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An Apostle’s Tale 2.4 – A Short Walk

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Bib-useka rose and turned toward the village, motioning his son to follow.

Neither spoke as they made their way along back along the temple’s tumbled avenue. Skirting around the south side of Bibleb-Akhet, they joined the wide, rutted track that served as the eastern highway a short distance outside of town. Almost immediately they encountered a man Djamose knew well, a jovial fellow the village children called Weepy because his left eye was forever shedding tears. His real name was Bib-ret-ka, and he was returning from the Land of Sobek leading a donkey saddled with two enormous baskets practically overflowing with half-dried mud. The cruelly burdened beast plodded and panted in the most pitiful way.

“Hi, Ret-ka,” said Bib-useka with a wave. “Is that poor donkey going to make it?”

“He’d better,” Ret-ka grinned, “or he’ll be supper tonight. That’s good mud, and it cost me a fortune.”

“It looks kind of wet. No time to dry it out?”

“I asked Ptahbesu if I could spread it out in his empty stock pen and come back for it tomorrow,” said Ret-ka, absently wiping a tear from his cheek. “He said if I dropped a single grain of it on his side of Wadjet’s Teeth he’d sell the whole lot to his son-in-law and I could fertilize my plot with sand. What a bastard.”

“One of these days somebody will come up with a curse he can’t shake,” said Bib-useka. “He wears so many charms he sounds like a rattle when he walks.”

“All in Bibleb’s time. So, where are you two off to today?”

“Believe it or not, Hawat-ha,” said Bib-useka. “I think it’s time I shook Ptahneferset’s rattle about that canal job we did during the Feast of Bastet.”

“Set’s flaming butt,” said Ret-ka, rolling his eyes. “You’re better off trying to get paid by my donkey.”

“And, of course, Djamose here is five years old now and it’s about time he paid a visit to our neighbors.”

To Djamose’s surprise, Ret-ka breathed a deep, sad sigh and shook his head.

“Wow, that takes me back. Worst day of my life. There’s no coming back from that trip, eh?”

He leaned down and fixed Djamose with his weepy eye.

“Don’t you worry, Djamose. The Lucky of Sobek are just that – lucky. You’re as good as any man there. Don’t ever believe any different.”

Djamose just nodded. Worry about what? He knew without having seen it that Ta y-Sobek was an earthly paradise of beauty and wonder and plenty. What could he possibly have to fear in such a place?

“Anyway, good luck to you both,” said Ret-ka, tugging the donkey’s halter. The animal complained loudly, but started plodding forward again. “And don’t forget – the supple reed outlasts the flood.’”

“Unhappy is the river free of water,” Bib-useka nodded sagely, clasping his hands in front of his face. “And Bibleb’s strength be upon your donkey.”

They started walking again, toward Ibhi Wadjet. Breaking against Wadjet’s stubby teeth, the yellow rays of Khepera’s morning light cast shadows on the ground that reached out to them like Set’s black fingers. Djamose was in a hurry. His father was taking his sweet time. He wasn’t looking forward to the morning’s errands.

“Tell me again where we’re going,” Djamose begged, skipping a few yards ahead. His young imagination burned like altar fire, his simple mind constructing, destroying and rebuilding a succession of indistinct wonders that must certainly lay at the end of the path to Ta’ sy-Sobek.

“We’re going to the town of Hawat-ha,” sighed Bib-useka. He’d been about Djamose’s age when he’d taken that journey with his own father, and although time had providentially erased the event’s specific details, he supposed he’d been just as giddy. He sighed again. It seemed a cruel thing to do to the boy, but it couldn’t be helped. Better I should be with him, thought Bib-useka, than he should find out how things are on his own.

“What do they eat?” Djamose supposed the residents of Hawat-ha ate nothing but beef and pork and cheese and grapes, all of it drowning in honey.

“They eat bread, like we do. And peas and lentils, and dates.”

It was a diet wholly out of tune with Djamose’s luxurious mental menu, and while he didn’t for a moment suspect his father would like about it, he had no trouble disbelieving every word. As the path began its gentle rise to the crest of Ibhi Wadjet, the boy had the distinct sensation of floating upward as if on a breath of wind.

“Tell me again what we’re going to do.”

“We’re going to see the man that I’ve been working for. His name is Geb-shu-ef, and he owes us a lot of money. If he pays us, we can buy something to take home. Would you like that?”

Djamose did like that, so much that for a moment he couldn’t speak for the hot excitement jammed up in the back of his throat.

“Like what?” he finally rasped.

He really had no idea. Djamose was familiar with commerce only in the most abstract and theoretical terms, having never laid eyes on a product that was available for sale. His imagination failed him, and he almost shouted with frustration.

“We’ll see,” said Bibuseka, most unsatisfactorily.

His brain finally catching up with his ears, Djamose’s heart suddenly turned cold.

“Why do you say ‘if he pays us’? Why wouldn’t he pay us? You said he owes us a lot of money. Doesn’t he have to pay us?”

