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.