Molly writes about Beth Erev

There is a new writer in Reno. This new writer, a Molly Maguire McGill manages to mix an interesting mash of Romance, religion, nostalgia, and politics. In her novel, “A Sappy Piece of Crap,” of all titles, she points to the poverty and despair, which grips a sizable percentage of our population, and shows how all it takes is one person who cares to change a world.

Molly Maguire posits a Beth Erev, a homeless girl who has suffered throughout her life. As a second grader she had been forced to compete with a schoolmate to find out who was the dumbest in class. She developed a crush on the boy she had to compete with. He went into boxing and pretended never to notice she was around. She won the title, dumbest in class. In the same year, she was the only child not to receive a valentine.

Molly never went to her Junior or Senior prom or even her graduation because she did not have a date or the money for a dress to dress up for the affairs. Later in life she found herself a drift less wanderer, traveling as a migrant laborer to the deep south and then back north to her home in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. In her travels, she meets an enigmatic Mt. Black who teaches her the survival skills of the Lenape Indians. It is here that she learns to make fine furniture and clothing using only the materials available from the land. That includes tree sap, tree bark, flax, and the fat from local road kill. She is sappy, not because she cries allot, but because she works with tree sap. People call her a piece of crap because she is homeless.

Inside lies a great treasure. It only takes the kindness of a local farmer, a Don Boker, with several of his friends to find the treasure inside to convert her into a very beautiful diamond. First, Don, just being a nice farmer, allows her to live on an abandoned section of his farm. Then he friends Cal and Bo start working as matchmakers trying to get Beth and Don together. What follows is a comedy of errors. They go to a baseball game. Don’s past girlfriend dumped him at a baseball game. During a typical Pennsylvania thunderstorm, Beth will run into a conservative and have a major argument. This will spill over into the perception that Beth come to believe she is the group’s pet, not a person in her own right. Only skillful negotiation on the part of Don, Bo, and Cal will save the day.

Bo and Cal will also try to take Don and Beth to meet friends in New York. They have a plan to create a theme park on Don’s farm, using Beth’s Lenape skills as the theme for the park. Neither Don, nor Beth are interested in the idea. They see in the plan their becoming man and wife. Don is only interested in farming, not looking for a mate. Beth does not want to be hurt again. It takes the skilled negotiation of Romero and Rose Grant, the friends from New York, to point out to Don and Beth that they are in fact meant for each other.

To find out what happens, you will want to read this well written novel. You can find it at Amazon.com, as one of their Kindle Books.

There is a great new writer in Reno Nevada

There is a new writer in Reno. This new writer, a Molly Maguire McGill manages to mix an interesting mash of Romance, religion, nostalgia, and politics. A Hope for a Different Future is a Coming of Age novel with an interesting spin. Molly Maguire McGill stars in this novel as a woman transported back in time, from today, back to October of 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis is just beginning, John F. Kennedy is still president, and Vietnam is some relic of World War II.

A great novel about a great place to live in America.

Molly Maguire goes to bed one evening, an adult woman, with her husband Karl by her side. When she wakes up she is in second grade and a life to live all over again. She tells her school friends about her nightmare, Dallas of ’63, Vietnam, Watergate, the president with Alzheimer’s disease, the Texas Oilmen running the country for their own advantage, and the rest. She also tells the boy next door about how they are married in this dream.

Molly’s friends talk her into writing the President about her dream, which she does. In her letters, she related to the White House about the President’s affairs, listing names. She had also discussed the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear tests in Nevada, classified information at the time. With the name, Molly Maguire, and the classified information, she finally catches the attention of the Secret Service. They arrive at her home on the Eve of Thanksgiving. Her parents are busy listening to their favorite music, folk music extolling the virtues of the common laborer. This only serves to heighten the sensitivities of the Secret Service. Still, when they meet Molly, they are convinced the letters really did come from the heart of a small child.

Molly gets to meet the President, for Christmas and Easter. In the process, she convinces the President to allow the communists to take over Vietnam in exchange for allowing America to help them develop a modified form of their government. Instead of war, Hanoi welcomes McDonalds, Burger King, and the like. Peace reigns in Southeast Asia. Molly also presents President Kennedy, who she has a crush on, with details about the assassination plan. The president launches an investigation, which leads to the arrest on hundreds. He remains at the White House in November of ’63 and the assassination never happens.

