Author: Justin Tiemeyer

The Humongous Fungus of Iron County, Michigan

Justin Tiemeyer 1 Comment

A whale is a whale, with flippers and tail, but the Michigan mat just spreads.
– Stephen Jay Gould

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
– Walt Whitman

I don’t remember ever learning about the largest organism on the planet in any of my science classes. I do, however, remember playing Nintendo with my brother Micah and my Uncle Paul every Sunday after church while my parents had coffee and windmill cookies with my grandma, and every time Mario would fall into an abyss or accidentally bump into one of those oh-so-dangerous Goombas we would compare the magnitude of our grief to the size of large animals. It wasn’t enough to simply say, “That sucks.” You had to say, “That sucks donkey,” then, in the spirit of oneupmanship, someone else would say, “That sucks elephant.” This would continue until we reached “blue whale,” at which point Uncle Paul would cap off the disappointment by saying, “That sucks mother blue whale.” The female Balaenoptera musculus – blue whale – is the largest animal, land, sea, or sky, but to find the largest organism on Earth I would have to look somewhere else entirely. It would not be enough to limit my search to animals only. For this journey, I would have to delve into the depths of Kingdom Fungi.

However many times Mario died – a rate that went up exponentially as soon as the controller switched to my hands – we were never so forlorn as to say “That sucks humongous fungus,” and yet this it the name the people of Crystal Falls, Michigan have given to the Armillaria gallica (formerly Armillaria bulbosa) fungus they claim to be the largest organism in the world. According to the Crystal Falls home page there is one particular fungus found locally that covers 38 acres, is somewhere between 1500 and 10,000 years old, and weighs as much as a mother blue whale – approximately 100 tons. While most of this organism’s body is located underground in an enormous system of interconnected shoots and masses, it can be seen above the surface in the form of small honey mushroom toadstools which are described not only as edible, but fairly tasty as well.

Aside from its estimated weight the Humongous Fungus has one other thing in common with the largest animal on the planet – both are whales. The main difference between the two is that one is a blue whale whereas the fungus is a white whale, my white whale. After all, I’d been searching for this creature (assuming the term “creature” even applies outside of Kingdom Animalia) for the past four years, since Amy and I took our first vacation together into Michigan’s upper peninsula a couple of weeks after we first met. Though the Crystal Falls home page had painted a picture of a mushroom-obsessed small town with toadstool roofs and quirky fungus memorabilia at every diner, the city that we rolled into that Friday afternoon showed no sign of mushroom pride, not a single ounce.

To give the people of Crystal Falls the benefit of the doubt I should probably explain that we arrived there on the Fourth of July and, if I’d inferred correctly from the attendant at the BP, everyone was relaxing and enjoying the Independence Day festivities in the nearby town of Alpha. Even so, I expected at least one sign on Highway 2 advertising the Humongous Fungus that comprises so much of the town’s web presence. I compared Crystal Falls to the city of Mesick in Michigan’s lower peninsula, a small seasonal vacation town I’d driven through often on the way to Empire Beach or Crystal Lake in nearby Frankfort. Though the fungus in Mesick is nowhere near as massive as the Humongous Fungus of Crystal Falls fame, their streets are lined with mushroom advertisements. Of course, the morel mushrooms of Mesick are much easier to capitalize upon than the giant supposed to lurk below the surface of Crystal Falls. In Mesick, (HYPERBOLE ALERT!!!) you couldn’t fire off a bottle rocket without hitting some sort of mushroom representation, but Crystal Falls was different. We’d have to work to learn the secrets of that town.

Looking closer at the town’s web site, I noticed several clues that I had previously overlooked. The Humongous Fungus was located underneath the Iron County forest near the Wisconsin border, not specifically under Crystal Falls. In fact, the majority of its mass was claimed to be located in nearby Mastodon Township. The web site was brutally honest in saying that “[p]eople are generally disappointed if they actually go to the site looking for the big mushroom.” The information that we read was enough to deter anyone from searching for the Humongous Fungus, but I was a man possessed. Instead of focusing on how my nemesis was located mostly underground, only visible as tiny mushrooms that appear predominantly in the fall, I focused on the word “site.” Where was this site and how could I get there? Amy had located a web site which claimed that the natural wonder could be viewed at the base of a waterfall. There were many nearby waterfalls, but there was no one waterfall that clearly served as the namesake for Crystal Falls. We could have spent the entire weekend disobeying the wisdom of T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli, but I had another idea in mind – we would enlist the assistance of one of the locals, the woman at the BP, or, as far as I experienced, the only living soul in Crystal Falls.

I walked into the BP with a friendly smile on my face despite my frustration and said, “Hi. I’m visiting from out of town and I was wondering if you could direct me to the Humongous Fungus.”

Nothing. The woman behind the counter was a brick wall (not literally).

“The giant mushroom that lives beneath Crystal Falls,” I said, attempting to jog her memory. “I read that the town throws a yearly festival in its honor…”

“I don’t know anything about a humongous fungus,” she said. “But if you’re looking for the Fourth festivities those are going on over in Alpha.”

Another dead end. It looked as if I would need to start a new line of questions.

“Could you point me in the direction of Mastodon?” I asked. “I can’t seem to find it on the map.”

“Mastodon’s just south of town on the 2,” she said. The route she described was the same route Amy and I had taken to get to Crystal Falls, and I didn’t remember seeing any town called Mastodon on the way there.

“Any landmarks I should look for?” I asked.

The BP attendant put her hands on her hips and thought about this one. In fact, she thought for an uncomfortably long time. I didn’t feel like I was asking too much of her. I just wanted her to think of the next town over and picture a restaurant or church of even a rival gas station, anything that could help me not to drive right by Mastodon for the second time that trip, but she gave me nothing.

“It’s gotta be between here and the Wisconsin border, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “If you get to Wisconsin you’ve gone too far.”

The woman grinned, confident that nothing was lacking in her directions. I was not quite so assured, but I knew I wouldn’t be getting any more help.

“One last question,” I said. “Do you know of any waterfalls down that way?”

“Yes,” she said. “Head out back of the airport. Should be some falls over there.”

Though the gas station attendant had been less than informative, she’d given us our strongest lead as to where we might find the Humongous Fungus. Driving South toward Mastodon, I found my eyes drifting to the grassy areas on either side of the road in hopes that I might espy a little patch of mushrooms. After some time we rolled past Mastodon Township Offices, a decent sized building with a couple utility trucks parked out front. From there we were able to get Google directions to the Iron County airport, a tiny airfield down a poorly labelled dirt logging road, and one small leap of faith later we were parked at a trail-head with the sound of fast-moving water just ahead.

Up until this point Amy had been a little bit of a stick in the mud, and I couldn’t blame her. She hated riding in cars and I’d trapped her inside of one for a good portion of two days, and when we finally arrived in Crystal Falls I didn’t even know where to begin looking for the giant mushroom I’d been bragging about since she first met me. But when she found out this wild goose chase involved hiking through some of the most majestic scenery in the state, Amy was fully invested. I basked in the serendipity of the fact that I had accidentally brought geology major Amy into an ecosystem constructed on and around a gigantic iron slab. In fact, Amy’s professor had even referenced the township of Mastodon in one of her classes, noting that there has never been a mastodon fossil recovered there.

A few yards down the path it became clear that what the woman at the BP had described as a waterfall was actually just a rapid. I tried my best to disguise my disappointment as Amy had the time of her life climbing up onto towering boulders, navigating twisting and turning paths, and pointing out mineral deposits and fun examples of geological principles, and it ended up working to my advantage.

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In her excitement, Amy was the first one to find a mushroom, a little thing nearly hidden by an exposed root but elucidated by a shaft of light that pierced the tree cover. We ended up encountering three mushrooms total on our trip to find the Humongous Fungus.

