Onesimus

SAINT PAUL WAS SERVING one of his periodic sentences behind bars when he met Onesimus. Onesimus was a slave who belonged to a Christian friend named Philemon, and why he was in jail nobody knows. Maybe he was a runaway. Maybe Philemon had charged him with theft. Anyway, when Onesimus had done his stretch and was about to be sprung, Paul wrote a short letter for him to give to his master, Philemon, when he got back home.

While they were doing time together, Paul wrote, not only had he made a Christian out of Onesimus, but he had also made him one of his best friends. The boy was like a son to him, Paul said, and sending him back was like "sending my very heart" (Philemon 1:12). Onesimus means "useful," and Paul plays on the name by saying he's become so useful to him that he doesn't know what he'll do without him. He doesn't come right out and say what he wants Philemon to do, but the hint could hardly be broader. "I would have been glad to keep him with me in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel," he wrote, "but I preferred to do nothing without your consent." In case that wasn't enough, he added, "Yes, my brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ." In the meanwhile he hopes that Philemon will receive the boy back "no longer as a slave but more . . . as a beloved brother" (1:13-20).

It's not known whether or not Philemon took the hint and let Onesimus return to be the old saint's comfort for what time was left him, but there's at least one good reason for believing that such was the case. Years later, when Paul was long since dead, another saint by the name of Ignatius was in jail. The bishop of Ephesus had sent some friends to visit him, and Ignatius wrote asking if a couple of them could be allowed to stay. Ignatius in his letter used some of the same language that Paul had used in his to Philemon, almost as if he was trying to remind him of something. And what was the name of the bishop he wrote to? It was Onesimus.

There's no proof that he was the same slave boy grown old and venerable with a mitre on his head, but it's very tempting to believe so. If he was, then he refreshed the hearts of not just one old saint, but two, and was more true to his name, useful, than Paul ever lived to discover.

Philemon

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Onan

THE ANCIENT LAW was that if a man died, his brother was supposed to have a child by his widow so the line wouldn't become extinct. Therefore, when Er died, it was up to his brother Onan to perform the duty with Er's widow, Tamar. Because Onan knew that the child to be born wouldn't really be his, he refused and "spilled his semen on the ground" instead (Genesis 38:9). As a result, God killed him.

This story is dismal enough in itself, but later generations have made it more so. Onanism has become a euphemism for masturbation, and the punishment Onan received has been interpreted as meaning that God is, to say the least, against it. Actually what God was against was that Onan had disobeyed the law of levirate marriage and had done so on the unedifying grounds that he didn't want any children of his running around with another man's name. Presumably the punishment would have been just as severe if, instead of doing what he did, he'd simply caught the next bus out of town. According to Dr. Kinsey, some 92 percent of all males have masturbated, as have some 62 percent of all women. The only damage to come of it seems to be the crippling sense of guilt and terror inculcated by well-meaning, pious folk who, forgetting their own sexual past, say that it makes you go crazy or blind or have your hair fall out.

There seem to be no scriptural grounds for condemning masturbation in itself. Like sex in general, if it is practiced to the exclusion of a loving relationship with other human beings, it is an infraction of the law of love and is its own punishment. On the other hand, if it's practiced as a temporary expedient until the right person comes along, it is harmless. It was not for his sexuality that Onan was punished, but for his stinginess and selfishness and general cussedness.

Genesis 38:1-10

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Old Age

OLD AGE IS NOT, as the saying goes, for sissies. There are some lucky ones who little by little slow down to be sure, but otherwise go on to the end pretty much as usual. For the majority, however, it's like living in a house that's in increasing need of repairs. The plumbing doesn't work right anymore. There are bats in the attic. Cracked and dusty, the windows are hard to see through, and there's a lot of creaking and groaning in bad weather. The exterior could use a coat of paint. And so on. The odd thing is that the person living in the house may feel, humanly speaking, much as always. The eighty-year-old body can be in precarious shape, yet the spirit within as full of beans as ever. If that leads senior citizens to think of all the things they'd still love to do but can't anymore, it only makes things worse. But it needn't work that way.

Second childhood commonly means something to steer clear of, but it can also mean something else. It can mean that if your spirit is still more or less intact, one of the benefits of being an old crock is that you can enjoy again something of what it's like being a young squirt.

Eight-year-olds, like eighty-year-olds, have lots of things they'd love to do but can't because they know they aren't up to them, so they learn to play instead. Eighty-year-olds might do well to take notice. They can play at being eighty-year-olds, for instance. Stiff knees and hearing aids, memory loss and poor eyesight are no fun, but there are those who marvelously survive them by somehow managing to see them as, among other things and in spite of all, a little funny.

Another thing is that, if part of the pleasure of being a child the first time round is that you don't have to prove yourself yet, part of the pleasure of being a child the second time round is that you don't have to prove yourself any longer. You can be who you are and say what you feel, and let the chips fall where they may.

Very young children and very old children also have in common the advantage of being able to sit on the sideline of things. While everybody else is in there jockeying for position and sweating it out, they can lean back, put their feet up, and like the octogenarian King Lear "pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies."

Very young children and very old children also seem to be in touch with something that the rest of the pack has lost track of. There is something bright and still about them at their best, like the sun before breakfast. Both the old and the young get scared sometimes about what lies ahead of them, and with good reason, but you can't help feeling that whatever inner goldenness and peace they're in touch with will see them through in the end.

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Ocean

THEY SAY THAT whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.

The beauty and power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows?

In his theology Tillich avoided using the word God because it seemed to him too small, denoting only another being among beings. He preferred to speak instead of the Ground of Being, of God as that which makes being itself possible, as that because of which existence itself exists. His critics complain that he is being too metaphysical. They say they can't imagine praying to anything so abstract and remote.

Maybe Tillich himself shared their difficulty. Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears.

-Originally published in Beyond Words

Observance

A RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE can be a wedding, a christening, a Memorial Day service, a bar mitzvah, or anything like that you might be apt to think of. There are lots of things going on at them. There are lots of things you can learn from them if you're in a receptive state of mind. The word observance itself suggests what is perhaps the most important thing about them.

A man and a woman are getting married. A child is being given a name. A war is being remembered and many deaths. A youngster is coming of age.

It is life that is going on. It is always going on, and it is always precious. It is God that is going on. It is you who are there that is going on.

As Henry James advised writers, be one on whom nothing is lost. Observe!! There are few things as important, as religious, as that.

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words