“Geb-shu-ef is an important man, and he’s careful with his money.”

“But you’re an important man, too. You’re the priest of Bibleb!”

“I’m not important to Geb-shu-ef, and he’s not afraid of Bibleb.”

That someone – anyone – would not fear to displease Bibleb was an idea entirely new to Djamose, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“At the temple you said we were entering the land of our enemies.”

“I did say that.”

“But we’re going to Ta’ sy-Sobek.”

“That’s where we’re going.”

Djamose’s thoughts skipped to a night a few months before when he’d wandered too far in search of fish-grass and got caught alone in the Red Land after Osiris had retired to his sepulchral throne. The Great Bull Khonsu had been falling low to the horizon, bearing the weight of a nearly full moon upon his back. The desert about Djamose was to him as familiar as the huts and alleys of Bibleb-Akhet, yet in that pale, oblique illumination he didn’t recognize any part of it. He knew very well where he was, but couldn’t reconcile what he knew with the testimony of his eyes. He felt something like that now.

“Are the People of Sobek our enemies?”

For a long moment Bib-useka didn’t answer.

“No, they’re not our enemies. But they’re not our friends.”

It seemed quite impossible.

“But we’re all Egyptians! How can Egyptians not be friends with other Egyptians?”

Again, his father walked in silence for a time before speaking slowly, carefully.

“We all live in Egypt, Djamose. Who is Egyptian sometimes depends on who you ask.”

That answer made no sense to the boy, who was in any case losing his appetite for the topic. His journey to Hawat-ha, long anticipated and launched with the highest of expectations, was beginning to seem like a questionable venture, and talk of enemies and men who cared nothing for Bibleb was taking a toll on his optimistic nature.

They continued in silence, giving Djamose a better opportunity to focus his attention on Wadjet’s rapidly approaching teeth. From a distance they’d appeared to him as jagged, formidable, menacing. From a perspective of perhaps 100 yards they assumed a very different aspect. They were tired-looking fragments of crumbling rock slowly collapsing back into the desert. It was obvious to Djamose that the spirits of those moldering hulks had fled them long ago, and it seemed to him careless of Wadjet to have allowed something so closely associated with Her illustrious self to have fallen to such an abased state.

The smell of water was stronger here, and of growing things, and of the smoke of dung fires. As he came near enough to put a hand on the powdery surface of the monolith to the left of the path he became aware that the deep westerly shadows concealed a strange tapestry of carved figures. In some ancient time a dozen lines had been cut into the weathered rock, dancing figures that held no meaning for him. In a somewhat less ancient time the panel had been defaced with what Djamose took for a crude representation of a human foot and leg, and which had been carved to a depth of more than an inch, obliterated a large portion of the mysterious text.

“What does it say?” Djamose asked.

“I don’t know,” said Bib-useka. “It’s very old.”

In fact, nobody in Bibleb-Akhet could decipher those puzzling runes, the talent of literacy having passed out of that village many generations before.

“What’s the leg for?”

“The leg is a symbol of Bibleb. It marks the beginning of Bibleb’s domain.”

Not coincidentally, in the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians, it was also the most basic symbol representing the sound at the beginning of the names Bibleb, Bes and Bastet.

“So we put it there to let people know when they’re entering the Land of Bibleb?”

“Um, kind of the other way around.”

“We didn’t put it there?”

“The People of Sobek put it there.”

“So they’d know when they entered Bibleb’s land?”

“So we will know when we’re leaving it.”

Djamose wasn’t sure he saw the difference, but the way his father said left no doubt that there was one. Bib-useka moved to the stone abutting the trail on the south, and stopped in front of a cracked and dusty mud shrine that stood to his waist. A small clay pot sat in its offering niche. It was about the size of a duck’s egg and stopped with a plug of palm wood. He picked it up and placed it in his sack.

“Good old Ret-ka. He, at least, remembers his duty to Bibleb. It’s disgraceful how many come and go without making a consideration.”

They were still west of the stones. Djamose could see the broad gap between Wadjet’s Teeth, and see the light pouring through the very short passage between them. He could step through any time he wanted, but, faced with the actuality, felt suddenly rather comfortable where he was. His father walked over and stood directly in front of him, placing a tender hand on his shoulder and staring directly into his eyes.

“None of us get to choose our place, Djamose.”

The boy just stared at him, expecting more.

“I love you, son.”

“I love you too, dad.”

Bib-useka softly turned his son to face east, and then, with a vigorous shove that almost knocked the boy off of his feet, thrust him through Wadjet’s ragged teeth and straight into the yawning mouth of Sobek.

An Apostle’s Tale 2.3 – Offerings

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“I have an idea,” said Bib-useka, with a quiet, conspiratorial air. Reaching into his sack, he withdrew a pair of thumb-sized figures crudely carved from palm wood and even more crudely painted. One purported to be a soldier, the other a hippopotamus, and neither was capable of living up to its aspiration without a substantial investment of on the part of the observer. They were, in fact, Djamose’s two and only toys.

