{"id":1810,"date":"2013-05-22T11:18:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T16:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=1810"},"modified":"2013-05-22T17:39:53","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T22:39:53","slug":"playing-catch-up-with-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/playing-catch-up-with-the-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Catch-Up with the Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other evening Nick and I were half-watching a Stanley Cup playoff game involving the Boston Bruins.\u00a0 At one point the camera panned the rafters displaying the banners honoring Bobby Orr, and Nick commented, \u201cWow, Bobby Orr only played for 10 years.\u201d\u00a0 \"Bible<\/a>And then I responded with a nugget from the deep recesses of my brain, \u201cYes, but he finished his career playing for the Blackhawks.\u201d\u00a0 Nick couldn\u2019t believe that this was true \u2013 Bobby Orr a Blackhawk? But then he was suitably impressed when he consulted the Internet on his iPad. \u00a0I was puzzled as to how I dredged up this fact \u2013 during the time that Orr played for the Blackhawks I was totally absorbed by medical school and the Blackhawks games were not televised then, so I really have no idea how I heard about it, why I chose to remember it, and how I could recall it some 35 years later.<\/p>\n

The bigger question in my mind is what my brain refuses to remember \u2013 like anything to do with the Bible.\u00a0 I know for a fact that I have read about or heard the explanation of \"Bible<\/a>Passover, the burning bush and parting of the Red Sea multiple times – certainly more than the fact that Bobby Orr finished his career in Chicago \u2013 but I can\u2019t give you any more details on these events other than that they were Biblical.\u00a0 (There is also that story about Jonah and Whale, but that might actually have something to do with Pinocchio who I think also spent time in a Great Blue.\u00a0 There is something biblical about Pontius Pilate, but that name only makes me think of Pierre Pilote, the sturdy defenseman, number 3 and captain of the Blackhawks in the 1960s.) \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

For starters I received no religious training from my parents.\u00a0 My mother did have a few expressions that provided some limited insight.\u00a0 If she was impressed by something she might say, \u201cJesus Murphy!\u201d\u00a0 If there was something that was threatening, she might say, \u201cJudas Priest!\u201d and so early on I got the sense that Judas was a baddie.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0And then she had a favorite song called \u201cThe Very First Baseball Game,\u201d which appealed to her love of clever \"Bible<\/a>word play.\u00a0 I can still remember the tune and the first couple of verses \u2013 \u201cEve stole first, Adam second, Solomon umpired the game\u2026” \u00a0(See below for the whole song).\u00a0 Finally, my
\nmother often participated in musical skits, and one involved John the Baptist.\u00a0 She stuck her head through a tray and surrounded it with lettuce and vegetables, closed her eyes and tilted her head to make it look she was an entr\u00e9e and that\u2019s how I know that John the Baptist was beheaded.<\/p>\n

My grandparents faithfully attended the Presbyterian Church and my great-great grandfather was a very pious man who actually founded the church; \u00a0there is even a beautiful stained-glass window in the church in his honor.\u00a0 But my parents never went.\u00a0 My\"IMG_0071-001\"<\/a> best guess is that they found it too much work to get 6 children all dressed up to fidget in church.\u00a0 On Sunday mornings my mother was more apt to get us all bundled up and go skating at the local ice rink.\u00a0 Curiously, I am actually in the church regularly now since I participate in the hand bell choir.\u00a0 Aside from the weekly rehearsals, I theoretically should attend the church service when we perform.\u00a0 Our seats were right below the pulpit at one church I played in, and as soon as the very popular and articulate minister started in on the prayer of confession and the scripture lesson, my head would start bobbing and moments later I would be dead asleep.\u00a0 To eliminate the possibility of public snoring, I felt it was more polite to simply file out after we performed our first number and do the Sunday Times crossword puzzle until it was time to sneak back for our closing number.<\/p>\n

Basically, I perceive the local Presbyterian Church as a very lovely event space \u2013 we got married there and it hosted memorial services for both my parents.\u00a0 My brothers and I met with the minister as we were planning my mother\u2019s service.\u00a0 My agenda for the meeting was to let him know who was going to speak, and what songs we had selected \u2013 these were not hymns, but a rendition of \u201cWhat a Wonderful World\u201d and two nephews playing a Grateful Dead song.\u00a0 So I was totally surprised when the minister interrupted me, held out his hands and said, \u201cLet us bow our heads in prayer.\u201d\u00a0 Well okay, it was his house after all.<\/p>\n

