The Wisdom of Lady Cardinal

Last night as we ate dinner, we were treated to a glimpse of the cardinal courting ritual.  A male and female cardinal came to the birdfeeder together.  Seeing them together is not typical during most of the year.  The male sat directly in front of the seed, while the female was at a right angle to him on the side of the perch.  He picked up a seed and placed it in her mouth.  She accepted it.  He fed her several times.  If he didn’t do this quickly enough, she sat there with her mouth open waiting until he caught on to his responsibility.

If Mr. Cardinal is going to “get lucky” tonight, he has to prove that he knows how to take care of a lady and provide for a family.  Unfortunately, human beings aren’t wise enough to figure this out.  Young women in our culture have accepted the lie that they can be sexually “liberated,” and that if things don’t work out, they can make it as single mothers.  Some teenage girls look upon having a child as a status symbol, or at least, something that gives meaning to their lives.   If any thought is given to the realities of caring for a child, it is “magical” thinking that is not based in reality at all.

Here are some interesting statistics I found.  Although two-thirds of single mothers are employed outside the home, only two-fifths are employed full-time year round.  The average income of a family headed by a single mom is only one-third of the average income of a family comprised of a married couple.  So, most children being raised by single mothers are being raised in poverty. 

I have seen this problem close up.  My heart breaks for young women who have made unwise choices and whose children suffer the consequences.  If they were birds, they wouldn’t survive.  Because they are people, and there are programs in place to assist, they “survive,” but not necessarily in a healthy fashion.

I have also watched a cute little downy woodpecker come to the bird feeder over and over.  Each time he picks up a seed, he carries it to the same spot in the large maple tree.  I do not see the female at the feeder until late in the summer.  It is apparently his duty to bring home the food, and he does it with diligence.  As I watch him hurry back and forth, I am filled with admiration.  I love that little bird.

God has placed wisdom in the instincts of His creatures.  He has placed a conscience in those who are made “in His image.”  Our culture has taught young women to ignore their conscience and accept something less than God intended.  Our culture has taught young men that they can get away with being irresponsible.  They do not have to prove themselves in order to have the privilege of mating.  Our young women are not wise enough to wait like Lady Cardinal with mouth open expecting to be fed.  Our young men are not diligent enough to exhaust themselves like Mr. Downy Woodpecker in providing for their families.

If only humans were as wise as birds…….

Entertaining the Thought

Committing an atrocity takes some thought and planning.   How does a person go from being “normal” to becoming a monster?

A fleeting thought passes through the mind.

The thought returns and is briefly reflected on.

The details of the idea are sketched in.  Perhaps at this point, the person believes he is only writing fiction in his mind. 

He meets someone either in person or through a book or online influence who reinforces his idea.

Carrying out the plan begins to seem possible.  Details are worked out.  Where would I buy what I needed?  When would I do this?  How will I pick the location?

Information is gathered.  Items to carry out the plot are actually purchased.  They sit in his room begging to be assembled or tried out.  Bomb-making equipment is stashed in the closet or a weapon is hidden under the bed.

Increasing amounts of time and thought are expended.  At some point the balance tips, and it is no longer “if,” but “when.”

A date and location are chosen.  The person gets up in the morning knowing this is the day.  ‘I am actually going to do this,’ plays over and over in his mind.

The process can’t possibly occur in a couple of days.  Sliding all the way down the slippery slope would take weeks, months or years.  A person could stop himself at almost any point in the process and say, “NO!  I will not do this evil thing.”  But…it would be easier to stop near the beginning than the end.  As the “event” nears, the imperative will become stronger and pick up speed.

It must take a certain amount of social isolation or at least, compartmentalization, for no friend or acquaintance to recognize the roaring freight train of the inevitable.

And then…the whole world knows what has gone on silently behind closed doors and in the recesses of the perpetrator’s mind.  Those who love him protest that it cannot be so.  Those who knew him casually are surprised.  The rest of the world asks ‘why?’ or shrugs it off, if it didn’t impact them directly.

The world would be a terrifying place if we knew how many people were someplace on that slope of tiny decisions spiraling downward.

Ion by Euripides

Phoebus (aka Apollo) forces himself on a young mortal woman named Creusa.  She finds herself pregnant and manages to hide this from her family.  She delivers the baby alone in a cave and decides that she must abandon him.  Unknown to her, Phoebus is watching out for the baby, and he is transported to a shrine for Phoebus where he grows up in service to the god.

