The Southern hill country personality type is a reticence towards others, even a reticence toward life, a suspicion about others, really a suspicion about everything, being afraid to commit, being afraid to take action, waiting, accepting—accepting not so much God, awaiting the will of God, as accepting because of unwillingness to act, to take a chance. And so life can pass by and one sits and waits, stifled by inaction, stifled by indecision, until finally something forces movement. Movement may be caused by hunger, or fear, some outside force that impels the person to do what he might not otherwise have done. The consequent movement, action, might be absurd, completely out of character, yet circumstances have brought about this action, this movement, and the person goes blindly along, not sure, waiting even while moving, passive even while in the process of acting, faithless even while seemingly throwing all aside in an act of blind faith.
Emotions, likewise, are restricted, because one is unsure how to express them. How does one express love toward another when one is unsure, and reticence is the typical response to everything in life. How can one feel excitement, feel love, feel wonder, feel happiness, in an uncertain world where inaction, waiting, watching, seems the most comfortable approach to life? Rocking in the chair on the porch, waiting—for what? For nothing really, just waiting. Perhaps just waiting for death, waiting for everything to finally come to an end. Waiting for the boredom to end. Waiting for the failure to end. Waiting to be released from the stifling inaction and uncertainty and hopelessness and faithlessness.
The Southern hill country personality is outwardly pious, but inwardly barren. Outwardly such people belong to a church, believe in God, say the proper grace at meals, sing the proper hymns, but without emotion, without feeling, because religion is something not to express emotion over; to express love for God is just as uncomfortable as to express love for another, a child, a relative, a parent. It is embarrassing.
Thank God for radio and television, by which one can submerge inaction and lack of confidence and the endless waiting for who knows what into a fantasy world of action, of love, of certitude, of confidence, of knowing exactly what to do, of taking life and directing it according to one’s will. How relieving to be able to watch a program, watch others, who are doing what you are unable, unwilling, to do, but you can watch along as they do it, and feel the satisfaction of a life well lived even if it is not your own.
Such crutches are everywhere, to help one limp along in life. If not television, if not the internet, then booze, or pills, or gambling, or something that takes one’s mind away from what is, to focus on what could be, what might be, and so lose oneself in a stupor, a fantasy world where one is exactly what one is not, where one is a great actor, a great mover, a great lover, a wealthy dynamic mover and shaker, a confident person wrestling with life and winning the match time and again.
What happens to you if all of a sudden chance (or destiny) steps in and wrestles you away from such a life, and you are brought into an awareness of something completely different, a different approach to life, whether it be due to the northern urban personality or some sort of personality in which the fire has been lit, and there is no embarrassment, and a person acts, sometimes foolishly, sometimes in failure, but acts just the same. What is it to put aside inaction to grasp an opportunity and do it? How can the southern hill personality abide by such a notion? Perhaps there becomes a contest of different personalities, different approaches to life, and a person is caught in between, and the personality conflict rages within, the genes of the past confronting the newness of the present, and the split personality results in internal chaos. North and south meet, action and inaction, arrogance and humility, certainty and uncertainty, willingness and unwillingness, and the split personality is torn in so many directions, between choice and non-choice, action and inaction, moving and waiting, doing and watching, accepting life as opportunity or accepting life as struggle.
How can life be both opportunity and struggle, action and inaction, doing and waiting, getting up and sitting down, embracing and distancing, feeling emotion and fearing emotion, loving but being embarrassed by love?
Northern Yankees and Southern hill people: two different ways at looking at life. One is more accepting, but still has the same fears and trepidations as others, but masks the fears in the formalities and structures of urbanized living—the associations or gessellschaft of modern society. The other is suspicious of such formalities, befitting a more rural people; the fears and trepidations of life are often dealt with not by masking them in formalities, rather by submerging them in the informalities of a more community existence: plain speaking, suspicion of others outside of one’s typical familiarity, a rough appearance to the world to show “ain’t scared,” even if you are.
Clinton Dan Stackhouse Jr. was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and died in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the course of his long life he served in the Army Air Corps throughout World War II in Europe. After the war he was an auto then an airline mechanic, and served as an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration. He was a lifelong member of the Church of Christ.
Dan’s father, Clinton Dan Stackhouse Sr., was born in 1900 in Sarcoxie Missouri. His mother Eva Bryant, born in Arkansas, lived in Okmulgee when she married Dan Sr. in 1921. Dan Sr. was a traveling salesman, hence the family moved about a lot. In the 1930s, for example, the family resided in several towns in Missouri. In 1940, when Dan Jr. was seventeen years old, the family lived in Tulsa. Dan went to and graduated from Central High School in Tulsa. He dated a girl who also attended Central, and who lived down the street, Chloe Elenora Lawson, daughter of William and Martha Lawson.
Dan was working as an auto mechanic when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Dan enlisted eleven days later, Dec 18, 1941; he traveled to Oklahoma City to enlist. He joined the Army Air Corps. He was stationed at Napier Field Air Base in Alabama. He and Chloe married in April, 1942, and she lived in the married housing with Dan while he trained. When Dan was shipped out to England, Chloe returned to Tulsa to live with her parents.
Dan served as a nose gunner on a B-24 Liberator that flew missions over Europe. The B-24 was the most produced bomber by the US during the war. A nose gunner was an enlisted soldier who handled a high caliber machine gun to protect the plane from enemy fighter planes. On one mission over Germany, Dan’s plane was shot down. He survived and was imprisoned in a German prisoner of war camp. Dan somehow contrived to escape as the war was winding down. He was able to reach the Allied lines in Germany.
