Spiritual J and the Bunny

For years I've had this sense that I'm standing at the door of real faith. But even though God has opened the door many times, or, rather, opened the door wider, I often stand, frozen at the threshold. 

Other times I've skipped right through the door, merrily singing my little God tune, delighted by how good it feels once I'm in there. I worry less, have a lighter heart, and then, back out the door I run. 

What could be so scary is beyond me, yet there I am, hopping in and out and hoping God will just yank me through and sit me down. God, being a gentleman, has yet to do so.

I have a friend who is deeply spiritual. For the sake of her privacy, let's call her Spiritual J. She is one of the women I spend time with every fall in a cabin in northern Michigan. 

Spiritual J  believes - openly, voraciously, enthusiastically believes. She calls God "Papa," and when something baffles her, she asks Papa for help. Sometimes she sees things that don't exist in this realm - fascinating creatures, colors, and things that can't be explained, and when that happens, Spiritual J asks, "Papa, what is that?" 

To anyone who might think Spiritual J has a screw loose, let me just say that, as far as I can tell, she is perfectly lucid, rock-steady, and grounded in reality. The only exceptions to that rule that I'm aware of are when we're "Up North," whipping up drinks in the blender.

There's not a lot to talk about in that cabin for four days at a stretch except for drinks to whip up in the blender . . . and food, husbands, kids, euchre, business, pets, and faith - actually there is a lot to talk about. It didn't take long for Spiritual J to peg me as an agnostic standing outside in my manufactured snow, wanting to come in from the cold. She started smiling at me more, with her big, summery, smile, the kind of smile that could only manifest itself on the face of someone who calls God "Papa."

Spiritual J is someone who makes me think of the word anointed every time I look at her. One of the women who spends time with us in the cabin said it really does help what hurts when Spiritual J lays hands on you.

During one of our trips north, I experienced this myself when I mentioned that my hand was a little achy. Turned out that Spiritual J had brought this cream with her that's supposed to be good for arthritis. So, she fetched it for me, but she didn't just hand me the jar; she opened the jar, scooped up a gob of the cream, then took my hand into both of hers and massaged the cream in. Something worked, and whether it was the cream or Spiritual J's application of it, I'm not sure.  

One night, when everyone else was asleep, Spiritual J and I sat outside, bundled in mittens and hats, peering out at the lake. Something came up about spirit animals and Spiritual J's belief that we don't just have spirit animals, we are spirit animals. Spiritual J said that when she wanted to know what spirit animal she was, she closed her eyes at bedtime and asked Papa to let her know come morning. 

The next day, as soon as Spiritual J opened her eyes, the word owl sprang to mind. When she searched the scriptures for owl, one thing she learned was that owls are guides, and she concluded that she was to help others coming to grips with their faith - or lack thereof. I climbed into bed that night, closed my eyes, and asked God to reveal the spirit animal I am.

In the morning, the first word that leapt to mind was bunny - not even rabbit - bunny. I snatched up my phone and Googled the significance of rabbits in scripture. I would have searched bunnies in scripture, but that seemed juvenile even for a novice like me. 

I found a lot of references to cuds and clean versus unclean animals, and then I read that the Physiologus, a Greek text dating back to about 200 AD, depicted rabbits as creatures that seek safety on cliffs and mountains only to scurry back down, their stumpy front legs making them easy prey to anything wanting to pick them off.

"I'm a frickin' bunny!" I whispered to Spiritual J at breakfast. “Supposedly, I run up mountains and then I run back down, and then I get eaten because my front legs are too short." First of all, in my scriptural youth and inexperience, I failed to process the fact that the Physiologus isn't scripture, and even if it were, there are all kinds of ways to interpret it.

Not even Spiritual J could make me feel better about God calling me a bunny - or so I thought. But Spiritual J smiled.

"Maybe God is telling you that you run to Him, but then you run away. It's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just a human thing. Maybe God is telling you that He knows you struggle."

At least Spiritual J's owl didn't swoop down and pick my bunny off a mountain. But if it ever does, I'm sure it will be for my own good. 

Wet Bread - If the Great Flood Really Happened, It So Should've Happened Like This

According to something I just read online (although shockingly, it might be one of the few online pieces not to be completely accurate), one of the most ambitious plans ever masterminded by God, was nearly botched. If the snafu hadn't been caught in time, someone God intended to survive the Great Flood would have been killed, which, if we take the story literally, would have altered the future of mankind. I'm not sure if this is part of the Hebrew Scriptures or not. If it is, then this is old news. Still, I didn't know about it so maybe you didn't either.

