On to Richmond

July 13-14: a college, a church, and the battlefields

The annual conference of the Hymn Society was held this year on the campus of the University of Richmond, an elite private institution of higher learning. Its elegant campus sits among the wealthy estates of the River Road area of west Richmond, and I could not help thinking of the Capital and its contrast with the poverty of Districts 11 and 12 in the Hunger Games book. Such thoughts do not, however, keep me from taking two desserts from the lavish display at dinner. I am not sure that I have ever eaten in such luxury, and can well imagine what Katniss and Peeta (and Rue and Thresh and many others from the book) would have thought -- as they loaded their plates and came back for seconds and thirds. Or what some of the people elsewhere in Richmond might think.

Years ago, our church sponsored a family of refugees from the Ukraine, back during the days of Soviet rule. There were two adults and four or five children -- the adults were short and thin, the children emaciated and small. I was with them when they first encountered an American supermarket. They could not believe their eyes -- all this food! I think of them as I marvel at this cafeteria.

I understand why the UR campus is so immaculate, why its dining hall and food are so lavish: they must attract students and their tuition dollars, and many of these students come from families of privilege where they assume such luxury as their entitlement. And this is no different from other elite private colleges and universities across the country, including the one where I received my baccalaureate. But I remain uneasy about it, and aware of the fragility of this manner of life: its manicured lawns, its perfect buildings -- and, I noted, its omnipresent security force.

Sunday morning finds me at St. James' Episcopal Church, its spire the focal point at the east end of Monument Avenue in Richmond. On this summer Sunday, the church is about eighty percent full, a lively congregation of all ages, including plenty of children and teens. I am underdressed in white shirt and tie with dress slacks and shoes; almost all of the men are in suits, the women in dresses.

The liturgy is straightforward Rite Two with five hymns, all well-played and sung with vigor. We kneel at appropriate times, but at no point do I see anyone make the sign of the cross; the overall feel of the liturgy is low-church.

I take an instant dislike to the Rector, whose function this day is Talk Show Host (at the announcements) and Celebrant. He reminds me of other clergy I have known, and it is unfair of me to lump him in with them. At the least, the obvious vigor of the parish reflects well on the parish leadership, and the Rector is always part of that.

I had arrived late, slipping into a back pew during the Collect for Purity, so I am curious whether anyone would greet me at the end. The postlude is buried under an instant din of loud chatter following the dismissal. I stand in place, listening as best I can, until the organist finishes (Buxtehude, played very well), and make my way to the door. There is much friendly conversation -- it is obvious that this congregation cherishes its fellowship -- but not a word for me, not so much as a friendly smile. I might as well be invisible. I am in the line for an assisting priest at one of the three doors; she takes my hand and with an artificial smile worthy of Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games, she says "Welcome. I'm so glad you're here." I walk down the avenue to the statue of "Jeb" Stuart, who was a communicant at St. James and was buried from this parish after his death in battle. The President, Jefferson Davis, and his wife Varina, and Mrs. Lee (and Robert, when possible) attended St. Paul's Episcopal, a few blocks away. We will have a hymn festival at St. Paul's later in the week

The afternoon lies before me, free until the conference officially begins at 5:00. I drive east on Broad Street, past the even more historic St. John's Episcopal Church, site of Patrick Henry's words "Give me liberty, or give me death." I linger at the National Park Service welcome center at the top of the hill on Broad Street, site of the Chimbarazo Hospital, the Confederacy's largest. More than 70,000 patients were here during the four years of its existence, with a lower mortality rate than many modern hospitals. A young park ranger makes up with her friendliness for the clergy of St. James; I am the only visitor, and she spends some fifteen minutes telling me about the site and the other National Park Service battlefield sites around Richmond. It is far too much for one afternoon, and I quickly get lost, seeking US 360 out to the Cold Harbor battlefield. I give up, and drive the length of Broad Street back to the university.