Dan was discharged on October 21, 1945. He and Chloe lived in Tulsa. Dan worked as an auto mechanic for Fred Jones Ford. They had their first-born child, Dan Michael, in September, 1946. Their second child, Denise Chloe, was born in July 1948 and died at about nine weeks. Dan took a job as an airline mechanic with Spartan Aeronautics in Tulsa. In time he became an inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration. He and Chloe moved to Seattle, where she died in 1976. Dan moved back to Tulsa, remarried, but when he died in 2009, he was buried next to Chloe at Rose Hill Cemetery.
Maxwell Lawson (perhaps christened as John Maxwell Lawson) was born in 1802 in Tennessee, but who exactly his parents were is unclear. Maxwell married Anna Gray in 1820, but what her ancestry was (besides her parents) is overall unclear. Maxwell and Anna had 19 children; they lived in Tennessee until the 1830s, when they moved to western Arkansas.
Maxwell was a farmer, initially in northeast Tennessee near the Cumberland Mountains. He did well enough to be able to support a large family and buy land. He must have moved west in part because he sought more opportunity where land was more available and perhaps less expensive.
Maxwell was a Democrat politically and a primitive Baptist religiously.
Maxwell and Anna relocated to Wesley, Arkansas. They bought a house in 1832, which was destroyed or razed, replaced by a two-story house still standing in Wesley that was built by their son William Riley after the Civil War; Maxwell and Anna probably lived in the house at the close of their lives. The house was a southern style house with a broad open veranda-porch. It was situated in the Arkansas forest.
Maxwell and Anna’s children fought for the Confederacy. Maxwell was apparently a captain in the Tennessee militia during the 1830s. There is no evidence that he owned slaves, though his father-in-law, Jacob Gray, who also moved to western Arkansas, owned a few female slaves.
Maxwell’s sister Lucretia married Blackburn Thompson in 1832; he was born in 1791 in Virginia. They moved to Campbell Co Tennessee and had a child Andrew J. Thompson on Oct 7, 1816. Blackburn fought under Jackson in the War of 1812. He and Lucretia moved to Madison Co Arkansas in 1856; he died in 1861.
Maxwell possibly had other siblings as well: Sophia, (1794-1880); James Robert (1803-1871); James Henry (1805-1876); Martin (1820 -?)
Maxwell’s parents were probably Randolph and Susanna Cross Lawson (the other strong candidates are Robert and Anne Goad Lawson). In support of the Randolph and Susanna is a land deed from 1832 that shows that Randolph purchased land in Campbell Co, the same place where Maxwell was born and where he too owned land. There is also a land purchase in the 1820s that shows Randolph Lawson and Maxwell Lawson buying land by New River. Robert Lawson also bought land in Campbell County. He and Randolph were apparently close friends or relatives, and fought together in the Virginia militia during the American Revolution.
Anna’s parents were probably Jacob C. Gray and Mary A. (Polly) Shreeves.
Maxwell seems to have been a big, burly man, very serious, virile, living until age 70. His photographic portrait shows a stern, dignified country man. He does not appear sad, just more of a serious gaze into the hardship of life. A survivor. He had a full head of hair and was generally handsome.
His wife was likewise big, burly, serious, and virile, bearing 19 children and living until she was 70. She was born five years after Maxwell and outlived him by five years. There is a sense of sadness and hardship in her photographic portrait. She appears to have been a beautiful woman with nice features.
Of their children, first born Calvin, 1825 to 1907, was a farmer who fought for the Confederacy. He married Jane Ann Fritts. Both were illiterate. Their second child was Polly, who married a man named Johnson. Their third child was Sarah, born in 1829 and dying in Texas in 1897. She married Clairborne Fritts in 1847. He was a Confederate soldier. Their fourth child, Elizabeth, born in 1830, married Martin Counts. Their fifth child was an unnamed female who died young. Their sixth child, Caroline, born in 1834, married Bud Williams. Their seventh child, David, born 1835, married Bashaby Counts. He was killed in the war. Their eight child, named Miles, died young. Their ninth child, Martha, was born in 1837. Their tenth child was William Riley Lawson, who was a Captain in the Confederate cavalry during the war. He married in 1866 and served as a postmaster and storekeeper in Wesley Arkansas. Their eleventh child, Samuel, born in 1841, married Kesiah Fritts. He was killed May 10, 1865, crossing the Mississippi River, coming home from the war, by bushwackers. Their twelfth child, Matilda, born in 1842, married a man who was killed in the war. Their thirteen child, John, born in 1843, married Mary Burks. Their fourteenth child, Phoebe, married Sam Henson. Their fifteenth child, Calloway, born in 1846, married Elizabeth Jane McElhaney. Their sixteenth child, Freeman, was born in 1848. Their seventeenth child, Nancy, married Zak Templeton. Their eighteenth child, Louisa, was born in 1855. Their nineteenth child, Margaret, married Dave Lucas.
Maxwell and Anna and other family members are buried in a small cemetery outside of Wesley, Arkansas.
Slaughterhouse Five, written in 1969, is overall an antiwar book in which war so messes with a person that they go in and out of imaginary dreams and experiences, time is totally disoriented, the traditional narrative of life is broken, and all that once seems normal is not.
The author purports at the beginning that he has long aimed to write a book about the experiences of the bombing of the German city of Dresden by Allied forces in 1945 at the end of World War II, but he didn’t know how to go about writing such a book, such a narrative; it is as if to try to write a rational book about so irrational an event is absurd.
