what the egyptians got right

What the Egyptians got right

 

I went to see the Omni presentation of “Mummies: secrets of the Pharaoh’s” recently and was surprised to see how much they got right about the future. The ancient Egyptians believed there was an afterlife that would unite them with their bodies someday (if not nightly) so they took immeasurable care in preserving their bodies and internal organs; separate jars for liver, lungs, intestines and stomach. The heart was left in situ because that would be weighed for judgment in the afterlife.  The exception was their brains which they didn’t consider important, and for some of us that is absolutely true; not to be judgmental or anything. The pharaohs believed they would spend time with Ra following him around doing his duties, still acting powerful and deity-like but commoners were sent to a separate less comfortable existence.

The Omni presentation even showed the mummy of Ramses, presumably the pharaoh that went head on with Charlton Heston, I mean, Moses of the book of Exodus fame. Ramses is possibly  the only biblical character we have a visual of. That was awesome, to see the face of the man that battled with God and had seen the face of Moses, who had seen God. Well Exodus 33:11-23 says he had seen God’s back side, anyway, that’s more than we’ve seen. I have witnessed his miracles and sensed his presence, but I’ve not been on a mountain while God passed over to let me see his glory. That was Moses gift alone.

Over time, from the elite to the lower classes, mummification eventually became the norm. The preservation of bodies was discovered by unearthed corpses that had been buried and found in the desert soil that had never decayed due to the dehydrating nature of the local sands combined with the bacterial killing properties of the environment which halted natural rotting. Yet, the rich Egyptians paid in advance for a 70 day mummification process and well stocked burials while the common man was just put in a hole in the ground with a few meager processions and achieved the same effect albeit without an elaborate tomb warehouse since the affluent not only preserved their bodies they built extravagant tombs expecting to wake up in the realm of Osiris well supplied. In their eternal resting place they stored food, gold, furniture, statues, seeds to plant for more food, personal grooming items, and clothes. The list goes on and varied with each person. Eternal resting places, that is, until discovered by looters, apparently even then the prosperous dead were victims of criminal activity. No amount of curses or magical incantations could prevent theft at that time anymore that security alarms today can.

I also believe in an afterlife where we go and reside with a God (The God, actually) and become kings, queens and priests, Rev 1:6. I don’t need to have my physical heart examined or weighed for entrance, as Jesus took care of my admission into heaven by shedding his blood for me, Romans 3:21-26. However, my spiritual heart will be judged, Romans 10: 9-13.  I also believe, like the Egyptians, we’ll  be reconnected to our bodies again but no  matter  what state they were left in here on earth; mummified, burnt, eaten by wildlife, or naturally disintegrated; Job 19:26-27, 1 Corinthians 15:35-49 (one of my personal favorite scriptures). I’m also pleased to know that when I die and God reconnects me to my restored celestial body I don’t have to worry about housing arrangements because he’s there now constructing my living space, John 14: 1-4 (another one of my personal favorites). Food will be abundant, Rev 19:9, and we’ll be well dressed, Rev 19:8 in clothes provided for us in advance. There will be no caste system; the poor and well-off will enter through the same gates. I don’t need to stock pile accessories that can be stolen (Luke 12:32-34) because my God is clearly more capable of meeting all my needs than Ra was for the Egyptians. My needs, not my wants. That isn’t even true, because all I want is to bow before God in thanksgiving and see Jesus on his right hand side before I search eternity’s sector for my relatives and meet all the heroes of old and hear their wonderful testimonies. Amen and Alleluia.

So even though the Egyptians got the after life scenario right;resurrection of body and heavenly existence, they just put their eggs in the wrong basket, faith in the wrong deity, bodies in the wrong sarcophagus.

 

religious artwork

RELIGIOUS ARTWORK

The Wari’s, Lords of the Ancient Andes, must have been very religious, I reflected as I wandered through the art exhibit at the Kimbell’s museum in Fort Worth. Most of the ceramics, and textiles on display had a staff deity in some form positioned prominently and elaborately on their surfaces. There were cups, urns and assorted pottery with creative and colorful depictions of various forms of the staff deity and his companions. The deity was woven into tunics and gloves. Art work on ear ornaments also displayed the deity’s image. There were mirrors with the deity’s likeness on the backside filled in with shells, and precious stones. Very pretty, and I’m sure they were sold, custom made,  at the local Niemen Marcus , not  massed produced for the local Wal-Marts. There were even little table top representations also painstakingly made of wood, stone and precious shells and gems.  Pocket sized jade figurines were also present to carry with them. Yes, the Wari were reminded of one or another of their deities at every turn. They must have really honored and revered him/them.

I wondered, as I moseyed through the museum, how the generations a thousand years from now would view our religious beliefs when they stumbled on a treasure of our art work they unearthed in some cave or unexpectantly abandoned city destroyed by nuclear warfare, tsunami , earthquake, comet or some other  unknown catastrophe.