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After sending photographs of my findings to the Western Montana Mycological Association, I received the following response:

hi Justin, it will help if we can see clear pictures of the cap, stem, and underside of the mushrooms. Sorry but not able to ID from these pics

As I compared the mushrooms I saw in Iron County with the sample images of Armillaria gallica on a variety of mycological web sites I had this sinking feeling that none of the three toadstools I saw were the toadstools I was looking for. It made me sad for a little bit, but ultimately I came out of the malaise with a higher outlook on the subject. When we had driven through the forest and seen the acres of trees cut down for logging purposes, the humongous fungus had been in those trees, eating away at the stumps. As we hiked through the iron hillside the fungus had been there, and it had been everywhere else, because where can’t a species live that can grow even in the nutrient-poor areas between large food sources. Though I never witnessed the invisible hyphae, once I got to the rapids I was never not surrounded by them.

The question was no longer whether or not I had experienced the humongous fungus. It now came down to whether or not the humongous fungus is paranormal.

Amy and I took a walk some weeks after this experience as I was preparing to write this post, and I asked her point blank what it means to be paranormal. She said, “It has to be unexplained phenomena.” I then asked her if she thought the humongous fungus was paranormal and she said no. It may have been paranormal at some point, but as soon as the scientific team of Smith, Bruhn, and Smith investigated the phenomenon and exposed it to the public it was no longer paranormal. This was Amy’s thought, at least, and it is a thought supported by most people. All the same, her answer felt unsatisfactory. For me there was something much deeper to the humongous fungus than what we knew. Armillaria gallica had been detected in soil samples, but its greater existence had only been inferred. Nobody had ever experienced the entirety of this individual clone, and to my knowledge there is no scientific method in existence yet that can discern the whole without the use of inference. Furthermore, were there a break in the hyphae connecting the entire organism as there must have been when the scientists took the soil samples, would the living cells still be considered part of one organism? Could I take a cubic meter of the fungus home with me and still consider both discrete entities the same organism?

Stephen Jay Gould takes up the ontological question posed by Armillaria gallica in an article in Natural History titled “A Humongous Fungus Among Us.” He writes:

A human observer sees nothing of this interwoven subterranean mat except for the occasional and spatially discontinuous mushrooms that poke through the forest floor.

And later:

But the deeper fascination of this tale lies elsewhere – in the striking way that the underground fungal mat forces us to wrestle with that vital biological (and philosophical) question of proper definitions for individuality.

Gould makes the reader question whether there are levels of individual identity “above” (community, ecosystem, biosphere) or even “below” (organ, tissue, cell) the level of the organism in the classical structural hierarchy, and not just for kicks, but because one must do so in order to truly understand the humongous fungus. His conclusion is probably unsatisfactory for most of us:

Nature is not an intrinsic harmony of clearly defined units. Nature is built at multiple levels, interacting frizzily at their borders.

Armillaria gallica, and for that matter the entirety of Kingdom Fungi, compose some of the frizzy matter at the borders of biological classification from Linnaeus through Darwin. It also exposes a bias in some of the basic tenets of biology, namely that the study of life leans toward those organisms who fit easily into our animal understanding of individuals.

While driving a friend of mine to a bar one evening, she revealed to me that she believes in fairies. She explained that it was not some simple wish that fairies were real; she honestly thought they existed. Her proof was that she had a very realistic dream about fairies. If I were to ask her to point to a fairy, therein proving their existence to me, she would be unable. On the flip side, if she asked me to prove the existence of the largest organism on the planet I would be at a similar loss. I don’t mean to undermine the work of the brilliant scientists who discovered the humongous fungus. Rather, with Gould, I would like to focus on the complexity of this situation. If we traverse the history of science, there are very few people, theories, or schools that can help us to understand the metaphysical implications that Armillaria gallica brings to light. The humongous fungus is not normal. The Greek prefix para- usually means “at or to the side of.” For something to be paranormal, it need only be beside the normal, just beyond the normal, or, as Gould writes, “interacting frizzily” at the border of normal. Of course, by this definition, all we know of nature is paranormal. Who among us could stomach the ramifications of this conclusion.

Just a couple of years ago I was blown away by the fact that Nintendo’s Wii console had access to an online service titled Virtual Console (VC). Through VC, gamers had access to classic games from the NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, and a variety of other outdated systems. In other words, I could play the same video games that I played as a boy with my uncle only now I could play them on giant flat screen displays with my hip friends while consuming alcohol. And with all of the wisdom I’ve accumulated over the years, I could meet every one of my unfortunate deaths with the words, “That sucks humongous fungus.” Or, I could go crazy and say, “That sucks taiga.” That’s right, not even biomes are out of bounds. But ultimately, I still don’t understand what it would mean to suck a taiga, and I don’t want to. In fact, with all of that wisdom I have a sneaking feeling that I now understand what it means to “suck donkey” or “suck mother blue whale,” and I’m no longer certain I want to make any such exclamations in the future. I think next time Mario meets his demise I might just take a drink instead.

Project Karamazov: Dirk Manning

Justin Tiemeyer 1 Comment
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Dirk Manning. Credit: Dirk Manning.

One of my most exciting experiences from the year I lived in New York City was attending the 2008 New York Comic Con at Javits Center in Hell’s Kitchen. I got the autographs of several highly influential creators – including those of highly influential X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and infamous novelist Orson Scott Card – attended panels for Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and Frank Miller’s The Spirit, and on Sunday I even bumped into The Daily Show‘s host Jon Stewart, who’d toted his kids along for children’s day. I showed up to let my geek flag fly, but I was also a man with a mission – to break into the comic writing business. The climax of my journey was when I mustered up the courage to walk over to then Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and say, “Hello. My name is Justin Tiemeyer and I’d like to write for Marvel Comics.” Quesada’s response was priceless – he looked up, sighed, and said, “You have to go through the submission process just like everybody else.”

Writer Dirk Manning has had his own fair share of comic con run-ins with big names from the comic book publishing industry as described in Write or Wrong: A Writer’s Guide to Creating Comics, his autobiographical how-to guide for aspiring writers in the comic book medium. His conclusion: Don’t do it just like everybody else, because everybody else is not a paid comic writer. Most successful writers are successful only because they published their own independent comics long before Marvel or DC ever knew who they were. Manning cites Robert Kirkman’s Battle Pope, Brian Michael Bendis’s Lili, Garth Ennis’s Troubled Souls, Grant Morrison’s Zenith, and Alan Moore’s Maxwell the Magic Cat as examples (36). For Manning, it is not about spending your time mired down by the submission process of the Big Two (DC and Marvel) as Mr. Quesada suggested. In fact, he goes so far as to note that these editors cannot legally review unsolicited submissions due to intellectual property concerns (34). Manning’s key to success is making fully realized comics today. After all, what better proof could you provide an editor who wants to know if you can plot and script comics on the company’s dime than a finished comic produced on your own?

Manning’s heftiest contribution to the canon of recent literature is Nightmare World, a series of 52 horror comics originally published online at the Image Comics online imprint Shadowline, Ink. The anthology covers a variety of horror subgenres, from deals with demons (“For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”) to delinquent artificial intelligence (“Extraordinary Machine”) to hitch-hiking murderers (“Movin’ Up”), all of which contribute to a grand unified story arc combining Lovecraftian mythology with Biblical imagery focused through Dante’s Inferno and traversing the apocalypse, the rapture, and all that follows. A couple of my favorite stories are “Knee Deep in the Dead” – a comedic critique of slasher films (and particularly slasher sequels!) from Friday the 13th to Halloween – and “Hungry Like The Wolf” – a stick figure werewolf tale and also one of the more brilliant pieces in the collection due to its creative use of pictures as a substitute for speech and inner monologue. A large portion of the Nightmare World series has been published in three volumes by Image Comics which are available for purchase on Amazon.com.

