When My Father Roars...

A true story. While still several years away from being a teenager, I was a young and promising Boy Scout, adventurous and always ready to go exploring with my friends. Early in the Fall, our troop prepared for a weekend camp-out at Breakheart Reservation. We would hike the six or seven miles and stay Friday night until Sunday morning. All treks seems to start in high spirits; this one was no exception, and our arrival at the campsite was exciting---several other troops from surrounding towns were also there.
Ritchie was the prankster among us, and of course, he came prepared. Around nine-thirty that evening he brought out the device, always a favorite of boys that age: a new water squirt gun, fully loaded. With no hesitation, he began to baptize anyone within its ten foot range. What a way to liven up a bunch of adolescent boys! But our troop leader was not pleased, and Ritchie wouldn't put "it" away. After several warnings, the leader had had enough. His barking, "you, you, and you... pack up your gear and head home!" Silence: instantly, palpable silence replaced noise. Those of us around Ritchie were stunned. We all looked at one another, like is this for real? No doubt about it. Again, this time pointing right at us: "you, you, you...all of you, pack it up." We could hardly believe it. It was already 10:30 p.m. However, in fifteen minutes, we were all outside with full packs, in the dark, headed home. No conversation now, just slow trudging out of the Reservation, onto the highway. We were together, we were friends, but each of us trudged along alone in our own silence. About 1:30 a.m. in the morning, one by one, we broke off to go down our own street. I was the last one, I had come the farthest, and now was the last of the nighttime trekkers. Parker Street wasn't very long in the daylight, but that night it seemed a long darkness punctuated by widely separated street lamps.
My home was a dark hulk, two and a half storeys barely discernible at that hour. Tired and anxious, I didn't wake my family at two-thirty in the morning; I just curled up against my pack on the back porch and slept. There my mother found me when she went out to pick up the early morning milk delivery. I could hear her calling my father, upset and wondering, and questioning me all the while I was trying to get in the house. I told my father what had happened, then went upstairs to bed.
Sometime during my half-sleep, I heard my father on the phone roaring....roaring his anger..."you let my son walk half the night home alone...!" One conversation after another he moved up the Boy Scout chain of command. The father of one of my friends was superintendent of schools. There was definitely going to be an accounting if my father had his way. And he did. When my Father roared, He was heard, and no one withstood His Word.

Profile of An Israelite

A True Israelite is willing and able...

1) To have their heart broken, that is to have their love spurned, rejected, even despised

2) To be crushed, that is to experience overwhelming disappointment of their hopes, vision, efforts

3) To be betrayed, that is to experience promises made---promises broken; covenants made---covenants broken

4) To walk the dry and thirsty land, and be "a friend", that is one who will gladly share the last sips of water with their companion(s)

5) To live under the "rains"---early and latter---that the LORD sends upon their life, their work, their faith: Garlic on the Golan

6) To press on, walk on, hobble along, and bear the pain of the journey, the pain of their knee, the pain of their heart or their head...crying out for help, but not for the relief of quitting, of taking a different path, of turning aside, or of simply stopping

7) To finally be mocked as a fool---"Where is your God?"---in the midst of the dark night of their soul: impossible, apparently fatal circumstances, the death of Israel, and the failure of Salvation

8) To be "marked"

9) To refuse "No" as an answer, rather to insist: "Make room for me (us)!"

10) To be a "Bag Lady" One bag, two bags...acknowledging whatever I choose I must carry!

11) To be "homeless" temporarily, for a season, for a time

12) To be a "fanatic"

13) To slay that which must be "slain"

14) To be a Bride to a true Bridegroom

Mole vs. Rock

All around this solitary garlic plant, Miryam the Mole had had her way, that is, she would tunnel to a spot directly underneath a garlic plant, then head straight upward following the roots of her intended snack. Eating from below, tugging the plant down into the earth, she would dine quite satisfied with her find. How then did this one, healthy, robust garlic plant survive, while all about every other plant had been pulled down?

Numerous places throughout the garden I had encountered Rocks up to the size of a really large grapefruit. Think about this: a garlic plant growing right on top of a Rock would be protected and essentially invisible to the keen senses of the sniffing mole. And, I don't know of a mole, anywhere, that can bore through solid Rock! Is this not according to the Word? "A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you. He will set me high upon a Rock. The LORD is my Rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer... (Psalms18:2; 27:5; 91:7) If you are in a garden with a marauding mole, growing on top of a Rock is the place to be!

