Scenes of Moses: Baby in an Ark

Late night musing on the I-80 highway.

But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it...  When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

If one scene really symbolizes Moses' life, it's this one. His family reaches the end of their ropes in protecting him. They place him outside their protection. They could not find a real water craft, so they place him in a flimsy basket, coated in tar to help its buoyancy. He is placed into muddy water, surrounded by tall stalks of weeds and reeds. (Don't try this at home.) He is essentially exiled for his own safety. But to what end?
The basket goes nowhere. Looks like a failed experiment. But then Pharaoh's daughter, off on one of her royal frolics and in the mood for a mud bath, finds the basket among the same reeds, and draws him out of the water. Not a failed experiment but a baptism. He is called Moses, which means draw out. 

Fast-forward forty years.

When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. ... They told their father, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”

Moses is a fugitive. Pharaoh wants him dead. Moses runs into the desert. He is exiled again, casts himself into the endless oceans of sand. (Where are you going, Moses? Where will you find refuge?) But look! He finds an oasis. And the man drawn out from the water is now drawing water for others. An exile finds a family among exiles. The Hebrew who looks Egyptian is saving people. Coincidence?

Fast-forward forty years.

Moses said to the Israelites, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today... The Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

Moses goes back, gets his extended family to follow him through the deep blue sea. First they were a little nervous but he's all like nah, trust me I got this I've done this before, so they went for it, and then bammm, the man drawn from the water now draws a nation out of the sea.  From a human perspective, it just looks like a life being pushed along by turbulent circumstances. No direction. No foresight. There's so much fear in the story, so much killing, so much hurt. It's just a basket stuck in the mud. It's just a guy marooned out in the desert. But look again, and you see that his name matters. As he was drawn, so he draws.

And the little details is what I hang my hopes on these days.

May the reader understand. 

quotables.

(Stuff I've either said, heard, read, or thought about recently that sticks out.)

• Maze Runner was based on a book? Oh. I thought it was based on Temple Run. - F.

• For almost thirty years now I have listened to the Israelis say to the Palestinians what I first heard the Afrikaners say to the blacks and coloreds. We are good people; if you just behave, we will give you most of what you are asking for. Oppressors do all they can to prevent use of the category of justice; they do all they can to cast the situation in terms of better and worse rather than justice and injustice, in terms of good behavior and bad behavior, in terms of benevolence. Nicholas Wolterstorff (2007-12-26). Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Kindle Locations 218-221). Princeton University Press - A. Kindle Edition. 

• A VIRUS IS a small capsule made of membranes and proteins. The capsule contains one or more strands of DNA or RNA, which are long molecules that contain the software program for making a copy of virus. Some biologists classify viruses as "life forms," because they are not strictly known to be alive. Viruses are ambiguously alive, neither alive nor dead. They carry on their existence in the borderlands between life and non-life. They are dead. They can even form crystals. Virus particles that lie around in blood or mucus may seem dead, but the particles are waiting for something to come along. They have a sticky surface. If a cell comes along and touches the virus and the stickiness of the virus matches the stickiness of the cell, then the virus clings to the cell. The cell feels the virus sticking to it and enfolds the virus and drags it inside. Once the virus enters the cell, it becomes a Trojan horse. It switches on and begins to replicate. Richard Preston, The Hot Zone,

• They were two human primates carrying another primate. 

•  The cross is in all life. It is in the earth; the seed dies that the plant may live. It is in the landscape; the mountain is bare and barren that the vale may be rich and fecund. The valleys stand so thick with corn. Aye, they do! And they do it by the soil washed from the mountain. The cross is in your blood. What are the white corpuscles doing in your blood-stream? Watching for infection! When they find it, they absorb it, but they too, in their turn must be absorbed by the newly created cells which take their place, or the blood would stagnate and the body would die. William E. Sangster, "He Dies. He Must Die" (1960), Classic Sermons on the Cross of Christ 

• Have you ever seen the germs that cause disease magnified for examination? They are most interesting to look at. They have such curious shapes; even beautiful shapes, some of them. It is possible to take an artist's interest in them and half forget the deadly nature they possess. But now go straight from that magnified specimen-glass and see the germ at its deadly work in the hospital ward. Look! This is Lupus at work. You were specially drawn to that magnified bacillus. It seemed so innocent; even pleasing to look upon. Yet that germ is doing this; it is eating that man's living flesh away. On and on it goes and nothing, it seems, can arrest it. You didn't know the deadly character of that bacillus when you first looked at it. It seemed just cute and you could discuss it with academic detachment. But what does it do? It does this! 