When they excavate our pottery, dinnerware, cloths, purses and jewelry would they get a grasp of our deep faith? Would they get the correct impression of us? When I go the mall, department store, Family dollar, on line shopping or craft shows I see many objects with evidence of our convictions. Blankets, purses, necklaces, baseball caps, statues ect. with crosses emblazoned on them. Not just crosses, the blessed mother of Jesus is an iron on applique on baseball caps, purses have gem stone crosses fastened to their sides, tall candles have glued on glittery haloed Jesus’.  At cemeteries how many corpses would they disentomb to discover smothered with otherworldly tattoos and say to themselves, “Wow they really loved their God.”

I’m sure they would imagine we were a very devout society based on their archeological finds.  But I live in the here and now and when I see these religious icons I don’t feel our connection with God. I feel like the massed produced art work is just that and nothing more.  I don’t think the Blessed Mother is honored having her image on a baseball cap of all things.  I see crosses hanging from review mirrors right next to big square fuzzy dice balls. I see cross jewelry on drug dealers, drug addicts, thieves, prostitutes who still live the life style, unrepentantly. Heck my favorite critical opinions are of Madonna and her crosses. It’s not my job to be anyone’s judge, I can’t read the hearts of these people and I can’t always control my own, but I am entitled to discernment.  We’re supposed to draw some conclusions to be able to avoid being corrupted by bad influences, to eschew wolves in sheep’s clothing.

 I think we’ve taken the sacred and downsized it to common everyday artwork.  Our minds have become desensitized to the consecrated message of the cross, that it was the execution device of our Lord and Savior, our sacrificial lamb, that it was the plus sign that adds believers to Jesus’s family. It’s now just something to adorn with diamonds and sapphires. Familiarity breeds contempt. Wearing a cross doesn’t make us sanctified any more than wearing a fur coat makes us a mink.
 

Based on the reality of our artwork is it possible that maybe we’re wrong about the Wari, Lords of the Andes and their dedication to the staff deity?   Maybe to the ancient artisans of that time it was just something to fill their coffers with as it is today for some and also was in the Apostle Paul’s time, who lived just a thousand years earlier than the Wari on another continent.  In the city of Ephesus Paul and his coworkers were nearly killed when Demetrius, a silver smith who made shrines for the Goddess Diana, admitted that the worship of Diana hadn’t hurt his retirement account any and was threatened by Paul and his traveling companions as they preached Jesus and turned some of the populace away from Diana and hence the Ephesian economy.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in the cross and own a few, a very few, myself, but we must be careful to not take the cross and its message for granted for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are saved it is the power of God. I hope that when my home is quarried by archaeologists generations from now I leave the correct impression of my religious believes.
 

Math. 10:16

Acts 19:23-27

Hebrews 5:14

1 corinthians  5:5-12

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

ancestors

 

 

monday, September 23, 2013

ancestors

  I looked intensely into the eyes of strangers in my stack of old black and white photos hoping to read the minds of the subjects.  These were photographs of people long gone. Long gone before I was born, heck, most had been gone before my parents were even born.  Yet here was proof that they had once lived, had breathed,  and had at one time stood or sat in front of a camera to preserve their images. These strangers were related to me,  making them relative strangers,  without their existence I wouldn’t be here, or at the least would be a very different person.

My Aunt Dot had given the pictures to me, when she had downsized her possessions to move to a retirement center because I was presently diving into the family history, trying to lengthen the family tree. I had started off with a seed, then a trunk, now I had a few branches. The search had begun because my dad wanted to find out about his great grandfather John, a civil war veteran who had fought for the north and died in 1876. Though we don’t have a picture of him Dad had had his sword once.  I remember it used to be kept in the hall closet, now it’s in my brother’s possession. However, I have the picture of my Great Great Granddad John’s, wife, Abigail, who died in 1910.

Dad and I had left Texas in the late 1990’s for a week and gone to their burial site in New England. Though the graveyard was well kept, Dad had surmised that no one had visited these particular relatives’ graves in decades. Some of their adult children were buried near them in unmarked graves because of financial limitations. How sad.  Once gone it’s not long before you’re forgotten. I was actually surprised the cemetery was still alive, excuse the pun. I had expected it to be some frowzy plot off the freeway run over with weeds and wild trees reserved for civil war burials but it was a tidy, growing necropolis. It had taken quite a bit of time to locate dear departed Grandparents John and  Abigail Pierce and family.

I looked again into the eyes of my great grandmother, Estelle.  I had some of her jewelry given to me by my aunt. I had worn one of her  simple diamond rings when dad and I had gone cemetery hopping up north. She was buried near her husband, Willard Pierce, who my dad was named after, son of the afore mentioned John  and some other relatives I had never meant but whose pictures were part of my acquired stack of photos.  It was really erie to see my very much alive dad standing next to a tombstone with his name on it and date of death in 1935. Dad had hinted I take grandma Estelle’s diamond ring and bury it in the top soil over her grave so she could have it back. I ignored him as though he hadn’t uttered a word hoping he had been joking, but not convinced that was the case.