Later in the week I visited the battlefield sites east and southeast of Petersburg, some thirty miles south of Richmond. I linger at The Crater, remembering that horrible day. Those who may have seen the movie "Cold Mountain" a few years ago will remember the battle scene early in the film; that was the Crater. Some Pennsylvania coal miners in the Union army dug a tunnel under the Confederate lines and filled it with gunpowder. The explosion immediately killed some 270 South Carolina soldiers who were in the trenches, making a thirty-foot deep crater still visible today. As was too often the case in this war, the Union soldiers were not effectively led -- their commander, Gen. James H. Ledlie, was well behind the lines, drunk -- and they were soon driven back with heavy casualties in hand-to-hand fighting in and around this crater. A division of United States Colored Troops had been specially trained for this day, and their casualties were the heaviest, the Confederate soldiers killing many of them even after they surrendered. Some were bayoneted by their own Union allies, "white soldiers who feared reprisals from victorious CSA troops" (from Wikipedia, s.v. "Battle of the Crater"). There was not such an evil day as this in all the five years of the war.

On my way back west after the conference, I followed the route taken by the Army of Northern Virginia in its retreat from Richmond and Petersburg, and I stopped at Saylor's Creek. This was where Grant's army caught up with the Confederates, who were strung out with their wagon trains over the country roads, and on this day, April 6, 1865, the Army ceased to be an effective fighting force; almost 8,000 men from the Confederate Army were captured, killed, or wounded. In the aftermath, the Union dead received honorable burial in a little cemetery that is still there at the site; the Confederates were left to be eaten by the animals, and their remains were later dumped without ceremony into unmarked mass graves.

Why do I go to places like this?

The best answer is that given by Mr. Lincoln on another battlefield:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln could not know that the "new birth of freedom" would soon be smothered by the robber barons who were already poised to take over his Republican Party and who control it to this day, and the Democratic Party as well. He could not know what a distant dream "government of the people, by the people, for the people" would become by the twenty-first century, hardly more than a bitter joke.

Perhaps he did not understand that the Confederates were fighting for such a government just as much as those on the Union side; their vision was a Jeffersonian democracy, an escape from what they saw as the tyranny of a too-powerful central government.

But Lincoln was right. So long as we remember those times, those people on both sides who, in their respective ways, fought for freedom, the dream shall not have altogether perished, and may yet in some future age become a reality.

A park, a visit, and a movie

[Some of my readers may be expecting an RSCM Report. With God's grace, it should be forthcoming by the weekend. Before that, I have today's post and two more about other matters, which (to my mind) relate to what follows at RSCM.]

July 8: The Valley of Virginia

I roll up I-81 through the Virginia Highlands, the foothills again shrouded with morning mist, behind them the mountaintops blue in the distance. I had hoped to drive part of the day on the Blue Ridge Parkway which winds northeast along the ridgetops, but instead I spend three hours at the rest area near Roanoke after the long descent from Christiansburg into the Valley of Virginia. I sit at a picnic table and write my account of yesterday's visit with old friends. By the time I finish, it is three o'clock in the afternoon, a fine hot day of white cumulus and blue sky.

A road trip such as this is for me a spiritual retreat, and the writing is part of it. The Daily Office, the long silences, the solitude, the (mostly) simple food, sleeping in the car, the unfolding vista of Nature... these are my teachers and companions. It is for this that I once thought to become a truck driver so that I could be on the road all the time. But it is enough to be as it is, and I do bless the Lord for the Road, and for the coming Home at last.

As is my practice, I stop at Lexington for a brief visit to the burial places of my heroes Lee and Jackson, arriving at the Lee Chapel minutes before closing time. I buy a photograph of Lee taken a year before his death, dressed in tuxedo and bow tie as president of Washington College. It will go on my desk with my icons as a reminder of this man's diligence in his administrative work. The Episcopal Church nearby is closed for the day, but I walk out to the cemetery to Jackson's grave.

From there, I go up at last to the Parkway for the late afternoon and sunset, with a night this time in an old-fashioned motel at Buena Vista, the sort of motel where each room is an individual tiny cottage. It is run by a gentleman from the Fiji Islands, and does not appear to be prospering; one gets the impression that no one has slept in this room for a long time.

July 9-12: A drive, a backyard and a movie

On this day, I briefly stop at the Green Valley Book Fair and buy gifts for two of my co-workers, plus a book for myself. Then, it is up the mountain again; my plan is to drive the northern half of the Skyline Drive, through the Shenandoah National Park.

