"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Daniel Morgan

The weather was unseasonably cold as I made my way to church. I live close enough that it is no stretch on my constitution to walk the few adjoining blocks, though if I had realized the gods of winter were yet so spiteful, I would have worn an overcoat. As it is, the elements cut right through to my skin and I'm forced to walk faster to get the blood flowing. But I only get colder and the silent storm, it seemed, was less concerned with me than in tearing at the edges of the world.

There is the dance studio we rent out for Sundays, borrowing their sound system and folding chairs and the marquee on the corner. But today is Wednesday, and so we did not bother to display our "Dalespring Baptist Church" sign. As I near it, the air is shaken by the pealing of bells, signaling the attendants of the Catholic church, Our Lady of Phorcydes, two blocks down. People stream in the large double doors of ancient oak, each side of which are stamped with canterbury crosses. At one end of the building, a square, sun-washed, limestone tower of the Norman style stands tall. The whole bulk reminds me of some medieval giant hunched over with its awkward head protruding out.

Though I don't remember walking the distance, I find myself standing before its façade. Before it, the sky is the color of hoarfrost and the stark trees are gathered singly or in pairs. The wind has dropped a bit by the time I'm at the heavy door, admits me entrance, and I look around at the celebrants gathered for Even Mass, doing a bit of calisthenics before entering the pews. Inside, the gods of winter seem to have retreated for now, biding their time. I'm not sure why I came. I certainly don't hold to their doctrine. But, still, it is temperate in here and I feel compelled to sit, or observe, or I don't know what.

A few stragglers give me a weird look and I realize I passed the two wells flanking the entrance that were too tiny to drink out of anyway. I get another icy look for not taking a knee before sitting, but I don't really mind. I'm enamored by the high-timbered ceiling and low nave windows, an old Norse word, I think for some reason, for the "wind's eye." Then there are the wine-colored veils draped over all the statutes. It reminds me of when Jews cover their mirrors at a funeral. It's kind of creepy in a way, like somebody just died and nobody knows quite what to do or say, so they don't do anything.

A fellow in the back corner of the pews looks oddly out of place. He almost reminds me of Walt Whitman, drunk and inanely singing in his head, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume . . .” Respectable men don't grow out their beards so wildly as his, and the old clothes are obviously his only pair. He looks like a fellow I met on a ship one time over the cold, recalcitrant Atlantic. And then he looks at me, one eye squinted or cocked, I can't tell in the shadows, and, quite without meaning to, I see Odin. The All-father of the Norse, Chief of the Aesir, bringer of victory, he stares at me. Enemy of the wolf, raven-god, lord of the gallows, I watch as he approaches.

Since my childhood, I've read of his exploits in the northern countries. How Odin-Gangleri, the Wanderer, searched out the Well of Wisdom at the root of the World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil, guarded by the giant Mimir, half-immersed in water and hefting the Kjolen Mountains since the dawn of time (though others say it is only Mimir's head that guards the Well). And Odin had to sacrifice an eye for a draught from the Well.

How for nine days he hung on the World-tree. And in his words, "Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows for nine long nights, pierced by a spear, pledged to Odin, offered, myself to myself. The wisest know not from whence spring the roots of that ancient rood. They gave me no bread, They gave me no mead, I looked down; With a loud cry I took up runes; From that tree I fell." And all to learn the nine songs of power and eighteen runes and converse with the dead; he knew the gods of old needed more than fertility charms if they were to survive the Ragnarok.

How his Valkyrie shield-maidens carry the greatest of warriors, the Einherjar, from the battlefield to Valhalla to join his ranks against that last Day. How every day the Einherjar sparred like archangels until they were all killed and every evening they feasted on a piece of Odin's body and were reborn. From his throne Hlidskjalf, he sees all in the nine worlds, his ravens Huginn and Muninn bespeak all things, and his wolves Freki and Geri accompany him and eat his food, since he takes wine only. He is surrounded by the beasts of battle and yet it is the father of wolves, Fenrir, who is destined to kill him on the last Day of Ragnarok, Armageddon. When brought into battle, his warriors would turn 'wood', an old name for madness and they would shout hellishly and bite their shields before the enemy, like their war-chief Wodan (or Fury). I could see him at the head of legions of berserker Vikings in the last winters of the world.