“Here,” he smiled, holding them out to his son. “Put these on the altar.”

Djamose didn’t know what to think. The impulse to cry was quite extinguished now that his immediate problem was solved. On the other hand, the offering his father proposed posed an entirely new and no less dire one.

“Those are mine,” said Djamose.

“Yes, they are.”

“They’re my toys.”

“Yes.”

Just as desperately as Djamose wanted to present something, anything, to Bibleb, he didn’t want to part with those shoddy figurines. The citizens of Bibleb-Akhet liked possessions as much as anyone else, they just came by them far less frequently. Fact is, the misshapen soldier and unrepresentative hippo were the first items Djamose had ever owned that he couldn’t wear. Bib-useka had presented his son with the playthings, neatly wrapped in fish-grass, the night before as the family was settling down to sleep. Djamose had begged for a few intimate minutes alone with the toys, but his father had merely laughed, set them aside and blown out the lamp. Come morning they’d been fully occupied preparing for their journey to Ta’ y-Sobek. That moment before Bibleb’s altar was exactly the second time Djamose had laid eyes on his first private property, and it seemed impossible to him that it could also be the last.

“I haven’t even played with them yet,” said Djamose, unable to prevent a pleading note from creeping into his voice. In his distress he didn’t think to wonder why his father was carrying his toys around in his bag.

“Then Bibleb will like them even more.”

At another time, in another place, Djamose might have been inclined to dig in his heels and defend his claim to those precious trifles, but there in the presence of his expectant god, with his father and priest demanding tribute be paid and Ta’ Sobek beckoning to him from the east, he simply couldn’t summon the will. He felt caught like a gull in a net.

“Go ahead,” Bib-useka patiently urged. “Offer them to Bibleb.”

His face still mashed in the dry earth, Djamose reached up without a word and accepted the little statuettes from his father’s hand. He was achingly aware of how superb they felt in his own – clean, smooth, and humming with stories beyond telling.

“Now, without getting up, see if you can put them on the altar.”

Djamose crawled forward as slowly as he thought Bib-useka would permit, pathetically trying to delay the inevitable. All too soon he reached the base of the altar and, reaching up as high as he could, just managed to push the objects over the edge and onto its weathered surface.

“Now say what I say,” his father instructed. “O Bibleb, I am your servant.”

“O Bibleb, I am your servant,” echoed Djamose. He fleetingly wondered if he should take a stab at a priestly tone, but found he had no heart to try, or even to care as much as he probably should.

“Your servant brings precious gifts, O Lord.”

“Your servant brings precious gifts, O Lord.”

“Accept these gifts from your servant.”

“Accept these gifts from your servant.”

“Your servant comes in prayer. Look with favor upon your servant. Your servant journeys to Ta’ y-Sobek. Your servant enters the land of his enemies. Protect your servant in the land of his enemies, O Bibleb. Hold your shield before your servant. With your spear strike down your servant’s enemies. Bibleb’s servant asks this. Life, health, strength to Bibleb.”

“…Life, health, strength to Bibleb,” concluded Djamose. He heard his father rise, but decided it better not to follow suit without orders and kept his face to the ground. Worship, he thought, was somewhat more complicated than he’d formerly believed. Bib-useka bowed low toward the sanctuary and clapped his hands together four times, and then twice, and then four more times. Then he collected his son’s toys and from the altar and placed them back in his sack. He would sell them at the market in Hawat-ha, as he’d planned when he carved them, and they would fetch a better price for having not been pawed by a child’s grubby fingers. It was a shabby little trick to play on his first-born son, but, among the Children of Bible, shabby little tricks often meant the difference between sufficiency and want.

“You can stand up now, Djamose.”

Rising, Djamose immediately noticed the figurines missing and his heart leapt into his throat.

“Where did they go?”

“They’re Bibleb’s now,” said Bib-useka.

Djamose was dumbfounded. Clearly the god had emerged from his sanctuary and taken possession of the figurines while he’d been groveling in the dirt. The wonder of it left him stunned, and hugely disappointed.

“Did you see him? What does he look like?”

“Our eyes can’t behold Bibleb’s unless he chooses to reveal himself,” Bib-useka instructed. “He didn’t choose to reveal himself today.”

Djamose felt better, and a little relieved. He wasn’t sure he was up to beholding the god’s terrible majesty just then.

“But why didn’t he take the food?”

“He did take the food. He had a very nice breakfast.”

“But it’s still there.”

Bib-useka laughed. Djamose thought his father to be in rather high spirits considering the personally calamity that had just befallen his only son.

“Gods don’t eat like you and me, with hands and mouths. Bibleb ate the smell of the bread, and the flavor of the meat, and the spirit of the offering. The offering itself is his food. Do you understand?”

“No.”

Bib-useka laughed again and stuffed the food parcel back into his sack.

