Last week one of our fellow authors made a harmless remark about the Presbyterian Church. I know Telling Your Story does not actually have a religious purpose. Nevertheless, a few interesting things have been happening in the world of American Christian churchdom. To celebrate this month, Women’s History Month, March 2017, you might want to choose to read The Red Tent (1997) by Anita Diamant. It is the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and the plot takes place in the pre-Decalogue days of ancient Jewish history. Women had to go to live in the Red Tent once a month during menstruation and to go there to have their babies with the assistance of the numerous midwives.
Dinah was a midwife. Dinah finally decides to marry Shalem, son of the king of Shechem, fortified city in Egypt. Shalem and a large number of the adult men in Schechem are murdered by Simon and Reuben, two of Jacob’s sons. These two also strip brother Joseph of his colorful coat and toss him into a well. Joseph has the power of interpreting dreams so is taken up by the king of Egypt and is made into a Vizier. The Pharaohs come later. The plot goes on and on with war, betrayal, murder and generally a picture of a really blood-stained history of primitive society. It is an extremely well-written book and celebrates women, all women.
Another religious book worth noting is The Shack (2007) by William Paul Young. A 50 year old religious man, Mackenzie Phillips (“Mack”) whose wife Nan refers to God as Papa, goes on an outing with his three children in an Oregon woods near Multnomah Falls, and a murderer abducts his 6 year old daughter Melissa and murders her. Local Police and even the FBI go on a search for the girl and find her blood-stained dress in a Shack. Mack looks at the red dress and is horrified. Mack gets very angry with God for permitting such a crime to have taken place. Why wasn’t God there to protect his daughter? A few months later Mack received a short note from “Papa” (from God?) asking him to come to the Shack, the scene of the last sign of Missy (Melissa) was found.
Mack doubted the note actually came from God but accepted the invitation, and went with a gun in case the note was a ruse, a note sent by the murderer of Melissa or other malefactor. Once Mack gets to the Shack, he falls asleep and has a dream in which he visits with God, a black woman, the Holy Spirit, an Asian woman and with Jesus. He quarrels with God, but assists Sarayu, the Holy Spirit, with arrangements for his daughter’s burial. He finds the location of his daughter’s cadaver by following red signs on rocks and trees that the murderer had previously placed there. The new male God assists Jake with this discovery.
Mack wakes up from his dream, goes with the local police and discovers Missy’s body lying in a cave. I saw the movie of this book and everybody wept when Missy gets buried in a graveyard that was heavily decorated with flowers bay Sarayu. The Shack was an unusually well-written story. It discusses Christianity honestly.
If you recall, the other religious work that impressed me was the poetry of Rumi. Last night on MSNBC I saw a documentary about a Scottish doctor who got a job with his wife Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Scottish doctor was gay. When he got to Riyadh, he was forced to live in a dirty apartment, and, when he tried to make contact with any of a large number of willing same-sex partners, the religious police caught on to him, they spied on him, then threatened to send him to jail. Arabian homophobia does not come from the Koran, in my opinion, it comes from the Arabian government trying to brown-nose Queen Victoria, our true larger enemy.
Speaking of Scotland, the Church of Scotland is the Presbyterian Church. Donald Trump is a Scottish Presbyterian whereas my family were English Presbyterians. The Presbyterian Church is said to be the boring church. I am spiritually a Presbyterian, although, since I do not own property or have a million dollars in the bank, I actually do not qualify to become a “real” member of the Presbyterian Church which is ever so slightly snobby. But I am still knocking on their doors.
I descend from the Reverend Robert Brown who obtained his MDiv (Master of Divinity) from the University of Glasgow in 1725 and also from the right reverend James Bishop Wilcox who established the Presbyterian seminary in Middlebury, Vermont around 1830. Reverend Robert Brown became an itinerant minister in Northern Ireland. James Bishop Wilcox married a certain Prudence Aldrich and had many children, however, many of these children were still-born. In the daguerreotype from around 1835 I used to have of Prudence Aldrich, she looked very bitter in a Puritanical sort of way. My grandmother told me that was because of the many miscarriages she suffered.
© 20 March 2017
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