Beyond Our Mortal Hearing

Ecclesiasticus 45:6-16

9 And he encircled him with pomegranates, with many golden bells all around, to send forth a sound as he walked, to make their ringing heard in the temple as a reminder to his people;

That’s Aaron’s priestly robe they are talking about, which was hung about at the hem with bells, and tassels intended to represent pomegranates, but I didn’t know that when I first read it, I was just tickled by the idea of being “encircled with pomegranates.” Of course I looked it up, and found that pomegranates go way back in mythology, always representing life and fertility. Greek myth, Jewish mystical symbolism, and Christian iconography. They are even pictured in the earliest European depiction of Christ in a mosaic. Originally found in Dorset, it’s supposed to go back to the 4th century. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinton_St_Mary) They also represent resurrection, which is awesome because it ties Christ’s resurrection to the archetypal personification of Spring as the resurrection of the earth itself in the Persephone myth. (Remember, she ate six pomegranate seeds, and so must spend half the year in Hades while the earth withers and dies in her absence, but she returns in spring and the earth comes back to life.)

On to the bells. While researching, I found that the bells were supposed to keep Aaron from dying as a result of entering the holy of holies. Weird. So of course I start looking into the spiritual significance of bells. Wow. Across all cultures they ward off spirits, particularly evil ones, and have something to do with death, dreams and prayer. So, according to this passage, the sound of the bells is supposed to be a “reminder to his people.” It seems that must refer to God’s people, based on the grammatical structure. So the ringing of the bells inside the temple, where the people weren’t allowed to go and the bells can only be heard by God, still somehow serves as a reminder to the people even though they can’t hear them. So does that mean that when God hears the bells, we hear them through God’s ears?  Is the metaphorical implication that the sound of bells always penetrates both spirit and flesh? That “rings” true. (Pun intended, sorry.)

Bells ring down the valleys of our dreaming; carry our prayers across the veil; ward off hungry ghosts, and the very sound of a bell is a thin place all by itself. Bells are calls to prayer, calls to meals, calls of warning, calls of mourning, calls across time and space that ring beyond our mortal hearing.

This gives a new breadth, height, and depth to my hearing of bells, whether it is church bells ringing to call the Christian faithful, or the bowl gong that anchors our attention as it opens and closes zazen.

 

2 Corinthians 12:11-21

11 I have been a fool! You forced me to it. Indeed you should have been the ones commending me, for I am not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing. 12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, signs and wonders and mighty works. 13 How have you been worse off than the other churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong! 14 Here I am, ready to come to you this third time. And I will not be a burden, because I do not want what is yours but you; for children ought not to lay up for their parents, but parents for their children. 15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for you. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? 1 6Let it be assumed that I did not burden you. Nevertheless (you say) since I was crafty, I took you in by deceit. 17 Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you? 18 I urged Titus to go, and sent the brother with him. Titus did not take advantage of you, did he? Did we not conduct ourselves with the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps? 19 Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves before you?

Paul is still really peevish! It just goes to show that nothing has changed about human nature. Apparently the issue was that Paul refused to accept money and gifts for his support from the Corinthians, but he did accept them from the Macedonians. Plus there were other Christian missionaries who were trash-talking Paul to the Corinthian church. These are the ones he calls “super-apostles.” He still insists on “not burdening” them, which I take to mean that he will still not accept their patronage. I wonder if there were strings attached that he didn’t like. I suspect so, since he talks about their complaint that he was “taking advantage” of them. That is a classic tactic of the manipulator, to accuse their target of doing the very same thing they are doing, as a kind of psychological bait-and-switch. So Paul was doing his utmost to avoid being manipulated by the influential people in the Corinthian congregation, and at the same time trying to continue to minister to them in good faith; all the while trying to disregard his own hurt feelings. It sounds awful. But there you go, church politics was the same ugly, petty, vindictive mess 2,000 years ago, as it is today. I don’t know if that’s a grief or a comfort.

Luke 19:41-48

41 As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, 'If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. 44 They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another;

Jesus desperately wishing that the people of Jerusalem (Yes, even them!) had been able to see and recognize “the things that make for peace.”

I can’t help it, I feel like he’s literally talking about what is going on in the U.S. right now. It seems bleakly evident to me that the “things that make for peace” are most certainly hidden from the eyes of every last person to whom we have entrusted the governance of our country. I feel like weeping too, and hoping that the days will not come when our enemies surround us and crush us. The trouble is, I think our enemy is us. We’ve set up ramparts around ourselves, and surrounded ourselves with delusion and ignorance and hostility. We’ve hemmed ourselves in on every side with greed, self-importance, and sycophancy. We are crushing ourselves to the ground with the weight of malicious, mercenary, dishonest opportunism while we mock anyone who values compassion, consideration, gentleness and respect for others. I am afraid we are well on the way to demolishing ourselves, and the stones are falling faster every day.

Oh well, there’s nothing for it but to carry on. I went and looked for a verse that said “bear up,” and I found this: 14 then I say to you, ‘Just as you brought forth in sorrow, so the earth also has from the beginning given her fruit, that is, humankind, to him who made her.’  15 Now, therefore, keep your sorrow to yourself, and bear bravely the troubles that have come upon you. (2 Esdras 10:14-15) There is a whole wretched litany of devastation and misery in that chapter that is strangely consoling.