“You will. Now do what I do.”

Facing the shrine, Bib-useka bent at the waist and held his arms over his head, palms forward, which pose Djamose mimicked awkwardly, but acceptably. 

“O Bibleb, your servants depart. Be pleased with your servants’ gifts. Look upon your servants with favor. Protect your servants. The servants of Bibleb depart. Life, health, strength to Bibleb.”

Djamose had made his first offering to his god. He hoped it had been worth it.

An Apostle’s Tale 2.2 – Empty Hands

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As the holy son of a long line of holy fathers, the titular moral compass of his community, and the conduit by which his flock approached their divinity, Bib-useka maintained a sizeable mental library of useful axioms and platitudes.

“Unhappy is the river free of water” was a favorite, it being obvious enough to preclude argument, vague enough to accommodate virtually any crisis of faith or fact, and satisfying to the average Egyptian’s bedrock conviction that advice delivered up by way of the Nile, however inscrutable, had to be good. Another standby, “Ask not of Bibleb what you ask not of yourself”, was handy at deflecting aggrieved supplicants’ more unrealistic prayers, and a great time-saver. Of more practical bromides, none were more direct – or more profitable – than “Every journey begins at the Temple.” Few of Bibleb’s faithful would consider venturing much beyond His austere dominion without first making offering and obeisance at His sanctuary. All by itself that compact chestnut yielded about 60 percent of Bib-useka’s wherewithal, which is why he repeated it at every opportunity.

“Every journey begins at the temple,” he said, taking Djamose by the hand and leading him westward through the village.

Djamose was quite literally vibrating with excitement, anticipating his first journey into the greater nation of Egypt and unto the warm bosom of his undiscovered countrymen. It seemed to him a proud and very grown-up thing to be allowed to personally ask Bibleb to speed his feet and protect him on the road ahead, although he didn’t for a moment believe that such blessings and protections were necessary. He half-dragged his father through the winding lanes to Bibleb-Akhet’s western boundary where, between a disintegrating lump of mud-brick that was both home and exile to a young woman whose mind had become infested with violent spirits, and the town’s offal pit, began an ancient avenue leading straight and level into the Red Land.

The way was paved, although most of the paving stones had long since found other employment, and those that remained served more to impede progress than to facilitate it. Low, compact mounds composed of the broken pieces of baked-clay bricks marched beside the broad aisle at precise 22-foot intervals, 24 of them on either side stretching ahead across the desert. No resident of Bibleb-Akhet could remember seeing those sorry heaps in any better condition, and the last person who could speak authoritatively regarding their original form and function had apparently died before doing so.

The priest and his son picked their way along the once-stately boulevard to its end and stood together before a once-stately shrine, an imperfectly rectangular box about five feet high, and long enough and broad enough for three grown men to lie down within. That three grown men might attempt to do so was unlikely, since the sole access to the shrine was the ubiquitous “false door” of Egyptian invention, a purely cosmetic representation allowing passage only to gods, spirits and imaginative musings. The mud-brick upper structure squatted precariously atop the uneven remnants of neatly laid stone walls, hinting that the shrine had once afforded a somewhat grander aspect. The few and scattered vestiges of white plaster still clinging to the roof and walls could, at first introduction, be easily mistaken for a random application of bird dung. Nevertheless, that crumbling, sun-baked carbuncle upon the face of the desert was the divine and august abode of Bibleb, and that it contained wonders beyond mortal description Djamose had no doubt.

Releasing his son’s hand, Bib-useka stepped forward, un-slung the fish-grass bag he’d been carrying from about his neck and fell prostrate in front of the altar. In marked contrast to Bibleb’s unlovely shrine, Bibleb’s altar was a thing to be admired, a precious block of smoothly finished black granite standing waist high and at one time embellished at its top corners by four “horns” not typical of the Egyptian devotional aesthetic. That one of the horns and the corner upon which it had stood were no longer in evidence was not deemed by the Children of Bibleb to hamper the performance of the altar’s holy office, a sensible position considering that five generations of the town’s collective productivity couldn’t hope to replace it.

“Bibleb, I am your servant,” Bib-Useka intoned, effortlessly assuming the timbre and cadence reserved to the priestly classes. “Bibleb, your servant is before you.”

Without rising, he reached into the fish-grass bag on the ground beside him and withdrew a small quantity of bread and dried goat meat wrapped in coarse fish-grass fabric. Reaching up, he set the offering on the dusty altar and continued.

“The servant gives food to Bibleb. The servant gives strength to Bibleb.”

He motioned Djamose to join him at the altar. The boy moved forward, dropping to his knees and planting his forehead in the sand. A powerful thrill surged through him. Djamose had worshiped at Bibleb’s shrine many times before, but he’d never before been there alone with his father, had never before witnessed the personal communion between the god and his priest, and had certainly never before approached Bibleb as a direct petitioner. That he was fated to become Bibleb’s strong right hand he already knew, but his first taste of that heady reality set a thousand sistrums ringing within his head.

