Connect the Dots
Stories
Contents
“Connect the Dots” by Frank Ramirez
“Sudden Death” by John Sumwalt
Connect the Dots
by Frank Ramirez
Genesis 15:1-6
(The Lord) brought (Abram) outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” (v. 5)
Most of us who live with light pollution are astounded on those few occasions when we are truly in a spot where the stars are every bit as visible as they were to our ancestors. It does indeed look as though there are more stars than we could possibly count. Indeed, the weight of glory can seem oppressive. It’s as if they were literally innumerable.
Now had Abram time and patience, and the willingness to stay up all night, it is generally accepted that there are around three thousand stars visible to the naked eye in a sufficiently dark sky. Abram certainly had the dark sky.
One group of stars that invites us to do some more realistic counting, one that most of us can see, even with light pollution, is the Pleiades, sometimes referred to as “the seven sisters.” This cluster of stars, located high in the sky near Taurus the Bull, was so called because it was believed they were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione: Alcyone, Electra, Atlas, Merope, Maia, Taygete, Pleione, Celeno, and Asterope. Their father Atlas, being forced to carry the world on his shoulders (literally) was unable to protect his daughters from Orion the Hunter, and so Zeus transformed them into stars, or doves, and placed them in the sky, or they flew there themselves. Oddly enough, there are Australian and African cultures that tell a similar story about these seven sisters, leading some experts to refer to this as the world’s oldest story.
Now most eyes can only make out six stars. It takes excellent eyesight to see seven, although, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Good eyes on a clear night can make out about nine, while the telescope makes out a great number.”
Alternatively, some think the name Pleiades comes from the Greek word plein, to sail, because the season when it was safe to sail began when the constellation became visible in the morning sky.
Different cultures tell different stories about the Pleiades. In the 1535 Coverdale translation of the Bible, there is a marginal note next to Job 9:9 that clarifies what is meant by the Pleiades – “Some call these seven stars, the clock henne with hir checkens.” Or, in our more modern English, “the hen clucking after her chicks.” Indeed, in England this constellation was called the “hen and chickens” rather than the Pleiades or the “Seven Sisters.”
Now that Coverdale Bible was translating a Hebrew word into Pleiades because that’s how the more learned of their readership (and all readers had to be learned in those days) knew it, but the actual Hebrew word is Kee-mah! And that word seems to mean “Heap” or “Herd”, referring probably to camels. Certainly, practical nomads in the Middle East could have cared less about the Greek story of Atlas and his seven daughters, and a lot more about something practical, like camels.
But the ancient rabbis also had had Hebrew legends about that cluster of stars. One of the rabbis told how two fallen angels, Shemhazai and Azazel, convinced God to let them live upon the earth, and while God insisted that they would give in to their evil inclinations, they insisted that they would sanctify God’s name by their actions. As it turned out, God was right.
Drawing in the story of the sons of God having children with the daughters of men, found in Genesis 6:1-4, the rabbis told how Shemhazai fell in love with a virgin named Istehar. She promised to give in to his lascivious demands if only he would teach her “the Ineffable Name,” (God’s name) which would allow her to rise up to heaven. Shemhazai taught Istehar the name, but she used it to rise to heaven without giving into his demands.
As it says in the Talmud, God placed her among the seven stars “because she kept herself aloof from sin…than humanity may never forget her.”
The two fallen angels, however, fathered the giants with other women, and this in turn led to the shortening of human lives and, eventually, the flood. According to this story, Shemhazai eventually repented and was hung in the sky perpetually as a sign of penance.
These legends of the Jews are as ancient as other legends about the stars, and perhaps this was in Abram’s mind as he looked to the heavens at God’s command.
(Sources include the Oxford English Dictionary and “The Legends of the Jews” by Ginsburg.)
* * *
Sudden Death
by John Sumwalt
Luke 12:13-21
“You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (v. 40)
My earliest memory of a sudden death occurred on the farm when I was four years old.
We lived just outside of Lime Ridge, near the border of Sauk and Richland Counties a few miles south of Cazenovia on a farm Dad rented on shares from old Mrs. Duren. Her nephew, Cazenovia phenom, Ryne Duren, was an all-star relief pitcher who led the New York Yankees to victory over the Milwaukee Braves in the 1958 World Series.
