Falling Down Day

Thursday: First it was Matteo. There was a slight assassination attempt on him at day care. The little boy behind him, Liam, saw an opportunity. The doorjamb was coming up fast on the right as the line of children moved from one room to another. Liam must have known that Teo was in a weakened state, owing to his running nose, his coughing, and his mouth breathing. Suddenly, looking away, shove – BLAM! Matteo trips into the doorframe, crumbles, dissolves into tears, and Marin is called.

Marin checks with how Teo’s teacher, Karis, feels about his status. Bump on forehead, already iced, straightline red bruise, no broken skin, he’s in my lap, the startled breath- catching sobs have turned to whimpers, he’ll survive.

Second was Marin. While adjudicating his recovery, Marin’s preparing to go to her ObGyn exam. These are coming at a fast clip this last month of our pregnancy. On the way down the stairs at work, she’s talking to her coworker, Naomi, over her shoulder, and – oops – missteps, and finds herself in mid-header. Whoa! Severly pregnant woman bouncing down the stairs.

I get a phone call as she’s driving to her appointment. Characteristically, she tells me of Teo’s misfortune before revealing why her voice is shaky. She’s all adrenalined up over her topple. Initial diagnosis, bumped knee. Really? YIkes!

Suddenly I feel like I’m in the wrong place. How can I help, what can I do, just say the word!

Apparently, at the doctor’s, they belted Marin up with a fetal monitor to hear how our little trooper is faring, head down with teeny fingers poised on the starting line waiting for the go. All well.

Finally, it was me. But only existentially. The boys from the LDS Church (Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints), whom I kept standing in our entryway the first Sunday in December, finally got through. The original followup visit I got suckered into they canceled for being late, then we kind of didn’t pick up whenever we saw “Church of Jesus Christ” on our caller ID. Then last week our caller ID was out for two days, and I ended up agreeing to meet yesterday at 4.

In short, my fall was to my knees. In two ways. The first was how I always end up admiring the system which brings me these fresh young people, sitting in my living room, talking about their lives, their faith, and trying to interpret scripture with someone like me who knows more about what they’re doing than they themselves know. I almost feel like an academic advisor.

The second was in prayer. Elder X (they never tell their first names, which would help the memory) prayed us into their bible study. Then, after learning really interesteing stuff about their families kneeling together and praying before bedtime (I just found that so sweet, though, of course, I’m projecting), their lives of doubt, competition and conversion, the quality and intensity of their missions, Elder X reads some scripture which is essentially wierdly irrlelvant, and asks me questions on the reading, which I answer.

That’s when I tell what I really think about Jesus’ resurrection, about the new intensity of life his followers discover in his absence, and how that “new life” is supposed to play out in Christian churches. I realized, a moment later, that my “Christian” story, no matter how different from the mainstream “Christian” doctrine, is over their heads. Just as their ideas are essentially “over my head.”

Because, it turns out, the “resurrection” for them means Jesus visits folks (Lehi’s decendants who sailed to America in 600 BC) in the New World, and that the “failed” system of prophets and apostles which, in Christianity, “crumbled” upon Jesus’ death, was revitalized among Lehi’s decendants, and led to the golden tablets which Joseph Smith discovered, dug up, and translated.

Hm. Okay. I listened politely. After all, what would Unitarians need to do to get our kids to become “our missionaries of Unitarian freedom and truth-telling in the Ural Mountains” as Elder Y had been for the Mormon “story.”

The prayer came when they asked me to close the session. They asked me to pray. Which turned out to be fun. It’s such an odd, wonderous thing, like someone coming up to you and saying, “could you make up a spontaneous gratitude poem so we can close our eyes together and enter a place of profound openness.” And then, what you say is welcomed, gratefully.

As I bid them farewell, holding my newly received “Book of Mormon,” I walk down to invite Marin and Teo to reinhabit our living room. In effect, we all have gotten up from our falls, a little different than we were before.