In a previous draft of this post, I went into a lengthy description of how Manning is the unicorn of comic writers – a unique type of individual that few will ever encounter and that those who have encountered are not likely to encounter ever again. This is because Manning was raised on novels, novellas, and short stories, not comic books and graphic novels. In an interview with Newsarama, Manning listed some of his favorite authors as Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka and George Orwell. Furthermore, with the exception of The Jovian in Nightmare World, Manning has no desire to write superhero stories. In this sense, Manning and I are different. My dream of being a comic book writer has always included writing big stories about my favorite comic book heroes. For Marvel, I wanted to write a post-Avengers vs. X-Men story about Cyclops abducting one-time friend Henry McCoy and travelling across space in search of Phoenix relics from other civilizations with the hope of finally reuniting with the great love of his youth, Jean Grey. I also had a pitch for Batman that I called “The Last Alfred Pennyworth Story.” It should be pretty clear that I am more of a horse than a unicorn. I want what every other aspiring comic writer wants – to have a cushy work-for-hire gig with Marvel or DC with the opportunity of developing your favorite characters for five or ten years. Manning is unique because he is repelled by that possible future and the likelihood of his creativity being stifled by excessive editorial oversight. For Manning, the greatest thing you could do is own your characters, develop them how they are meant to be developed, and make every sacrifice in making certain that your individuality is represented in the sovereignty of your own stories.

There’s more to Dirk Manning than just Write or Wrong and Nightmare World. There’s the noteworthy spiritual successor to Nightmare World titled Tales of Mr. Rhee, an unfinished web comic titled Farseeker, and several other stories for such titles as Dia de los Muertos and Critter. For more information on Manning, feel free to visit the writer’s web site DirkManning.com, and for all the latest news follow Manning on Twitter @DirkManning.

 

ZEROBOUND

One of the main things I hoped to accomplish with #ProjectKaramazov was to distance the project from critiques that it is an egoistic and self-serving journey where I bask in the delight of interacting with my favorite celebrities regarding my favorite book by including information about organizations that help bring about measurable good in the world. When I asked Dirk Manning if he had a favorite charity, non-profit, or other philanthropic organization that he’d like to promote, he spoke of the charity of “paying it forward.” If Manning had his way, we would all hold this one axiom in our hearts: “Do one unsolicited act of goodness for someone every day.”

Though Manning himself did not hip me to Zerobound, I thought this organization might be worthy of looking into as a means of accomplishing Manning’s ideal of a daily dose of goodness. Founders Sabrina Norrie and Kelli Space tasked themselves with finding a creative way to give students a path out of loan debt. Space had made headlines years ago when she started a web site called Two Hundred Thou where she sought out public donations in order to conquer the $200,000 in student loan debt she acquired while attending Northeastern University. Following Space’s example, Zerobound is a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo where student debtors pledge to do volunteer work at local charities and nonprofits in exchange for financial pledges from their community that are directly applied to the student’s loan debt.

If you find yourself with the ability to make a contribution toward a better future for college graduates, head over to Zerobound and make a pledge to a current campaign. If you find yourself overburdened by the yoke of excessive student loan debt and strongly inclined toward volunteerism, follow the same link and start your own campaign. Comic writer Dirk Manning was able to get the first volume of his series Tales of Mr. Rhee into comic book stores with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign. With somewhere near 70% of the population of the United States suffocating under the force of debt, Zerobound hopes to kick start a few lives, and perhaps a struggling economy in the process, by helping graduates help themselves get out of debt.

We should all be inspired by the imperative to do a good deed daily. It should serve as an excuse to get creative in helping those around us. Norrie and Space were following this moral rule, whether they intended to or not, when they founded Zerobound. I don’t want to do anything to stifle your ability to creatively help those in need in your community, but if you’re looking for a resource to bring your giving to a new level, you could find much worse places to go than Zerobound.

Campaign Stories: Wiliken 20

Justin Tiemeyer 2 Comments

Wiliken wiped sweat from his brow as he reached the top of the hill. It was a sunny day and the sun had sapped a great deal of his strength out of him, but they were almost there.

Jean-Baptiste had already begun his descent down the hill before either Ugarth or Grace had managed to reach the top. Wiliken felt a certain level of freedom when he traveled away from the city. Whenever he felt that Douglas wasn’t watching him, he felt that he could breathe easily. There was a part of the githzerai that felt anxious that the bard had not followed them. This mission was normally Douglas’s sort of adventure, and yet he had stayed behind in the city. It was curious.

As they approached, Wiliken felt a moment of uncertainty. There were two towering she-bears standing with tensed muscles and their backs turned to the adventurers. Wiliken didn’t know what was more disturbing – the fact that the bears didn’t seem to notice the party approaching or the fact that the party had decided to sneak up on a pair of battle-ready she-bears. The bears were transfixed on a point in front of them, a point that Jean-Baptiste had summoned them in order to guard, a tiny tear in reality.

When Jean-Baptiste had arrived the previous night, he’d wanted to lead a party back out into the wilderness that very evening. Jenkins had convinced him to rest and wait out the storm.

“The she-bears can handle guard duty until morning,” Jenkins had said.

“I suppose you’re right,” Jean-Baptiste had responded. “And if they are overrun, I will know.”

It was clear that Jean-Baptiste was unhappy, so Jenkins had called a council on the matter in the middle of the night. Jean-Baptiste recounted his story of being deep in meditation when he’d heard a deep rubbing sound. He’d felt the anomaly before he’d even seen it, a small gash in space much like a knife wound in flesh. Out of it had popped a small creature the size of a house cat which immediately began to devour any living plant, insect or small rodent nearby. Jean-Baptiste had killed the beast immediately, for the creature had disgusted his natural senses just as the gash in the open air had. The creature was no longer a threat, but Jean-Baptiste could see that the tiny gash was growing. He told the group that he had first attempted to close the portal. When he couldn’t he cast a ritual that would slow its growth and decided that he may need help.

The she-bears parted as they walked by. When everyone was present Jean-Baptiste touched the nose of each sentinel gently and released them from their duty. They bounded off into the forest, never to be seen again.

When Jean-Baptiste had originally described the creature, the others had speculated as to its origin. Ugarth had remained silent. As he approached the creature, he became clearly disturbed. His composure fell apart immediately and in a fit of rage he began stomping the dead animal with the heel of his foot before collapsing onto the ground in despair.

“What is wrong with the orc?” Wiliken asked.

“These creatures,” said Grace. “I believe they may be the same beasts that killed Ugarth’s people. He was once the king of the orcs, you know?”

Grace went on to explain that some of the people in the party had been there during the fall of Ugarth’s kingdom. They had been uncertain where the creatures had come from, but they had assumed that it was an Iuzian attack, some sort of biological warfare.

“But these portals aren’t Iuzian,” Wiliken suggested. “They’re far too primal, too asymmetrical. They almost look like they were created on accident. Far too crude for an empire with advanced teleportation capabilities.”

“I believe you’re right,” Grace said.

Shortly after they’d arrived, the portal popped shut, leaving no evidence of its previous existence. The party returned to the Felshore knowing nothing more than they had the previous evening, but Jenkins held another council just the same. When they explained what they had seen, Jenkins said, “If there are other such portals, I believe I can track them down. I will need the help of our githzerai friend.”

“You will have it,” Wiliken said.

Ugarth, Grace and Jean-Baptiste pledged their support as well in the search for the next portal.

“Would you care to join us, Douglas?” Wiliken asked. The human stood next to Jenkins with his arms crossed. He considered for a moment before saying, “I have more pressing things to do here in town.”

The others parted to make preparations for their departure, but Wiliken lingered behind.