Yesterday, I had thought to enter the park late in the day and stay for the night in one of the campgrounds, but I thought "They will be full. It is July, right after the fourth, a holiday week." No, I could have easily stayed there instead of the motel; the campgrounds I saw were less than half full. "People don't camp out much anymore," I am told by one of the park rangers. Nor do they drive through the Park; there is almost no traffic. I hardly see two score of cars all day. I can remember visits over the years when there was heavy traffic in this park: long lines of cars, trucks with campers, motor homes.

This is perhaps the most beautiful part of the Appalachians. There are plenty of opportunities for hiking, camping, and fishing in the park, and if nothing else, simply the leisurely drive along the mountaintops. If any of my readers should visit this part of the country, I highly recommend taking a day (or better, two or three) for this. Here is a typical view from the road.

By evening, I am at my sister's house, in a Maryland suburb of Washington. It is as it has been for decades; almost every horizontal surface is covered with books, knick-knacks, plants, quilting supplies. The cabinets, the many bookcases all groaning under double-shelved books -- everything overflows. There are piles of books on the floor, to the point where one can hardly enter some of the rooms. In the front yard, the old white Mitsubishi van is filled with more books, boxes of them, blue tarps lashed over it all with clothesline ropes, the tires flat. It has been no more than a storage building for ten years and more, reminding me of the old rusting cars and trucks on cinder blocks in the hill country.

Those who have seen my office may be tempted to say "It runs in the family," and they would be right. Were I not married to a Midwestern woman of Dutch descent who likes everything to be tidy, I would be just like my sister. Living with a slovenly hillbilly was a huge adjustment for her after we got married; she has improved me somewhat.

But there is a glory to this old house of my sister's, bursting at the seams with decades of clutter. It is the back yard: a riotous profusion of wildflowers, ferns, vegetables, trees, birds. Whenever an empty bit of soil becomes available, my sister puts a plant in it.

I sit in their glass-walled back room and feel as if I am in a forest, on this quarter-acre suburban lot within earshot of the Beltway. Over the almost forty years that she has lived there, she has created a little paradise. The arrangement of the plants seems random, but she has considered patterns of sun and shade, shelter from wind and frost, companion-planting principles. The result is an unstudied naturalness and beauty.

She and her husband love science fiction and fantasy -- it is she that introduced me to Tolkien in my childhood, and it is she who cajoled my parents into letting the two of us stay up late to watch the original Star Trek episodes every week. We saw three science fiction movies during my visit, including the current Star Trek movie (disappointing). One of the three movies was excellent, the one that we watched at home on DVD: "The Hunger Games." It is in part a commentary on the manner in which a small number of wealthy and powerful people, living in the "Capitol," manipulate and exploit everyone else. The protagonists are from District 12, the coal-fields, where most people live on the edge of starvation. Here is an account of the Hunger Games universe.

I am a little surprised that such an explicit indictment of the "one percent" was allowed to enter the public sphere. The lords of public opinion doubtless presume that these books and movies will have their few minutes in the spotlight and then be buried under the torrent of trivia and filth that spews endlessly from the Media.

Having seen how some of my choristers reacted to the Hunger Games, I would not be so sure. My impression is that these books and movies have entered the ongoing corpus of young adult literature every bit as much as Harry Potter. For a long time to come, young folk will read these books, see these movies, and be formed by them. The result is unknowable.

A week on the road

Wednesday, July 3: A beginning

Mrs C. helped me carry my gear to the car. "I want to see you get everything in," she said. I am traveling alone, but I will be on the road for eighteen days and have packed many things. I have what I need to sleep in the car; I have what I need for the Hymn Society conference; I have food for many days, mostly dried fruit, nuts and seeds, whole wheat tortillas, a box of granola bars, a gallon of water which I plan to replenish at rest areas. Mrs. C. shakes her head at the quantity of baggage.

Everything fits.

I am driving the new 2013 Toyota Corolla; 312 miles on the odometer as I begin what will be a journey of almost three thousand miles. One of the principal objectives of this trip is to gently break in this vehicle. The first thousand miles are critical, and if driven carefully, the engine and transmission are on their way to a long life, God willing.

