Author: Wesley White

A Rule’s Exception

“The exceptions to any rule are the most interesting in themselves, for they show us that the old rule is wrong. And it is most exciting, then, to find out what the right rule, if any, is. ~Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist (p. 16).

The appeal to a rule qua rule needs one more look at the observational data—the experience of today’s ability to record observations in a new setting with new tools of measurement.

This ability to hold old data against new data is to have eaten from a tree of knowing outcomes and a willingness to alter them based on new information. When such connections to a new world are outlawed from the beginning, we don’t need to simply wait for some next great shoulder to stand on and with. When different outcomes are dismissed out-of-hand, we can be as certain as ever we can be that it is but a matter of time before the old rule crashes.

Such a crash has never been pretty or sweeping. There are still people aplenty who can only respond positively to a hierarchical structure where they know their place, their rule, and it will always be within a right-wrong binary—Heaven is up; Earth is flat.

Theology, the old queen from generations of incest, is always tested at the point of its current certainty. Ironically, it is its loyal opposition that carries its best hope of reinvigorating its line. The parade of religions seems never to end, like the parade of tectonic plates rising from below and diving deep below—mixing and sifting their moment in the sun, their dance of respiration featuring a coordinating atom of magnesium in chlorophyll and of iron in hemoglobin.

A Beginning that Ends with a Mummy

Alter’s introduction to Genesis has this summary: “Genesis begins with the making of heaven and earth and all life, and ends with the image of a mummy—Joseph’s—in a coffin.”

Alter sees “irrepressible procreation” as implicitly projected beyond this story-line and continuing through every subsequent oppression. As a story continued on to a time of exodus, this carries literary weight. As the experience of many a people whose artifacts have lasted beyond their own very repressible procreation, many questions need raising.

Life of the imagination grows and adapts to its current circumstance. After realizing Life has its seasons of mummification, story can find its way past apparent death—Genesis, Invictus!

Life within political, economic, and religious dicta often finds itself cut off with no advance notice. Such a Kafkaesque reality goes, none-the-less, into Dylan’s “good night” with no Eliotian “whimper” or notice—Genesis, Obliterus!

The Hebrew Bible – Alter

Robert Alter’s new three-volume work, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary is going to be a key source for my comments about Genesis. Alter begins with an extended look at the seeming reality that “translation is betrayal” or, within a religious tradition, “heresy.”

A part of the tension scripture reveals is a distinction between written and oral traditions. There is a temptation to smash these two together in an unhelpful or unholy amalgam that can no longer distinguish past articulations and present need—which delays the arrival of a future with a larger present than our current one.

This confusion is found in an appeal to sola scriptura as interpreted by some “holy” spirit. Not allowing scripture to be a record of previous revelations keeps it from playing its part in present questions, even those simply rephrased from the past. Every generation needs to add to a scriptural base and be exempted from it.

Giving scripture its due, but not more, opens us to clarify the questions and revelations of today while also leaving room for glimmers of tomorrow to be planted in today. When these three beginning states (past, present, future) can be engaged on both personal and social life-layers we find a different order of energy not only welling up but overflowing beyond an explanation of a particular translation or interpretation of either an etiology or teleology. Alphas and Omegas become mere metonymies of a fullness of life where we go beyond signing-in to signing-up to choose life in its interface with death.

Of G*D & g()d

I’ve been reading Lloyd Geering’s From the Big Bang to God. The last section wonders if we can still use the old term “religion” for a new commitment to a structured form for meaning in a global setting beyond our fascination with clan. Geering offers no suggestion for an alternative.

The reliance of his text on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is leading me to transition my usual marker of an evolutionary and mutating G*D to g()d.

This moves from othering capital letters and an asterisk encouraging a reader to look elsewhere for “more” to a more familiar lower case with space for a seed to be planted and evolve as it does (there is less here than we have come to expect).

These two:

G*D    and    g()d

are the current bounds or spectrum within which I find a delicious playground. and invite you to join me in playing with them as a way of sensitizing our awareness beyond cares of every night and noon.

Fair Warning

It is time for me to get back into a bit of more regular writing. I thought of starting another site to do it but figured this might be as good as any to begin.

The main topic will be Genesis with occasional forays into other bits and pieces.

Note that those who use the subscription process always have an opportunity to unsubscribe at the bottom of the email you receive. If there are others you think might appreciate reading here, you can refer them to http://eepurl.com/cqvRmT to sign up to receive postings at 9AM the day after they are posted. If someone wants to taste this series, you can refer them to https://wildernessurgency.org.

First Post tomorrow.

Wesley

Mark – Historical Fiction

You might be interested in a new book by RW Holmen—Wormwood and Gall: The Destruction of Jerusalem and the First Gospel. This is a story of Markos (who wrote the Gospel of Mark).

Holmen uses current historical and archeological findings to give credence to one background possibility for the currently invisible Mark. The lens through which he works is the image used by James Carroll that the Christian scriptures are “war literature”. Holmen uses his experience of being an Army Ranger to inform his telling the time of Mark from the expulsion of the Roman Army to their return and destruction of Jerusalem and subsequent years to the writing of the first gospel. I can highly recommend this telling.