Many years pass.  Creusa has been married to Xuthus for some time, but they have not been able to have children.  They travel together to the temple of Phoebus to plead their case for a child.  Creusa meets her lost child, but of course, does not recognize him.  While she talks with him, Xuthus has gone into the temple.  He comes out saying that he was promised that the first person he saw on leaving the temple would be his son.  Ion, who is actually Creusa’s son, is the first person he sees.

When Creusa learns that Xuthus now has a “son” and that he plans to take him back to Athens with them, she is upset.  She feels that he has a son, but she doesn’t, and that this young man will now ascend to the prominent place that her own offspring should have had.  On the advice of an old servant, she decides to kill Ion.  She possesses vials of the blood of a Gorgon, and one of these is a death potion.

Creusa arranges for the death potion to be placed in the goblet of Ion which will be used in the celebration Xuthus is giving in honor of Ion becoming his son.  Fortunately, the first round of drinks is spilled out as an offering to the gods.  A bird laps up some of Ion’s drink and dies.

Ion now decides that he must kill Creusa, who he thinks is his step-mother, because she intended to kill him.  In the nick of time an old prophetess arrives with a chest containing items found with Ion when he was a baby.  Creusa realizes that Ion must be her son and is able to describe in detail the contents of the chest.  Ion now believes she is his mother.  The two are ecstatic to find one another after all these years, and the fact that they just recently were intending to kill one another is forgiven and forgotten.

This is a pretty tangled and convoluted plot.  Lies and misunderstandings abound.  I suppose if one were to have actually seen this performed as a play there would have been great suspense wondering if either the mother or son would kill the other before figuring out their relationship.  Tragedy seems inevitable until the very end.

As the goddess Athena comments in conclusion:  ‘Tis ever thus; Heaven’s justice may tarry awhile, yet comes it at the last in no wise weakened.

And the chorus responds:  It is only right that he, whose house is sore beset with trouble, should reverence God and keep good heart; for at the last the righteous find their just reward, but the wicked, as their nature is, will never prosper.

I’m a bit surprised to hear this from the Greeks whose gods seem so capricious and flawed.  In fact, earlier in the play Ion comments to Phoebus:  How, then, can it be just that you should enact your laws for men, and yourselves incur the charge of breaking them?.....For when ye pursue pleasure in preference to the claims of prudence, ye act unjustly; no longer is it fair to call men wicked, if we are imitating the evil deed of gods, but rather those who give us such examples.

Thankfully, as Christians we have a God who is a good example.  Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet was without sin.  Hebrews 4:14, 15

Discarding the Shroud

O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago.
He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  Isaiah 25:1, 7, 8

My mother died in my home in 1998.  Because she was under the care of Hospice, she did not need to go to the hospital to be pronounced dead.  The funeral director and his assistant came right to the house to pick her up.  As I waited for them to arrive, I pictured them taking her out in a black plastic body bag, and this was a chilling thought. The day was cold and snowy.  Black plastic seemed so harsh and lacking in any comfort.  But, when the undertaker arrived, I realized that the body bag was soft blue corduroy.  Perhaps it was lined with black plastic, but that is not what I saw.  I saw my Mother's favorite color and something that would enfold her as she traveled through the snow to the hearse.  Such a small thing...but, it has come to my mind more times than I can recount over the years.  Always, there is a sense of peace in the mental image of her body shrouded in soft blue fabric.

But...what if the shroud could be not only changed to something comforting, but totally discarded?  What if death could be swallowed up in victory forever?  What if the one thing we can be sure of, in addition to taxes, never happened again?

That is the message of Easter.  In rising from the dead, Christ has forever conquered death.  Death only has power as long as He allows it.  He planned long ago to release man from the grasp of certain death.  He has not just changed the shroud into something more aesthetic.  He has destroyed the shroud!

That is the message of Easter.

Here is my response:  I will exalt and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things!

Boredom and Drama

Human beings seem to require a certain amount of drama in order to stave off boredom.  Some personalities must feed off turmoil throughout their lifetimes.  Others only seem to require it during adolescence.

Those who need endless drama are endlessly difficult to live with.  Teenagers are only temporarily difficult to live with.  For most of them, sanity and clarity do eventually dawn.

During times when drama is necessary, a lack of it results in behaviors which will incite it.  These range from outright brawls to more minor occasions of "needling" or "stirring the pot."

It seems generally true that those who are addicted to turmoil don't recognize their addiction and may even complain about this trait in others.  Having a reason to complain results in conversation which perpetuates it.  Drama is contagious.

