A Tangible Thing

musings before i finish some stuff

Gonna be MIA for awhile because I’ve gotta finish my book draft here and then I’ve gotta submit it and then I’m not really sure what happens after that. There’s this scenario in my head where I submit it and the editor reads it and even though I haven’t deviated much from the original proposal they email me and say “hey you know now that we see this written out we think it sucks.” I’m not sure if that even happens but in my head it does every day! I push on, though, never letting the imaginary humiliation prevent me from pursuing the more tangible humiliation that would come with publishing a bad book.

In my own work, I struggle with that line between the imaginary and the tangible. Rastafari is a mystic tradition, thus its mystery, but each of its mysteries is linked to tangible western anachronisms about “Eastern” religions or, many times, inconvenient truths about colonial atrocities. That can be difficult to explain to people whose instinct is to focus on the ganja sacrament, or who get hung up on their own incorrect interpretations of “divinity” as it refers to Qedamawi Haile Selassie and Etege Menen Asfaw.

(Also, in fairness to those without the patience, it can also take quite a bit of time to explain. Americans are busy, so I try to focus on the stuff Americans find exciting, like when someone gets shot or when there’s a hot woman involved. Attention span is a modern challenge with a modern solution — titillation.)

The other day, a friend asked me to clarify what was different to me about the Ethiopian faith, and why I gravitated toward it. Most of my initial impulses were things that I realized weren’t particularly tangible. The mysteries and magical traditions that remain intact. The ritual commitment. If one wants to be purely technical about faith systems, even the Miaphysite nature of Iyesus Kristos in the Ethiopian church is a subjective difference from the more popular interpretation of the savior in the Eastern and Western churches.

Then it occurred to me. There was a tangible difference. At one point, I remember asking an orthodox in Lalibela if any of the Ethiopian churches use wine at their holy communions (I was given Holy Water communion). The man laughed at me. He spoke in Amharic to his companion about what I asked and she laughed, too. I was informed that alcohol in the church was a European tradition and was, in fact, completely inappropriate to bring into a holy Tewahedo building. One is not supposed to even enter the church to pray if they’ve consumed alcohol, because their mind and body are not pure enough for Igziabiher and the Savior of the World.

The alcohol sacrament is not universal to Christendom. While the Ethiopian culture has a traditional alcoholic drink (a honey mead called Tej which is brewed with a medicinal shrub), mass production of booze and its most popular modern beers didn’t arrive until the West got there.

I remember the version of the “water into wine” parable in American churches. At the risk of over simplifying, much of it is positioned as the Savior of the World saving a boring wedding. That’s not exactly how it’s meant, though. Iyesus created a new version of wine from water using the power of St. Mary — the healer and giver of Medicine — so that the hosts of the wedding could properly honor their guests. The parable is about creating a hospitable environment, not a rainmaker savior providing endless booze with the wave of a hand.

There’s a high and mighty, puritanical angle I could take as a writer and thinker that doesn’t quite play, though. One where I pretend Christianity is corrupted by alcohol, which would be an extremist position. Instead, Ethiopian orthodox consume alcohol on special occasions, thus the tangible differences in views of alcohol in the church did not result in a teetotaler culture, even before the West showed up. Outright “haram” designation for alcohol has always been more of an Islam thing.

However, only one of the saviors in each parable is providing genuine nourishment. The Jesus of the literalist West provides the illusion of love through intoxication by producing alcohol from nothingness, as a miracle. Iyesus, meanwhile, provides a love so miraculous that it can heal when there is nothing to consume but water. Worshipping water seems tangibly better than worshipping alcohol, but some people get defensive about that topic so I just let it be.