Daniel 6 – The king they talk about here is not historical according to
a Jerusalem Bible note. It is
probably supposed to be the first Persian king, Cyrus, but he is called Darius.
Daniel is granted an important position in the king’s court. Other satraps and
“state presidents” try to discredit him but despair of it.
They go to the king
and suggest he institute a requirement that every local leader be required to
NOT worship any god other than the king. If he does, he should be thrown
into a lions’ den. The king signs off on this. Daniel, of course, continues his
daily prayers towards Jerusalem. The other leaders turn Daniel in, but the king
is determined to save him.
In the end, he tells Daniel it will have to be his God who
saves him. He is thrown to the lions – the king is so distressed he cannot
sleep that night. The next morning, the king hurries to the lions’ den and
cries out “in anguish, ‘Daniel servant of the living God! Was your God, whom
you serve so faithfully, able t rescue you from the lions?’ Daniel answered,
‘Long live the king! My God sent his angel to shut the lions’ mouths so that
they would not hurt me, for I have been found innocent in his sight. And I have
not wronged you, Your Majesty.’” (6:20-21).
The king sends for the accusers, and they are thrown in
along with their wives and children and devoured. After this, king “Darius”
sends a letter out proclaiming his devotion to the God of Daniel. “’I decree
that everyone throughout my kingdom should tremble with fear before the God of
Daniel. For he is the living God, and he will endure forever. His kingdom will
never be destroyed, and his rule will never end. He rescues and saves his
people: he performs miraculous signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth.'”
(6:26-27)
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism
Part 6
In my last two years of high school, I became very
interested in other literature as well, through English class and other outside
reading. Some of what I was drawn to was also to play a role in the development
of my thinking and my faith. One was James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The whole theme of Stephen’s
search for a father touched me in a vulnerable place. Joyce did not intend his
writing to draw readers to Catholicism, and little in the book is positive
about the Catholic Church, but it drew
me anyway—the searing identity it
impressed on Stephen, the inescapable claim of it over him. I did not
respond to it immediately, but I know it played a role in how I felt myself bound
to it later on. But by far the most important piece of literature I was exposed
to in high school was T. S. Eliot’s Four
Quartets. We read the opening segment of it in English class my senior
year:
Time
present and time past
Are
both perhaps present in time future.
And
time future contained in time past.
If
all time is eternally present
All
time is unredeemable.
What
might have been is an abstraction
Remaining
a perpetual possibility
Only
in a world of speculation.
What
might have been and what has
been
Point
to one end, which is always present.
It wasn’t an easy poem, and poetry wasn’t really my “thing”
then or ever. I might never have even remembered reading it in high school had
I not rediscovered it a few years later in college. But when I did, when it did
become important, I remembered it as having come into my life in high school. Grace works in this way, unheralded and
almost unperceived in its entries into our lives.
But religion and the pieces that made up religion for me was
only one part of the person I was in high school and in later life. Because of
the strange shape of my family life, there
was a kind of fault line that ran through the landscape that I had to
negotiate, a philosophical and emotional fault line that separated the worlds
of my parents and my grandparents. The fault line ran through me as well—on
the one side, the conventional religion and politics my grandparents fostered
in me; on the other, the political and philosophically radical outlooks my
parents fostered.
My visits with both my father and my sister were always
extended conversations on everything that was going on in the world at that
time: developments in science, psychology, and culture, understanding the
dynamics of human life and history, the events of the day—civil rights, the
cold war, the Cuban Revolution, the presidential campaign of 1960. From them I learned that you couldn’t
necessarily trust what you saw on the television or read in the daily
newspapers. You had to keep in mind the interests your source of
information was out to serve, where they got their money, what they were trying
to convince their readers of, and where they got their information. And my
father and sister tried to get me to see that the government could sometimes do
very bad things—like try to murder Fidel Castro or undermine the revolution he
had brought to Cuba. They also tried to
get me to see that most of the things most people believed most fervently—their
religious hopes and patriotic idealism—were things that mostly benefited the
rich and powerful but did not necessarily serve the interests of the poor and
oppressed. I didn’t know until later in my life that my father was a member
of the Communist Party—or had been. To this day I am not sure when he was. I
know he joined and eventually quit, but not the details. The closest he came to
admitting it to me was when I told him that I might someday like to run for
Congress and he advised, laughing to himself, that I perhaps should keep my
relationship with him a little quiet if I did. But it wasn’t the politics of
communism we talked about. It was the philosophical underpinnings—the dynamics
of history, seeing through conventions, unmasking the illusions bourgeois
society generated to hid the ugly economic underbelly or reality.
My mother and sister also did their best to bring me over to
that side. The few memories I have of visiting my mother in New York involve
not only memories of bubble baths and walks to the park but also tirades
against President Eisenhower for the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
talk of the street demonstrations protesting it, or other angry remarks about
the country. My sister was among the first group of American students who went
to Cuba after the revolution in 1960. She came back a complete convert, full of
enthusiastic stories about the new society Castro was bringing about in Cuba,
the hope it represented for all the poor countries of Central and South
America, and the challenge it represented to American capitalism and
imperialism. She had pictures of the new housing going up for the poor in Cuba,
the preschools that were being started, the medical care that was being
provided for free. Everything she told me, I believed. I carried copies of my
sister’s pictures of Cuba to school with me and argued with teachers and others
in my classes about what was going on there. My parents and sister seemed so much better informed than anyone else I
know about politics and current events that it was just not possible to
disbelieve what they told me.
But I didn’t let them disturb the other side of my own inner
fault line, not yet. My interest and involvement in my church, my love of the
Kennedys—these loyalties and loves were
in some little compartment of me that was beyond the reach of other people’s doubts
or criticisms, even my father’s. He seemed to accept that. He didn’t
challenge me seriously on my lack of consistency. I think he understood that I
was living in two worlds, that I was learning different things in the different
places of my life, and that it would take time for me to resolve the
inconsistencies. He believed his views were true, and that if he was patient, I
would come around to seeing things his way. And I would, for a while.
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