Religion/Theology Bookshelf:
A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob
This is the second in L’Engle’s “Genesis Trilogy
Reading these books made me totally want to go back and read Genesis again.
EXCERPT FROM A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob
In the beginning of Genesis, God affirms that the Creation is good — very good. The Incarnation is a reaffirmation of the innate goodness of all that God has made.
Teilhard de Chardin says that “for a soul to have a body is enkosmismene.”
Enkosmismene. To have our roots in the cosmos. We are like trees, drawing spiritual water through our rootedness in Creation. This is the affirmation of incarnation.
Even in time of tornado, earthquake, ice storm, our very roots are part of the entire cosmos. Surely Jacob, picking up the stone he had used for a pillow, and pouring oil on it as it became an altar, was making this same affirmation in his cry that here was the house of God. Jacob was indeed rooted in cosmos. At that moment he knew at-one-ment.
What actually happened to Jacob? Did God really speak to him in his dream of angels? Later, it was a physical angel who grappled wtih him? Is the word physical combined with angel a contradiction? Is any of this important?
As we are rooted in cosmos these images are part of the myth which the Creator gave us so that we may begin to understand something which is beyond literal interpretation by the finite human being.
On a TV interview I was asked by a clergyman if I believe that fantasy is an essential part of our understanding of the universe and our place in it, and I replied that yes, I do believe this, adding truthfully that Scripture itself is full of glorious fantasy. Yes indeed, I take the Bible too seriously to take it all literally.
The story of Job is a wrestling with deep spiritual questions rather than dry factualism. And I love it when, in the beginning of this drama, the sons of God are gathered around, speaking to God, Satan was among them. Fallen angel or no, Satan was still God’s son, and at that point was still speaking with his Creator. I wonder if he is still waiting to do that, or if he has so separated himself from at-one-ment that he and his cohorts can no longer bear to be in the Presence?
And what about Ezekiel and those glorious wheels which some people think may have been UFOs? There we have our first glimpse of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. There we see the resurrection of those dry bones with living flesh, as we read the language of poetry which expands our understanding beyond its normal limitations.
The mythic interpretation is not a facile, shallow one, but an attempt to move into the deep and dazzling darkness of that truth which the fragile human mind cannot exhaustively comprehend, but can only glimpse with occasional flashes of glory.
To live with an understanding that myth is a vehicle of truth is a far more difficult way to live than literally. The mythic world makes enormous demands of us, and that may be why it is so often shunned. The greater the good we are seeking, the greater the possibilities for perversion. But that does not make God’s original good any less good; it simply heightens the challenge.
I am sometimes shocked by what I read in the Bible. There is much that I am still struggling to understand, such as the horrible story in Judges of the man who divided his raped and murdered wife into twelve piece, sending one piece to each of the tribes of Israel. I still struggle with the story of the blighted fig tree. Does it mean that when Jesus asks us to do anything, he will give us the power to do it, whether we ourselves are able to do it or not? Some of the violence in both Testaments frightens me, caught up in this age of violence. But my response of shock may be a good thing, because it pushes open doors which I might otherwise be fearful of entering.
That limited literalism which demands that the Bible’s poetry and story and drama and parable be taken as factual history is one of Satan’s cleverest devices. If we allow ourselves to be limited to the known and the explainable, we have thereby closed ourselves off from God and mystery and revelation.
Once I remarked that I read the Bible in much the same way that I read fairy tales, and received a shocked response. But fairy tales are not superficial stories. They spring from the depths of the human being. The world of the fairy tale is to some degree the world of the psyche. Like the heroes and heroines of fairy tales, we all start on our journey, our quest, sent out on it at our baptisms. We are, all of us, male and female, the younger brother, who succeeds in the quest because, unlike the elder brother, he knows he needs help; he cannot do it because he is strong and powerful. We are all, like it or not, the elder brother, arrogant and proud. We are all, male and female, the true princess who feels the pea of injustice under all those mattresses of indifference. And we all have to come to terms with the happy ending, and this may be the most difficult part of all. Never confuse fairy tale with untruth…
I am not sure how much of the great story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is literally true, how much is history, how much is the overlapping of several stories. Did both Abraham and Isaac pretend to Abimelech that their wives were their sisters, or have the two stories mingled over the ages? Does it really matter? The mythic truths we receive from these stories enlarge our perception of the human being, and that unique being’s encounters with God. When the angel of God comes to wrestle with us we must pray to be able to grapple wtih the unexpected truth that may be revealed to us. Because Jacob, later in the story, had the courage to ask for God’s blessing, we may too.
If we take the Bible over-literally we may miss the truth of the poetry, the stories, the myths. Literalism can all too easily become judgmentalism, and Jesus warned us not to judge, that we might not be judged.
How difficult it is! When I worry about those who castigate me for not agreeing with them, am I in my turn falling into judgmentalism? It’s hard not to. But not all the way, I hope. I don’t want to wipe out those who disagree with me, consigning them to hell for all eternity. We are still God’s children, together At One. Even if I am angry, upset, confused, I must still see Christ and Christ’s love in those whose opinions are very different from mine, or I won’t find it in those whose view fits more comfortably with mine.
Dear God. What am I looking for? Help me to look for Christ.
God can use unworthy material to accomplish magnificent purposes. Worthiness is not a criterion. One can be worthy and closed, like the Pharisees in all generations and all races, all religions, failing to understand that openness to God’s revelation is first and foremost. One can be worthy and so wrapped in one’s worthiness that one fails to recognize the three angels who came to Abraham, or the angel Isaac knew would pick the right wife for Jacob, or those angels ascending and descending the great ladder as Jacob lay with his head on the stone. Those three great patriarchs were unworthy, but they were open to change, change in themselves, change in their understanding of their Maker. All of them saw angels. Through them we, too, can learn to be open, not closed. We, too, can have eyes and ears open to the great challenges God offers us. This does not mean fluctuation with the winds of chance or whim, but recognizing the wind of the Holy Spirit, whose sign is always the sign of Love.
Jacob at last was at one with the angel. So may we be, too.
Jacob wrestled all his life — with his brother Esau; with his father-in-law, Laban. But it was God with whom he really had to struggle.
