Hierophantic Hearing at Horeb

           At the time that Elijah was emerging as a vatic voice for the Israelites in the early period of Kings, a seer of another sort, the great Greek poet Homer was crafting his epic works, the Iliad and the Odyssey.  In Book 24 of the former, there is a famous and compelling scene where Achilles returns the body of Hector whom he has killed to Hector’s father, Priam, and the two embrace in silence.  Intense grief is attendant on the loss of a warrior hero, and enmity is suspended.  Homer creates a momentous moment of mutual forgiveness that startles our expectations.  There is an analogue here to 1 Kings, 19.  In the encounter that Elijah has on Horeb with Yawheh’s presence, a dramatic scene develops along established lines of theophany but the culminating manifestation of divine presence contradicts anticipations of might and majesty.  What Elijah hears—and doesn’t hear---instructs him on his role as prophet.  David Wolpe comments on the significance of what Elijah learns:

                    Elijah was witness to a titanic show of natural force in

                    order to prepare him to listen for the silence.  He was
                    anticipating a word, and needed to hear its absence. 
                    God’s self-disclosure to Elijah is not with a word, but
                    with the voice of silence.  Elijah is renowned for his
                    zeal; he understands the God of awesome declarations,
                    of dazzling wonders.  In the previous chapter, Elijah, in
                    opposition to the priests of the idol Baal, has invoked
                    God’s fire upon an altar.  Now when God needs to speak
                    to him, Elijah expects thunder.  He learns silence. [1]

          Because Elijah’s experience with God’s voice arrests and compels the biblical reader’s attention, it has been the subject of much exegesis. The specific passage most examined in 1 Kings 19 is 11-12. 

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the LORD—but the LORD was not in the wind.  After the wind there was an earthquake—but the LORD was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake there was fire—but the LORD was not in the fire.  After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.  When he heard this Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave. [2]

          The prime exegetical issue here is— what is it that is heard?  It clearly is not actual total silence as Wolpe suggests above.  The range of translations employed in different Bibles shows that the hearing at Horeb is hard to pin down.  For example, here are a couple of relatively recent lists of variants; first, Norman Podoretz in his  book, The Prophets: “The literal meaning of kol d’mamah dakkah is ‘a voice [or sound] of thin silence.’  I for one like KJV’s “a still small voice” better than NRSV’s ‘a sound of sheer silence’ or NJPS’s ‘a soft murmuring sound,’ let alone JB’s ‘the sound of a gentle breeze.’ [3] Secondly, Craig Morrison, OCarm, in his essay “Elijah’s Ineffable Experience”:

                    The phrase itself offer few clues for penetrating its meaning,

                    and a study of the individual words only brings into relief the
                    paradox they contain, “a sound of thin silence.”  It is without
                    parallel in the Bible. Its inscrutability has generated a multi-
                    plicity of English translations.  I know of at least twenty
                    different ones, including : “a thin petrifying sound, “a roaring
                    and thunderous voice,” “a sound of a gentle breeze,” and “a
                    sound of sheer silence” (my favorite for its alliteration). [4]

          The “multiplicity of English translations” has been objected to in principle by Gerhard von Rad in his foundational Old Testament Theology where he displays  reservations about multiple interpretations of theophany and symbolic explanations.  On the other hand, the Collegeville Bible commentary asserts plainly, “The episode is artistically constructed.” [5]

          In my view artistic construction is a key to understanding Elijah’s experience. The repetition of the “but/not” phrases, e.g., but the LORD was not in the wind…the earthquake…the fire… serve not only to eliminate locating the divine in the natural but also to abet a larger discernment.  In Elijah’s period of crisis—and in our own—spiritual succor should be sought by attending to God’s presence within rather than without.  Psalm 46, “Be still and confess that I am God,” picks up part of the dimension of trust that is thrust to the fore here.  In many ways Elijah is the ideal exemplum to show the need for spiritual transformation.  Unpredictable, imprudent, seemingly whipsawed by  emotions that impelled him to mock the prophets of Baal during the contest at Mt. Carmel, Elijah flees from the fear of Jezebel’s threat, and despairs to the point that he asks the Lord to allow him to die.  He needs the guidance of an angel to restore his energy to move from the broom tree and partake of food.  Nevertheless, all of this depleting frenzy is part of Elijah’s journey to the very same mountain of the Lord where Moses received the covenant with God. He follows the path that Moses trod, purifies himself with forty days and nights of fast as did the partriarch and also hides his face in the presence of God's glory.  With such a personal manifestation of God's presence, Elijah should be filled with hope and on the threshold of exaltation.  But he is filled with more agitation than joy.