A Hope for a Different Future revolves around how history may have changed if these to events of world history, the assassination, and Vietnam had never happened. How would the Civil Rights movement been affected? For her sixteenth birthday, Molly receives a VW Bus. Would the VW Bus had become the Hippy wagon if there had been no Vietnam? Like the movie, “Pleasantville” points out; the utopian suburbia could not last in a vacuum forever. How might this view of reality changed had President Kennedy lived and Vietnam not happened?

Much of A Hope for a Different Future revolves around Molly and Karl as they grow up and grow together as friends, and then in High School, as lovers. A Hope for a Different Future is a coming of age novel. We again hear the joys and the pains, of growing up in Levittown Pennsylvania, suburbia.

A Hope for a Different Future also presents Vatican II as it presents itself to mid-sixties America. As a result, A Hope for a Different Future mixes a coming of age novel with folk politics and progressive religion. You will love A Hope for a Different Future. You can find this novel at Amazon .com.

There is a new writer in Reno

There is a new writer in Reno. This new writer, a Molly Maguire McGill manages to mix an interesting mash of Romance, religion, nostalgia, and politics. Eight Friends from Washington D.C. is her lead off novel about eight young people who meet as new staffers for the Romney/Ryan administration. All begins very well as they meet at the apartment complex they will share on the southern tip of the city. Soon, they are attending the swearing in ceremony, where they meet high government officials, including members of the US Supreme Court.

A great new novel from a new writer in Reno Nevada

Being politically active, the eight young people play geography games in their apartments, including a game to show their knowledge of the state capitals. Personalities begin to emerge. Niles and Sherry, the African-American members of the group soon form a friendship. Coming from Texas, Bill tends to be a little brash, to the point of rude. Maria is the devout member of the group. We will later learn she really wants to be a nurse, but as a perspective nurse, she is also devoutly pro-life. That is why she supports this administration.

Virginia is from the Deep South and will manipulate Bill into a compromising position, then take advantage of it. Ben is from Nebraska. He will help the others after their terms in the Executive Office Building are over. The novel takes these eight people as they move into the nation’s capital, visit the historic sites, and take bicycle trips out into the surrounding countryside. They will also visit Arlington National Cemetery with the new President using Marine One, and travel the nation using Air Force One.

Those who are interested in US History, in particular while it is being made, will love this novel. Those interested in the geography of Northern Virginia, and in the history of the region will love how the eight visit these sites and have the scenery laid out for them.

This novel is a political novel. It shows what would happen if the Romney/Ryan ticket were elected. It shows the massive budget cuts. It also shows how these budget cuts will affect the inner workings of our big cities. There are two key scenes in the novel where riots break out in Washington D.C. and other cities throughout the nation. Each time, the eight friends find themselves in the middle of riots.

In one scene, the eight attend a local professional football game when cattle are dropped from the sky from a cargo plane. Remember when the air traffic controllers at Ronald Wilson Reagan International fell asleep? Remember how aircraft did not have the navigational assistance to land? With the cattle, naked skydivers shoot water from water guns and throwing water balloons. This heightens the sense of chaos, which is beginning to consume the nation.

Niles and Bill join the Marines and Army respectively. Bill manages to grow up and falls in love with Maria. Niles will use the skills he learns as a recon Marine to save Sherry in North Carolina. To learn what happens to the eight, and to the nation, this novel is a must read. You can find it at Amazon.com.

The fight to decide who the great provider is has not yet ended part 2

Hosea 12:8 states, “לַעֲשֹׁק אָהֵב כְּנַעַוֹבְּיָדוֹ מאזְנֵי מִרְמָה,” Canaan is explicitly referred to as a merchant. This is in Hosea’s time. Proverbs 31:24, in the middle of the Acrostic, “Woman of Valor,” recited by all Jewish men to their wives Sabbath evening relates, “וַחֲגוֹרנָתְנָה לַכְּנַעֲנִי,” “She gives girdles to the Canaanites/merchants.” If the writer of Joshua and Judges is from a later period, like the Babylonian exile, it would make sense to condemn the merchants who diluted the old ways of doing things. They were from the low country, which is to say by the Mediterranean Sea, and therefore the bringers of foreign lifestyles. When looking for a people to blame for the disaster, they make the ideal target.

