*
WHITE OWL FLIES INTO AND OUT OF THE FIELD
Coming down out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,
it was beautiful, and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —
and the grabbing thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:
maybe death isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —
as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
~ Mary Oliver
Mary:
How marvelous to think " death isn't darkness, after all," but a ravishment of light! This is no soft or sentimental vision, Oliver's death is no gentle angel, but a raptor, a great white owl with a five foot wing span, coming swift and silent down on its prey. And yet that capture is folded in a luxurience of soft feathers, a translation of flesh in a rapture of incandescence, washing us out of our bones, out of our selves, eyes closed at last on all the small worries and hurts of our lives, as we dissolve into the furnace of light and are consumed.
This is an extraordinary vision, taking the raptor's kill and reimagining it, so that it becomes not an end, not a promise of comfort, but of transforming exaltation, a fire that leaves no ash behind, only light. Light absolving and resolving, past any fears, any reservations, a redemption without a god, or any need for one. This is exceptional, and wonderful, and for me at least, deeply satisfying.
HOW TWO FICTIONAL CATS SHOW US DIFFERENT CULTURES
~ This is the story of two messy cats. One wore a hat and had no known permanent address, while the other lived alone in a cat-sized house in Japan. You might know the first cat from The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. A staple for the American child, this tuxedo cat breaks and enters the home of an unnamed narrator and his sister Sally on a cold and wet rainy day when there is nothing to do.
The cat dangles the prospect of “fun” in front of the siblings in a manner suggesting that “fun”—teehee—might be naughty. And despite the earnest intentions of the fish-in-the-bowl cautioning against extended play with such a cat, Sally and the narrator are helpless. They watch as the Cat balances a series of otherwise unrelated objects on top of each other. An added benefit of absorbing this circus act in book form, is that a child’s English vocabulary is boosted. (“And where is the hook? Good. And where is the book? Good,” I have intoned dozens of times to my own child to a point verging on inanity.)
Matters escalate when the Freudian stand ins for the two children themselves—Thing One and Thing Two—show up and the house is trashed, a clear foundation on which so many Jerry Bruckheimer disaster movies—not to mention James Bond, Risky Business and Home Alone—are all based until, at the end the Cat cleans it up just in the nick of time with the aid of a machine. Technology to the rescue. How many movies can you name that resolve in just this fashion?
Contrast The Cat in the Hat to Nontan, who appears in a series of children’s books written and illustrated by the Japanese author Sachiko Kiyono. Nontan, too, makes a mess which he is at first inclined to disavow. He trashes each of his friends’ houses, leaving every time it is suggested he ought not to create such clutter. Like The Cat in the Hat, the story of Nontan escalates, but not as you might expect.
Japanese is full of onomatopoeia—even adults use these terms meant to convey the exact crunchiness of snow, the slithering of fish through water, the sharp pain of a thistle puncturing skin. These onomatopoetic terms can give Japanese sentences a unique vibrancy, so one is not just conveying the characteristics of something, but the distinct physical sensation of a moment—how something else makes you feel. When Nontan the cat goes to his friends’ homes—pig, rabbit and bear—the trash follows him “pappara.”
This seems like childish good fun until the dramatic moment when the reader, and Nontan, realize that the trash in fact is alive and the pappara sound isn’t just gibberish, but meant to convey the free will of accumulated paper and dirt and what it can do to a person. Or a cat.
The trash clings to Nontan, frightening him and smothering him until in a fit of pique, he decides to take matters into his own paws. He picks up a broom and banishes the garbage from his home. When he’s done, he feels—onomontopoeia again—sukkiri inside, a feeling of bright cleanliness. Nontan the cat has just Marie Kondoed the hell out of his little house. At the end of the book he avows to help his friends clean up their homes too so they can be sukkiri with him.
Why am I reading children’s books? A few years ago, I wrote an essay for Lit Hub comparing western and eastern fairy tales which focused on one basic point; we all imprint on stories from an early age which program us with a sense of “how things are supposed to be.” In simplistic terms, western fairy tales often end with a wedding, the defeat of a dragon, and/or plundered treasure. And this in turn means that many of us grow up thinking we should aim for the real world version of such material triumph and that we have failed if we don’t achieve it.
By contrast, eastern fairy tales—and I focused on Japan in my original essay—often end with what the Japanese scholar Hayao Kawai called an “aesthetic ending,” or a beautiful image often comprised of natural wonders. In such stories, the conclusion might include clouds partially obscure the moon, flowers blossoming to herald spring, or fog nestling in a valley. People—especially young people—still write to me saying that they love the essay because it names for them one of the things they enjoy about Japanese movies and entertainment; life is valid even if it does not resolve in the way one is taught that it should.
This year, as a visiting professor, I have had the pleasure of fulfilling a many year fantasy of turning this essay into a semester long course. My students in the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College are reading fairy tales and children’s books alongside western and eastern novels as a way to examine story structure and culture. Our readings include Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat and Nontan; it is in fact my students who noticed the criminal mind of the Cat, and the Freudian implications of Thing One and Thing Two.
