Took the weekend to trip to the Homestead to see the farm and my mom for the holiday; Saturday was a slice of Paradise there in the North. Sunday morning brought storms and tough winds which made the 8-hour drive back wheel-grippingly tense with the cross winds and driving rains. By midnight, I was weary as all get out when we stumbled into our hilltop fortress.

Fortunately, my brain was working when I left, and though I couldn't finish the fragmentary essay below before I took the conn across the turnpike, I think you, dear readers, may well be able to navigate through to the end by my roadmap. Typically, a single phrase expanded to a full-blown rant. Call it my contribution to the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

Fri May 9 19:12:44 EDT 2003

Ex. 12:12 (JPS trans.):

"For that night I will go through the land of Egypt and strike down every first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and I will mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt, I the Lord."

This line, specifically the emph-added clause above, struck me rather forcefully this evening, as we departed on a trip to my family homestead. The striking notion was that not only was the Lord acting on human blindness, human pride, but in the realm of the spritual, among gods, daimons, spirits, angels, pow'rs. The gods that are no gods are receiving punishment. How is a god punished?

I think here of a good friend who's studying archaeology, with a long-standing love and appreciation for Egypt, the land of ancient tradition, of astounding antiquity, and mystery. I think of how the Egypt almost all of us have in mind is that Egypt of the pyramids, Sphinx, murals, Books of the Dead, papyri (magical and otherwise) -- and how the gods are everywhere to be seen in the monuments. These gods are now to be punished for their works. I am forced to admit that even I have to think of the punishment of these gods in terms of their idols: temples, shrines, monuments, all the glory that was.

But perhaps this is precisely the problem of Pharoah and Egypt. Seeing what our hands have made, we give ourselves and all our work over to powers which promise more, promise immortality, "surely you will not die..."

adoration - they want it, we want it, parttnership

paul in i cor on partnership w/ lord and demons (cup of lord, table of demons)

arrogance to be more than we are, the overreaching to godhood

yet egypt remains, is not destroyed -- _aphes_ - let the tares grow with the wheat a burning wick he will not quench &c.

redemption, not destruction -- casting down of crowns