Thoughts on Languages, Signs and God

The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.”  Mark 8:11-12

Our modern world thinks in the language of Science. In the language of Science, you propose a theory and then test it. In Science, you collect data. In Science, you're looking for proof, amassing evidence. When something is true, there will be signs that it's true, clues to buttress a theory you're working on. Eventually you stack up so many clues or evidences or signs indicating that something is true, that you start referring to it as a "fact" or a "law."  In Science, concepts can be expressed in little bits and tidy packages, often with diagrams and mathematics. That's the language of Science.

There are other languages for speaking of ourselves and the universe around us, however. These other languages are, in my opinion, other "ways of knowing." Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule wrote a book that I heard a lot about during my doctoral studies, called Women's Ways of Knowing.  The researchers noted that women don't only know something because they theorize and test a theory, but they also know based on intuition, context and connectedness. There are signs, but their knowing is strongly connected to gut feeling, intuition, and emotion. There is evidence, but it doesn't come in tidy packages; instead, a "way of knowing" is all about concepts being interconnected, interwoven, integrated.

There's another language or way of knowing, which I would call "Superstition." Superstition is a language of fear, because the speaker of Superstition sees evidences of threat in their world. Don't do this thing, because then a bad thing will happen. Or do this other thing so you can keep the evil away from your door. If something happened to you, it's because the Universe is angry with you for breaching some rule or whim of the gods which may or may not have an explanation. You had better make amends, and fast, or worse will come to happen. People who speak Superstition walk around with a fearful eye looking, looking for warnings, for threats, for dangers. They often give away their power to psychics, omens, charms and strategies designed to bring good luck. As there is much fear in our world, there are also a great many people speaking the language of Superstition, whether they would identify it as thus, or not.

And then there's the language of Faith. As with Superstition, Faith is speaks with belief in the unseen. Unlike Superstition, Faith is not a language of fear. It is a language of hope, of expectation, of surety in face of an absence of hard proof. But Faith isn't simply based on make-believe. There is always some evidence or sign that functions as the fertilizer of Faith. Oddly enough, this evidence becomes clear, much of the time, after the crucial moment, and is identifiable only as the basis for the next conversation in Faith. Nevertheless, one doesn't just pick up this language out of thin air. There are signs, clues, and evidences ... but not enough of them for the language of Faith and the language of Science to become one and the same.

While Science spoken fluently doesn't take leaps to conclusions, Faith spoken with conviction, does. It takes leaps, sometimes happily, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes by sheer force of will, based on some sort of evidence. Interestingly enough, if proof were to show up, it would no longer be the language of Faith.

In the above-referenced story of the Pharisees questioning Jesus, they were speaking the language of Science. They wanted proof that he was who he said he was. There were theories floating out there that he was the Promised One. They wanted clear clues, evidences, and signs. The irony was that there were signs all around them, yet they didn't connect the dots. The stories go like this, in order starting in Mark 7: (1) Jesus heals a girl of a demon in Tyre, (2) Jesus heals a blind and mute man, (3) Jesus feeds four thousand people with seven loaves and a few fish, (4) the Pharisees ask him to perform a sign from heaven for them (5) Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida.

Okay, you tell me: where in that short narrative was Jesus not giving evidence that he had some kind of connection with the Divine?  Does it not strike you as a bit nutty that religious leaders show up in the middle of all that, asking him to do a hat trick from Heaven?

Herein, I think, lies the issue: Some people either have forgotten the language of Faith, or they never have learned it.

I see people who are naturally drawn to Faith, seeing God's work all around them, picking up on clues and evidences of Divinity--not proof in the language of Science, but evidences in the language of Faith. Other people seem to have no interest in Faith. They demand that God, if He is to be taken seriously, prove His existence in some foolproof (a punny adjective indeed) way, beyond the shadow of a doubt, so that it can be measured, photographed, chemically tested, DNA-mapped, and recorded in the annals of Science. It doesn't matter if evidences come before and after their demands delivered to God in the language of Science; they do not see them. They are effectively monolingual in their set of tools for dealing with the Big Questions of the universe.

It is not my intent to make fun of people who are either disinterested, or who insist on understanding God in the language of Science. Obviously I prefer to approach the whole topic through the language of Faith on this blog. Having said that, I respect those who address the world through the language of Science, and I use a whole lot of the language of Science in my real, day-to-day activities and conversations. I just think it's pitifully narrow to expect and require the whole world to know and speak of everything in the universe using one language at all times. I would prefer that people were multilingual, to stretch my analogy. We need to do good Science; we need to do good Faith. We need not be shocked or offended when people come along who can use more than one language.

