The Parable of the Lost Sheep tells the story of one shepherd who, having lost one of his one-hundred sheep, abandons the remainder of his flock to go searching for it. Finding it, he rejoices.
That is the essential plot to the three versions of the story – but there are some variations. First, the context within which the story is told in Matthew and Luke and Thomas are different: Matthew has it set as response to a question concerning care for God’s little ones; Luke places it as a rejoinder to the Pharisees concerning Christ’s association with sinners. Meanwhile Thomas has it as an elaboration of a description of Christ as being the way for those who are lost.
Second, only Matthew has the parable begin with a question ‘What do you think?’, the other gospels have it begin with some statement. Matthew has the sheep itself go astray; in Luke the shepherd loses it. In Matthew the sheep may be one of the little ones; in the other gospels it is only one of the flock. In Matthew the shepherd rejoices alone; in Luke he calls friends to join in the rejoicing – this means a different emphasis for finding and for celebration, respectively.
Finally, the implied object of the parable changes: in Matthew, it is one of the faithful who has gone astray; in Luke it seems meant to refer to a sinner.
Taken together, these imply a more didactic purpose for the parable in Matthew. It is a parable expressly for the governance of community in the midst of teachings about who will be greatest in the kingdom, where the little ones will be, how to deal with those members who sin and lead others astray. The opening question would be a pedagogical tool, and the sheep itself going astray clearly makes it more similar to a human being – in the sense of going astray as a willful action. Finally, as part of its unique emphasis on finding again, Matthew leaves the shepherd to rejoice alone at the end. The point is that those in the community should do for those who stray just what God would do: find them again.
To preach the Parable of the Lost Sheep in Matthew would be to reflect on God’s exorbitant fidelity to God’s followers and the implied innocence of those who are deceived; to go astray is more nearly to be lead astray and paired with the previous teaching concerning those who lead the little one astray the blame is quite clearly on the deceiver rather than the lost.
The sheep itself is not a fault and is to be found and restored to the community. The success of this endeavor is not guaranteed; sheep are sometimes permanently loss. But the possibility implies responsibility for and from everyone in the community, especially if we remember the pastoral tone of the beatitudes in the same gospel, and the nature of pastoral care in Matthew. The shepherd is alone in Matthew because the shepherd is the believing community itself. The sheep is worthy of rejoicing because it is one of God’s own faithful, and it is the will of God that no one perish.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Serial Fiction: Whisper from the Dust XII
Ryn gasped, and I knew that the gap, though of course not physical, was opening. Then my own feet sunk and I had only time to wonder if the Healing Well would have preferred we enter naked, or if that was solely the prerogative of the Blood of History. The hard white stone of Ariel softened, and it parted like sand to let us pass. The wail of the Healing Well inside my mind was no less heard than any call of the Wells of the Dead. We have often talked, Ryn and I, about whether or not the minds of the Wells are sentient, or simply reactive in the way of the minds of valkyries and quickswords and shrouds and all the other equipment and weaponry the veilmen have. It certainly feels as though a mind, strange and alien, were welcoming you to a house where you most emphatically do not belong.
Whatever it is or was, the mind of the Healing Well had parted the stone of the street to let us pass. It is not at all difficult to remember to hold one’s breath while one passes through stone and, even, the walls of the Well itself, which must be harder than any metal when firm, as no one has been able to open one without its own consent. Still, it took too long. The Healing Well was further beneath the surface of Ariel than one might have supposed, perhaps five meters – most of the Wells of the Dead lie just beneath the soil. And one is never ready for the drop from the ceiling of a Well unto its floor. I doubt that even the veilmen, who must enter one every time they change or recharge their weapons, can be prepared for every time they drop three meters unto a floor harder than cement, after passing through supposedly solid earth. It is no better for us Blooded to find our fluid sudden there, though it is our purpose.
Batyst and I were certainly startled to come out of the earth and to land, unprepared, on the floor of an utterly empty Well. I hit the floor and rolled in utter darkness. Ryn grunted and cursed at his own rough landing. The Healing Well was supposed to have been filled with great white light, though it had dimmed in years past, as a sign of its decay. But this Well held no light at all, not even after I had woken it. Sighing, we both struggled to our feet.
“Ryn, I – ” I stopped when I heard his great brown robes rustling and the striking of a flint against its steel. A few moments more, and Ryn Batyst stood in the glow of two primitive torches, rags soaked in oil and wrapped around heavy sticks he must have taken from the woods. He stepped over and I took the one he proffered.
“I could have carried my own, at least” I said.
“Do you see, Del, why I brought you here?” he asked.
Slowly, I walked around the Healing Well’s interior. As with many Wells, it was not very large: four strides and four again and again carried me all the way around its unbroken silver walls. Only the Wells of the veilmen in Nogilia and Nesechia are reported to be quite large, capacious enough to hold rank on rank of armor suits and vehicles. But though this Well had once held the wounded body of the first Faith, it could have held little else. In its center I spied markings that might once have been an elaborated circle.
“Not for anything the Healing Well has to offer, I guess.”
“You underestimate yourself. Do you realize what you’ve done! For four decades everyone has tried to wake this Well! The Historians, the Guardians, I myself have tried to wake it! And now you come and open it in the time of a few short breaths. You, who are not supposed to be able to manipulate machines at all. You who are too poor of birth to orchestrate the lowest Temple service. You, who deny what the mind of the ancient dead would say about you!”
I snorted, half- laughing. “But they were just trying to open it in all the wrong ways. It’s not a pet. It’s not something that obeys. I only treated it the way the Wells of the Dead are treated. I asked it if I could enter. It’s nothing you couldn’t have done, if you had but thought of it. And I don’t even know why I did.”
Batyst raised an eyebrow. “Did you?” He chewed a lip. “Yes, that might have worked. But I did not think of it. And you did. And the Well did respond to you. It would never have answered me.”
“What? Why not? You wake the Wells of the Dead more certainly than anyone. Those machines call you the most of all. Why would the Healing Well be any different?”
“Because the Wells of the Dead hold something of living flesh. But the Healing Well is entirely of artifice, a Well of the machines. It is not the same at all.”
I paced in the darkness, the firelight flickering. “But I am the same, I am the same as you. You failed the tests as certainly as I did, though perhaps less times. I was exposed to machines of each kind, history and weaponry and transport. None of them did anything at all. I’m common – a guildsman, nothing more.”
Ryn grinned like the sun again and held out his hand. In the dying torchlight I couldn’t see exactly what he held. He held it a little higher. ‘Take it, Del. It’s of no use to me.”
I reached out and took and almost could not believe. It was a history of the Profusion, a slate of metal no thicker than a piece of paper and almost as flexible, though only a third the size. And in my hand its letters hummed instantaneously to life, glowing in lines of green text whose characters were utterly unfamiliar to me.
“How?” I asked, shaking, “This is from the Temple. How did you get this? How could anyone?”
Ryn nodded. “When you were being tested. The Historians were quite preoccupied by their charade. Everyone knows they bring up histories from the vaults brought here from Kasora. Senre would never content himself in such dank places. So I looked around his desk. Security is always minimal that time of day, when they’re shriving the confessors.”
