Bible Babel's been getting some good love lately. Now a national best-seller, thanks esp to the good folks I saw in MN! And many thanks to Martin Sieff for bringing an open mind and sense of humor to his Washington Times review. Meanwhile, spring is bustin' out in Charlottesville, and my Richmond garden promises tulips soon to come,... whether or not I peel the winter's mulch away. How generous, all ~

Atheist students at a Texas university are offering porn in exchange for Bibles arguing, "same diff." Inflammatory, to be sure, but are they right? The Bible is indeed full of racy material, from its very first book on. Robert Crumb's Genesis in graphic novel form warns on the cover that adult supervision is recommended. The Song of Solomon's highly suggestive erotic poetry is inspiration for a line of Christian sex toys that you can buy at Book22.com (in one Christian ordering of the books, it is the 22nd). In the New Testament, Paul explicitly lists some of the ways that people "got off" in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Revelation, the final book of Christian canon, describes in gory (albeit symbolic) detail the whoring of Babylon. And that's just a wee sampling of the sex. But pornography isn't just about sex, is it? There's something more that makes it what it is... and so difficult to define. There's something of the forbidden and shameful about it. There's the debasing and humiliating, the using and abusing of others for a temporary pleasure that drives porn. Violence and the horrors that lay a person out raw, which we watch hungrily, disaffected and complicit. Isn't that combination -- the repulsive and our inability to tear our eyes away from it -- porn, too? 

Wouldn't it be nice to say that the Bible includes no such narratives, images, and invitations? But it does. Saul is castigated for showing mercy to a vanquished king, so we watch smugly as he carries out the righteous act of butchering Agag. We watch as a nameless woman, gang-raped and left for dead, is cut into eleven pieces to rally the Israelite tribes against their own. The prophet Ezekiel likens the capital cities of Samaria and Jerusalem to two young women and proceeds to subject them to graphic humiliations and abuse. We watch comfortably even titillated, knowing that "they deserved it." Doesn't Jesus's crucifixion -- an innocent submitting to a twisted power of the state, of hatred and fear, brutally humiliated and strung up in bloody torture... and accepted as somehow right and good -- meet the criteria for porn? Paul's stern rebukes (whether they came from him or became attributed to him) of women thinking, acting, and speaking with equal humanity as men, and the ways in which those texts have denied women their fullest expressions of humanity... is that porn? Or when biblical texts serve the purposes of the powerful to circumscribe individual growth and even to dehumanize the other... well, a case could be made.

Finally, though, the Bible is isn't the same as the porn those university students are handing out. It is far more rich and nuanced. It is also full of the very things that lead us to push back against the arrogance of brutality and to cringe and to cry out in sympathy and compassion for the oppressed and abused. Even while it throws into our faces the ugliness of hatred and fear, violence and humiliation, it invites us to challenge (demands that we do!) whatever is life-denying to the least of these, the poorest, and most vulnerable. For that's finally what each of us is, what we all are. Hannah's song becomes Mary's Magnificat. Power is overturned and the weak become the strong. Expectations and assumptions are derailed and reborn in compassion and joy. 

If we loose our grip on what the Bible can and cannot do, on what we allow that the Bible says and doesn't say, then maybe we'll witness the Bible embrace what seems pornographic only to assimilate and transform it into a mandate for the fully realized life for all beings in a family at home on this breathing earth.

A whirlwind trip to MN for a few bookstore events, and I am reminded how lucky I am to have such a great family and truly wonderful friends. Besides meeting some new people, interested for a variety of intriguing ways in Bible Babel, I got to catch up with friends and family that I haven't seen in years. As my sister Deb put it, "It's like a funeral, except no one died!" And here's a treat: seeing the great big moon coming up over Lake Superior. Walking along the shore, its boulders covered in glossy sheets of ice, icicles pinpointing down from frozen outcroppings, well, I could look and look and never lose interest. Add the sound of waves rolling in, tumbling the slush and floes, and if it weren't so darn cold, I'd be there all day and straight through the night. But now I'm heading home to sweet Virginia and can't wait to arrive. A few flight snafus, but I can see that same moon, a silent friend over the airplane's wing, and it comforts me somehow. Is it any wonder that the ancients marked holy days by the moon? Is it any wonder that the most important Christian holiday, Easter, is marked by the moon?