Teo, Mike, and Maroni / Advent Day 12

I lie beside Matteo this afternoon, trying to help him move from waking into his nap. He resists, and kicks his legs, flails his limbs, sings, sighs, complains of throat pains, and actually gets counted down (1 2 3 Magic) and spends five minutes in the hotel room bathroom by himself, doing his crying routine – all very familiar.

But then I turn gruff, and he surrenders. Two minutes later, he’s fast asleep.

In those two minutes I think of the passage into unconsciousness. It’s an acceptance, on one level, of our limitations. I can’t stay awake forever, I have to let sleep take over.

On another level, it’s an acceptance of mortality. Finally, there will come a day when I will let go of life, in essentially the same way. Resisting, resisting, and then, in two magical minutes, surrendering, and passing.

I think of my little boy, who may be there holding my hand (as I was a six weeks ago, holding my dying mother’s hand), guiding me then as I guide him now, as I breathe my last, and relax into death.

It always is so sweet to fall asleep with Teo, who often will throw his arm over me to join mine over him, with my hand tucked under him behind his back. All hunkered down like a litter of puppies while I tell him a story until one or both of us doze off. Falling asleep with someone I love is the very best thing.

Interestingly, the Advent theme of the end times could have been for Christians a gentle letting go, a breathing in of God’s breath as God comes to bring us all to a rest which will grant us strength to live a deeper intimacy with God.

Instead, their vision is of the world dissolving in fire and suffering, as God loses patience with all the evil (think Noah’s Ark – that frustrated, vindictive God). And, as Jesus articulates it, some people will be ready and safe, but most will be shocked and in torment. Why’d the early Christians take this domestic lullaby of endings, and raise it to a shrill murderous shriek?

There’s a video making its way around the web which takes up the origination myth of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons.

In a cartoon format, it explains how gods in the spirit-world gave birth to a spirit child, Elohim, who grew up and came up with the idea for our planet to be physical home for the billions of spirit children they all were generating by having methodical celestial sex.

Two of Elohim’s spirit children, the Mormon-Jesus and Satan, were in competition for stipulations to add to human free will. Satan wanted no free will, the Mormon-Jesus wanted lots. Satan and a third of the Mormon heavenly host rebelled and were punished by being sent to earth, but without bodies. The undecided heavenly host came to earth, enfleshed, but black, with no hope of redemption.

The rest came as whites, and had the opportunity to earn planets after death to continue to have sex and create more spirit children for the universe.

By the way, Elohim and Eve started things on earth, and later Elohim came and had sex with Mary to give Jesus a body to live in. Guy’s pretty focused on sex for a God.

During his life, Jesus married Mary Magdalen, Martha, and the other Mary, and had kids, before being crucified. On his resurrection, he converted a white race in the New World, which fought the rebellious, dark skinned Indians, and lost. Moroni was the last of that race, who hid the gold tablets of their writings (which explain all this?) in the ground before his death.

Which Joseph Smith discovered, translated with Moroni’s angelic help, and then lost. Smith, the God Elohim, and the Mormon-Jesus will judge all who die.

While former Baptist Minister Mike Huckabee abruptly backed down from his observing that(Mitt Romney and) Mormons see Jesus and Satan as brothers after the Republican debate in Iowa last night, I have an humble observation.

I want to observe that both the first century cosmology (Jesus will return to judge the earth with fire) and John Smith’s cosmology (compliant Mormon men earn planets and continue the solemn, cosmic sex after death) – both are a sad, empty preoccupation of vain men clinging to the silliest power there is, religion (or in Smith’s case, sex).

Enough with that version of the end-time Advent theme. Instead, let’s make a religion out of the simple, real things. Like: to put our children to bed, helping them graciously to let go of the lovely golden sunsetting afternoon. To breathe their breath, clinging to their little bodies, giving thanks that we don’t have to worry either ourselves or others about some demented version of life after death.