I sat on the floor, uneasy, and leaned back against the wall. “I wonder if I haven’t recovered from my fever yet. Why, though? Why bring me here just to read this?”
“Because it was a guess. Because I knew that you would have to experience in order to believe regardless. And I overheard Senre before he came to bless the Public of Guilds, talking with his apprentice about trying to open the Healing Well again. I had to see if they might find anything. And, of course, I had to help you hear.”
I gazed at the slim glyphs of text, wondering how the Historians had ever learned the language. My eyes were blurring, and I felt myself smiling foolishly. “But how, Ryn, how can I do this? I should not be able. No one like me should be able.”
Batyst sat beside me, his shoulder against my own as I tried to manipulate the history into speaking my own language, “Del, what if I told you that the Historians have been lying to the world about what makes that world possible. What if I told you that every time a child steps into the Temple to take the test, its outcome is already determined by some trick of the Historians. What if I told you that the Historians systematically exclude those adepts with more talent than themselves, and this is the reason for Thaeron’s long and slow decline. What if I told you that you could have been a Historian the very first day the Historians took you in their care?”
I sat in the darkness for a while, letting my mind go clear again. The goodness was too much to be conceived. The Historians had rejected me not because of my unknown parentage but because of my undeniable talent. I could have trained with them from the first day, and worked to lift up the people of Ariel from a position of real power, rather than always ineffectually scheming to undo it. Then from the darkness came an answering presence, and I exalted, and rolled up the history and tucked it inside my sleeve. I had read enough. I stood.
“Then I would say, Ryn, that the Historians wanted to open up the Healing Well again because they’re looking for something. I would say that they’ve read that there might be another Well in Ariel, a Well in which no one has ever been, and that they look for it because in that Well lies something that could save this world from its destruction, and the Orchids have made them more frightened than they’ve ever been.”
I paused, listening, strengthening the connection my mind had made. “And I would say, Ryn, that that Well is calling us right now, because it is right beneath us, but that the Historians will never open it because they do not know the right question.”
Then Ryn stood up beside me, and we let our torches fall, and we walked together into the center of the Well and what had once been a quite purposive circle. I wondered if the first Faith had seen it, and my mind asked another question of the darkness. With keen intellect the darkness answered, and we sank again through that substance that is harder than any metal, the floor of a Well of the Profusion, and into quite another Well entirely.
Whatever it is or was, the mind of the Healing Well had parted the stone of the street to let us pass. It is not at all difficult to remember to hold one’s breath while one passes through stone and, even, the walls of the Well itself, which must be harder than any metal when firm, as no one has been able to open one without its own consent. Still, it took too long. The Healing Well was further beneath the surface of Ariel than one might have supposed, perhaps five meters – most of the Wells of the Dead lie just beneath the soil. And one is never ready for the drop from the ceiling of a Well unto its floor. I doubt that even the veilmen, who must enter one every time they change or recharge their weapons, can be prepared for every time they drop three meters unto a floor harder than cement, after passing through supposedly solid earth. It is no better for us Blooded to find our fluid sudden there, though it is our purpose.
Batyst and I were certainly startled to come out of the earth and to land, unprepared, on the floor of an utterly empty Well. I hit the floor and rolled in utter darkness. Ryn grunted and cursed at his own rough landing. The Healing Well was supposed to have been filled with great white light, though it had dimmed in years past, as a sign of its decay. But this Well held no light at all, not even after I had woken it. Sighing, we both struggled to our feet.
“Ryn, I – ” I stopped when I heard his great brown robes rustling and the striking of a flint against its steel. A few moments more, and Ryn Batyst stood in the glow of two primitive torches, rags soaked in oil and wrapped around heavy sticks he must have taken from the woods. He stepped over and I took the one he proffered.
“I could have carried my own, at least” I said.
“Do you see, Del, why I brought you here?” he asked.
Slowly, I walked around the Healing Well’s interior. As with many Wells, it was not very large: four strides and four again and again carried me all the way around its unbroken silver walls. Only the Wells of the veilmen in Nogilia and Nesechia are reported to be quite large, capacious enough to hold rank on rank of armor suits and vehicles. But though this Well had once held the wounded body of the first Faith, it could have held little else. In its center I spied markings that might once have been an elaborated circle.
“Not for anything the Healing Well has to offer, I guess.”
“You underestimate yourself. Do you realize what you’ve done! For four decades everyone has tried to wake this Well! The Historians, the Guardians, I myself have tried to wake it! And now you come and open it in the time of a few short breaths. You, who are not supposed to be able to manipulate machines at all. You who are too poor of birth to orchestrate the lowest Temple service. You, who deny what the mind of the ancient dead would say about you!”
I snorted, half- laughing. “But they were just trying to open it in all the wrong ways. It’s not a pet. It’s not something that obeys. I only treated it the way the Wells of the Dead are treated. I asked it if I could enter. It’s nothing you couldn’t have done, if you had but thought of it. And I don’t even know why I did.”
Batyst raised an eyebrow. “Did you?” He chewed a lip. “Yes, that might have worked. But I did not think of it. And you did. And the Well did respond to you. It would never have answered me.”
“What? Why not? You wake the Wells of the Dead more certainly than anyone. Those machines call you the most of all. Why would the Healing Well be any different?”
“Because the Wells of the Dead hold something of living flesh. But the Healing Well is entirely of artifice, a Well of the machines. It is not the same at all.”
I paced in the darkness, the firelight flickering. “But I am the same, I am the same as you. You failed the tests as certainly as I did, though perhaps less times. I was exposed to machines of each kind, history and weaponry and transport. None of them did anything at all. I’m common – a guildsman, nothing more.”
Ryn grinned like the sun again and held out his hand. In the dying torchlight I couldn’t see exactly what he held. He held it a little higher. ‘Take it, Del. It’s of no use to me.”
I reached out and took and almost could not believe. It was a history of the Profusion, a slate of metal no thicker than a piece of paper and almost as flexible, though only a third the size. And in my hand its letters hummed instantaneously to life, glowing in lines of green text whose characters were utterly unfamiliar to me.
“How?” I asked, shaking, “This is from the Temple. How did you get this? How could anyone?”
Ryn nodded. “When you were being tested. The Historians were quite preoccupied by their charade. Everyone knows they bring up histories from the vaults brought here from Kasora. Senre would never content himself in such dank places. So I looked around his desk. Security is always minimal that time of day, when they’re shriving the confessors.”
I sat on the floor, uneasy, and leaned back against the wall. “I wonder if I haven’t recovered from my fever yet. Why, though? Why bring me here just to read this?”
“Because it was a guess. Because I knew that you would have to experience in order to believe regardless. And I overheard Senre before he came to bless the Public of Guilds, talking with his apprentice about trying to open the Healing Well again. I had to see if they might find anything. And, of course, I had to help you hear.”
I gazed at the slim glyphs of text, wondering how the Historians had ever learned the language. My eyes were blurring, and I felt myself smiling foolishly. “But how, Ryn, how can I do this? I should not be able. No one like me should be able.”