In this case, I think the researchers who wrote Women's Ways of Knowing are on to something; there is other ways to know ourselves and the world around us. The authors of that book proposed that those ways are gender-related, but I think there is far more diversity than that. I've suggested here that the Big Questions of the universe (Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?) can be discussed through the languages of Science, or Superstition, or Faith. It's possible that there are more languages by which to approach the Big Questions. I'm still musing upon the whole thing.

My point is that in any language we speak of these things, we are fallible humans unlikely to find the things that are invisible to us, just as the Pharisees were oblivious to the evidences all around them. I am grateful for the language of Faith, for its richness and its puzzlements, for the ways in which it speaks to the deep in me as none of the other languages do. I suppose that's why I write about Faith so much. Because, unlike the language of Science, the language of Faith invites me to make those leaps based on little evidences, affirms an inner knowing, points out what I wouldn't otherwise see, satisfies my need for hope and rest, and connects me to both the human and the Divine.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.  Heb. 11:1-2

Myth and Physicality

"Without Purse or Scrip" by Liz Lemon Swindle

Have you considered the flesh-and-blood Jesus lately?

Mark chapter 1: Jesus took the hand of Simon's mother-in-law and helped her up. Jesus reached out his hand and touched a man with leprosy. 

Mark chapter 2: Jesus walked along the lake. He ate dinner at Levi's house. 

Mark chapter 3: Jesus was jostled by crowds. He climbed a mountain. His eyes scanned the faces of those sitting around him.

Mark chapter 4: Jesus got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake. He slept on a cushion in the stern of the boat. He got up in the middle of a storm and rebuked the elements.

Mark chapter 5: Jesus felt power go out of him. He looked around the crowd, trying to see who had touched his clothes. He took a little girl's lifeless hand in his own hand, telling her to get up.

Mark chapter 6: Jesus laid his hands on sick people, healing them. He looked up to heaven when he gave thanks for bread. He broke bread and divided fish, handing out the pieces to be passed along to five thousand people. He walked on the lake. He climbed into the boat at the end of his walk on water.

Mark chapter 7: Jesus walked miles and miles to Tyre and Sidon. He put his fingers in a deaf man's ears. He spit and touched the tongue of the man, who also couldn't talk. He looked up to heaven and sighed ... sighed ... deeply.

And he spoke, and taught, and prayed.

"Lord, I Believe," by Liz Lemon Swindle

I am reading through the gospel of Mark in my morning devotions. I've only finished the first seven chapters, but over and over I notice indications of the physicality of Jesus. He touches. He climbs. He talks. He eats. He sighs. He looks, and looks, and looks again. 

Visiting Israel when I was eighteen years old, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of amazement that it all really existed. The holy land was not a myth, like Hansel and Gretel or Aesop's fables or Cinderella. Here were the places I had heard about and read about since I was too young to speak, here were the hills that Jesus had looked at, the lake he crossed so many times, the river in which he was baptized. It was all real. It was all physical. Jesus existed here, in this place, nearly 2000 years before I arrived on this piece of earth.

Again, reading the book of Mark, I'm struck by the physicality of the text. As one of my Bible study group friends pointed out last week, it's the details of the story that remind you that it wasn't a myth. It really happened. No one makes up stories with this kind of detail, no one else has fabricated a man who delivers anything like this collection of teachings. It comes alive all over again as you visualize it: you watch Jesus pick up the lifeless hand of a little girl; you hold your breath watching him look around and scan the faces of the crowd for the telltale expression of the one who touched his clothing; you hear the rocks roll under his footfalls as he walks the dusty paths; you see his chest heave with a big, full-lung sigh and his face turned up toward heaven before he tells the deaf man's ears to "be opened."

Children around the age of five or six are concerned about what is make-believe and what is real. Is that a real story? Is Santa Claus real? Are angels real? In some way, I think, we continue to negotiate that question throughout our lives. I admit that I do, reading these old familiar stories and looking for the real flesh-and-blood Jesus. The story doesn't amount to a hill of beans unless you settle the question of his physicality, his real 3-D existence in a very real world inhabited by you and me.

"No Man Knoweth the Hour" by Liz Lemon Swindle

A Maine Event, Part 4

Lunch on the terrace at Bar Harbor Inn, Maine

A visit to Mount Desert Island requires that a significant amount of time be spent in Bar Harbor, the town on the east side of the island. Originally called "Eden," it befits its name. The town is a lovely little place with lots of touristy shops containing everything from art to trinkets to hiking gear. The main shopping streets, Main Street and Cottage Street, are situated like a big "L" rather than a grid. The town slopes down to a lovely harbor named Frenchman's Bay. 