          We should not be surprised at this.  Elijah is filled with "fear and trembling" as Moses was, as all of us would be.  We get a strong sense of this roiled seeking self in Martin Buber's poem, "Elijah."

                              You wanted to descend like a storm wind

                              And to be mighty in deed like the tempest,
                              You wanted to blow being to being
                              And bless human souls while scourging them,
                              To admonish weary hearts in the hot whirlpool
                              And to stir the rigid to agitated light,
                              You sought me on your stormy paths
                              And did not find me.


                                                  …………………

                              Then my messenger came to you

                              And placed your ear next to the still life of my earth,
                              Then you felt how seed after seed began to stir,
                              And all the movements of growing things encircled you,
                               Blood hammered against blood, and the silence overcame/
                                                                                                                           you

                    The eternally complete, soft and motherly

                                --Then you had to incline upon yourself,
                                Then you found me. [6]

In this poem Buber (who had a longstanding interest in Elijah and wrote a mystery play centering on him) profoundly limns the visage of the stalker after truth, the sinner seeking salvation, who appear to me as one and the same.   T.S. Eliot in "Burnt Norton," images that “still point of the turning world . . . Neither movement from nor towards,” perhaps a place where we and Elijah will attain “release from the inner/And the outer compulsion,” if we learn to  listen and hear the Word of Yahweh in what Yeats termed “the deep heart’s core.”

              

---

[1] Wolpe, David.  Speech and Silence: The Jewish Quest for God, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1992, p. 193

[2] The Catholic Study Bible, New American Bible, divers editors, Oxford University Press, New York, 1990

[3] Podhoretz, Norman.  The Prophets, The Free Press, New York, 2002, p.97 (*note)

[4] Morrison, Craig, OCarm, “Elijah’s Ineffable Experience,” The Bible Today, 41, 6 (2003): 354-58

[5] Bergant, Dianne, C.S.A., General Editor, The Collegeville Bible Commentary, The Liturgical Press,   

  Minnesota, 1992, p.309

[6]  Quoted in Martin Buber and the Theater, edited and translated by Maurice Friedman, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1969, p.96.

Grunts from the Wordgrump (4)

>If you hold the position of a computer writer on the staff of the Washington Post, and you are on camera explaining the "cloud" to an interviewer, you should not need to be apprised that the verb to use when explaining the efficiency advantages of storing information in the cloud is expedite not expediate.  The latter is gibberish and makes you sound like a dope.

>Don’t respond to questions that have not been asked, especially in situations of intimacy or interrogation.

>"Despite the assurances of his letter, my brother returned was a different man."  You will be shocked that E.L. Doctorow could publish this "clumsy" sentence in Homer and Langley if you misidentify the main verb (as I did).  Then, when you see the cleverness of his syntax, you grin with delight. 

Giant's Causeway: Myth versus Science

A highlight of our recent visit to the island of Ireland was the time we spent at Giant's Causeway.  It's a stunning geological site . Located on Ireland's north coast is a large area of rock formations.  Circular, columnar, flat and interlocked stones create pavement paths that project into the Atlantic. 

      Everyone who treks the Causeway asks the causal question: how did this place come to be?  The National Trust publishes a booklet that provides two explanations but one account is indulged and the other is valorized.  "Finn MacCool's Causeway" and "The True Story of the Giant's Causeway" are good examples of what are called "competing narratives."  Where the writers at the National Trust stumble is in their use of the word "true" to tip the scales to the side of science. And just to be sure, before they summarize the story of Finn MacCool, they preface it with the statement: "Before there were scientists, myths and legends helped to explain strange landscape features like the Giant's Causeway." 