So, instead, he writes an absurd book to reflect the absurd reality that he has found himself in. It is a book about a loser who goes to war and is captured by the Germans and abused, is put in a slaughterhouse to work like a slave, is in the meantime kidnapped by aliens and taken to an alien planet where he exists in a zoo so that the aliens can watch him. He is imprisoned, in other words, by these aliens, just as he is imprisoned by the Germans, imprisoned by his memory, imprisoned by his mind, constantly going back to tragic events that he wishes he could forget. His mind is so disordered, that not only does he imagine something as ludicrous as the aliens on Tralfamadore, and his presence there with a porn queen exhibiting sex for the aliens, but he also goes in and out of time, back and forth, whenever and wherever his disordered brain takes him.
In the book there is no sense of morality, or right and wrong, and the behavior of humans is generally disordered and often ludicrous. To treat others with such cruelty is ludicrous. And although Billy is generally an ok guy, not trying to harm anyone, he is constantly being harmed, by not only other humans, but even aliens as well. The order of Western Civilization, based on the order of human reason, God’s will, morality and goodness, and the order of time, its slow linear movement, has completely vanished in a world of hate and destruction, random events, and the overwhelming rule of chance and contingency.
Even though the Tralfamadorians lock him up in a zoo, Billy still is impressed by their philosophy of life, that death is an illusion, that we can experience life anytime we want to, that all of the moments of life are randomly available to us, and hence there is no death as an end to linear time, because linear time doesn’t exist, rather random moments of time exist; hence there is no end, it is all circular and sporadic. But it is godless, amoral, filled with chance and irregularity and senselessness, hence overall absurd. Why would anyone want to exist in such an existence of circular momentary recollection of random events? How can there be any meaning?
But of course there is no meaning. Vonnegut, who experienced the bombing of Dresden, taking refuge in a slaughterhouse while everyone outside was burnt to a crisp, comes out of the war with a sense of meaninglessness. This is what philosophers call the Postmodern, as it comes after the order and regularity of the Modern. The Postmodern is meaningless and absurd, and there is no purpose, no direction, no goodness, no God.
Vespasian Bradford of early 17th century London was a craftsman belonging to the city livery company, or guild, of cooks, people involved in the preparation of food.
Vespasian’s namesake was the Roman Emperor Vespasian, who ruled Rome from 69 to 79 AD. Who named the English child born in 1560 this unique name is a mystery. His parents were either William and Alice Bradford or Richard and Catherine Bradford.
Vespasian was likely born in Yorkshire, England, in 1560, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth Tudor. He died during the reign of Elizabeth’s successor, James Stuart.
Vespasian married late in life, to Joane Burrowse, on May 28, 1604, when he was 44, and she was 12. This young woman was the daughter of Sir Richard Burrowse and Lady Barbara Burrowse. They were married in the Shoreditch Church in London.
According to The Parish Registers of St. Thomas the Apostle, London, containing the Marriages, Baptisms, and Burials from 1558 to 1754 (London, 1881) Vespasian and his wife had a son Richard, baptized June 25, 1605, a daughter Margaret, baptized May 15, 1606, a daughter Elizabeth, baptized May 9, 1607, a daughter, Anne, baptized June 18, 1608, a daughter Jane, baptized July 6, 1609, a daughter, Joane, baptized Aug. 7, 1610, and a son Richard, baptized Dec. 9, 1611.
Vespasian was a member of the Worshipful Company of Cooks in London, a very old livery company. In 1616 he was listed in the charter of the Worshipful Company of Cooks as an Assistant, one of a small group of liverymen who were in charge of the guild—the Court of Assistants.
Vespasian was buried April 11, 1618, at St. Antholin Church, Budge Row, London—an Anglican church in the heart of the city.
Joane outlived Vespasian by seven years, dying in 1625. Their grandson, Richard Bradford, emigrated to Virginia in the 1650s. His great-great granddaughter, Lena Bradford, married James Amos. She is my fifth great-grandmother on my mother’s side. Vespasian is my 11th great-grandfather.
William and Margaret Harwood Hawkins were among the first English settlers of Rhode Island. William, by trade a glove-maker, was a native of Exeter, England, born in 1609; his parents were William Hawkins and Katharine Gonson. William, Jr, sailed from England in 1634 bound for St. Christopher (St. Kitts). On board the same ship was Margaret Harwood who listed her home as Stoke Gabriel, also in Devonshire, south of Exeter. She was born in Bulmer, Essex, north of London, in 1612. Her father was Thomas; one record said she was a bastard, hence her mother was unnamed.
Whether William and Margaret already knew each other, or romance blossomed onboard the ship to America, is not known. One record suggests the possibility that they did know each other before sailing: “February, 1634, among persons bound for St. Christopher’s who have taken the oath of allegiance before the Mayor of Dartmouth: William Haukins of Exter, Devon, glover about 25 and Margaret Harwood of Stoke Gabriel, Devon, spinster about 22.” A perplexing question is: what were the two young English people doing aboard a ship for the new English colony of St. Kitts? William and Margaret were both young, perhaps strong and able-bodied. The English were recruiting such people to help colonize Caribbean islands, over which the English were competing with the French, Spanish, and Portuguese. St. Kitts was a new English colony in the Caribbean dedicated to sugar production. The work of clearing the tropical jungle of trees and plants, battling hordes of insects and rats, and planting crops such as tobacco and especially sugar was exhausting, and the more people involved the better. Also, there were conflicts with rival French colonists and the native Carib people.
