When my mind is absorbed in trying to solve a problem or remembering where my glasses might be misplaced or trying to recall a pungent quote, it often comes up empty. Remembering to call the pharmacist occasionally leaves me prescription-less. Forgetting to turn off the lights is now another failure of mine.
Generous friends suggest that my forgetfulness is nothing to worry about as it is my age that produces the unintended oversights. Age is a double edged sword as it is also a reminder of approaching mortality.
Shaving is the saving grace in this matter of forgetfulness. While my mind is totally vacant, thoughts occur to me that seem worthy of my comment. Those thoughts rarely tell me about the location of my glasses or the quote that has escaped me, but there are often other thoughts that intrigue me. Perhaps if there were a few examples of transient shaving thoughts, the idea might become clearer to the reader.
Religion – Islam and Christian Scientists
My thoughts rarely stray into ecclesiastical matters when performing the tonsorial effort of shaving. My shaving instrument is a battery operated electric shaver. Perhaps if lather and an old straight razor were used, my thoughts on religion would occur more often and might have greater philosophical impact. But my experience with an electric razor goes back to the late 1940’s, so my religious thoughts have some historical context to them.
Currently, my concern has to do with an alleged misinterpretation of Islamic sacred texts and my wonderment about what has happened to the Christian Scientists.
In the Islamic case, several scholars now say sacred texts of the Islamic faith have been misread and misinterpreted for centuries. It has long been the belief of observant Moslems, that if a religious man is killed in a noble act – such as protecting the faith – he will be admitted as a martyr to Paradise. That is only the beginning. Various divisions in the Islamic faith say that such a martyr shall be entitled to 20 or 50 or even up to 100 virgins at his disposal.
In previous essays, several ancillary thoughts have been expressed. For example, will the martyr have a voice in picking out his virgins? Can a martyr trade one or more of his virgins to another martyr as would be done among professional sports teams in this country? The implication has always been that the martyrs will be furnished with young virgins. What will happen as the virgins age and become less attractive? Is there a provision for older virgins? And one must ask, what provision will be made for gay martyrs. Equality would seem to demand that gay martyrs be treated as other martyrs are treated.
But all this business about virgins is now under sustained attack. There is a school of eminent scholars who have studied the sacred texts of the ancient Islamic faith who now conclude that martyrs will be rewarded by white table grapes rather than by various numbers of virgins. Apparently, in ancient times among the Islamic faithful, white table grapes were objects to be greatly prized. A mistranslation in Islamic sacred texts had mistakenly rendered white table grapes as virgins. That is some mistake!
Moslems are forbidden from making and drinking alcoholic beverages, so the grapes must be only eaten. Fermenting them into wine or champagne is barred by religious fatwas. In Paradise, martyrs enjoy an eternal life. It might be supposed that eating white table grapes every day for 3,000 or 8,000 years might become boring, but boys, that is what we have to eat in Paradise.
It is probably a fortunate idea that my razor is an electric model. If this misinterpretation of texts had occurred when people used straight razors, it is obvious that throat cutting would be found in every corner of the civilized world.
So much for the Moslems. Let us now consider what has happened to people who embrace the faith of Christian Scientists. That sect was founded and promoted by Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910).
My curiosity was caused by what some people believe to be a large lack of activity in the work of Christian Scientists. On the main street of Summit, New Jersey, there is a prominent church and a reading room further down the street. In nearly 50 years of my occasional curiosity, no one seems to be using the Christian Scientist reading room. And there seem to be no hordes of people attending the weekly services at the church.
Encyclopedias state that the religion is founded upon principals of divine healing and laws expressed in the acts and the sayings of Jesus Christ as discovered and formulated by Mary Baker Eddy. Christian Scientists deny the reality of the material world. They argue that illness and sin are illusions to be overcome by the mind; thus they refuse medical help in fighting illness. It is unknown if they refuse help in fighting sin.
Principia was a private high school founded by the Christian Scientists in the St. Louis suburbs. In a baseball game in the 1930’s, a Principia infielder was accidentally spiked by an opposing player. There was a fair amount of blood, but the Principia player refused medical attention and claimed that it would all be overcome by his mind. That never struck me as something the mind ought to be doing, but it was not my call, so the game went on.
An expert in theological matters who is not affiliated with the Christian Scientists, has said that their support is off 40%, presumably from its peak. This expert comes from Defiance, Missouri and speaks the truth about sacred matters. As was said earlier, no one seems to be using the Christian Scientist’s reading room on the main street of Summit, N.J., a thriving and a prosperous town. Taking 40% away from patronage at the reading room would put us into negative numbers. That is something that must be pondered as we continue to shave.