Batyst sat beside me, his shoulder against my own as I tried to manipulate the history into speaking my own language, “Del, what if I told you that the Historians have been lying to the world about what makes that world possible. What if I told you that every time a child steps into the Temple to take the test, its outcome is already determined by some trick of the Historians. What if I told you that the Historians systematically exclude those adepts with more talent than themselves, and this is the reason for Thaeron’s long and slow decline. What if I told you that you could have been a Historian the very first day the Historians took you in their care?”
I sat in the darkness for a while, letting my mind go clear again. The goodness was too much to be conceived. The Historians had rejected me not because of my unknown parentage but because of my undeniable talent. I could have trained with them from the first day, and worked to lift up the people of Ariel from a position of real power, rather than always ineffectually scheming to undo it. Then from the darkness came an answering presence, and I exalted, and rolled up the history and tucked it inside my sleeve. I had read enough. I stood.
“Then I would say, Ryn, that the Historians wanted to open up the Healing Well again because they’re looking for something. I would say that they’ve read that there might be another Well in Ariel, a Well in which no one has ever been, and that they look for it because in that Well lies something that could save this world from its destruction, and the Orchids have made them more frightened than they’ve ever been.”
I paused, listening, strengthening the connection my mind had made. “And I would say, Ryn, that that Well is calling us right now, because it is right beneath us, but that the Historians will never open it because they do not know the right question.”
Then Ryn stood up beside me, and we let our torches fall, and we walked together into the center of the Well and what had once been a quite purposive circle. I wondered if the first Faith had seen it, and my mind asked another question of the darkness. With keen intellect the darkness answered, and we sank again through that substance that is harder than any metal, the floor of a Well of the Profusion, and into quite another Well entirely.
Christology: Cone's African-American Christology
Cone's Christology: life, death and resurrection as revealed in Scripture and as related to the experience of the liberation of the poor. This is the identification of God with the struggle, pain, and hope of liberation theology generally and with African American theology particularly. However, I think that for Cone if he got to keep any part of Jesus, he would keep his life, if you know what I mean - his life because for Cone Christ's death would follow precisely from that (states kill the vocal oppressed) and because the eschatological hope of Christ in the kingdom would be the hope that surpasses death. This is not unlike Cone preferring Christ's humanity over Christ's divinity, as he explicitly says. It is the 'with'-ness of Jesus that matters for Cone, and that starts and is almost contained in Jesus's life and ministry. He talks about Jesus as a friend and uses the language of rhythm more times than I could count. That's the reconciliation aspect, too. Atonement is attunement, to put it crudely.
So the concrete language of experience and compassion and living hope is all taken very well, for me. I disagree with you in some sense in that I don't think Jesus has one message for all people. Rather, what Jesus has is some message for each people, if that makes any sense. It's not that universal significance/salvation doesn't exist, but that you can never work that out apart from its prevailing concreteness: Jesus was a Jew. But the potential hazard of this, and this is something you also get at, is when Jesus only liberates only my people, because we're the onlyones who understand him. If African Americans become the new Jews not only in the sense of being preferred and chosen by God but also in the sense of having privileged (err, underprivileged in this case) access to the meaning of God in Jesus, then I think we have a problem, the same old problem that we had to start with. I can't see Jesus as being that totalizing, or that simplistic. If it's not going too far to say that we each get the God we need (which is an really old idea, I think), then it is going too far to say that I've got the God everyone needs. No, you've got the God each person needs. No one has the God that all people need.
Not even Cone, though he does make a decent run at it. I've often wondered, though, in all these liberation theologies that understand oppression in such devastating and right detail: what does human/Christian freedom look like? Is it Roman civic freedom? Modern Western freedom? What is this liberty - what does it actually look like in the world? Can we see the face of the kingdom of God? Is it the wealth of the poor? The hermeneutics of the poor? What are we all in this for, by Cone's account?
So the concrete language of experience and compassion and living hope is all taken very well, for me. I disagree with you in some sense in that I don't think Jesus has one message for all people. Rather, what Jesus has is some message for each people, if that makes any sense. It's not that universal significance/salvation doesn't exist, but that you can never work that out apart from its prevailing concreteness: Jesus was a Jew. But the potential hazard of this, and this is something you also get at, is when Jesus only liberates only my people, because we're the onlyones who understand him. If African Americans become the new Jews not only in the sense of being preferred and chosen by God but also in the sense of having privileged (err, underprivileged in this case) access to the meaning of God in Jesus, then I think we have a problem, the same old problem that we had to start with. I can't see Jesus as being that totalizing, or that simplistic. If it's not going too far to say that we each get the God we need (which is an really old idea, I think), then it is going too far to say that I've got the God everyone needs. No, you've got the God each person needs. No one has the God that all people need.
Not even Cone, though he does make a decent run at it. I've often wondered, though, in all these liberation theologies that understand oppression in such devastating and right detail: what does human/Christian freedom look like? Is it Roman civic freedom? Modern Western freedom? What is this liberty - what does it actually look like in the world? Can we see the face of the kingdom of God? Is it the wealth of the poor? The hermeneutics of the poor? What are we all in this for, by Cone's account?
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Serial Science Fiction: Whisper from the Dust XI
“Will there be another Blooding? I’d like to return to the city.”
“That is where I plan to go. As for whether or not there will be a Blooding, well, that is up to the Blood. The Wells call no one ahead of time, Del. If not you, they certainly don’t tell me.”
“Why do you always say things like that?” I asked. “Whatever you think I am, I’m not. What the Blood does tell me, I never understand. I crave the past right along with all the rest of this backwards world, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”
Ryn chuckled. “It does not matter what I think you are. It matters who you think you are. It matters who the Blood of History knows you are. And you both agree on this: that you are not yet yourself. That is what you look for, Del Tanich. You are a word that does not yet know its sound. I would only help you hear it.”
“And that’s what you’re taking me for? I haven’t even eaten yet.”
“It is better that you do not. The smuggler’s gate is not for a heavy stomach. Still, I have bread that we can eat on the way. But we need to leave. It’s six hours walking from here.”
I nodded. During the day I had noted that Triske’s farm lay among the northmost parts of the Profuse River valley, in a crook of a hollow made by a splashing glacial stream. I stood up to go, in that hesitant but hopeful way one has when recovering from illness.
“Let’s go,” I said. “If I’m to open with the market at dawn.” Ryn looked at me, but did not say a word.
Our hike to the base of the plateau proceeded in some haste. We hurried toward an appointment. So far upstream, the River was narrower, and we crossed it on one of on one of those ubiquitous ferries for those few who do not wish to go all the way downriver, a simple slab of logs bound to a cable. Considering that we both wore our host’s apparel, if anyone saw us as the sun set and we poled across, they would have thought we were farmers off for an evening’s entertainment beside a still, or hunters or trappers scurrying from one copse to the next before the darkness fell.
Along with the moon rose the other four of those spheres called the Orchids, silent and ominous. Even Batyst was distracted for a moment. And I agreed immediately that they mean no good. They hang in the night like malice itself. They’ll not leave until they war upon this world, and the Historians teach that if loaded with personnel, such ships hold sufficient forces to occupy an entire world – but if loaded with weaponry, they can destroy that same world outright.
