hgoodman's blog

My favorite season is Advent. All the anticipation and waiting. The preparations. Lighting a new candle each Sunday, then, on Christmas Eve, passing the fire from candle to candle.

When I came home from New Jersey, I found a treat in my mailbox (the good kind; not the kind from the neighborhood kids)--a copy of the Mosaic Bible.

The Mosaic Bible uses the New Living Translation. At the beginning of each book, the editors give a short paragraph summary of the content of the book, an outline, the author, the date, a one-sentence purpose statement, and the themes. 

But my favorite part of the Mosaic Bible, and the reason I craved it, is the readings and art for the liturgical calendar, beginning with Advent and going through Pentecost. Each week contains suggested Scripture readings, meditations in poetry/hymn form, selections from theologians across centuries and continents, and art.

From the editor's statement about this project: "The purpose of this Bible is to provide a way to encounter Christ on every continent and in every century of Christian history. Why? Because when this happens, God's profound and often unexpected work on behalf of his children becomes clear in new and exciting ways. It is important to see that the body of Christ is much bigger than the small piece we each experience in our everyday lives."

Mosaic draws together my favorite things: artistic expressions of God's word, history, cultural richness, and the rhythm of the liturgical calendar. I can't wait to begin using the readings this Sunday.

Because the readings can be broken up throughout the week, this is the ideal way for families to introduce their children to theologians and artists.

I highly recommend Mosaic, but you need to hurry and get yours. Advent begins this Sunday!

I'm speaking of New Jersey, of course, the land upon which God will model the new earth.

As much as I love this great state, I had second-guessed my decision to take my annual trip. With finances what they are (or aren't, rather), did I need this research trip? I know the area, the mindsets, the lifestyles. I know how things work.

Going was the right decision. I had been afraid about writing my next novel for multiples reasons. Those fears haven't left. But ideas begin to shout over the fears. Besides some logistics, as I walked the streets of the town, Sarah began to emerge. She told me about her childhood, where she went to school, and the beauties and pains of early marriage. She told me about the chemical spill across the street at the dry cleaners.

Now, I'm ready to tell her story.

I suppose this relates to the importance of setting. It's more than the location of the story. Setting dictates the rhythms of life. It's bound up with character. I needed to breathe Sarah's atmosphere to know her.

And I might have snuck in some fun while there, too.

My Twitter friends may remember that sometime in September (or was it August?) I began degrouting our shower. The grout is original, which, while a high status in the art and fashion world, here means it's sometimes missing and sometimes moldy. I felt I had to shower after stepping out of my shower.

And my Twitter friends may recall that this project may indeed be the death of me (see--I can pick up a good southern phrase). Classic tweets regarding the project include:

off to de-grout my shower! (2:20 PM Sep 16th)

wow. degrouting so much faster after Chris fixed the tool and showed me I could be rougher with it than I was. This is almost fun now! (10:49 AM Sep 18th)

my hands won't stop vibrating after using Dremel. I feel like a cartoon. (12:47 PM Sep 18th)

they ask me how I knew . . . grout gets in my eyes (1:28 PM Sep 18th)

guess I'm done today's grout work. Dremel not working again. At this rate, I'll finish by New Year's in time for resolution to never do this (2:19 PM Sep 21st)

Dremel bit snapped in half. Then my piano student stood me up. Lovely. (4:59 PM Sep 28th)

Today's Cervantes' b-day (or what they think is his b-day). It's fitting I work on the grout in honor of Quixote. It's my personal windmill. (10:24 AM Sep 29th)

You see the deterioration--from optimism, joking, even song (and, yes, dance) to suspicions of insanity. Yesterday, after over a month of absence (due in part to legitimate reason--travel), I returned to the degrouting project. 

To find the Dremel tool, once again, inoperable.

Okay, I can make lemonade (especially since we recently learned that our lime tree may be, indeed, a lemon tree). I'll work on getting out the caulk with the hand saw.

Uh-huh.

And this is where I met my nemesis.