Dad still farmed with horses in those days. He sometimes let me drive them ahead of him five feet at a time when he was hand picking corn. It was only a couple of years later that a little Ford tractor would usher in the modern era of agriculture on Sumwalt Farm.
As usual, that day I went with Dad out to the barn to help with morning chores. This was after breakfast on one of those bitter cold winter mornings in 1955, and after he had already risen at 5 A.M. to milk the cows. I was going along to feed the calves with the nipple bucket, one of the few chores that I could do that was actually helping more than getting in the way.
As we opened the barn door we were greeted by the sweet, pungent odor of animal warmth, alfalfa hay, and the remains of the same in the gutters Dad was about to clean.
My eyes went immediately to the flattened body beneath one of the draft horses. I did not want to believe what I saw. There was my favorite kitten, a fluffy calico bundle of joy; she loved to chase me around the barn batting at a piece of bailing twine.
Dad explained that Tiny had been attracted to the warm spot where the horse had been laying and was asleep there when the horse laid down again. “It was just one of those things,” he said, “couldn’t be helped.” I don’t remember if I cried, but I can still feel the shock and the injustice of it all. It was my first introduction to one of the harsh realities of life. Death can intrude at anytime and anywhere.
There were more unexpected deaths at about that same time; the cow that fell into a deep hole and drowned in a spring in the pasture across the road, another kitten that was run over by the milk truck, and my great uncle, Tom McDonough, whose funeral in the parlor in his house next to the EUB Church in Lime Ridge, were my introductions to the sudden finality of death.
I would serve briefly as half-time pastor in Lime Ridge 58 years later, in my first year of retirement after we moved back to the farm. Lyme disease forced me into full-time retirement two months after that last pastoral appointment. My last pastoral act was a burial service for a still born child at the Concord Cemetery, two miles north of our farm off HWY 58, up past the old White School near where Frank and Virgie Brown used to live.
Her little grave is about twenty yards down the hill from where we buried our long-time farm neighbor, Gilly Moe, some ten years ago - just a few feet from the graves of his in laws, Buford and Gertie Frye, who were killed when a semi crushed their car back in the early sixties. The whole community was stunned at the loss of this beloved couple who had operated our grocery store in Loyd for many years.
There among the graves of a host of friends and neighbors, I stood silently with the funeral director waiting as the grieving parents said their final farewell. I had come full circle. And the shock and injustice of it all was no less than when I beheld the lifeless body of my beloved kitten.
Death, sudden and otherwise, had been an intricate part of my life as a pastor. Sharing words of comfort and hope with grieving families had been a holy privilege that had shaped me and changed me in ways that I cannot put into words but had not totally prepared me for the inevitable approach of my own earthly end. That came with one of those dreaded phone calls: “Alan died.”
And ever since my brother’s sudden death almost two years ago, I have awoken each morning with a new perspective, thankful to be alive and knowing viscerally that my time will come, perhaps sooner than I can allow myself to imagine. Alan was just 67, two years older than Bob Saget, whose unexpected death at 65 shocked his friends in the entertainment world and his millions of fans. The passing of Betty White at 99 and Sydney Poitier at 94 feels more like the natural order of things, at least the one we prefer.
My colleague Douglas Skinner puts it this way: “We expect 94-year-olds to die. We don’t expect 65-year-olds to die. Death is theoretical for most of us. We try to keep it at arm’s length. Yes, it happens, but not now, not to us. The death of Sidney Poitier fits the narrative we tell ourselves. The death of Bob Saget doesn’t… It’s one thing for a 94-year-old man who has been “ailing” for some time to die. That makes sense to us. But when a 65-year-old man, who to all appearances is still fully alive dies unexpectedly, that rattles us. We can keep Sidney Poitier’s death at arm’s length. But Bob Saget’s death gets up in our faces. We can deal with the gradual approach of a gentle death after a long, rich, diminishing life. But what are we supposed to do with a world where active people just up and die without warning?”