“Can you give us some privacy, please?” Jenkins asked Douglas. Douglas looked at the wizard angrily before stomping off.

“How may I be of service?” Wiliken asked.

“You have been developing some uncanny abilities lately, it seems,” Jenkins said. “Heightened powers of the mind, one might call them. Don’t be frightened. Any wizard of a high enough caliber can sense these things. What I want from you is to meditate on the portal you saw today. From your description, I will pinpoint our location and send the party out to investigate.”

“I wish to join the investigation party,” Wiliken said.

“That can be arranged,” Jenkins said. “I suppose you’ll want some time to prepare as well.”

Wiliken had been dismissed, but he lingered behind for a moment uncertainly.

“Is there something else you would like to talk about?”

“I fear that my son has become too powerful for us to track,” Wiliken said.

“That is disappointing.”

“But I think there is a way to find him,” Wiliken said. “I believe that if I were to travel back in time I could stop him before he becomes a threat, and I believe that you are the only wizard in the world who has the power to send me back.”

“I will have to think on that,” Jenkins said. “At the moment I am drained. I don’t believe I could even send you ten minutes into the past.” Jenkins looked Wiliken over. “I will need a few items. Perhaps when you return from this mission we can discuss acquiring these things.”

Jenkins might have known about Wiliken’s newly developed powers, but the githzerai felt certain that the wizard didn’t know everything he’d seen in his visions. And he didn’t need to know either. Wiliken had no concern at that moment for tracking down his son. That was only a means to a higher level of trust in the Felshore. What he really wanted was to save his wife, to bring her back to the land of the living, and to do so he would need Jenkins’ time magics.

Campaign Stories is continued in Wiliken 21.

Genesis 7: Watching TV

Justin Tiemeyer 2 Comments

Seven. I only got seven chapters in before Genesis broke me.

When I was in seminary I learned that Genesis is a tricky book. After all, the book begins with two competing creation stories each featuring a different order of events. My way of dealing with that, for the purposes of blogging, was to suggest that the order was poetic. The two accounts were a pair of literary methods that each emphasized the importance of humankind in different ways.

For six chapters I’ve worked to package Genesis into a unified narrative; on the seventh chapter, I rested.

The original goal I set for my contributions to #TroubletheWaters (which is by no means a requirement for other contributors) was to approach the text honestly and courageously, letting the words speak to me without the noise of my own prior knowledge and the teachings of others. I had been doing pretty well at this endeavor, but then, like I said earlier, Genesis broke me.

It’s not like I’m saying me and Genesis are done forever. I actually harbor quite a deep love for the Hebrew scriptures. When I say that Genesis 7 broke me, I mean that I am no longer able to read the Bible as one continuous and consistent drama. In other words, I am no longer attempting to see a meta-narrative in this text, one story that binds all of the other stories into a logical, cohesive whole. The unavoidable truth that we find in the book of Genesis, as in many other books of scripture, is that multiple voices are found therein and they each speak a different tale for a different purpose, and what they are saying is quite often logically inconsistent.

Genesis reads like my mom and dad’s arguments while watching TV. At my parents’ house there is invariably some sort of CSI or Law and Order playing on the screen in their living room, and my dad will be certain that a guest actor is the same person he remembers from some earlier show like Columbo, Perry Mason, or Rockford Files. My mom will chime in claiming that the actor my father has in mind died two years ago and that my dad is really thinking of so-and-so from Murphy Brown. After that, they just go at it. The last time I witnessed such a dispute I actually looked into the actor’s history using IMDB (internet movie database). When I settled things, I expected my parents to be happy, but in actuality they seemed far more annoyed than relieved. What I had perceived (perhaps wishfully) as a collective pursuit for the sake of understanding was for them a competitive sport, a sport that I had just ruined.

The voices in Genesis compete with one another as well, each claiming to have access to a more true, more compelling version of events than the other. They agree that the subject matter is that of Noah, his wife, their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their wives – though none of them can seem to remember the names of the female protagonists – how they lived in an age of violence, that God’s hatred of violence is the reason for the flood that will destroy all life on Earth, and that God helps eight humans and a whole mess of animals to escape extinction in an ark. What they don’t agree on is big. Dad thinks no humans live for longer than 120 years, but mom keeps saying that Noah was 600 years old when the flood hit. Uncle Howie says there were two of each animal, but your mom (his sister) corrects him that there were more of the domesticated animals.

“They had to eat,” she shouts.

Uncle Howie shouts louder, “They were vegetarians!”

Your cousin Willy interjects that there were extra birds too.

“Nobody asked you!” everyone else shouts in unison. Because of the power of their conviction Willy doesn’t even raise the question of what happened to all of the fish, but it was certainly on his mind how God intended to drown all the fish.

Some of you may join me in seeing this text as irresponsible. My reasoning is that the argument among the various Biblical sources as to the age of this or the headcount of that is so loud that it covers up any account of the suffering experienced by all the people who weren’t privileged enough to get on the boat, all those “wicked people.”

I don’t claim to know what it was like to be one of these people who drowned because of God’s wrath, but I have lived through a flood. On the day I proposed to Amy, April 19 of 2014, the flood waters began to rise in Lowell. You get used to water pooling in low places when it is raining, and it is not that uncommon in Michigan, as elsewhere, to drive through water that might just be too deep for your car to safely get through. These are common, every day fears. But when the puddles start pooling together and creeping ever so slowly toward you, it is a different story all together. By the time we evacuated, many of the roads we’d normally take had already become impassible, and I was struck with a feeling of terror. If we couldn’t get out of town, what could we do? Drive to the highest point in town and hope that we could wait it all out in our car? And what if the flood waters reached us there…

I have the beginning of an understanding of what the flood might have been like. There are some important differences between my story and the ancient flood story. The Genesis account depicts a time before there were emergency early warning systems or motor vehicles that could spirit you away from the floodplain. Most importantly, those who attempted to escape had nowhere to escape to. I never had cause to give up hope, but when a flood can submerse even the peaks of the highest mountains you are faced with a completely different situation. The only thing these people had to look forward to was an ugly death by drowning.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that there was ever a time when all of humanity deserved to die. I have trouble listening to a story about the corruption of every species on the planet without imagining exceptions, and I’m not talking about Noah and his family. Am I to believe that even out there among the wicked there was not a single soul willing to help a neighbor out from under an overturned oxcart? Is it possible that there was not a single champion of mercy available to carry the injured to a place of relative safety? While we’re talking about Noah and company staying high and dry on a luxury cruise with all the cute little animals, God is murdering humankind. That includes children. That includes babies. And, yes, that includes the unborn in their mothers’ wombs. Perhaps you’re OK with God perpetrating the largest scale mass murderer in the history of everything – we’re told they had it coming, after all – but how does it feel to know that God just aborted every last innocent, ensouled, helpless human fetus in this same fit of rage?

This is not something to turn away from. This is something we need to think about every time we talk about a righteous God delivering a great hero of faith from destruction. This is something not depicted in our pretty children’s picture Bibles, but nonetheless we must consider the human cost of God’s wrath. To do anything less would be pretty darned irresponsible.

Further Reading:

Letter to a Confused Young Christian at Political Jesus

Genesis 6: The (First) War to End All Wars

Justin Tiemeyer Leave a comment

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the ever-so-familiar tale told in Genesis 6, I want to take the route of William Shakespeare and begin with a dramatis personae of the factions of intelligent life involved in this story.