So why is it my brain is so reluctant to pluck and retain anything to do with the Bible?\u00a0 Why do I have such a selective lint trap?\u00a0 Yes, I have been lucky to live in a country and community where my cultural identity has never been challenged, so maybe that explains why religion has not played a prominent role in my life.\u00a0 But it must be more than that, since the Bible is the basis of so much art, literature, history, good and evil.\u00a0 How could I have ended up with such a gaping hole in my liberal arts education?\u00a0 It was time to play catch up.\u00a0 I knew that I could never read the Bible, and searched for an abridged \u201cBible for Dummies.\u201d \u00a0I found the perfect primer, \u201cThe Good Book,\u201d by David Plotz, subtitled, \u201cthe bizarre, hilarious, disturbing, marvelous and inspiring things I learned when I read every single word of the Bible.\u201d\u00a0 The blurb said \u201cIrreverent \u2026 Plotz\u2019s hilarious exegeses will have you laughing out loud.\u00a0 Who know the Bible was such a laugh riot?\u201d\u00a0 Perfect, irreverence and humor just might get me through the Good Book.<\/p>\n

It seems that Plotz and I have very similar outlooks.\u00a0 He is culturally Jewish, I am culturally Christian, but when he says that he goes to his place of worship as often the DMV, and with the same degree of pleasure, I am right there with him. \u00a0We both know some Bible basics, such as Adam and Eve, and the Ten Commandments, but few other details.\u00a0 Plotz is my shepherd and he leadeth me.\u00a0 Off I went into a chapter by chapter recap of the Old Testament.<\/p>\n

Oh the horror, the horror!\u00a0 There are gruesome tales of rape, mass murder, incest, concubines, slaves and general mayhem, more heinous than anything the Law and Order has ever come up with.\u00a0 The story of Dinah is one such example.\u00a0 The poor girl is raped by Shechem (pronounced \u201cShake \u2018Em\u201d), who then realizes that he loves her.\u00a0 (Actually there is one Law and Order plot about a woman who unwittingly marries her rapist).\u00a0 Dinah\u2019s father and brothers agree to the marriage, but on the condition that all men in Shechem\u2019s town agree to undergo circumcision.\u00a0 However, after the procedure, Dinah\u2019s menfolk descend on Shechem\u2019s village and brutally murder everyone, steal the livestock and take all the women as slaves.\u00a0 Plotz is aghast and so am I.\u00a0 Do we want our children reading this stuff?\u00a0 In church last week, the 4th<\/sup> graders were proudly given Bibles as they graduated to the next level of Sunday school.\u00a0 However, I don\u2019t think that I let my daughter watch Law and Order until she was at least in 6th<\/sup> grade.<\/p>\n

I went to the local library and riffled through a children\u2019s bible and was relieved to see that poor Dinah had been edited out, but most of the rest of the Old Testament was there.\u00a0 And even though the stories are sugarcoated and come with gentle illustrations, the horror cannot be totally eliminated.\u00a0 There is Abraham who is given a test of faith and ordered to sacrifice his son Isaac.\u00a0 The children\u2019s Bible dutifully shows father and son climbing the mountain gathering wood to make a fire.\u00a0 Isaac innocently asks his father the whereabouts of the sacrificial goat, never dreaming that his beloved father is about to kill him.\u00a0 \u00a0The \"Bible<\/a>children\u2019s Bible then shows a picture of panicked Isaac tied to the funeral pyre, with his father holding a knife a millimeter from his neck.\u00a0 Only then does God relent.\u00a0 Are you kidding me?\u00a0 This is the warm and fuzzy God that we want our children to love and respect?<\/p>\n

And then there is the story of David who lusts after the lovely Bathsheba, the wife of his brave and loyal general Uriah.\u00a0 David seduces her and gets her pregnant, and then recalls Uriah from the front in the hopes that he will bed his wife and think that the impending child is his.\u00a0 When that plan backfires, \u00a0\u00a0David connives to send Uriah off to certain death in a battle in order to marry Bathseba.\u00a0 David has now violated at least three commandments (coveting a neighbor’s wife, lying and killing).\u00a0 God is displeased, but only punishes David indirectly through the death of his innocent newborn son.\u00a0 Come to think of it, there is another Law and Order episode about a woman who inadvertently marries her husband\u2019s killer, but this man is more appropriately punished \u2013 life without parole.\u00a0 \u00a0I am beginning to think that the Old Testament was good source material for the most lurid episodes of Law and Order.<\/p>\n

I do thank Plotz for introducing me to Leviticus 19, which lists a charming set of laws that address basic human behavior, such as stealing, lying or killing, or degrading your daughter by making her a prostitute.\u00a0 Then there are laws that address issues of everyday life, including business ethics.\u00a0 My favorite is \u201cDo not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity.\u201d\u00a0 This is an enduring business ethic, whether it is the humble shopkeeper with his finger on the scale or the dissembling Wall Street banker.\u00a0 Here is the oddest law of all, \u201cDo not wear clothing of two different kinds of material.\u201d\u00a0 This law has not stood the test of time.<\/p>\n