 

      Clearly, in their view science has ridden to the rescue of humans locked in the lore of unknowing.  But at the heart of the mythic creation story of Finn and the Giant's Causeway is a model of overcoming fear by the innovative use of trickery and deceit.  The Scottish giant Benandonner whom Finn fears because of his superior size is duped and flees.  MacCool is master of his domain. And what does "the true story" tell us?  A lot of folderol about volcanos, solidified lava, and cooling and cracking rock that took place about 60 million years ago.  Who's silly enough to believe that?

  

Admiring Ancestors and Atavism

          We were a small group of Caseys together in Northern Ireland in Cullyhanna, the cemetery of our paternal ancestors.  Stephen was relating how graves had been dug on a site where a previous family member had been interred.   As a young man he joined in that labor.  Few recognizable remains were unearthed because of decomposition and the passing of time.  When some bones were found they were placed in a bag to keep them separate from the newly deceased.  Stephen recalled having his stomach turn when he found a foot, some teeth and clumps of hair.  On the other hand, the pre-eminent poet of the North discerns the dignity in ancient practice: “Our pioneers keep striking/ Inwards and downwards, / Every layer they strip/ Seems camped on before.” (Seamus Heaney, “Bogside”)

 There’s a lot in Irish culture about death and digging. One of Heaney’s signature poems is “Digging.” He reflects on his father’s and grandfather’s skill with a spade.  “But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. / Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it.”  You can find excavation and exhumation metaphors in the poets of the North and in the playwrights of the Republic. Christy Mahon’s father dies and resurrects more than once in The Playboy of the Western World.  

           And in the grim memorials of the Troubles that stand as headstones and wall murals in and around the Falls (Catholic) and Shankill (Protestant) roads in Belfast, one can hear an unceasing keen for the fallen.

John Montague wrote about the “the old people” who “trespassed on my dreams” in childhood, “[u]ntil once, in a standing circle of stones, / I felt their shadows pass/ Into that dark permanence of ancient forms.”  The circle of stones referred to are “dolmens” which is the famous comparison in the title/first line of his poem, “Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people.”

 

The dolmens are portal tombs, dramatic in appearance. A capstone is supported by columnar pillars.  The burial chamber is within and below.  So also is the storehouse of the past, within our elders and below the surface of our present living.

          It may be that all humans are haunted by the past in one form or another.  For the Irish, the force of the past is often historical or genealogical.  In the North religious rage and political difference fed division.  While overt violence ended with the Good Friday agreement in 1998, memories of mutual atrocities endure.

          The pull of the past and the lure of ancestral lore both partake of atavism. But to state that is not to contemn or condemn.  The word itself is unjustly pejorative (especially in its adjectival form, “atavistic.”)  The core denotation of atavism actually cites genetics rather than the domain of the troglodytic in explaining the recurrence of form in an organism further back than one’s parents.  There is a conviction that sages will instruct and edify us so that we can increase knowledge of self.  To rewrite   Santayana: “Those who do remember and understand the past are privileged to learn from it and use it wisely.”

          Retrieving what is remote from us is not an easy endeavor. You “got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest.”   And for Johnny and I that required journeying to the ancestral homeland (again).  But in our dotage, steadied by our female custodial companions, we made our way to the farm our father grew up on over 100 years ago; visited the gravesite of our grandfather, our aunt and uncles; received very helpful information from Crossmaglen native Michael McArdle; and unmatched hospitality from our cousin, Stephen Casey.  My brother, the first son of John Casey and the namesake, recalled how Dad had provided the headstone in the cemetery.  He bantered about having a claim on the space for himself.  At our leaving the deal was sealed.  Johnny left beaming.  That’s an Irishman for you.  Got to scope out the plot before you plop into it.  At least someone else will do the digging.