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The merchants brought the way of the nations. That is what merchants do for a living. They bring goods, and with the goods the way of living from other cultures. Psalm 115:4 begins a diatribe against the idols of the Canaanites, and it is part of Hillel. The referent has a double meaning. The silver and gold could refer to the market with its emphasis on silver and gold. It could also refer to the פסלים the Canaanites worshiped. It probably refers to both.

The main complaint of the Deuteronomy writer of Joshua and Judges is bringing the way of the nations. By the Babylonian exile, the writers were the established class, not the farmers, or the shepherds. Deuteronomy 9:4 tell us, “מר בְּצִדְקָתִי הֱבִיאַנִי יְהוָהלָרֶשֶׁת אֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַזֹּאתוּבְרִשְׁעַת הַגּוֹיִם הָאֵלֶּהיְהוָה מוֹרִישָׁם מִפָּנֶיךָ.” The writing is that of a very skilled writer. “לָרֶשֶׁת,” to inherit alliterates well with “רִשְׁעַ,” Russia, “Those who think themselves first,” and “מוֹרִישָׁם,” “to drive them out.” The skilled writing is not that of a farmer, or a shepherd. He is the established class.

Deuteronomy 9:4 translates, “Do not say in your heart, “It is because of my charity, the Personal Name has brought me in to possess this land, and because of these nations thinking themselves first that the Personal Name is dispossessing them before me. It is because of their thinking of themselves as first that the Personal Name, your Almighty Judge, dispossesses these nations in order to fulfill the promise he made on oath to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

The context Torah and Prophets gives us is not that of class war. The warning is not to be like the other nations, thinking themselves first. Deuteronomy does show the greatest concern for the less fortunate. Deuteronomy 15:4 tells us, “There shall be no one of you in need, if you listen to the voice of the Personal Name, your Almighty Judge, and carefully observe this entire Mitzvah which I enjoin on you today.” Deuteronomy 15:11 relates, “The land will never lack for needy persons; that is why I command you: “Open your hand freely to your poor and to your needy kin in your land.” God knows we will never follow the rules, so commands us to at least make up for past failures.

This takes away the third option of “An Introduction to the Old Testament.” Some of the peoples fighting the Canaanites probably were Semitic, as opposed to the descendents of Ham who were the Canaanites. Almost certainly, some were shepherds fighting for their shepherding ways against the established farming and merchant ways of the more advanced culture.

We must follow Torah, not because we believe it is literally correct, it is not, but because we are evaluating about what they thought was the conflict. They are the only witnesses to this and thought the conflict was about who the real “בעל” the real head of the household, the real “אל” or Almighty Judge was. If we could ever get this right, there would be no need to fear anyone. God is the Great Provider. There is no need for merchants or market forces, or any of the garbage these false idols may seem to provide.

This is part 2. Please click here for part 1

The fight to decide who the great provider is has not yet ended part 1

When discussing the reason for Israel’s admission in to the Promised Land “An Introduction to the Old Testament,” mentions three reasons theories as to how the Israelis entered the land. One of these theories centers on the idolatrous behavior of those already in the land. In this theory, Joshua comes in with Israel and in one massive war wipes out the original population.

One of the twelve apostles was a Canaanite.  An Introduction to the Old Testament,” points to many other examples of how Canaanites were in the land long after they were wiped out. This points to the second hypothesis; the conquest of the land was gradual. “An Introduction to the Old Testament,” posits a third hypothesis, a Marxist one. At least some of the people who sided with Israel participated in a Marxist peasant’s revolt.

In our nation, the fight to decide who the great provider is has not yet ended, or possibly even begun.
This guy posed for Terri and Larry Garside as they were coming down through Klamath Falls.