Overlooking the bay is the grand Bar Harbor Inn, providing an outdoor terrace restaurant, marked by the yellow umbrellas, and the indoor Reading Room Restaurant, overlooking the bay through the big windows above the terrace restaurant.  The food, as mentioned before, is delicious at both restaurants.

Down in front of the hotel is the Margaret Todd, a schooner which bears tourists and wedding parties off on a sail a couple of times a day.  We didn't take a cruise, but we got lots of nice pictures of her.

There are several piers from which lobstermen (is that the right word? "Lobsterpeople"?) leave for their night's work, kayaking tours noodle about and then depart, and harbor tours and ferries leave. Sitting by the water and watching all the comings and goings is a lovely pastime.

The town has its own set of quirks, including this entryway to the Diner Taxi Restaurant. We didn't eat there, but were intrigued by the perspective down a little alleyway to the diner.

On Independence Day we arrived too late in town to find parking quickly--we underestimated the crowds attending the event--and thus caught only the tail end of the July 4 parade. But people seemed to be in fine fettle, the shops were open, and a fair was fairing at the park with--among other activities and booths--Rotary members serving up a 20-something dollar lobster feed for lunch. Being a Rotarian and a vegetarian, I was at a bit of a quandary, and ended up bypassing the event for edible fare more to my tastes.

One thing that struck me as I walked around the town of Bar Harbor was that it must be the most dog-friendly town in the city. There were dogs everywhere, typically on leashes, but getting underfoot, making their way between people on crowded sidewalks, and generally irritating me, a "cat person." Store owners provided water bowls out by their doors for dogs, and there was even a store solely selling various "stuff for dogs," most of it quite unnecessary in my opinion. I wondered, Do dog owners have a tour book that tells them which towns are dedicated to their pets? Are there towns that invite dog owners to bring their pooches along with them? Someone seemed to have put out the word on this one!

The town of Bar Harbor, canines notwithstanding, was indeed a lovely place full of beautiful buildings and interesting things to look at. Our vacation wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable without our visits there.

A Maine Event, Part 3

One of the delights of Maine was all the good food we found there, even though they're all about lobster, and we're vegetarians.  So get your salivary glands going; for this installation, we're taking a tour of the food we found in Maine!

We start with flatbread at the "Fresh" restaurant, featuring locally grown foods, in Camden, Maine. Husband was happy with his order.

I ordered a mixed veggies and goat cheese dish.  Other than the asparagus being a wee bit woody, it was delicious.

Okay, so this was not a restaurant offering.  We bought groceries on the way to our cabin, and blueberry peanut butter toast was just the thing I craved, the evening we arrived.  There was something about those blue Crate and Barrel dishes at the cabin that made everything look delicious, and gourmet.

Again, from our cabin fare: shredded wheat, bananas and blueberries makes a great way to start the day as you sit in a chair and look out over a calm sea with a sailboat glistening in the sunshine out there.

Our cabin featured carpenter ants, diligently chewing away near the front door and leaving little things that looked like wood shavings. We told the landlady, and she was on it in a trice. She called in the pest control folk, and sent us off for the day with a promise to pay for a meal out. After a vigorous hike, we did go to the "2 Cats" restaurant in Bar Harbor, well reputed for good food.  My order was poached eggs on polenta with spicy potatoes and spinach. They brought that with a nasturtium.

Husband ordered scrambled eggs with feta, a biscuit with strawberry butter, and spicy potatoes. Again, the nasturtium came along for the fun.  It was a pretty good brunch.

But our best food was at the Bar Harbor Inn. I didn't get a photo of our first meal there, which was a lunch out on the lawn overlooking Frenchman Bay. They served us delicious mozzarella and tomato on foccacia sandwiches.  They were heavenly!

Then, for our anniversary dinner we went back, and ordered the wild mushroom ravioli with grilled artichokes and a lovely sauce.  Aren't the stripey raviolis interesting?  It was delicious.

But I save the best for last. The blueberry pie at the Bar Harbor Inn was the best thing EVER!!!  I had been off sugar for over a year, but it was worth breaking that sugar fast for this pie. We think that Mainers mistakenly call them blueberries, as they look and taste like our huckleberries from the Northwest. Whatever the name, those berries were delectable. I am thankful for taste buds!

A Maine Event, Part 2

One of the loveliest things about our visit to Mount Desert Island was hiking nearly every day in Acadia National Park. There are so many different trails, so many landscapes to see, that you can have a great variety of views.