“Bibleb eats and grows strong,” chanted Bib-useka. “The gift of the servant is the strength of Bibleb. The strength of Bibleb is the joy of His servant. Life, health, strength to Bibleb.”

Face-down in the dirt before his god, Djamose felt his spirit rise like a falcon in flight, borne aloft on the mighty wings of a benevolent destiny. Bibleb was his god, and he was Bibleb’s servant, and their special bond transcended all ages of that ageless land.

“Now it’s your turn,” whispered his father, without raising or turning his head.

Djamose fell to earth, instantly and hard.

“What?” he hissed.

“It’s your turn,” said Bib-useka, kindly, but insistently. “Give something to Bibleb.”

The boy’s hot rapture turned to cold horror. He had nothing to give. Why, he screamed in his head, didn’t I bring something? That he hadn’t the first idea what might constitute a suitable temple gift didn’t even occur to him. What he knew for certain was that his first semi-private audience with Bibleb was ending in disaster before it had a proper chance to start. His triumph was plummeting in ruin, his euphoria choked by ashes, his divine bond smashed to splinters.

“Go ahead,” coaxed Bib-useka, gently. “Make an offering.

Utterly paralyzed, it required Djamose several moments and all of his five-year-old will to speak.

“I don’t have anything,” he breathed, his eyes wide with alarm and still staring straight at the ground. “I didn’t bring anything.”

His father knew that, of course. It was as he’d intended.

“Hmmm…”, murmured Bib-useka, turning his head slightly and knitting his brow in concern. “Bibleb must have a gift. I don’t know how we can leave for Ta’ Sobek without Bibleb’s blessing, and I don’t know how we can get Bibleb’s blessing without an offering. Nobody comes to the temple without an offering, Djamose. Nobody. This is bad, son. Very bad.”

Djamose’s unhappiness couldn’t have been more complete if Sobek himself had stormed up the ruinous avenue, ripped both of his arms from his body and ate them while he watched. He was going to cry, and he knew it. Bawl and blubber right in front of Bibleb and in front of his father and such a weak and impious worm as he could never be appointed the great god’s earthly instrument. He was just summoning up the wind necessary to express his abject misery in long and full-throated wails when his father clucked and raised a single finger.

“I have an idea.”

An Apostle’s Tale 2.1 – Twilight of Faith

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In the beginning, Djamose was happy.

In the way of idiots and small children, he accepted everything that came within his orbit as right and fine and amply sufficient to his perfect contentment. His father was tall and strong and wise, his mother beautiful and kindly and properly doting, his sister, Asha, an endlessly diverting companion. He knew the other children of his village to be smart and funny and rich in important information, and he knew their parents to embody every good quality that he could name, and many more that he couldn’t. To Djamose, the wretched mud huts of Bibleb-Akhet were palaces, the close, gritty passages between them over-flowed with delight and interest. The murky water he drank from his cracked bowl flowed over his lips like cool bliss, and he couldn’t conceive of a meal more satisfying than a crust of coarse barley bread afloat in a thin millet soup.

Exploring the desert’s stony margin with Asha and the other children as they went about harvesting the scanty crop of fish grass that clung to life amid the rocks, he marveled at the harsh Red Land’s immensity and mystery. He feared the gods of those dry wastes, yet happily sought their company and never tired of pursuing their secrets.

Swatting flies away from his mother while she and the other village women gossiped and sang and with bleeding fingers twisted that wretched material into baskets and mats and exceedingly small profits, Djamose felt only awe before the simple plant’s miraculous utility and the impossible artistry of the rough, graceful hands that transformed it into wretched wares.

 Each morning as he watched his father march away with the other grown sons of Bibleb toward the unseen land beyond Ibhi Wadjet to tend herds from which they received no milk, build light and airy houses far more comfortable than their own, and muck out ditches and canals that delivered not a drop of water to their benefit, he easily imagined them spending the hot days pleasantly engaged in exciting activities that, while not clearly defined, were surely remarkable and heroic and praiseworthy. Wadjet’s Teeth he considered a reassuring shield against certain poorly understood adult perplexities that existed in some distant realm and frequently cropped up disapprovingly in village conversation. For that matter, Djamose believed that when the morning breezes blew from Khepera’s mouth it was the desert itself that smelled green and fresh and deliciously wet, for he had never seen the verdant landscape so close at hand and assumed the playful spirits of sun-baked grit and hard flint and choking dust could exude the scents of paradise whenever they fancied.