“An Introduction to the Old Testament,” asks us to abandon the literal reading of the text in light of a twentieth century understanding. If this were a peasant Marxist revolt, we would expect the writers to use a name for the enemy that vilified them. Canaan, “כְּנָעַן” refers to the people of the lowlands. They thought of themselves as the people of the soil juxtaposed to the people of Aram, the highlands people. They were not the only tribes living in the land at the time. If Canaan referred to elite as “An Introduction to the Old Testament,” maintains, why choose to name this people a word that simply means lowland, or humble people? Why list names to these peoples corresponding to tribes other nations report were really in the land?

There were two disputes between the Canaanites and the entering Hebrews. One concerned who the great provider was: “אל” or “בעל” and “עשתרת.” The Canaanites worshiped “בעל,” “Husband,” or the head of the household. His bride in the story is “עשתרת” or the woman of “תרת,” or “Ra” an Egyptian word. She was one of the daughters of Ra in Egyptian mythology. These individuals point to a farming culture. “בעל” dies in the winter and rises again in the spring. When he rises, the ground becomes fertile. “בעל” becomes the great provider.

Agriculture was a great advance in the development of culture. In the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there is minimal conflict between the Canaanites and the shepherds who were with them. Most of the people in the Promised Land were ranchers, shepherds, as were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

As Joshua and the people of Israel enter the Promised Land, there is conflict similar to the conflict between the ranchers and the farmers of our American Midwest. The farmers put up barbed wire fences to keep out the cattle. Ranchers became upset as they tried to move their cattle from Texas to the railroads in Kansas. The ranchers of our Midwest were the wealthy tycoons. Hebrew is Hebrew for “Homeless.” Another difference is the cattle, “Chattel” or live stock. The American rancher raised cattle. The Basque peoples, who ranchers also did not care for, raised sheep, as did the Israelites. They were the odd men out.

What was the original dispute with the Canaanites? The only text we have as to the real dispute is Torah and Prophets. Were the original Canaanites farmers putting up fences to block the herding of the Hebrews? Was the dispute about who “בעל,” the Great Provider is?

“An Introduction to the Old Testament,” brings up the dispute between the established folk who moved from agriculture to trading, built cities and traded with peoples from Carthage to Greece, to Egypt. He points to the desire to return to Egypt and the consumer mentality of Pharaoh, the Great Abuser, who makes the Jewish people a commodity.

In the consumer/trading mentality, “בעל” becomes Hermes, who becomes Mercury. The Great Provider of the agrarian people becomes the god of Merchants and thieves. As polytheism dies out the idea of a god becomes with a mechanical creation, or in Freudian terms, a great Id, who is more able to discern what is in man’s best interests than the collective Ego. The Super Ego and the ID join together to rationalize rampant consumerism at the expense of the poor.

This is part 1, please click here for part 2.

We will be part of the land six feet under with Sean Hannity or six feet over with God part 2

The story in Joshua is of a very violent entry into the land of Canaan. Archeology does not seem to bear out the violent entry theory. Archeology shows that Egyptians made their buildings out of stone, not mud, brick, and straw as Exodus stipulates. Babylon did. The writer transposes the oppression under the Babylonians back in time to the epic story of the Hebrew people suffering in Egypt, so the people can relate to the story. The reason for the violence being in the Joshua is that the anger the Jewish people had against Babylon is transposed back into time to the Canaanites. “If only we had eradicated all temptation to follow the ways of the nations, God would never have gotten angry and sent Babylon to destroy us. We should not only be angry with Babylon, but with the Canaanites too.”

I establish my Brit with you, with all of mankind, and with all of creation. All will re-enter the Garden of Eden, paradise. First, you have to take care of this place, this planet we call earth.

Genesis 9 tells us, “I establish my Brit with you, your descendants after you, and with every living creature that was with you: the birds, the tame animals, and all the wild animals that were with you—all that came out of the ark. I establish my Brit with you, never again will I destroy all creatures with the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.” The contract is with all flesh, with all the land, not just mankind.