The views along the coast are the most popular, especially along the Otter Point trail that goes along the east side of the island. There were so many people lollygagging along that trail that it was actually irritating to walk it, because they got in the way of real hikers (i.e. us). But the views were spectacular.

And part of the beauty is spotting sailboats out catching the wind. Despite the overcast skies, the weather was warm enough to be just right for hiking.

Along the southern coast, the fog made it look cold, the way I experience beaches in Oregon and Washington. But it wasn't. You wouldn't want a jacket of any kind on a hike through this fog. Very interesting.

Occasionally we'd come to a bog with a plank trail laid over it.  This one was kind of fun, and there were gorgeous blue flag irises growing out of that very green area.

I was particularly amused by people who brought out their camp chairs, some of them with a little built-on shade, set them up on the rocks so they could read a book out by the sea. What a lovely way to spend an afternoon!  I wished for our own camp chairs, but they were safely back in our garage at home.

One of the trails I enjoyed the most was the time we took a carriage path around Eagle Lake.  These paths were built by Roosevelt when he was annoyed with cars clogging up the roads in Acadia National Park, and making the air stinky. He had the sandy carriage roads built to accommodate horses and buggies; they still do that, but they also accommodate walkers and bicyclists. 

There are miles and miles of carriage roads through the park, in a system that includes beautiful stone bridges. They are a great deal more comfortable than hiking the rocky paths, which we did for a little while, thinking we would hike right along the water's edge.  Not a good idea. These are not like the smooth, groomed paths through the forest on this side of the country. We found ourselves watching our footing and stepping on rocks, looking for the next blue paint marker to assure that we were still headed the right direction.  It was a happy moment when we rejoined the carriage path.

The nature views are wonderful along the paths. There are ponds with beaver lodges, deer, eagles, squirrels ... it's delightful. The beavers were probably taking a nap in their comfy beds at this one, as they didn't show up while I was watching.

Here's Eagle Lake, which we walked around on carriage roads.  It's about a six-mile walk.

And at the end of the walk, we enjoyed watching the kayakers getting started.  Earlier we'd seen a couple of teenage girls come crashing up the hill from the lake to the carriage road. They said their kayak had turned over and they'd swum to shore. They were planning to meet up with their mom, whose kayak had also capsized.  They heard her calling and wheeled around and crashed back down through the forest to meet her.

Our last hike was another six-mile walk along a fire road that passed by Hodgdon Pond and Long Pond.  While we didn't try out kayaks on this trip, they were in full view pretty much any time we were near water, and I hope to give that a try sometime in the future.  For now, hiking was good for the soul, and Mount Desert Island is the perfect place to do it.

A Maine Event, Part 1

Ten years ago, Husband I took our honeymoon to Maine.

"Why Maine?" you ask?

Well, because we wanted to somewhere that neither of us had seen. I have traveled the world a great deal, and he has traveled all over the United States. But neither of us had spent time in Maine, if you don't count the road trip when his parents drove the boys across a bridge to Maine, and then turned around, just so they could say they'd been there.

We enjoyed Maine so much during our honeymoon trip, we promised each other we'd return for our 10th anniversary. So we did.

One of the most delightful things on this trip was The Barnacle. That's where we stayed for a week on Mount Desert Island, about a 20-minute drive across the island from Bar Harbor, with Acadia National Park lying between the Barnacle and Bar Harbor.

The Barnacle is a 70-year old family-owned cabin looking out from the "quiet side" of Mount Desert Island, near an area called "Pretty Marsh."  I found it after an extensive search online, looking for something we could afford, something the right size (there are a lot of bigger dwellings for rent on the island), and something that would be close to the waterfront.

The Barnacle has a lovely big glass door that rolls back so that your sitting area flows from indoors right out onto the deck and the outdoors.

"I know you're going to want a door like this at our house, now," Husband said.  He's right. Not that it would work, but... wow.  It was lovely!

The place had a nice woodsy smell, rustic enough to feel vacation-y, and up-to-date enough to have everything you needed, including a fully-stocked kitchen with all the pots and dishes and tools you could hope for, to a washer and dryer off the bathroom.

And the view over the water?  Oh my!  It was lovely.

The nice thing about the quiet side of the island is that you also get the sunsets.  The weather was perfect, and the sunsets went right along with that.

The Barnacle was just what the doctor ordered.