The smugglers awaited us on the other side. How Ryn had known where they would be, he did not say, and I did not ask him. Their manner invited little conversation and they engaged in none, save what would one flash another using the signals of their hands. I told myself to remember to ask Ryn if we might learn the same system; too many people know the urchin tongue, and I’m nervous now about the Temple’s spies. That last Blooding was entirely too close.
But the smugglers led us into the darkness of the trees without a sound, and I realized that those places where both river and trees came near the base of the plateau would be very few indeed. The smugglers were by necessity less crafty than I’d thought. And they walked a harder road, traipsing through the leafy woods in darkness complete without stars or moon or torches of any kind. Several times I stumbled, and only Batyst’s sure grip kept me on my feet. His voice jolted me out of my thoughts.
“You should know,” he said, “What I do for you is not conditional. It is not contingent on anything you say or do or think or feel. It has nothing to do with who you are right now. The Blood steered me toward a promise. I serve that promise, and so do you.” He smiled then, “Even when you do not know what it is. That is what I’m going to show you.”
The last of the smugglers turned back to us then, eyes flashing in the black. She motioned us forward, quickly. She didn’t care for us, of course – but the price of their guidance was that we carry sacks as heavy as anything I’d ever brought to market. I did not ask what was in them. Knives wrapped silently in wool, perhaps, for personal defense of the kind which the Historians prohibit, or the wet leaves of the plant that the Temple alone is allowed to use for the incense of its services. Tax-free flour, perhaps, underselling the variety the Baker’s Guild must officially use. To think of it, they might simply be seeds I carried slung across my shoulder, and I was undercutting myself by providing for one of those un-guilded vendors who furtively traipse the alleys of Ariel, going furtively from door to door hoping that no White or Green will catch them.
Whatever I carried, I collapsed outright in the clearing when we reached the cliff at the base of the plateau. We’d walked five of the six hours that Ryn Batyst had promised, and I supposed that meant that we had gone faster than expected. With a pair of oculars, the lead smuggler flashed signs at someone on the top, whose dim form I could make out in the light of the stars and moon and brooding, alien spheres. Those would be bad, I realized, for their trade. The guards would see quite further than normal in any night like this, clear of cloud and storm. So when it came my turn and Batyst awaited me at the top and the lead smuggler hissed at me to go, I grabbed the rope and only prayed there were no guards near.
To whom exactly I sped my thoughts, I of course cannot say. The gods of the Profusion, everyone knows, have quite gone, into the void beyond the void. It is their grace, and only their grace, that lingers – and will soon follow them entirely. But after I had pronounced one of the Temple’s oft-repeated forms, I gripped the rope more calmly nonetheless. I was fortunate that the smuggler going downward – for Ariel exports much, also, that is not sanctioned – was subtly heavier than me, so that a gentle hand pulled me upward. Though I’ve used it a dozen times, I doubt the smuggler’s gate is anything I shall ever become accustomed to. I’m always glad when it is over.
Batyst embraced me at the top and we bid our compatriots farewell. Doubtless, they wondered why we had not descended as Blooded normally would; it seemed unlikely that Batyst had told them. He certainly had not told me. And we did not turn west toward Batyst’s own street. Nor did he spare my street, by the shrine to the thirty-second Faith, more than a sidelong glance. We were traversing the city proper. While we waited in a shadowed corner for a patrol of Greens to pass – for we were long past curfew – I asked him why. He said only that it would make more sense as a surprise.
Still, when we stopped again to wait within the shadows of columns outside the abandoned Speaking Hall for a patrol of Whites to file past, the surprise became more apparent. And when we hurried over toward the center of the heart of Ariel and Batyst started reciting the words that Historians utter to wake their machines, our purpose seemed clear, though no longer sensible. The Healing Well had not been opened in forty years. Not even all eight Guardians or a full circle of Historians had been able to wake that Well again. There was no reason to expect that the chair of the Public of Guilds Public of Guilds and a newly-minted member of the Sower’s guild would do much better. Still, as we stood over it, our ears straining for any step of a returning patrol, I thought I knew the way.
From my mind I quieted those words that Historians use to fill the air. Instead I made myself as still and empty as I could, as still and empty on those nights when one stands before the call of the Wells of the Dead and nothing else can be said of any importance, as still and empty as a bank of fog. Indeed I recalled that strange white wind that had disturbed my vision within the Blood of History, though it now seemed like so many nights ago, as Adlasola Oso had not even known who I was. But I thought of that wind and of the woman, of the salvation of the world lying within the earth and soon felt the earth itself open up to me, a great crack in the pavement of Ariel’s crushed stone. I asked the mind of the Healing Well a question.
“That is where I plan to go. As for whether or not there will be a Blooding, well, that is up to the Blood. The Wells call no one ahead of time, Del. If not you, they certainly don’t tell me.”
“Why do you always say things like that?” I asked. “Whatever you think I am, I’m not. What the Blood does tell me, I never understand. I crave the past right along with all the rest of this backwards world, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”
Ryn chuckled. “It does not matter what I think you are. It matters who you think you are. It matters who the Blood of History knows you are. And you both agree on this: that you are not yet yourself. That is what you look for, Del Tanich. You are a word that does not yet know its sound. I would only help you hear it.”
“And that’s what you’re taking me for? I haven’t even eaten yet.”
“It is better that you do not. The smuggler’s gate is not for a heavy stomach. Still, I have bread that we can eat on the way. But we need to leave. It’s six hours walking from here.”
I nodded. During the day I had noted that Triske’s farm lay among the northmost parts of the Profuse River valley, in a crook of a hollow made by a splashing glacial stream. I stood up to go, in that hesitant but hopeful way one has when recovering from illness.
“Let’s go,” I said. “If I’m to open with the market at dawn.” Ryn looked at me, but did not say a word.
Our hike to the base of the plateau proceeded in some haste. We hurried toward an appointment. So far upstream, the River was narrower, and we crossed it on one of on one of those ubiquitous ferries for those few who do not wish to go all the way downriver, a simple slab of logs bound to a cable. Considering that we both wore our host’s apparel, if anyone saw us as the sun set and we poled across, they would have thought we were farmers off for an evening’s entertainment beside a still, or hunters or trappers scurrying from one copse to the next before the darkness fell.
Along with the moon rose the other four of those spheres called the Orchids, silent and ominous. Even Batyst was distracted for a moment. And I agreed immediately that they mean no good. They hang in the night like malice itself. They’ll not leave until they war upon this world, and the Historians teach that if loaded with personnel, such ships hold sufficient forces to occupy an entire world – but if loaded with weaponry, they can destroy that same world outright.
The smugglers awaited us on the other side. How Ryn had known where they would be, he did not say, and I did not ask him. Their manner invited little conversation and they engaged in none, save what would one flash another using the signals of their hands. I told myself to remember to ask Ryn if we might learn the same system; too many people know the urchin tongue, and I’m nervous now about the Temple’s spies. That last Blooding was entirely too close.