We have also been reading a smattering of sociology and psychology, like The Geography of Thought by RA Nesbitt, which examines the different ways in which Asians (mostly Japanese) perceive the world in contrast to westerners (mostly Americans). The book recounts the results of experiments in which, for example, participants were shown images of an aquarium, and then asked later to identify in a series of follow up questions which objects had been in that scene. Nesbitt found that Japanese disproportionately were able to recall more background objects than Americans who, in turn, could recall foreground objects. Over and over Nesbitt examines this tendency and concludes that in general, Asians are better at understanding the background—“the field” he calls it—and how objects and characters are related to each other, while westerners focus on the main actor in a story.
Nesbitt writes, “Not only are worldviews different in a conceptual way, but also the world is literally viewed in different ways. Asians see the big picture and they see objects in relation to their environments—so much so that it can be difficult for them to visually separate objects from their environments. Westerners focus on objects while slighting the field and they literally see fewer objects and relationships in the environment than do Asians.”
I’ve cited Nesbitt before in my previous work, Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye. In that book, I recount undergoing Zen teaching at the 800-plus-year-old monastery Eiheiji, the seat of Soto Zen Buddhism, and where a basic training device for monks and lucky visitors involves 1. not speaking and 2. completing a meal at the same time. This exercise, practiced over and over again, is part of what can give a novice an awareness of others. If you are able to finish eating at the same time as everyone else, then you are more attuned to “the field.” In Where the Dead Pause, I recount the many ways in which, culturally, people in Japan seem to have a heightened awareness of physical space.
Occasionally, at a reading, I would give my audience a cup of M&Ms, and challenge them to finish the candy at the same time so they too could get a glimpse of what it is like to train in the Zen way.
Most of the time, the M&M exercise went over with good humor, but occasionally someone would protest, pointing out that people other than Japanese Buddhists are capable of matching the pace of general eating, which is of course true. Sometimes I was reminded that not all Asian stories end with aesthetic images and not all beloved western stories feature strong individualists triumphing over leviathans.
I do understand the dangers involved in making generalizations about groups of people. On a popular culture level, I’m well aware of how frightening the notion of a blurry collective can sound. Picard was, after all, pursued by the Borg whose “Resistance is futile” motto dominated TV in the late 80s and early 90s around the same time that Japan seemed like an unstoppable economic dynamo. I’m also aware that emphasizing Japan’s ability to see “community” better than the west can seem essentialist, which is not a comfortable position for those of us trained in the west to respect plurality and view all humans as equal.
But here we are today. The news is filled with stories about the novel coronavirus. On the one hand, I read articles that lay bare the racist implications of calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus,” while other pieces ask: who can best flatten the curve? Answer: China, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. (As of this writing, Japan is not on the list because the data is not yet clear.)
It has been my past experience that in times of crisis, we are much more tempted to make observations about national characters: Japanese stand patiently in lines and don’t complain, while Italians are garrulous and sing on balconies and Americans are… well… divided. And it is here that the stories we tell ourselves and which program us so early start to seem relevant.
In the restlessness of the young flocking to Florida beaches on spring break and defying the order to stay home, it’s hard for me not to see vestiges of The Cat in the Hat himself, who finds fun a little daring and naughty; oh yes he’s going to mess up the house no matter what Mom says! Meanwhile we are waiting for technology to save us in the form of a vaccine. Then there is Nontan over in Japan realizing that he must not only keep his house clean but his friends’ houses too; in fact to do so makes him literally feel good inside. Helping others sparks joy.
My own comfort with looking at cultural differences varies. I will say here that the whole reason I have struggled for so many years to investigate cultural difference is because, from childhood, I was told by many Japanese themselves (mostly men) that their culture was different and they wanted me to understand this difference. It has never felt right to me to respond: “Well actually your culture isn’t so different and the fact that you think this is essentialist.” Rather, it has made more sense to wonder why cultural difference might unnerve us and what the actual differences might be and why they exist. Still, if I have a bias, it is that all humans are humans, and that what one man can do, so can another. I wanted to explore this with my students, whose youth makes their minds open and imaginations hungry.
When I was working on my new book, American Harvest, people sometimes asked me why I was spending time with farmers in the heartland who, it was assumed, are so politically and ideologically different than I am. The first reason, really, was curiosity. If we were so different, I wanted to know why. Actually, this is probably the only reason.
I have found that the cheerful summation “Well, people are pretty much the same everywhere” is, while true, not very helpful. It is true that a messy cat is a messy cat. And, so? I have also noticed a tendency to suggest that the new book I have written is “nuanced.” I confess an allergy to this word; it is also the same word used to describe Japanese; one hears often that their culture is one of nuance. This is a term that has come to sound to me a bit like weakness. It implies that we can excuse bad behavior—a messy cat—by saying that our acceptance of him must be nuanced.
And yet I have found, as I said, that a messy cat is a messy cat in any culture. To notice the background, instead of the foreground is not, to me, nuance; it is simply a matter of where one pays attention. To notice other people to such a degree that you can finish your M&Ms when they do, or to notice them and not want them to get sick so you team up together to prevent sickness from spreading is also, to my mind, not nuanced. It is a matter of attention.