Perhaps more than anything, Djamose was happy because he knew himself to be beloved of Bibleb. After all, could his life be so favored without the great god’s constant and tender approval? And wasn’t his own father, Bib-useka, personally appointed by Bibleb to serve as his chief minister? Granted, as reflected by Bibleb-Akhet’s rather subdued manner of worship the high priest of Bibleb enjoyed little in the way of special privilege. Bib-useka’s only badge of rank was a thin copper bracelet from which any identifying markings had long since worn away, and his principal duties were seeing to the orderliness of Bibleb’s shrine and reciting the ancient liturgies during the god’s relatively few festivals and formal observances. Even so, that unremarkable bracelet shown like burnished heaven in the child’s eyes, and listening to his father intone the mysteries of Bibleb before the assembled faithful in the sonorous tones and measured cadences distinctive to priests was all the proof he needed that Bibleb-Akhet was the eye of everything good and holy and wonderful, and that he, Djamose, born of the storm, was the eye of Bibleb-Akhet.

Unreasoning joy is common enough in children, but only the lucky or the unbalanced can nourish it into adulthood. Sooner or later rational people surrender the delusions of youth, allowing them to gradually sink to the very bottom of their hearts, locking foolish chimeras like supreme confidence, unshakable hope, and unconditional love in a strong chest were they can’t influence the natural and necessary course of life. They take out those luxuries only rarely, in quiet moments, remembering what it felt like to be truly happy, smiling and sighing over their former innocence. For most, that chest takes many years to fill, ensuring a relatively gentle transition from wide-eyed wonder to jaded cynicism. For Djamose, the evolution was rather more abrupt, and certainly more traumatic.

Possibly his happiness was simply too perfect. Possibly his illusions were simply too grand. Possibly his untested psychological apparatus was simply unprepared to withstand the decidedly unwelcome and certainly unexpected truths that were the bars on the cage of his existence. Whatever the case, on the 38th day of Flood, in the 11th year of the blessed reign of Pharoah Amenhotep III, Great Spear and Shield of the Two Lands, the self-appointed Eye of Bibleb-Akhet got his first unvarnished look at his place in the world. On that bright morning, Bib-useka took his supremely confident, unshakably hopeful and unconditionally loving son by the hand and led him east through Wadjet’s Teeth into the moist and waiting mouth of Sobek, and it can fairly be said that Djamose was never happy again.

My Dinner with Madalyn

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A while back a friend invited me to join an exciting new discussion group forming on our little piece of the Good Earth.

Lots of smart people had expressed an interest in coming, he said. One expected member had once run for the state legislature, he said, and another one worked in Washington. D.C., rubbing elbows daily with the nation’s movers and shakers. The very cream of the mountain area’s intellectual crop would be expounding for my personal edification, he said, and I would be a fool to miss a priceless opportunity to be so edified. I’ll admit to feeling secretly flattered that he thought me of a level to exchange words with such luminaries, but sitting around and talking isn’t really high on my list of things-to-do-tonight and I hoped he could flesh out the offer before I verbally signed on the invisible dotted line.

“Sounds like it could be fun,” I said, deftly hedging. “What kind of a group is it?”

“Nothing too formal,” he assured me. “Just some people who like discussing philosophy, and politics and current events. We’re planning to meet once a month over dinner. Very casual.”

He was playing to my weaknesses, and the supper-shot struck hard. Still, it takes a lot to get me out of the house after 5 o’clock, so I pressed for details.

“Does this group have a name?”

“Not officially,” he said, with an offhand shrug. “But we’ve been playing with the idea of calling it the ‘Freethinkers Group’. You seem to have strong opinions about everything. I think you’d really like this.”

There are many gaping holes in my cultural fabric, and the term “freethinkers” was one of them. I envisioned a sturdy cadre of lofty souls bravely pressing the boundaries of intellectual achievement.

“But that’s not firm, or anything,” he continued. “In fact, one of the purposes of the first meeting will be to give our group a name and decide exactly what we’re all about. The worst that can happen is you’ll get a good meal, and if you don’t like what you hear you never have to go back.”

What the heck. He was right about my love of endless argument, after all, and there were a couple of restaurants I was looking for an excuse to try.

“What the heck,” I said. The first convocation of the Evergreen Freethinkers Group was held at the local Himalayan buffet, and maybe 10 people showed up. The failed statehouse candidate and Washington bigwig turned out to be the same person and, as far as I could tell, she was selected principally to serve as a kind of celebrity recruiting tool. She styled herself an “advisor and consultant”, but it took me less than five minutes to divine that she was a Washington lobbyist. Her presence in the group was not reassuring. On the other hand, the head Freethinker and the chef behind our little banquet for the brain was a person I knew well, and liked even better. And if most of the others were strangers to me, they all seemed nice enough, and nice enough is good enough in my book.

Supper was tasty, conversation sparkling, and my seat surprisingly comfortable, almost ergonomic, enabling me to shovel pork masala down the hatch at peak efficiency while waiting for somebody to say something somehow related to the group, or freethinking, or thinking at all. Trouble was, nobody did. I hate to take things on myself, but felt pushed into a corner.

“So what’s a freethinker, anyway?” I finally asked, a little slyly, trying to sound like I totally knew what a freethinker was and the question was really designed to open a broader discussion of the deeper nuances of that species. The response left me feeling even more adrift. Most of my fellow diners became instantly engrossed in the remaining contents of their plates. A handful leaned back in their chairs and exchanged those pointedly expectant looks people get when they’re deferring the question to someone else. After a long beat, somebody finally took a stab at it.