But the smugglers led us into the darkness of the trees without a sound, and I realized that those places where both river and trees came near the base of the plateau would be very few indeed. The smugglers were by necessity less crafty than I’d thought. And they walked a harder road, traipsing through the leafy woods in darkness complete without stars or moon or torches of any kind. Several times I stumbled, and only Batyst’s sure grip kept me on my feet. His voice jolted me out of my thoughts.
“You should know,” he said, “What I do for you is not conditional. It is not contingent on anything you say or do or think or feel. It has nothing to do with who you are right now. The Blood steered me toward a promise. I serve that promise, and so do you.” He smiled then, “Even when you do not know what it is. That is what I’m going to show you.”
The last of the smugglers turned back to us then, eyes flashing in the black. She motioned us forward, quickly. She didn’t care for us, of course – but the price of their guidance was that we carry sacks as heavy as anything I’d ever brought to market. I did not ask what was in them. Knives wrapped silently in wool, perhaps, for personal defense of the kind which the Historians prohibit, or the wet leaves of the plant that the Temple alone is allowed to use for the incense of its services. Tax-free flour, perhaps, underselling the variety the Baker’s Guild must officially use. To think of it, they might simply be seeds I carried slung across my shoulder, and I was undercutting myself by providing for one of those un-guilded vendors who furtively traipse the alleys of Ariel, going furtively from door to door hoping that no White or Green will catch them.
Whatever I carried, I collapsed outright in the clearing when we reached the cliff at the base of the plateau. We’d walked five of the six hours that Ryn Batyst had promised, and I supposed that meant that we had gone faster than expected. With a pair of oculars, the lead smuggler flashed signs at someone on the top, whose dim form I could make out in the light of the stars and moon and brooding, alien spheres. Those would be bad, I realized, for their trade. The guards would see quite further than normal in any night like this, clear of cloud and storm. So when it came my turn and Batyst awaited me at the top and the lead smuggler hissed at me to go, I grabbed the rope and only prayed there were no guards near.
To whom exactly I sped my thoughts, I of course cannot say. The gods of the Profusion, everyone knows, have quite gone, into the void beyond the void. It is their grace, and only their grace, that lingers – and will soon follow them entirely. But after I had pronounced one of the Temple’s oft-repeated forms, I gripped the rope more calmly nonetheless. I was fortunate that the smuggler going downward – for Ariel exports much, also, that is not sanctioned – was subtly heavier than me, so that a gentle hand pulled me upward. Though I’ve used it a dozen times, I doubt the smuggler’s gate is anything I shall ever become accustomed to. I’m always glad when it is over.
Batyst embraced me at the top and we bid our compatriots farewell. Doubtless, they wondered why we had not descended as Blooded normally would; it seemed unlikely that Batyst had told them. He certainly had not told me. And we did not turn west toward Batyst’s own street. Nor did he spare my street, by the shrine to the thirty-second Faith, more than a sidelong glance. We were traversing the city proper. While we waited in a shadowed corner for a patrol of Greens to pass – for we were long past curfew – I asked him why. He said only that it would make more sense as a surprise.
Still, when we stopped again to wait within the shadows of columns outside the abandoned Speaking Hall for a patrol of Whites to file past, the surprise became more apparent. And when we hurried over toward the center of the heart of Ariel and Batyst started reciting the words that Historians utter to wake their machines, our purpose seemed clear, though no longer sensible. The Healing Well had not been opened in forty years. Not even all eight Guardians or a full circle of Historians had been able to wake that Well again. There was no reason to expect that the chair of the Public of Guilds Public of Guilds and a newly-minted member of the Sower’s guild would do much better. Still, as we stood over it, our ears straining for any step of a returning patrol, I thought I knew the way.
From my mind I quieted those words that Historians use to fill the air. Instead I made myself as still and empty as I could, as still and empty on those nights when one stands before the call of the Wells of the Dead and nothing else can be said of any importance, as still and empty as a bank of fog. Indeed I recalled that strange white wind that had disturbed my vision within the Blood of History, though it now seemed like so many nights ago, as Adlasola Oso had not even known who I was. But I thought of that wind and of the woman, of the salvation of the world lying within the earth and soon felt the earth itself open up to me, a great crack in the pavement of Ariel’s crushed stone. I asked the mind of the Healing Well a question.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Matthew: On Discipleship
On Discipleship in Matthew
The aspects of the disciple that appear in Matthew and still signify today are precisely those traits that correlate to the heart of Christian discipleship itself.
The first of these is leadership. This essentially describes the tension that Carter articulates: that the disciples have both “an existence on the social margins” and participation “in the reign of God revealed by God’s actions in Jesus.” The disciple is neither isolated nor conforming but beginning as an agent of God’s present and coming kingdom.
The point of following Jesus is not to draw other disciples in your wake. It is not even enough to simply live on the margins because that is not the purpose. What is the purpose is bringing and proclaiming God’s reign. This was once thought to overturn God’s law but, as Hanger notes, more consideration and careful scholarship leads us to believe that the leadership of the disciple is leadership in the righteousness, mercy, and justice that the law referred to.
That has always been God’s reign. Love is the fulfillment of the law and not its overthrow.
“Disciples are called to a life of greater righteousness and justice” describes the trait corollary to the first: disciples are to be just. Contained within God’s reign is a disclosure of God’s own nature. It disciples must then be reconciling, faithful, honoring, non-violent, loving, praying, integral, and fair servants of God. They will neither conform to nor abandon this world but bless and transform it through their presence, as the examples of salt and yeast would indicate. Disciples will even bless their enemies and will not be intimidated by the powers and terrors of this world.
The righteousness of God’s rule, after all, has been revealed to them. Disciples understand that their leadership, because it comes from following Jesus of Nazareth, is not that of the Gentiles ‘who lord it over’ those beneath them but is instead a life of self-sacrificing service. The purpose is not to seek out positions of authority for oneself, but to exercise the authority of God in whatever place Jesus leads the disciple to. The righteousness of God is first for the disciple; from this all else follows.
This implies the third trait of the disciple: fidelity. Allegiance to God’s will and reign is paramount, not in order to secure one’s own salvation but precisely because of it and in response to it. Matthew contains stern admonitions for those torn between loyalties and those of impure motives. They have no place in the kingdom because they have one foot securely in this world.
When the disciples fail it is either becomes fear overcomes their best instincts toward fidelity or because their thinking is still tainted by the structures and expectations of the world. And those two failures are intimately related. The expectation of the world is that if Jesus dies his kingdom will not endure. The expectation of the world is that securing a place in anyone’s kingdom is seeking out power and authority for oneself.
But fidelity to God indicates quite differently.
The aspects of the disciple that appear in Matthew and still signify today are precisely those traits that correlate to the heart of Christian discipleship itself.
The first of these is leadership. This essentially describes the tension that Carter articulates: that the disciples have both “an existence on the social margins” and participation “in the reign of God revealed by God’s actions in Jesus.” The disciple is neither isolated nor conforming but beginning as an agent of God’s present and coming kingdom.
The point of following Jesus is not to draw other disciples in your wake. It is not even enough to simply live on the margins because that is not the purpose. What is the purpose is bringing and proclaiming God’s reign. This was once thought to overturn God’s law but, as Hanger notes, more consideration and careful scholarship leads us to believe that the leadership of the disciple is leadership in the righteousness, mercy, and justice that the law referred to.