It is the stories about the messy cat and why he should clean up that are different; as a writer, this is what I am always trying to understand. And the question I often ask is: what is really happening here? I find that sometimes, the only way to know what is actually happening, is to try to get rid of whatever story I think is happening. Only then can I see the story for what it is. ~
https://lithub.com/what-two-imaginary-cats-tell-us-about-who-we-are-and-how-were-different/?fbclid=IwAR1d0ZigmJ1bx1LgtMKaAAqjfZQgja8fmyDp7UJlAKqoa3S6jj0aWB_w3qM
Nontan, the naughty Japanese kitten“Behind the words of the written work, nobody is present; but language gives voice to this absence, just as in the oracle, when divinity speaks, the god himself is never present in his words, and it is the absence of god which then speaks.” ~ Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation
Maurice Blanchot. Could a French intellectual look more perfect than that?*
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” ~ Oscar Wilde
Oriana:
And sometimes romance can lead to a tragedy.
Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas*
EGGS AND EASTER: NO, NOT ISHTAR
Eggs, like bunnies, are obviously symbols of fertility. But it’s interesting to take a deeper look:
~ Ancient Egyptians believed in a primeval egg from which the sun god hatched. Alternatively, the sun was sometimes discussed as an egg itself, laid daily by the celestial goose, Seb, the god of the earth. The Phoenix is said to have emerged from this egg. The egg is also discussed in terms of a world egg, molded by Khnum from a lump of clay on his potter's wheel.
Hinduism makes a connection between the content of the egg and the structure of the universe: for example, the shell represents the heavens, the white the air, and the yolk the earth. The Chandogya Upanishads describes the act of creation in terms of the breaking of an egg:
In the beginning this world was merely non-being. It was existent. It developed. It turned into an egg. It lay for the period of a year. It was split asunder. One of the two egg-shell parts became silver, one gold. That which was of silver is this earth. That which was of gold is the sky … Now what was born therefrom is the sun.
In the Zoroastrian religion, the creation myth tells of an ongoing struggle between the principles of good and evil. During a lengthy truce of several thousand years, evil hurls himself into an abyss and good lays an egg, which represents the universe with the earth suspended from the vault of the sky at the midway point between where good and evil reside. Evil pierces the egg and returns to earth, and the two forces continue their battle.
In Findland, Luonnotar, the Daughter of Nature floats on the waters of the sea, minding her own business when an eagle arrives, builds a nest on her knee, and lays several eggs. After a few days, the eggs begin to burn and Luonnotar jerks her knee away, causing the eggs to fall and break. The pieces form the world as we know it: the upper halves form the skies, the lower the earth, the yolks become the sun, and the whites become the moon.
In China, there are several legends that hold a cosmic egg at their center, including the idea that the first being or certain people were born of eggs. For example, the Palangs trace their ancestry to a Naga princess who laid three eggs, and the Chin will not kill the king crow because it laid the original Chin egg from which they emerged.
The cosmic egg, according to the Vedic writings, has a spirit living within it which will be born, die, and be born yet again. Certain versions of the complicated Hindu mythology describe Prajapati as forming the egg and then appearing out of it himself. Brahma does likewise, and we find parallels in the ancient legends of Thoth and Ra. Egyptian pictures of Osiris, the resurrected corn god, show him returning to life once again rising up from the shell of a broken egg. The ancient legend of the Phoenix is similar. This beautiful mythical bird was said to live for hundreds of years. When its full span of life was completed it died in flames, rising again in a new form from the egg it had laid. ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/beyond-ishtar-the-tradition-of-eggs-at-easter?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Vladimir Kush: Egg-Rise*
FIRST SIGN OF CIVILIZATION
~ Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said. ~ Ira Byock
Mary:
Margaret Mead's answer to the first sign of civilization is as wise as it is simple...the definition of a human society begins with an act of empathy and kindness..the sick and injured are not abandoned or ignored, but cared for so they can heal, no matter what it might cost others in time, energy, or danger. I can think of no better definition, no better yardstick to measure who we are and how well we are doing.
Margaret Mead*
ROGER EBERT ON KINDNESS AND HAPPINESS
Kindness covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.
To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find out.
~ Roger Ebert (1942-2013)
Oriana:
The part about making ourselves unhappy really hit home in a retroactive way: I remember when I used to make myself unhappy. To paraphrase Plath, I did it exceptionally well. And it's hard or even impossible for an unhappy person to make others happy.
*
“... a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s own work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.” ~ Albert Camus, The Plague
Camus and his great love, the actress Maria Casares*
This is a 393-years old Greenland Shark that was located in the Arctic Ocean. It's been wandering the ocean since 1627. It is the old living vertebrate known on the planet. Photo by Julius Nielsen.*
THE ENERGY DRINK OF THE ROMAN LEGIONS
~ The Romans were famed for their innovations in military logistics, which allowed them to extend their territory from Rome and its immediate surrounds to the whole Mediterranean and ultimately, with the establishment of the Roman Empire, virtually all of western Eurasia. But an army can’t win if it’s thirsty. Enter posca. This blend of vinegar and water—and possibly salt, herbs, and other stuff—holds a special place in beverage history thanks to its role as the Gatorade of the Roman army.
It’s possible posca was Greek in origin. Its name may have derived from the Greek word epoxos, which means “very sharp,” according to The Logistics of the Roman Army at War, by Jonathan Roth, historian at San Jose State University. But the beverage owes its fame to the small, but essential, part it played in the Roman army’s legendary efficiency. As early as the middle of the Roman Republic era (509-27 BCE), the military rationed posca to troops along with grains and, very occasionally, meat and cheese. That policy continued for centuries, well into the Roman Empire.
