Page a Day: Three

            I blinked. “But we already are at war.” Something passed through me, then, dark and cold as winter water. It was that sinking feeling that men call dread. 

            “They came a year ago,” I said, remembering. “From the void between the stars, in ships like moons. They never demanded anything, or told us who they were. They just came. They brought that black cloud...”

            Jerem Cozak pursed his lips. “The nightwind.”

            “The nightwind, that could change a person’s loyalty.”

            His face darkened.  “That power was not commonly known.”

            “I knew a woman. She saw things, painted things. The nightwind covering the world, and now I suppose it has. I met her just before they came. When the city fell, she... killed herself.” I frowned. “That’s it. That’s all I remember, finding her body. After that, I...” I waved my hand. 

            He frowned. “She was your lover?”

            “She would have said she was my friend.” My face grew hot.

            “Our time is hard for lovers and for friends. But it is good for allies now.” He pushed himself upright. “Come, Del. Victory never waits. ” He stepped out of the sarcophagus.  

             I laughed at him. “There are only two of us. But there are armies of millions of them.”

            I saw then that he had no scholars’ frame, soft and slight as I had often supposed, but a body wiry and tense, the build of a gunner of the veilmen, posted on the edges of the battle, but always fighting nonetheless.

            He turned and walked over to the wall, where the woman had gone out. “That was is over; we lost. The armies have moved on. But in this we will have allies. Stand up.”  

Page a Day: Two

             I remembered, then. I was sixteen when I stood in the vaulted, musty Temple, taking my final exam, right hand inserted inside a small box of clear plastic. Within, the silver machines that made Profusionist metal seeped around my skin, tingling and itching. While the Historians watched, I willed that the machines become hard as stone, then free and fluid as water. They did neither. 

            Nauseous from failure and over-sweet incense, I withdrew my hand. The great technologies of the world would remain forever dark to me. The mysteries of the relics of that time when humans crossed the void between the stars would never exalt my consciousness. No sentient machine would ever answer me.

            Yet I was now in a Well of the Profusion, a house of such machines. The walls and floor and ceiling were all made of them. The sarcophagus was not for the dead, but was itself some kind of machine. There would be machines too small to see, laboring in the air to cleanse it of our breath. 

            “Del Tanich, behold your ally,” said a strong, smooth voice. I jumped. But it was of course my companion, who had finally woken up beside me. And when I turned to look at him I nearly started again. For I knew him, in the way that nearly everyone may know a particular kind of person. 

            A shrine in the Market square displayed his piercing green eyes. Coins of the realm held his taught thin face and hairless head in sharply etched relief. His commanding baritone had authorized a hundred laws in my own lifetime. 

            “Our Faith,” I said, pressing my palms together and my fingertips to my forehead, as do all those who meet any more powerful than they. My hands shook, and now my stomach ached with hunger. My voice came out high and cracking and weak, as though I had not used it in a very long time. I realized that I wore only the sackcloth shirt and trousers which prisoners of the Temple wear. 

            A warm hand grasped my wrist. “The Faith is dead,” he said, moving my hands away from my face, “and there will be no other. I am Jerem Cozak. The Faiths came to give men peace. I’ve come to give you war.” 

Page A Day: One

Behold the Jade City

On the first day,          

            The Faith admitted that yes, I had once killed him. Then he changed the conversation. Now, of course, I know that he is only that sort of man. But then, when this all began, I did not even know his name. I barely knew my own.

            I woke laying with him inside a silver-sided sarcophagus which had no padding of any kind. We were arranged so that we faced each other. The lid, thick as his pale arm, canted against the side of our receptacle, having been slid aside and abandoned. Our other limbs were entangled. My left hand grasped his right foot.

            I guessed that we were not lovers, or not good ones. Perhaps we had been thrown there. We had certainly been unconscious. My companion remained so. He did not move, though I let him go.

            The soft scratching that had woken me continued. It was like the sound of leather on some metallic thing. I blinked my eyes and shook my head and remembered very little. When I sat up, my head and stomach ached. My mouth felt full of chalk. I had been drunk, or ill.

