It was always one of our favourite lines, at Watling Street Lower School for the Children of Inebriated Gentlefolk - "....upon the chaos, dark and rude." What was the Chaos up to, we wondered, that earned it such censure? Was it outrageously profane or unnecessarily biological? Or was it merely impolite?
But that image of the dove-like - or, for the Celtic-minded - Wild-Goose-like - Spirit, brooding like bird over the egg-like potential of the Universal Void - that has stayed with me. And I'd planned a suitable talk for tomorrow on the motherly properties of God, and the brooding, hen-like nature of the Spirit, as a suitable counter-strike against the crass militarism of the so-called "Fathers' Day". Which everyone knows is correctly called "Fathering Sunday".
But we've printed off tomorrow's service sheets, and I discover that Hnaef has used the Not Really Sexist Version of the Bible in printing the reading. So instead of a hovering / moving / brooding, columbiform / anserine Spirit, we have "a wind from God" sweeping over the waters.
This gives me all sorts of problems. Mostly because I've already prepared my spiel. Obviously I could change it to take the reading into account. I could give the Beaker People a serious explanation of the whole ruach-breath-spirit-Spirit ambivalence, and risk somebody among them actually knowing something about Hebrew. I could explain how ruach is a feminine noun, and so shows that the feminine is implicit in the Godhead. Although of course for all I know this line of reason is totally untrue. After all, "girl" is neuter in German, and we don't expect young German women to behave in a neuter way. And cats walking from France to Germany change gender, but the EU hasn't put a special clinic on the border. And of course it also invites some subordinationist to conclude that's where the feminine ought to be in the Godhead - third. Hovering about brooding while the Father is "I Am"-ing and the Word is Peaking. And then I'd be leading into a whole two-hour digression on the unity of the nature and of one substance in the Persons, and how the Father is also Our Mother and a day will have gone by before we know it. And even then I'll have to make it clear that the Holy Spirit taking the feminine gender in Hebrew isn't the reason why she was "sweeping". Not that kind of sweeping.
You see, I blame the translators of the NRSV for all my problems. Whether they think "a wind from God" is the best translation, or whether they've gone for a liberal attempt to write the Trinity out of the Creaion, I don't know. Maybe that's just as good as all the others, which have the Spirit of God brooding, hovering, moving etc on the face of the waters. But be that as it may - if the Bible's not going to say what I want it to say, where does that leave us? They should have left it somewhere near what we like and know, and then we'd all know where we are.
So I've given up on the whole thing. I've just been on the phone to my friend, Perry Koresis, and she's going to come and teach everybody a lovely Trinitarian liturgical dance. I believe there may even be ribbons involved. That should be suitable for Fathers' Day, if nothing is.
But that image of the dove-like - or, for the Celtic-minded - Wild-Goose-like - Spirit, brooding like bird over the egg-like potential of the Universal Void - that has stayed with me. And I'd planned a suitable talk for tomorrow on the motherly properties of God, and the brooding, hen-like nature of the Spirit, as a suitable counter-strike against the crass militarism of the so-called "Fathers' Day". Which everyone knows is correctly called "Fathering Sunday".
But we've printed off tomorrow's service sheets, and I discover that Hnaef has used the Not Really Sexist Version of the Bible in printing the reading. So instead of a hovering / moving / brooding, columbiform / anserine Spirit, we have "a wind from God" sweeping over the waters.
This gives me all sorts of problems. Mostly because I've already prepared my spiel. Obviously I could change it to take the reading into account. I could give the Beaker People a serious explanation of the whole ruach-breath-spirit-Spirit ambivalence, and risk somebody among them actually knowing something about Hebrew. I could explain how ruach is a feminine noun, and so shows that the feminine is implicit in the Godhead. Although of course for all I know this line of reason is totally untrue. After all, "girl" is neuter in German, and we don't expect young German women to behave in a neuter way. And cats walking from France to Germany change gender, but the EU hasn't put a special clinic on the border. And of course it also invites some subordinationist to conclude that's where the feminine ought to be in the Godhead - third. Hovering about brooding while the Father is "I Am"-ing and the Word is Peaking. And then I'd be leading into a whole two-hour digression on the unity of the nature and of one substance in the Persons, and how the Father is also Our Mother and a day will have gone by before we know it. And even then I'll have to make it clear that the Holy Spirit taking the feminine gender in Hebrew isn't the reason why she was "sweeping". Not that kind of sweeping.
You see, I blame the translators of the NRSV for all my problems. Whether they think "a wind from God" is the best translation, or whether they've gone for a liberal attempt to write the Trinity out of the Creaion, I don't know. Maybe that's just as good as all the others, which have the Spirit of God brooding, hovering, moving etc on the face of the waters. But be that as it may - if the Bible's not going to say what I want it to say, where does that leave us? They should have left it somewhere near what we like and know, and then we'd all know where we are.
So I've given up on the whole thing. I've just been on the phone to my friend, Perry Koresis, and she's going to come and teach everybody a lovely Trinitarian liturgical dance. I believe there may even be ribbons involved. That should be suitable for Fathers' Day, if nothing is.
Wonderful - that Perry Koresis is a fantastic dancer!
ReplyDeleteUnlike her sister, Terpsie.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid that in classical Hebrew grammar, ruach would be classified as a noun, not a verb.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm all for the ribbons. Bright pink ones preferably, to match the banker's shirts. What fun!
Fathering Sunday. I wouldn't go near that with a bargepole.
ReplyDeleteThat awful liberal place down the road had "She sits like a bird" as one of their hymns last week. In a spirit of oecumenical fellowship (or should that be "personship"?) I offered to write them a new verse that started, "She runs like a girl."
They declined. But not in Greek or Latin as they don't know how.
Holger, I sit down and repent in dust 'n' ashes.
ReplyDeleteI blame it on those people who kept telling me that what you "are" is as important as what you "do". It has clearly left me with verb-noun blindness.