Roman soldiers did, of course, drink water. But historical records suggest that it wasn’t their beverage of choice. Consider what Plutarch wrote about how Cato the Elder, an officer during the Second Punic War (218-202 BCE), dealt with his thirst, according to Roth:
Water was what he drank on his campaigns, except that once in a while, in a raging thirst, he would call for vinegar, or when his strength was failing, would add a little wine.
Like Cato, Romans prized wine for its supposed health benefits, as Rod Phillips, a historian at Carleton University in Ottawa, writes in his book Wine: A Social and Cultural History of the Drink That Changed Our Lives. That made posca—which contained vinegar made from wine gone bad—vastly preferable to plain old H2O. And wine, at the time, was plentiful. Rich Romans put back titanic volumes of it. As the reach of Roman imperialism spread throughout Europe, viticulture followed, which “gave their armies ready access to wine depots almost everywhere,” writes Phillips.
For military officials, off wine was a cheap source of calories to distribute in bulk. Diluting it with water to make posca “effectively doubled the volume of liquid ration given to the soldiers at a very low cost,” observes Roth.
There probably was something to the Romans’ belief in posca’s health benefits. The drink’s acidity and slight alcohol content would likely have neutralized bacteria, making it safer than drinking straight water. That could have been a big benefit, given that tainted water has been known to ravage armies more effectively than battle. Vinegar was also thought to help stave off that scourge of militaries throughout history—scurvy. (It doesn’t, as it turns out. But Ancient Romans were hardly the only ones to misplace faith in vinegar’s antiscorbutic virtues; as late as the mid-1800s, the US Army rationed apple cider vinegar to troops stationed in America’s southwest during the Mexican War, according to Roth.)
Mind you, military leaders and other elites generally didn’t deign to drink posca, which was more a drink of the common people, according to Pass the Garum, a fantastic blog dedicated to exploring Roman cuisine. When Roman emperor Hadrian wanted to slum it with his soldiers, this would have been his drink of choice. As Pass the Garum notes, the ancient historian Suetonius mentions vendors selling posca on the streets during the early years of the Roman Empire. Both among soldiers and common folk, posca continued to enjoy favor well into the Middle Ages, writes Andrew Dalby, a renowned historian of Greek and Roman cuisines, in Food in the Ancient World from A to Z.
Aside from slaking Roman thirst, posca’s other main claim to fame arises from its controversial cameo in the Bible. As Jesus Christ was suffering crucifixion—or possibly just before, at Golgotha—Roman soldiers offered him sips of the stuff from a sponge held aloft with a reed, according to Matthew 27:48. Depending on the interpretation, they did this either to help lessen his anguish or to needle him, notes Phillips. Whatever the case, Jesus wasn’t having it. “After tasting the posca, Christ refused to drink it,” writes Phillips.
So what did posca taste like? It’s a little hard to say. Due to its ubiquity in Roman literature of the day, we can safely conclude that it involved some ratio of water and red wine vinegar. But might it also have featured other flavors? History isn’t very helpful on that score, since no Roman posca recipes exist.
Thanks to Byzantine medical writers, however, we’re not totally in the dark. Aëtius of Amida and Paul of Aegina, both Byzantine Greek physicians of the sixth and seventh centuries, respectively, included recipes for a “palatable and laxative” posca that included cumin, fennel seed, celery seed, anise, thyme, and salt, according to another book by Dalby, Tastes of Byzantium: The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire. (However, Dalby complicates the matter somewhat by noting that the word they used, the Greek loanword phouska, may by that time have become a catchall term for second-rate wine substitutes.)
My own posca–making is guided not by zeal for ancient Rome, but, rather, because I’m really thirsty. So while my concoction was inspired by what I learned from a lecture on ancient Roman cuisine a few years back, it has since strayed from the more authentic recipes. I’ll still use diluted apple cider vinegar, if it’s handy, but I’ll sometimes go with homemade kombucha. And instead of honey, I prefer a glug of maple syrup (less messy). Also, usually, a little salt. And definitely a ton of ice. I’m not sure if you can still call that posca. But whatever it is, on a hot day, it sure hits the spot. ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/my-favorite-beverage-is-a-2-000-year-old-energy-drink-from-ancient-rome?utm_source=pocket-newtab
*
Jamie Lluch: Sightseeing, 2014. Odd, the way we discover what looks like social distancing in all kinds of art
Charles:
Great picture.
Notice the shadow is bigger than all the other people. Look at the light and shadow on the steps.
Oriana:
Yes, now I see his large vertical shadow on the wall opposite the window, and the small, horizontal shadows of the other people. Thanks for pointing it out.
**
“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” ~ Anne Frank
*
On April 12, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia. That evening, Harry S. Truman took the oath of office. Eleanor Roosevelt called Truman to the White House with the news of her husband's death. He asked her, "Is there anything I can do for you?" And she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”
What a marvelous woman!