“Freethinkers are people who explore different perspectives on a variety of topics.”

Uh-huh.

“So that’s what this group is?” I asked, feeling intellectually, if not gustatorially, unsatisfied. “We just talk about stuff? It seems like we should have some guidelines, or at least a theme. Otherwise this is just a once-a-month supper club, right?”

“Well what’s wrong with a once-a-month supper club?” smiled one wag, feigning hurt surprise to general and vaguely relieved laughter. As I knew I ultimately must, I was rapidly establishing myself as the squeaky wheel and malcontent in their cozy little chat room. I leapt to damage control.

“I just mean I was under the impression this was some kind of philosophical thing. Did I misunderstand?”

“Oh, no,” said the lobbyist, throwing me a kindly bone. “It definitely is a philosophical discussion group. Freethinking is all about philosophy.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. “Okay, so, just as a starting point, could you define exactly what the freethinker philosophy is?”

More plate-staring, more questioning glances.

“I guess you could say freethinkers have a humanist perspective,” said the lobbyist, finally. “In fact, I think we should call ourselves the Evergreen Humanists Society.”

Alas, once again my vast and comprehensive ignorance proved a humiliating barrier to understanding. In these enlightened times, I expect most everybody is familiar with Humanism, is versed in the Humanist agenda and prefers light Humanist tracts for summer beach-reading. I had exactly no idea what she was talking about.

“Okay, so what is a Humanist?” I pleaded, pathetically frustrated. “What is the Humanist philosophy?”

Uncomfortable silence. It was astonishing, really. I was sure that every other person at that table could have answered the question in their sleep, but clearly nobody wanted to. Perhaps feeling responsible for having evoked the Humanist specter before one so benighted as I, the lobbyist at last addressed me in that sweetly patient way usually reserved for the instruction of small children and the dangerously inebriated.

“Humanists believe in human solutions to problems instead of religious ones.”

Somewhere in the back of my murky mind the pilot light winked on.

“I’m not following. So we’re against religion?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “We don’t have anything against religion. We just don’t think it should have any influence on social, economic or political decisions.”

“Well I’m not sure there’s any way to avoid that, short of Thought Police,” I said. “People vote their conscience, and in America most people are religious. You can’t really separate one from the other, can you?”

“Oh, no, and we wouldn’t want to try. But we can educate people about the Humanist point of view and enact laws to prevent organized religion from imposing its moral agenda on the rest of us.”

“The rest of us being…”

“Anybody who doesn’t subscribe to the dominant religious viewpoint.”

With a whoosh and a roar the burner kicked in and I was suddenly afire with comprehension. My mess-mates, many of them pretty solid acquaintances, a couple of them good friends, were atheists. Well why in the world didn’t they just say so at the get-go? Were they afraid I was going to leap from my chair brandishing a crucifix and hose them all down with holy water?

“So humanists are athiests,” I pronounced, with a melting sigh.

“Oh, no. Many humanists are atheists, but they don’t have to be.”

“So a Christian can be a humanist, too?”

“Oh, yes, as long as they don’t let their private beliefs affect their public policy.”

“I’ve never met a Christian like that, but then I guess I haven’t met all the Christians, yet. So humanists think Christians are okay as long as they vote like atheists.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. We simply believe that the solutions to human problems lie in human reason, not in some higher power.”

“But if a Christian’s higher power tells them to feed, like, 10 zillion starving African children, that’s a solution to a big human problem.”

“But religious aid always comes with strings attached,” she said, plainly growing exasperated. “Christian charities have no right to impose their values on other cultures.”

I was going to point out that dead people have no values at all and ask how many shoes humanist ministries distributed last year, but the table was clearly losing patience with me. It belatedly dawned on me that no member of this discussion group had come wanting, or expecting, to hear a dissenting opinion. It was a meeting of the faithful, and I was the heretical fly in their communal bowl of thenthuck. Conversation continued in a desultory way for a few minutes, most of it geared toward soothing the lobbyist’s wounded psyche. I was uncomfortable, and I sensed most of my companions were by then uncomfortable with me. Still, the tapering banter was instructive of the humanist worldview. While they were wonderfully tolerant of virtually every religion on the planet, their indulgence did not extend to Christian philosophies. Any idea, concept or belief originating in the Bible but lacking the authoritative support of a competing philosophy such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and even Islam and some of the least restrictive Protestant Christian sects, was immediately and firmly dismissed as fruit of the poisoned tree. Their scorn was particularly bitter toward the Church of Rome in general and the Pope in particular.

“The Catholic Church is basically a religious tyranny,” said one fellow, with dramatic emphasis. “I personally find it incredible that anybody still buys into a bunch of 2,000-year-old superstitions.”