That Odin stood before me and opened his hand and said with a obeisance that made me cringe, "Have change to spare? Anything would help, please." I blinked for a second at his visage, wondering why you, who know the nine songs and eighteen runes of power, and the dwarf-wrought ring Draupnir, would be in need of some pocket change? Was it not enough that you sacrificed your body and forsook your eye to inherit the knowledge to safeguard all of Asgard for the coming war? I realized my mouth was dry from hanging agape. I fished around for what nickels and dimes I had for the All-father.

"Thank you, sir," the god of winds shook my hand, "God-bless-you, God-bless-you," he muttered upon retreating to his corner. He walked as one dejected and stripped of all his martial glory, "A paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick," as the poet said. I doubted if he had ever had a decent meal or a hot shower to soothe his cracked and leathery skin.

"Alföğr . . .?" I wanted to ask of him, but he hobbled away and the sound of the service returned, and I had to laugh at myself for the delusion. Apparently, I was a little out of place in all this high ceremony. By now the purple-laden priest, attended by his two acolytes, was approaching the dais. The host was about to be lifted up and the wine was about to be withheld. In the same practiced steps they had taken for thousands of years, the three converged into one image, one motion of washing and bowing as they hefted it up, chanting, "Te igitur, clementissime Pater — per Jesum Christum, Filium Tuum, Dominum nostrum — supplices rogamus ac petimus — uti accepta habeas, et benedicas haec, dona haec — munera, haec — sancta sacrificia illibata, in primis quae tibi offerimus — pro Ecclesia tua sancta Catholica . . ."

Amidst the incense, the three seemed to blend together into a grisaille grotesque and I was reminded of the fuming cave of Avernus and the stink of sulphur. For the Greeks had many trinitarian gods and demi-gods, like the Moirae, Gorgons, and Graeae. The Graeae ("gray ones") shared one eye among the three of them. These three ladies, Enyo, Deino, and Pemphredo, were something of soothsayers though as well, conveying wisdom to the supplicant through their one eye, that is, until some upstart named Perseus took it from them. But they were never killed or sacrificed to gain knowledge and understanding. They were content to work behind the scenes. They were more like Mimir as well watchers.

The Egyptians, however, had Ra (or Re), the god of the midday sun, for their father. His light could be his body, his eye, or even goddess Hathor. The Right Eye of Ra then was something like the eye of Odin's divine empowerment. Then there was Horus the younger, son of Osiris, born of the Sacred Acacia tree, with the foundling childhood of Moses and the immaculate birth of Jesus. Like Abel's slaying or Joseph's desertion, Osiris was killed and dismembered by his evil brother Seth, or Set. But Horus avenged his father, and in a mighty agony with his uncle Seth lost his left eye in the process (though it was later healed by spittle). Thus, having paradoxically gained a superior place, Horus said of himself, "Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight."

But that's just it. He was not unique. Even the elder Horus was thought to have the sun and moon for his eyes. When there was a new moon and he was blind of both lights, he could be unpredictable in battle. Indeed, there is a whole barrage of gods who were murdered or self-immolated, and whose flesh served as the substance of life for the world: Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysius, Balder, and even to some extent Orpheus, whose head served as an excellent oracle for hidden wisdom. In other tales, there is the head of Bran, Mimir, and even, perhaps, John the Baptist.

There is so much overlap in these stories, I cannot help but feel the linkage to what I am watching now as the priest implores in Latin for Mary, Queen of Heaven, the Rose without Thorns, to hear us in our distresses. Astarte of the Sumerians became Ishtar of the Babylonians, and thence Hathor of the Egyptians. When Hathor, the eye of Ra, was sent to slay rebellious mortals, taking on the pestilencial mantle of Sakhmet, she would have killed all of mankind in her frenzy were it not for Ra getting her drunk by coloring the beer to look like blood. Aphrodite was a later name of Hathor and also served as a consort of Adonis, another dying god. Hathor later merged into Isis (meaning "Knowledge"), whose consort was Osiris. In Christian mythology, she became the Madonna. Even within Scripture, Christ is prefigured in Adam, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, and a dozen others. The whole story of the Lion King, of the Uncle trying to usurp the throne and the son trying to restore it, is almost universal in mythology. Always there is the tale of the mother recovering to the tomb of her son and her lord, and the eventual resurrection of the same to avenge his killer, who ironically enough was often he himself. "Myself to myself," sang Odi— er, Whitman.

