January 14,
2009
Promises, Promises
Up early,
reading First Samuel for no other reason than it makes my mother happy to know
I have a Bible on my bedside table.
By “happy” I mean something like “content” or “at peace.”
The story
(skipping lightly through the Vacation Bible School stuff everyone remembers):
A man has
two wives. One of them has children, the
other does not. The other (Hannah) prays
in the temple, a bargain: God, if you give me a son, I’ll give him back to
you. Over and over again, rocking back
and forth. The priest, Eli, thinks she’s
drunk. She convinces him she’s not. He says, “Then, God answer your prayer.”
She gets pregnant with Samuel. When he’s three, she gives him up to Eli to
serve in the temple, then she goes home to have more sons.
Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are
a mess. Find a way a priest can screw
up, they screw up. Their sins are “great in the sight of the LORD.” Samuel
on the other hand is a good lad, and one night God speaks to him – this is a
rare thing in those days. Among other
things, God tells Samuel that Eli’s sons are through, nothing anyone can do will ever get their sins forgiven.
And nothing does. They’re killed by the Philistines, and when
Eli hears of it he falls off his chair, now old and fat, and breaks his neck. So ends the house of Eli the priest.
11:40 pm.
By “at peace” I mean “not rushed,” “not harried.” Time to pursue tangents, to slip away to take a leak without
looking over your shoulder.
By
“at peace” I also mean “free,” especially
to think in the wrong direction, to make a mistake, even a horrendous mistake, and be forgiven. “I’ll love you forever,
she says, “until someone better comes along, or someone less likely to make
mistakes.”
“You
and your descendants will be my priests," God says to Aaron and his sons. "You have my word on it, and my word is ‘forever’”
(Exodus 28:1, 43). Does God add under
his breath “until such time as . . .”? Or, does God just give up on his “perpetual
statute” when the going gets sticky, when priests get stinky like H and P?
And
if God can give up on this promise when things don't go as hoped, then, Mother dear, what of God's promise to me? – so grace turns out to be conditional and
forgiveness a not-so-funny joke. I'm only free as long as I don't make a bad mistake.
I can’t stop thinking about work. There must exist somewhere a group of people
you could have a real, long-term conversation with. “This,”
you could say, “is what is bothering me." “I can see that,” they could reply. “You’re
wrong, of course, but I can see it.” I
could be. I don’t need to be right all
the time. “But you can see it, what I’m
saying?” And they'd nod, “Yes.” “That’s good,” you'd say. “That’s really good. I appreciate it. Thanks. I mean it. Thanks. Really.”
You’re
babbling because you do mean it, but you don’t believe it. Soon, because they’ve been at this all their
lives and you’re among them for a season . . . soon they’re talking behind your
back. They don’t mean any harm. They just wanted to figure you out, put you in
the right box. There are plenty of boxes
around, too, but not the right one. “Well,
hell, if I’m gonna build a new box . . .” X says. “No, no. You shouldn’t oughtta have to,” Y is indignant. And Z agrees with him: “Sometimes folks gotta
make compromises.” By “folks” he means other folks.
So,
you compromise. Go along to get
along. (Yes, Mother.) But the conversation is over. Words that could chase around thoughts like
free-range chickens around their yard end up in coops deader than alive in foul prisons.
Every
time I pass a truck stacked with those birds in their wooden cells, I promise I’ll
never eat chicken again. I do have some
in the freezer, though, I can’t let go to waste. But never again after that.
W
Nulli se dicit
mulier mea nubere malle
quam mihi, no si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
Dicit: sed mulier
cupido quod dicit amanti
in vento et rapida scriber oportet aqua.
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