First of all, there is God, who is also called Lord [Gen. 2:4 NRSV, etc.], but whose real name is unknown, unpronounceable, and represented by the tetragrammaton “YHWH.” God is the creator of everything that we know, or the one who organized, ordered, and conquered the chaos, depending on your interpretation of Genesis 1. God is composed of spirit (“a mighty wind”), has knowledge of good and evil, and possesses immortality. We know this because after God blessed Adam and Eve with the divine spirit, and directly after they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God cast humankind from the garden lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever like God and God’s droogs [3:22]. Nobody has called God all-powerful yet – of course, nobody has dared call God weak either – but we know that the creation / organization of the cosmos required a power much greater than that we currently have access to.

Next are the children of God, and I’m not referring to what Sunday School teachers call everybody who goes to your church. These are the beings that have only been referred to by the plural pronoun “us” up to this point [1:26, etc.]. It would seem that these mysterious other divine figures are part of a heavenly court ruled by God. Without much to go on, it would make sense that these beings are similar to God insofar as they are spirit, possess knowledge of good and evil, and have eternal life. As God’s children, it would seem that they derive their power, in some way, from God. These eternal beings may be the gods of other tribes, seen as local governors under the supervision of YHWH. They may be the personified / deified concepts that God created: Day [1:5], Night [1:5], Sky [1:8], Earth [1:10], Sea [1:10], etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if these are the same beings that are later transformed into angels because of codes against idolatry / worshiping other gods. One quality that they seem to exhibit which we haven’t seen God get into yet is the power to take on the flesh and appear as human, because in Genesis 6:2 they begin to breed with the daughters of humankind.

What a great transition, because humankind is the next on our list. I know this just might #TroubletheWaters, but it is beginning to look like there are two different kinds of human on earth. Why don’t we call this a hypothesis? There are children of delight, the garden-born / garden-descended humans (Eden = “delight”) who have had direct experiences of God because they are, in some sense, God’s chosen, the high priests and priestesses chosen to intercede on behalf of humankind. They are composed of flesh, spirit, and knowledge of good and evil, and prior to Genesis 6 the spirit within them allowed them to live to very old age. According to Genesis 5:5, Adam lived to the ripe age of 930 before he died. The rest of the humans may not have been blessed with the spirit and may not have lived very long. The first we learn of the children of wandering is when Cain is cast out into the land of Nod (“wandering”) [4:16], and we must presume that they are present in Genesis 6 as God plans to destroy all of humanity. We could easily call these people others, outsiders, or foreigners. All we know is that they have flesh. Maybe they had knowledge of good and evil. Maybe not.

Finally, there are the Nephilim, a newly introduced race as of Genesis 6 comprised of the offspring resulting from the interbreeding of the children of God and humankind. Genesis 6:4 reads, “These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” Half-divine, half-human, we can assume that they are composed of both flesh and spirit, probably the knowledge of good and evil, but almost certainly not immortality. From my understanding of the heroes of old, the Nephilim appeared to be larger, more powerful versions of normal humans.

Now that the players have entered the field, I can mention that Genesis 6 appears to be yet another chapter emphasizing God’s desire for non-violence. This theme is so prevalent in #TroubletheWaters that you’d think I went into reading scripture with the hopes of converting some ancient words to my cause, but I think it is so obvious in the text that anyone who is willing to do an honest, unencumbered reading will see what I am talking about. If you look only as far as Genesis 6:11-13, it should be clear:

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them…”

In an odd, yet strangely familiar, narrative the humans and the Nephilim have turned their ways to violence, probably engaging in war over land, humans against Nephilim, humans against humans, Nephilim against Nephilim, human / Nephilim armies against human / Nephilim armies. I’m sure that if you look into some of the secondary literature of the time, you’ll find every possible iteration of these combatants and possibly a whole slew of other challengers. God is not happy with this aggression. It is interesting that violence is described as corruption of the flesh, which I presume to mean infection, rot, puss, decay, and maybe even leprosy. If you imagine the weapons that would have been used in these early wars, slings, arrows, crude blades and blunt weapons, you know that there was probably a severe lack of “clean kills” on the battlefield. Rather, many warriors probably crawled into a corner and died hours, days, or weeks later as their wounds festered, their cause of death: sepsis, the corruption of flesh that shuts down a person’s organs. With this understanding we see corruption as not just a metaphor for violence, but also an effect that is brought about by violence.

The reason I think this whole story is familiar is because the comparisons to the Greek epic Homer’s Iliad, among other ancient stories, are screaming out to me. A parent god and pantheon of lesser gods / children of god / godlings interfere in mortal affairs – CHECK! Heroes of great strength who claim lineage from the gods themselves are the warriors of old that are sung about in our songs – CHECK! There are normal people there fighting but you’ll never know their names or sing their songs – CHECK!

In another way, this story is eerily similar to our own recent past. When God revokes the spirit, drastically reducing the lifespan of humankind, and decides to destroy humanity and creation, we see a story comparable to the one that unfolded in World War I. This is the war to end all war. During the first half of the 20th century, the idea was to end German militarism in order to end all war. In Genesis 6, it is to destroy all humanity, all flesh, for flesh leads to violence. The end result is the same: somebody thought that it would be possible to end all violence by enacting the biggest act of violence one could ever dream of.

The dramatic irony is astonishing at this point. If God’s destruction of humankind had been successful in getting rid of violence, would humanity have ever fought World War I, not to mention every war before that and every war since? Would people be talking about gun deaths, domestic violence, or the ever more pervasive problems of abject poverty (which people are not talking about enough!)? No. We know already, at the beginning of Noah’s arc that God fails miserably with his half-cocked plan to rid the world of violence.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of the narrative, but there is a lesson to be learned from God’s failure, and I’m sure we’ll come to it before too long. For now, I want to return to the second half of Genesis 6 where, similar to the genealogical story of Genesis 5, Noah is set up as the new Adam. What is interesting about understanding Noah as the new Adam is that we learn just how impossibly different the humankind that we interact with on a daily basis are from “the first human” with whom we tend to claim kinship. (Are any of us even descended from Adam and Eve, the children of delight, or are we wanderers too?) Adam is blessed with the spirit of God, making him much closer in composition to the Nephilim, the giants and heroes of old, than to us. But Noah is the first human to be denied the spirit of God and live to have a tale told about him, and it is with Noah that we should feel familiarity. Noah’s probably met ancestors of his that were hundreds of years old, and this is what his expectations had been for himself and his children as well, until God got angry, and now Noah would be a lucky man to live past his hundredth birthday. This short life is the doom we all face. The line of Adam ended with Lamech. We are the children of Noah, the children of an early death.

Further Reading:

Letter to a Confused Young Christian at Political Jesus

Campaign Stories: Wiliken 19

Justin Tiemeyer 2 Comments

With targets fastened to hay-bails and lines of men and women armed with mismatched bows and arrows, Wiliken spent most of his days just outside the time-displaced Shining City training the people of Felshore in archery. He’d pace behind an older peasant and correct his stance or offer tips to the son of an aristocrat looking to gain prestige in his social group.

“All must offer themselves up in defense of the city snatched from time,” the wizard Jenkins had said. “And all must earn their meals.”

Wiliken had originally hoped that he might be employed to fix up some of the dilapidated buildings, those uninhabitable and unsightly structures that couldn’t withstand the forces associated with jumping forty years into the future. It was Douglas who asked Wiliken to train the men and women to shoot and shoot well.

“I’ll need longbows just as I’ll need swords and scythes,” Douglas had said.

But to what end? Wiliken often wondered if it was Douglas’s army that had soured the relationship between the bard and Jean-Baptiste. The old man had disappeared into the wilderness a fortnight ago.

“It will do you good,” Douglas suggested, but Wiliken knew one thing for certain: as long as his services were needed in the field teaching archery, Douglas would have no problem keeping tabs on the githzerai.

On a particularly humid afternoon, a young boy reported to Wiliken. The githzerai recognized the boy immediately as one of the orphans his son had intended to sacrifice in order to give a repeat performance of the destruction Wiliken himself had caused four decades earlier.