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1905, wedding photo. We tend to think of her as rather ugly, but here she is, a lovely bride.*
WHILE RECITING THE APOSTLES’ CREED (favorite moments of truth series)
“I'd been on patrol, and I went to church that evening. It was an Anglican church, quite high church (I always liked the ceremony) and I was standing up, reciting the Apostles' Creed (which to this day I could recite word for word) and suddenly I realized I didn't believe a word of it, and probably never had. And I never went back to church after that, except for the occasional funeral.”
~ Arthur Hailey, in Walden Book Report, July 1998
Hailey reports this moment in truth happened to him in Cyprus in 1944. He was a RAF pilot.
Oriana:
It’s different for everyone, but going over a familiar text and suddenly seeing it in a completely different light is one way. I didn’t get to see a single page of the bible (Catholics back then were discouraged from reading the bible, and besides the text was hard to get) until after I’d already had my epiphany: “It’s just another mythology.”
Because of religion lessons I was familiar with the Genesis story of creation, but seeing the actual text, phrase by archaic phrase — creation in six days, the solid firmament like a tin roof with the “waters above the firmament,” Eve from the rib, etc — made me think, “This really IS mythology.” Not some subtle literary mythology, but big-time archaic mythology. It could not be saved by a metaphoric reading. It could only be tossed out entirely.
But I know it happens in many different ways to different people. “Apostasy is autobiography,” I am tempted to say, but that's my love of alliteration speaking. Yet I am truly fascinated. Sometimes there is one distinct moment of realization, and sometimes a very gradual process of shedding the beliefs and gaining more and more clarity. Sometimes there is a journey from one denomination to another, until the need to go any church dries up. And the journey isn't over after that. More reasons, more answers come like waves lapping toward the shore.
*
THE CAMEL-GATE: “IT’S EASIER FOR A CAMEL TO PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE THAN FOR A RICH MAN TO ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD”
~ One of the most blatant examples [of misinterpreting the Scripture] was related to Christ’s interaction with the rich young ruler. Luke 18:22-25 explains the sad end to their conversation.
When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. And Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Based on the simple reading of the text, there shouldn’t be any confusion about what it means to pass a camel through the eye of a needle (the reference also appears in Matthew 19:24 and Mark 10:25). And yet I’ve witnessed pastors do all sorts of exegetical gymnastics to explain away the clear meaning of Christ’s words—not only in my original Australian congregation, but throughout Europe and America, as well. What at first glance seems like a straightforward hyperbolic illustration has been twisted, contorted, and explained away through exegesis and iffy archeology.
The explanation usually goes something like this: Christ wasn’t referring to the eye of a literal needle—that would be preposterous. Instead, He was talking about a narrow entrance into the city of Jerusalem, a gate known locally as “the eye of the needle.” This gate was so small that a camel could only be brought through with great difficulty, squeezed through on its knees—which depicts how we humbly need to come to the Lord.
That explanation can be quite compelling—after all, humility is necessary—as long as you don’t read the next two verses of Luke’s gospel: “They who heard it said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ But He said, ‘The things that are impossible with people are possible with God’” (Luke 18:26-27).
Christ’s words make the point of His illustration abundantly clear. He can’t mean that the rich man can only attain salvation through humility—getting a camel to stoop and squeeze through a narrow gate might be challenging, but it doesn’t require divine intervention. In context, His point is unmistakable: Manufacturing your own salvation is just as impossible as threading a massive beast of burden through the eye of a sewing needle. Apart from the intervention of the Lord, it cannot be done.
In his commentary on the passage, John MacArthur explains another key flaw with the spurious interpretation: “There is no evidence that such a gate ever existed. Nor would any person with common sense have attempted to force a camel through such a small gate even if one had existed; they would simply have brought their camel into the city through a larger gate.”
Instead he says, “The Persians expressed impossibility by using a familiar proverb stating that it would be easier for an elephant to go through the eye of a needle. The Jews picked up the proverb, substituting a camel for an elephant, since camels were the largest animals in Palestine.”
So why go to such great lengths to sidestep the clear meaning of Christ’s illustration? The reasons come into better focus when we consider the most vocal proponents of the “Needle-Gate” theory. For starters, it’s predominant among many prosperity preachers and televangelists, who understandably don’t want to draw scrutiny and rebuke for their extravagant lifestyles.
Christ’s exclamation, “How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” (Luke 18:24) would have been a shock to His original audience. As John MacArthur explains, “The idea that wealth was a sign of God’s blessing was deeply entrenched in Jewish theology.” Prosperity preachers today have repeated that lie to pillage the people of God. What better way to insulate their thievery from Christ’s warning than to warp the meaning of His words altogether?
There’s another group that favors the “Needle-Gate” theory, and they’re grounded in the same mindset that Christ originally rebuked. The rich young ruler was a product of the Jewish religious system, and his self-assurance about earning his salvation was a direct reflection of the Pharisees’ man-centered legalism.
Just consider his original question to Christ, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18). As John MacArthur explains, “In keeping with his legalistic system of self-righteousness, he sought that one elusive good work that would push him over the top to obtain eternal life for himself.”
In the same way, countless pastors and church leaders today downplay the Lord’s intervening work in salvation and defy Christ’s words in this passage, treating faith as a mere decision, and repentance as nothing more than simply changing your mind. The God-centered gospel of regeneration is substituted with a man-centered decisionism which makes salvation the result of one’s humility—however difficult that may be.