•  Supin, dude, you just let me down. In fact, you constantly let me down. In fact, when I die, I'm gonna let you lower me into my grave so that you can let me down one last time. - F.  

•  It was a mistake. But it was the kind of mistake you don't regret making for how you've learned from it. - F. 

A Groomsman's Joy.

“The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.” – John 3:29

In this grand procession, I am neither groom nor officiant, neither invitee nor relative. I am the groomsman. Rejoicing in their completeness completes my joy. Celebrating their wholeness is making me whole. Blessing their oneness unifies my ...

Here's looking at you two.

when your tide rushes over me
there's only one
way to figure out
will ya let me drown
oh will ya let me drown?

The Power of a Photograph

 Art is limitation. The essence of every picture  is the frame. - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

 A way of certifying experience, taking  photographs is also a way of refusing it—

 by limiting experience to a search for the

 photogenic, by converting experience

 into an image, a souvenir. - Sontag, On  Photography

 I photograph to find out what something will  look like photographed. - Garry Winogrand

HONY (Humans of New York) is this guy who takes great photographs of people. Each person featured on HONY is generally photographed alone. It's shown me how close-up shots of a person effectively alter your perception of him. Look at the man pictured above. I suspect that if I saw him in a crowd, I'd just see a disheveled old man. I'd avoid eye-contact. But now I see him and only him. I'm forced to reconsider him. I see a man with tired and sunken eyes that have seen a lot. And s that a suspicious or amused face? Dunno But I do know I am interested.

I guess you'd think I see him better now that I see him as an individual. True.

But seeing him alone also causes me to glorify him. Now a man wearing a colorful turban is a wise man, a sage full of counsel and exotic experiences. Oh, he doesn't have a shirt on? What a simple-minded man who doesn't care what others think of him! What a great simple life! Look at those gaunt shoulders. Must get lots of exercise. I should ask what he eats to stay in shape. 

In Which I Avoid the Elephant in The Room

• I look forward to this weekend. For months now, I have been heated, poured into different molds, reconstituted, cooled for a time, and then heated and poured out again. I gotta find myself again. Trees and hiking and shit have always helped me do that. Here's to you, nature.
• Each time I walk into a courthouse I am immediately smacked with two impressions: 
• (1) How important this stuff is. I walk into a courthouse and see the woman who is about to be evicted from her apartment, and I know that lawyers like me will decide where she sleeps tomorrow. 
• (2) How self-absorbed lawyers are. We are suit and tie society. We flash our secure ID passes as we enter, avoiding eye-contact with non-lawyers. But we can tell they notice us, and we relish in that.
• The court rooms are dingy, and even the ones with polished mahogany desks have gum stuck underneath. Cases are decided flippantly, clerks play favorites, and judges who have eaten breakfast are kinder to plaintiffs than those who have not. I have taken a look inside the sausage factory, and it is not pretty.

---------------------------------------------------Interlude-------------------------------------------------

                            

• These observations are really just pour-overs from observations about us people in general. You are forever so self-absorbed that you have no idea what you've done to someone, and your fading memory lies to you. And the most tragic thing of all is when the good memories flicker and burn out with no one to think of them anymore, though they are the reason we are where we are now. 
• The unnoticed thing about endings is how they precede beginnings.
• What if life throws you lemons and you have no pitcher to pour the lemonade into? Or what if instead of throwing you lemons, life just throws you lemonade? Everyone loves lemonade until it gets poured on them. 

Carolyn: I need you to do some research for me on the “volunteer exception” to the NY Labor Law.

20 minutes later….

Finney: There is a “volunteer exception” to the NY Labor Law.