William and Margaret married in 1634, and within a few years relocated to New England. Emigrating, William and Margaret were among those who in 1638 received lots of land in the new settlement of Providence, founded and headed by Roger Williams. The new town was on the western side of a hill on a broad peninsula bordered by the Seekonk river to the east and Great Salt River, or Providence River, to the west. William’s land, which was allotted to him on December 20, 1638, was at the southern edge of the peninsula, or neck, near Mile End Cove. William in 1640 along with his neighbors signed an agreement to form a government.
It would be nice to know how and why a young immigrant to the sugar colony of St. Kitts had moved north with his wife to a new colony in North America just recently founded by Roger Williams—and became a landowner and one of the original stakeholders of the colony at that! Not only were they original proprietors, but William and Margaret were members of the church in Providence. Thriving, William was able to purchase the lands of his two neighbors to the north in the mid-1640s. He was repeatedly made a freeman—meaning a person of property and legal consequence–of Providence.
William and Margaret arrived at a contested region between Anglo-American newcomers and indigenous tribes. Roger Williams had befriended the Narragansett tribe and negotiated with them, and was for decades a supporter of the rights of freedom of conscience and fair-dealing with the American Indians. After the Pequot War of the 1630s, relations between the English and the Narragansetts were tenuous. War returned to New England in 1675: King Philip’s War. The English attacked the professedly neutral Narragansetts, who joined forces with the Wampanoags and Nipmucs; intense warfare in and about Providence followed. Many of the Rhode Islanders fled, but not William and Margaret Hawkins and family. William helped to man the garrison in Providence, notwithstanding the destruction all around. Because he “stayed and went not away” during the conflict, after the defeat of the Indian tribes, in 1677, the colony awarded Hawkins with land taken from the Narragansetts. Indian captives were treated as prisoners of war, often sold into slavery or bound into servitude. English veterans of the war, such as William Hawkins, earned the right to use Indian servants. William and Margaret were significant landowners with a “considerable estate of lands and livestock” and, it appears, a secure labor force, the consequence of his valiant behavior during King Philip’s War. Along with wealth came political status, as William was elected to represent Providence in the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1677 and 1678.
Bond labor was a phenomenon throughout the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies in America. Bondage took many forms: slavery, servitude, apprenticeship. Children and adults, Blacks, Whites, and Indians, were bound to labor for periods of years, sometimes for life. Some colonists were early opponents of slavery in America. Some Rhode Islanders in 1652 requested that slaves serve only a term of years, “as the manner is with the English servants” rather than for life. William Hawkins eventually agreed. He purchased a twenty-year-old slave named Jack from a Barbados plantation owner in 1695. However, four years later he manumitted Jack “to take effect in 26 years from this date” because “he had respect for him.”
The document granting manumission is found in The Early Records of the Town of Providence, vol. 4, pp 71-72:
Be it knowne unto all People by these presents that Whereas I William Hawkins of the Towne of Providence in the Collony of Rhode Island & Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett Bay in New England haveing for Me my heirs & Assignes, Purchased, Procured, bought & obtained of one william Mackcollin of the Island of Barbados, Merchant a certaine Negro man of about twenty yeares of Age, Named Jack to be unto me my heirs & Assignes for Ever, as may appeare by a bill of sale under the sd William Mackcollins his hand & seale, beareing the date the seventh day of June. 1695; But notwithstanding I the sd William Hawkins bought the sd Negro Jack for Ever, yet upon further Consideration & in favour to the said Negro Man Jack (haveing a Respect for him) Doe by these presents: Relinquish, Release, Discharge & for Ever set free from all & all Manner of service or servitude to me, my heirs, Executors, Administrators or Assignes, after he hath by service Compleated the full & just terme of Twenty & six yeares time from & beginning upon the seventeenth day of June last past being in this present 1699; the said Negro Man Jack; And doe injoyne My selfe, my heirs & Assignes after the sd twenty & six yeares as aforesaid be expired never to make any Claime or Demand to the sd negro man Jack by vertue of My said Purchase of him from the said William Mackcollin as abovesd; In wittnes of the Premises I de here-unto set my hand & seale the Eighteenth day of November in the yeare One Thousand six hundred ninety nine. Signed & delivered in the presence of Tho:Olney senr: and John Whipple junior
By this time, Margaret had died, probably in 1687. The couple had five children: John Hawkins, William Hawkins Jr, Edward Hawkins, Mary Hawkins Blackmar and Madeline Hawkins Rhodes. William died sometime near the end of 1699.
Map showing the original proprietors of Providence in 1640. William and Margaret Hawkins’ land is the third plot up from the bottom.
The grinding movement of time toward the end was slow and steady, one day following another, night falling expectantly, darkness ruling the land until the hues of dawn foretold the beginning of a new day like all the others. The beauties of starry nights and rosy dawns were lost amid the suffering and cries of the tortured, ill, and dying. The people could not see that truth and goodness overshadowed the land at dusk and brightened the world with new light. The divine punctuated the sameness of daily toil and disturbed repose. Creation waited expectantly, if humans were blind to the emerging truth surrounding them. The stars appeared ever brighter, the night sky ever clearer, the sounds of night like a choir rejoicing in the arrival of the child. Most people closed their doors and shuttered their windows to the lights and sounds of the night. Some people, however, could not help but see and hear. Shepherds watching over their flocks knew the night sky, watched the progression of stars and constellations, kept track of Orion and the Pleiades, the rising of the Dog Star, Sirius, the strange patterns of the wandering planets. They knew the sounds of night, and the sameness of each night, the constancy of creation from season to season. But there was a change to the unending sameness. The constancy of nature was suspended as the timeless entered time. The lights and songs of the night jarred them from their slumber, and they looked in awe, listened intently, to the message told them by the night. A child is born. God is with you.
