Lust

Lust is the craving for salt of a person who is dying of thirst.

~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Lying

There is perhaps nothing that so marks us as human as the gift of speech. Who knows to what degree and in what ways animals have the power to communicate with each other, but to all appearances it is only a shadow of ours. By speaking, we can reveal the hiddenness of thought, we can express the subtlest as well as the most devastating of emotions, we can heal, we can make poems, we can pray. All of which is to say we can speak truth-the truth of what it is to be ourselves, to be with each other, to be in the work!- and such speaking as that is close to what being human is all about. What makes lying an evil is not only that the world is deceived by it, but that we are dehumanized by it.

~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Magic

Magic is saying "Abracadabra" and pulling the rabbit out of the hat, is stepping on a crack to break your mother's back, is a dashboard Jesus to prevent smashups. Magic is going to church so you will get to heaven. Magic is using mouthwash so everybody will love you. Magic is the technique of controlling unseen powers and will always work if you do it by the book. Magic is manipulation and says, "My will be done." Religion is propitiation and says, "Thy will be done."

Religion is praying, and maybe the prayer will be answered and maybe it won't, at least not the way you want or when you want and maybe not at all. Even if you do it by the book, religion doesn't always work, as Jesus pointed out in one of his more somber utterances when he said, "Not everyone who says, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 7:21), the corollary to which would appear to be, "Not everyone who wouldn't be caught dead saying, 'Lord, Lord,' shall be blackballed from the kingdom of heaven." He softened the blow somewhat then by adding that theway to enter the kingdom of heaven is to do the will of his Father in heaven; but when religion claims that it's always sure what that will is, it's only bluffing. Magic is always sure.

If security's what you're after, try magic. If adventure is what you're after, try religion. The line between them is notoriously fuzzy.

~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Male

Males are strong, daring, aggressive. Females are gentle, prudent, sensitive. That's the way it was always supposed to be. If a particular male didn't fit the picture by nature, he generally tended to let on that he did. He wasn't free to be himself that way, but at least it was better than drawing unfavorable attention and possible ridicule. Artists of various kinds-together with priests, ministers, and actors-were sometimes exceptions, but everybody knew they were a peculiar crowd anyhow.

When the old stereotypes began to break down in the middle of the twentieth century-a revolution crystallized in the musicalHair-it was of course a liberating experience for males just as for everybody else. Starting with the younger ones, they could put an earring in one ear and wear a ponytail without having their masculinity called into question. If they opposed war, violence, and nuclear power, they might get into trouble with the cops, but most people no longer considered them traitors to their gender. It was even acceptable for them to stay home and take care of the children while their wives went out to earn the family living.

Needless to say, males continue to be as much of a problem to themselves now that the sky's the limit as they ever were. Maybe more so. With females more or less liberated right alongside them, they're not quite as much in charge as they used to be, and that leaves them feeling a little vulnerable and disoriented. Free to be almost anything these days, now they've got a harder time figuring out what to be. With everything pretty much up for grabs, they're not sure what's most worth grabbing.

Father and husband, brother and son, lover and friend-all the old roles are still there for them to fill, but with the old scripts discarded, they're left to wing it as best they can.

~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Mark

Nobody knows for sure who wrote the Gospel that bears Mark's name because the book itself doesn't say. Some people claim it was the John Mark who turns up in the book of Acts as a traveling companion of Paul's and the son of a woman named Mary, who owned a place where the group used to meet and pray back in the days when the church was young (Acts 12:12). And maybe this John Mark was the same person who appears in the scene of Jesus' arrest at Gethsemane as a boy who managed to escape from the soldiers' clutches but not without leaving his shirt behind, so that he ran off into the dark scared out of his wits and naked as the day he was born (Mark 14:51-52). Mark is the only one who reports the incident, and maybe he put it in as a kind of signature. An early historian says he was a friend of Peter's and got some of his information from him. Who knows? In the long run, the only things you can find out about him for certain are from the book he wrote. Whoever he was, Mark is as good a name to call him by as any other.