Then there was the picture of of a man I knew as—get  ready for this—my  grandma Pierce’s mother’s husband’s father, or Great Great Grand Daddy Thompson. It was an old faded photo taken in Belfast Ireland of a man wearing a leprechaun styled hat, a fringe of hair (that I imagined was red) outlining  his jaw, long sideburns and a very serious expression as though smiling would hurt more than child birth. The back of the photo discloses the name and address of the studio that captured his image on paper, or cardboard or whatever. I googled them to see if I could order more copies but they no longer exist. Imagine that. Business must not have been very good.

The reason I had gathered my dearly but not recently departed  family of strangers together on this day was so I could take them to the post office’s coping machine to reproduce them for my cousin, who I’ve never met face to face but have shared many phone calls comparing our genealogical research efforts. 

Once inside the post office I was badly shaken when I discovered Grand Daddy Thompson wasn’t with us anymore,(yes I know he’s been  dead for decades,  I mean his picture was gone!) I retraced my steps, several times, in my search for him. I even asked the postal workers , a few hours into the search, if he had come into their custody some how by a good Samaritan who might have found him lying around the parking lot, but no such luck. I had lost Great, Great grand daddy Thompson. After years and I do  mean years of being safely kept in the family archives he was now a missing person, er, a missing flat cardboard representation anyway . I only had my unreliable memory to remember him by and God only knew how long that would last.

I punished myself emotionally to the point of physical illness, over and over again for having been so undependable, afraid to ever face my aunt again. My Aunt Dot, by the way was now in the company of Grandmas Estelle and Abigail, and Grandpas John and Thompson , but as formidable as she was in life I still feared her reaction in the hereafter.  Was she sitting next to Great, Great Grand Daddy shaking her head and tsking me, saying “I know I should have know better, She’d loose her head if it wasn’t attached?”  I couldn’t even bring myself to disclose the truth to my father for dread of seeing  the disappointment in his eyes.

I emphatically believe in hauntings now because I was haunted for months with unprofitable notions on where the picture might have slipped, like for example into some odd crevice, or under some piece of furniture, or stuck behind one of the other pictures waiting to pop up and yell BOO.

Months later after I reconciled myself to the obvious, Grand Daddy Thompson was MIA, I had to make another rare stop at the post office, my first visit since my lamentable loss. Standing in line waiting to get to the service desk I occupied myself with mindless daydreaming to divert memories of my deplorable ineptitude preserving the family’s memorabilia given to me in sacred trust.

I looked at the line still ahead of me, at the clerks at work at the desk, and then my eyes drifted upwards to the shelves on the wall behind the workers. Without warning my right arm shot up, my index finger pointed out stiff and straight and a bellow erupted from my lips, “That’s my Grand Daddy Thompson!”

 I stood spell bound for a second hoping no one had noticed me. Not realistic, no way in hell had that eruption slipped by unnoticed, (excuse my language but that phrase captures the moment better than anything). Transactions halted while everyone present in the range of my vocalization stopped chattering and centered their attention on me, some even pulled young children closer for fear I might be dangerous. I slowly lowered my arm and tried to look just as curious as they were about who had screamed out like that. Nope. They knew it had been me.

Taking a deep breath and trying to recoup some dignity I explained that I had been looking for that picture for months. I was waved on to the head of the line where one of the clerks explained that and old lady had found the picture lying in the parking lot months ago on her way back to her car. When she brought it back in a week later one of the clerks remembered a panicky middle aged woman inquiring about so he and placed it on public display hoping she (I) would return to claim it. I explained the middle aged woman must have been my mother. Yeah, that was a flat out lie alright, since she also was with my Aunt Dot.

I was so unquestionably relieved to be reunited with Grand Daddy Thompson I forgot my business with the post office and rushed home to rejoin him with his family. 

Now what was the purpose of this story? Glad you asked. It struck me that someday in the future I dream of being in another line far, far away in different dimension. A line of people, uncountable in number,  now conquerors, flowing through a dozen gigantic pearl entrances all streaming towards a radiant figure greater than any super hero, sportsman or celebrity we’ve ever known, seated in an enormous throne grander than any  earthly king’s that has ever lived.  Another man I had been searching  for, but  who had actually found me when I was lost. A man whose picture I didn't possess but who  I would recognize without problem. At that time I will shoot out my right arm, point my index finger and bellow, “That’s Jesus, my Lord and Savior!” without being noticed by anyone else because we’ll all be unified in our outbursts of praise and gratitude.  And then, probably after fleeting millennia spent praising our Redeemer, I would hook up with the souls that had belonged to the pictures my Aunt Dot had entrusted to my care. And no, I would no longer be fearful of my Aunt’s formidableness. (I hope)