Noah's Ark
Copyright, Teece Aronin

Now, I have no intention of getting all religious on you, but I will acknowledge that, of course, many people believe God is perfect and by extension so are His plans. So I'm not even going there. I'm simply sharing what I read which was that, for some reason - God only knows why - God told Noah to destroy the first person to announce the flood's onset. But when Noah's daughter-in-law, Aphra was baking bread, water suddenly poured from the oven. 

Understandably, Aphra exclaimed that the flood was commencing, and since she happened to be the first to do so, God had to quickly shift gears so Noah wouldn't kill her. In God's plan, Aphra had to survive to help repopulate the earth post-flood.

So, I got to thinking: How might all this have gone down, and what gears might God have shifted to save Aphra from a terrible fate? Consider this possible scenario:

It's a hot, humid day and the forecast is calling for rain. Aphra stands in the kitchen about to take a loaf of bread from the oven. She is cranky, not only because it's hot, but because she's pregnant, has a headache, and the oven hasn't worked right for days. 

But mostly, Aphra is cranky because her husband, Ham, and a bunch of kooks, specifically Ham's father and two brothers, are next door in the backyard - again - hammering away - still - and the father, the biggest kook in the bunch, is claiming he will save them all, plus a whole boatload of animals, from a flood. Now really, how asinine is that? 

Young Aphra and Ham live next door to Ham's parents, Noah and Emzara, and this has been a sticking point for much of their marriage because Aphra detests the region's swampy summers. Noah and Emzara moved to this area, popular with seniors, when they retired, and Aphra resents Ham for dragging her here too. Ham exhibits an almost sappy adoration for his parents, but Aphra finds them intrusive and preachy. Today, every noisy smack from a hammer is making her resentment stronger and her headache thumpier. Some linguists believe that this is where the term "pounding headache" comes from.

Anyway, since construction began on that thing next door, Ham's two brothers and their wives have been staying with him and Aphra. And lately, animals have been brazenly strolling in from outside, putting their feet up on the furniture and smelling up the house.

Now Aphra stands in the kitchen, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. A cloth is tied around her hair to keep it out of her way but a loose, raven-colored lock has escaped the cloth to stick against the back of her sweaty neck.

She remembers what the locals say, that it isn't the heat, it's the humidity, and that's certainly the case today. The air is suffocating, and Aphra muses that one could practically drown just from breathing. She dismisses the thought as crazy. No one would be drowning around here anytime soon. And there wasn't going to be any stupid flood either. God, Noah was such a nut-ball.

With impulsive fury, Aphra goes to the kitchen window and yells in the direction of her in-laws' backyard. Immediately, all hammering halts, and every man freezes dead in his tracks, straining to hear. Ever since the ark, they've all been living in similar doghouses so this could have been the shriek of any one of their wives. As each man prays it isn't his, there comes another shout:

"Ham! I said, get your @$$ in here!" 

With the exception of Ham, all the men sigh with relief, and construction resumes. Ham straightens and looks in the direction of his prize donkey grazing in their backyard. Why would Aphra want him to bring it in the house? Then the realization dawns: Ham is the @$$ his wife is yelling for.

A momentary sadness darkens Ham's gentle features. He is embarrassed by his wife's public use of coarse language. Would she kiss her mother with that mouth? And his own mother would never say such things. Still, Aphra is a sweet, good natured girl overall so he will overlook this one small flaw.

"Coming, honey!" he calls. "Be right back," Ham tells the others. Striving to be cheerful, Ham heads for home. But once in the house, he sees his wife's expression and all hope is dashed.

"What?" he asks.

"When are you going to realize that I matter more than that crackpot out there?" Aphra wants to know.

"Baby," Ham answers imploringly, "that's my dad. Please don't talk like that. He's been nothing but good to me all my life."

"Really? Then why did he name you Ham?" his wife shoots back. "You are named after the meat of an unclean beast. What kind of father names his son after something filthy and disgusting?"

Ham winces. He has wondered this himself. His parents are strict Jews. Why would his father have named him Ham? And even if the idea was his mother's, why would his father have allowed it?  

"Well, I'm sure there was a good reason," says Ham. The defense is as weak as his manhood.

