The Pentecost

The Holy Spirit Doth Descend and Fall Upon Thee
That, by the way, is the way you have to talk when you're reading the Protestant-Christian holy book, they call it the Bible, which simply means "Book." "Bib" It's easy to get book out of "bib." When I was kid, my grandmother was the town "Lib" rarian. I can see Book in Lib. In Spanish libre. Wow, suddenly I'm getting out of my field--I'm guilty of stealing under and over fences to try and get a feel for the whole locale--Bib has lead me to Lib that has lead me to libre that leads me to Liberty and Liberal. Holy Moley! I love playing with words; like a kid playing with blocks; and I had blocks and I played with them, spelling words, making up my own words like "SNYX" or just throw all the blocks up in the air and let them hit where they may and then see what they spell out. Some of my blocks had numbers on them, too, so I had words in my kiddy lexicon like A3TS, 2U6T...now 2U6T is easy to pronounce, "too-you-six-tee"--I would pronounce A3TS "a-three-tee-ess," rapidly, you know. I don't remember if these words had meaning to me or if any of the words I spelled had meaning to me--we're talking really really kid here--like when do we play with blocks, pretty early, right?--except kids nowadays surely have no idea what blocks are or were--except, I notice, most of the kiddie shows on teevee must be produced by Baby Boomer types because they all are so archaic in their language, images, and what they're trying to teach that blocks have to be a part of their background. Like Mister Rogers. He was like watching people from the 1940s being hip, and certainly blocks were a part of his past--he talked baby talk, too, you know? I talk to my dog like its an adult; I talk to babies like they're adults, too.

My point: words and books of words and how we define words and pronounce words or even whether the words we hear have any meaning to us at all are still parts and pieces of us--we are trapped in our languages, unless we're taught to be multilingual early, which wasn't the case when I was in pubic-hair school--I did however start having to learn to read other languages in college for my readings in graduate sociology--most of the great founding sociologists were either French or German; still, I have no idea really what a German is saying and certainly not a Frenchman; I lived in Mexico so I did learn a tad of Mexican con Texian down there and the fact my half-Tex-Mex wife spoke Tex-Mex with a saucy flavor but I never got fluent and used sign language as much as I spoke Espanol. Symbols, however, have become the most accessible universal language, a language of familiarities.

I live amongst Asians. The majority of people I meet on my elevator do not speak nor do they understand English or even if they do it's a pitiful speaking and understanding whose true meaning and usage don't go much further than the page they are currently on in the How to Speak English in 48 Hours book they're learning out of. Around the barn with the Wolfman getting to this: HOWEVER, THEY do understand symbolic language--that's the universal--like if a sweetly beautiful Asian woman gets on the elevator with me, the first thing I do is smile at her. She damn sure understands a smile. Smiles can be read many ways. Asian women understand clearly a man smiling at them and how he's smiling at them--coldly, preemptorily, or warmly, with a little continuance in it. Not lurking at her now. Or, if it's hot, all you have to do is fan yourself with a question on your face. She understands you are signaling that it is hot. I might even get a reply in what English she knows--"Yes, it hot." Or if an Asian man gets on--same thing--except, a wolf like me doesn't have much to do with men whether they speak English or not or are Asian or not. I'm a ladies's wolf; born of a woman, raised by 3 women, taught by women, married women, let those women keep my life in order, and then have been bossed by women for the length of my money-making career. In the literary game, I'd much rather deal with a woman agent than a man. I think women understand writers better than men do; hell, women read books; all of them I know do--I grew up with libraries, remember, and in all the houses, cars, apartments, villas, hotels I've ever lived in, I had my books with me--a horrible burden to carry around as a young man on the move, but I did it, at one time having over 2000 books in my library.

And there is Liberty in books, but not the Book I started off this long highwayed post with--the Protestant-Christian holy book, the Bible--actually it's official title is The Holy Bible, that article needed to give it uniqueness--"This is it!"

All of this ramble has meant to introduce you to my The Holy Bible expertise.