Personally, I am almost never bored.  I can always think of some creative project or knotty conundrum to occupy my mind.

BUT

I do also live on the teetering edge of a great swirling vortex of chaos provided for me by family members.  If I weren't exerting so much effort to prevent myself from being sucked in and consumed, maybe I would be bored and in need of creating my own drama.

Am I supposed to be grateful?

The Trojan Women by Euripides

This play takes place outside the city of Troy which has just fallen due to the Trojan horse.  Poseidon appears at the beginning of the play and has a discussion with Athena.  Athena is requesting that although she has assisted Agamemnon and the Argives in defeating the Trojans, Poseidon will see to it that they suffer hardship while sailing home…yet another example of the fickleness of the Greek gods.  Following this agreement, they disappear for the rest of the play, and the focus is on the women of Troy, who have been taken captive by the Argives.

Hecuba, who was married to the now dead Priam and as such was queen of Troy, is bemoaning her fate.  Although she is old and gray, she along with the other women will be given as spoils of war to the Argive army.  Because she is elderly, she will become nothing more than a slave.  The younger women will become, against their wills, the wives of the conquerors.  Particularly grievous is the fact that Cassandra, who is a virgin prophetess and Hecuba’s daughter, will become the wife of Agamemnon himself.  Hecuba is distraught, but Cassandra is delighted, because she sees it as a way to bring about Agamemnon’s ruin, and so avenge the deaths of her father Priam, brother Hector, and the other Trojans.  (It will turn out that she is right about this.  Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, kills him when he returns, in part, over the fact that he has taken Cassandra as his wife and intends to replace her.  See “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus)

Hecuba’s son Hector and his wife Andromache have a son named Astyanax who is a small child.  Talthybius arrives with the message that Andromache must surrender her child to be thrown off the wall of Troy.  The Argives are apparently afraid that if he lives to adulthood, he will avenge the deaths of his father, grandfather and other Trojans.  Both Hecuba and Andromache are in great grief over this, but realize they are powerless to stop it.

Menelaus enters and has a discussion with Hecuba about Helen.  Helen, wife of Menelaus, was the cause of the war, because she ran off with Paris, Hecuba’s son.  Whether Helen should live or die is discussed in detail with Helen pleading for her life.  Menelaus intends to take her back to Argos to be killed in front of those who have suffered the deprivation of so many years at war because of her.  Hecuba cautions that Menelaus should not travel on the same ship with Helen, because she fears Helen will again win his heart.

Talthybius returns with the dead body of Astyanax which is being carried on the shield of his father Hector.  He is prepared for burial on the shield.

The women, including Hecuba, are herded off to the ships as they see Troy being burned to the ground behind them.

Observations:

*Once again the Greek gods are fickle.  Poseidon even makes this accusation against Athena.  Why leap’st thou thus from mood to mood?  Thy love and hate both go too far, on whomsoever centred.

*Sometimes death brings more honor to a person than life would have.  As for Hector…he is dead and gone, but still his fame remains as bravest of the brave, and this was a result of the Achaeans’ coming; for had they remained at home, his worth would have gone unnoticed. ….whoso is wise should fly from making war, but if he be brought to this pass, a noble death will crown his city with glory…”

*Hecuba and Andromache discuss whether there is more hope in life or in death.

Hecuba:  Death and life are not the same, my child; the one is annihilation, the other keeps a place for hope.

Andromache:  ‘Tis all one, I say, ne’er to have been born and to be dead, and better far is death than life with misery.  For the dead feel no sorrow any more and know no grief…

*Hecuba makes an interesting prayer, indicating that she doesn’t know who the supreme power is.  O thou that dost support the earth and restest thereupon, whosoe’er thou art, a riddle past our ken! Be thou Zeus, or natural necessity, or man’s intellect, to thee I pray; for, though thou treadest o’er a noiseless path, all thy dealings with mankind are by justice guided.  This is a bit surprising considering the vacillating nature of the Greek gods’ dealings with men.  But, I suppose that she believed that justice was being done, even though she didn’t understand it.  This is, of course, what I believe about my God…that what seems like an injustice is lack of infinite understanding on my part.

*Apparently the cost and ritual involved in funerals was being discussed long ago.  …yet I deem it makes but little difference to the dead, although they get a gorgeous funeral; for this is but a cause of idle pride to the living.

The Suppliants by Euripides

I had thought about giving up on Euripides, because some of the first plays I read seemed to be hateful of women.  However, I’m glad I persisted, because this one has some interesting themes.