Leviticus 25 tells us, “The Personal Name told Moses on Mount Sinai, “Speak to those who quarrel with God and tell them. When you enter the land that I am giving you, let the land, too, keep a Sabbath for the Personal Name. For six years, you may sow your field, and for six years prune your vineyard, gathering in their produce. During the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath for the Personal Name, when you will neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard.”

The next chapter tells us, “I will scatter you among the nations at the point of my drawn sword, leaving your countryside desolate and your cities deserted. During the time it lies waste, the land will make up for its lost Sabbaths, while you are in the land of your enemies. The land will have rest and make up for its Sabbaths during all the time that it lies desolate, enjoying the rest that you would not let it have on your Sabbaths when you lived there.”

This is what happened during the Babylonian Exile. The writer of Leviticus looks back in time, through the reign of the kings, the rustic life the people had before the kings, and all the way back to Joshua and sees what America saw during the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. America, the land of the empty people, אמי רקה , did not give the land its rest, so God made provisions for the land to take its rest. We find the same logic today, We listen to people like Sean Hannity tell his audience at Faux Noise how prideful the liberals are for claiming people could cause global warming. The liberals are doing the same as the prophets did before them. They look into the future and project what will happen, given the best scientific evidence, if things do not change.

The writer of “J” is very concerned for the land. He knows that if we do not take care of the land, the land will cry out to God and God will come down and get even. He will use climate change as the mechanism through which the world gets even. The land will have its rest. If we do not give the land its rest, God will give the land its rest and we will be part of the land again, six feet under the surface of the land. It is only a matter if we will listen to Sean Hannity and his ilk at Faux Noise, or if we will listen to God.

Torah, in particular the stories of life in the land, Joshua, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings is one large story, of living in the land, sometimes guarding and keeping the garden, sometimes living in loose confederation, as America did before our modern constitution. Sometimes they strove as we did to get back to the old Articles of Federation, as the south did in the 1860’s, sometimes with a strong central government, Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and sometimes with limited government/states rights, which allowed for the enslavement of peoples, north and south. Sometimes, we did not care for the land. Those old enough remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire in Cleveland Ohio, Love Canal, the Valdez Oil Disaster and the Deep Water Horizon. As Leviticus 26 predicts, when we guard and care for the garden, things go well. When we do not care for the garden, the land will have its rest. That is the reason we read Joshua, Samuel, and Kings.

We will be part of the land six feet under with Sean Hannity or six feet over with God part 1

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth at their creation. When the Personal Name, the Almighty Judge made the earth and the heavens there was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field had sprouted. The Personal Name, the Almighty Judge had sent no rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the ground. A stream seeped out of the earth, watering all the surface of the ground. The Personal Name, the Almighty Judge formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The man became a living being.

It may seem strange, discussing The Land: The Promise of the People of the Social Contract. Is not the Promised Land, the Promised Land, Israel, from Lebanon to the Red Sea? On the other hand, when we try to find the Garden of Eden, we find something interesting. As we look at the mural at our Cathedral, we notice how the Lamb stands atop four rivers. These are the four rivers of life from Genesis 2:4. Two of these rivers are easy to find, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

The third is a dry creek bed in western Saudi Arabia. The fourth defines the land of Cush, a land that stretches from Ethiopia and Somalia all the way to modern Libya. The Tigris and Euphrates are north and east of Israel. The Pishon and Gihon are to the south, east, and west. The land in the middle where we expect to find the Garden of Eden, is exactly where Israel sits today. The Garden of Eden is Israel.

Does not Genesis 3:23 tell us how God banished Adam and Eve from the garden? “God expelled Ha Adam, stationing the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword east of the Garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.” The apple in the story is the way of the nations. The Cherubim have a striking resemblance to the Babylonians who guard the way to Israel with a fiery sword, which devoured Jerusalem. Psalm 137 depicts the anger the Jewish nation had against Babylon for the destruction it reaped on Jerusalem.

The Garden of Eden is Israel in idealized form. It does not rain there. I mist comes up from the ground and waters the place. It is a garden, with plants and animals, there is no death there. Some think the writer of Genesis 2-4 was from Jerusalem and they identify him by his using the Personal name of God. All is ideal. Dr. Michael D. Coogan from Harvard Divinity School mentions the importance of soil, the land, and the people. Psalms 120-135 talk about the trip to the new Israel, the new Promised Land from Babylon.