Some of the caulk--the caulk my husband added to the shower a few years ago, stripped away, no problem. Some of the caulk, which must be decades old, held firm. The saw doesn't cut through it because the caulk is too putty-like. But neither can I peel it out because in that sense the caulk is too petrified (meaning hard, not scared).

You see my dilemna.

Removing the old caulk is harder than containing the blob in a thimble.

Which is why I've decided that I'm moving into a tent.

Indeed, the new earth cannot have mansions. Mansions mean upkeep, and who wants to regrout the showers?

The red has been in
the leaf since its conception
waiting
for the bright sun to
dim
for the right amount of
rain.
Waiting.

Then.
Then.
On a certain day
not long before the leaf
will fall
not long before it returns
dust to dust to
mulch.
Then
the green fades
giving way first to yellow
then
to orange.
Then the red
that has always been
there
waiting
emerges along the
veins and the
edges
pushing to the rest of the
leaf.
Pushing and
bleeding
until the whole leaf shines
with waxy
red
brilliance.

For your afternoon jog, create a playlist on your iPod (or other mp3 player) of, say, Jamie Cullum's "I Could Have Danced All Night," "La Vie Boheme" from Rent, Chopin's Etude #5 ("Revolution"), and U2's "Elevation." Human nature demands you incorporate dance steps into your jog.

Sure, you may incur odd looks from parents walking their children home from school (the children will understand, of course), but your heart-rate will double, you'll extend your run for the fun of it, and you'll actually look forward to your next jog.

Let me preface this with two statements:

1. Evangelism and social justice are necessary and normative to the Christian life.

2. Art has a place in shining light on and practicing in both these issues.

For years, Christian writers have been decrying the idea that every book by a Christian author must be evangelistic. I don't think anyone means that a book necessarily can't have an evangelistic idea in it. After all, conversion is central to story, whether that conversion be Christian or not (meaning, the conversion could be that someone realizes something about themselves or solves a murder or gets the girl).

As we've been discussing this, I've seen a rise of books addressing social justice issues. These books have been celebrated for their message. And while many of these books are good, and, as I mentioned above, I believe art has historically had (and should have) a connection to social justice and other concerns of its day, I wonder if we are simply substituting one message for another. 

I'm wondering aloud here, mind you.

Art does something--that I'll concede. It draws you to beauty or works through suffering or lets you know you're not alone, for example. 

My question, then, is how much does it need to do? At what point do we subjugate it to utility? At what point does it stand alone?

Small print: Title quote from Woody Allen

In Israel, I was trendy. I saw some of the latest archaeological digs.

We passed a main street in Jerusalem from Byzantine times, drove by a sanctuary recently unearthed in Magdala, stepped into the believed house of Peter (the apostle of Jesus), peeked into the palace of Queen Helena (from first century AD), and walked through King David's Palace.

In 2005 through 2008, a woman named Eilat Mazar (who happens to be the granddaughter of the archaeologist who unearthed the Temple Mount) excavated the area just south of the Temple Mount. Her team found remains of a foundation wall underneath centuries of buildings. 

The foundation of King David's Palace, she said.

Thence broke out a cage-fight. Some, including archaeologist Cahill, say this is the Jebusite fortress, not King David's palace. They donned brass knuckles and had it out.

Exciting stuff, no?

After wandering through the remains (via guide, Asher, who didn't respond quite so positively to my "As in My Name Is Asher Lev" comment as I would've hoped), I had to have a copy of The Palace of King David: Excavations at the Summit of the City of David, Preliminary Report of Seasons 2005-2007. Who wouldn't?

Side note: This was the second time I almost lost the group. As I pursued my copy of the book, they pursued the bus. Thank goodness for an easy-to-spot group of journalists.

Two interesting things I learned from the digs and further reading in the report (rather, I will limit myself to two things):

First, as we climbed down into a water tunnel, Asher climbed onto a ledge and told us that here archaeologists found artifacts from Hezekiah's time and a much earlier time. In suspense, we walked further down the tunnel as he revealed the mystery: this tunnel had originally been built and used by Melchizedek. Offhandedly, he gestured toward a roped-off area. "Oh, that was discovered a few months ago." And he moved on.

