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Towering
Intellectuality
By
Marvin Payne
Yesterday, in
a conversation with my father-in-law, I used the word “bifurcate.”
It just popped into my head and demanded to be spoken. Not having
the slightest idea what it meant, I couldn’t deliver it within any
meaningful context. So I just spoke the word. This is the kind of
thing that happens when I am overly stimulated intellectually.
My father-in-law
(and, since this column has a philosophical connection with Family
History, I should specify that I am discussing here my Nearest Paternal
Ancestor on my Spousal Line) has been characterized as something
along the order of a “towering intellect.” He has been characterized
thusly by at least one individual who is actually paid to observe
and evaluate the human condition (see www.marvinpayne.com/familyalbum.html,
paragraph two, but not right now).
By “towering
intellect” I mean that if you’re discussing the Kabbalah (a Very
Serious Text emerging from the Ancient Hebrews) and the appointed
time for concluding your discussion has come, and he’s leaving the
room with focused purpose, you mischievously ask, “Hey, weren’t
you going to tell me just a titch more about the earlier (horizontal)
rendering of the Hebrew letter “aleph”?, he will immediately drop
his suitcase, sit down with you once again on the couch, and miss
his plane.
(In Hebrew,
as is apparent to most towering intellects ((and even to a few just-barely-standing-upright
intellects)) there is an alphabet character ((the first, as it happens,
although it’s hard to tell, because Hebrew is read from right to
left)) called “aleph,” which once looked a little like the head
of a bull, or, in its earliest form, the head of bull enjoying a
siesta. The Kabbalah attaches great symbolic, numerical, climatological,
and even spelling significance to each of the Hebrew alphabet characters.
Did I say the Kabbalah was pretty Serious? One ancient Rabbi, with
a perhaps overly-nurtured sense of humor, was once symbolically
laden with all the sins of the Camp of Israel and driven into the
wilderness for whimsically suggesting during the composition of
the Kabbalah that they name the first chapter that deals with alphabet
characters “Aleph In Wonderland.” This account is to be found in
the ancient “Rumoricon,” a little-known but vast Talmud-like commentary
on The Apocrypha.)
According to
Kabbalistic methodology, sacred texts are to be understood on various
levels. For example, if you encounter the aleph in the earlier (horizontal,
or “siesta”) rendering, it is a signal that the next passage is
to be understood as a dream. If, on the other hand, you encounter
the aleph in the later (vertical, or “awake”) rendering, it is a
signal that the following passage may only be read under the threat
of being ceremoniously gored in the Court of the Gentiles. Did I
mention that the Kabbalah is a rather Serious Book? Not to mention
Totally Forbidden and--hey, what is that shadow creeping up behind
me brandishing a sacrificial sword? Oh, whew, it’s just my little
boy in his Kabbalistic Enforcer pajamas.
(Someone accustomed
to Kabbalistic interpretation of texts would probably point out
here that “whew” is a word that only has significance in the world
of written expression. Even “cowering” intellects, or even those
to whom Shakespeare referred as “base football players” ((see “King
Lear” Act One, Scene Four and then wonder with me how a guy can
be, simultaneously, a baseball and football player. Well, cut Shakespeare
some slack. He was, after all, a theatre geek, towering intellect
notwithstanding)), will readily see that “whew,” although widely
understood when perceived on the page (or parchment, or basalt slab)
is not a word ever actually spoken by humans. ((Except by a girl
with whom I was enamored in my adolescence, Christine Welch (((see
www.marvinpayne.com/lovebook.html,
chapter three))), who once said “whew” to me right out loud in an
otherwise meaningful sentence without batting a lovely eye. Christine
had, it seems, spent most of her summer in the library.)) )
But it’s all
pretty useful actually, this attention to cultural, mystical, and
poetical tools of scriptural interpretation. On account of here’s
Dave Koralewski, (the Father-in-law under consideration here--also
the Sunday School President in his ward) suddenly standing in front
of the fifteen-year-olds because their teacher had moved from the
ward without telling anybody, asking the students to read silently
certain passages of scripture so that while they’re looking down
he can be reading silently certain passages of the lesson manual
(these towering intellects have their tricks, let me tell you).