Travelers caught on the road took extra care to keep to the path, letting the stars, which shown brightly in the clear desert air, guide them. Gentle zephyrs whispered among the palms, sycamores, and figs. Those still awake resting after the labors of the day awaited sleep and the new day. Everyone, human and beast, anticipated dawn. In the town, a few feeble lights interrupted the overwhelming darkness. Candlelight and oil lamps cast great shadows upon mothers caring for sick children, feeble old men refusing to sleep, and the anxious despairing over deeds of the past and retribution yet to come. Tavern owners had shut the doors and hostelers closed the gates. Those wanderers needing food and rest were left to fend for themselves.
The man and woman, having come from afar to fulfill the requirements of the law, arrived after dark. The man was a native of the town, though not a resident, and had known of neither friends nor family who could host him and the woman for the night. The woman was exhausted and about to give birth. Starlight pointed the way to a rustic barn filled with hay and feeding troughs. The woman tried to stifle her fears and the cries of pain as the baby would wait no longer. The man found a bucket and a well, drew water and wet some clothes, and tended the woman the best he could. After a time she made the final push and the baby emerged in a splash of warm fluid from the womb amid cries of anguish and joy. The man cut the cord and gave the naked child to the mother, who wrapped him in clothes to protect him from the cold and held him to her still heaving breast. Soon the cries were stifled and the child slept. The man put the child in the only object resembling a cradle, a manger that he packed with straw. The woman kneaded her womb to try to stop the ongoing cramps.
In the dead of night the stars shown more brightly, particularly one that seemed to herald for the man the new life brought into the world. Accompanying the apparent brightening of the star were noises caused by the movement of the natural and supernatural. The man heard rapturous singing voices and wondered whence they came. Soon he heard the footsteps and shouts of man, and guardedly asked what they wanted. He could detect trembling in their voices and fear in their faces, glistening from tears. They were shepherds, they said, who were reclining in the surrounding hills, watching over their sheep, when they had been astonished by amazing figures in the sky, glowing ethereally, singing, glorifying God. One of the messengers told them of the miraculous birth of the son of the most high God in this very town of Bethlehem, and that the child would be found lying in a manger in a barn. When the messengers departed, in their wake was the bright starlight that shown upon the town. The men said that though they had been terrified they could not doubt their senses, and knew that God had commanded them to go and find the baby, to worship this child, Immanuel. They looked upon the sleeping infant and continued to weep and shutter excitedly, glorifying God and the great miracle He had deigned to allow them to witness.
The appearance of the shepherds astonished Joseph, the father, who was nevertheless not completely unprepared. He was a descendant of King David, the anointed, and had been taught the Scripture, and knew the prophecies that the Messiah would herald from the house of David, and be born in the City of David, Bethlehem, Joseph’s own birthplace. Although Joseph was a craftsman, not a scholar, he was dutiful in attending the synagogue, following Mosaic Law, and reading the Scriptures. He knew what Isaiah said about the suffering servant who would be born of a virgin. Reality and experience reflected the dream that had informed Joseph that his wife, Mary, was this virgin.
Mary listened to the shepherds and pondered what they had witnessed. All that she had been told was coming true. Nine months before, she had been a young maiden living with her parents in Nazareth in Galilee, betrothed to a good man, Joseph the carpenter. Her dreamlike experience of the messenger who hailed her and proclaimed that she was the mother of God had in due course occurred as predicted: her body had changed and her womb had grown. The birth of a wonderful, healthy child and the words of the shepherds were amazing, if expected.
Joseph and Mary had bound themselves in the acceptance of God’s will. During Mary’s pregnancy they had learned, along with the other inhabitants of Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea, of Caesar’s requirement that all heads of family enroll at the place of their birth. Mary had been in her ninth month when they began the five-day journey to Bethlehem. Jews were taught to obey the Mosaic Law in synagogue and the Roman law by circumstance.
The checkered political history of the Jews, the ongoing political struggle for power by dynasts among the chosen people, combined with the ceaseless aggression directed toward Israel and Judah, later Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea, by outsiders—Chaldeans, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans—had left the Jews a weakened people subject to the whims of outside forces. For several generations the most compelling and dominant force was that of Rome. Like most occupying powers throughout history, Rome required little from its subject peoples as long as they obeyed the laws and paid their taxes. The enrollment that forced Joseph and Mary to journey to Bethlehem was in accord with the latter. Romans governed subject peoples indirectly by means of local rulers, kings and tyrants, and directly, by appointed officials, who were given complete authority subject to the supervision of the Senate, formerly, and at this time, the imperial power, held by Octavian, or Augustus, Caesar. Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, had held power for almost forty years. He along with other tyrants, had destroyed the Republic, substituting the rule of one person. Augustus held power by controlling Rome’s huge military. In the Near East, he preferred to control kingdoms by means of a patron-client relationship with rulers such as Herod and his sons and successors. These men ruled as long as they followed Augustus’ bidding and kept order. Often they worked in cooperation with Roman officials—procurators, propraetors, proconsuls, and governors. Augustus maintained remarkable control by a strong Roman troop presence on the frontiers of an empire that encompassed parts of three continents. The large military was a continual drain on the empire’s resources, for which Augustus paid by taxation. To know what was the proper tax quota for each province and client kingdom required meticulous records of the number of citizens. Hence Augustus ordered the enrollment, or census. Joseph, Mary, and the child stayed in Bethlehem for several days to allow for Mary’s recovery and for Joseph to enroll with the local officials. Joseph was able to find more secure lodgings for his family. He prepared to make the journey home to Nazareth, planning on his way to stop at Jerusalem to accomplish Mary’s purification according to Mosaic Law and for the circumcision of the child according to the Abrahamic Covenant. Meanwhile the shepherds were not silent about their miraculous experience. Word had spread and the devout and curious came from surrounding villages to see the child. Most astonishing of all the visitors were Chaldean stargazers bearing gifts and kneeling before the child.