Right.

So here's the thing. The tunnels lead to the Gihon Spring, the major water source for the city. The magnitude of the tunnel system helps us understand the size and significance of Jerusalem as far back as Melchizedek. Jerusalem, which became the religious and political center of Israel, had been an important religious and political center of Canaanites for centuries. When David conquered them, it was no minor feat. And it proved by leaps and bounds God's sovereignty and his choice of Israel as his instrument to reign religiously and politically. (That last part is my interpretation, be ye warned.)

Also, at the Gihon Springs, archaeologists discovered a tower. This helps us understand 1 Kings 1 when David tells Nathan the prophet to take Solomon to Gihon and crown him the king at a time of political upheaval. Why accomplish such a momentous event at a spring? Because that spring and that tower, we can now say, was a hub with political signficance. 

Second, putting together history and the new archaeological digs, we can understand the person of Uriah (from 2 Samuel 11, the man from whom David steals Bathsheba). It appears that Uriah was a successor to Jebusite rulers. "The story of David's defeat of the destitute Uriah (2 Samuel 12) marks the very end of the Jebusite royal dynasty in  the city" (Mazar, Preliminary Report, 2009). This presents a nuance to the story we know so well about David, Bethsheba, and Uriah. More than a story of lust, it has political ramifications. When David killed Uriah and took his wife, it symbolized his ultimate defeat of the Canaanites of Jerusalem.

One last word about Israel: love the food, love the scarves. I may have loved the food more than the sites, but don't tell anyone I said that.

The world-weary traveler (more like world cuisine-stuffed traveler) has returned home and is ready to offer up thoughts on Israel and New Jersey packed in brown paper packages tied up with string.*

I cried thrice in Israel.

My first tears occurred at the museum that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls (The Israel Museum in Jerusalem). Men belonging to a Jewish sect called the Essenes lived with their families in the first century B.C. around caves, which we call Qumran. The men would leave their families to enter into these caves and copy what we refer to as the Old Testament. These scrolls were discovered accidentally in 1947 by a shepherd and contain sections from every book of the Bible except Esther and Nehemiah, including the oldest copy of Isaiah (known as the Isaiah scroll), a scroll that is complete of the whole book.

Why would this excite me, you may ask.

Beside the fact that Israel brought out my inner nerd (yes, I know), seeing the different handwritings, some tall, others small and neat, still others slanted, reminded me that everyday men sat down and wrote out these stories, both these copies and the originals. They sat with ink and parchment to attest to God's work in their lives. These particular copies have been preserved over centuries, a testimony to God's preservation work of the Scriptures, not just in hard copy (such as these), but through the work of the Holy Spirit in the universal Church. Scriptures are alive and active. This work does not negate personality but draws on it, employs it, gives it meaning. God works primarily through humans, unique, beautiful, and weird.

The Caves at Qumran: where shepherds accidentally found the Dead Sea Scrolls

The second time I cried, our tour guide, Karl, had been telling us two stories of Holocaust survivors, one from Romania, one from Hungary. They were the stories of his parents. He told us these stories at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial center, in the Garden of the Righteous, a garden that remembers the goyim, or Gentiles, who put their careers, lives, and families at risk to save Jews. 

Yad Vashem is Hebrew for hand and name, which are two ways of remembering--the body and the name. The architecture of the place symbolizes the deterioration of the Jews as a people group before the Holocaust, the darkness of the Holocaust, the open light at the end, and the strength of the Jews now. My favorite story shows the hope and healing Yad Vashem offers. Yad Vashem keeps archives of the names and stories of those who suffered in concentration camps. One woman put her name into the system to find that it had already been entered. By her sister. From whom the woman had been separated since the Holocaust. Each had assumed the other had died. Turned out the sisters lived close to one another in Israel. They were reunited after fifty years.

Whether you visit Israel for its archaeology, as a pilgrim, or for its food, you must visit Yad Vashem. It is a center not for hate but for healing, to which its architecture attests. I'd recommend going without a tour guide and allowing yourself to take your own pace. (One of the journalist with whom I traveled wrote a piece about Yad Vashem, which I recommend. You can read it here.)