I eschew the interstates for this purpose, seeking to vary the highway speed in a range from 45 to 55 miles per hour, up to 60 if I must make a foray onto the interstate (as soon proves to be the case, when part of my chosen route is closed because of flooding, with a detour to I-80, and later another twenty miles on I-74). I plan on taking frequent and long breaks, having read that in this initial break-in, one should stop for an hour or so after every two hours of driving.

This is precisely the manner in which I most love to travel cross-country.

First stop: a civic park on U.S. 6 in small-town Iowa for Matins. I have brought my Hebrew Psalter, so the appointed psalms take about a half-hour to read. Halfway through Psalm 16, an elderly man crosses the street and comes straight up to me. "Where are you from?" he asks; it is a sufficiently small town that he knows I don't live there. I tell him, and add that I am on my way Out East to visit family. I lay my office books aside and chat. His name is Skip; he is 83 years old, retired from a career as a barber; his shop used to be right across the street. We talk of the notable restaurant that used to be next to his shop; until it closed, I would try to time my trips along this road to arrive at dinnertime. Their macaroni salad, their potato salad, their versatility with what used to be called "congealed salads," were legendary. I have heard that their pork tenderloin was equally memorable, though I cannot speak to that from experience. The restaurant is no more; even the building is gone, replaced by a parking lot.

Second stop: another attempt at Matins, at a rest area on I-74 in Illinois. It is almost noon by now, and a family is having a picnic lunch nearby. The two small children eye me with curiosity. The second lesson is Philip and the Ethiopian, a good story for a day on the road. Like him, I proceed "on my way rejoicing."

Third stop: a civic park in a mid-sized town on U.S. 24, still in Illinois. It is almost 4:00 by now, and hot. I find a shaded picnic table in the deserted park and spend an hour writing of the day.

July 3, 1863, one hundred and fifty years ago today: the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, with Pickett's Charge. "Always remember that you are from Old Virginia," he cried to the men as they started across the field. As ever, my mind fills with "what ifs." What if Jackson had lived, and led his corps on the first day? What if Longstreet had not been so obstinate? What if the artillery had not overshot the Union lines as the guns grew hot, spending most of their ammunition with little damage to the foe? Despite it all, they almost did it; they reached the Union lines and almost broke them.

But they didn't. So many brave men -- Virginians, Carolinians, Georgians, men of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, units from every state in the Confederacy -- men from my home town among them -- dead on that field.

May they rest in peace, and their Union brothers with them.
May I always remember them, and remember that I too am from Old Virginia.

Independence Day

West Virginia, that would be. It became a state that summer of 1863, though there was almost no Union sympathy in my part of the state. My feelings about the making of West Virginia are a mixture of pride in the mountains and their cantankerous, independent people; and shame that we left Old Virginia and the Confederacy. Well: Jackson and many of his men were from what is now the Mountain State. There is no shame in that.

I sing Matins on this Independence Day in the parking area across the street from the birthplace of a man who did more for this country than most: Ulysses S Grant. As with the Battle of Gettysburg, this week marks the 150th anniversary of one of General Grant's triumphs: the surrender of Vicksburg after a long siege. In this campaign, Grant showed his considerable perseverance.

On travel days, I am mostly silent except for the Daily Office. But the Toyota has a modern audio system with a CD player. We have never had one of these in a vehicle, so I packed the three-CD soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings movies. Today is rainy, so I worked through all of them as the day progressed, repeating many of the tracks as I went.

For a project such as LOTR, the composer Howard Shore drew heavily on Wagner. As I listen this day, I find more influence from Bruckner than I had remembered, especially in the use of horns and low brass, and the choral voicings (very much like those in the second Mass setting of Bruckner, the one in eight parts with wind orchestra). It is good music, suitable for its purpose. That purpose, the accompaniment of visual action, causes it to be disjointed, held together mostly by its leitmotifs and the relationships of key centers, but the same can be said of Wagner's operas. I will not pretend that Shore's music is the equal of Bruckner's or Wagner's, but there is much that I can learn from it.

The rain continues all day, heavily at times. I finish the day at my base of operations for the next two days: the travel plaza on I-77 in Beckley. It proves a good vantage for the city's fireworks display. Before saying Compline and drifting off to sleep, I sit in the Toyota watching the fireworks and listening to the final tracks of Return of the King.

