We Are All Witnesses

One of my FYS colleagues this year is a Rel. Studies professor, young, hip and very considerate of students' various perspectives. His section is called "Sport as Religion and Religion as Sport." Don't you imagine that it will be over-subscribed? Anyhow, in the recent hype about the Cleveland Cavaliers and the playoffs in which they nearly knocked out Detroit, I saw several ads being featured in the city called "We Are All Witnesses." Here is the Nike link (I don't know how to paste in images--sorry):

http://www.nike.com/nikebasketball/usa/?loclist=witness

I'd say they are fodder for his FYS discussion, wouldn't you? Don't get me wrong. We love basketball (college style rather than pros) and Cleveland needs a boost somehow. Sports provides as good a way to forge community and pride as just about anything these days (even the conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra is part of an ad campaign called "Believe in Cleveland.") Nevertheless, this seems a bit over the top. Some version of "We are all witnesses" has been an Urbana logo in the past.

And in the meantime, we have been participant observers (I won't say witnesses) to the reality that hard work pays off in the nice yard and garden department. I am half way through spreading the four cubic yards of mulch (some with C's help), we have cleaned up and re-seeded after the dead tree was taken down, and the flowers are all planted. Hooray! (I will spread the rest of the mulch while C is in Colorado grading AP calc exams the first nine days of June.) We're off to G.R. tomorrow for our annual state-mandated meeting with K's case manager. She'll come home the same day C does for Julie's wedding. We'll have nine people staying here for the big occasion. Another reason for all the yard work, besides the fact that it is enjoyable to do.

Lessons Learned

At Ruberad’s request, I am reflecting on what I have learned from reading Genesis (beginning with chapter 12) with a rabbi (whose permission I have not asked to write publicly about our experience). It’s been more than I could have expected and I look forward to next fall when we will resume our hour a week together.

In order (I think) from least important to most important:

1) I have learned lots of facts, most new, some needing to be refreshed, such as what the midrash and mishnah are and what the relationship between the Torah and the Talmud is and, in broad strokes, what the relationships among various American Jewish branches are. RJ has told me several midrashim and made me envious about a class she once took on Genesis 22, the binding of Isaac, and the midrashim that has developed across the centuries about that passage. When I was relaying the interpretation of Walter Breuggemann about why Abraham had to leave his home, she listened in fascination and said, “What a wonderful midrash.”

2) I have learned that most Jews, even the more conservative ones, do not believe in what Christians call “original sin.” Perhaps this should not have surprised me, but it did and still does, especially in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Because I had read The Beginning of Wisdom prior to our time together, I had encountered this reality in Kass’ words: “Traditional interpretation, especially Christian, refers to this act of transgression as signaling the ‘fall of man’—though the expression nowhere occurs in the text. But if we read anthropologically, and in a wisdom-seeking spirit, what we have here instead is in fact the rise of man to his mature humanity—to be sure in all its pathos and ambiguity.” In this regard, then, Jews are closer to Muslims than they are to Christians despite the shared text of the Hebrew Bible. And naturally, this belief affects many other ones, especially about how to solve human problems at all levels.

3) Related to this what I have learned about the role of law in Jewish understanding. Naively I believed that (again, like Muslims, and as a corollary to #2) obeying the law is the Jewish path to salvation. RJ disabused me of this belief as well, and I found corroboration in a fine little book called Abraham’s Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations (of which I have only read a couple of the essays) by Michael Wyschogrod. “I was particularly annoyed,” writes MW, “by the idea that Jews think they are saved by deeds while Christians know they are saved by faith and only by faith….If a Jew thought this, he would, in effect, be saying to God: Don’t do me any favors, don’t give me more than I deserve but also don’t give me less than I deserve, give me exactly what’s coming to me and then I have nothing to fear. I doubt any Jew in the history of Judaism has thought this. Every Jew knows, or should know, that if God were to pay him what he deserves, neither more nor less, he would be lost. His only chance depends on the mercy of God. If God decides to overlook his sorry record and to bestow mercy rather than justice on him, then he has a chance. But certainly not otherwise.