As I plowed through the Plotz\u2019s version of the Old Testament, I suddenly realized why my brain is so resistant to the Bible.\u00a0 I envision a swing where the perfect time to give it a push is in the instant of stillness at the height of the arc.\u00a0 A push at any other time results in chaos.\u00a0 I have recognized that my brain has that moment of stillness for a limited number of things \u2013 pattern recognition is one general theme that manifests itself in birdwatching, crossword puzzles, looking at pathology slides under the microscope, knitting patterns, etc. \u00a0 I have also recognized that my brain is very literal.\u00a0 There is simply no moment of stillness for fantasy.\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry, but that is how I would categorize much of the Old Testament. \u00a0The Bible might say that burning bushes, parting of the Red Sea and Jonah and the Whale are miracles, implying that there is an explanation, but it\u2019s just beyond or earthly understanding. \u00a0I categorize these events as fantasy, implying that there is no way, no how, that they could ever be true. \u00a0My innate aversion to fantasy is consistent.\u00a0 \u00a0I have a similar lack of interest in Greek mythology (when did the Greeks recognize that their Gods were myths?) and have never seen any episode of Star Trek, Star Wars or Harry Potter.<\/p>\n

And so I come to the end of \u201cThe Good Book,\u201d and here is what one Bible illiterate thinks.\u00a0 I should preface this by saying that Nick and I miscommunicated on our Costco runs and we now have 10 pounds of limes in the fridge.\u00a0 I\u2019m diligently trying to work my way through \"bible<\/a>this green mountain and am now on my fourth lime-laden margarita. \u00a0\u00a0But here is it.\u00a0 I certainly recognize that the Bible and the church are a source of community and strength to millions, but organized religion just don\u2019t resonate with me.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have a beef with the Bible, there are many good stories, and the book of Proverbs seems particularly peppy and offers some good advice. \u00a0But I already know that there are endless opportunities for self improvement and the prayer of confession at the beginning of the Presbyterian service is a definite downer.\u00a0 But the main issue is that I can find spirituality without a guide book; if I keep my eyes open and take a walk in the park my brain will find a still moment and let random wonder and awe pour in.<\/p>\n

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, post, stop) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.\u00a0 Scroll down for answers.<\/em><\/h6>\n

Let\u2019s review God\u2019s cruelty through the misfortunes that are Job\u2019s<\/p>\n

God lets Satan kill his family and in despair Job tears off his —–.<\/p>\n

Then Satan tests him with skin lesions and a maggot that —– into his skin<\/p>\n

Three friends arrive and are appalled at the bad shape Job is in.<\/p>\n

Despite their —– words of advice Job asks the eternal question Why?<\/p>\n

Why would a kind and loving God permit such suffering and not let me die?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Answers:\u00a0 robes, bores, sober<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Complete Lyrics to \u201cThe Very First Baseball Game\u201d<\/p>\n

By Arthur Longbrake, 1906<\/p>\n

Eve stole first, Adam second;
\nSolomon umpired the game.
\nRebecca went to the well with a pitcher,
\nAnd Ruth in the field made a name.
\nGoliath was struck out by David \u2014
\nA base hit was made on Abel by Cain,
\nAnd the Prodigal Son made a great home-run.
\nBrother Noah gave checks out for rain.<\/p>\n

Jonah wailed \u2014 went down swinging.
\nLater he popped up again.
\nA lion-drive by ole Nebuchadnezzar
\nMade Daniel warm-up in the pen.
\nDelilah was pitching to Samson,
\nWhen he brought down the house with a clout,
\nAnd the Angels that day made a double-play
\nThat’s when Adam and Eve were thrown out.<\/p>\n

Ole St. Pete was checking errors,
\nAlso had charge of the gate.
\nSalome sacrificed Big John the Baptist
\nWho wound up ahead on the plate.
\nSatan was pitching that apple
\nAnd looked as though he might fan ’em all,
\nBut then Joshua let go a mighty blow
\nAnd blasted one right at the wall.<\/p>\n

And then the Lord wound up and took good aim,
\nAnd started the very First Baseball Game.
\nAnd, now we all know the way that the game was begun,
\nAnd to this very day \u2014 It’s still Number One!<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other evening Nick and I were half-watching a Stanley Cup playoff game involving the Boston Bruins.\u00a0 At one point the camera panned the rafters displaying the banners honoring Bobby Orr, and Nick commented, \u201cWow, Bobby Orr only played for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-to-the-best-of-my-knowledge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-tc","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1810"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}