Killing Goats, Super Bowl And The Pursuit Of The Divine

I remember my first Day of Sacrifice.
Ahhh yes, cast the mind back to the spring of 1999: the bellow of the hemorrhaging bulls, the feedback screech of the goat with the severed jugular, the children squealing with delight while the mullah's yodeled from a thousand minarets.
Today is the Id-ul-adha (spellings vary, so get off my ass) so folks have been pouring into the streets to butcher the animals they’ve saved up for these past weeks.
The She-Grinch was outta the house @ 5:45 am with her rug and accessories, heading for a front row spot in the ballroom at the Hotel Indonesia. Later on a goat she owns a quarter share in will be chopped up and handed out to the poor.
It’s all supposed to commemorate, honor, Abraham’s dedication to his faith, his belief in the rationality of the Divine and the faith he displayed when asked to make the ultimate sacrifice to some unrevealed master plan. Imagine the scene, the old guy pinning his eldest son Ishmael (aka Isaac), swaddled in fine white clothing, to the butcher’s slab with one horned, calloused hand while with the other, prepares to plunge some grey and vorpal blade into the youth’s thin chest, bleeding him like the sheep and goats of the herd.
And in the inevitable pause before the crashing of cymbals and drums, a voice thunders from above: “Abe, dude, relax. I was just kidding!”
What kind of a compassionate deity tests a guy like that? And what about Job? And the others. What about the wives and children of the apostles?
“Sorry, Sweetie, I’ve gotta run. This Jesus fellow says I’m to put away my nets and become a fisher-of-men! Cool! Look, I’ll be back sometime I guess. Meanwhile you and the kids… uhhh… yeah well good luck with that, eh? Catch ya later.”
Fortunately no one listens to these sorts of mysterious messages from above ordering folks to kill people for no reason, right?
Well, except for that lady who killed her three kids there in Michigan a couple of years ago. And J.W. Gacy, too: I seem to remember him going on about “voices” at some point during the trial for killing all those men and burying them beneath his Chicago garden. Maybe there were a couple of others…
And there’s always Oral Roberts, the Grahams and the rest of those vile people. Seems God’s forever speaking to them or appearing in trailer-parks 45-feet high to lay down the word: “Go on, I know she’s only 14 but she likes it when you touch her there!” or “Bring me a Shitload of money or I’ll bring you home!” or “Persecute all who are not like you!”
There might be a few others besides. I wonder who James Brown was channeling the other night, when he took a swing at his wife?
Today we’ve got real, live human judges to mete out justice so guys like Abraham, they’d be sickin’ the child protection people on his ass so fast it’d make his head spin. Then some beefy rent-a-cop would probably let slip to the rest of the boys in general population about how old Abe was hurting kids and that would be pretty much all we’d ever hear of the ‘ol goat till either Jesus or the Justice system stepped in to get him out from under the weight pile.
All of which is germane as The Grinch prepares to switch teams. Yes indeed, making the move from one tribe of People of the Book to another, (so it’s more like a trade within the leading division rather than an outright exile to some non-Primetime operation: like moving from the NFL to the Euro League or something equally horrible).
- I’m going to follow this tangent for a moment. Am I the only one who is trying to reconcile the fact that Sunday afternoon stateside a bunch of overpaid apes are going to start one of the most agonizingly boring events in sport with a solemn Super Bowl prayer for help and forgiveness. And that at the end of the game, the inter-league ministry will see a large number of the same gorillas kneeling down, holding hands and praying together at center-field, offering up their respective performances as a gift to the Deity. And that in between these two moments (four hours apart) one of the key manifestations off all that is good and great in the world will be a 12-minute football game between two teams of lingerie-clad supermodels?
The Grinch is no prude but he is truly struggling to understand what forces are at work in a country so obsessed with and ultimately afraid of its own sexuality, that would lead it to create the Lingerie Bowl half-time show? As a friend verily remarked yesterday on hearing the news: “Soon, the American Empire must end.” –
But I digress…
Fact is, to paraphrase Garrett Morris: “Christian-ty has been berry berry goo to me.”
39 x Christmas!
First Communion coins!
Pancakes for supper in March/April!
Fish-sticks for supper March/April!
Learning how to make hooch from my Mohawk brothers at Jesuit school!
“Darling, try to understand, it’s against my religion for me to wear one!”
Despite the long list of positives, by May I’m enlisting with the goat killers. I’m quite looking forward to ignoring my second manifestation of man’s desperate search for order in the universe. Been reading up on Islam, studying the life of the prophet etc etc. So much I didn’t pick up by osmosis during my years in the Durian.
Seems like folks hijacked his vision as well. And I don’t mean the Talibs and the rest of those little modernist fascists. Wayyy back, almost immediately after his death, the squabbling (of the: “The shoe, follow The Shoe!” vs “This is his sacred gourd, it alone is the sacred relic” variety) splintered his followers into many different camps. So all you’re left with now are corrupted versions of his vision.
Sort of like Che. If there is an afterlife, I bet he and Mohammed are playing dominos and having a great chuckle at our expense.