That has always been God’s reign. Love is the fulfillment of the law and not its overthrow.
“Disciples are called to a life of greater righteousness and justice” describes the trait corollary to the first: disciples are to be just. Contained within God’s reign is a disclosure of God’s own nature. It disciples must then be reconciling, faithful, honoring, non-violent, loving, praying, integral, and fair servants of God. They will neither conform to nor abandon this world but bless and transform it through their presence, as the examples of salt and yeast would indicate. Disciples will even bless their enemies and will not be intimidated by the powers and terrors of this world.
The righteousness of God’s rule, after all, has been revealed to them. Disciples understand that their leadership, because it comes from following Jesus of Nazareth, is not that of the Gentiles ‘who lord it over’ those beneath them but is instead a life of self-sacrificing service. The purpose is not to seek out positions of authority for oneself, but to exercise the authority of God in whatever place Jesus leads the disciple to. The righteousness of God is first for the disciple; from this all else follows.
This implies the third trait of the disciple: fidelity. Allegiance to God’s will and reign is paramount, not in order to secure one’s own salvation but precisely because of it and in response to it. Matthew contains stern admonitions for those torn between loyalties and those of impure motives. They have no place in the kingdom because they have one foot securely in this world.
When the disciples fail it is either becomes fear overcomes their best instincts toward fidelity or because their thinking is still tainted by the structures and expectations of the world. And those two failures are intimately related. The expectation of the world is that if Jesus dies his kingdom will not endure. The expectation of the world is that securing a place in anyone’s kingdom is seeking out power and authority for oneself.
But fidelity to God indicates quite differently.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Serial Fiction: Whisper from the Dust X
Chapter Four
September 2, 440 Y.A.
“What happened?” I asked when I awoke. The room I found myself in was plain and simple, but different from the stone flats in Ariel; these walls were wooden planks stained dark, as was all the furniture I saw, though that was only the bed itself, a small table of the kind best used for playing cards, and the chair in which sat my master, Ryn Batyst. I don’t know that the room could have fit another soul.
“Where am I?” I asked again – and, when I noted the dimness of the light washing through the room’s wood-framed window, “What time is it?”
Ryn nodded. “We were worried: not everyone lives through river fugue, and your head took enough of a blow to cause real damage. But now you wake, in the last hour of the afternoon. The sun is setting.”
I guessed, then, and half-sat up. “The farmer and his wife?”
“Heru and Triske. You must learn all the names, Del. No one else knows anyone. That is for our safety. But the Blooded will depend on you.”
My vision swam when I tried to shake my head, and I was nearly sick. “All I do is fail. I failed the examination. I brought an un-Blooded to our meeting, and couldn’t even escape on my own when she brought the Greens upon us.”
Batyst raised his eyes to meet my own; he had been looking at the floor – lost, I suppose, within his own thoughts even as he answered my questions. “To infiltrate the Temple always was unlikely; what happened was exactly what I expected,” he said. “The girl was a surprise, but she warned us that the guards were coming. We would not have known. We should have taken the smuggler’s gate rather than the stair. We drew attention to ourselves. But the Greens did not catch anyone. We have all dispersed or returned to the city. The Blooded are safe.”
“But the call of the Well of the Dead,” I said. “It stopped.” When I realized that my arms could not hold my upper body above the bed any longer, I fell back, exhausted.
Ryn smiled. “Each day we learn anew. Now we know that either the Wells of the Dead are not unconcerned for us, or that the Blood is not as indifferent as we suppose.”
“Where is she?” I asked. “What were those ships, those spheres? Are they still there?”
“She is safe. I thought you would know about the ships. You have spent far more time with the Historians than I. The whole world is talking about them. And I doubt that they will go away as soon as we might like.”
I closed my eyes and thought. “They are Orchids,” I said. “the greatest engines of the Profusion. The gods gave them to humanity so that they might leave the Earth, and when all the worlds had been colonized, the Profusion used them first against the heretics, then in the long losing wars against the winds of the void. They were thought utterly destroyed.”
“Nine of them now circle our own world.”
“The Profusion is beginning anew, then. Other humans have come to trade and talk with us, and we have much to learn. They can be our allies, our friends.”
“No,” Batyst shook his head. “Friends seldom come in force. And I do not feel the grace of the Profusion being restored. True, Historian Senre did say their shrouds matched the colors of the shield worlds, of our ancient sister planets beside the nearest stars.”
“Then that’s why the Faith went up to the Needles, because he had heard that they were coming. The Needles must be observatories! It wasn’t about that relic ship at all. But that means the Needles knew those ships were coming, and their veilmen told the Faith. But why didn’t he tell us that? Why didn’t you know? Have the crews of the Orchids said anything? And how has all this happened since last night?”
Batyst reached over and grasped my shoulder. “Rest, Del,” he said. “You’ve been ill for three days. I’ve met with the Public of Guilds and returned. You are still recovering, though it seems the Blood has perhaps helped you fight the river virus. But the concerns of the world are too big for all of us. What is not too big for us is that through all of this there has been good news. No, not good news – great news.”
I stopped staring at the ceiling and turned to look at him. “Three days? I’ve missed the payment, then. I’ve lost my stall. I’ll be demoted in the guild. It’ll be months before I can afford another one.”
Now Batyst reached up and covered my eyes with his palm. “Rest, Del Tanich of Ariel. I’ve spoken with your guild and loaned you money from my account. You’ll have a booth to sell your seeds. But that is not important. What is important is that the High Historian Salaan, the great Head of all the Order of the Children of History, has washed up, even more ill than you. on friendly Sepiran shores. The Guardian there reports that he is on death’s own door.”
Instead of risking the nausea of shaking my head again, this time I merely sighed. “But what has that to do with us? Even if he dies, another Historian will just replace him. Senre, probably, and someone worse will just come here to take his place.”
Ryn’s laughter boomed through the little room. “No, Del, no one will replace Salaan. Because someone already has! He has been exiled, without due procedure. It was a palace revolution in Kasora that’s kept it silent. A rogue power sits in the Jade Temple now. But our Senre already contests their authority. He’s sent couriers to every city and Temple on this continent. The Order of the Historians is crumbling. Their house fights against itself— just as we prepare to strike it down.”
With a grin that held all the confidence of a sun, Batyst stood up and put his hand upon my shoulder, “ Rest, Del,” he said softly. “You’re going to need it.” With that, and with his typical resounding stride, he left.
And I shall admit, dear reader, I did sleep more soundly for knowledge of the High Historian. Batyst and I have both thought much on the effects of our insurrection, whenever it succeeds, and how the Order of History itself would respond. Now it seemed that they might not be able to.
When I woke again, it was morning and I felt quite well. I ate whole bowls of Heru’s simple and splendid soup before spending the rest of the day strolling through Triske’s broad fields. The earth was soft and rich and I wondered if perhaps there might be business in selling that to people in the city, right alongside my seeds. Every gardener in Ariel complains of the soil they must dig up from their basements. But how in the grace of the Profusion would I ever convince a farmer to sacrifice even a gram of it?