My third set of tears came at our goodbyes.

Nineteen writers traveled together for a week, spending almost every waking second together (except when we parted ways to update Facebook, where we often ran into each other), communing together at meals, dancing together, and sharing an experience that took us all by surprise. I did not expect to find friends in Israel. What can happen in a week? Even now, I can't articulate what happened, but somewhere between the laughter, the awe, and yes, the sarcasm, on 4000-year-old remains, friendships emerged. I must have known them for decades, I think. If I believed in reincarnation, I would've argued we came from the same family a few centuries ago. I'll offer the only explanation I have: God.

It hurts to be separate from them. In the new earth, I'll search them out, and we'll dance together again (perhaps on the Sea of Galilee sans boat).

Dancing on the Sea of Galilee: photo by Peter Fleck

*Fine print: You'll find a more detailed article about the setting of Israel in the story of the Bible upcoming at Biblical Studies Foundation, aka bible.org.

Last night, before watching the latest episode of Flash Forward, Chris said, "Remind me how the last one ended."

My reply: "The guy from Coupling who was in the girl from Lost's flash forward got a call from Charlie from Lost saying something about them being responsible, and the Shakespeare guy told his coworker to call the hacker."

Oddly enough, he understood me.

After returning from Israel (and having some sense of coherence return to my life--although not much), I thought I'd compile a list of tips for those of you out there desiring to make a trip to the Holy Lands. Or for those of you armchair travelers who prefer seeing the world through the travel channel. You still may need these tips before the Israel episode.

1. Travel with cynical writers. I worried the trip would be made up of constant emotional breakdowns and holy moments. Israel's a great place for them. But as Keith, one of my fellow travelers, said, "All of creation is holy lands" (or something to that effect). We're no closer to God because we traveled to Israel. What a trip to Israel does is give a framework, a set, for you theater lovers, for understanding the Bible. Instead of emotional breakdowns, I had ah-ha moments. As I've listened to the Bible the past couple mornings, I've been able to better picture the stories, to enter into them. They're human, earthy, real, and at times, smelly (the stories, not the writers, although . . . ). Traveling with cynical writers not only keeps the trip entertaining (which it was), but keeps it down to earth.
2. Hire a tour guide with degrees in botany, history, and archeology. It makes for a well-rounded education. One minute he rubs medicinal geranium, the next, he explains the excavations of King David's palace. You may also be treated to traditional Jewish songs.
3. Also make sure he's loaded with humor and patience. Especially patience.
4. Learn shorthand. It's impossible to jot down all the new information otherwise.
5. Take a washcloth. Little did I know that most hotels, even the high-class ones, don't provide washcloths. Using the corner of a hand towel is cumbersome. Especially when you accidentally slap yourself with it, forgetting how long and wet it is.
6. Make sure your camera doesn't have hidden folders hogging all the memory space.
7. Don't publish random thoughts on your blog at night after long, grueling days. You have no capacity for decent editing at that time.
8. Take sleeping pills. No matter how tired you are, you most likely won't sleep through the night. On the plus side, you'll enjoy plenty of sunrises.
9. Pack Band-Aids. You will get blisters on your feet.
10. Don't shave before swimming in the Dead Sea. Don't pick at your cuticles while in the Dead Sea.
11. Don't fill up on the first course at dinner. The waitress has plenty more to bring.
12. Recalibrate your understanding of old and new. Anything under 2000 years old--new. Even after seeing 4000-year-old excavations, I felt that remnants from Jesus' time were new.
13. Take The Holy Lands: An Oxford Archaeological Guide by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor. Only read the brief historical outline before coming. Each night, read the sections on the next day's sites. This book gave me categories so I could retain much of what I saw and heard while at the sites themselves. It kept me from getting lost.
14. Speaking of, if you get lost (not that I'm speaking from experience, eh-hem), no worries! Almost everyone speaks English. I'd recommend doing so with another good-hearted scarf-lover, though. If you feel like getting behind the group, that is.