Blue Wild Indigo, a novel by Stan Rice. Part one: Disruptive Discoveries

 

Stan Rice has just published another novel Blue Wild Indigo in the series Under the Sun, which explores what, if anything, God is doing in this world under the sun: first, from the viewpoint of the poet who lived at the time of King Solomon, and wrote Ecclesiastes (Among the Lilies); next, from the viewpoint of the woman who loved the prophet Jeremiah (The Almond Branch); next, from Heloïse and Abélard in medieval France (Paraclete); finally, this novel, set in modern rural Oklahoma.

Here is the author’s summary from Amazon:

All her life, Sophia is inconvenient. She thinks too much and everybody knows it. She escapes twice from her Amish community in rural Oklahoma and discovers how dangerous and costly love and wisdom can be. The first time, she leaves with Clay. They find that the outside world is worse than their Amish community and they return, join church, and marry. Sophia’s second departure—with its risk of shunning—is not so easy. She takes refuge with Gil, a famous, lonely theologian, who is escaping his own past. But by hiding in Gil’s house, Sophia has exchanged one set of restrictions for another. Sophia’s brilliance shocks Gil into rethinking everything he thinks he knows, as he helps Sophia recreate herself. Their love grows as deeply as the roots of the blue wild indigo, a long-lived prairie flower. As Clay stalks Sophia, she and Gil discover that love is worth even the risk of death. Only after this experience are Sophia and Gil free.

This is how the novel begins:

Her eyes. It was her eyes that shot out at me, barbed me, and reeled me in. She made me feel like a fish who thought that because he understood the water he understood the world, only to find that he did not even understand the water. She left me flopping on the floor. Even now I do not know whether she intended to capture me or if I just blundered into the circle of her light.

This is a book for which the author chose not to seek commercial publication. The reason is obvious. There are thousands of works of fiction about the Amish, but almost all of them are written by Amish for Amish, which means the plot is almost the same for all of them: young Amish people experiment with the outside world, during their period of rumspringa, and find out that life is better back home. Almost nobody outside the Amish religion wants to read fiction about Amish, unless it depicts them as ignorant, backward, stupid people. But there is not even very much published fiction about this, because a reader grows weary of a writer that just heaps abuse upon people he or she considers boring.

What Rice has done is to write a novel about a brilliant, therefore inconvenient, Amish woman, who needs to leave her community even while she continues to love it.

The format of the book includes chapters written from first the viewpoint of Sophia, then of Gil, filling in their background stories—the stories that were too sensitive for them to actually tell one another about, so they wrote them down, often in the second person. The whole book has passages of very creative format. Chapter 4 of Part one consists of a shopping receipt, which reveals Gil’s mental struggles as he prepares for Sophia.

The first thing to note, regarding Sophia and Gil, the main characters, is that their meeting brings disruptive discoveries. Scientists and theologians alike must be ready for disruptions to come along. Perhaps Gil thought he was living in peace away from religious and academic strife in a country house, but he had all of his assumptions challenged when he met Sophia (from the Greek word for wisdom). She is a fiercely intelligent Amish woman, who grew up in central central Oklahoma. She had chosen a life (fundamentalism) that Gil assumed people only got forced into by their circumstances. And then, when she walked all night to find his house and simply assumed that he was going to let her move in with him. Two disruptions to his thinking. Gil assumed that the Amish were not too smart; but then again, natural selection favored their mild way of thinking, which spelled social and family success for them, so maybe it was an intelligent choice on their part. Sophia wandering into Gil’s life disrupted him forever.

But Sophia was not mindlessly fundamentalist. She chose her life after constantly challenging the assumptions of her family and church, about history and science. Church leaders know this is going to happen, and they allow a period of rumspringa in which Amish youths can try out the sinful world in order to find out for themselves that a life of family and church love is much better. But the running and springing around of rumspringa did not include freedom of thought. The young folks could smoke and drink, but they were not allowed to freely read or to go to college. Sophia had to go out into the world with her boyfriend Clay, and they both found out how the sinful world can degrade you.

Sophia experiences disruption when she, by chance, meets Gil. The more she does things with him, such as an environmental protest, the more she finds that her previous experiences have prepared her for him. She was already an environmentalist without realizing it. Organized environmentalism gives her a new purpose in her life. She finds a mental soul-mate in Gil and her life, also, is disrupted forever.

Paraclete, A Novel by Stan Rice, part two. Science in Pre-Scientific Days

This essay follows up on the previous essay  about Stan Rice’s novel Paraclete, about Heloïse and Abélard in medieval France. The question I want to focus on in this essay is, Abélard was a priest and Heloïse a nun, but were they also scientists?

Abélard held most of the beliefs of his fellow scholars. He probably thought the Earth was fairly small and probably flat and looked mostly like Europe. This viewpoint is expressed in the crowning mechanical achievement of ancient times, the astrolabe, which looked like a big wristwatch and was used to keep track of the movement of stars, planets, and the moon. Heloïse and Abélard admired this invention so much that they named their love-child Astralabius after it.