People throughout the ancient Mediterranean believed that the divine spoke to humans through dreams.
Such was the experience of the young woman, which brought images so vivid, a conversation so easily recalled, that the sights and sounds etched on the mind and memory were never to be forgotten. Whether she was asleep or awake is indeterminable as it was recorded later; the experience was so vivid in her sleep as to be unquestionably real or so dreamlike in her wakefulness as to not be doubted. When the event happened, day or night, winter or summer, month or year, is unknown, unimportant. It was an experience not bound by the normal rules of time. How long it lasted, and whether it was continuous in one or several series of moments, is irrelevant to the experience, to the overwhelming truth that the message contained, both for her and for others. People of her time and of the past had had similar experiences, as she well knew, from hearing stories told or listening to the scriptures being read. She had learned that messengers came and spoke to royalty and commoners alike. So sure were people of her time that such messages were divine, that kings sought out whoever could explain their dreams; some people had that art, soothsayers and prognosticators, experts who could read divine messages in the flights of birds, the arrangements of the stars, the shape of the liver of a sacrificial animal. She had no need for such expertise. Her experience was sufficient to know it was a messenger, one who came from God.
Strangely, in recollecting the experience, she did not describe the messenger save for his name, Gabriel, which means man of God, or strength in God, which was precisely what the girl, Mary, would require to fulfill the requirements of the message. It was an ethereal messenger who spoke to Mary, a messenger without form, merely the spoken word or thoughts, powerful enough to bring about a change in the girl, to cause her body to shutter in the presence of God, to hear more carefully the words spoken, to know for certain what was said to her in her mind.
She was no one in particular, merely a girl, a virgin, daughter of commoners, illiterate and ignorant as were most such people two thousand years ago. At the same time she was exceptional, unique, one favored by God, selected by Him for an important role, a service for all humankind. Her purpose in life, like all girls and women of her time, was to marry and bear children, if she was so fortunate; few women questioned such a role, it was what their mothers and grandmothers had done, and what their daughters and granddaughters would do. To have a mate and have a child was as natural as to sleep and eat, to live and die. And yet the dreamlike message she experienced, which told her that this was her destiny, which was neither exceptional nor out of the ordinary, was forcefully put, a message of an imminent occurrence, something that could not be delayed. She was a virgin. And yet, she was to have a child. Her dream turned out to bear a divine gift.
Modern philosophy and science are uncomfortable with the presence of God in any venue, much less the womb. What should be considered the most inviolable place has been violated and penetrated time and again to destroy the most sacred of all things, life. Great thinkers, such as Sigmund Freud, who saw God as the figment of the collective imagination, the product of psychic yearning for completion and love, are aware of no true unity with the divine, in or outside of the womb. Other great thinkers, such as Karl Marx, believing that biological demands precede consciousness, that before awareness is hunger, subject humans to the overwhelming dominance of time and place. Yet, ironically, now and in the past humans have engaged in an unending search for the divine, the discovery of which, it is thought, will yield answers to the many perplexing questions confronting humankind. Great have been the number of philosophers who ask the questions all humans ask and propose answers fit for their time and place. Rather than finding humility in the elusive search for truth, thinkers wallow in the hubris of knowing. All the while humans face the abyss of ignorance.
Dreams invite acceptance of the unreal, something outside of oneself. Individuals in any culture at any time feel an overwhelming need for completion, sense a pull from a transcendent other. What Rudolph Otto called the numinous was the dazzling light that blinded Paul of Tarsus; the child’s voice that responded to Aurelius Augustine’s agonizing question; the austere, universal presence of the One that so captivated Plotinus and his disciples Porphyry and Julian; the oneness that Siddhartha Gautama experienced in the rushing water of the river of life; and the fear and awe that Moses knew when standing on holy ground before Yahweh. All of these religious experiences involve particular people at particular times seeking, sensing, reaching out for, receiving, and accepting, the transcendent.
The greatest threats to modern society in the third millennium, Anno Domini, are not overpopulation, hunger, disease, terrorism, global warming, and war–although these are pressing problems to be sure. Rather, the modern scientific worldview of purposeful objective thought is destroying the subjective, intuitive awareness of the numinous and transcendent that humans have sensed for countless ages. The individual’s sense of self is a casualty in the secularization of knowledge that has occurred during the past two centuries. Impersonal social and economic forces rather than life are the great agents of change. Reason and science have overwhelmed intuition and art; the subject who intertwines oneself with the object of inquiry is condemned as biased and prejudiced; personal religious beliefs have no place in scholarly endeavors. This secular, objective trend is, perhaps, a mere aberration in time. The period from the structured urban lifestyle that began in Mesopotamia five thousand years ago to today is comparatively brief in the history of humankind. The age of modern science since 1500 is on the human time scale just a fleeting moment. The transcendent and the transient, the subjective and the objective, intuition and reason, have been united from the beginning of humankind.
