Privilege
Saul, the first king of the Israelites, is one of my favorite characters from the Hebrew Bible. He was not a brilliant man, nor an overly brave individual, certainly not as ambitious as his successor, David. He was thrust into his position by God who was responding to the request of the Israelites that they have a king so that they could be ruled in the manner of all their neighbors.
Samuel, prophet and spiritual leader or gibbor (sometimes called judge) of Israel at the time, has warned the Israelites that they are asking for trouble because by asking for a king they are spurning God’s divine authority and making themselves vulnerable to taxation, warfare and any leader’s vain ambitions.
Samuel finally accedes to the people’s demands and God (who is the one actually upset by this, according to the text—although one wonders) and is given the prophetic sign that Saul is the one who will be king.
Saul is just passing through Samuel’s town. He’s looking for some donkeys who have wandered away from his family’s homestead. Saul’s servant suggests that they go to the local prophet or seer to find out whether or not he might have some idea where to look for the donkeys.
The Hebrew here is evocative as there is actually an editorial comment in the text indicating that the status of prophets was changing at the time the story was written…during the time of Samuel soothsayers were called “The Sighted Ones.” Later on they were referred to by the title Nevi’im, the “the gushing fountains.” In Hebrew texts, only some seers get the latter title….this text is letting us know that, irregardless of what Samuel was called in his day, he merited the designation of the latter category.
Samuel agrees to meet with Saul about his donkeys, but has received the sign from God regarding the Divine’s choice of Saul. The passage from the Tanakh for this topic is the moment when Samuel springs God’s plan on Saul.
It’s clear from Saul’s reaction that he is not very happy about this. In fact, later on, when Samuel calls all the important families of Israel together in order to reveal God’s kingly appointment, legitimating the choice through a process of carefully crafted oracle bending, Saul attempts to hide from the assembly in a pile of baggage, despite the fact that he is apparently much taller and bigger than most of the people around him. It really does seem like a scene out of a movie.
Saul seeks Samuel’s advice at every turn for the first years of his reign, and is extremely uncomfortable when the prophet dies. It is at that point his own career begins to spiral out of control and Saul begins to exhibit some of the more unsavory characteristics of kingship. It is so clear from this distance in time and place that Saul is depressed, he hates being king and he’s really angry at God for putting him in such a place.
At one point Saul misses Samuel’s advice and presence so much he actually conjures up the seer’s ghost from the underworld, Sheol, through the mediations of a necromancer, “the witch of Endor.” She successfully rouses Samuel from the underworld and he appears in semi-corporeal form really angry at Saul for violating God’s established boundary of life and death, thus demonstrating a lack of faith in God and his own abilities (the witch is never condemned for her professional skill).
By the time Saul eventually dies in battle with his beloved son Jonathan, David had already begun to assemble the army that would fill the power vacuum left by an heirless throne. Saul started out as an open, vulnerable young man, able to emulate prophets and abide by their wisdom, but ended his life an anguished, insecure king, tormented by doubts, paranoia and migraine headaches.
So human, so not up to the task. It’s almost as if Samuel, not God, had picked him in order to show the Israelites the folly of their political preferences. The most difficult part of this story is that Saul can’t simply stop being king; he has to keep trying to rule, even when his heart isn’t in it, even when he wants to quit. What many would regard as a privilege, Saul experienced as a burden, probably as something that he felt he never deserved and didn’t understand. And, it killed him.
I had the honor of attending and participating in the
I admire Armstrong very much, not just for her writing, but
for what she has gone through to find her voice, her place in the world of
religious scholarship. She tried to be a
nun, but found the rigor too abusive (this was pre-Vatican II). Through a technicality (really!) and the
refusal of an institution to embarrass itself by admitting impropriety among
its faculty, she was denied a doctorate from
She has suffered from many health problems, including epilepsy, severe depression and numerous failed relationships. But she has gone on to become one of the most prolific writers on religious history and inter-religious encounter in the last 20 years, without being terribly religious herself (she calls herself a ‘free-lance monotheist’).
She gave the plenary address for the conference and charged religious studies scholars with three things: we must make our scholarship more accessible to the public, we must let go of our self-serving commitments to status and narrow disciplines, and we must take responsibility for the political implications of our scholarship. People are willing to kill and die for many of the things we (scholars) write about….that makes our work important and integral.