Mole Moves

Miryam the Mole has met her Maker. The way of all flesh is to run to and fro, back and forth...be anxious for our food, fretful to preserve our life, and determined to seek out whatever our "nose" fancies... and in all those tunnels in which we run about, there is a trap. That trap would have no power over us, except it is baited by the thing we want most! So we are drawn to our doom by desire (maybe even inordinate desire, which is lust).
I think Miryam the Mole couldn't give up her garlic patch. Even when the "stinky" got pretty awe-ful on one end, she would race through tunnels to another part of the garden. So for Miryam, there really wasn't any escape from the stinky but one: Leave. That, or perish. However, she couldn't abide what was to have been her Passover. Instead, she was trapped at the end of a new tunnel that was seeking to break into four new rows of garlic.
I could see the end coming for her. Up to the high end of the garden she would race for a garlic, then all the way down to the lower end for another. Rushing to and fro in a matter of minutes. In one intersection she even threw up a mound of dirt---in my face so to speak---to try and seal off the stink in the main tunnels. And not paying attention to where she was headed. Two cats were already sitting and listening to her "moves" to and fro. Ready to pounce. Only difference from lions, cats don't roar. But, they hunt just as skillfully, and these aren't de-clawed house kitties.
So ends the story of Miryam. Her Hebrew name comes from "marah" (bitter) and "yam" (sea or ocean). Miryam's way is the way of all flesh. Look around you, seen everywhere: a few moments in the pleasures of the garden... then!!
Thirty-seven garlic plants later, I am a bit sad. Maybe moles can't learn some new "moves." She was certainly quite proficient at digging tunnels and eating, but those "moves" did her in. So now the cats are smiling, the garlic grows tall in the new rains, and "Shaket" and "Shalom"---quiet and peace---reign in the garden once again.
Indeed, Miryam did have something of God to reveal to me.
But first, I'm going to have a big dish of my favorite ice cream topped with ripe banana...

The Mole Talks Back

"I have been appointed and sent by God."
"OK. I have heard that line before. So why are you chewing up my garlic patch? I planted that garlic unto God for a blessing of the Land and the People. Isn't there something you like to eat, perhaps even more than garlic?"
"Gotcha. But, you still are trying to drive me out! Am I not part of the Land? Pee and bleach. Now that is pretty bad! How would you like it if someone invaded your house and...? There are some things I am to teach you!
"I'm listening."
"Such as leave no trace, how to be fed in the wilderness, how to tunnel, network, be present but unrecognized, how to be Joseph, how to Bless, how to be building in the "waste places" unseen and unrecognized, and lastly---
How to be a mole!"
"Why should I be learning how to be a mole? That's your calling!
"Haven't you ever heard the saying, "Be as wise as moles?"
"I think it is, "Be as wise as serpents..."
"For Zavitan Street it is "Be as wise as moles..." Notice how parts of the garden are sinking. My doing."
"Are you going to eat all my (the LORD's) garlic?
"Maybe, so what if I do? Are you a Cain?"
"My neighbors have fruit trees, the fruit is falling on the ground, and they can't even be bothered to pick it up! And here I am busting my butt to produce a seed garlic planting stock which you are eating!"
"So are you going to kill me?"
"No, the LORD said not to kill you."
"OK, I believe you, but your friend is subtly trying to persuade you to do it---with that trap!
"Listen, Miryam Mole, I am trying to figure out how to bless all the Land, all of God's creation, including you, but there aren't any worms or other food for you...just you and the garlic. And you strike me as greedy, unmannered in the ways of a community...out of control, driven by your appetite for my garlic.... I am trying to apply what I thought I had learned back in Maine.
"That was a different mole in a different world. Here it is mostly kill or be killed."
"So I have noticed! Still, why has the LORD given me instructions not to harm or kill you?"
"You'll have to ask Him."
"Well, anyway, I was hoping we might become friends in this "holy land."
"We might. We'll see..."
"I have enjoyed this conversation. And I will try and listen..."
"Good. We will talk again. Now, I'm going to go and have another garlic. They really are quite tasty! Shabbat Shalom, Baruch.

More Mole: Where is the "Defense?"