Bye Bye, Ocean

We recently spent a week on Mount Desert Island, in Maine, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of our honeymoon, which was in Maine. One afternoon I was walking past a little beach near the pier of Bar Harbor, and looked down from the walkway on a mother standing by the water with her young child. She walked over to the child and said, "It's time to go now."  Then she picked her young one up and said, "Time to go. Bye bye, ocean!  Bye bye, ocean!" in that singsong voice many of us use with young children.

What is it about us, I wondered, that we invite children to say farewell to inanimate objects? What is it with the "bye bye" when it's not another human being, when it doesn't care if you're leaving or not?  I voiced my musings to Husband.

"It's a friendly signal to the child that it's time to leave," Husband said. "They know that 'bye bye' means we're going now."

I've been thinking about that leave-taking phrase ever since.

Rhonda and Benji, in a photo I took in 1984

When I was a college student, I got to know a couple of sweet kids, the children of friends from my parents' church. Rhonda and Benji were happy-hearted, loving, enjoyable children who spent hours around us. We eventually lost touch with them, but I heard a wisps of updates on their doings. Rhonda became an engineer, got married and had children, and Benji also married. I also heard that he'd been diagnosed with a degenerative disease. Both of them reconnected with me on Facebook in recent years. It was fun to see their photos and read updates on their lives, although there were worrisome updates on hospital stays for Ben.

Two days ago Ben's mom posted news that he was back in the hospital, and it was now evident that this would be his last stay. There were statements of hope for eternity from family members surrounding him, and sadness, such sadness. This morning came the news from Ben's mom: "My boy, my precious boy whom I loved very much passed away last night. Oh Ben -- I would gladly have died in your place. How I will miss you."

My heart aches for them in their leave-taking. "Time to go now. Bye bye, ocean."  Good night, Ben.

‎"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Rev. 21:3-4

Unremarkable

What extraordinary thing to do you see in this picture?

Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 

Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith. 

Mark 6:1-6

I wonder about Jesus's family and townspeople. Jesus had lived in Nazareth for thirty-ish years. His siblings and neighbors had watched him grow up, interacted with him, seen how he related to people. Did nothing at all pop out to them? Is it possible that he actually came across during those years as a very ordinary person, with the usual plausible idiosyncrasies? Is it possible that he was an unremarkable carpenter until the age of 30, when he suddenly packed up shop and left for the Jordan River where John was preaching, and started doing all kinds of out-of-character things? One scholar comments that “his normalcy was their biggest obstacle.” Could he have gone overnight from being “normal” to being very unusual?

It is hard for me to believe that a person—let alone Almighty God, for that matter—would be unremarkable for thirty years and then suddenly become a completely different person. I could imagine that something new could start happening, that he could have begun healing and teaching when he hadn't been doing that before. But I can’t imagine someone completely changing character at the age of thirty unless they got a really hard knock on the head. We have no record of such a thing happening to Jesus … which leads me to believe that someone quite remarkable lived there among them for thirty years, and they simply didn’t see it.

I once watched a ridiculous movie [sorry, but that’s what it was—quite thoroughly nutty] with my husband. The movie-makers claimed that when the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria arrived on the horizon in sight of the Americas—the islands of the Caribbean, actually—the native people couldn’t see the ships coming, and thus were surprised by their conquerors. The narrator of the documentary reasoned that the local people had never seen a ship before, and therefore had no mental construct by which to understand what they were seeing. Therefore, they just couldn’t physically perceive it with their eyes and brain. The horizon, for them, was empty.

While the idea of the natives not being able to see the Spanish ships right in front of them doesn’t sail straight with me, I do think there are times when we don’t “see” remarkable things right in front of us:

Sometimes you’re looking for something that’s missing, and in the familiar, cluttered context of everything else around it, you can be looking straight at it and not see it.

Sometimes a person leaves their family behind, only to deeply regret it later as they have some insightful experience and come to understand their family in a different context.

Sometimes a parent doesn’t realize they have a gifted child until someone else makes an observation about their child’s unusual, shiny talent.

Sometimes we let days pass while attending to unimportant things, only to wish later, from a different perspective, that we had those days back so that we could live them better.

Could the brothers and sisters of Jesus, and the townspeople around him, not see him as unusual, displaying in their midst a character that was truly remarkable? Could it be that Jesus discussed fear and faith—two of his oft-repeated themes—in conversations with them and they never heard the significance of it, never understood how divinely important those themes were? Could it be that they were so accustomed to him that they had no mental construct to interpret the beauty and divinity in his perspective? How is it that they thought him unremarkable?

Because “unremarkable,” even unbelievers would likely agree, would not have been the right adjective to describe Jesus. Not then, and not now.