All the Ways We Bleed

This morning, I continue to be tired, but it's a good tired, born of good classes, work on final papers, and pleasant days at the office getting the tasks of a campus done.  Let me just record some reflections that I don't want to lose, reflections that probably don't hang together as a cohesive essay but are worth capturing nonetheless.

--I'm listening to Terry Gross interviewing Dave Grohl, whom I've always loved.  What a delight.  He's self taught, so his approach to creativity and music gives hope to people like me who don't have lots of time to learn music theory.  He talks about how he approaches the guitar as if each string is a drum in a drum kit.  Fascinating!  And he's got his guitar with him to demonstrate what he's talking about.

--The other night, I was listening to my New Testament teacher talking about crucifixion and resurrection, while my spouse was in the other room watching this strange vampire movie.  It had the bad cinematography of a cheap 70's movie:  grainy with awful sound quality.  The plot:  boy meets girl in a bar, and they have sex, and oh dear, she might be a vampire.  There's a middle-aged male detective, that squat kind of man who populates so many movies.  He will never be able to attract a nubile vampire girl into his bed, and so he's out to decimate all their joy.

--I spent the end of Thanksgiving week-end looking at the 4 crucifixion stories in the gospels.  On Sunday, I sat in church, and thought about Jesus being both God and human.  I wondered how the story would have turned out if Christ had behaved differently.  I am not a person who subscribes to the theory of substitutionary atonement, the idea that Christ must be crucified to appease a God who needs that sacrifice so that humans can be saved.  Crucifixion was a capital punishment reserved by Romans for enemies of the state, so clearly, Jesus was doing something to put him on a collision course with the occupying force/imperial army.  What if Jesus had been a different person?  What if there had been no crucifixion?  How would we understand God?  How would history have been different?

--I wrote this in for a seminary assignment, but I realized it was taking me in a different direction, that while it was interesting, wasn't within the scope of the assignment:    "Could there have been a means of salvation that didn’t involve crucifixion if Jesus had behaved differently?  I believe in a universe that is rooted in free will, in which nothing is pre-determined.  If I truly believe in a universe rooted in free will, does this mean that God can’t be omniscient?"

--For the record, I don't believe that God is omniscient.  If we believe in free will, then God can't be omniscient.  And yes, I know all the ways that people try to say that we can have both free will and an omniscient God, but I don't agree.

--In the not too distant past, I'd have been burned as a heretic.  I am OK with that.

--Speaking of witches, it's also strange to be thinking about fleshly issues like vampires and crucifixion while the Supreme Court may get rid of Roe v. Wade.  I was thinking about my time in the 80's, when I was very careful with birth control since I lived in South Carolina where abortion was only legal in the first trimester.  I was thinking about all the ways women used to try to have abortions and how glad I was that abortion was safe and legal, even as I hoped never to need one.  I'm thinking about all the tender parts of the body, all the ways we bleed.