Personal note: This story is about how I recognize some of myself in sacred literature I read today, in the Episcopal tradition’s interpretation. Blessed are they that take no offense at me.
Opening Numbers
I read Numbers 2:1-10 today aloud at church, and found myself in it. This story is about wandering around in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt, getting impatient because life is too hard for these former slaves. Now they are explorers following Moses. Expectations were high, and are dashed. People have been eating the bread from heaven for weeks, and they’re tired of it; it’s light, nearly tasteless, certainly nutritious, but it’s not what they’re used to eating. They remember eating meat in “the fleshpots” of Egypt. Oh, for goat stew again!
“The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us out to die?...there is no food and no water; and we detest this miserable food.’”
I can see the lips curling, the eyes narrowing. I suspect dangerous energy: the people are contemplating becoming a mob.
God heard the poisonous words, and sends poisonous snakes. The mob disintegrates. The bitten die.
The people apologize to Moses, begging him to intercede for them. When he does so, this comes next:
A Little's Good. More is Lethal
As my vicar remarked, isn’t it odd that the people have already been told not to make graven idols, and God tells Moses to make such an idol. This people has already seen disaster strike the idolatrous and wealthy nation that enslaved them, and now they themselves are struck—by a “plague” of poisonous mouths, a plague that recalls the plagues of the place they longed for, and which is no longer what they remember.
Today's reading is bracketed by Ephesians, which says we’re dead—bitten by the ruler of the power of the air, the serpent aloft, perhaps the same one that is in the ‘apple’ tree in Genesis…having been bitten, we bite. I contemplate my vampire chi, again. "Saved by faith, and this is not of your own doing; it is a gift of God--not the result of works...For we are what he has made us..." says the final verse. We are what he made us. I am as I am, for I AM made it. Those who would 'cure' this, be warned: what God makes is "very good"--it meets the intent of the supreme deity.
The real disease is cured in John: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent…so must [Jesus] be lifted up…” for the cure of those people who are called to Jesus. They find God through Jesus, and a balm for their soul's sickness. It's quite similar to how bodhisattvas operate. *see footnote
[EDIT: This doesn't mean I actually think Jesus is going to cure my Asperger's. I interpret this to mean that I have been made a gift of this because I'm supposed to do something good that I could not do without it.]
I’m reminded of the warnings on prescription drug vials. A little medicine gets me out of the bed. A little more puts me into a coffin.
A Story of the Mouth and the Poison Dragon
This is very much a story of the mouth. It opens with harsh accusation, suspicion, and open contempt for a God who delivered his chosen people from slavery. The people's pungent and poisonous words, amplified by the murmurings of a growing horde, were answered with more poisonous mouths sent among the people.
And here is where I find myself. The gift for words at once sharp and blunt, fast and furious, which in small doses cures ills and staunches evils, in larger doses leaks the poisons of my history into my present, reopening my scars. My asperges becomes polluted, an acid wash.
Somehow, “meditating to take away the poison dragon of emotion” is supposed to help fix this. I find I often have to submerge, deeply, to swim among stingrays as one of them, until I no longer recognize them as kin.
I breathe through my mouth, down here in the deep. I hold my life in my mouth, down here in the deep. If I want to return to light and air without returning to the spirit of the air and its power, I need to measure out my words like the heart medicine digitalis. The meditations of my heart will be in my mouth. I need a healthy heart, to have a healthy mouth.
In short, I need to crave goodness, not power. Forgiveness, not resentment. Strength, not gratification. Not an easy thing to pull off at the pace of life.
Manna, True Taste, and Water
It is also this God who has provided food in the wilderness that reminds me of how The Master of Three Ways describes true food, or how the Tao Te Ching described goodness:
Strong wines and fatty meats, sweets and spicy food--
These do not possess true taste.
True taste is only found in the light and simple.
--Hung Ying-ming, transl. William Scott Wilson,
Master of the Three Ways, Book One, verse 7.
True goodness
is like water.
Water’s good
for everything.
--Lao Tzu, transliterated by Ursula K. LeGuin,
Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way, verse 8.