I was delighted to read Pulitzer-prize winner Michael Dirda's review of Bible Babel in the Washington Post last week. He clearly read the book carefully through, and "got" it. That he liked it, too -- how sweet! Meanwhile, check out some of Dirda's own books, if you haven't had the pleasure already. As an avid collector of quotes -- inspiring, intriguing, comforting, and unsettling -- I especially love Dirda's Book by Book, containing such gems gleaned from Dirda's wide-ranging reading and organized with a bit of engaging commentary by the author himself.

February, and I'm excited to be heading to MN... for a few days, anyway. I know. You'd think it's the worst time, and yet -- to share warm conversation about books with family and friends and friends-yet-to-meet -- is an especially sweet pleasure in the midst of winter's hold on the north. And word's getting out. This morning's New York Times ran an article about the surprising pleasure of trekking into the frozen wilderness of Minnesota's border lakes -- the waterways we share with Canada. They snake their way through piney islands, rocks, and fiercely clear air for more miles than you can imagine,... and there's not a motor in sight or auditory range. It's awesome in ways we seldom experience anymore but that, with no warning or fanfare, lay bare our deepest and perhaps truest connection to each other and this great green-blue globe of earth. To touch a little such wildness, or be touched by it, can be transformative, as the whole biblical book of Numbers ("In the Wilderness," as the Hebrew title identifies the book) attests. Dangerous, yes, but good.

 Out of the heaps of snow we've been getting lately, someone in my neighborhood has fashioned a great big Cupid in her front yard...or is it a cherub? Shoot, is Cupid himself some kind of cherub? I stood contemplating those questions for a minute or so until my dog started snuffling about at the smooshed remains of a sandwich beginning to emerge from under the packed snow, and I figured it was time to move on.
 Christmas came and went with its cards adorned by chubby-cheeked winged babies. Now it's Valentine's Day, and they're back again. We're accustomed to calling these charming figures cherubs. But it's a biblical word, and in the Bible, cherubs are nothing like that.

The biblical book of Revelation (the last one in the Christian canon) is full of wild imagery and evocative symbolism. It lends itself well to interpretation, reinterpretation, and application in all sorts of times and places. I begin BIBLE BABEL with reference to concerns aired in Florida some months ago about inserting microchips in animals. The chips have retrievable electronic data to make it easier to, well, retrieve Fido or Fluffy should he or she get lost... which sounds good. But to some Revelation-readers it hints of evil because a passage there tells of a wicked Beast increasing its power and control. Without its mark one can neither buy nor sell. There's talk also of implanting chips in people these days, by employers (of all things!) to track their workers. It has ominous implications even apart from the religious. Add Revelation, as this recent Washington Post article reports, and people are past uncomfortable.

Please come to Fountain Books in Richmond's Shockoe Slip tonight Feb 8 at 6:30 pm for a BIBLE BABEL book talk and signing!

 I love the movie Groundhog Day. It's such a great story about redemption, and I for one, an accomplished bumbler, would love a few do-overs to get things right. Besides, the film's hilarious. I might have guessed that it would have some sort of religious theme to it, but until recently, I didn't imagine that Punxsutawney Phil and Jesus share that auspicious day... and not by mere coincidence. Groundhog Day is exactly forty days after Christmas Eve, and Jewish religious tradition required that certain things happen forty days after a boy's birth. Those traditions, together with ancient legends, ultimately led to the connection of that cheeky little varmint with the Christian "light of the world." 
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Given its title, I figured that the movie would have something to do with demons -- a whole, well, legion of them... in full-on "possession" mode. After all, "Legion" is the name of a biblical demoniac, according to the stories in Mark and Luke, because many demons were involved. But in the movie, Michael (our hero-angel gone rogue) actually goes to some trouble to explain explicitly that the troops of zombie-like murderers are not possessed by demons but rather are angels fulfilling the command of God. And yet. Here the movie suggests that the line between angels and demons frays as God's patience wears thin. That's just one thing among many that I found intriguing about this movie. Another (and I admit I loved this) is the paradox of obedience. [spoiler alert!] Michael is finally deemed a better servant of God than the hyper-obedient Gabriel, set on fulfilling God's command to kill off the human race. Precisely by disobeying, Michael satisfies the "need" (vs. "want" hmmm) of God. That part's a little silly (God as some adolescent to the angels' maturity?!). But hope for a future unwritten (no theological fatalism, here), and mercy at the hint of goodness... I like that.