Holmen has also written: A Wretched Man: A Novel of Paul the Apostle and Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism. I also highly recommend both of these. He has additional books about his Army experiences available on Amazon.

Hello again

My journey through Mark had come to a close. Recently, though, a new stirring has begun toward another wilderness setting—Genesis.

My current schedule is full until the middle of March, so my current plan is to look at April Fools Day (plural fools, rather than possessive ones) as a starting point for another journey.

Likely, this one will not be verse by verse only. With more than 1,500 verses and my advancing years, it didn’t seem prudent to start a four-and-a-half year journey. There will be some larger scenes considered.

You are welcome to come along for the ride and invite others to sign up. As always, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this message.

May your own creative juices find their continuance or renewal.

Wesley

Closing Off

Thank you to those who have visited and left comments.

I would appreciate any “review” of this verse-by-verse approach to Mark. There is the possibility of this being turned into a self-published paperback book several months down the way. It obviously needs some editing.

There is also the reality that my next three months will have a primary focus on a Special General Conference of The United Methodist Church as it wrestles with how close to grace it will come regarding its own LGBTQ+ members and LGBTQ+ persons in discriminatory settings. I work with Love Prevails and would appreciate your support of our work through your prayers/intentions/meditation and donations.

One of the outcomes of this work is a new translation of Mark—
Slow-Reading the Gospel of Mark. Any reviews of this book on Amazon would be appreciated.

May you be awed enough in life that you will leave an empty tomb of the past and proceed to the yet-to-be-seen.

Wesley White
wwhite (at) wesleyspace (dot) net

Afterword

Afterword

Marking Time

betwixt and between
be and ing
continuous
fits and starts
we begin and end
with a provisional
transitional
beginning and ending

never a definite article
a the beginning
a the end
consistently
flowing again
remembering anticipating
are ing and tomorrow ing
our each is ing

wilderness at core
tempts and restores
within each boundary
contemptuous
unsettling every settled
feeding off certainty
to retreat deeper
until urgency pauses

a living heart
pushing onward
repenting again
compassionate
with wounds near and dear
and Johnny AppleEater far
betwixt and between

Mark 16:9-20

Later additions

(Inserted in some manuscripts from an ancient source)

[9But all that had been revealed to them they reported briefly to Peter and his companions. Afterward Jesus himself sent them out, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.]

[9After his rising again, early on the first day of the week, Jesus appeared first of all to Mary of Magdala, from whom he had driven out seven demons. 10She went and told the news to those who had been with him and who were now in sorrow and tears; 11yet even they, when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, did not believe it. 12Afterward, altered in appearance, he made himself known to two of them, as they were walking, on their way into the country. 13They also went and told the rest, but they did not believe even them. 14Later on, he made himself known to the Eleven themselves as they were at a meal, and reproached them with their want of faith and their stubbornness, because they did not believe those who had seen him after he had risen from the dead. 15Then he said to them, “Go into all the world, and proclaim the good news to all creation. 16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who refuses to believe will be condemned. 17Moreover these signs will attend those who believe. In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages; 18they will take up snakes in their hands; and, if they drink any poison, it will not hurt them; they will place their hands on sick people and they will recover.” 19So the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat at the right hand of God. 20But they set out, and made the proclamation everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the message by the signs which attended it.]

homo constructus is most proud
of the meaning behind its contraptions
there is an intentional lack of mystery

no thing can long be left
without its interpretive core
locating its place in knowing

once placed it is fenced in
now to the next open field
erecting explanatory containers as we go

The beginning continues. This is the shape of Mark—Next….

The urgency of the first part of Mark to reveal changed hearts and behaviors shifts in the second part to an expectation of “beyond” only accessible through consequences lived out in this world.

Anything that attempts to concretize and control the wilderness of indeterminacy, chaos theory, and any spirit that blows where it will to tap the most unlikely undermines Mark’s emphasis upon the human Jesus. What began with Jesus identified as Christ/Messiah/Anointed ends with Jesus identified with no-place located no-where—Nazareth in Galilee. It is this common everyday reference that offers us an insight into a never-ending beginning.

Since we are there now it becomes our wilderness to enter and go deeply enough into that we are freed from all that the spurious additions would have us believe as orthodox (right thinking that would again crucify a bubbling source of seeing beyond current limits).

A non-ending frees us from any “sacred and undying message of eternal salvation”—rising goes where it will.

“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” has no standing in a court of Mark which asked no one to be baptized or even to believe, but is abundantly fruitful in lives from Peter to Bartimaeus. Belief and baptism might be responses people would choose to do, but are quite unnecessary to salvation (“healing”, “wholeness”).

We all know demons are not demoted by sincere belief; even snake charmers are bitten, and poison is poison. Healing can occur but as a surprising gift, not as proof of anything.

To be true to Mark and Galilee, Jesus is raised to Galilee—not to heaven. Jesus continues as partners of those taking Mark’s story into themselves, listening behind its surface, and rewriting it into the next experiences they engage in. Hang on! BANG! Onward to rising!