And they get
to the part in Mosiah (see Mosiah 7:30-31--don’t bother with www.marvinpayne.com/anythingatall.html
at this point) where the Lord says “If my people shall sow filthiness
they shall reap the chaff thereof in the whirlwind.” And the towering
intellect (or “TI”) asks the class, “What does ‘sow’ mean?” And
there are blank stares, except from the young sister who condescends
to point out to the poor TI that it involves a needle, thread, and
cloth. So the TI asks them if they are acquainted with the parable
of the sower and is met by blank stares, this time even from the
austere haberdasheress.
Then he tells
them the parable, and some of them find it familiar, and some of
them suddenly remember that “sow” means ‘”deposit seeds into a medium
from which they might grow.” (Perhaps if “bifurcate” had been part
of a parable that gave it a context, I would have been able to guess
what it meant.) As he related to me this Sunday School sowing story,
I was right with him, because last Monday we planted our garden.
(We always plant it all at once and it always grows. And it almost
never has weeds. Eat your heart out. Or pay your tithing and find
out what totally surprising blessing the Lord has in mind for You.
In the World of Blessings it is, more than anywhere else, “different
strokes for different folks”--this, besides the blessings themselves,
is what makes obedience so much fun.) I would stick my fingers into
the tilled soil and pull some back, little John Riley and Caitlin
Willow would drop kernels of corn or little dry beans into the gap,
and then we’d stomp them down all along the row. We’d inter one
spiky little beet seed per every round anticipated beet, and array
our little honeydew seeds along the parapets of their hill, methodically
and meticulously.
A Parable
But in the parable,
some seed “fell by the way side,” and the fowl birds ate them. Some
“fell upon stony places” and there wasn’t any soil to grab hold
of, so they fried. And “some fell among thorns” and were choked
by the thorns. And I’m thinking, “Hold on! I, even I who only gets
a good garden as a blessing for doing something else right, know
better than this. This year I avoided planting even one bean in
the driveway, where hungry and fowl birds are wont to strut. I avoided
planting a single kernel of corn on the surface of a rock. I avoided
burying my little beet seeds among thorns. Assiduously. Bifurcatively.
What was this Sower in the parable thinking?
My reverie is
interrupted by my father-in-law waving his hand gracefully across
the space between us. At first, I think he has begun dancing, or
something. But then I realize he is demonstrating a style of planting
that is alien and wonderful, maybe even Kabbalistic. Being a TI,
he is bringing a cultural level to this whole “sowing” thing that
never would have occurred to me, not to mention to his staring fifteen-year-olds.
Your hand is full of seeds, you’re walking through the ancient field
(perhaps incautiously close to way sides, stones, and thorns, but
there you are) and gradually opening your hand as you’re swinging
it in an arc before you. Seeds galore. All over the place. You are
“casting” seeds, like little pearls, into the waiting ground.
And he suggests
(and this is pretty easy to see, what with all the wide visual aiding
he’s doing) that a certain kind of “casting” is “broadcasting.”
Got it.
Then he asks
both me and the fifteen-year-olds, “Are you aware of anyone who
is broadcasting filthiness?” Oooh! Cultural leap--like lightning
between two poles (or a tiny spark across a synapse)! And of course
the filthiness takes root and sends out hungry shoots. What gets
reaped therefrom is a whole ‘nuther discussion.
And we are left
knowing that whether we finally lift our open hands to the Lord
filled with golden grain or hold our hands behind our backs, hiding
from Him the clutching chaff, is a bifurcation that can be discerned
without any Kabbalistic tools whatever.
--------------------------------------
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