My "Rosary" Ring

I am not Catholic, but I understand that rosary beads are used by Catholics as a guide to prayer.  Each bead represents a prayer.  I have my own version of “rosary beads,” and it is a ring.

About 20 years ago, my children gave me a ring with each of their birthstones in it.  The ring was configured to allow for additional stones to be added.  A few years ago when the ring needed to be re-sized for my aging knuckles, I decided to have the birthstones of my grandchildren added.  There were 8 at that point, so four stones were added on each side of the original four which represented my children.  Last year, a ninth grandchild was born, and a stone was added on the side to represent her.  I have room for 3 more stones before I have to get a new ring with more spaces.

Since adding the birthstones of grandchildren, I have been using my ring as a prayer reminder, and calling it my “rosary ring.”  When I look down at my hand, I am reminded to pray for my family.  Sometimes I run a finger of the opposite hand over the ring and ask God to bless my family in a general way.  More often, I look at each stone individually and pray for the person it represents.

In Isaiah 49:14-16, Israel thinks that God has forgotten her, but through the prophet, He says, Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands….”

Could a mother and grandmother forget her family?  Possibly…not likely, but possibly.  I suppose I could become senile and not have any idea what my ring represents.

But, God will not forget those He loves.  They are not just on a ring, but engraved on His palms.

Beached

In the sand just above the lapping waves,

It lies helpless,

A lifeless gelatinous mass.

Cast on the shore motionless and dying,

Unable to crawl

Back into the nurturing brine.

Floating in the depths, it had stingers

Hidden in its translucency,

A way to protect itself.

On the beach it is defenseless

Quiet and senseless.

The embodiment of vulnerability.

I once lay on the edge above the waves

Of the life-giving sea,

Afraid to move back toward it.

Accused of using my stingers,

My past was with gossip

Dredged up altered and rewritten.

I lay motionless, vulnerable, in need.

Knowing I must

Return to the nurture of the sea.

Aware that the saltiness would cause pain

In my open wounds,

I inched back embracing it.

I could not, would not remain beached.

Life itself could be lost,

By avoiding the depths.

To bask in its warmth and buoyancy,

I needed to crawl back

Into a different part of the ocean.

The jellyfish died…..I lived.

Cataclysmic Events

Living in upstate New York, I rarely think about the slow-paced glacial retreat that influenced the landscape surrounding me.  However, every time I visit the Rocky Mountains, I am overwhelmed by the cataclysm that must have occurred in order for them to exist.  I wonder if people living here ever mentally strip away the snow and evergreens and look at the outline of the peaks with the obvious fingers of once flowing lava that brought about these massive shapes.

I picture what it would have been like to watch….from a safe distance in space, of course…as the earth spewed out its molten interior by either projectile vomiting or gradual oozing.  What awesome power was required to force the mountains to such amazing heights?

I imagine a divine conductor waving his baton and thunderous orchestration accompanying the fireworks….sort of like cannon accompaniment in the 1812 Overture, only infinitely louder and grander.  A sweep of the baton producing a gigantic plume of yellow and orange with a rumble followed by an eardrum shattering BOOM!

But today, out the window I can see white ribbons of sunlit snow wandering through the dark evergreens.  Skiers and snowboarders gracefully fly down the solidified once molten fingers with no thought to the unimaginable power contained by the fragile crust on which we dwell.

In the Terminal

I suppose that talking on a cell phone in an airport departure lounge surrounded by strangers seems like a “safe” thing to do.  No one there actually knows you, so knowing your business probably seems like no biggie.  But, do you really want to entertain those of us listening?  At one point, the cellphone talker walked out into the corridor and my eyes met with those of two other individuals in the vicinity.  I said nothing, but the other two made comments to each other about having to listen to this woman’s business. So, even though the lady repeatedly walked out into the corridor, thinking she had greater privacy there, I learned the following:

She is a single mother whose daughter lives with her parents.  They aren’t happy that she keeps taking off to follow her dreams leaving the child with them.

