Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil
Maybe it is true that I was enjoying a respite from confinement and limitation. Ana has no such freedom. I just wandered off. I was immersed in a religious milieu, a clutter of all sorts of obediences and solitary ways melding over one another’s rules, bending straight edges to God into life forms of flow and curves as God herself would create.
Ana and I are still pondering “better excuses” for my tardiness.
“Actually Ana, I was looking at a statue of a goddess with thirty breasts.”
“Yes! I just knew that’s what you were doing!”
The tension melted into the full release of giggles and hugs.
“So you were already assuming I was pondering a goddess?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“One made up of woodsy stuff with acorns for breasts?”
“Is that what captivated you so completely you lost track of time?”
I look into the blue waters of Ana’s gaze, her flushed checks, and the softness of a woman with her breasts longing to nurture.
“Ana, this is what I saw today. Colleen is best in the other room when I tell this because it was from other lifetimes I’ve known. She would only be confused or frightened by it. But the little church is one of ‘syncretism.’ [Footnote]”
“What?”
“It’s the taboo that sent Moses into a rage at seeing the Hebrew people melting down their earthly gold into a statue of Baal. It was the first commandment broken. It would seem to be breaking of the rule to love the one God, the God of Abraham, above all others. But now it is known that there is only one God. And syncretism is simply a mixing together of images and traditions from different religions. But does one God require one creed?.”
Ana notices, “One creed, but a threesome of a God?”
“Yea, that would have sent Moses back up the mountain for sure. The one God who spoke to Abraham of countless stars and an eternity of grains of sand probably doesn’t really quake mountains in fear of statues made by human hands. But all this so-called Christian use of relics and amulets to elicit miraculous behavior probably still does separate people from knowing the God who even loves their enemies the same as them. That one God apparently doesn’t take orders from people, rather listens to our prayers with compassion.”
“So it took you a whole afternoon to figure this out?”
[Footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism – retrieved, May 26, 2022
(Continues Wednesday, February 1)
Lazarus Ink 