Some in the pro-life movement notice that man becomes a living being when God breathes into them. They argue that life must therefore begin with breath. They forget that God does not breathe into Eve or her offspring either. Genesis 4:10, Deuteronomy 12:23, Leviticus 17:11, 17:14, and other places equate life/soul and blood. Blood is the only organ that touches each other cell in the body and it is present when the body has two cells.

Joshua Son of Nun/ a carpenter, with Peter Son of Nun the fisherman.

Moses and the people of Israel spend forty years walking through the desert on the way to the new Garden of Eden, the Promised Land. When they arrive, Joshua, whose name in Greek is Jesus, the son of Nun, the fish, takes the people into the Promised Land. Another Joshua, the son of a carpenter and who hangs out with fishermen, one of whom is Simon, who he calls Peter/the rock, he will call the Son of Nun, the fish.

The idea of “Holy” has real meaning when understanding righteousness part 2

If the corrected understanding of “Holy,” is correct, if we are separated to…” God is not only transcendent, but also imminent. His image is within each of us, as Genesis 1 tells us. God made us in his צַלְמ, which sounds like Shalom, and in his likeness, the feminine plural of blood, דְמוּתֵ. We are the imminence, the image, and likeness of God in this cosmos, which has the same root as cosmetology, that which makes beautiful.  Genesis 1 becomes the great literary landscape, the literary cover for the book we call Torah, explaining what the entire rest of Torah is going to be about. God hovers over wilderness and chaos, bringing order to the cosmos.

Jesus may be employing G’zerah Shavah in Matthew 5:48, “Be Shalom, as your heavenly Father is Shalom.” The text he refers to is Leviticus 19:2. The root of Shalom is not simply peace. When Israel signed its peace treaty with Egypt they did not want the treaty translated into Arabic because Shalom in Hebrew means a sense of completeness and tranquility the Arabic Shalom does not convey. This feeling of צַלְמ and Shalom means having the tranquility that comes from knowing God is within us, so we need not fear.

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Jesus tells us, “Unless your צֶדֶקה  surpasses that of the grammarians and Pharisees/Separate Ones, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” What follows is a heightened sense of community, where all look past differences and strive to be a complete family, knowing they have to live in the same oikonos, economy, house, so might as well strive to get along. The Hebrew word for “Separate Ones,” is “Pharisee.” It follows that Hebrew has two words for “Separate,” one of which is Pharisee/פרוש/Perez. The other is צֶדֶקה which means “Holy.” Pharisee/פרוש/Perez mean separate from. צֶדֶקה/Holy means separate to, separate to God’s work of guarding and keeping his garden/his planet, which includes each other.

“I am the Personal Name your Almighty Judge, who brought you out of the land of Oppression, out of the house of menial labor.” Jewish Passover tradition emphasizes how the Jewish community is to remember what it was like to be there, for the first time, each time, they celebrate the feast. Our concept of the Physical Presence comes from this understanding.

The Jewish concept of Justice/ צֶדֶקהand its concept of קדוש is based upon this salvation experience. They remember what it was like to suffer, and they remember our rescue. This causes a response of gratitude which tells them, and through the Eucharist, us, how to respond when we see others suffering. We become so enmeshed in helping each other; we do not have time or inclination to violate any of the Ten Rules, which follow.

Mark 2 tells us the Haggadah about the healing of the paralytic. Jesus asks the Separate Ones, “What is easier to say… or …” The power is not in the words, the flapping of the gums, the vibration of the windpipes, or how our tongue roles in our mouths. The power comes from the heart. Scholars argue about just what this child did that made him a paralytic in the first place.

After studying Semitic literature, the strongest possibility is nothing at all, or at least nothing worse than any other child his age. John 9 is a typical Semitic story relating what sin causes their suffering. The lesson is that there is not necessarily any sin at all. Our paralytic could be a victim of child abuse, nothing more.