“So the Jew does not claim to be ‘justified’ by the works of the law but rather by the mercy of God. At the same time, this does not mean that he can do whatever he wishes….Only God justifies and he justifies far more on the basis of mercy than on the basis of rewards earned by good deeds” (231-232).

4) and 5) The next two belong together: The excitement of good questions and the value of good commentaries. Having been trained in inductive study by InterVarsity and having learned those lessons well, I have always regarded textual questions as the primary and privileged method of study. Commentaries are important (and here is a confession: I love to read good ones.) but only secondarily after personal study is completed or at least well under way. I am not used to going to a study lugging 15 pounds of commentaries with me (RJ calls is “show and tell” ☺) But in this context at least, the two are symbiotic. It was RJ who posed the question, why did Abraham have to leave his country and family? In fact, when I teach the Abraham chapters in Chr. Ed at church next fall, I am going to try to pose one huge question for each class period. My favorite commentaries for these chapters? The (Jewish) Leon Kass’s The Beginning of Wisdom, J. Gerald Kanzen’s Abraham and All the Families of the Earth, and Walter Brueggemann’s Genesis: Interpretation. One of the cool things I have learned, however, is how in at least one of RJ’s commentaries (some of it in Hebrew, some Aramaic and some English), the questions that the commentators raised are included in their own section, in addition to the “plain sense of the text” commentary and some selected midrashim. At least in that one commentary, the questions are central, just below the text and before the “plain sense” and (lastly) the midrashim.

The relationship between questions and commentaries has become crucial
to me because as I re-write the Qur’an Bible studies into chapters of a book of invitation into dialogue, I need to understand whether using an inductive (Bible) study technique is applying a foreign method of study on the Qur’an. Is it “western” or “Christian” methodology that will lead readers away from the essence of its message? I am coming to the conclusion that it is not as I read about the way Muslims relate to the Qur’an. I’ll let you know….

6) I have (re)learned the importance of Genesis. It is foundational for Christians as well as Jews, and at every point I have been able to relate a Christian interpretation of the text that highlights some aspect of the gospel. And in this regard, let me say that this is a true dialogue. I have no expectations about anyone changing significant religious commitments, but at the same time, my confidence in God’s word to do its work in our lives has only increased. He is meeting us in his Word and at every turn.

7) Lastly, I have begun to treasure a new friendship. Whereas before, RJ was a person with whom I interacted at a few meetings a semester, now I care about what is going on in her life. Friendship is foundational for interfaith dialogue. I have always believed so and am more convinced than ever. I have so enjoyed interacting with a peer (not to put down what students can do or can bring to discussions). I wish there were a Muslim woman peer with whom I could also (notice—also, not instead of) share earth- and heaven-shaking ideas and precious lives together.

59 going on 89

I saw a podiatrist today (hoping for help for my long-hurting feet and for the best two-out-of-three opinion on whether I should do weight-bearing exercise as opposed to just stationary bike riding). The X-rays told the doctor (who played tuba in the WHS band with Jenny many long years ago--or not so long ago, depending on your perspective) that while I may claim to be 59, he expected to see an 89 year old woman. Sigh. Guess that osteoporosis affects feet, not just spines. That should have been obvious to me, but no one ever talks about os. excpet in relation to spines. Not just os, but short tendons, high arches, extreme bunions, and hammer toes. All related and not easily fixable. He recommends waiting until I can find 8 weeks to be still and recover for any bunion surgery (and perhaps another go at lengthening the tendons at the same time), and that won't happen until we retire. In the meantime, his verdict is "start walking again--it matters not how slowly" as the weight-bearing part of exercise is important. So if you have to slow down for me to keep up with you, please be patient!

Rain, rain, go away...