If I would master the temptation to be short and sharp, I can’t make it a situational event. I have to find in me the water that is good for everything. I have to refuse to be possessed by my own history, which inflames what it touches. I might say I have to taste the situation that is, not the situation that was, the simplicity of the present offense in the present tense. The offense may be infuriating in its own right—but only in its own right. It cannot be allowed to lure the snake off the pole and into the living day. The true meaning of "an eye for an eye" is that only an eye may be taken. Not more. Only the offense that is current. Not all the ones that it resembles, and which remind me of my vulnerability.
[EDIT: And so I find the source of my intense emotions: the rehearsal of past hurts, aided by superior long-term memory (aspie), abetted by a very bad therapy choice (rehearsing, to remove anxiety by making things familiar), co-conditioned by OCD (can't stop once I start), and refined by rapid reaction time (ADHD + aspie + OCD working together; high energy baseline + hypersensitivity + sharp points + practice concentrated by frustration).]
Oh, God. How is this a gift?
Why is this reading timely?
Halfway through Lent, we who observe it grow tired of the simple. It’s boring, and unappealing, and too much of anything becomes unpleasant.
Lent, conventionally, is about giving up a favorite thing in the name of Jesus, who retreated for forty days to fast and pray. It’s common to give up meat, alcohol, chocolate, or favorite habits—and the Church encourages that its people do not deny themselves so much as take on something new, something that’s been put off. So I notice the last thing about the mouth, in this season: when I read things I’ve posted to other people, how often they are really about me, when I thought I was responding to some external demand. So when I wrote comfort, I find comfort; when I wrote rebuke, I find myself rebuked; when writing to inspire, I find inspiration. I am confounded by all this; as my son said: "Mom, you're a confused predator. You're a leopard who wants to share her veggies." I feel an urge to lie down in peace with the goat and the lamb and eat grass. I don't have the teeth for it, so I have to work a little harder.
Footnote: A sermon I heard a year ago made it clear that people of my tradition accept that Jesus can work through any faith, filter, or condition without requiring recognition; I heard and believe that anyone may be saved through any tradition that seeks God. For who can know all the names of God? A god that humbles himself to live and die as a human is not going to turn into a power-mad narcissist with an axe to grind, no matter what the hymns say. I believe it’s important to distinguish faith from culture.
Opening Numbers
I read Numbers 2:1-10 today aloud at church, and found myself in it. This story is about wandering around in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt, getting impatient because life is too hard for these former slaves. Now they are explorers following Moses. Expectations were high, and are dashed. People have been eating the bread from heaven for weeks, and they’re tired of it; it’s light, nearly tasteless, certainly nutritious, but it’s not what they’re used to eating. They remember eating meat in “the fleshpots” of Egypt. Oh, for goat stew again!
“The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us out to die?...there is no food and no water; and we detest this miserable food.’”
I can see the lips curling, the eyes narrowing. I suspect dangerous energy: the people are contemplating becoming a mob.
God heard the poisonous words, and sends poisonous snakes. The mob disintegrates. The bitten die.
The people apologize to Moses, begging him to intercede for them. When he does so, this comes next:
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous snake, set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’” Moses makes a bronze snake on a pole, and anyone snake-bitten that looks up at the pole lives.
A Little's Good. More is Lethal
As my vicar remarked, isn’t it odd that the people have already been told not to make graven idols, and God tells Moses to make such an idol. This people has already seen disaster strike the idolatrous and wealthy nation that enslaved them, and now they themselves are struck—by a “plague” of poisonous mouths, a plague that recalls the plagues of the place they longed for, and which is no longer what they remember.
Today's reading is bracketed by Ephesians, which says we’re dead—bitten by the ruler of the power of the air, the serpent aloft, perhaps the same one that is in the ‘apple’ tree in Genesis…having been bitten, we bite. I contemplate my vampire chi, again. "Saved by faith, and this is not of your own doing; it is a gift of God--not the result of works...For we are what he has made us..." says the final verse. We are what he made us. I am as I am, for I AM made it. Those who would 'cure' this, be warned: what God makes is "very good"--it meets the intent of the supreme deity.
The real disease is cured in John: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent…so must [Jesus] be lifted up…” for the cure of those people who are called to Jesus. They find God through Jesus, and a balm for their soul's sickness. It's quite similar to how bodhisattvas operate. *see footnote
[EDIT: This doesn't mean I actually think Jesus is going to cure my Asperger's. I interpret this to mean that I have been made a gift of this because I'm supposed to do something good that I could not do without it.]