First of all, I do not own a copy of this The Holy Bible though growing up on the bald prairie of far West Texas in my home's library there were at least 20 versions of this The Holy Bible on our bookshelves, mainly because my dad collected versions of this book, "various translations," he called them. There was the standard King James version of this book. That's the major domo of "Jehovah's" word the British forced down the throats of the "savages" their "civilized" empire undertook to make civilized and children of their god and through the sanctions of the church work them to death or leave them savages and still work them to death since the Brits brought Capitalism along with their god--under a surly old virgin queen married to a Prussian fop who must'a had a harem hidden under Buckingham Palace--anyway, I diverge--however, keep in mind, I blame everything happening today in this country--hell, the world-- on the British past and present. So, the English Holy Bible--is the King James version, which King James himself supposedly translated--and we can certainly trust an Anglican King at truly understanding the language of Jehovah, right? Which is leading me to this word "Pentecost."

My dad's hero, by the way, was Robert Ingersoll, who my dad said was the smartest man who ever lived and who had "a tongue coated in gold and a gold brain to give it golden speech"--ahh, my dad, his thoughts were always in the Highlands (ever read that William Saroyan story "My Heart Is in the Highlands"?)--and Robert Ingersoll, by the way, was also a stone Atheist, a loudly heard and written about Disbeliever, but it was his intelligence my dad respected and as such, my dad was concerned with translations, especially translations of the actual words of my dad's god, Jehovah--and my dad might have been an Atheist at heart--I've been suspicious of his faith on more than one occasion, but he was obedient to my mother's will above all things and that meant being a Christian--a surprisingly LIBeral Christian, thank the Lard--that same feminine will that ruled over me and in exchange for following her will's ways and rules she returned her female affections and gave us female presence--women design men to fit their fashion. Quote me on that. Women marry men they are attracted to but then once they're married or living together they start redesigning their men--you know: "Oh, honey, not like that...here, let me...." "No, not there...that hurts...." Designing women! Hollywood guys know this. Jewish guys are the best at knowing this; a Jewish guy told me one time when he found out his wife and I were closer than just good friends--he said, "All Jewish guys know their women go off to get thrills but all Jewish guys also know Jewish women always come back their husbands and kids." I never forgot that, brothers and sisters, and in the case of his wife and me, that's exactly what happened, though it's more tragic than I've got time to explain on this blog. It's one of the great romance stories of the past century--I've got a book in me about it, too....

Becoming a "Christian" for my mother meant following the teachings of god's holy writ as interpreted by what she called "biblical scholars and teachers"; my dad still kept his secular interests alive by getting into various translations of the Christian Bible. Let's see if I can remember a few of these bibles--there was the King James version; next important was something my mother's church used and approved of called the American Standard version, and its follow up called the American Revised Standard version--Americanized versions of the King James bible--you know, without the "thees" and ''thous." All of these translations, I believe, were based on Greek translations of Hebrew texts by monks and priests and great men of intellect like that--and yes here again I jest--Holy Jesus, how can Christians utterly let themselves fall under the spells of books that probably are all falsely translated--all translated from doctored documents? Fools.

My dad also had a Goodspeed bible, out of the University of Chicago--remember the U of C? It was never intended to be an Atheist school; John D. Rockefeller, a Baptist, built it--though all the U of C professors I had in college were Atheists.

The Goodspeed bible became my dad's "carrying" bible--I remember it because it looked like just a regular book. You know? No Moroccan binding; no gold-edged onion-skin pages; no, this bible just looked like a regular book.

I started reading the Christian Bible with my dad when I was preschool age--reading the bible word for word from my dad's personal American Revised Standard version (my mother and father had their own personal bibles and they did not like to use each others bibles nor loan them to each other; in fact, not one living soul was allowed to touch my mother's American Standard personal bible--and especially not my dad. I had a bible, too, a New Testament I won because I quoted more verses from the bible from memory than any of the other little cloggers in my Sunday School class. Yahoo!).

