changed the subject. He never told me what happened or who was involved. He owned his own feelings about it and kept the gossip to himself. And I'm glad.

Let's assume that whatever the conflict was, he was in the right. There would have been no benefit in telling me the story of what caused his distress. Had he told me how that other person had wronged him, I would certainly have taken his side out of respect and loyalty because I thought very highly of him. But he knew that if I had a relationship with that other person, I still had the possibility of having good interactions with them if he didn't negatively color my feelings. He didn't need to put himself in between the two of us. It's also possible that no matter what that person's character may have been at that moment, that they might change over time, and if my teacher had vented to me to elicit my loyalty, I might have missed the opportunity to know the other person as he or she grew better. Instead, he allowed me to go on, as a cynic might say, "in ignorant bliss" of the other person's flaws and believing the best of them. And that is as it should be. Christians are not meant to be cynics. There is scripture aplenty encouraging us not to allow idle talk to tear others down, and to be as good a lawyer for a brother or sister's faults as we are at rationalizing our own.

Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. James 3:5

That verse makes me think of Smokey the Bear. Only you can stop forest fires.

I'm not yet as wise or disciplined as my professor. I'm guilty of wanting the selfish ego boost of having someone agree with my point of view, or the pride of seeing my own influence. I still sometimes think that maybe God needs *me* to help him influence someone else's perceptions of another one of his own children. Laughable, isn't it? If someone has a petty character flaw, nobody needs me to point it out. That flaw will almost always point itself out, and my talking about it only displays my own petty faults.

And thus concludes the evening's ruminations. Take from it what you will.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

A week's gone by, and a full one. My girl has survived the first 6 days of a new school, a much bigger one than she's ever been to. She knew only one person in only one of her classes. A week later, she has a lunch group and a few theatre friends. She's auditioned for a play, didn't get cast, but might work tech. And, then she surprised me by applying to be a representative for her class in student government. Considering that 2 weeks ago, she was almost overwhelmed with anxiety, I'm so proud I could burst. If she can face her fears with this kind of aplomb, she can handle whatever life throws at her.

And, I worry every day about what it might throw.

The news has dragged me down lately. Children separated from parents, racially-charged conflicts, and now horrific news from the Catholic church in Pennsylvania. I find it hard to believe that humans can be so callous about the harm they do to other humans. I've let my girl see my feelings, and I realized I was bringing her down, too, when she asked, "Has it ever been this bad before?"

Oh, hon. My first thought was of slavery, lynchings, the separation of slave families, but the more I thought, the more atrocities I thought of. We humans have been horrible to our fellow humans for all of history. The near-genocide of native Americans. The Holocaust. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Any targeting of civilians by any wartime force. The horrible treatment of so many political prisoners and prisoners of war in various places around the world. It's even in the bible. The bashing of babies against rocks. We humans have a bottomless capacity to be heartless, and we always seem to find a way to feel justified when it's us committing the atrocity.

Oh, hon, the truth is, it's hardly ever been this good. There are people speaking up, exposing the things that need to be exposed, calling for everyone to recognize the dignity of all people. We still pray every day that God's kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. I don't think he'd ask us to pray for that and work toward that if it couldn't ultimately be accomplished. It's just a long, long, long process, and our lives are too short to grasp the eternal perspective.

Good Bones
by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones:  This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Raising Daughters and Words

I need to write more. I need to read more fiction. I read three books, 2 fiction and 1 non-fiction, while we were on vacation last week, and they were the first books I've gotten fully through in a while. They were all life-giving. I downloaded Matt Haig's Reasons To Live on Kindle, and it might be one of the best books I've read on depression. He has no remedy to sell except your own remedy, all the while writing with great sympathy for the varieties of ways depression presents itself, and a generous, vulnerable account of his own. I picked up two novels in the used bookstore at St. Simons Island, and both were fantastic. The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin kept me glued to the pages for a solid 2.5 days, which for me, is saying something. But the book that got into my bones was Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. After two chapters, I had to look up the history of the Japanese occupation of Malaysia in the 50s, history I had never been exposed to. But it was the story and the mesmerizing language that really captivated me. It stirred my inner poet and made me want to write again. And so, here I am, writing again.