...and it did for about three hours this afternoon after a week of steady rain and more predicted for the next several days. So in the window of time, after my FYS workshop (at which I had to present some materials on constructing writing assignments), I got into the garden for a little muddy while. Still have more flowers to plant, but I can see progress.

Northeast Ohio has not had as heavy rains as New England, however, and we can be glad for that as well as glad that our noderate drought seems to be ended. It rained out graduation though, which is always more pleasant outside. Our baby grass is coming up, at least in the front, without my watering twice a day, so that is good too. Tomorrow 4 cubic yards of mulch will be delivered (for me to spread during the next couple of weeks), and someone is coming to cut down the dead ash tree. (Probably the latter will mean someone will trample on the baby grass?) I like the flower garden part of yard work, but the lawn stuff--you can have it. Thankfully, Chuck has most of it.

Lily of the Valley

My lily of the valley is flinging its sweet fragrance all over the yard, not only making my heart sing but making me almost forget about a multitude of back yard bare spots (from lack of sun and an abundance of squirrels) and a multitude of front yard bare spots (from grubs)--both under repair right now. I have picked several small bouquets of them so I can enjoy them inside as well. Two of them are in tiny, beautiful pitchers my mother gave me years ago, which I bring out every summer for tiny arrangements. Just right. If I HAD to chose a favorite flower--please don't make me, please--it would be lily of the valley. This year they are especially glorious.

Switching Gears

While Chuck still has exams to give and grade, I am now officially finished with my semester (although my new boss asked me to help run a workshop for FYS profs next week, which may be a taste of things to come as new policies come into being at the Writing Center next year). Even so, I can now switch gears to the two major tasks at hand: putting in the garden (and mourning the loss of our beautiful ash tree, which is diseased and will have to be taken down) and revising my comparative Bible/Qur'an study into a book "of invitation into dialogue" as per my conversation with an editor at the Festival of Faith & Writing. The former task should take about a month by the time I (we) mulch, and the latter far more than the summer. I hope to do two, possibly three chapters (of eight), by the time we greet students again. Ellen's last project for her collections class was to put together a $4000 monopoly money's worth of books on M/C dialogue, but using inter-library loan is free, so I have already pushed that "request item" button about 25 times. Chuck has moved an empty bookcase upstairs so that I don't have to stack all these books on the floor around my chair. After all, one of his huge remaining projects for our house updating project is to paint in that livingroom sometime this summer. (We put the bookcase in Karen's bedroom, which he has already painted.) Let me just say that I love May, not only for the weather but for the time and space and promise it provides for projects such as these.

P.S. Anticipating lots of work ahead, I did read novels greedily the end of last week and can highly recommend Midnight River by Lilian Nattel and Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb, the first set in a Polish shetl and the second going back and forth between an Ethiopian Muslim city (Harar) prior to and during the famines and coups of the 70s and 80s and the London of the late 80s and 90s which "received" the Ethiopian immigrants. With my criticism of how Rushdie conveyed the experiences of such immigrants in Satanic Verses fresh in my mind, I couldn't help but marvel at how well Gibb accomplished the same task.

Tuesday Lunch Bunch

Perhaps it's because I spend most of my time with students, I don't know, but may I just say that this year's Tuesday lunches in the Faculty Lounge with my peers, mostly retired (I'm the young-un of the bunch and newly included in the group), have been the highlight of my week. Most of these feisty, interesting women are still in the bookclub that I no longer attend (because of spending most of my time with students). That's probably why the level of the conversation is so high: books, music, lectures, local politics, with the inevitable smattering of medical problems thrown in. I have loved it and now must wait until next fall for them to resume on any kind of regular basis. A corrollary: I have enjoyed my recent reading of Genesis with the COW's rabbi (also a peer--a woman nearing 50 if not already launched into that decade of her life), creating our own interfaith dialogue complete with stacks of commentaries and midrashes, as much as I have working with student groups. We are going to meet one more time during exam week before we too disband until next fall. What does this say about me, the person passionate about students (and I still am)??