Mary’s betrothed similarly received a dreamlike visitor, a messenger bearing a gift, who asked of him to accept what he did not understand, to abide by a will larger than himself. Joseph, a simple man who worked with his hands, not a great thinker or exceptional leader, rather a person content to listen and abide, dreamed of God’s messenger telling him to accept a destiny that would have otherwise been abhorrent to him. Betrothal to a virgin implied she would be untouched until marriage, that her womb was reserved for his seed. Joseph dreamed, however, that Mary was pregnant and that her womb was inviolable and sacred and that he must accept the child as his own. He awoke to a new reality that he acted upon with confidence in the truth. He transformed his entire life according to a message he received in a singular, inexact moment of time.
Joseph was a Hebrew, a Semite, a descendant of people who had migrated from ancient Iraq, Mesopotamia, west to the land of Canaan, what in time became Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea. The Book ofGenesis describes the transformation of these Semites into Hebrews by focusing upon the story of a man, Abram, and his wife, Sarai, nomadic herders who followed a divine call to journey to a distant land. Like other Semites, Abraham and Sarah and their people continued to feel the terror of the unknown, but their fear was mitigated by the realization of a God who cared for them, who was Himself Fate, who controlled all things, and who could circumvent the laws of nature should He so desire. This identification of self with God grew more sophisticated with the passing centuries. We find in Exodus Moses discovering a God of law and deliverance called simply, “I Am Who I Am.” Who precisely this God is and what are His powers and interest in humans is made specifically clear in the writings of the Psalmist David, king of the united kingdom of Israel and Judah from 1000 to 961, Ante Christos. David, at the same time a warrior, murderer, adulterer, and conqueror, was also a poet and singer of extraordinary talent and sensitivity, whose Psalms express the epitome of piety and anguish, love and torment.
David’s poems are ironic expressions of faith in an all-powerful God even as evil torments and controls the poet. David discovered the dreamlike existence of continually being seduced by some force, some spirit, something strangely in yet outside himself. It was there to counter whatever felt good, those pleasant feelings of life, when things appear right, more than adequate, and nothing is better than a peaceful smile and soft sensations of contentment. It was a fleeting sensation, this intrusion into constancy and order, this violation of satisfaction and happy thoughts. It pierced well-being. It distracted normalcy. It penetrated into a deep well of abandonment, fear, distrust, envy, selfishness, anger, and lust. It found the weakness of his being, the entrance in time of corruption, the fleeting path to what is not real, the moment when fantasy, indolence, hunger, dissatisfaction, and the corporeal reign. It was not right yet it felt good. It was wrong yet just for a moment it was allowed. Evil triumphed. But only in the passing moments. God triumphed over the timeless, the transcendent feelings and experiences that overwhelmed the singular instance of evil.
God, Yahweh, transcends the moment by speaking in a timeless fashion. Sometimes his words are profound, as to Moses. Usually they are indirect, as to Elijah, when he heard God whispering to him. Sometimes the voice of God is found in the wind. The Hebrews discovered that God often speaks subtly, as through dreams. Elihu, in the ook ofJob, proclaimed that God’s word comes to humans “in a vision of the night,” and He tells them of His plans, and dissuades them from their’s.
Many Hebrew prophets were experts in dream interpretation. Joseph the son of Jacob became the powerful adviser to pharaoh after providing an insightful interpretation of the Egyptian ruler’s dream. After failing to find his own dream prophesiers able to explain his perplexing dreams, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar employed Daniel, who provided the correct interpretation. The Hebrew prophets heard the voice of God in singular and transcendent moments, either when awake or asleep, and responded like Isaiah, who declared, “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.”
Isaiah, learning of God’s plans, even predicted that at some point in time, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” God is with us.
The world was in need of a savior; then a star appeared, an astral phenomenon seen in the east.
Those who witnessed the rising star on the endless desert horizon were seeking signs of the will of heaven, the becoming—that which is not, yet will be. Each night these sorcerers of the desert, star worshipers known as Chaldeans or magi (μάγος, magŏs), sought in the movement of the stars and planets along the zodiac the signs of the future, information they could employ in their sorcery and charms, their advice to kings, their own achievement of power and wealth. The astral event, unexpected, astonishing, and concerning, impelled the sorcerers to journey in search of its meaning.
Their search led them to the one through whom all of the past as well as the whole of the present and the future are fulfilled.
The sorcerers lived in lands to the east out of reach of the power of Rome and the eastern extremes of the Roman Empire—Anatolia, distant lands of Mesopotamia and Babylon and beyond to the Iranian plateau where the star-worshiper Zoroaster had once come preaching a belief that the multitude of divinities long held in awe by priests and peoples were but two primal forces of good and evil in constant combat for control over the natural and supernatural. The sorcerers devoted themselves to the good rather than the evil, and used their knowledge of the stars to predict events that served the former in opposition to the latter.
The sorcerers of Anatolia followed the star that guided them across the deserts, journeying in the wake of other nomadic travelers who centuries before had set out from Mesopotamia toward the land of Canaan. Unlike the first Hebrews led by Abraham, the sorcerers did not drive sheep and goats before them; but they were sufficiently wealthy to bring rich gifts of their lands: minerals and spices and ointments. They were uncertain of their destination, uncertain for whom the gifts were; they traveled with theirs eyes and ears open to any possibility to which the astral phenomenon might bring them. Passersby might wonder, “what folly is this, that sorcerers follow a strange star bringing rich gifts to where and to whom they know not?” The sorcerers had faith in their reading of the heavens, faith that the astral messenger was not bent on folly; something sensed and intuited informed them of the rectitude and certainty of their mission.