I've struggled about what to do with this blog. I want to write, and I want to write for an audience. But, while I've done it with previous blogs, I find myself resistant to just keeping an online journal of my days/feelings/thoughts. I want to structure it with "music on Monday," "words on Wednesday," "thoughts on Thursday," etc. It assuages my worry that blogging is mostly just naval-gazing. But, artificial structure is not working for me. It feels contrived, and it turns writing into a duty. So, I'm going back to a more organic way of writing. I don't know quite how it will come out, but maybe that's okay.

xxxxx

My girl starts 10th grade at a new school on Wednesday. She's nervous, but she doesn't realize that she's so much braver than I would have been at 15. I marvel at her. She has become so much her own person. But, then, she always was.

When she was born, I felt the strangest sensation. It was as though another person had walked into the room. Of course, she was indeed a newly arrived person, but I had expected it to feel more like she was still part of me, not so much like a stranger had arrived. She came with an unmistakable message - "I'm not you." She was a presence. After a few tense seconds while we waited for her to cry, she finally let out a quiet, sweet, almost unbearably endearing "graaa." Soon, that weak little "graaa" was a big "WAH," And, now "WAH" has become, "I need you to take me to Ulta so I can buy some more makeup." (So not like me.) And I'm so thankful that she is so normal.

On Wednesday, she'll arrive at a new school, her own person. She knows a few of the students, but not very many. She'll know them soon enough. She'll start with a graaa, progress to a WAH, and end up a leader. And I'll marvel at her again.

Maybe writing is like raising a daughter. You can't structure it. It takes you down avenues you weren't expecting. It exposes you, surprises you, scares you, exhilarates you. And then, ultimately, it humbles you because you realize that she, or it, belongs to itself. It is not you.

xxxxx

Is it weird to say that my writing has its own identity? Some writers like to talk of a muse, and I understand that. I don't speak the way I write. I don't even always think the same way when I write. Things come to me when I'm writing that don't come to me at other times. It's similar to when I'm playing and the music takes over and I become its servant. These things happen. Art has its own personhood. I don't know how to explain it.

xxxxx

The sun has set while I've been sitting here on the porch, all hot pink and orange between the pine trees as I listen to the kids at the neighborhood pool and the crickets and cicadas start their songs. The mosquitoes have been merciful, and the Georgia heat is not unbearable. I've a glass of wine and a sleeve of crackers, and the night is kind. I've written enough for tonight. Time to read again.

Words on Wednesday: The Light and Lightness of Ash Wednesday

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel

It's Ash Wednesday, the day on the liturgical calendar when we begin the season of Lent. Lent commemorates Jesus' 40 days of fasting in the wilderness, and on Ash Wednesday, the church encourages us to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. It's a time for self-examination and repentance. Of course, we are called to do these things daily, but I think we believe that in Lent we are supposed to repent... harder. Instead, what I feel today is relief and thankfulness to be mere dust. It means that I can give up the burden of saving the world and saving me and trust that God is doing both of those things. The great thing is that the examined life can become the unburdened life, if you're healthy about it. But for some, the call to self-examination can result in self-blame and a failure to truly experience the joy of being forgiven. While I appreciate the liturgical calendar and the rhythm it can supply to worship,  I also think we need to guard against allowing the culture of an institution to suggest extra-biblical practices that seem to be more dark and heavy than light. If we're not careful, lent and Ash Wed observance can make us turn in on ourselves and try to repent harder than is necessary.

I'm protestant, but blessed to have served in a variety of denominations, including Catholic. They have a term that touches on what I'm trying to describe as over-repentance:  scrupulosity. It's a sort of religious perfectionism in which someone feels they can never stop confessing or feel able to enjoy forgiveness. It's a sort of spiritual OCD. I think that at times, I've been like this. So, this year's Ash Wednesday when I feel relieved to be dust - feels like a victory.

The pressure to participate in church programs can result in a sort of scrupulosity, too. I have in the past felt a duty to participate in as much as my time would allow. I've cut back. WAY back. Right now, I'm attending only one thing - a spiritual formation class that has been like manna from heaven. We have great discussions, and yesterday we talked about the difference between doing "great things for God" versus simply living fully into every moment being fully ourselves as God created us and sharing the gifts of the Spirit's fruits - love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness, self-control, etc. These are greater gifts than any earthly skill or talent. We talked about the ripple effect something as small as a smile can have - the ministry of welcome and love to those we encounter. We talked about Jesus' lack of an agenda or program. He had no schedule like this: 9:00 am: Woman at the well. 1:00: Take on some Pharisees. 3:00: start a ministry to the leper colony. Instead, God incarnate walked through life ready to encounter whatever came his way. I'm not knocking ministry or relief programs. They do good work. I'm just giving up the idea that I have to adopt an agenda or join a program out of duty. God will put in front of me what he wants me to do in his time. I don't have to get ahead of him.

