On Epiphanies Gained while Arguing about the Bible

I unintentionally had this argument with an old friend just before we were given the assignment to start one.  He is a friend from my past with whom I had fallen out of contact.  We bumped into each other on campus last year and wound up in technical writing together this semester.  I said that I believed there were parallels between Biblical mythology and the mythologies of other religions.  Christianity, I said, shared many similarities with other religions.
"Not really," he responded.
"But how can you say that," I countered, "when Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all derive from the Old Testament?  And did you know the story of the 'Great Flood' is a common theme in many cultural mythologies?  It's not peculiar to the Bible.  In fact, there are Native American stories describing how Creator had become angry with humanity for living wickedly, and destroyed them with a flood; all but one pious man and his family, who weathered many days in a vessel which Creator explained how to make.  And these stories existed in their cultures before whites came and forced Christianity on them."
"I don't want to talk about it!" he snapped.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said.  "I'm not religious, so--"
"Well I am."  As if only those who are religious have any right to voice opinions on the Bible.
"Well I'm not.  I don't think we should base our lives on a text written thousands of years ago by one small culture.  However, I think the Bible is important because it basically invented literature as we know it."
"That's fine," he says, trying to be authoritative, "as long as you respect it."
"Well, I do respect it, but not for the reasons you think I should.  It's a Semitic cultural accounting.  It's the story of ancient people who are not my ancestors.  It bears very little meaning for me."
"I'm sorry," I said without knowing why I was apologizing.  "I can't force myself to believe something I don't."

And that was it.  That's where I had my epiphany.  The stories contained in the Bible are not the accounts of my people.  I don't have lineage dating back to the Mayflower, or concrete accounts of noble ancestors contained in dusty, old archives in the Old Country; but I know where many of my ancestors lived before coming to America:  Wales, England, and Sweden.  Now, it can certainly be argued that my ancestors living in the British Isles were most definitely Christians.  Indeed they were, and some still are today.  It can also be argued that without the Old Testament, there would not be a New Testament; which is where Christianity derives most of its dogma.  Though Christians may cleave more adamantly to the teachings of the New Testament, they still claim the Old Testament's mythology as their own.  I have always balked at blindly accepting the Christian faith as the only way to believe without fully realizing why; but then, in that epiphytic moment, I did realize why:  It is not the story of my people; therefore it has no legitimate claim to my spirit.
I did not grow up religious, but I did attend a few church services with various friends and joined a youth group for a short period of time in middle school.  Never, not once, have I ever felt any sense of comfort in church.  I left the youth group because I came to realize what a crock it was.  A flimsy sham attempting to brainwash impressionable young people while out of their parents' presence.  I didn't like the way they countered what my parents had taught me (for I did pose questions of faith to the pastors) with how they thought  things ought to be.  I remember being told on one occasion that my parents were straight up wrong, and being a good person is not enough to redeem oneself from the horrors of Hell.  A statement I took to be a deliberate, meditated act of undermining parental authority.  As Dr. Sexson has pointed out, most of the beliefs associated with the Bible are not contained therein; they are interpretations formulated in the minds of individuals whose capacity to understand is no greater than mine.  What hegemonic rule makes one ancient culture's mythological history more legitimate than that of  another?  I want to learn more about the stories that were being told by the people who would become my ancestors, for they also walked the face of the earth during "Biblical Times."  That is where I will find myself; not in the pages of the Old Testament.  Nor do I believe it to be contained within the pages of the New Testament.  For me, it is unfathomable that there is not something beyond this life on Earth, but it is equally unfathomable that that something can be summed up on one small library of books called the Bible.  Last winter, a girl I had know since she was a child passed away.  She was only seventeen, but she was about to give birth to her first child.  A little girl.  She and the baby's father lived out in Three Forks and on their way to the hospital to give birth, she died in a car accident.  They were not able to save the baby.  It was an accident; one coalescent moment in time that resulted in a horrible tragedy.  She died, her baby died, but the baby's father and the other driver lived.  And why?  Why did it happen that way on that day?  I don't accept the answer that God's ways are mysterious, yet I do not begrudge God.  I do not angrily rebuke the sky, demanding to know why, if He's so just and great, God would permit such a horrible thing to happen.  I do not do these things because I feel that any answers given, whether by laymen or priests, would be hollow.  There is no answer; it just happened.  What if it had not been icy and foggy that day?  What if they had left the house just five minutes earlier or later?  What if they had taken the interstate into Bozeman instead of the frontage road?  What if the other driver had taken the interstate instead?  Who suffered the bigger injustice?  The young girl and her baby, or the young man who survived his family?  I find more comfort in accepting that life is unfair at times.  It's terrifying to realize the truth that bad things can and do befall anybody at any given moment in time; but these things are not resultant of cosmic vendettas, and we cannot stop their happenings.  That is the common thread which connects humanity.  We're all in this crazy world together, and we can feel empathy for the plights of others--even if they're not God's chosen people.  And that, I think, is the true beauty of the human spirit.  It is our want to ease the pain of others because we know, that at any unpredictable time, it could be us.