Science, as we understand it today, was very uncommon and hidden before early modern times in Europe. Many textbooks have lists of early scientists, all male, with the acknowledgement that some of the Greek and Roman philosophers had started the process of science. As far as ancient and non-European scholarship was concerned, scholarly thought consisted largely of “I am the Great Conqueror, I say the world is flat, and if you disagree, your head will be on a platter.”

But the “scientific method” is more of an attitude, of seeking evidence to test our beliefs. Not just to confirm them, but to give these ideas a real chance to be wrong, and then if they pass the test, we can honestly believe them. People have always done this, and sometimes have gotten away with it. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Roman philosophers such as Lucretius even speculated about evolution, and they sought evidence for it. You can do science too, even though you may not consider yourself a scientist. See my book, Scientifically Thinking: How to Liberate Your Mind, Solve the World’s Problems, and Embrace the Beauty of Science.

In Abélard’s time, scholars were not allowed to disagree with church doctrine. What Abélard insisted on over and over and over was that scholars ought to be allowed at least to question the authoritative doctrines. Just ask about them, that’s all. This was an essential first step. If scholars ended up confirming the doctrines, then our ability to worship God would have been magnified. Whaddaya say to that, Uncle Fulbert? You afraid we might find evidence against those doctrines?

Paraclete, A Novel by Stan Rice, part one. A Story as Old as Humankind

 

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Paraclete, which is number three in the series Under the Sun. It is the timeless love story of Heloïse and Abélard in medieval France. This historical event has been fictionalized many times, but Rice puts an interesting twist to it.

Here is the Amazon summary of the novel:

The story of Heloïse and Abélard may be the most intense love story in all of history, but it was also the focus of how humans understand—or fail to understand—the work of God—if any—in the world of nature, or man, under the sun. 

After an adventurous youth in the eleventh century, Peter Abélard becomes a philosopher, the closest any medieval person could be to a scientist. So sharp and delightful is his mind that, after joining the priesthood, he becomes Magister of Notre Dame in Paris. His dedication to fearless inquiry gets him in a lot of trouble, especially with his rival cleric Bernard of Clairvaux, who spends his life trying to undermine Abélard. But Abélard is so popular that it takes decades to silence him.

When Abélard meets Heloïse, a young woman whose mind is even sharper than his, they fall deeply in love and take every increasingly heedless risk to have sexual intimacy. When Heloïse’s uncle Fulbert discovers this, he gets Abélard fired, then plots to have him castrated. Their love child, Astralabe, is taken from them.

Abélard lives out his years in a run-down country abbey, Paraclete, directed by Heloïse, but even here the Church will not leave him at peace.

 

This story is as old as humankind because humans have always had religious leaders (usually male) with power, whether intellectual or political; and these leaders have frequently considered themselves to be free to violate moral laws, and have sex with their (usually female) followers. Moreover, he was 35 and she was 19. Sounds like clergy abuse? What is frequently absent from the fictional retellings of the story of Heloïse and Abélard is that Heloïse was at least the intellectual equal of Abélard, if not his superior. Though the sex was not necessary, a profound friendship was unavoidable. The fact that Heloïse’s clueless uncle Fulbert had Abélard castrated makes the story anything but run of the mill. This story is a hyper-charged romance between two super-nerds.

Abélard probably shared the prevailing view of his time that women could not be as smart as men. He learned differently. He also learned that intellectual love was more satisfying than carnal love, of which he was no longer capable.

The letters that Heloïse and Abélard exchanged, especially after their forced separation, have been lost. Then a scholar recognized certain passages in a book about literary form that seemed to resemble what the exchanges between Heloïse and Abélard would probably have been like.

In the next essay, I will analyze what the intellectual bombshell of Abélard’s thoughts may have represented to medieval scholars.

The Almond Branch: A novel by Stan Rice. Part three. Prophets and Scientists

 

Stan Rice has recently published another novel, The Almond Branch, in the Under the Sun series. This series poses the question, what is it that God is doing in this world under the sun? The phrase comes from Ecclesiastes, which is the almost-agnostic book in the Old Testament. Rice speculates on answers to this question: in the time of Solomon (Among the Lilies); in the last days of Jerusalem (this novel); in the Middle Ages of Europe (Paraclete); and in a modern Amish community (Blue Wild Indigo).

Here is the author’s summary from Amazon:

In Jerusalem, immediately before its conquest by Babylon, Jeremiah is on his way to succeeding his father as a priest. Even when they are children, Miriam loves Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is clueless about human love even when he grows up. He is borderline crazy and keeps alienating himself from his society. He thinks God speaks to him through puns. Jeremiah’s father has pagan images in addition to Jewish ones, to appease Jebusite neighbors, but Jeremiah destroys them. And it keeps getting worse, until Jeremiah has to live in a cave with the other prophets. Miriam is torn between a marriage proposal from an older but very good man, Saad, and Jeremiah’s invitation for her to join the prophets, though not as his lover.