It's easy to elevate the value of the program or the institution and fail to embrace the wildness of the Spirit. Today, I could easily allow the cultural and institutional weight of Lent to weigh me down. But, I don't feel heavy today. I feel light. I don't feel dark. I feel light. I think it's appropriate. So does this poet.

Ash Wednesday

by Louis Untermeyer

(Vienna)

I

Shut out the light or let it filter through 

These frowning aisles as penitentially 

As though it walked in sackcloth. Let it be 

Laid at the feet of all that ever grew 

Twisted and false, like this rococo shrine 

Where cupids smirk from candy clouds and where 

The Lord, with polished nails and perfumed hair, 

Performs a parody of the divine. 

The candles hiss; the organ-pedals storm; 

Writhing and dark, the columns leave the earth 

To find a lonelier and darker height. 

The church grows dingy while the human swarm 

Struggles against the impenitent body’s mirth. 

Ashes to ashes. . . . Go. . . . Shut out the light. 

(Hinterbrühl)

II

And so the light runs laughing from the town, 

Pulling the sun with him along the roads 

That shed their muddy rivers as he goads 

Each blade of grass the ice had flattened down. 

At every empty bush he stops to fling 

Handfuls of birds with green and yellow throats; 

While even the hens, uncertain of their notes, 

Stir rusty vowels in attempts to sing. 

He daubs the chestnut-tips with sudden reds 

And throws an olive blush on naked hills 

That hoped, somehow, to keep themselves in white. 

Who calls for sackcloth now? He leaps and spreads 

A carnival of color, gladly spills 

His blood: the resurrection—and the light.

Silver Linings

The last month has been a little chaotic around here, and I'm not just talking about politics. It's been a good opportunity to practice having a positive attitude in the midst of craziness. I've learned quite a bit this month and discovered a number of things to be thankful for.

The girl who checks me out at the local pharmacy remembers my name.

I'm thankful for good health insurance.

I learned that my gynecologist started out as a religion major. Now I know why he's such a great doctor.

I've learned that 9 (nine) places in my body don't have cancer. Well, we're still waiting to hear definitively about 5 of them, but they seem to think it's just a formality.

I learned how to work a car battery charger.

I learned which places in town have the best machine to pump up a leaky tire.

I'm thankful for the guy at our tire place who didn't charge me for a repair. We'll buy more tires from him.

I know which wrecker to call when the car just won't go anymore. I'm thankful for his promptness.

I now know the names of one of the guys at the car repair place and two folks at the rental car place.

I've had the opportunity to drive, in addition to my own car, a Dodge Challenger, a Jeep Patriot, and a Nissan Versa. In case you ever need to know, the gas tank is on the driver side for all of them.

I'm thankful that several people earned money for their families by fixing my car even though it was totaled the next week.

I'm thankful for the sheriff's deputy who happened to be just a few feet away when the wreck happened and could vouch that it wasn't my fault.

I've learned that my usual emergency care place doesn't do third-party billing for car accidents so you might as well go straight to the ER.

I've learned that you can get a concussion without even hitting your head on anything. I'm thankful that none of us had any serious injuries.

I've learned that I can survive a week that contains both a car wreck and unrelated surgery.

I'm thankful for a hubby who took charge of everything, handling insurance, rental car stuff, meals, and more and for piano students who don't mind rescheduling lessons.

I'm thankful that I am not a journalist for any major news organization right now.

I'm thankful that I am not a politician responsible to any constituency for my support or non-support of the current White House administration.

I'm thankful that I live in a country where freedom of speech is guaranteed, and I'm thankful for our founders for the wisdom and discretion they exercised in creating our government.

I'm thankful for the deep discussions I've had with my daughter as a direct result of the current political chaos - discussions on character, integrity, self-control, and all the other fruits of the Spirit.