If the child is a victim of child abuse, this child has to believe several things in order to walk again. He must believe Jesus has the ability to forgive him of whatever he did wrong. He must believe Jesus can heal whatever physical problem causes his paralysis. Last, and most important, he must believe that whatever caused him to fail in the past is gone. This brings us back to those choices Jesus gives his adversaries.

The first choice, “Your failures are forgiven,” is a statement of empowerment. “Whatever you did wrong in the past is in the past.” His sense of gratitude will lead him in the direction he must follow next. The second choice, “Pick up your mat and go home,” is just that; it is a direction to pick up his mat and go home, at which point, with no direction, he is no longer empowered. Afraid of more abuse, he becomes paralyzed again. The patronizing attitude of the Separate Ones and their assumption that if he is forgiven, he must have done something wrong, only exasperates the paralyzing (pardon the pun) sense of guilt.

As it relates to Genesis 1, with God hovering over wilderness and Chaos, with mankind, in his image and likeness guarding and tending his garden. The paralytic has not kept up with his schoolmates. While they studied and learned their craft, the paralytic lay on a bed. He is behind. He cannot compete on equal terms. If he tries, he will fail, the guilt will return, and…

There is only one solution to the problem and it does not come from Jesus. It does come from the four still up on that roof, and the people standing around Jesus. They must be patient, spend the extra time, and help the paralytic catch up. That is the lesson of Genesis 1, of what Exodus 20, and Deuteronomy 5 is all about, remembering our rescue and when we see suffering, doing something. That is צֶדֶקה and that is קדוש. That is justice and that is what Holy means.

The idea of “Holy” has real meaning when understanding righteousness part 1

Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his. Whatsoever he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

It being by him removed from the common state nature has placed it in, it has by this labor something annexed to it, that excludes other men’s common right. This labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what is once joined, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

So says John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government, chapter 5, section 27. The question is, what does this have to do with the concept of “Holy,” and the precepts of Torah? Although John Locke quotes Torah and Gospel, he is a protestant whose work is political philosophy published anonymously in 1689. He is not, nor does he claim to be a theologian. Still, he summarizes nicely what the word “Holy,” means.

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One idea of what “Holy means comes from the Navy with its quarter-deck. The quarter deck is “holy ground.” Why is it holy and what makes it holy? The captain of the ship said so, because the navy has a tradition of declaring a certain part of the ship the quarter-deck holy, special. That is what it means and that it all it means, special. Why? Tradition says so. In Catholic tradition, “Holy” surely means far more.

As theologians, we parade around saying “Holy,” means to be separate from the common ground. The Hebrew, ללח means common or separated from the temple. It is interesting to note that the word קדוש does not appear in Genesis, and does not appear until Exodus 3. When it does appear, at the burning bush, God uses the term in a way that assumes Moses will understand what he means, even though the term is new, and has never been used, at least in Torah, before.

The story of the burning bush, Sinai, in Hebrew, must have been written at a later date, when the Jewish people had a clear understanding of what Holy meant. As to what the original readers would have understood by the term or the intermittent readers between then and now, would require further research, and may not be knowable at all.

How would Moses have understood the term? as the place where God was? God was speaking to him at the time. Of course he was present. If Holy is where God is, what does God mean when he says to be holy as he is Holy?

St. Matthew translates this concept into the Greek, κοινός/common. The Hebrew, ללח  shows how the Jewish community at the time of the Great Assembly and throughout the Second Temple period saw holiness and all that comes with it as being tied to the temple. As Israel wandered through the wilderness, they did not have a temple, so the understanding of Holy as being tied to the temple could not have been understood.

The idea of Holy as being tied to marriage also could not have been understood. The wedding contract does not come until Horeb with the giving of the Ten Commandments. What did God mean at Sinai? Further research is required.

John Locke explains, קדוש not only means, “separated from,” but more importantly, “separated to.” In Hebrew, קדוש also means, “To be married,” marriage contract language. The bride is separated from the common lot of mankind and separated to her בעל her husband.

Hebrew has another way of talking about man and wife, “בת זוג and בן זוג” the son and daughter of the pair. We are all children of God, of different sexes. We are members of one grander family formed by the bride of Christ to the grand Abba, the one who is to come, Haba, the Lamb of God, Bah, and who loves his children.