Later when I met her on the street, coming as we both were from having lunch, I decided to greet her but not say much…she was obviously very tired and had a cold. I doubt she will remember me at all. She has chosen to accept the role that Spirit has thrust upon her, with all its costs. Her writing and her solitary life is a spiritual discipline, and she’s very honest about the yogic, reclusive, meditative aspects of it. I don’t know if she is happy, but I think she has found some measure of peace and satisfaction with her life; a remedy, if not a complete explanation for some of her pain.
As I walked away from our encounter, I considered how my meeting her, if for only a brief moment, was an extraordinary privilege for me, not because she was so profound (I already know she can be that), but because, she was, in fact, so very ordinary….returning from lunch, tired, cold, probably wanting only to get out of her shoes into slippers with a cup of tea and a good book or brain killing movie. Unlike Saul, she can stop being a public figure from time to time, while enjoying the comforts that her earned status has finally brought.
It’s often hard to decide whether the time in which we all live is a burden or a blessing. We’ve picked a pivotal moment to engage earthly existence: environmental crisis, constant economic and political warfare, bigotries and fears seemingly accelerating faster than the weapons we use to exterminate one another over these self-imposed fantasies.
Yet, more than ever we are aware of being completely connected to one another: the exhaust from my car affects the upper atmosphere in polar regions; my purchases can directly express and impact markets far from my home; daily broadcasts from Asia, Africa and South America all bear witness to the inevitable conflicts borne of being neighbors with every one else.
Religion is changing accordingly, giving rise to syncretic hybrids, new revelations and attempts to batten down the hatches in defense of archaic ‘orthodoxies,’ depending on predilection. While I still struggle with learning new languages, informally studying Arabic and Spanish to meet new challenges and needs, my virtual step-daughter, Lelia, easily lapses back and forth between English, French and Arabic while writing her college entrance essays about the refugees from Darfur, Sudan she worked with while in Egypt over the summer.
At night I dream of earth changes, weather disasters and muse how the latest remake of “War of the Worlds” (2005), with its media invocations of “terrorism” and the Holocaust, dramatically captures the real psychological circumstances of our collective consciousness (this despite the fact that Tom Cruise is in the movie).
Our home is filled with discussion, world music, periodic
visitors from the Pentagon, and travelers from virtually everywhere….I
alternate between being entranced, amused and completely terrified almost
daily. I miss the open plains, storms
and wind, but have grown to love the great silence of the
Work unfolds, spiritual discipline fills the gaps, and while none of us really knows what the future will bring (and perhaps it’s better that we don’t know in some instances), it is still a privilege to be here, a privilege that is beyond blessing. With blessing we expect a boon…rather privilege is the opportunity to do something, be something, beyond what we could have imagined, beyond our fondest hopes and deepest fears. That deepest impulse is what God wills for each of us.
It is a privilege to love and to be loved (even when love hurts and we seem to lose), it is a privilege for others to seek our service and for us to give it (even when we don’t believe we have/are anything special), each moment of meditation, prayer, repose is a privilege (most particularly when we do these things not only for ourselves but for the millions who cannot be at peace or do not know that peace is an option).
Sometimes being “God’s” instrument means we might suffer, or even die (although we need not “seek” such things to be an instrument). This deep night of the year (Solstice and New Moon closely tied) is another moment of turning towards our service. We remember Rumi and ancient tumults passed away, the hope of Sun’s/Son’s rebirth, the promise of winters and springs now bleeding into each other.
Our planet still orbits the same sun that followed Jesus, Moses, Zarathustra, Buddha and Muhammad on their journeys, and the same moon moves with us. Mother will live through all her emergent life-forms and we will build new prayers to usher in her new seasons, biology providing the spiritual impetus for re-patterning. As she loves, so will we change. As Patti Smith once put it: “This loving and furious world cries and sings its way through eternal skies.”
We are the borderline generations, allowing our foundations to be torn away and re-created into new nations of consciousness. The privilege is being part of that song, that re-birth, to do our part as midwifes. Saul was an instrument despite himself, giving birth to a nation, and Karen Armstrong has largely accepted her role as renegade scholar-prophet-critic. Seek ye first the kingdom, then as the Shakers said: put “Hands to Work: Hearts to God.”