Heads nodded all around, and I knew I would not be returning to the Evergreen Freethinkers Group, or Humanist Society, or whatever other not-especially-descriptive label they ultimately chose to misrepresent themselves.

But please don’t misunderstand. People who know me will tell you I’m no champion of religion, Christianity or otherwise. In the interest of full disclosure, I was raised a Catholic, went to Catechism classes both summer and winter until my 16th birthday, and have always found Catholicism’s deep historical continuity among its most appealing features.

Then again, I dropped religion like a hot rock the first chance I got. Yes, it was partly laziness and late Saturday nights, and partly a general boredom with the monotonous sameness of Mass, but mostly it was because, like many teens of my generation, I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, took Philosophy 100 because it sounded like an easy A, and joined in many a profound and chemically-enhanced debate with others of questing minds.

Thus philosophically fortified, I decided long ago that the Big Questions are called that because they’re quite plainly beyond the reach of our small mental faculties, and that anybody who claims to know The Truth is taking far too much on faith. I’m not just not-religious, I don’t consider myself particularly spiritual in any sense.

On the other hand, I believe in a higher power, if only because the world is far too miraculous to be the product of mere happenstance. I believe in moral absolutes, because as a student of history I’m familiar with endless disheartening examples of the ease with which the human animal can slide into brutality when not restrained by conventional conscience. And I believe in the continuation of the soul because it has been my observation that Wise Nature wastes nothing, and it would seem out of character for it to discard my consciousness, or yours, or a bug’s, or a ferret’s, or a humanist’s.

If anything, my rudimentary philosophy is a shabby patchwork of Socrates’ “Credo”, classical Stoicism and Kiri-Kin-tha’s First Law of Metaphysics, with a strong dash of Adam Smith as observed by Plato’s Third Eye. But if I didn’t take the humanist rejection of Christian philosophy personally – and I really didn’t – it still bothered me on practical grounds.

Driving home from the restaurant I thought for the first time in a long time of a story I’d once written for the newspaper. The local Catholic priest was launching a series of philosophical discussion groups aimed at high school students. The talks were supposed to be non-denominational, and if I had my doubts about that I still thought it would make an interesting article, and I was pleased to see more than a dozen kids turn out for the premier. Clearly sharing my skepticism, the students started out by doing their best to force the priest into a religious corner from which he couldn’t possibly escape. I was tickled, and secretly hoped they’d succeed, but it quickly became obvious that we in the audience were both over-matched and out-classed.

To my surprise, the vicar displayed perfect mastery of philosophical schools from Buddhism, to Taoism, to Zoroastrianism, to Islam, to Druidism and even animism, and he spoke of them all with unmistakable respect and, I thought, a somewhat less-than-perfectly-pious enthusiasm. Apparently as nonplussed as I was, one of the kids asked him how it was that a Catholic priest came to be so versed in the faiths of infidels.

“It’s standard teaching at the seminary,” he said. “Philosophy is a search for truth, and all religions are just searching for the same truth by different paths. Catholicism is one path, but there are plenty of others that are just as valid. By dismissing a philosophy – almost any philosophy – you’re depriving yourself of the truth it contains.”

And that, it occurred to me, was the problem with my freethinking friends. At any given moment, I thought, thousands of monks, priests, pastors and prelates are studiously contemplating and debating, pondering and weighing, in a relentless search for truth, and they’d been at it for more than 21 long centuries. Surely among them they’ve come up with something worthy of consideration. Yet those prickly humanists will reject out of hand the hard-won product of billions of man-hours of concentrated philosophical thought simply because of its tangential association with a historical figure named Jesus of Nazareth.

Say what you will about the official Catholic stances on gay marriage and female priests, but throwing that baby out with that bathwater is just willful ignorance, and that’s just bad policy. While deeming themselves the most enlightened of humans, my dinner companions were, in fact, among the most closed-minded, certainly far more so than that well-read Catholic priest.

True, humanists will probably never wage violent crusade against Believers, but only because there will probably never be enough of them together at one time to make a good show of it – even freethinkers aren’t immune from base natural passions. And if they’re not already on a non-violent crusade to prevent fellow citizens from acting upon their personal philosophies as their consciences demand, then what was the point of our most delicious supper?

Love it or hate it, and for all its many abuses, past and present, organized religion is the greatest force for good existing in the world today. And whatever your thoughts on the Pope, Catholic Charities International will do more to alleviate human suffering today than the American Humanist Society will accomplish from the instant of its foundation until the end of time.

I would ask of the humanists of my acquaintance only that which they would ask of the Christians of my acquaintance: Live and let live, Brothers and Sisters. If you don’t want to give up your right to the free and unfettered expression of your faith, don’t expect them to give up theirs. It’s a free country, after all, and that’s a foundational American philosophy.   I never went back to the Evergreen Freethinkers/Humanists/Supper Club, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t miss me. I’ve been back to the Himalayan buffet lots of times, though. The sha momo is fantastic.