Whether young or old we are well advised to heed these words of the psalmist in the ninetieth psalm:
...our years come to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are threescore and ten,
or even by reason of strength fourscore;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away…
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 7, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Connect the Dots” by Frank Ramirez
“Sudden Death” by John Sumwalt
Connect the Dots
by Frank Ramirez
Genesis 15:1-6
(The Lord) brought (Abram) outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” (v. 5)
Most of us who live with light pollution are astounded on those few occasions when we are truly in a spot where the stars are every bit as visible as they were to our ancestors. It does indeed look as though there are more stars than we could possibly count. Indeed, the weight of glory can seem oppressive. It’s as if they were literally innumerable.
Now had Abram time and patience, and the willingness to stay up all night, it is generally accepted that there are around three thousand stars visible to the naked eye in a sufficiently dark sky. Abram certainly had the dark sky.
One group of stars that invites us to do some more realistic counting, one that most of us can see, even with light pollution, is the Pleiades, sometimes referred to as “the seven sisters.” This cluster of stars, located high in the sky near Taurus the Bull, was so called because it was believed they were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione: Alcyone, Electra, Atlas, Merope, Maia, Taygete, Pleione, Celeno, and Asterope. Their father Atlas, being forced to carry the world on his shoulders (literally) was unable to protect his daughters from Orion the Hunter, and so Zeus transformed them into stars, or doves, and placed them in the sky, or they flew there themselves. Oddly enough, there are Australian and African cultures that tell a similar story about these seven sisters, leading some experts to refer to this as the world’s oldest story.
Now most eyes can only make out six stars. It takes excellent eyesight to see seven, although, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Good eyes on a clear night can make out about nine, while the telescope makes out a great number.”
Alternatively, some think the name Pleiades comes from the Greek word plein, to sail, because the season when it was safe to sail began when the constellation became visible in the morning sky.
Different cultures tell different stories about the Pleiades. In the 1535 Coverdale translation of the Bible, there is a marginal note next to Job 9:9 that clarifies what is meant by the Pleiades – “Some call these seven stars, the clock henne with hir checkens.” Or, in our more modern English, “the hen clucking after her chicks.” Indeed, in England this constellation was called the “hen and chickens” rather than the Pleiades or the “Seven Sisters.”
Now that Coverdale Bible was translating a Hebrew word into Pleiades because that’s how the more learned of their readership (and all readers had to be learned in those days) knew it, but the actual Hebrew word is Kee-mah! And that word seems to mean “Heap” or “Herd”, referring probably to camels. Certainly, practical nomads in the Middle East could have cared less about the Greek story of Atlas and his seven daughters, and a lot more about something practical, like camels.
But the ancient rabbis also had had Hebrew legends about that cluster of stars. One of the rabbis told how two fallen angels, Shemhazai and Azazel, convinced God to let them live upon the earth, and while God insisted that they would give in to their evil inclinations, they insisted that they would sanctify God’s name by their actions. As it turned out, God was right.
Drawing in the story of the sons of God having children with the daughters of men, found in Genesis 6:1-4, the rabbis told how Shemhazai fell in love with a virgin named Istehar. She promised to give in to his lascivious demands if only he would teach her “the Ineffable Name,” (God’s name) which would allow her to rise up to heaven. Shemhazai taught Istehar the name, but she used it to rise to heaven without giving into his demands.
As it says in the Talmud, God placed her among the seven stars “because she kept herself aloof from sin…than humanity may never forget her.”
The two fallen angels, however, fathered the giants with other women, and this in turn led to the shortening of human lives and, eventually, the flood. According to this story, Shemhazai eventually repented and was hung in the sky perpetually as a sign of penance.
These legends of the Jews are as ancient as other legends about the stars, and perhaps this was in Abram’s mind as he looked to the heavens at God’s command.
(Sources include the Oxford English Dictionary and “The Legends of the Jews” by Ginsburg.)
* * *
Sudden Death
by John Sumwalt
Luke 12:13-21
“You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (v. 40)
My earliest memory of a sudden death occurred on the farm when I was four years old.
We lived just outside of Lime Ridge, near the border of Sauk and Richland Counties a few miles south of Cazenovia on a farm Dad rented on shares from old Mrs. Duren. Her nephew, Cazenovia phenom, Ryne Duren, was an all-star relief pitcher who led the New York Yankees to victory over the Milwaukee Braves in the 1958 World Series.