But in none of these stories is there the grandeur of a god who can lay down and take up his life freely. Nor are there dates or eyewitnesses to verify the death, much less the resurrection and the life of this ubiquitous Corn-King. Nor do any of these gods give their wisdom freely to any who ask — they themselves often do not have it until death, and then only dimly and in part. But something about them pricks at my heart, especially the idea of a god forsaking his own eye, or body, or bride (really the same thing) for his worshippers.

I remembered the sermon at my church last week and the words of Paul, ". . . But we have the mind of Christ." And with it, we do not see in the fading twilight of paganism to which Odin is consigned. Though today many wish to limit the vision of Yahweh with the ironic title "Open Theology", the end is a return to the blind, berserker ravings of Sakhmet or the elder Horus. And those are not gods to whom I would fain give my devotion.

By now, a careless yawn almost made me sneeze awake from the clouds of incense. I'm still looking on the priest's backside glory, and without some impatience, at the uncut altar and the temple that could be touched and a blazing fire, and darkness and gloom and a tempest, making me shy away and squint my eyes to gaze upon it, as though a wall of enmity withholds its hand against me, while still beaconing with the other. Then I wondered, looking back at the All-father, how come there was no meal? Even the Israelites feasted on the Sinai mountainside. They had just read of how the apostle admonished the church in Corinth not to hoard the Lord's meal. The whole point of the communion was for there to be a love feast of fellowship. But there was no frocked fellow sharing his potion with the least of these. Here they were reading these words, as they had for thousands of years, not understanding the figurative meaning. The Lord was no cannibal; His flesh was His earthly ministry, embodied in His Church. Drinking His cup was not the blood from His veins, but the blood poured out in the fellowship of His sufferings. There was none of that here. It was awful pretty, I'll give them that, but the gaunt look from the All-father's eyes told me that this pomp and circumstance of ancient gods was far from the supper of the early Church.

By the time I recover from the musing, I noticed the people were gathered by the chancel in droves. After he was out of wafers, the priest shrugged, half-apologizing. Just then, one of the supplicants cocked her head quizzically, in an almost feline manner and reached across the rood screen to grab for more, accidentally exposing his torso. Suddenly, she began to scratch at it until she reached blood and lapped it from his side. Soon a few more joined in mewling and the choir commenced singing: "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: misere nobis, Euan! Euan! Eu-oi-oi-oi!" Even were it not hard to see from where I was, I turned my head, noticing the All-father was gone. By the time it was over, the gothic reredos seemed to have taken on a different hue, though at last the congregation had crossed into the Holy of Holies and partaken of the fruit of the vine. It was not like the verse I had memorized growing up, "I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever," and I thought it best to slip out quietly after that.

*          *          *

The smell of blood lingered and I felt somewhat nauseous on the way, as though I was still in some shady hollows of Thessaly or the frozen drifts of Sörkedale, passing the flocks on the hillside in a neighborly greeting, having just come from appeasing the gods and feasting with them and on them. The windswept streets led me around in circles, wondering at it all. And I felt lost in the white space, like some troll had turned my coat inside out.

I thought back to the days of yore to what I knew was true and holy. Of the Hebrews gathered together to take the Passover Seder, remembering the mercy of Yahweh upon their firstborn. The smells of the salt water and bitter herbs and hastily-prepared bread, the familiar laughs of friends and family, so intimate and sharing.

More than a thousand years later, there was a man gathered with his closest friends, discoursing on love, breaking bread and sharing wine, and washing their feet, saying, "These words I have spoken to you have made you clean." There was a misunderstanding and a betrayal, but nothing that the master did not welcome as the course of foretold events. "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me. This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." But the ceremony I observed in the cavernous belly of that medieval giant was nothing like an enactment; the Kingdom of Heaven did not advance one bit through it.