That is exactly what is going on through the Exodus story, and that is exactly what is going on through Torah with its Haggadah, and Halakha, story and walk. God takes his bride, Israel from the common lot of slavery in Egypt and brings her to Sinai where he marries her. In Jewish tradition, the marriage includes a contract. This is The Ten Words, the Ten Commandments.

If the traditional understanding of “Holy” is correct, and the words means, “Separated from,” the Deists who wrote our Constitution are right. God is some transcendent watchmaker who made his watch and now sits off at a distance and watches it tick. Our upper middle-class is well within its rights to build their gated communities and watch as the common lot of mankind devours itself as scrub cattle.

If the corrected understanding of “Holy,” is correct, if we are separated to…”

God is not only transcendent, but also imminent. His image is within each of us, as Genesis 1 tells us. God made us in his צַלְמ, which sounds like Shalom, and in his likeness, the feminine plural of blood, דְמוּתֵ. We are the imminence, the image, and likeness of God in this cosmos, which has the same root as cosmetology, that which makes beautiful.  Genesis 1 becomes the great literary landscape, the literary cover for the book we call Torah, explaining what the entire rest of Torah is going to be about. God hovers over wilderness and chaos, bringing order to the cosmos.

The Hebrew word for “Separate Ones,” is “Pharisee.” It follows that Hebrew has two words for “Separate,” one of which is Pharisee/פרוש/Perez. The other is צֶדֶקה which means “Holy.” Pharisee/פרוש/Perez mean separate from. צֶדֶקה/Holy means separate to, separate to God’s work of guarding and keeping his garden/his planet, which includes each other.

As long has Pope Pious stands by our Agnus Dei our faith will not change part 2

We look at the mural at our Cathedral in Reno Nevada. At the head of the mural is the Omer, the Word, the Lamb of God, atop the four rivers of life. To his left is John the Baptist, whose father preached that God saved us for service to God. To the right is Our Blessed Pope Pius X and a working couple who epitomize what the Catholic church used to stand for, and can stand for again. Pope Pius X preaches against the Modernism of the modern conservative movement.

They wrote, “Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions, it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal.” We teach Torah and Gospel are the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Torah is Jewish and Jesus is Jewish. We teach how Marcion’s teachings are heresy. Pope Pius X wrote:

The field of Catholic Action is extremely vast. It does not exclude anything, in any manner, direct or indirect, which pertains to the divine mission of the Church. It is necessary for everyone to cooperate, not only for the sanctification of his own soul, but also for the extension and increase of the Kingdom of God in individuals, families, and society. Each one works according to his energy for the good of his neighbor by the propagation of revealed truth, by the exercise of Christian virtues, and by the exercise of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

We seek to restore Jesus Christ to the family, the school, and society by re-establishing, human authority represents the authority of God. We take to heart the interests of the people, especially the working and agricultural classes, not only by inculcating in the hearts of everybody a religious spirit. We endeavor to dry tears, alleviate sufferings, and improve the economic condition of the marginalized by wise measures. We strive to make public laws conformable to justice and amend or suppress those, which are not.

All these works, sustained and promoted chiefly by lay Catholics whose form varies according to the needs of each country; constitute what is known by a distinctive and surely a very noble name: “Catholic Action.”

For Catholic Action to be most effective, it must also employ all those practical means, which the findings of social and economic studies place in its hands. It must be vitally aware of the conditions of civil society, and the public life of states. This places a duty on all Catholics to prepare prudently and seriously for political life. It is of the utmost importance we extend the same activity to a suitable preparation and organization for political life.

Our Blessed Pope also instructed, Catholic Action must be under the direction of the local Bishop. The United States has 225 Catholic colleges and Universities and 26 law schools. They graduate 70,000 students each year. Our Blessed Pope tells us that through Catholic Action we need to organize and direct the training of future leaders so we have leaders who will support all of Catholic Teaching, including pro-life and Catholic Action. Our bishops very much do have a role in finding and developing future leaders, helping them find the financing to run for public office, and recommending them to the masses. That is the legacy of the man in the mural.

This is part 2 of a series. Please click here for part 1