Believing that, in spite of the murmurings of the callous and the self-righteous, lends me more strength and integrity than can be found in the pages of any book.

Stevens: A Mythological Modern Poet

When speaking in terms of "modernism" and the "modernist movement," it is important to recognize that these phrases are not synonymous with the English word "modern', which defines something contemporary in nature.  The modernist movement was not solely literary, for it embodied all aspects of creative art.  Its coming into existence was partially due to mass cultural uprising against Victorian rigidity, but was more profoundly fueled by Western society's extreme disillusionment resulting from the horrific experiences witnessed during the Great War.  Many modernist thinkers came to view the world as fragmented; there existed not just one, cohesive reality in which all of society was enveloped, but multiple realities all operating within their own dogmatic parameters.  This fragmentation was further compounded by the increasing feeling of isolation many people developed in response to the rapid technological advancements of their time.



Picasso's 1903 The Old Guitarist.  Many academics believe
this painting inspired Stevens to write "The Man
with the Blue Guitar."

 Perhaps these feeling of alienation and fragmentation are best represented by the visual arts, and among these representations the painter Pablo Picasso is probably the most recognizable.  Picasso once said:  "The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"  Many modernist writers echoed this sentiment by experimenting with a variety of new writing techniques such as stream of consciousness, or by focusing on unconventional subject matter.  Others attempted to make sense of their chaotic world by incorporating the patterns of myth into their work to create new and unique literary styles.  These elements can be seen in the work of Modern American poet Wallace Stevens.  In his poem, "The Man with the Blue Guitar"(which many academics assert was inspired by Picasso's 1903 painting, The Old Guitarist), Stevens refers to the guitarist as "a shearsman of sorts."  According to my Oxford American Pocket Dictionary, shear can mean:  to distort or be distorted, or break, from a structural strain.    The man with the blue guitar "does not play things as they are," for "Things as they are/ Are changed upon the blue guitar."  But the people implore him to play "A tune beyond us, yet ourselves."  The amorphous term "they" characterized in the poem is a reference to society at large.  The poem's speaker and the man with the blue guitar may be consciously aware of the fragmented, alienated state of society, but the common masses are only subconsciously aware of it.  Thus they are unable to articulate that for which they yearn.  They are caught between cleaving to what  they had traditionally understood themselves to be, and striving to understand the state of their disillusionment. Later, in part XV of the poem, the speaker asks:  "Is this a picture of Picasso's, this 'hoard/ Of distractions,' a picture of ourselves,/ Now, an image of our society?"  In so doing, Stevens deftly depicts the complexities of human emotion by analogizing music and art. 


Picasso's 1937 Guernica.  Perhaps this is the "hoard of destructions" Stevens references in "The Man with the Blue Guitar."



Stevens further demonstrates his willingness to utilize mythology in "Peter Quince at the Clavier."  In this poem he again represents emotion through musical images.  Also present in the poem are alternate realities to what society has conventionally perceived.  Peter Quince, being an unsophisticated rube, would not normally be sitting at a clavier, plucking melodic chords and exploring the complicated emotions invoked by an unattainable mistress.  The poem is incredibly erotic.  In the Biblical story Susanna is renowned for her beauty and piety; in Stevens' poem, although demure, she is a sexually empowered woman.  In the privacy of her garden (a mythological symbol of eroticism), "She searched/ The torch of Springs,/ And found/ Concealed imaginings./ She sighed/ For so much melody./ / Upon the bank, she stood/ In the cool/ Of spent emotions./ She felt, among the leaves,/ the dew/ Of old devotions."  These lines are clearly depicting the act of masturbation.  "The torch of Springs" symbolizes her female genitalia, and concealed imaginings her sexual fantasies.  (It may be of interest to note here that modernist writers often attempted to break the societal barriers of prudery prevalent during the Victorian Era).  She stands on the bank "in the cool of spent emotions" and remembers "old devotions." Her sexual desires fulfilled, she pauses to remember her maidenhood; to remember the first stirrings of sexual awakening.  The elders have witnessed the entire event, and now their lust is kindled.  Susanna is ashamed of having been caught in such a private and vulnerable moment.  In the Biblical story the only explanation for her shame is having been seen naked by men to whom she is not married.  Stevens attempts to fill the lacunae of the Biblical version by presenting an alternate reality in which Susanna does more than just bathe in her garden, and in which the one imagining such a scene is a rough around the edges, blue collar guy fantasizing about catching a sophisticated, sexually unavailable woman in the act of pleasuring herself. 

But a fantasy is just that. It is "momentary in the mind."  The sexually charged fantasy of the virginal maiden dies when the maiden is deflowered.  She is replaced by a sexually aware, unattainable woman.  The latter fantasy being no less momentary than the first.  Peter Quince well remembers the lesson learned through the elders' mistake.  How could they have foreseen Daniel's meddling in the matter?  Peter Quince is also well aware of his shortcomings, and knows that he, too, will probably be foiled if he dares to act upon his fantasy.  So he sits, isolated, dejectedly plucking at his clavier, refusing to give his Susanna the satisfaction of gloating over herself for all of eternity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w32XfBVWFqw   

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/blueguitar.html