Protecting Oneself

I watch myself and my fellow 4th Quarter types .... we're sensitive to bruising .... and not just if we've taken too much Warfarin.

Initially, I thought to myself -- writing the above -- that it bears or bares some similarity between the old and the young. The young, too, are very sensitive but it strikes me, on second thought,  that the vulnerabilities must include some that are very different .... even if the responses might be similar. Well, then, it's not so much that both are sensitive that I need appreciate, but what the soft-spots are that set off these responses in myself and others Playing in the Last Quarter.

My reflexive turn is typically to Scriptural passages .... even if we change, as we age, I suspect that our metaphors remain rather steady. With the Patriarchs, for some reason, the relevant texts don't seem to show any struggle. Jacob, the Grandson of the Forebear who is credited with setting all this Judaeo- Christian to do in motion and who goes off into the sunset quietly after attempting to do in his older two sons, Jacob gathers up children and blesses them up and dresses them down and reaffirms his preferences for some. Isaac the Betweener and one of his Dad's attempted offerings goes quietly, even if like his favored son, he, too, gets caught in scandalous confused preference- affirming and disagreement with his wife. All this in Genesis, as is Joseph's unremarkable dotage. The only hint the text gives us is in the beginning of Exodus where it is noted that he was, in some sense, forgotten: And a new king arose on Egypt that didn't know/recall Joseph.

It's not until the central character of Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-and-Deuteronomy is aging that we hear of complaints about getting old. Moses seems to tire of his complaining and whining (kvetching) flock. He begins often saying "this is it" ... "this is the salient matter (zeh ha'davar)" .... and either he or his God that speaks to him feels the urge to put an end to this flock .... to drive them and their whining off a cliff or something. At the end of his life, Moses, himself, complains:

"And I asked for mercy for myself (in the reflexive verb form in the Biblical Hebrew ... va'eschanan) from God at that time. You began to show (me) your servant ...." and now you wish me to go up to some lonely mountain -top and die without getting the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box.

Maybe these lead to the two images that I need to understand .... those of my brothers and sisters who feel angry at their progeny? for leaving them? for growing up? for going on to new tasks? and those who feel cheated of the prize that they always hoped for or dreamed of? Maybe, too, there are those who are at peace with gifts received?

The New Testament Preacher of Peace is never given the time to age ... to become defensively dissatisfied with his lot in life ... or death. The curiously quoted Aramaic words at the passion are those of a young man assassinated in the prime of his fame and as his followers were proliferating ... growing in number. The words quoted are assumed to be Aramaic interpretations of the Psalms. There, it says: Eli, Eli lamah azavtani? My Lord, my Lord, why have You abandoned me. In the Aramaic (a language which combined the Hebrew of the day with indigenous Arabic languages), it appears as: Eli, Eli, lamah sabachtani. Now, the word sabachtani is the same word that the Aramaic translators of biblical texts (people like Onkeles) use to render abandonment in Psalms ... but oh! so preciously close to the Hebrew 'zavachtani' which could only alter that passage reported in multiple gospels as "my Lord, my Lord, why have You slaughtered me?.

Maybe that's a question still better rendered as: My Lord, my Lord, why have You taken so much from me?