Dad still farmed with horses in those days. He sometimes let me drive them ahead of him five feet at a time when he was hand picking corn. It was only a couple of years later that a little Ford tractor would usher in the modern era of agriculture on Sumwalt Farm.
As usual, that day I went with Dad out to the barn to help with morning chores. This was after breakfast on one of those bitter cold winter mornings in 1955, and after he had already risen at 5 A.M. to milk the cows. I was going along to feed the calves with the nipple bucket, one of the few chores that I could do that was actually helping more than getting in the way.
As we opened the barn door we were greeted by the sweet, pungent odor of animal warmth, alfalfa hay, and the remains of the same in the gutters Dad was about to clean.
My eyes went immediately to the flattened body beneath one of the draft horses. I did not want to believe what I saw. There was my favorite kitten, a fluffy calico bundle of joy; she loved to chase me around the barn batting at a piece of bailing twine.
Dad explained that Tiny had been attracted to the warm spot where the horse had been laying and was asleep there when the horse laid down again. “It was just one of those things,” he said, “couldn’t be helped.” I don’t remember if I cried, but I can still feel the shock and the injustice of it all. It was my first introduction to one of the harsh realities of life. Death can intrude at anytime and anywhere.
There were more unexpected deaths at about that same time; the cow that fell into a deep hole and drowned in a spring in the pasture across the road, another kitten that was run over by the milk truck, and my great uncle, Tom McDonough, whose funeral in the parlor in his house next to the EUB Church in Lime Ridge, were my introductions to the sudden finality of death.
I would serve briefly as half-time pastor in Lime Ridge 58 years later, in my first year of retirement after we moved back to the farm. Lyme disease forced me into full-time retirement two months after that last pastoral appointment. My last pastoral act was a burial service for a still born child at the Concord Cemetery, two miles north of our farm off HWY 58, up past the old White School near where Frank and Virgie Brown used to live.
Her little grave is about twenty yards down the hill from where we buried our long-time farm neighbor, Gilly Moe, some ten years ago - just a few feet from the graves of his in laws, Buford and Gertie Frye, who were killed when a semi crushed their car back in the early sixties. The whole community was stunned at the loss of this beloved couple who had operated our grocery store in Loyd for many years.
There among the graves of a host of friends and neighbors, I stood silently with the funeral director waiting as the grieving parents said their final farewell. I had come full circle. And the shock and injustice of it all was no less than when I beheld the lifeless body of my beloved kitten.
Death, sudden and otherwise, had been an intricate part of my life as a pastor. Sharing words of comfort and hope with grieving families had been a holy privilege that had shaped me and changed me in ways that I cannot put into words but had not totally prepared me for the inevitable approach of my own earthly end. That came with one of those dreaded phone calls: “Alan died.”
And ever since my brother’s sudden death almost two years ago, I have awoken each morning with a new perspective, thankful to be alive and knowing viscerally that my time will come, perhaps sooner than I can allow myself to imagine. Alan was just 67, two years older than Bob Saget, whose unexpected death at 65 shocked his friends in the entertainment world and his millions of fans. The passing of Betty White at 99 and Sydney Poitier at 94 feels more like the natural order of things, at least the one we prefer.
My colleague Douglas Skinner puts it this way: “We expect 94-year-olds to die. We don’t expect 65-year-olds to die. Death is theoretical for most of us. We try to keep it at arm’s length. Yes, it happens, but not now, not to us. The death of Sidney Poitier fits the narrative we tell ourselves. The death of Bob Saget doesn’t… It’s one thing for a 94-year-old man who has been “ailing” for some time to die. That makes sense to us. But when a 65-year-old man, who to all appearances is still fully alive dies unexpectedly, that rattles us. We can keep Sidney Poitier’s death at arm’s length. But Bob Saget’s death gets up in our faces. We can deal with the gradual approach of a gentle death after a long, rich, diminishing life. But what are we supposed to do with a world where active people just up and die without warning?”
Whether young or old we are well advised to heed these words of the psalmist in the ninetieth psalm:
...our years come to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are threescore and ten,
or even by reason of strength fourscore;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away…
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 7, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