The New Testament is the part of the P-C bible, the smallest part of the P-C bible, that is all about Joshua bar Joseph, a Nazarene Essene Jew who 2000 years ago was leader of a small, small band (as few as 20 followers) of Jews who "taught" against the Judaic sect rulers and their ass-kissing and kowtowing to the Roman occupiers--Jesus was a Jew and followed Jewish laws and traditions faithfully--Jesus was never a Christian. He taught a New Testament interpretation of the Torah, meaning Jewish people were no longer under the Ten Commandments of Moses because of what Joshua of Nazareth had gleaned from his rabbinical studies at the Temple in Nazareth as a young man approaching his bar mitzvah based on his understanding of the role of the Messiah in the restoration of the Land of Judea and the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple--the Temple that contained the Jews's Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant--which is now said to be in Ethiopia. Jesus went around trumpeting that he had discovered the messianic meaning in the Torah to mean him; this meaning led to Jesus becoming a Libertarian--a man of free will, to believe in whatever you wanted to believe in, though he did spell out the consequences of not believing he was the son of Jehovah-- still, his politics were "Give unto Caesar Caesar's, etc."-- privately keeping your faith in the Jews's supreme being being the true supreme being and one day rescuing you from this horrible world where we have to WORK to survive. You see, Christians are lazy as hell; they see work as slavery, that's why the Christian churches supported slavery, both Catholics and Protestants, throughout history. The P-C bible is full of slave talk--Abraham had a handmaiden--the Arab chick he banged to get his son Ismael. The Jews themselves were said to be slaves to the Egyptians though there is some contradictory history that says the Jews were actually very well treated in Egypt. Christians see Jesus as their Liberator, meaning, he's gonna throw down a holy staircase (Stairway to Heaven) and all of THEM who are in Josh's Daddy's Little Black Book are gonna get to ride up that escalator of Zion on up into Jesus's own City Four Square--aha!!!--and all the rest of us are gonna be LEFT BEHIND. I gotta believe that part of it and I pray every night to Jesus, "Oh please, Jesus, come and get your believers and get 'em the hell off this planet, our only paradise, our only heaven--and, Jesus, please leave thegrowlingwolf BEHIND. Amen. Selah. Sobeit."

The first Pentecostal church I ever encountered was across the street from my paternal grandmother's castle in my old hometown--hell, she looked like Queen Vicky, she was that old style, except my paternal grandfather hadn't been a Prussian fop but a horny old swamp fox from North Carolina who kept her pregnant and bopping out kids till he bit the dust at an early age leaving her queen of the hop after that.

The church across the street from my grandmother's castle was the noisiest church in the world--'cause when those white folks got to worshippin' old Josh ben Joe, wow they rattled windows for miles around and when they got their hillbilly instruments out and started yowlin' out them hillbilly gospel tunes, you know, making that joyful noise to the Lard, wow--my hometown police were flooded with complaints--and soon the cops would arrive and tell these rollers to settle down.

That church in that private house was a Church of the Four Square Gospel. This was a church established in Los Angeles back in the Jazz Age by a rebuked actress named Aimee Simple McPherson, a divinely good-looking woman who wore sexy-thin white flowing robes and let her long blonde hair down while she taught her brand of what really was a cultish branch of Protestant-Christianity who called themselves Pentecostals. Pentecostals included--and these are all from memory: Anabaptists (Free Will Baptists), the Churches of God in Christ, the Nazarenes, all the Holiness churches, eventually all coming under the enterprise of the Assemblies of God Church, at first definitely all white and mostly all south--a church from right out of the highest hillbilly hills of this country, the superstitious highest of hills, from the Cumberland Gap on out West, spreading like wild-fire among the poorest of whites, those whites who lived closest to the blacks, adjacent to their parts of towns, or working with blacks on tenant farms, or chain gangs, or riding the rods with blacks, working on the railroads with blacks, in the steel mills, making the automobiles. "Low-class whites," my mother called them, "white trash" we called 'em when I was a boy.