The play is set at the Temple of Demeter At Eleusis.  (The temple of some god or goddess seems to be a common setting for Greek plays.)  Aethra, an older woman of Eleusis, arrives at the temple and is approached by a chorus of elderly women who are in mourning.  Aethra’s son Theseus is currently ruler of the land, which is a democracy.  The chorus entreats Aethra to intervene with her son on their behalf.  The sons of the elderly women, who are from Argos, have been killed in a battle against King Creon and the city of Thebes, which is not a democracy.  Contrary to what is considered right and proper, the Thebians are refusing to allow the elderly women to retrieve the bodies of their seven slain sons and bury them.  Also present and begging for help is Adrastus, who led the men into the slaughter.

Theseus arrives and inquires about the commotion.  After questioning Adrastus, he decides that this misfortunate is Adrastus’ fault, and there is no reason for him to risk war with Thebes in order to recover the bodies.  However, his mother persuades him that it is his responsibility to stand up for what is right.  He agrees to go to the council and have a vote taken, so that the will of the people decides the matter.

The council votes to try and retrieve the bodies through diplomacy first, but if necessary, to go to war.  Before there is opportunity to send a messenger to Thebes, a herald arrives from Thebes.  Initially, instead of delivering his message, he and Theseus get into an argument over whether democracy or monarchy is the best form of government.  Eventually, he gets around to delivering his message that Creon has no intent of giving up the bodies, and that the only solution will be war.

Theseus and his army attack Thebes and are victorious.  He graciously does not sack the city.  He only wants the bodies.  These are brought back to Eleusis and burned on a funeral pyre before the ashes are returned to their mothers.

A bit of a side story to this is that Evadne, daughter of Iphis and widow of Capaneus, throws herself on the funeral pyre of Capaneus, in spite of her father’s pleadings.  Also each of the seven men is eulogized and some interesting characteristics emerge in the eulogies.

The play concludes with the appearance of the goddess Athena, who gives specific instructions regarding the need to have the Argives swear that in exchange for the kindness of Theseus and the people of Eleusis, they will never attack Eleusis.

Observations:

*Although Euripides does not speak so negatively of women in this play, his compliments are back-handed.  Yea, for oft even from women’s lips issue wise counsels.

*The question of whether basic human nature is good or evil is raised.  For there are who say, there is more bad than good in human nature, to the which I hold a contrary view, that good o’er bad predominates in man, for if it were not so, we should not exist.  Logically, there are other options, but this is the view of Theseus.

*The notion of naturally occurring classes in society is discussed.  For, there are three ranks of citizens; the rich, a useless set, that ever crave for more; the poor and destitute, fearful folk, that cherish envy more than is right, and shoot out grievous stings against the men who have aught, beguiled as they are by the eloquence of vicious leaders; while the class that is mid-most of the three preserveth cities, observing such order as the state ordains.  So the concept that a stable society must have a strong middle class is apparently an old one.

*I am beginning to think that one could make a decent term paper out of the topic:  The Concept of Democracy as Seen in the Play of Euripides. 

Against:  Democracy is described as “rule by a mob.”

                A person who doesn’t rule for his lifetime has more opportunity to hide his failures

Whenso the city has to vote on the question of war, no man ever takes his own death into account, but shifts the misfortune to his neighbor.

For:        When laws are written down, rich and poor alike have equal justice.

                People are free to decide whose counsel is best.

In a democracy the young are encouraged.  A despot sees them as a threat and may kill them off or use them ill.

*The finality of death is described.  For this one thing, when once ‘tis spent, man cannot recover, the breath of life, though he knoweth ways to get his wealth again.  Bankruptcy can be survived.  Death is irretrievable.

*A preference for daughters over sons in old age is mentioned.  For naught is there more sweet unto an aged sire than a daughter’s love; our sons are made of sterner stuff, but less winning are their caresses.   I heard a story once about a man who was disappointed when his wife gave birth to a daughter.  The doctor said to him, “If you had had a son, when you are old he would be gone and off living his own life.  Your daughter will still be there to kiss your old bald head.”

*The Greek gods were fickle.  I see many a contradiction in their dealings with men.  As I have mentioned in prior blogs, I see the Greek gods as useless.  I believe in a better one.

*Parents hope that the good they do for their parents will be returned to them by their children.  For a wretched son is he who rewards not his parents by service;  for, when he hath conferred on them the best he hath, he in turn from his own sons receives all such service as he gave to them.  That is, of course, as it ought to be, but in this broken world, it doesn’t always work out that way.  Sadly, there are some wretched sons and daughters around.