He was a man in a hurry, out of breath, with no time to lose because that's how the people were he was writing for too. The authorities were out for their blood, and they were on the run. At anymoment of day or night a knock might come at the door, and from there to getting thrown to the lions or set fire to as living torches at one of Nero's evening entertainments took no time at all. So he leaves a lot out; it's amazing how much. There's no family tree for Jesus as there is in Matthew and Luke. There's nothing about how he was born, no angel explaining it ahead of time, no Wise Men, no Herod, no star. There's nothing about his childhood. There's precious little about his run-ins with the Pharisees, no Sermon on the Mount, only four parables. His teaching in general is brushed past hurriedly-except for one long speech, just a word here, a word there. "Immediately" is one of Mark's favorite words, and he uses it three times more than either Matthew or Luke, fifteen times more than John. "Immediately he called them" (1:20), "immediately on the sabbath he entered the synagogue" (1:21). Immediately the girl got up and walked (5:30), or the father cried (9:24), or the cock crowed (14:72). Jesus himself races by, scattering miracles like rice at a wedding. Mark is alive with miracles, especially healing ones, and Jesus rushes from one to another. He had no time to lose either.

Mark writes for people who already believe instead of the ones who need things explained, and therefore it's who Jesus was, rather than what he said, that Mark's book is bursting with-who he was and what he did with what little time he had. He was the "Son of God," that's who he was. Mark says it right out in the first sentence so nobody will miss it (1:1). And he came "not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (10:45). That's what he did, and he died doing it. The whole book is obsessed with the fact of his death. And with good reason.

If Jesus died as dead as anybody, what hope did the rest of them have who woke every morning to the taste of their own death in their mouths? Why did he die? He died because the Jews had it in for him, Mark says, because he is hard on the Jews, himself verylikely a Gentile and writing for Gentiles. He died because that's the way he wanted it-that "ransom for many" again, a wonderful thing to be bought at a terrible price. He died because that's the way God wanted it. Marvelous things would come of his death, and the one long speech Mark gives has to do with those marvelous things. "The stars will be falling from heaven," Jesus says, "and the powers in the heavens will be shaken, and then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory" (13:25-26). Of course there was hope-hope that would set the stars reeling.

But even in the midst of his great haste, Mark stops and looks at Jesus, sees him better than any of the others do. When Jesus naps in a boat, it's in the stern he does it, with a pillow under his head (4:38). The others don't say that. And the grass was green when he fed the five thousand on hardly enough to feed five (6:39), not dry grass, crackling and brown. He got up "a great while before day" to go pray by himself (1:35), not at nine, not after a hot breakfast, and he was sitting down "opposite the treasury" when he saw the old lady drop her two cents in the collection box (12:41). Only Mark reports how the desperate father said, "I believe. Help thou my unbelief" (9:24), and how Jesus found it belief enough to heal his sick boy by. You can say they make no difference, such details as these, which the others skip, or you can say they make all the difference.

Then the end comes, and even Mark has to slow down there. Half his book has to do with the last days in Jerusalem and the way Jesus handled them and the way he was handled himself. And when he died, Mark is the one who reports what his last words were, even the language he spoke them in-"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" - which he translates, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (15:34). Only Matthew had the stomach to pick them up from Mark and report them too. Luke and John apparently couldn't bring themselves to.

Mark ends his book, as he begins it, almost in the middle of a sentence. There was no time to gather up all the loose ends. The world itself was the loose ends, and all history would hardly be enough to gather them up in. The women went to the tomb and found it empty. A young man in white was sitting there-"on the right," Mark says, not on the left. "He has risen," the young man said. "Go tell his disciples. And Peter," Mark adds, unlike Matthew and Luke again. Was it because he'd known Peter and the old man had wanted his name there? So the women ran out as if the place was on fire, which in a way of course it was, "for trembling and astonishment had come upon them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid" (16:1-8). Later editors added a few extra verses to round things off, but that's where Mark ended it. In mid-air.

Mark's last word in his Gospel isafraid, and it makes you wonder if maybe the theory is true after all that he was the boy who streaked out of Gethsemane in such a panic. He knew how the women felt as they picked up their skirts and made a dash for it anyway. Wonderful and terrible things were happening, and more were still to come. He knew what fear was all about-the scalp cold, the mouth dry, the midnight knock at the door-but he also knew that fear was not the last thing. It was the next to the last thing. The last thing was hope. "You will see him, as he told you," the young man in white said (16:7). If that was true, there was nothing else that mattered. So Mark stopped there.

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words