As John MacArthur explains, that betrays the point of Christ’s words, and the truth of the gospel.
“The obvious point of that picturesque expression of hyperbole is not that salvation is difficult, but rather that it is humanly impossible for everyone by any means, including the wealthy. Sinners are aware of their guilt and fear, and may even desire a relationship with God that would bring forgiveness and peace. But they cannot hold on to their sinful priorities and personal control and think they can come to God on their own terms. The young man illustrates that reality.”
The “Needle-Gate” theory isn’t exclusive to false teachers—it’s been around long enough and taught widely enough that even some faithful teachers assume this interpretation by not carefully studying the text in context. Tragically, a wrong interpretation of this text not only promotes error, it becomes a missed opportunity for worship. How so?
Luke 18:25 is one of the clearest testimonies from our Lord on the inability of man to do anything to save himself. This doctrine of total inability is a vital component to the gospel; it highlights the impossibility of salvation apart from a sovereign work of God in a person’s heart. More than that it highlights God’s grace in that He does do that work. For that reason this text should lead to humble praise of our God and Savior. ~
https://www.gty.org/library/blog/B150914
Oriana:
Just like Jesus, to be needling the rich.
I didn’t quote this in order to agree with Rev. Cameron Buettel about the need for supernatural grace in order to attain salvation. Such issues don’t exist for me.
What continues to interest me is certain striking pronouncements in the bible — including the one about how entering the kingdom of heaven is more difficult for the rich than trying to thread a camel through the eye of a needle. Naturally the rich (including the televangelists) would dislike this passage, and try to explain it away.
And even though Buettel ends up universalizing the impossibility of entering the Kingdom through one’s own efforts, note that the famous passage does single out the rich.
There were more than fifty comments on this article. The one that stood out for me stated that the rich have the resources to pull them through difficulties, so they are less likely to pray for divine help. And indeed we know that as a country gets more prosperous, religiosity tends to lessen.
(A shameless digression: a recent meme pointed out that "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get arrested for anything.")
Of course the evangelicals and prosperity preachers will tie themselves in knots to revise Jesus' words about the rich man, the camel, and the needle's eye. They have inverted just about everything he is reported to have said.
Think of "suffer the little ones," "the last shall be first," "the meek shall inherit," not to mention — give away all you have, etc. They have actually done to the gospels what witches and satanists were accused of in the past....stood it all on its head, replaced the virtues of love and charity with greed and hate, all while cloaking themselves in the assumption of righteousness. Thus those calling themselves Christians are some of the most mean-spirited you will ever come across.
I don't know exactly, whether influenced by the words of the gospels made so familiar in my early years of catholic schooling, or by the attitudes of my own father, whose central value was always "work," from as far back as I can remember I had no use for the rich, seeing them basically as parasites, useless and worthless and certainly not to be admired. So somehow that supposedly so American fondness for the "rich and famous" was never real for me. I had only scorn for those admirers and imitators I saw as "acting rich." This has been my most unchanging and solid prejudice, not a result so much of any reasoned argument as an almost visceral disgust...as I said, there from the earliest times I can remember.
Oriana:
What startles me is that the very richest have, if they coordinated together, the resources to wipe out poverty, if they wanted to, or to significantly advance biomedical research so as to wipe out various diseases, or transform a developing country by introducing solar energy to power every household — again, if they wanted to, if enough of them had the desire to do something wonderful for humanity. Now, should those things depend on a whim of a super-rich person? But that’s just one instance of the many kinds of insanity pervading our economic and political systems. I almost want to agree with many of the Millennials: the “normal” is not normal — it’s irrational and often harmful, and needs to be reformed for the sake of the common good — or, more urgently, if humanity is to survive beyond two generations from now.
Joe:
I keep thinking about your comment on the Eye of a Needle and the Camel parable. Did the priests and ministers ever try to get to the heart of that story? They were more concerned with dodging the main points, and they focused on the structure [the alleged gate] and the camel.
When you think about being a rich man, you think about the seven capital sins. You see the difficulty of achieving heaven. Vanity. How many rich people think they don’t deserve their wealth? The right to hoard and toss change to their employees belongs to them alone.
When I was teaching early American Literature, one of the writing was by a preacher who gave a sermon to the plantation owners about their mistreatment of slaves. The owners told him either to stop telling them what to do with their wealth or to leave.
When a wealthy person hears about the lack of food in poverty neighborhoods, they find it inconceivable that a person couldn’t afford quality food. John McCain famously didn’t know what the price a gallon of gas was. As it turned out, he didn’t purchase gas or food — his servants did.
Thomas Jefferson believed the profits from selling his slaves made high-quality wine affordable. Gluttony and drunkenness usually apply; overindulging takes food and drink away from the community. When you keep the money to indulge in fine foods and drink, it is very similar. I have wondered why the sermons never focused on the seven capital sins.
Oriana:
There is simply no evading the fact that Jesus preached against the wealthy and the pursuit of wealth. “Sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow me” — this would be challenging enough for anyone, but is essentially unimaginable for a rich man. And it reveals that the person’s real god is money.