Even after Miriam marries Saad, Jeremiah still seeks her comradeship. The king counts on Egypt’s help against Babylon, only to be disappointed. A wealthy businessman and his grim brother, modeled after Trump and Pence, cannot save Jerusalem either. While Jerusalem suffers starvation and cannibalism during the Babylonian siege, the king throws Jeremiah into a cesspit, from which he is rescued by a steward modeled after Obama and a court jester modeled after Biden. Jeremiah rejoices when the tension is broken and Jerusalem falls, and all the skilled people, including Saad, are deported. Miriam stays behind and rescues the Old Testament wisdom literature—which is still an embarrassment to conservatives—from being lost.

What could Old Testament prophets and modern scientists have in common? I have two answers for you.

First, both have to be observant of everything, all the time, and to ask questions about why things are as they are. When Miriam and Jeremiah are at a little waterfall, where the water drops create a rainbow, they think about why there are water drops. That is, why does water form into drops rather than just falling down to the earth as lots of individual little packets? This is a question that may never have even occurred to you to ask. You have to watch nature very closely and think about it. Jeremiah’s explanation is definitely pre-scientific, saying that almost infinitely small angels are holding onto one another, and they create the rainbow colors. Before you laugh, consider substituting “molecules” for “angels” and “hydrogen bonds” for “holding onto.” Jeremiah’s theory (as invented by Rice) is more like Newton’s theory (as accepted by modern science) than it is like Goethe’s theory.

But, maybe, Goethe might turn out to be partly correct. To Newton, colors were physical properties of light of different wavelengths, period. To Goethe, there was a psychological component, in which human perception made the colors different. We now know that the stimulation of the three kinds of color receptors in the retina sends signals to the brain to create the illusion of color. There actually is such a thing as psychological color!

Also, when Miriam and Jeremiah were out at the swamp, they saw a bittern camouflaged in the reeds. They almost didn’t see it, until Jeremiah told Miriam what to look for.

Second, a scientist can be a prophet if s/he explains the political and social consequences of scientific discoveries.  Not every scientist does this. Thousands of scientists studied nuclear physics, but only a few (such as Andrei Sakharov and Albert Einstein) have spoken out to political leaders about the dangers of atomic weapons. A prophet might predict, wrongly (so far) that the world will be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. If prophecy is mere prediction, then Sakharov and Einstein were wrong. But prophets open out minds to recognize the possibilities. In this sense, Sakharov and Einstein were true prophets, and though their predictions were wrong their prophecies helped to save the world, at least so far, from nuclear disaster.

Many prophets, ancient and modern, have been hated by political leaders. Those of us who are prophets about environmental disaster are hated by conservative politicians and by the corporate leaders who support them. Though the attacks sustained by Michael E. Mann have been much more mild then what Jeremiah experienced, they were inspired by the same moneyed interests that drove rich Israelites to hate Jeremiah.

Among the Lilies, a novel by Stan Rice, part four. A devastated landscape: Solomon’s legacy

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.

The summary from Kindle is:

Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.

While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.

Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.

In order to build his Temple and Palace, Solomon must totally destroy the forests of cedars in Lebanon. They were legendary before him, but today very little remains of the fabled cedars. This photo shows one of the last remaining groves of Cedrus libani today.

 

The forests are magnificent when Solomon first visits them and contracts with King Hiram to cut down the trees. He just doesn’t understand that a bunch of gilded trunks in a Temple are nothing compared to the living forest from which they came. At the end of the novel, all that remains of the forest is mud, which consumes Elah and Henna and delivers them to their downfall.

History books seldom include the environmental devastation that comes with the fall of civilizations. Early historical records tend to just be a list of kings and battles. Historians now routinely include economics and sociology in their explanations of the rise and fall of civilizations. One of the early historians to include geography in his European histories was Marc Bloch, from Strasbourg, where I now live. But world history seldom includes the environment, something that works like A Forest Journey and Collapse are helping to rectify.

But you can find an environmental explanation for the collapse of societies even in the Bible itself. The Israelites were commanded to let their farmland rest every seventh year (the “sabbath of the fields.”) They apparently never did so. After 470 years, the Israelites owed a debt of 70 years to the land. This law is stated right after the ten commandments in Exodus 23:10-11. In Leviticus 26:34-35, Moses quoted God as saying that if the Israelites did not let the land rest every seventh year, Israel would be conquered by enemies, the land would lie desolate, and then the land would “enjoy its rests.” According to the Second Chronicles 36:21, this is exactly what happened. “The land enjoyed its rests” for seventy years, not incorporated as a part of the Israelite economy, but all at once, after its collapse, during the Babylonian captivity. We have not yet, even today, learned the lesson that we have to treat God’s Earth with respect if we are to survive.