“My next fletching class won’t be until tomorrow morning,” Wiliken said, dismissing the boy.

“I will learn to shoot,” said the boy, defiantly. The sacrifices had come from various parts of the world and from all walks of life. This boy had the entitlement of a noble’s child. The githzerai mused that Douglas must have been like this as a child if one were to judge only by the way he’d turned out.

“I don’t have any extra bows.”

The boy reached for Wiliken’s own bow, and the githzerai was surprised to find that he was willing to let the boy shoot with True Shot. “I will use your bow.”

If the boy can even draw back the string, I might have to just give it to him, Wiliken thought. Not only could the child pull back the string, but he quickly nocked and fired an arrow at the nearest target with the finesse of an athlete. The arrow found its home, a bullseye.

“You certainly have a knack for it,” Wiliken admitted. “But shouldn’t you choose a skill where your god might give you some advantage?”

The boy had been staying at an orphanage built by a Solaran acolyte named Morgan since they had arrived in the Shining City. Those with a magical inclination – a great many in number, which is unsurprising considering it was probably this particular aptitude for which they were chosen to be sacrificed – would be trained in the way of Solaris if they chose.

“Perhaps Solaris would have you become a paladin, a wizard, or even a monk,” Wiliken suggested.

“A god so weak he cannot guide an arrow?” said the boy. “I have no use for such things.”

Wiliken chuckled. It was like looking upon himself as a child. “What is your name, boy?”

“Alexander,” said the boy.

As Wiliken watched Alexander move on to targets further and further away, to moving targets at varying distances, and even a couple of tests the githzerai had devised himself. The boy had the same self-reliance that Wiliken had always benefited from but there was something else there as well. Everyone is at their best when they are young and their muscles work well, but this boy was simply better than the githzerai. There was no mistaking it.

One generation makes the previous obsolete, Wiliken reflected.

After the citizens had finished their archery practice for the day, Wiliken lagged behind, walking among the scattered stones at the city limits. There had once been an expertly crafted stone road that lead out from the Shining City, and when the area had been transported through time the perfectly hewn stone had broken and scattered about the perimeter of the town. This was the edge of the Shining City, the intersection of the new and the old, and the stones that should have been ruins were just as keen as the day they were laid. This whole city could have been reduced to ruins, had been reduced to ruins, or so Wiliken had once thought.

There was a rustling sound from behind the githzerai. Wiliken spun around and was frightened to see a half-orc towering over him. In his reflections he’d allowed a wall of a being sneak up behind him, and surely this would be his last mistake.

Wiliken shuddered, and the half-orc laughed.

“It’s been a good long time since someone’s been properly scared of me,” he said, chuckling. “It’s refreshing. Surely, you know the feeling, githzerai.”

“Not since the orphans took to the teachings of Solaris,” Wiliken responded.

The half-orc introduced himself as Ugarth. “I used to be an orc,” he said, and smiled. “But now I’m a citizen of the world.”

“Your sarcasm is refreshing,” Wiliken said, feeling his muscles un-tense. “It reminds me of a friend.”

Wiliken hoped to meet up with the deva named Jurgen once again, but as long as the people of the Felshore were suspicious of his ally’s motives the githzerai expected he would not see his friend. Perhaps he’d never see Jurgen again.

“What are you doing out here?” Ugarth asked.

“I’m trying to figure out a way to stop my son,” Wiliken said. “I think it is the only reason that they are keeping me alive.”

Wiliken knew this was a bit of an exaggeration. The wizard Jenkins had pardoned him with such fantastic exuberance that he’d thought all sins were forgiven. Douglas on the other hand…

“That explains why Douglas has his eye on you so often.”

“Oh, you noticed?”

“Some people are not so good with mixed morality,” Ugarth said. “Me, I have no problem with messy matters. When you grow up looking like me or you, you don’t really have a choice.”

Wiliken and Ugarth talked for a little longer before Ugarth returned to town to deal with some personal matters. Wiliken remained in the field until it grew dark. As the sun sunk below the horizon, a light rain began to fell. Clouds covered the bright shining stars, signaling that the githzerai ought to return to the barracks.

Wiliken was troubled at how few ideas he’d had in order to track his son down. When he’d served in the blackguard he was the one you went to in order to get something done. But he’d had no scruples back then, back when he was young. He’d had no family to temper him, no guilt to slow him down. The one called Iiuza was too powerful, too well-connected. He could stay hidden from Wiliken for as long as he wanted, and when he emerged he could put to shame any plan they might have of capturing or killing him. Wiliken supposed he should cancel the fletching workshop the next day and spend some time meditating. It was not enough to merely find his son in order to prove his loyalty to the people of the Felshore. Wiliken wanted to live long enough to see his son pay for his crimes.

Wiliken wanted to live.

The storm began to worsen. Thunder clapped and lightning illuminated the sky with no interval in-between. As he entered the city and walked between the buildings, he could have sworn that there was somebody behind him. It could have just been Ugarth, or someone who had just awoken to bring some laundry in from the rain. Wiliken’s mind was caught up in dark matters. It would not be surprising if he’d transformed ordinary occurrences into something quite disturbing just because of where his mind was dwelling at the moment.

Having calmed himself, Wiliken walked through the door to his barracks and closed himself into the small but comfortable shelter from the elements. He sat down on his bed in order to remove his muddy boots. He hadn’t even untied his second shoe when his door swung wide open. Wiliken stood upright and assumed a fighting position. Lightning sizzled from ground to cloud, making night seem like day and revealing a man standing in his doorway.

Wiliken dashed for his bow True Shot, but the man simply walked toward him and put a hand on his arm. The githzerai spun to see that the stranger in his room was Jean-Baptiste. He’d returned from his meditation in the wilderness.

Campaign Stories continues in Wiliken 20.

Genesis 5: Of Persons and Priests

Justin Tiemeyer Leave a comment

When I was younger I used to skip chapters like Genesis 5 that were comprised only of genealogies of “patriarchs,” a bunch of men who lived to ridiculously old ages and had many children but only one worth noting. Someone coined a term for these chapters, the “begats” of the Bible, because so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so on and so forth. These chapters were really repetitive, listing a guy’s name, the age he was when he had his first child, the fact that he had many more children, and the age he died. They were full of unfamiliar names, like Mahalel and Methuselah. And more than anything I had a lot of trouble determining what the importance of these lists was. I guess I just didn’t have the imagination necessary – or the superior genius – to chart the age of the earth based on a series of tall tales about 900 year old men. To me, these genealogies were just something to skim over on the way to better stories.

For the most part there is no story to Genesis 5. I suppose you could make the argument that the chapter begins with Adam, the man who broke the rules in Eden resulting in humankind toiling away at the earth for hours on end, and ends with Noah, the man who apparently sussed some sort of relief out of the poisoned ground, and that this resembles a story. But the truth is that the genealogy has more of a philosophical significance. The idea of the image of God takes center stage here, forcing the question, “Who is created in the image of God? All of humankind or just a select few?” And if that is not enough, there is an added bonus concept of a son in the likeness or image of Adam as well. With this language abounding, the reader is required to consider what these image relationships mean and who they apply to.

The scope of the image of God is confounded by a funny quality of the Hebrew word “Adam,” which could be understood as a proper noun, referring to a particular person named Adam, or as a common noun meaning “humankind.” The same sentence can be rendered two different ways:

When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God.

When God created Adam, he made him in the likeness of God. [Gen. 5:1 NRSV]

Depending on how you understand the wording, the group of people created in the image of God may include only Adam, Adam and Eve, Adam and his heirs, all humankind, or even only those humans descended from the original garden dwellers, excluding those people outside of and to the East of Eden who welcomed Cain into his life of wandering.