An exception does come to my mind: the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He gave away his inheritance. Apparently he was ashamed of having an unearned income. Gandhi also regarded it as shameful. On the other hand, this is precisely what creative people dream about, so as to gain the time to pursue their vocation. So: no absolutes here.
Let's face it: the teachings of Jesus are difficult, so naturally many would try to distort them. Still, there is no denying that Jesus favored the poor over the rich.
BATS AND VIRUSES
~ When it comes to viruses, ones from bats are weirdly deadly — at least to humans.
The mammals can carry many viruses with the potential to cause serious diseases in people, including rabies, Ebola, Nipah, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and others. Bats rarely get sick from those viruses. Why these pathogens tend to be so dangerous when they infect other animals has been a mystery.
Previous work suggests that a bat’s immune system is especially adapted to tolerate viruses, thanks in part to its ability to limit inflammation. Now a study using cells grown in a lab hints that to counter a bat’s immune defenses, these viruses have gotten good at spreading rapidly from cell to cell. That means that when they get into animals without a similarly strong immune system, the viruses are particularly adept at causing serious damage.
Scientists have pinpointed bats as potential sources of several viral outbreaks in humans. Insect-eating bats may have been the source of the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa (SN: 12/31/14). Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) harbor Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic virus related to Ebola. Other bat species are reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses.
Pathogens can only spread so fast internally before they kill their host, Brook says. But if the host has an immune system that can defend against rapidly spreading viruses, a virus might evolve to infect new cells even faster than it would in a different environment, in a sort of arms race.
And if a quick-spreading virus from bats were to infect another species that lacked batlike defenses? “It would probably cause extreme virulence,” Brook says.
There are more than 1,400 bat species in the world, Olival says, and the current study focused on only two. “It’s important to remember that all other bat species might have totally different responses as well,” he says.
Olival is also curious how the findings might apply to other animals that can carry deadly viruses, such as rodents. “Bats are not the only mammal that are reservoirs for human zoonotic viruses,” he says. “The question is not only how do bats cope with viruses, but how do other mammal species that are reservoirs cope with the viruses they carry?”
While bats do carry lots of deadly viruses, “I don’t want people to walk away wanting to kill all the bats,” Brook says. Closely related animals are more likely to transmit viruses to one another, and bats and humans are not close relatives. “Bat viruses are not likely to spill over to human populations. It’s just that when they do, they are virulent.”
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bats-immune-system-viruses-ebola-marburg-people
Bats as a source of viruses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DsVhaXx8_I
*
ARC, OUR MEMORY MOLECULE — BORROWED FROM A RETROVIRUS LIKE HIV?
~ How does memory work? The further we seem to dive in, the more questions we stumble upon about how the function of memory first evolved. Scientists made a key breakthrough with the identification of the Arc protein [Activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein] in 1995, observing how its role in the plastic changes in neurons was critical to memory consolidation. [i.e., no Arc, no memory consolidation — new learning is forgotten.]
This protein is already a big deal, but the Arc picture just got a lot more interesting. In a 2018 study published in the journal Cell, a team of researchers at the University of Utah, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, argue that Arc took its place in the brain as a result of a random chance encounter millions of years ago. Similar to how scientists say the mitochondria in our cells originated as bacteria that our ancient ancestors’ cells absorbed, the Arc protein seems to have started as a virus.
The researchers knew they were onto something when they captured an image of Arc that looked an awful lot like a viral capsid, the isohedral protein coat that encapsulates a virus’s genetic material for delivery to host cells during infection.
“At the time, we didn’t know much about the molecular function or evolutionary history of Arc,” says study coauthor Jason Shepherd, an assistant professor of neurobiology, anatomy, biochemistry, and ophthalmology at the University of Utah, in a statement. Shepherd has studied Arc for 15 years. “I had almost lost interest in the protein, to be honest. After seeing the capsids, we knew we were onto something interesting.”
The main issue that challenges neuroscientists’ understanding of memory is that proteins don’t last very long in the brain, even though memories last nearly a lifetime. So for memories to remain, there must be plastic changes, meaning that neuron structures actually have to change as a result of memory consolidation.
But scientists never thought they would stumble on evidence that pointed to a viral origin for Arc, as these findings suggest.
The research team needed to verify this theory, so they tested whether Arc actually acts like a virus. It turns out the Arc capsid encapsulated its own RNA. When they put the Arc capsids into a mouse brain cell culture, the capsids transferred their RNA to the mouse brain cells — just like viral infection does.
“We went into this line of research knowing that Arc was special in many ways, but when we discovered that Arc was able to mediate cell-to-cell transport of RNA, we were floored,” says the study’s lead author, postdoctoral fellow Elissa Pastuzyn, Ph.D., in a statement. “No other non-viral protein that we know of acts in this way.”
The researchers suspect this virus-mammal collaboration happened sometime between 350 and 400 million years ago when a retrotransposon — the ancestor of modern retroviruses — got its DNA into a four-legged creature. They also suspect that this happened more than once. If they’re right, this research complicates the picture of the evolution of life as we know it. Not only did many mutations happen by random chance to make us what we are today, but we actually borrowed biology from other cells and organisms to get here. A little bit of their history lives on in us today.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/all-your-memories-are-stored-by-one-weird-ancient-molecule?utm_source=pocket-newtab
~ Two independent teams of scientists from the University of Utah and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have discovered that a gene crucial for learning, called Arc, can send its genetic material from one neuron to another by employing a strategy commonly used by viruses. The studies, both published in Cell, unveil a new way that nervous system cells interact.