I’m reminded of the warnings on prescription drug vials. A little medicine gets me out of the bed. A little more puts me into a coffin.
A Story of the Mouth and the Poison Dragon
This is very much a story of the mouth. It opens with harsh accusation, suspicion, and open contempt for a God who delivered his chosen people from slavery. The people's pungent and poisonous words, amplified by the murmurings of a growing horde, were answered with more poisonous mouths sent among the people.
And here is where I find myself. The gift for words at once sharp and blunt, fast and furious, which in small doses cures ills and staunches evils, in larger doses leaks the poisons of my history into my present, reopening my scars. My asperges becomes polluted, an acid wash.
Somehow, “meditating to take away the poison dragon of emotion” is supposed to help fix this. I find I often have to submerge, deeply, to swim among stingrays as one of them, until I no longer recognize them as kin.
I breathe through my mouth, down here in the deep. I hold my life in my mouth, down here in the deep. If I want to return to light and air without returning to the spirit of the air and its power, I need to measure out my words like the heart medicine digitalis. The meditations of my heart will be in my mouth. I need a healthy heart, to have a healthy mouth.
In short, I need to crave goodness, not power. Forgiveness, not resentment. Strength, not gratification. Not an easy thing to pull off at the pace of life.
Manna, True Taste, and Water
It is also this God who has provided food in the wilderness that reminds me of how The Master of Three Ways describes true food, or how the Tao Te Ching described goodness:
Strong wines and fatty meats, sweets and spicy food--
These do not possess true taste.
True taste is only found in the light and simple.
--Hung Ying-ming, transl. William Scott Wilson,
Master of the Three Ways, Book One, verse 7.
True goodness
is like water.
Water’s good
for everything.
--Lao Tzu, transliterated by Ursula K. LeGuin,
Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way, verse 8.
If I would master the temptation to be short and sharp, I can’t make it a situational event. I have to find in me the water that is good for everything. I have to refuse to be possessed by my own history, which inflames what it touches. I might say I have to taste the situation that is, not the situation that was, the simplicity of the present offense in the present tense. The offense may be infuriating in its own right—but only in its own right. It cannot be allowed to lure the snake off the pole and into the living day. The true meaning of "an eye for an eye" is that only an eye may be taken. Not more. Only the offense that is current. Not all the ones that it resembles, and which remind me of my vulnerability.
[EDIT: And so I find the source of my intense emotions: the rehearsal of past hurts, aided by superior long-term memory (aspie), abetted by a very bad therapy choice (rehearsing, to remove anxiety by making things familiar), co-conditioned by OCD (can't stop once I start), and refined by rapid reaction time (ADHD + aspie + OCD working together; high energy baseline + hypersensitivity + sharp points + practice concentrated by frustration).]
Oh, God. How is this a gift?
Why is this reading timely?
Halfway through Lent, we who observe it grow tired of the simple. It’s boring, and unappealing, and too much of anything becomes unpleasant.
Lent, conventionally, is about giving up a favorite thing in the name of Jesus, who retreated for forty days to fast and pray. It’s common to give up meat, alcohol, chocolate, or favorite habits—and the Church encourages that its people do not deny themselves so much as take on something new, something that’s been put off. So I notice the last thing about the mouth, in this season: when I read things I’ve posted to other people, how often they are really about me, when I thought I was responding to some external demand. So when I wrote comfort, I find comfort; when I wrote rebuke, I find myself rebuked; when writing to inspire, I find inspiration. I am confounded by all this; as my son said: "Mom, you're a confused predator. You're a leopard who wants to share her veggies." I feel an urge to lie down in peace with the goat and the lamb and eat grass. I don't have the teeth for it, so I have to work a little harder.
Footnote: A sermon I heard a year ago made it clear that people of my tradition accept that Jesus can work through any faith, filter, or condition without requiring recognition; I heard and believe that anyone may be saved through any tradition that seeks God. For who can know all the names of God? A god that humbles himself to live and die as a human is not going to turn into a power-mad narcissist with an axe to grind, no matter what the hymns say. I believe it’s important to distinguish faith from culture.