Who Am I?

a male senior citizen, retired but reasonably sentient; a former teacher of literature regarded by students as someone who knew his stuff but was a tough grader; a former supervisor of teachers new to the school; a husband in a 44-year marriage; a father of two married daughters, one a music teacher, the other an attorney, marvelous individuals whose advice I respect; a dedicated dog lover especially of St. Bernards which I have rescued ; a semi-southpaw; a sometimes dieting, exercise-contemplating guy striving to stave off senescence; a first generation son of immigrant parents from the "auld sod"; a student and teacher of Irish culture; a Catholic revert; a good lector; an insecure  singer; a rosary pray-er; an owner of too many tee shirts and coffee mugs with messages on them; a popcorn addict; a bibliophile; too often a lead-foot driver; a fan of the female voice in popular music; a non-fan of hip-hop and rap; selective about what films to see; a strong skeptic of anything labeled "new," "improved," or "cutting edge"; one who is almost convinced that computers and cell phones are satanic devices that threaten our souls--thus they are to be cursed without compunction; the "most impatient person she's ever known," according to my wife; a fellow who is sometimes too quick to judge and too slow to forgive; one who listens to advice and sometimes even heeds it; a person enamored of his own opinions who is comfortable with persons of similar ilk; a life-long theist, whether churched or un-churched; a political liberal who is more annoyed by the ineptness of political liberals than by the narrowness of hidebound conservatives; a believer in the sustaining presence of a good and loving God who has granted us the survival tool of humor, be it light or dark; and one who attests to the comfort to be drawn from the proverb made widely known by President Kennedy: "There are three things which are real: God, Human Folly and Laughter.  The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third."
     and finally, one who has himself been in need of the balm in Gilead and hopes always to learn new ways "to make the wounded whole" and "to heal the sin-sick soul."

Grunts from the Wordgrump (3)

   A good true story deserves many tellings, and in class whenever I had a group of new students I related my experience with “the one letter difference.”  When I worked for the Great Books Foundation, I traveled extensively conducting training courses.  The invoice presented at the end of one’s hotel stay listed the name of your employer or organization.  At one memorable check out, I took note of a “one letter difference” in the recorded name of my firm. I discovered that I was part of a group that devoted its energies to either dumb people or attractive breasts.  The k in “Books” had been typed as a b.

   “Typos,” the scapegoat for careless writing, are not simply matters of form; they are frequently matters of meaning.  For example, if you write “prostrate” for “prostate” you are addressing a spiritual posture rather than a troublesome male gland.  If you use the term “interment” you’re referencing burial which will confuse your meaning if your intent is to speak of being held in custody without trial, i.e., “internment.”  “Decadent” and “decedent,” “dear” and “drear,” “navy” and “navvy,” “sear” and “seer” are some other examples of choices that qualify for the one letter difference botch-er-roo.  Strictly speaking, they are not all homophones or homonyms although they partake of elements of both.  Choosing the wrong word cannot be blamed on the computer or the word processing program.  The error is caused by the writer.  And it’s not merely a “typo.”  It’s a matter of meaning and meaning matters.  

Betting, Boxing, Batting, and a Spiffy Bookstore

     You can find all of the above by road tripping it to Kentucky-ana.  Park yourself for a day or three in Louisville.  We were there post-Derby week and found it quite possible to lose money easily at Churchill Downs.  The ponies will take your wallet for a weight losing spin any time.

   Muhammad Ali's Museum captures both the athlete and the activist and brings back many memories.  No pictures were allowed on the day we were there.  The factory where the Louisville Slugger bat continues to be made was informative and fun even for those who aren't baseball fans. It's also a museum that allows a bit of time travel.  Here I am giving the Bambino some tips on his swing.

   There was a brief note some months back in the N.Y. Times travel section lauding Carmichael's, Louisville oldest independent bookstore.  I made a note of that endorsement and stopped by.  It's a small good place, wherein I found some fiction titles of which I had not heard,(sniff, sniff) e.g., Hygiene and the Assassin by Amelie Nothomb and Kockroach by Tyler Knox.  The former is the story of a dying Nobel Prize winning novelist whose misogyny and bigotry meets its match in an interview with a female journalist who refuses to be impressed by his stature.  The latter novel is the tale of an insect who awakes one morning in horror to discover that he has been turned into a human.  Sound familar?  The trip produced a birthday present for Daughter the Elder.  She'll be surprised that's it not a book.