She works in the film industry and is currently working on a fairly low budget project.

Someone is very unhappy with her.  I am not sure if this is someone working on editing a script or someone waiting for the completed script, but no amount of begging “please, trust me” was cutting it with S……. (I’m not going to use her real name).

After a long and distressing phone call with the upset S……, she talked with a confidant, sharing that at the age of 40, she was questioning everything about herself and her career.  Should she back off or jump in with both feet.

She is in a relationship, and I am unsure how secure it is. 

She works on projects with her brother.

I don’t know if she was talking to her brother or her special friend when she encouraged him to remember that:  “The universe is working toward a higher order at all times.”

I was trying very hard NOT to listen to her and to read my Time magazine, but the printed page is no match for live drama unfolding.  There was a large white space on the page I was reading when she came out with this tidbit about the universe, and I wrote it down in the space, so I wouldn’t forget it.  I guess this is New Age thought.  It certainly doesn’t sync with what I learned about thermodynamics in physics class.

The flight was delayed, but the time passed rapidly between my magazine and the drama of the the cell phone calls.  I found myself wishing I could talk with this woman, but at the same time thinking, what would I even use as a point in common from which I could develop a meaningful conversation?  So I prayed for her then, and I have several times since.

Iphigenia at Aulis

This story should be before “Iphigenia among the Tauri” if the stories in the Great Book series were chronological.  It occurs when her father Agamemnon is at Aulis, apparently becalmed and unable to continue sailing towards Troy.  He and Menelaus and their army are on the way to attack Troy and attempt to retrieve Helen.  A seer has told Agamemnon that in order to continue to Troy and have success, he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis.

Agamemnon is horrified by this and doesn’t want to do it, but is afraid of what others will think if he doesn’t show that kind of commitment to the cause.  He knows his wife Clytemnestra will never agree to this so he sends a message that he has arranged a marriage between Achilles and Iphigenia.  He later sends his servant off with a message to ignore his prior message, but the servant is stopped by Menelaus who then confronts Agamemnon.

Not having received the second message, Clytemnestra and Iphigenia and their entourage arrive expecting a wedding celebration.  Agamemnon is hoping to carry out the sacrifice without Clytemnestra catching on, but she meets Achilles and tries to talk with him about his impending marriage to her daughter.  When he indicates he has no idea what she is talking about, they are both embarrassed.

 Once the truth is known, Achilles swears he will protect Iphigenia.  He is distressed that his name has been used in this deception.  Clytemnestra and Iphigenia both plead with Agamemnon, but there doesn’t seem to be any way out.  Iphigenia decides that if it means success for the army of her father, she is willing to sacrifice herself.  Although the retrieval of Helen doesn’t seem worth her sacrifice, the protection of the army and her homeland is worth it.

At the moment when the knife is put to Iphigenia’s throat, she disappears and a hind appears in her place to be sacrificed.  Iphigenia has been saved by and spirited away by the gods.

Interesting quotes:

Agamemnon:  I envy…every man who leads a life secure, unknown and unrenowned; but little I envy those in office.

None of mortals is prosperous or happy to the last, for none was ever born to a painless life.

A hateful thing the tongue of cleverness.

Thine is the madness rather in wishing to recover a wicked wife, once thou hadst lost her—a stroke of Heaven-sent luck.  (In other words, Agamemnon wishes Menelaus would just say ‘good riddance’ to Helen.)

He who is wise should keep in his house a good and useful wife or none at all.

Menelaus:  …he is enslaved by the love of popularity, a fearful evil.

Clytemnestra:  An honourable exchange, indeed, to pay a wicked woman’s price in children’s lives!  ‘Tis buying what we most detest with what we hold most dear.