My mother's brand of Christianity, fundamentalist, too, looked down upon the Pentecostals. The old folks referred to them as Holy Rollers. And Holy Rollers is a good name for them, because "holy rolling" is one of the effects of having a Pentecostal experience.

The Pentecost from whence they get their brand is described in the New Testament. And yes it is the same as the Jewish event called the Pentecost, meaning the fiftieth day after Passover when all the Jews have a feast where they let their hair down and get kind'a paganistically wild. You see, old Jesus in making himself the Messiah predicted all this crap to that handful of relations that followed him around who called themselves his "Apostles," a part of them, the closest to Jesus calling themselves his "Disciples"--that's the 12--why we have 12 people on juries. The 12 Disciples were Jesus's front men, body guards, etc. I mean Jesus was a Holy Roller Jew, don't you see. [Isn't it interesting how related everything is--that's what old Einstein figured out.]

Jesus's spin was this: "OK, boys, gather 'round. Big Daddy has laid it out for me--I mean I gotta fulfilled this Messiah thing and a part of that is I gotta get arrested in Jerusalem, you all dig? 'Cause here's the deal, and Petros over there will fill you in on the details as soon as Big Daddy's orders are obeyed and I'm outta here for a few days." "Oh Lard, of what is this thou speaketh?" "Come on, you boobs, you've been listenin' to my BS sermons--how 'bout that one on the Mount of Olives--whew I was on a roll that day--remember the Beatitudes, boys--remember I predicted a bunch of Gay poets in the Twentieth Century would call themselves the Beats based on that sermon--and you boys know I love good writing--especially I like the way Marco the little cripple boy over there writes--you ever read what he calls his 'book'? It's not bad readin', boys. Anyway, let's get back to Big D's plan. We're going into Jerusalem right before Passover, dig; in fact, we're going in on Palm Sunday--you know the day those Catholic Jews carry all those palm leaves with them to Temple? By the bye, Judas, you got the palm leaves I told you to stock up on? We can sell 'em like hot cakes as I ride into Jerusalem majestically on a donkey." "A donkey! But Lard." "That's right, lads, a god-damn lowlife donkey--it's the greatest PR stunt in Jerusalem advertising history, baby--me shining like an angel on that donkey. Then after we make our entrance, we'll camp out somewhere for the night--Gethsemane I hear has a free campground in it so that's where we'll camp. Er-ah, er, Jew Boy, I mean Judas, come on, I always joke with your name, but anyway, would you leave the room a minute." [Judas exits the room.] "Now boys, here's what's gonna happen. Judas there is gonna go bribe the Romans to come bust my ass in Gethsemane that night after I come in on the donkey. Judas, he's a good boy, he's agreed to be the goat in this--I gotta mansion ready for him up in Heaven that's worth a hell of a lot more those thirty pieces of Roman silver he's gonna earn for this job--the way they devalue that crap every four or five days it's a wonder 30 pieces of it are even worth a sow's ear. So, here's the deal, boys. The Romans are gonna arrest me and charge me with calling for the overthrow of the Roman government and also with not believing Caesar is a divine ruler. So look, I'm gonna be hanged out on Golgatha as a political rebel." "But, Lard, you can't be serious--are ye drunk, Lard, you drank a lot of that Mogen David at Mary Magdalen's joint the other night?" "Boy that was good wine, too--can that little Mary throw a shindig or what?--but, not to worry, gang, I'm comin' back from the dead." "Yeah sure you are," piped up Doubting Thomas. "That's right, oh ye of little faith--I'm the son of God, remember? the Messiah, baby; invincible--hell, man, I'm dyin' to save you from your sins so you don't have to sacrifice your best animals every year to those Sadducean bastards and can sell 'em to the Arab butchers for a fine profit instead. So after I come back from the tomb, boys, we're gonna have one hell of a Pentecost party on the Day of the Pentecost, dig? And then, right there in front of you all, Big Daddy's gonna open up the heavens and, boys, hot damn, I'm gonna be pulled up by Big Daddy's magnetic personality and be transported to Big D's right hand, on the Throne of God, baby, and there I'll make intercession for you dudes, so don't miss me, I'll be with you in spirit. By the way, like that kook El Ron ben Hubbard says, start your own religion, boys, after I go up to Big Daddy's side--you know, call it 'Christianity' yeah, that's it--damn I'm good at coming up with these spins, ain't I? Just like Karl Rove."