Finally, as the whiskers are lopped off, there is a disturbing advertisement placed in the pages of “The Item,” a local weekly newspaper serving Millburn and Short Hills, New Jersey.
In reading The Item for 35 years, the paper seems to avoid controversy on all occasions. The deer who live in the woods around here became more aggressive a few years ago and residents of Short Hills found their flowers, shrubbery and vegetables eaten by the deer. So for a time, The Item adopted an editorial policy of suppressing the deer, even endorsing a professional deer hunt with rifles. Then a resident or two who were opposed to cruel treatment of the deer protested, and The Item has now adopted an editorial policy of passive thought with respect to the deer problem. Unfortunately, the deer don’t read The Item and have produced new herds which now eat even greater amounts of flowers, vegetables and shrubbery. But the Item seems to take a very muted policy toward the deer and toward other matters of interest to its readers.
And so it was a new experience to find this small ad in a newspaper which seems to avoid controversy whenever possible.
The Item serves an affluent community which seems to support several churches and synagogues. The Millburn-Short Hills township is a live and let live community. It is not like Southern communities where laymen admonish potential sinners by saying, “We didn’t see you in church last Sunday.”
Examination of Tennessee road maps show that Athens, the home of the ad placer, is only 35-40 miles from Dayton where the 1925 “Monkey Trial” took place. In that case, Scopes, a high school biology teacher was convicted of teaching evolution instead of creationism. H. L. Mencken wrote extensively about this trial and the surrounding Bible Belt. Naturally, Scopes was convicted, but served no time.
It has been my practice for more than three quarters of a century to avoid involvement with religious matters. Nonetheless, my curiosity was sufficiently aroused that when my last shaving stroke was finished, my mother’s Bible was consulted with respect to “The Beast” referred to in the Athens ad.
The Red Dragon
This is a straight reporting job. Any editorial comments will have to come from the reader. In the King James Version of the New Testament, we find the “Revelations of St. John the Divine.” In Chapter XII, verse 2, there is a woman. “And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.”
Verse 3 says, “And there appeared another wonder in Heaven and behold a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads.” Presumably, the woman in verse 2 delivered the red dragon in verse 3.
The Beast
In Chapter XIII, verse 1, we learn, “As I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns and upon his horn ten crowns and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”
The Beast and His Mark
In Chapter XIV, verse 9, we find that, “And the third angel followed them saying with a loud voice, If any man worships the beast and his image and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand.”
Babylon Falls
In the previous verse, we have Babylon fallen, “because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”
So this little ad from Athens, Tennessee, warns us about red dragons and a beast all of whom have seven heads and ten horns and about Babylon’s collapse. Because the ad was placed in our local newspaper, it becomes clear that Millburn-Short Hills had better avoid the “wine and wrath of fornication” or all its residents will receive a mark on our foreheads or on our hands.
On the other hand, it could be argued that the wine referred to that causes fornication comes from Israeli bottlers. That would say Millburn-Short Hills will probably avoid Babylon’s fate because consumption of Israeli wine in the United States is somewhere near zero. One final thought. Revelations does not tell us what mark the beast will leave on our foreheads or hands. My hunch is that it will be an upper case capital “B.” Anyone disagreeing with that idea can write to Athens, Tennessee.
—
As time goes on, it is my plan to catch and bottle a few more Thoughts While Shaving. They vary from the old prohibition of rigidly concealing bra straps to the Wild West traffic patterns that occur in New Jersey’s roundabouts. My shaving takes about eight minutes per shave, so you can see my mind is hard at work nearly all the time. In the meantime, there is much work to be done so that Millburn-Short Hills will not follow in the tragedy of Babylon.
Well, there you have the first edition of shaving thoughts. There is no intention to do anything about the table grapes issue or Mary Baker Eddy’s folks. And finally, there will be no intention to support the fundamentalists in Athens, Tennessee. But it is hoped that the Moslems, the Christian Scientists and the neanderthals in the Bible Belt know that someone is thinking about them.
E. E. CARR
August 29, 2004
~~~
“Tonsorial” is a fantastic word, and one that’s new to me. One has to wonder how a man with aphasia pulls that one out. I guess a lifetime of reading will do that. It means “of a barber or barbering” but most sites note that it is “often used humorously” — which means that it’s a pretty perfect fit.
In other news, it’s sort of surprising that Christian Scientists haven’t been evolved out of the gene pool by now. If you have a group dedicated to staying sick, you kinda think that you’d have less and less of those people as time goes on. I wonder if the recent anti-vaccination movement has swelled the ranks a bit.
In other news I think I now hold some sort of record for “grandson officially commenting on grandfather’s discussion of virgins in the Islamic afterlife” because it’s come up in no less than ten essays now. I go into it most in-depth here.