Anger started to creep in and I took my pocket Bible and flipped the thin pages until I ran across the disciples eating together in Troas, and then before a shipwreck, and everyday even, from house to house with gladness and sincerity of heart. I saw them cramped in those mud-brick houses, not yet having been blessed by Constantine's roomy basilicas. Every time they had a meal, they gave thanks or eucharisto. The two were identical as communion (koinoinia). All that meant was fellowship or sharing, especially believing together with one mind in fellowship and sharing all things in common as anyone might have need. This applies to God, believers, and the lost, with or without a meal. If I remember my history, it wasn't until Pliny's letter to Trajan in A.D. 112 that Christians had come to hold two meetings on Sunday, one for hymns and the sacramentum (which was then only an oath to obey the law), and the other for their meal.

But Trajan's edict banned the later agape meetings. Soon the meal table was relegated to the wall and became a sort of ornate Old Covenant altar, nullifying the one and only sacrifice of Hebrews 9:8-28, 10:1-25, which ends conveniently enough with a warning about forsaking assembly. Nevertheless, eventually one priest emerged out of the whole and it soon became the practice of calling only him the priest. To further delineate between the people and the giant, a wall was put up between the ritual sacrificer and the rest of the "participants." Several hundred years later, the bread and wine was considered to be the mystical way to gain the power and protection of the deity it was given to as an ablution, and only the bread was fit for the masses. But maybe that was a good thing, since it saved them from breaking Levitical law against eating blood.

The people begin to believe that this is how things always were until one day a German monk would have no more and tried to return to the words of Christ. But the giant had grown ancient now and was hard to kill. And so it is that today pastors of all stripes pass on the warning not to take the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, as though it were the point of no return when a wafer and some grape juice enter our mouths. Thus, in the final effect, there is no difference between Our Lady of Phorcydes and Dalespring Baptist. One view may be merely mistaken and the other blasphemous, but neither are in line with Scripture. We know that you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.

We also know that eating and drinking kosher or pagan meats, that is, food in and of itself, is not the kingdom of God — reconciliation with God and with one another is. It is idolatry that Paul is concerned with in his letter to the Corinthians, for making the true substance of fellowship of believers into mere shadow of image and effigy. The Lord's body are those believers around us; the Lord's table is the world, of which may no man call common what God has cleansed, whether in Peter's rooftop vision or in Christ's upper room pronouncement. Thus we say with the Lord, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." By this food, like in the third chapter of Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, our lives become the sacrament to be consumed, transubstantiated into His image.

Communion was never about judging whether one is worthy of remembering Christ as Baptists believe or eating Him as Catholics confess from a straight-backed pew. It was whether one would walk the streets of Samaria and stoop down to find the All-father beaten in the gutter; whether one would mix blood and dust with him in bringing him back to the warm presence and manifestation of Christ in fellow, feet-washing believers. The true reflection comes when one must decide whether or not to reach out and love one's neighbor even as a living sacrifice of a pure and undefiled religion. There my Bible fell open to 1 John 3:16-18 and the eucharistic language of Philippians 2:17 and 2 Timothy 4:6. It is here, at the crossroads of our doubts and doctrine, our mental hesitations and our true confession, that we do share in the body of Christ and partake of the blood of the new covenant. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.

Knowing ourselves as members of His one body and Himself as the Head, is the first step to seeing His words as the spirit and life, since the flesh profits nothing, as he told the literal-minded Jews in John 6:53-66. His disciples were also slow to take the lesson so it is no surprise that we who have not seen him have trouble. When the sons of thunder wished to drink his cup, he taught them the lesson of servitude. Later, they had to be reminded that those who are blessed of the Father would serve the least of these. Finally, when he gathered with them for the last time, he demonstrated the lesson by washing their feet even as Mary and the harlot had washed his feet before. Now, if you know these things, you are blessed if you do this communion of which I have spoken to you.

I knew what I had to do in the weather, why I was circling upon the same path. I searched out the All-father, to see if perhaps his gray eminence might let me clothe him in some better garb amid a warmer home.

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