Living in coronacirusworld 111 : Wheat and tares

7/13

Black rainbow

Exiled from my apartment for a few hours so the place can be bombed for cockroaches. Sit outside and enjoy my coffee while planning the week. 

Our Bible Study tonight is Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43, another sowing parable. Also know as the wheat and the tares. One commentator tells us that in the Middle East there is a weed called darnel virtually indistinguishable from wheat. It also seems to have intoxicating powers. All one can do is wait until with are fully grown. Then the true wheat with its heads  bows down, becomes distinguishable from the darnel.and one can separate one from the other. James Peterson in his Message translation prefers thistle. An interesting choice since it actually nourished certain birds and stands as a symbol of Scotland. My college (Wooster) with  Scottish roots names its literary  journal  Thistle. In A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore the Donkey ate thistles. Seems the weeds are an ambivalent lot. If there’s a point to this parabl, it this that sometimes when we go to anxiously about rooting out weeds, we take out the wheat as well. (There goes the Ulysses S. Grant statue…) 

We live in a culture of labeling and judging. In our conversation, most of us have  been victims of judging. Often in our work but even in our families. And as we talked more, all of us at one time or another had made assumptions and misjudged someone else. Any of us could  come up with  our own examples. Jesus is basically telling his disciples, let God do the sorting. (The dark form of this ides was lived out in the Massacre of Beziers, July 22nd 1209 in which a community of “heretic” Cathars were attacked by an Albigensian Crusader army. When the soldiers reported that Catholics were living in the midst of the heretics and refusing to leave, the Cistercian abbot  Arnaud  Almaric reportedly responded "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” Kill them all, God knows his own. This has survived into our own day in the slogan, "kill them all, let God  sort them out…” ) Jesus was basically saying to his disciples live and let live. God will the care of it…It’s a caution against labeling and sorting. 

But there’ a deeper level as well. We aren’t just wheat and tares. Neither of is are wholly one or the other. On any given day…..Each of us is both, It's interesting that Jesus’ explanation given in private to his disciples, not the crowd. His words to the masses remain as a Zen koan which is at it should be I imagine.

Our conversation ends early  enough for me to get into the Jack Hardy Song Exchange. I’ve got a new corona song almost born. And as always, as I listen to my colleagues, I get taken by their tunes and forget my own. As always, most of the songs relate to what’s going on around us. One is basically an ode to Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. Another comes off as a punk statement of what a lot of opponents are saying about the moment.  Friends are anxious as to how inviting it is. That the satire needs to be made more clear up front. I disagree. Part of what I’m struggling with is the vanishing line  between far left and right. (Always a thin one..) Former Occupy Wall Street friends have fallen in with the  ‘Plandemic Crowd..” Former left progressive clergy falling into the anti-vaxxer, anti deep-state crowd. There’s a way in which mistrust circles around and far left and far right melt together. Like wheat and tares, we can’t make assumptions about who the other side is. Sometimes they used to be us. It’s finally my turn.  And the comments are good. Something here to work with. A corona song that’ personal, not political. As always, it feels good to have made it through my insecurity to taking a risk. Let’s see where this goes….

Checkig the sink before bed, I see a roach. Survived the bomb. At the end of time, roaches and viruses, viruses and roaches,,,,,