Advent Day10: The Divine Jest

Do you not know, have you not heard?  I am Emperor Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire . . . defeater of Antony and Cleopatra . . . Tribune . . . Supreme Military Commander . . . First Citizen of the State . . . architect of the Pax Romana, blood-stained though it was . . . bringer of the standing army . . . taker of land . . . killer of children . . . victorious warrior . . . Censor, in charge of supervising the morals of the State . . . keeper of the food supplies . . . bestower of gifts upon the poor . . . tax collector par excellence. . . bringer of the census . . . owner of Egypt . . . survivor of illness and shipwreck and slanders and commoner lineage and assassination attempts . . . upon my death, joiner of the company of the gods as a member of the Roman pantheon, my name is Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus – Emperor Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine, and I was the first Caesar, Kaiser, Tsar. . . and when I order something, it is done.

I am, after all, The Emperor, Son of the Divine.

And who would not call me a god when the food in their mouths drops from my hand?  Who would not worship me when the land they call home is bestowed by me?  Who would not tremble before me when the power of life and death lies in the bow of my head?

From a sincere desire to make the collection of taxes more fair and just (and not coincidentally, greater for my coffers, for the coffers of Rome are my coffers), did I institute the census, in order that taxes collected from the provinces be based on something other than the whims of the tax farmers (I spit at their memory).

And what I, what Rome, declares, is done.  

How could I have known that a census, a bureaucratic measure at most, would be the agent of the change of the world?  How could I have known that traveling to the birthplace to be registered would upset the order of things beyond all reckoning?  How could I have known my own census would reduce my place in history to footnote, while a baby not even yet born would supplant me as The Son of the Divine?

And how could I have known that there – in the weeds of the outliers – lies the irony of my demise . . . can you see it?  It is the people – people coming and going, traveling my roads and bringing with them the scourge of new ideas . . . ideas like love and mercy, joy and peace, a fellowship of equals existing in voluntary confraternity through the ages.  

The fates (dare I call them gods any longer?) are indeed cruel in their jest.

“Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit.”

Luke 2.1-3

Carrying Water

Only as an adult did I realize that my family spent every Sunday at my grandparents’, not so I could play outside or hang with my cousins, but so we could help Grandma and Grandpa carry water from the spring for the week.

My grandparents did not have running water until the last year of my Grandfather’s life.  That means they had no hot water heater, and hence no hot water save what was boiled on the stove.

It means they had no toilet.  They used a chamber pot and had an outhouse.

They were spare people – spare of material goods, spare of waste, spare of words.

They appreciated the cost of everything.

Two generations later, I find myself part of a wasteful generation that throws things away rather than repairs them; that lets the water run simply to let it run; that uses drinking water to flush away its waste (something that puzzles many of my friends from other parts of the world).

I have completed my grandparents’ cycle in some ways, having returned from town life to country life, and yet, even now, I find myself in a tiny village held captive by the water ways of modern life, as we had to stop drinking from the flowing waters (not clean enough) and drink from treated wells, only to find the treated wells contaminated and unusable and having no other source of water because the other sources have been cut off from us – and it’s been thus for over a year now, that we’re supposed to be boiling our water for all purposes (save showering, I suppose).

Turns out when it comes to water, I’m living more like my grandma than the people of my own time.  How’s that for ironic, Grandma?

I Came Too Late for Your Good Times

I hear you tell
of the good old
days – not so
long past that I
couldn’t have
been there myself . . .

the days when parties
were had and friends
were visited and lives
were touched and the
young were taught and
care was given and life
was good and

I realize
I missed it all
for I came too
late to all your
good times

and all you and I
are left with are
dreams of memories
past that we did not
share because I came
too late

***

Postscript: Written when I was particularly struck that I had missed the many good times the folks at the church I serve have experienced as part of their past.  Last night, a group of us played bridge together and I had to laugh as I thought there will come a day when we will say together, “Remember when we used to get together on Monday nights and play bridge?  Remember that time when . . .?”  Past might be prologue, but it’s also wrapped up in present and future.  And so it goes.

Perspective²

In one 360◦ turn in Edinburgh, could you see around and into buildings,  you would see statues of philosopher and father of secular humanism David Hume; father of the United States’ brand of capitalism Adam Smith; the Duke of Queensberry, author of the well-known boxing rules of sportsmanship; and John Knox, Reformation preacher and father of modern presbyterianism as practiced in Scotland and the US in particular.  The same land that in many ways birthed Western modernity’s secular humanism also gave it presbyterian Calvinism.

If you stand inside St. Giles Cathedral, you will see the statue of John Knox.  The iconoclast has literally himself become an icon.

Window at rear of St. Giles
Reads "Gifts, Sweets, Souvenirs"

Standing outside St. Giles at the rear, you will see the St. Giles gift shop and above it, in the glass of the windows, painted signage indicating that gifts may be had.

Reformer Martin Luther rejected the sale of Papal indulgences, a fundraising mechanism for the then-Pope to secure the necessary monies for the completion of the Sistine Chapel.  That, among other things, led to a Reformation and split from the Roman Catholic Church that has yet to be fully (some would say even partially) healed.

Flash forward to our own time, and see a central geography of worship for the Presbyterians that sells trinkets to support care of yet another building, a behemoth of ancient architecture preserved for its beauty.

Of course, no one is threatened with the fires of Hell should they not buy a post card of St. Giles (so far as I know).