The scope of the image of Adam becomes similarly confusing. Adam fathered “a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth” [5:3]. If we flash back to the previous chapter, Seth was given to Adam and Eve as a replacement, as Eve says, “God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him” [4:25]. If there is continuity between these chapters, then Abel would have been the child created in Adam’s image. Perhaps the entire lineage of men in Chapter 5 are the children who share the image of Adam (which may or may not be different from the image of God). Noah seems especially to embody the image of Adam. After all, because of forthcoming events he becomes the second coming of the first man. Do all of the descendants of Adam share in his likeness, or only those selected and named? Was Cain a son created in his father’s image? If so, perhaps the likeness faded once Cain committed murder. If not, then I think we finally know why God chose the offering of Cain. Maybe it had more to do with the one making the offer than the product that was offered.

It is difficult to understand who is seen in an image relationship with whom without first postulating as to what being in the image of another means. This concept is worthy of further discussion, but for the sake of moving this particular discussion forward I want to suggest that the image of God is another way of talking about personhood and the image of Adam is another way of talking about priesthood.

Those created in the image of God are persons. Like God, who is a singularity, persons cannot be replaced. Their existence ought to be treated with reverence. Persons are co-creators, be they parents, artists, builders, farmers, or anything else, but also stewards of that which God created (the whole cosmos). Persons are to be treated with dignity, never killed, never lied to, never cheated on. There is no need for the Ten Commandments if persons only understand that they are created in the image of God. What God is in actuality, persons are in potential. This applies to all of humanity. Cain’s fault was not recognizing the personhood in Abel, and similarly we have enacted endless chains of violence because we dehumanize others. We image that we can remove their personhood, and with it their entitlement to life and liberation.

If I didn’t believe that the first several chapters of Genesis are thinly veiled discussions of the early Jewish priesthood (an idea that my buddy Rodney set me onto), I certainly would have after reading Genesis 5. If the origin story is about all of humankind, then why are those outside of the garden not even mentioned until after Cain is exiled? And why, when we reach the genealogies, do we only learn of one person each generation as opposed to the plethora of interesting and dynamic persons who must have populated the planet? This is because the story of Adam is the story of the first high priest. (Yes, this story is highly male-centered, but there is no reason to believe that Eve is not a high priest as well. Those humans that were created in the image of God were created as both male and female, after all. Not just male.) Abel would have inherited the role of high priest from Adam, but Cain put a stop to that, so the role passed to Seth. This explains how in irreplaceable child created in the image of God could be replaced by another – it is not the person who is being replaced, but the priest! After this, one male in each generation, along with, potentially, his wife, is made the high priest, and left to receive commandments from God, to teach humankind, to plea for humankind’s sake, to enter into covenants, and to generally act as a human-God relations associate.

Genesis 5 is much more than a simple genealogy. Of course, I’m probably not the only person who believes it impossible to call a genealogy “simple” when it includes a person (Enoch) who never died but who joined God at the end of his days. This chapter is certainly not a chapter to skip. It is the conclusion of the great creation epic in which all of humanity is created and granted the dignity that any irreplaceable entity deserves with one chosen each generation for the horrors of communicating between a fearful God and a violent animal called Adam, AKA humankind. But after creation comes destruction, and this destruction begins when first the name Noah is written.

To be continued…

Further Reading:

Letter to a Confused Young Christian at Political Jesus

Genesis 4: Dis-Abel

Justin Tiemeyer Leave a comment

I am notorious for setting conversational traps to end arguments with those who disagree with me. Here’s a classic: “If you are doing what things as you describe them, then things will certainly work out fine.” The person I am talking with will think that I am agreeing with them and the argument will come to a stop, because surely my interlocutor is doing everything as described. Why else would s/he describe things that way? In truth, we are still completely at odds. I believe that this person is NOT doing things in the described fashion, and the proof is there in the fact that things have not been working out fine. My soon-to-be-wife Amy has always had a keen ability to see through these traps I lay, and she hates when I try. That’s one of the many reasons I’m marrying her – she’s my equal (or my better, really) at the war of words, the Gilgamesh to my Enkidu.

I think it is a common human error to relate always with that which is good in a story, be it the protagonist, a good message, or anything else. In the gospels, there are several conversational traps meant to root out hypocrisy not only within the narratives but within the hearts of those reading the narratives. For example, most people reading of Jesus’s crucifixion relate with Jesus, the persecuted, when their own actions are often much more similar to those of Pontius Pilate, the dutiful Roman officers, Judas Iscariot, or even the many Jews who quickly turned on the “King of the Jews.” There are many who enjoy when Jesus takes the Socrates route and makes the Pharisees look like legalistic fools who don’t understand that “the law” was conceived in love and meant to serve humankind, only to make the same mistakes in our own interpretation. We relate with Jesus in these situations because we couldn’t imagine that we might be so incorrect, unaware, and capable of propagating violence, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Then we come to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.

Cain and Abel are a pair of brothers, the children of Adam and Eve, and at this point in the scriptural narrative, the only children who have ever lived. Cain farms crops from the earth and Abel tends to a flock of sheep. The two brothers both bring an offering of the best fruits of their labor to God. God holds Abel’s offering in high regard, but the best that Cain has to offer is simply not good enough for God. Jealous, Cain kills his brother Abel, but is unable to hide his crime because both the blood of Abel and the earth itself, two natural mechanisms of justice in Genesis, cry out against Cain. As a result, God punishes God by cursing him to walk the earth forever and ever with no relief, not even in death, for the one who kills Cain will be “avenged sevenfold.”

If we are to place ourselves anywhere in this story, we place ourselves naturally in Abel’s place. We can imagine doing our very best, and we imagine that we will be the ones who are rewarded. When there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the choice of Abel’s gift over Cain’s we are all-too-happy to provide a justification of God breaking the number one of parenting – NEVER CHOOSE A FAVORITE!. Abel must be more faithful than Cain. He must have given his best and Cain must have given his leftovers. God must have known that Cain had murder in his heart from the beginning. We add to this story because we want to defend the victim, this Abel fellow, who we feel so akin to. But, for the most part, none of us share anything in common with Abel. We are, honestly and truly, meant to relate with Cain.

Even if you are more faithful than the average bear, it should be clear that Cain is the son who is more obedient to both his God and his parents. He is the one who tills the earth. As part of the lease agreement for inhabiting the garden of Eden, Adam, for the sake of all humans and all the animals he held dominion over, promised to eat the fruits and vegetables of the garden, never tearing the flesh of an animal or destroying a plant in such a way that it can no longer be fruitful itself. Even when Adam eats of the one fruit in the garden that is not given freely to him, his curse is to labor long and hard, sweating while tilling the earth for sustenance. Cain obeys these, the only rules that appear to exist at this point in the narrative, a covenant and a punishment that both hold sway before even the ordinance against murder is put into place. Abel, by contrast, must look like some sort of aberrant Nazi mad scientist or torturer. He is the first carnivore in a world where without an established tradition of eating flesh. By any measure, Abel’s gift should be the one that is rejected, but the events of Genesis 4 stand in direct opposition to the nonviolent message of Genesis 1-3, depicting a capricious God with an inscrutable mind.

It is a hard change of perspective to think that readers of Genesis 4 are supposed to see themselves in the actions of Cain. I wonder if it is easier when we think of where we are in life when we first hear this story. Think back to that imaginary set of parents I keep referencing who are telling these origin stories while walking through the desert after having escaped slavery in Egypt. Do these people who have never known a home feel more like the first humans living in a paradise given by God? Or do they relate more to the rejected Cain, forever a stranger, dispossessed of land and title, forever a wanderer. (Cain is banished to live among the people in the land of Nod, but Nod means “wandering,” so this land seems to be no land at all, the lack of land, in fact.) The second audience I imagine for this story is a group of Jews who have gathered together after the fall of Jerusalem. They do not live among like-minded individuals, but have been married off to people of different nationalities, who speak different languages and worship different gods in their homes. Again, I wonder if they believe themselves akin to the purebred first children of God, delighting in creation in eternal providence, or if they feel scattered about in dangerous territory, sharing the lot of the first murderer.

