When I Was A Girl, I Loved Esau

When I was a girl, I loved Esau.

At night when the work was done and we were all gathered around
the fire Father told us our stories. I listened, I listened with all my
self. I stored them up inside in neat bundles of books and chapters.
Each story the living memory of a person, newly breathing with
each telling.

I was a contrary child and so the other stories, the silent ones that
grow up inside and around the spoken memory like bindweed, were
counterpoint inside my heart.

Esau was not so clever. He was big and hairy and strong. He
loved God’s world and went out into it to make his way. Esau
would hunt, running and leaping, climbing and lifting and
crouching, until at the end of the day he was empty of reserve his
very essence in danger of being consumed. He would return to the
tents trembling and sweating like a horse that has been whipped
across the desert sands long after it should have been given rest and
water.

Esau was not so clever but he was filled with passion. He would
rather work beside the slaves then sit in the shade and talk. Esau
lived life. He did not store it up and use it in tiny bits to gain
advantage.

In my mind I could see him, huge and red, striding across the
encampment. He was not his mother’s favorite, but his wives loved
him. They relished the feel of his arms around them and when he
went out to hunt they sent a piece of their hearts with him. Esau
did not care that his wives were of a different peoples, had different
languages, even different gods. Eassu’s God was big enough for
them all and the language of love has never suffered from a lack of
words.

But Esau’s mother did not love him. He was not sleek and brown
and smooth like Jacob or her people. He was not like his father
either. Had he been born alone I think she would have smothered
him so no one would wonder at his red hair and green eyes. But
Jacob came second, the correct child, beautiful and familiar to her
eyes, and so saved from reproach she did not kill her firstborn, but
neither did she love him.

Jacob was like her, small, dark and mean spirted. He wanted the
birthright, but more, his mother wanted it for him. Together they
conspired to cheat Esau, and they did. My heart breaks for him
still, even though he long ago returned to the earth. Afterwards he
went out with his wife and made for himself a kingdom where he
was Pappa and Lover and Chieftain. A world full of fierce little red
headed children who loved to hunt and whose mothers’ fondly
compared them to their father.

Then, Father tells the part where Esau and Jacob meet again. Jacob
is afraid, but Esau is big. He welcomes Jacob, and lets him live.

When I was a child, I loved Esau. I prayed that God would send
me someone like him, big, strong, passionate and wild and that God
would pass over to other girls, girls who did not weep for Esau’s
broken heart, all of the Jacobs, the smooth, scheming, clever
favorites.

Praying for Rain

It has been very dry here for sometime. We are short about 16
inches of rainfall this year, and have not had a “soaker” in six weeks
or more. Hay fields look like mid September, crops are stunted,
un-watered lawn is turning to dust. Vegetation crunches underfoot.
Worse still is the damage being done to deep rooted and long lived
plants.

Last week I went to the Northgate area (of Chattanooga) to help
out a friend with administrative problems. All the way there I
prayed for rain. Once there I popped out of my car and into hers.
Off we went to discuss a strategy to solve her problem. Then came
the storm, a ten minute, hard, fast storm.

I smiled.

Friend asked me “Why are you smiling?”

Well”, I answered with a grin, “It’s raining and my
windows are down!”

I prayed for rain and left the windows down. I’m still praying for
rain, but now I roll the windows up!

To make the joke on me richer, when I got back to North Georgia I
found that not one drop had fallen where I live.

Why I'm a Vegetarian


I am frequently asked why I’m a Vegetarian. Like most vegetarians
I have several reasons.

First, and most important - I do not want my body to be a
walking cemetery.

Second, and also important - My health, as most of you
know I have struggled with weight for most of my life and
have had high blood pressure for over 15 years. I also have
interesting and unpleasant digestive issues together with
hypoglycemia and arthritis.

Third, and not quite so important to me, though it should be
- the environment and other humans. Intensive livestock
farming pollutes water tables and produces unthinkable
amounts of gas, contributing to global warming. Meat
production also reduces the available land available for grain
and vegetable production thus reducing the amount of food
available to humans.

After I explain this, the ones who don’t immediately change the
subject tell me they luvvvv meat and just could not give it up.

Poppycock, you don’t even miss it after a few days. After a
month or so it starts to smell funny to you and after three
months you are a little repulsed by it.

The next one is - I don’t much like vegetables, so I can’t be a
vegetarian.

I didn’t like them much either. I found out though that once
I had learned some good recipes (vegetarian curry is a
favorite) and had been off meat for a few weeks that I
craved some vegetables and that they all tasted much better.

Seldom does anyone ask me what the “side effects” of being a
vegetarian are. But here they are.

I am taking one half as much beta blocker as I was
previously and one fourth the amount of Ace inhibitor. I am
completely off all anti-inflammatory drugs.

I have lost weight without going hungry.

I feel much better.

My joints do not hurt.

The heat does not bother me as much.

I am no longer having chest pain.

I am no longer having “flutters”.

My skin looks better.

My unpleasant bowl disease is about 75% better.

Out of Sorts, This I Believe

I am procrastinating. I should be writing an ante litem letter, but
here I am blogging instead. Yesterday was a strange one.
Apparently 3/4 of the church knew the pastor was going to be out
of town, I was part of the 1/4 that showed up, the 1/4 that did not
know.

Sis and husband showed up for services, even though they had
already been to their church’s morning service. Between the low
attendance and the guest speaker they did not really get the Mosaic
experience. Really though, maybe they picked the right week to
come since the speaker was a pastor with a strong “Jesus is the only
way” outlook, which they share. Frankly the sermon was too long
and came pretty close to being the sort of sermon that kept me out
of Baptist churches most of my life. It made my little red fundy
flags go up.

Now I will take a brief break from my generalized hatefulness and
share the funny and to the point message the guest speaker gave.
In a nutshell, spiritual maturity is loving each other and creating
unity. It was funny to me because for days I have been judgmental
and harshly opinionated and a little bit negative. So, a little fundy
or not, it brought me up short against my ugliness. It is easy to
love my immediate circle and easy to love the ones that are far
away, but I have, and continue to have, great difficulty loving
people I know of individually that are not family or friends. I really
am a bit of a crank.

I will say, since I have already implied it, that I do not believe in any
version of the Jesus Christ story that involves most of the world,
including Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, Buddhist etc., going to
hell. Further, I do not believe that Jesus Christ was God in
the Trinitarian sense. [Check out the Johannine Comma]. I think that
both God and Jesus are. Jesus prayed to God, not to himself.

I believe that Jesus is the key to the Kingdom of
Heaven. But I don’t think the key will work if you do not take it
and put it in the lock,open the door, and go
through it. There are other keys to the Kingdom, there are
other mansions in Heaven, there are other sheep, not of this fold.
These things I believe. If I am wrong, I will have lots of company
in the afterlife.