"Yeah, right!" his wife barks. "And here's another thing: I want you to stop messing around with that dumb boat!"

"Uh, actually honey, it's an ark," Ham corrects with instant regret.

"Alright - ARK!" Aphra roars like a pregnant, hormone-riddled fire-breathing dragon. "Do you have any idea how many things need fixing around here? Take that oven for instance! You've been promising to fix it for days, but no! The ARK comes first! You fix that oven and you fix it now!"

With that, Aphra yanks on the oven door and a huge rushing gush of water erupts from the opening, smacks into the couple's faces and soaks them before spilling to the floor.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Aphra yells, then wonders dimly who those people might be and why she would be yelling their names. "It's the . . ."

Knowing his father will kill the first person to announce the flood, Ham clamps a hand over his wife's mouth then tells Aphra for once in her life to just shut the  #*?% up. And since he's on a roll, he tells her to lighten up on the G#??*&n swearing. 

Ham lifts Aphra into his arms and hustles her over to his parents' backyard where everyone jumps aboard the freshly completed ark. Aphra looks embarrassed, and some linguists believe that this is where the term sheepish comes from.

"I'm sorry, Ham," she says. "You were right. There really is going to be a fl . . ." 

Hams's hand shoots out like lightening to silence her again, accidentally bumping her head against a signpost pointing the way to Alligator Alley.   

For some reason not clear to Aphra, seeing her bump her head makes her husband smile.

And some linguists believe that this is where the term happy accident comes from. 

Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Some people say that when God closes a door, He opens a window. Now an atheist will tell you there is no God which would mean that if a door shuts, don't look at God. And for God sakes don't look at God to open any windows. 

So if there is no God, who does close our metaphorical doors and open our metaphorical windows? Beats me, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's one of those pesky gnats dive-bombing the human psyche - the gnats known as free will and fate. I'm not here to weigh in on either one other than to say I doubt both can exist - at least not simultaneously - and I have no idea which one does.

Anyway, one night I was out on a date with a man who was an atheist to his core. The very idea of God or religion filled him not just with disdain but with disgust. Even though we didn't see entirely eye to eye, he was such a bright man that I was enjoying his company just the same. 

He was tall, handsome, urbane and flawlessly articulate. He was as perfectly polished as the President's shoes except for the colorful discourse pouring from him on the topics of God and religion. Despite the fact that he was beginning to surmise I was too much of  a "believer," we were very much enjoying our talk. 

He turned to me where we were seated at the bar of a pricey little watering hole, pulled out his cell phone and asked if I'd like to see pictures of the renovations he was performing on his house. As he swiped through the photos, he explained the details as he went, finally stopping at a picture of beautiful mahogany-stained doors lying atop sawhorses.

     
"I'm installing these doors throughout the house," he said. As soon as I saw the picture, an evil troll banged a gong in my head.

    
"Did you know those are 'Christian doors?'" I asked, an innocent expression faked upon my face.

"I don't know what you mean," he said, gravely. Now, he was 6'2" and I'm 5'4", so one could say he really was looking down on me. 

"The doors you're installing; they're 'Christian doors,'" I repeated.

"No they are not," he replied emphatically.

"Oh, but they are," I chirped.

"No," he informed me as though addressing a well-meaning moron, "the correct term is 'six-panel doors.'"

"That may very well be, but they're also referred to as 'Christian doors,'" I explained. I honestly did like him and don't know why I wasn't behaving better. 

     
"Here, I'll show you," I offered. At this point I whipped out my own phone and Googled Christian doors.

     
"See? Look here," I invited. "Christian doors date back to the 1700s and are also known as 'frame and panel' or 'cross and bible doors.'"

     
I didn't even know they were called cross and bible doors until I read it to him and was practically giddy over it as I did. I could see him physically pull back and his posture grow stiff so I stuck my nose back into my phone - but continued:

"Okay, look. It says here that the configuration of the four panels on the bottom of the door creates the illusion of a cross. See? It's right there. It's so obvious when you know what you're looking for. And then, the two panels at the top represent an open bible, but actually, they make another cross too, don't they? Imagine that - two crosses on one door."

     
I looked up at him with the expression of an angel, which wasn't easy as it doesn't come naturally.   

"Well?" I asked, "Isn't that interesting?"

There was a long pause before he dryly remarked, "I am not going to let you ruin them for me."

     
And did I mention that his name was Christopher? It was, and may I be struck dead if I'm lying. 

Hand to God.