On one of those discouraging days of disappearing garlic, I was punching holes in the sticky soil with my long screwdriver, and injecting a squirt of stinky repellant. In many places, as I was moving along the rows, the screwdriver would almost disappear, either penetrating a tunnel or some kind of underground cavity in the soil. Then, toward the outermost five rows, I began to notice I was hitting some pretty solid feeling rocks. I stopped to rest for a moment, and as I looked around, I suddenly realized the mole was mostly moving up and down rows three and four. One or two plants from row five were gone, but that was all. Those outer rows had no gaps or missing plants. Was something going on underground, something I could not see from my above-ground perspective? Was there a hidden defense?
"Defense", in any endeavor, can never win "the game". We still have to score some points or make some gains. The garlic had been planted and was prospering, but without some defense, it was possible all could be lost. A good defense is critical to not losing.
A couple of months earlier during the soil preparation and tilling of the ground, I now remembered I had hit some stoniness, and every so often some rocks that the tiller couldn't even budge. But I really didn't pay too much attention simply because the tiller would prepare the upper 8-10 inches of soil, more than sufficient for the garlic to prosper.
Enter the Mole, but obviously at tunneling depths deeper than the tilled soil, and I hadn't been concerned with those depths, that is until Miryam Mole started the beginnings of a Moleville. Now my attention was sharply focused on those underground things!
Miryam the Mole appeared to have tried to probe and enter those outer rows, but she had stopped. Why? Perhaps, at those deeper depths there are underground rock or stone formations that even the most expert and determined Miryam couldn't bore through (much less try to move!).
Now wouldn't that be "neat" if the Defense had a formidable front line---The Rock---which Miryam the Mole could not move or burrow through! (Note: rocks on the Golan are volcanic in origin, roundish, very dense and heavy. They literally "rained down" in a cataclysmic and violent volcanic event, Sodom-like in fury, onto the Golan landscape. Those hot-rock showers can still be seen on the surface.)
So long before I (or Miryam the Mole for that matter) ever appeared on Zavitan Street, those rocks had been set in place by the Rock-Man in anticipation of this day. Now that is really impressive! Also, reassuring for the garlic and Baruch.

More Mole: Miryam

"What have you been seeing of the Mole, Baruch?"
"Not much happening---a few more small garlic plants have been pulled under. I'm not quite sure what I am to be doing, leave it be or drive it out of the garlic patch. Doesn't look like it is going to volunteer to leave the dinner table. It may be blind, but it has a keen sense of "food." Really, LORD, who is going to leave such a good paying job? This mole, is it really just about "money-making" and interest?"
"No, Baruch. There is much more to this little critter. This mole is a people, my people---that is, all Israel---and they have become as moles burrowed into the world, holed-up with their treasures, "the garlic." They really are "dug in." I have chosen, loved, and preserved them, but they really "dig" their own ways, habits, desires, needs... The comfortable and familiar, the predictable and reliable are what they seek or smell out. These they connect with, and not with me. They have taken their "Precious Idols" into their life. They have become one with the Money Mole. They are moles.
So LORD, now I understand why you didn't want me to kill or harm the mole. But how to get it (or them) out of that maze of tunnels? You said no to the trap. The water didn't work. The urine and mild bleach solution seems to be working as a corral, at the least the running to and fro in the tunnels seems to have ceased... But it still, obviously, isn't sensing anything other than garlic---"food." Maybe some fear and a little panic as well..."
"This is how it is going to be. They, and this one little mole, will be unable to turn a "blind eye" to what I am bringing. Dangers on the right hand, perils on the left. The unbearable, difficult, painful, and "odious" will enter their tunnels. I will make them senseless even to their wealth, abundance, and riches. They will cease being fixed on "the garlic." Plagues, famine, war, persecution... will be very real to these mole noses. They will gnash those sharp teeth to no avail. Wickedness and unrighteousness abounding. Now, Baruch, do you see a bit more of what I am doing?"
"So, the urine-bleach solution is the stink of the world!"
"Exactly. And the rain showers I brought today will carry their "stinky" ways from the surface of the soil deep into their mole tunnels and hiding places. Slowly, but certainly, "my waters" will do unto them as they have done unto my creation and unto Jacob. Permeate, penetrate...my heavenly waters will carry the overwhelming and overpowering "odors" through every nook and cranny of the soil, the Adam-ah. Their earthy, fleshly senses, even blind eyes, will not be able to ignore the "in your face" reality. It is not good to pee on my ways. I will pee on your ways O man! Those who stubbornly refuse, who stay, they will perish in their burrows eating their garlic, thinking they are "safe," confident they can survive. Dig deeper! Create multiple "exit" strategies! The curtain of stink will come down to the deepest recesses. They will not "see" or "smell" or discern the veil of death. They truly are senseless."
"So what do you see today, Baruch?"
"O LORD, this stubborn mole, as the "fumes" have penetrated deep, it has come up from the silent deeps to sub-tunnel the lesser depths. It won't leave the garlic... still feeding, burrowing here, turning there, even while the tunnels are filling with the stinky fumes. This mole must be a Miryam."
"So call her Miryam! I am at the doors of her burrow "knocking." Who will answer? She is wedded to her idols, and those idols are too big to be dragged through the tunnels. The treasures of my people are blocking the exits. Warn them Baruch, sound the alarm. Perhaps, some will hear, some will "see," some will smell..."
"I am arising, my strong arm bared and active. I am driving my people out of
the stink of their world. I am calling them, I am leading them forth to the Light of day and Life, "if my people called by my Name... So, some will come forth, though with tears and mourning. I am ready to console, I will carry, I will accompany them with steadfast love and mercy. My Word will light their path, and that way will be a Holy Way. Even so, even now, Baruch, I do this. So, Baruch, tend to my "moley" people!"