Then I chanced to look at the sky and chastised myself for such concerns: five of the Orchids, large as they were, still showed during the day, the dark black of their sides not quite absorbing all the sun that chanced to strike them. They’ve said nothing, Heru assured me.
She also related the Faith’s full statement on the issue: we will await further developments. Whereas the Orchids have taken no action against Thaeron itself, we will take no action beyond calling the Guardian to double their patrols. Whereas recent activity within particular Needles coincides with the orbital proximity of an Orchid ship, and whereas the crews of the Orchids remain silent and inactive, we have reason to believe that the Needles themselves possess significant defensive capabilities. On them all Thaeron will rely. Such is the thinking of our elected bureaucrat.
It was nightfall and I was still considering all of this – and wondering how I could discreetly return to the city, and sitting down to write these pages – when a great knock pounded my door. I knew it instantly, as kind Triske had but tapped gently when he came with my breakfast, and as I’d heard Ryn’s knock so many times upon my own door in Ariel. He is the only Blooded, too, who knows where each Blooded lives. The rest of us are left with the chance knowledge of friendship and association – and more than one of us has been surprised to see a tavern chum pass naked through the earth and into the Blood’s particular bliss. I suppose he will tell me these things, too, whenever he believes I’m ready.
But he came in as though I were in my own room, with the bravado and sincerity of an autumn squall, and I noted that that first chill of that season had descended on Ariel. Soon I will change over to selling winter seeds, those that do with less light and warmth in the year-round gardens. Though those sell more cheaply, I have always preferred the autumn of the year. That is the season that feels most like living to me, as we all of us inhabit that time when our summer’s grace can only be remembered on certain afternoons, and when the nights tell us of darkness and death to come. The Feasts of Present Days in the fall of the year have always been my favorites, though they remind everyone what will happen when the Historians, machines, and histories all fade into collapse or obsolescence, as inevitably they must.
“Come now, Del!” boomed Batyst. “The revolution will be joyous! We should be, too.”
“She said it would be boring, if we’re the ones who do it.” I snorted.
He raised his eyebrows at this, but said nothing. Instead he walked over beside the window to stand with his back toward me and said, “I want you to come with me, Del.”
September 2, 440 Y.A.
“What happened?” I asked when I awoke. The room I found myself in was plain and simple, but different from the stone flats in Ariel; these walls were wooden planks stained dark, as was all the furniture I saw, though that was only the bed itself, a small table of the kind best used for playing cards, and the chair in which sat my master, Ryn Batyst. I don’t know that the room could have fit another soul.
“Where am I?” I asked again – and, when I noted the dimness of the light washing through the room’s wood-framed window, “What time is it?”
Ryn nodded. “We were worried: not everyone lives through river fugue, and your head took enough of a blow to cause real damage. But now you wake, in the last hour of the afternoon. The sun is setting.”
I guessed, then, and half-sat up. “The farmer and his wife?”
“Heru and Triske. You must learn all the names, Del. No one else knows anyone. That is for our safety. But the Blooded will depend on you.”
My vision swam when I tried to shake my head, and I was nearly sick. “All I do is fail. I failed the examination. I brought an un-Blooded to our meeting, and couldn’t even escape on my own when she brought the Greens upon us.”
Batyst raised his eyes to meet my own; he had been looking at the floor – lost, I suppose, within his own thoughts even as he answered my questions. “To infiltrate the Temple always was unlikely; what happened was exactly what I expected,” he said. “The girl was a surprise, but she warned us that the guards were coming. We would not have known. We should have taken the smuggler’s gate rather than the stair. We drew attention to ourselves. But the Greens did not catch anyone. We have all dispersed or returned to the city. The Blooded are safe.”
“But the call of the Well of the Dead,” I said. “It stopped.” When I realized that my arms could not hold my upper body above the bed any longer, I fell back, exhausted.
Ryn smiled. “Each day we learn anew. Now we know that either the Wells of the Dead are not unconcerned for us, or that the Blood is not as indifferent as we suppose.”
“Where is she?” I asked. “What were those ships, those spheres? Are they still there?”
“She is safe. I thought you would know about the ships. You have spent far more time with the Historians than I. The whole world is talking about them. And I doubt that they will go away as soon as we might like.”
I closed my eyes and thought. “They are Orchids,” I said. “the greatest engines of the Profusion. The gods gave them to humanity so that they might leave the Earth, and when all the worlds had been colonized, the Profusion used them first against the heretics, then in the long losing wars against the winds of the void. They were thought utterly destroyed.”
“Nine of them now circle our own world.”
“The Profusion is beginning anew, then. Other humans have come to trade and talk with us, and we have much to learn. They can be our allies, our friends.”
“No,” Batyst shook his head. “Friends seldom come in force. And I do not feel the grace of the Profusion being restored. True, Historian Senre did say their shrouds matched the colors of the shield worlds, of our ancient sister planets beside the nearest stars.”
“Then that’s why the Faith went up to the Needles, because he had heard that they were coming. The Needles must be observatories! It wasn’t about that relic ship at all. But that means the Needles knew those ships were coming, and their veilmen told the Faith. But why didn’t he tell us that? Why didn’t you know? Have the crews of the Orchids said anything? And how has all this happened since last night?”
Batyst reached over and grasped my shoulder. “Rest, Del,” he said. “You’ve been ill for three days. I’ve met with the Public of Guilds and returned. You are still recovering, though it seems the Blood has perhaps helped you fight the river virus. But the concerns of the world are too big for all of us. What is not too big for us is that through all of this there has been good news. No, not good news – great news.”
I stopped staring at the ceiling and turned to look at him. “Three days? I’ve missed the payment, then. I’ve lost my stall. I’ll be demoted in the guild. It’ll be months before I can afford another one.”
Now Batyst reached up and covered my eyes with his palm. “Rest, Del Tanich of Ariel. I’ve spoken with your guild and loaned you money from my account. You’ll have a booth to sell your seeds. But that is not important. What is important is that the High Historian Salaan, the great Head of all the Order of the Children of History, has washed up, even more ill than you. on friendly Sepiran shores. The Guardian there reports that he is on death’s own door.”
Instead of risking the nausea of shaking my head again, this time I merely sighed. “But what has that to do with us? Even if he dies, another Historian will just replace him. Senre, probably, and someone worse will just come here to take his place.”
Ryn’s laughter boomed through the little room. “No, Del, no one will replace Salaan. Because someone already has! He has been exiled, without due procedure. It was a palace revolution in Kasora that’s kept it silent. A rogue power sits in the Jade Temple now. But our Senre already contests their authority. He’s sent couriers to every city and Temple on this continent. The Order of the Historians is crumbling. Their house fights against itself— just as we prepare to strike it down.”
With a grin that held all the confidence of a sun, Batyst stood up and put his hand upon my shoulder, “ Rest, Del,” he said softly. “You’re going to need it.” With that, and with his typical resounding stride, he left.
And I shall admit, dear reader, I did sleep more soundly for knowledge of the High Historian. Batyst and I have both thought much on the effects of our insurrection, whenever it succeeds, and how the Order of History itself would respond. Now it seemed that they might not be able to.