Iphigenia among the Tauri by Euripides

One of several things that caused Clytemnestra to be so angry with her husband Agamemnon that she killed him was that he had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the gods in order to attempt to win their favor in the war against Troy.  Orestes later killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father resulting in his exile.  We now learn that Iphigenia was not actually killed.  Just as Agamemnon was going to slay her with a knife, she was spirited away by the goddess Artemis, and a hind was left in her place.  Iphigenia was taken to the land of the Tauri and became a priestess in the temple of Artemis.  She is charged with making a sacrifice of any person who arrives on their shores from Hellas.

In his exile wanderings Orestes (her brother) and his friend Pylades stumble on these shores and are captured by the locals.  They are brought to Iphigenia who intends to sacrifice them according to the accepted protocol.  However, when she learns they are from the country of her birth, she begins to question them.  Pylades has given her his name, but Orestes has withheld his, so she doesn’t know initially that she is questioning and preparing to kill her own brother.  Eventually it is decided that Orestes will stay and die, but that Pylades will escape death by promising to carry a message back to Ilium for Iphigenia.  When Iphigenia gives him the written message and says it is for Orestes, Pylades hands it to him immediately, and so Iphigenia learns that her captive is her brother.

The three begin to plot how Iphigenia can get out of her required duty of killing them and escape with them back to Ilium.  She says that she will convince Thoas, king of the Tauri, that they are not a proper sacrifice because they have been guilty of matricide.  They must be purified before they are sacrificed, and since they have touched the statue of the goddess, it must be purified also.  This needs to be done in seawater, and she alone may preside over these rites.  King Thoas should stay behind and see to the cleansing of the temple itself.

Of course, Orestes and Pylades have a ship waiting for them.  

The three, with Iphigenia carrying the statue, escape to their ship.  The Tauri attempt to stop them, but are unsuccessful.  They hurry back to get soldiers to assist.  King Thoas is about to give chase, when the goddess Athena appears and tells him that it is the will of the gods for them to escape.  Also, although their ship is about to be dashed on the rocks, Poseidon intervenes and calms the sea for their sake.  Orestes and Pylades are to return to Ilium.  Iphigenia is going to end up at the temple of Artemis in Brauron.

Interesting quotes:

Iphigenia:  The unfortunate, having once known prosperity themselves, bear no kind feelings towards their luckier neighbours.

                Who knows on whom such strokes of fate will fall?  For all that Heaven decrees proceeds unseen, and no man knoweth of the ills in store; for Fate misleads us into doubtful paths.

                A man’s loss from his family is felt, while a woman’s is of little moment.  (That would be Euripides’ opinion!)

Orestes:  No wise man I count him, who, when death looms near, attempts to quell its terrors by piteous laments, nor yet the man who bewails the Death-god’s arrival, when he has no hope of rescue; for he makes two evils out of one; he lets himself be called a fool and all the same he dies; he should let his fortune be.

Chorus:    This that I have seen with mine eyes, not merely heard men tell may rank with miracles; ‘tis stranger than fiction.  (Truth is stranger than fiction.)

Response to The God Delusion-chapter 10

The God Delusion concludes with a discussion of whether we “need” God for anything.  “Does religion fill a much needed gap?  It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled…”

 If Dawkins is trying to quote Blaise Pascal, he hasn’t quite got it right.  “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”  Vacuum…not gap, heart…not mind, and not just any God.

Dawkins does allow for four possible roles for religion:  explanation, exhortation, consolation and inspiration.  He believes he has already eliminated looking to religion for any explanation….that is the purpose of science.  Exhortation is out, because he doesn’t see religion as a proper source of morality.  That leaves consolation and inspiration to be explained away in this final chapter

So, God may be comforting, but he isn’t really anything more than an imaginary friend.  Two of my children had vivid imaginations and well-developed imaginary friends.  Neither of them seemed to use these friends as a form of comfort.  My daughter had one friend on whom she projected all of the naughty things she might have liked to do herself, but refrained from as her “Jinny Johnny Monee” did these for her.  Her second friend “Jennifer-in-the Mirror” was more a rival.  Looking in the mirror on the car visor, she was disgusted that Jennifer had a knit hat exactly like the one her aunt had knit for her.  Neither of these friends would qualify as “a good model for understanding theistic belief in adults,” which is Dawkins claim regarding imaginary friends.  My son had several friends who were off having adventures in a strange land he made up.  He also talked to his stuffed animals, but they were not for comfort to him.  He referred to them as his “sons” and took care to read to them, and try to protect them from such things as airport security machines.  Again, this did not parallel a relationship with a deity.