These are my own imaginary perspectives from Jews thousands of years ago in what is now called the Middle East, but most of this blog’s readership is composed of Christians in the US. What could Christians possibly have in common with Cain? Well, most Christians believe that humans were burn under the curse of original sin. Just like with Cain, the inscrutable mind of God has decided to punish us for some unknown reason because of something done by our most distant human ancestors. We may follow the covenant, the law, or the gospel to the word, but we are still rejected. Most Christians also believe that God sent Jesus to absolve the mark of this first sin, to bridge the gap between God and the people of God. But our post-salvation experience of existence does not feel like a bridge. We are not all singing happy songs in the garden of Eden together. We are eternally East of Eden. When God gives the lesson of this story – “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” [Gen 4:6-7 NRSV] – it is meant to be received by Cain’s ears, but also by our own eyes.

I remember I attended a church service once that ended with the minister challenging the audience to “abandon yourself and take up your cross.” I was immediately hit by the gravity of this statement. Who could ever be so strong as to leave all remnants of ego behind? Certainly not me. I had tried and failed to do exactly that many times in my life. It seemed impossible that I could defeat my own ego, and I was terrified to my core of the sacrifices it would take to do so. To the same statement, many others were smiling, self-satisfied, saying “Amen,” and “yes,” as if  they’d had time between hot yoga and dinner at Louis Benton Steakhouse to drop off their ego at the pool and pick up a fashionable cross at Macy’s. I had to remind myself that I was nowhere nearer this lofty goal than any of these people, but I was irritated by the presumption that they were already at the finish line after doing nothing more than coming to church that very morning.

The point of seeing ourselves as Cain is that if we keep seeing ourselves as the persecuted and not the persecutors, the faithful as opposed to the screw-ups, as God’s only son rather than the plethora of people Jesus encountered who could not, for the life of them, understand his teachings, if we keep making these mistakes we are bound to do more harm than good in this world. You can keep posting pictures on Facebook of all of the Christians killed in the world, but you might be a better human being if you recognize that Christianity is also an unimaginably formidable power in the world responsible for the deaths of many non-Christians. Perhaps during thousands of years of wandering Cain has taken responsibility for his actions and committed himself to making the world a better place, or perhaps all he’s done is concoct an elaborate story in his head about how he is the victim. But who are we to judge when most of us claim to do the former while engaging in the latter?

Further Reading:

Letter to a Confused Young Christian at Political Jesus
Did Abel Deserve to Die?: Mosala’s Postcolonial Reading of Genesis 4:1-16 at Political Jesus

Campaign Stories: Wiliken 18

Justin Tiemeyer 2 Comments

“They named the bow Wiliken,” said the githzerai. The tribunal of Douglas, the wizard Jenkins, and the Baroness of Felshore sat before him, not in some regal courtroom or even in a public square. The three protectors of the Shining City sat on a bed in the barracks, and the githzerai on a wooden chair, no chains and no ropes, but also nowhere to hide. “I think it was the githzerai elders. I have trouble remembering that time. My adopted father named me Embrion, just as I named my own son Embrion, but I took the name Iiuza while training to become a blackguard, and so also with my son. The nearest translation for the deep tongue word wiliken is ‘true shot.’ As for Iiuza, this word means ‘Son of Iuz.'”

A chill went through the room. None in the Felshore seemed to have any problem speaking of the kingdom of Iuz, the Iuzians, nor even the dark Lord Iuz himself, but the githzerai suspected that Iuz had a different meaning in this city out of time. For the Shining City mere moments had passed between the complete destruction of the surrounding areas and the future some decades later, but for the githzerai and the rest of the world the time had crawled. The hours and days crawled slowly during the in-between time, and as the world began to forget the city that once was, the rumors had spread of how it was put to ruin, tendrils of gossip running from village to village about the one responsible. It was the Son of Iuz, a legendary figure whose heart was supposedly filled with malice. The githzerai could see the truth unfolding in the eyes of those gathered, for even during their short tenure in this time period they must have become acquainted with the cautionary tomes, the vulgar drawings on ruins, but now they understood that the destroyer, this Son of Iuz, sat before them and they were reverent to that fact.

“You,” said Douglas. “You brought this city to ruin. You murdered countless innocents. It was YOU who fired the arcane weapon upon us.”

“And it was only because of those gathered before me today that the death toll was not greater,” the githzerai said. “I am no arcanist, but it was I who gathered all of the innocent children needed to power the weapon, and it was I who introduced them to my blade. I suspect Valgaman was looking for history to repeat itself when he invited me to his palace. Perhaps my son requested that he invite me as a test, to see if I am the ‘traitor’ he believes me to be. But I would not repeat what I did that day. I vowed never to kill an innocent or to raise my hand to one weaker than myself as I watched that beautiful city fall. I dropped my sword and have never again picked it up. That said, I am responsible for enough deaths to damn myself a thousand times over, and none of my actions since then can atone for what I have done.”

There was silence.

“Are you surprised your son followed in your footsteps?” Douglas asked.

“He couldn’t follow in my footsteps,” the githzerai said. “I was born with a father who cared for me, who guided me on the path to manhood. True, he was an Iuzian, and his love lead me to a very destructive place, but I always felt supported. My son… was never supported. At least, not by me. When he was old enough he trained to be blackguard. The son of Iiuza, and yet he struck fear in nobody. He was never meant to be a warrior. He should have been something better, perhaps a builder or a poet. But he took the name Iiuza even though it didn’t fit, and his cruelty surpassed my own. I never wanted to prove myself evil. I just followed the path set before me. Embrion is set on proving to the world that he was chosen by the god Iuz, and I’m convinced he’ll kill anyone… perhaps everyone… to make his point.”

The three judges exchanged glances. Is this the moment, the githzerai wondered. Is this the moment where they hold me before their justice? When they pronounce my death?

The baroness looked forlorn. “Iiuza… Or Embrion… How do we stop him?”

“I’d hoped to devise a plan with Jurgen,” said the githzerai. “He had suggested that I help him find the remnants of the arcane weapon. I had intended to tell him whatever he wanted to know if he’d help me rescue my wife and stop my son. But now Jurgen is gone…”

The darkness that had first crossed the baroness’s face had crept its way onto the visage of both Douglas and the wizard. This was the moment in which all would be revealed. The githzerai expected that they would find his answers not good enough. He expected death, and in the most private confines of his heart he welcomed it. There had been a moment when the githzerai first saw Douglas again in which he’d wanted to bum rush the man, to snap his neck before the wizard could strike him down. If he had only been allowed to leave the Felshore instead of spending those long weeks imprisoned. If only he could have sent a message. But Douglas’s only concern was for the precious city. In that moment, the githzerai had wanted to kill them all for letting his wife die. In truth, the githzerai knew that he could have broken out of his prison at any moment, and if he’d really been that concerned he could have escaped the city without anyone noticing. It didn’t matter that Douglas watched his every move. If he’d cared he could have been invisible. But he didn’t care. His wife’s blood was on the githzerai’s own hands. He was alone in the world, without purpose, wasting away the moments until “Iiuza” caught the githzerai and murdered him for a blood traitor. Better that Douglas kill him now.

“Do you have a backup plan?” Jenkins asked.

“No,” the githzerai said. “I would have to think about it.”

“Then you will think about it outside of this dank prison,” Jenkins said. “The Shining City is open to you in its entirety, and you are free.”

Campaign Stories continues in Wiliken 19.