The sorcerers believed that the supernatural could interpose change and movement on the unchanging truths of the natural. The great certainty of the patterns of the heavens had meaning and influence over human events. The number of stars in the sky, the wandering planets, the patterns of the zodiac, held latent power, as did substances of the earth, air, fire, and water. The sorcerers, knowing that the divine and its many manifestations revealed truths to the willing observer, thinker, and listener, hurried them on in the conviction that without doubt the astral phenomena had supernatural origins, and must not be ignored.
The appearance of a star, a new light in the heavens, might signal any of a number of events. Time immemorial had taught prognosticators that stars were manifestations of the divine, even symbols of particular supernatural powers—to impregnate the barrenness of soil and womb with new life and growth, to stir among men the angst to desire power and conquer foes, to will to rise among others as king. This latter possibility, that an astral phenomenon was a supernatural sign of the birth of a king, quickened their step as they journeyed west.
It is not told how long was their journey and precisely from where they came; what were their names and nationalities; how many they were and whether or not they held political power among their respective peoples. The story of the sorcerers’s journey to Palestine is anonymous about such details, but clear about their beliefs and purpose and about what they found when they arrived.
Ancient authorities on the practice of magic, who lived during the many centuries that the Roman Empire provided a unified structure for learning, believed that the magi, the sorcerers of Anatolia who were experts in astrology, divination, and magic, were opportunists. These Asian sorcerers claimed to be able to anticipate the interposition of the supernatural on the natural, to predict, anticipate, the arrival of divine hints of the future and read them when they arrived. Ancient scientists and philosophers were often incredulous about such claims, though they did not doubt the abilities of the sorcerers to use magic, to predict the future, and to gauge the will of heaven from the stars. Hence when the sorcerers from Anatolia crossed the Jordan River, entering into Palestine, following an astral phenomenon, their counterparts at the court of Herod, king of Judaea, sought to discover the magi’s mission. Herod was like most ancient kings insecure in his power, wondering how long fate had decreed his rule, hungry to find out from any source, information about the future. He had court astrologers, to be sure—the strongest, wealthiest kings attracted the most skilled soothsayers, either Chaldean or trained by Chaldeans. Their positions at court, indeed their very lives, depended upon their skill at prognostication. The sorcerers arriving from the east were rivals, but could hardly be ignored.
Upon arriving at Jerusalem, the sorcerers went to the court of the king, whose name was Herod. Whether the king that they met with was Herod or his son and successor Herod Archelaus is unclear from the source, the Gospel of Matthew. The king and his advisers, upon learning of the coming of the magi from the east, following the sign of heaven, inquired of the sorcerers what they had seen and what it could mean. The sorcerers revealed enough of their mission to encourage speculation as to what the star could mean, but they were hesitant to put themselves into the hands of the king or his court astrologers. While the sorcerers stayed in Jerusalem an uncertain amount of time, they continued to see the astral phenomenon, and wondered when its true significance would be revealed.
The sorcerers either had learned beforehand or learned upon their arrival in Jerusalem that Jews were most particularly anxious about one future event, the coming of the anointed one, the Messiah. The Hebrews had for over a thousand years looked for the appearance of the anointed one, who would champion their cause, free them from suffering and political oppression, and lead them to a new age wherein the chosen people of Yahweh would find redemption and peace—and power and glory as well.
The yearning for a savior is common among individuals and peoples throughout time. Some Hebrew writers, such as Isaiah, portrayed the Messiah as a “Prince of Peace,” a humble and loving healer. The author of the Psalms believed the Messiah was Lord, son of God. Other Hebrew writers expected the Messiah to come in a blaze of glory. According to the author of the Old Testament book of Daniel, who wrote two to three hundred years before the reign of Herod, the Messiah would provide a temporal and secular manifestation of what all people seek, what people of the ancient world in particular sought: wealth, power, glory, revenge, martial success. More recently, perhaps only seventy years earlier, the writer Enoch had conceived of the Messiah as God’s agent to avenge His enemies. Hence did the Jews hunger for the appearance of the anointed one.
Even if freed for short periods from the whims of rulers and soldiers, the people of Palestine, like most ancient peoples, were constantly pressured by famine, malnourishment, plague, individual illnesses, disability, insecurity, pain, and eventual death. Lives were short and brutish. Few people were educated, and most lived in fear of the unknown. Ignorance was the great ruler of all people, fed by the deception that life could be lived without pain, hunger, violence, and fear. People responded to their conditions by retreating inward to what was left of self, a dark, dismal region of absence of love and the ubiquity of pain and terror. The only release was death.
Out of the darkness a light shown. Hopeful individuals saw it, reached out to touch it, embrace it. Sin and despair often tried to cover the light, to smother its rays, to hide it though it could not be hidden. Somewhere the light still penetrated the darkness. The magi from Anatolia focused on the light amid the darkness of Herod’s Judaea. As they viewed the suffering and poverty of the people and the lavish wealth and momentary power of the king and court; as they walked among religious leaders, Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes, who puffed themselves up thinking that they knew the will and ways of God; as they listened to astrologers and sorcerers who sought to tell the king what he wanted to hear—the magi still could see the light, the astral messenger that nightly appeared, giving them hope. So they waited. They knew that in time, soon, the astral messenger would reveal what they had journeyed so far to see. They waited in expectation of the supernatural.
The American Plutarch 