Friday, December 17, 2004

Of Homo Leprechaunus

I find the search for the Big Bang and the search for the Missing Link to be two of the most ironically worthwhile pursuits of modern science. The search for the Big Bang has given us the two Hubble Deep Field photographs, along with their precocious younger sibling, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which together present the most brainspattering, shotgun-blast-to-the-face witness to the majesty of the Creator I have seen. The search for the Missing Link, on the other hand, is far more interesting for its dead ends. And I am not speaking of the much-hyped hoaxes and cavemen constructed from bone chips, but rather of the very real scientific discoveries and their implications for people such as myself who have stubbornly refused to stop believing in fairytales.

Picture if you will a tropical island populated by tiny little people who hunt dragons, giant rats the size of golden retrievers, and miniature elephants. While this seems like the setting for a bad fantasy novel, it actually comes from the pages of a scientific peer-review journal, and is intended as quite serious natural history. The remains of a race of three-foot-tall hominids (read, 'wee folk') have recently been discovered in Indonesia, and the discovery has created quite a stir in the scientific world. Most especially, this is because they are apparently (even from an evolutionary standpoint) neighbors of Homo sapiens and not his ancestors. As such, Homo floresiensis stands as one of the few known semihuman creatures that may very well have interacted with humankind; another is Homo neandertalensis. This past summer, while rereading Lewis' The Discarded Image, I became convinced that the neandertal and the elves or high faeries of European folklore were one and the same. (The modern paleoanthropologist's conception of the neandertal is very little like the sloping caveman of the popular imagination. Neandertal was apparently not only stronger and hardier, but also more intelligent than modern man. Oh, and his slightly shorter stature fits in well with this theory also.) Now the appearance of the diminutive Homo floresiensis lends credibility to the existence of such fairytale staples as leprechauns, gnomes, and the like. Even the scientists have admitted as much, especially since the tiny people recently discovered in Flores (affectionately dubbed 'hobbits' by their discoverers) have always featured in the folklore of that island in much the same way that leprechauns do in the folklore of the Irish or pucks and Robin Goodfellows in that of the wider British Isles.

Science rules.

posted by Jeremy at 6:47 PM
3 marginalia

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Of Pagan love

Yesterday I watched Closer, and while I'm glad I did, it is one of the unpleasantest films I've seen in some time. The story follows the hideously intertwined sexual relationships of four selfish, faithless, cruel, guilt-ridden, despairing, hopeless, and entirely ordinary people as they brutally destroy their own and others' lives--all in the name of love. The movie is really brillant at portraying this as the abomination it is, without giving into the typical Hollywood temptation of trying to pander to audiences' desire for mere titillation. There is a great deal of (quite explicit) on-screen sexual content (although, interestingly, not a single sex scene), but it is all far from appealing. 'Eviscerating' is a better term.

The love possessed by the characters in this film (which is smart enough not to put forward the all-too-tidy 'sex vs. love' dichotomy) is monstrous, an idiot and bestial mutation of the familiar Christian virtue. Closer is a phenomenally accurate portrayal of how human depravity perverts even such a noble thing as love into a weapon for annihilating souls, but it does so without offering any sort of a solution, because the moviemakers obviously do not have one. It gives us the Law (no pun intended) without the Gospel, and the result is really depressing. To sum up my reaction to the film, I must reference one of its scenes. Jude Law's character has just met Natalie Portman's character and is describing to her his work as an obituary writer. He explains the euphemisms used in the obits page ('convivial'=alchoholic, 'private'=gay, etc.), and she asks him what her euphemism would be. He replies, "Disarming." When she objects that 'disarming' is not a euphemism, he says, "In your case it is."

In this film's case, 'disarming' is a euphemism.

posted by Jeremy at 9:38 PM
2 marginalia

Friday, December 03, 2004

Of a Mystery Multiplied (More Sexy Stuff)

Forgive me; I can't resist.

It suddenly seems remarkable to me that the author of Hebrews, in 10:20, speaks of Christ's flesh as a veil. Now I don't think this is really the point of the passage, but such a reference to a veil of flesh suggests a sexual connotation, and I find upon closer examination that out of this a pattern seems to emerge. I don't know how useful (or orthodox) this train of thought is, but bear with me. You may offer criticism in the comments.

Throughout the Old Testament, the unfaithfulness of Israel is often portrayed as the dalliances of an adulterous wife. Her rejection of Yahveh takes the form of harlotry; she goes "a-whoring after other gods." In Ezekiel 23, we are told that the sister cities of Samaria and Jerusalem even went so far as to give up their maidenhead to their lovers among the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans. Israel had lost the purity of her youth, her spiritual virginity, to foreign gods ("While she was mine," Yahveh bitterly remarks in v. 5).

In the New Testament, Christ comes to stand in the place of an impure humanity before the Father. May I suggest that in so doing, he becomes a renewed spiritual virginity for the elect, supplying a new veil, "that is to say, his flesh"? And that when that veil which is his flesh is torn, what has has happened is none other than the reunion-in-consummation of God and man?

And what in fact follows this but the entry of the Spirit, the Lifegiver, into the world, impregnating it (if I may be allowed the term) with a new creation, the kingdom of heaven? It seems to me that this pattern in not wholly in my imagination. And if that initial sacrifice of Christ on Calvary can be seen (in a sense) as the opening act of a marriage between God and man, could not the symbolic repetition of it in the eucharist be likened to the continued (bloodless, after initial consummation) sexual communion of a husband and wife?

I'm not sure any of this is very compelling. Comments are certainly welcome.

posted by Jeremy at 3:59 PM
4 marginalia