While Arc is known to play a vital role in the brain’s ability to store new information, little is known about precisely how it works. In addition, previous studies had detailed similarities between the Arc protein and proteins found in certain viruses like HIV, but it was unclear how those commonalities influenced the behavior of the Arc protein.
Further experiments performed by both teams of researchers suggested that Arc capsids act like viruses by delivering messenger RNA to nearby cells. Dr. Shepherd and his colleagues grew mouse neurons lacking the Arc gene in petri dishes filled with Arc-containing vesicles or Arc capsids alone. They discovered that the formerly Arc-less neurons took in the vesicles and capsids and used the Arc mRNA contained within to produce the Arc protein themselves. Finally, just like neurons that naturally manufacture the Arc protein, those cells made more of it when their electrical activity increased.
Both groups of scientists now plan to investigate why cells use this virus-like strategy to shuttle Arc mRNA between cells and whether this system might allow the toxic proteins responsible for Alzheimer’s disease to spread through the brain. Dr. Budnik hopes that such research will shed light on the development of neurological diseases and potentially lead to new therapies.
In addition, Dr. Shepherd believes it may be possible to use Arc capsids for genetic engineering and gene therapy, which currently use viruses to introduce new genetic instructions into cells. The human immune system sometimes attacks those viruses, causing dangerous side effects. Because the Arc protein is native to the human body, clinicians may be able to use Arc capsids to deliver genes for gene therapy without triggering an immune response. ~
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/memory-gene-goes-viral
viral capsid and one more source:
~ By carrying out memory tests in Arc-deficient mice, Shepherd and his colleagues have shown that Arc is essential for memory. “If you take the Arc gene out of mice,” Shepherd explains, “they don’t remember anything.” These mice initially appear to be capable of learning, but they aren’t capable of retaining these memories. “If you come back an hour later or a day later, there’s just no consolidation.” Based on these studies, Shepherd believes that Arc is a critical piece of the brain’s conversion of memories from short-term to long-term storage.
What Shepherd saw [when he examined Arc under an electron microscope] reminded him of something that had nothing to do with the proteins he was used to – the Arc protein looked like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Retroviruses, like HIV, lack the necessary biological machinery to replicate their own RNA. So instead, they have evolved to attach to a host cell, and insert their own genomic material into the genome of the cell, where it will be replicated as part of the cell’s normal process. To protect the viral RNA from being destroyed by the host defense system, viruses enclose their RNA in a protein shell called a capsid. This allows the virus to travel from cell to cell unscathed. Like HIV, Arc forms a capsid containing its own RNA – which was completely unheard of for a human protein.
Through mouse experiments, they also found that Arc proteins behave like viruses, “infecting” cells just like real viruses do. Shepherd found that Arc capsids released from one neuron are able to share their RNA with another neuron, similar to how viruses share RNA.
The way Shepherd sees it, “Arc is really the intermediate between the environment and the wiring of the brain.” He explains that any time you encounter something new, or the brain needs to learn something new, Arc expression is enhanced. He says, “Anything that boosts cognitive awareness and plasticity, we think could boost Arc expression.”
Furthermore, Arc is probably not the only gene of its kind. Shepherd thinks there are another 50 genes in the genome that have similar viral structure or origins. It’s unclear whether these other proteins could be involved in memory, or if there’s similar viral-like processing or pathways in other cell types. The questions Arc poses may lead us to even more exciting discoveries. ~
https://massivesci.com/articles/arc-protein-mind-control-memory-brains-shepherd-utah-tedmed-alzheimers/
HIV capsid (outer envelope)Oriana:
This is fascinating: viruses are us!
We already knew that bacteria are us: mitochondria, which produce energy for us, started out as independently living bacteria. Evolution works in wondrous ways.
Lilith:
Thanks for posting this. This information about viruses, and actually that we are viruses, at least our memory-making apparatus is what we got from viruses. That is quite something.
Mary:
The new information on the Arc protein as possibly originating in a virus at some point adopted by our own cells, in the same way our mitochondria originated in the inclusion of a bacteria, is both stunning and exciting. What are we if not our memories? And if the very capacity to consolidate memory is an adaptation of an invasive virus somewhere in the distant past, then that viral invasion actually created us. This is a staggering idea, with wild implications, including the possibility that infection can be an evolutionary game changer, far beyond such things as building antibodies and developing immunities.
Oriana:
Lilith, Mary: you zeroed in on my favorite part of the blog — viruses are us!
And bacteria too, of course.
And who knows what other tiny creatures are yet to be discovered inside us, either living relatively independently (microbiome), or incorporated into every cell of our bodies. Where did the sperm get their tails from? Nothing would surprise me.
On 12 April 1955, Jonas Salk's vaccine for Polio was declared safe, and he chose not to patent it.
ending on beauty:
TRAVELING TOGETHER
If we are separated I will
try to wait for you
on your side of things
your side of the wall and the water
and of the light moving at its own speed
even on leaves that we have seen
I will wait on one side
while a side is there
~ W. S. Merwin
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