Wisdom

IN THE BOOK OF PROVERBS, Wisdom is a woman. "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work," she says (8:22). She was there when he made the heaven, the sea, the earth. It was as if he needed a woman's imagination to help him make them, a woman's eye to tell him if he'd made them right, a woman's spirit to measure their beauty by. "I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always," she says (8:30), as if it was her joy in what he was creating that made creation bearable, and that's why he created her first.

Wisdom is a matter not only of the mind but of the heart, like a woman's wisdom. It is born out of suffering, as a woman bears a child. It shows a way through the darkness the way a woman stands at the window holding a lamp. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness," says Solomon, then adding, just in case there should be any lingering question as to her gender, "and all her paths are peace" (3:17).

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

Wine

UNFERMENTED GRAPE JUICE is a bland and pleasant drink, especially on a warm afternoon mixed half and half with ginger ale. But it is a ghastly symbol of the life blood of Jesus Christ, especially when served in individual antiseptic, thimble-sized glasses.

Wine is booze, which means it is dangerous and drunk-making. It makes the timid brave and the reserved amorous. It loosens the tongue and breaks the ice, especially when served in a loving cup. It kills germs. As symbols go, it is a rather splendid one.

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Whale

IF IT WAS ACTUALLY A WHALE that swallowed Jonah on his voyage to Tarshish, it couldn't have been the kind of right whale you find in those waters because their gullets aren't big enough. Maybe it was a sperm whale, because they can handle something the size of a prophet without batting an eye. Or maybe, since the Hebrew word means only "great fish," it wasn't a whale at all, but a people-eating shark, some of whom attain lengths as great as thirty feet. But whatever it was, this much is certain.

No matter how deep it dove and no matter how dark the inside of its belly, no depth or darkness was enough to drown out the sound of Jonah's prayer. "I am cast out from thy presence. How shall I again look upon thy holy temple?" (Jonah 2:4), the intractable and waterlogged old man called out from sixty fathoms, and Yahweh heard him, and answered him, and Jonah's relief at being delivered from the whale can hardly have been any greater than the whale's at being delivered of Jonah.

Jonah 1:17-2:10

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Water

FOR NINE MONTHS we breathe in it. The sight of water in oceans, rivers, and lakes is soothing to the spirit as almost nothing else. To swim in it is to become as weightless and untrammeled as in dreams. The wake of a ship, the falling of a cataract, and the tumbling of a brook can hold us spellbound for hours, and in times of drought we feel as parched in our being as the lawn that crackles beneath our feet.

Air is our element, but water is our heart's delight. "My flesh faints for thee," the Psalmist sings, "as in a dry and weary land where no water is" (63:1). And among the last things that Jesus ever said, and among the most human, were the words, "I thirst" (John 19:28). 

-Originally published in Beyond Words  

War

WE CANNOT BE reminded too often that the largely middle-aged or elderly politicians, generalissimos, and assorted heads of state who declare war on each other take no part in the dirty business of actually waging it, but leave that instead to the young. The attempt is made to secure their participation by stirring them up into a patriotic fervor, but if that doesn't work there are laws to compel it, with the result that they find themselves faced willy-nilly with having to fight to the death if necessary for a cause that a great many of them neither understand nor in their hearts consider worth paying anything like such a price for. When their bodies start coming back in bags like rubbish, they are honored as having given their lives for their country, whereas the truth of the matter is that more often than not they did not so much give them as have them wrested from them whether that's what they had in mind or not.

Can there be any doubt that if the fighting were to be left to the leaders themselves, the story would be a very different one? It is a thought worth pursuing. Many of them are overweight. Many can't see without glasses. A few wear hearing aids or pacemakers and feel faint at the sight of blood. Even the younger ones who have kept in some kind of shape have in all likelihood never so much as punched another human being in the nose, let alone aimed a gun at one in anger. But no matter. Theirs it is to do or die, and one pictures them in their business suits and long dresses, their burnooses and caftans and saris, as they head off to do it armed with weapons they have no idea how to use and ultimatums, principles, and slogans that suddenly seem equally useless, and with their hearts in their mouths.

Can there be any question as to how long it would take them to turn around and go home? Can any crazy scenario we manage to dream up be even half as crazy as war is crazy? Can there be any doubt that Jesus was speaking only the simple truth when he said that those who live by the sword will perish by the sword?

The lucky ones are the ones who perish all at once and get it over with. The others are those who still have years and years left for remembering the handsome young men and strong young women who were once the fairest and dearest they had.

-Originally published in Beyond Words