Dawkins doesn’t think that those who say they believe in the after-life really do.  He quotes a nurse as saying that, having seen many deaths,”the individuals who are most afraid of death are the religious ones.”  It is convenient for his argument that he can quote this particular nurse, but I am also a nurse, and I do not agree with that statement.  He asks why believers don’t look forward to death.  The answer is that some do.  Many people are not in a state in which they are able to talk about their impending death.  People of faith, who I have known and who have been coherent and verbal prior to death, have talked about it. 

A few days before her death, my mother-in-law cried out asking for me to help her.  I asked her if she was in pain, and she answered, “I don’t know.”  I asked what I could do for her, and she responded, “I don’t know.”  I then said, “Mom, do you just want to go see Jesus.”  She cried and said, “Yes, oh yes.”  A bit later, while my husband and I sat holding her hands, she said, “This is a sad time for everyone.”  I said, “I hope it isn’t too sad for you, Mom.”  She laughed out loud, “Oh, No!  I’m going to be better off than the rest of you!”  She also told my father-in-law very firmly that she was leaving “to go be with the Lord.”  She exhibited no fear and no difficulty in talking about her impending death.

Dawkins lastly turns to inspiration and whether God is needed for it.  He, of course, doesn’t believe so.  He talks about all the trillions of people who could have existed, but don’t, so we are “staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight.  However, brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull…couldn’t this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never be offered life in the first place?”  

Now wait just a minute here, a few pages back he is talking about life pretty cheaply.  It is perfectly alright to abort a fetus, who will never know the difference.  Death is no problem because we weren’t conscious before birth, so why should that be a problem after death. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the logic in now talking with grandiose sentimentality about callously insulting unborn trillions…who, of course, never existed, aren’t conscious, can’t feel pain, and don’t know they are being insulted.  It is apparently okay to get all sentimental about the “unborn” when it is convenient to the point he wants to make.

He likens man’s ability to understand what is around him to looking through the small slit of a burka.  We can only “see” a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with our eyes.  We are aware of additional portions of it by using instruments.  “Our imaginations are not yet tooled-up to penetrate the neighbourhood of the quantum.  Nothing at that scale behaves in the way matter—as we are evolved to think—ought to behave…..Common sense lets us down, because common sense evolved in a world where nothing moves very fast, and nothing is very small or very large.”  And later, “the assumptions that quantum theory needs to make…are so mysterious that even the great Feynman himself was moved to remark…’If you think you understand quantum theory…you don’t understand quantum theory.”

So…we are supposed to accept science, which defies common sense and can’t be understood because our range of sight as humans is limited, but we can also be certain (as he has declared in chapter 4) that there is NO GOD?????

In a world where nothing moves, very fast, and nothing is very small or very large, there is a God who encompasses all of it.  He does not need to be fast, because he is omnipresent.  He permeates the very small and even the very large moves within Him.  Does it defy common sense….maybe.  Is it explainable through science….probably not, but then currently neither is quantum theory.

Dawkins ends with “….we may eventually discover that there are no limits.”  I wish he would discover the One who has no limits.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm.  He said, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me.  Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions?  Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it?  On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone, while the morning stars sang together and the angels shouted for joy!”

After four chapters (Job 38-41) of such questions, Job wisely responds, “Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. I repent in dust and ashes.”

I am not opposed to science and looking for answers. (I actually have an undergraduate degree in chemistry.)  But, there are limits to the human mind….Dawkins himself has admitted that. 

I would hope that no one would lose his/her faith or wallow in despair after reading this book.  It contains way too much misinformation and faulty reasoning to be taken seriously.