So there ya go. Jesus ascended into Heaven on the Jewish Feast of the Pentecost.

Now here's where the Pentecostals come in. After old Josh ben Joe ascended up into Hebbin' on the Hill of Transfiguration or something bib-lie-cal like that, the Apostles and Disciples went to a big hall and preceded to fling out with their Pentecostal feast, when, after the wine had flowed freely and the shanks had been devoured and more wine had flowed suddenly, BOOM, Hallelujah, flames started lickin' brightly over their heads and they started cackling some kind of prattle none of them understood--stuff like "E-oh-bah-shabah-a-boma-elo-ho-humyon" which the Apostle Paul called "speaking in tongues" in his "book" in the P-C holy book as "The Acts of the Apostles (Second Acts, verses 1-4, in case your intellectually curious)--and they were dancing and really having a ball and then some of 'em started slammin' each other down in the spirit, while some of 'em were dancing in the spirit and then one of the blind ones suddenly started seeing again and that's how HEALING got into the Pentecostal hoodoo ceremonies. They decided this is what Jesus meant by being hit by the HOLY SPIRIT--or the Holy Ghost (yep, folks, I cannot lie, we're talkin' ghosts here). When the Holy Ghost descends on you, brothers and sisters, you get kind'a wildly devilish in your mesmerized states. Rolling down the aisles--rolling around all over the floor--that's what "holy rolling" is--you don't see it much on teevee, but if you watch old Phony-baloney Benny Hinn--he's on late at night all over the cheap channels--he sometimes shows healin' and dancin' and holy rolling and speaking in tongues--it's pure paganistic, that's for damn sure.

I can't go on. I'm laughing like one of my cousin hyenas as I try and explain this silly fictional shit that millions of people take literally and schedule and plan their lives and the lives of everybody else in the world around this faith they have in this Nazarene Essene-sect Jew rebel who lived 2000 years ago and who never wrote anything down and whose name we know from these Jewish historical accounts of life under Roman rule and not from any true historical documents--a totally Jewish tale and even a totally Jewish religion. Christianity simply lets GENTILES become JEWS without really converting to Judaism. Christianity lets white people become the Chosen People, too, same as the Jews are Jehovah's Chosen People because of that Ark of the Covenant that's over in Ethiopia now that contains the Covenant between Jehovah and the Jews, that God of Abraham they talk about all the time--the same God of Abraham the Arabs call Allah (All God) (all good) (all evil: del evil, devil)--shit ain't words fun.

l hat of www.languagehat.com got me started on this explanation of America's own cult Protestants, the Pentecostals--hillbilly in origins, influenced by black gospel, all white in their origins though having evolved today into integrated megachurches and a church system worth billions of dollars a year into the coffers of these predominantly white Rolex-wearing Pentecostal hucksters. Next time you dare can stand to watch old Jerry Falwell teach his evil shit check out those hog-like jowls hanging off his old pale white fleshed face. Look at how bloated and goutishly fat his old bloated body is. It's the good life, baby. A fulfillment of the Amurican Dream. It's eatin' fattening foods like cornpone and hog jowls and maw and snout cheese and red-eye gravy and corn-on-the-cob dripping in butter and rolled in Morton salt, and then to that deep fat-fried fried chicken Aunt Jemima brings out to the Falwell Family Sunday Groaning Board every Sunday after church. This form of Christianity is very Elizabethan, if you study white genealogies, you'll find, America's hillbillies are very Shakespearean in their character.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

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Check out this guest article by Dave Lindorff currently running on BuzzFlash; reads like Dave read The Daily Growler over the past couple of days:

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/524

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Happy Pentecost!

thestaff
for The Daily Growler