            The room itself was the same whitish silver as the metal sarcophagus, and square and small, no more than five strides along a wall. It held that smell that only comes immediately before a summer storm. It was dim, having no doors or windows. In fact, its diffuse light had no visible source of any kind. I shivered.

            And turned my gaze upward just in time to see a woman’s long, black-trousered legs struggle upward through the ceiling above the farthest wall. Even her boots were black, and it was their sound that had awoken me. The flare of her hips told her sex. But nothing could tell me how she had climbed a wall that held no handholds, and passed through a ceiling which had no opening. Before I could cry out, she disappeared. 

On Scripture: Job 42

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

Then Job answered the LORD:

"I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

`Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

`Hear, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you declare to me.'

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes."

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations. And Job died, old and full of days.

On Scripture: Job 38

Job 38:1-7, (34-41)

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up your loins like a man,

     I will question you, and you shall declare to me. 

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

    Tell me, if you have understanding. 

Who determined its measurements-- surely you know!

    Or who stretched the line upon it? 

On what were its bases sunk,

    or who laid its cornerstone 

when the morning stars sang together

    and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

"Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,

    so that a flood of waters may cover you?

Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go

    and say to you, `Here we are'?

Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,

    or given understanding to the mind?

Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?

    Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,

when the dust runs into a mass

    and the clods cling together?

"Can you hunt the prey for the lion,

    or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,

when they crouch in their dens,

    or lie in wait in their covert?

Who provides for the raven its prey,

    when its young ones cry to God,

    and wander about for lack of food?"

On Scripture: 2:1-10

One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it."

The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason."

Then Satan answered the LORD, "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life."

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die." But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Next time: How does this text baffle me? How does it accuse me?

On Scripture: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22

On Scripture: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22

The king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, "What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled." Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me-- that is my petition-- and the lives of my people-- that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king." Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?" Esther said, "A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.

Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.

How does this text guide me? What is it concerned about, what are its interests?

It's worse than I thought. The king's anger didn't save the Jews. At least, his anger alone did not do so. The lectionary omits the scene where Haman falls on Esther's feet pleading for his life. This happened because the king was so angry that he left the room. Haman knew he was probably moments away from death. So did Esther. She looked the man in the eyes. And she did nothing. Not even when the king came back in and claimed Haman was trying to rape her, which he clearly wasn't trying to do. She lets the man die on a trumped-up charge that was probably an excuse to get rid of a political opportunist (even touching a king's woman was tantamount to coup de' etat). Meanwhile, we see from the text that she is a pretty astute political opportunist herself.

Stone cold. I bet she did that with a solemn expression.

Now, the text has a lot to say about ironic reversals and getters getting got. It's beautifully written. And, written in the post-Exilic period, it clearly has a lot to say about the triumphant deliverance of the Jewish people and the celebration of Purim, a Jewish holiday whose origin does not appear in the Torah. But not only does Esther turn down what had to be an honest supplication, the reaction of the Jews in succeeding chapters may well be a bit excessive. 

So, yes, Ether is a controversial book. It was a late addition to the Jewish cannon. It does not mention God. It does not mention the law. Luther wished it had never been written. It may have contributed to Jewish hostility against Gentiles (of course, they would say, so did the attempted genocides). On the other hand, it sounds like Joseph and wisdom literature and Daniel and does know its Jewish history. And Esther comes the whole way out of the closet about being a Jew, probably a good thing in the Diaspora. 

So that's what the text means to do. Character matters. Talent, intent and utter accident all accomplish the will of God. Evil will be overturned, perhaps to the degree that it has sought to overturn the good. Communities love the come-uppance of their enemies. And of course the text says that both anger and serenity, whether for the arrogance which believes that the world must change just because it wants it to or the arrogance which believes it will not change despite all the pressures of circumstance...neither of them have to worry about looking foolish. 

Because on the one hand, they already are, and on the other hand, what matters is what God chooses to do with one's particular foolishness. Absolutely, the portrait of Esther is at least somewhat embarrassing, in the sense that she reminds us of King David, to some degree, where every action has a secondary purpose, and all of this has been very, very carefully considered. I don't laud David for it. And I don't praise Esther. 

But I can't condemn her for it, either. We are all of us two-edged swords. 

next time:  How are these words healing me? When this text loves me, who does it love, and how?

the Curious Monk