When I woke again, it was morning and I felt quite well. I ate whole bowls of Heru’s simple and splendid soup before spending the rest of the day strolling through Triske’s broad fields. The earth was soft and rich and I wondered if perhaps there might be business in selling that to people in the city, right alongside my seeds. Every gardener in Ariel complains of the soil they must dig up from their basements. But how in the grace of the Profusion would I ever convince a farmer to sacrifice even a gram of it?
Then I chanced to look at the sky and chastised myself for such concerns: five of the Orchids, large as they were, still showed during the day, the dark black of their sides not quite absorbing all the sun that chanced to strike them. They’ve said nothing, Heru assured me.
She also related the Faith’s full statement on the issue: we will await further developments. Whereas the Orchids have taken no action against Thaeron itself, we will take no action beyond calling the Guardian to double their patrols. Whereas recent activity within particular Needles coincides with the orbital proximity of an Orchid ship, and whereas the crews of the Orchids remain silent and inactive, we have reason to believe that the Needles themselves possess significant defensive capabilities. On them all Thaeron will rely. Such is the thinking of our elected bureaucrat.
It was nightfall and I was still considering all of this – and wondering how I could discreetly return to the city, and sitting down to write these pages – when a great knock pounded my door. I knew it instantly, as kind Triske had but tapped gently when he came with my breakfast, and as I’d heard Ryn’s knock so many times upon my own door in Ariel. He is the only Blooded, too, who knows where each Blooded lives. The rest of us are left with the chance knowledge of friendship and association – and more than one of us has been surprised to see a tavern chum pass naked through the earth and into the Blood’s particular bliss. I suppose he will tell me these things, too, whenever he believes I’m ready.
But he came in as though I were in my own room, with the bravado and sincerity of an autumn squall, and I noted that that first chill of that season had descended on Ariel. Soon I will change over to selling winter seeds, those that do with less light and warmth in the year-round gardens. Though those sell more cheaply, I have always preferred the autumn of the year. That is the season that feels most like living to me, as we all of us inhabit that time when our summer’s grace can only be remembered on certain afternoons, and when the nights tell us of darkness and death to come. The Feasts of Present Days in the fall of the year have always been my favorites, though they remind everyone what will happen when the Historians, machines, and histories all fade into collapse or obsolescence, as inevitably they must.
“Come now, Del!” boomed Batyst. “The revolution will be joyous! We should be, too.”
“She said it would be boring, if we’re the ones who do it.” I snorted.
He raised his eyebrows at this, but said nothing. Instead he walked over beside the window to stand with his back toward me and said, “I want you to come with me, Del.”
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Christology: On Brock & Parker's Feminist Critique
I couldn’t help but wonder, reading this, if the authors had actually encountered the same kind of Christianity I had. To be sure, the abuses of Christian doctrine to pin suffering on the victims and to minimize, sacrilize, or obfuscate the suffering of the disenfranchised is itself a long and unfortunately storied history. They are without doubt right in their analysis concerning the ways Christian teaching have been used as a weapon throughout the ages, and I agree and sympathize with them on many counts in that regard.
Where I think I would depart from those readings is 1) understanding ‘the tradition’ or ‘the Church’ as a monolithic entity without much apparent complexity or redeeming value and 2) understanding the abuse of church dogma as necessarily indicative of the nature of that dogma itself. For instance, ‘the central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the world communicates the message that suffering is redemptive’ could just as plausibly be said, within Christian tradition, to communicate the message that Jesus’s suffering is redemptive.
To what degree and in what manner Christians are to follow that act has been subject to a great diversity of opinion and interpretation; I am not aware of any dogmatic formulation that puts anyone back up on the cross with Jesus. Nor I am aware of anyone ever saying that ‘imitation of Christ is first and foremost obedient willingness to endure pain.’ It’s simply something I’ve never heard outside of a few extreme ascetics that the Church has by and large abandoned anyway. Perhaps I have not been told that because I am a man; I do not know. But it’s certainly nothing within my own experience.
What is within the realm of the Christianity I have encountered is something like ‘imitation of Christ is first and foremost obedient willingness to love.’ So much of Christianity makes no sense whatsoever outside of that cornerstone – and so much of it makes enormous sense within it. Christ’s suffering was great because it was for love. Christ’s suffering was efficacious because it was for love. To love in this life is to experience pain. That is unavoidable. That is inevitable. The modernist, just utopia free of all suffering whatsoever isn’t going to happen in this life. That’s no endorsement of suffering, that doesn’t mean it’s all okay. It just means we’re going to have to deal with it.
God was saying in Christ that we love anyway, because God loves anyway. Even God doesn’t love without pain. Even God isn’t ‘safe.’ That might not have been articulated in any atonement theology as such, and I believe this an error that tradition has indeed made. But certainly anyone who knows John 3:16 ought at least to have the principle of love in mind. Brown and Parker posit that their approach is theological, not biblical. And I’m sorry for that. So much of their concerns could be addressed simply by an ethic genuinely and steadfastly grounded in biblical love. That’s both more and less revolutionary than anything they propose, and an element that both they and their oppressors have overlooked.
Where I think I would depart from those readings is 1) understanding ‘the tradition’ or ‘the Church’ as a monolithic entity without much apparent complexity or redeeming value and 2) understanding the abuse of church dogma as necessarily indicative of the nature of that dogma itself. For instance, ‘the central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the world communicates the message that suffering is redemptive’ could just as plausibly be said, within Christian tradition, to communicate the message that Jesus’s suffering is redemptive.
To what degree and in what manner Christians are to follow that act has been subject to a great diversity of opinion and interpretation; I am not aware of any dogmatic formulation that puts anyone back up on the cross with Jesus. Nor I am aware of anyone ever saying that ‘imitation of Christ is first and foremost obedient willingness to endure pain.’ It’s simply something I’ve never heard outside of a few extreme ascetics that the Church has by and large abandoned anyway. Perhaps I have not been told that because I am a man; I do not know. But it’s certainly nothing within my own experience.
What is within the realm of the Christianity I have encountered is something like ‘imitation of Christ is first and foremost obedient willingness to love.’ So much of Christianity makes no sense whatsoever outside of that cornerstone – and so much of it makes enormous sense within it. Christ’s suffering was great because it was for love. Christ’s suffering was efficacious because it was for love. To love in this life is to experience pain. That is unavoidable. That is inevitable. The modernist, just utopia free of all suffering whatsoever isn’t going to happen in this life. That’s no endorsement of suffering, that doesn’t mean it’s all okay. It just means we’re going to have to deal with it.
God was saying in Christ that we love anyway, because God loves anyway. Even God doesn’t love without pain. Even God isn’t ‘safe.’ That might not have been articulated in any atonement theology as such, and I believe this an error that tradition has indeed made. But certainly anyone who knows John 3:16 ought at least to have the principle of love in mind. Brown and Parker posit that their approach is theological, not biblical. And I’m sorry for that. So much of their concerns could be addressed simply by an ethic genuinely and steadfastly grounded in biblical love. That’s both more and less revolutionary than anything they propose, and an element that both they and their oppressors have overlooked.
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