Lay down your sweet and weary head;
Night is falling, you have come to journey's end.
Sleep now, and dream of the ones who came before;
They are calling from across the distant shore...
(from the closing song, "Into the West")

July 5: Kinfolk

I visit three of my cousins, and decant a shot of white lightning from its mason jar, saved from my uncle's funeral. We toast our ancestors and talk of old times. I lived in that little valley for a while; I could have stayed. But my vocation lay elsewhere.

I return to the travel plaza for the night, which becomes rainy and cool; a good night for sleeping. The windows fog, the rain beats on the roof. I settle into the passenger seat under my sleeping bag and bless the Lord.

July 6: Memorials and collard greens

Onward: this is the day to visit the graves of my parents. I bring them white daisies and read part of the Burial Office, Rite One. I eat at the cafeteria where I used to take my mother; their collard greens, mashed potatoes, and soft rolls are as splendid as I had remembered.

I visit also the Confederate Memorial and the graves of those who died in defense of this town. Someone has planted old-time perennial flowers around the granite monument. I do not go by the old home place, but I look for the oak tree from the memorial; yes, there it is. My head spins in sudden memory of standing on that spot, a boy of eight or nine years, doing the same -- looking for our oak tree.

Onward again: to East Tennessee for the Lord's Day.

July 7: A Sunday among Presbyterians

Summer mornings come gently out here. I eat breakfast and sing Matins from the edge of a truck stop parking lot. The hills are shrouded in mist; the sun rises through the clouds. It is fully 10:00 before the morning clouds and mists disperse into a clear day. When I lived briefly in the Caribbean many years ago, I longed for mornings like this. There I was surrounded by sunshine, but my dreams were of foggy mountains, of grey soft mornings like those of the southern Appalachians.

I have returned to the town where we lived for seventeen years, probably the best and most productive of my years in this life. I miss this place.

The fine long main street now has many restaurants and antique shops where there had been empty storefronts. The upper storeys of some of these buildings have been made into lofts, luxury condominiums. But I when I turn left into the neighborhood of my former church and our home across the street, almost nothing has changed.

When we lived there, two dogwoods, two large holly trees, and an old lilac bush graced the front yard; all are now gone save one dogwood. The house is unchanged. The old garage, already bedraggled in our time, now leans slightly to the left.

Across the street at the church, I am most struck by the trees. I remember the planting of a row of saplings along the street; they are now thirty feet tall. The old single-pane windows in the office-and-classroom wing have been replaced with energy efficient (and, I learn, un-openable) windows. And they have air-conditioned the choir room and music office. I think of the long sultry afternoons at my desk, sweat pouring down in the ninety-degree temperature, or at the piano in the choir room, the windows wide open to the natural world. I miss those days.

The church has a front lawn of about two acres, needing only a flock of sheep to remind one of certain English cathedrals. A few years ago, they dug up this expanse of lawn, laid several miles of crisscrossing pipes, and installed geothermal heating and cooling as a commitment to environmental sustainability. Blessings be on them for this.

I last attended a service at F.P.C. fourteen years ago, and wondered whether anyone would recognize me, or I them. The moment I walked into the nave, Bob and Betty and their daughter Scottie saw me and immediately recognized me. Soon I was surrounded by a group of old-timers. I was deeply moved that they had not forgotten me.

Later, at the offertory, the usher that handed me an offering plate was K., a veteran of the girls' choir and former piano student, now grown plump and looking much like I remember her mother. She almost dropped the plate when she recognized me, a smile of delight on her face. After church I met her husband and two children, and we talked. "Are you still composing?" she asked. Nonplussed at such a question, I answered: "When I have to." She told me that the two pieces she most remembered from choir were Rutter's "All things bright and beautiful" and one that I wrote for the girls and had almost forgotten, a setting of the Genevan text and tune for Psalm 43. "I enjoyed choir," she said, "but I didn't realize what we had until my children got to choir age and I saw what they sang. Little children's songs." She paused, and added: "You taught us to sing quality music. Thank you."

The singing choirs are on vacation: the handbell choir plays a prelude, part of a hymn accompaniment, and a piece at the offertory that I had taught them. Three of the ringers date from my tenure, and I talked of old-timers with them afterwards: Jim, Lou, Bonnie - who I learned is now married to Gene, who (then and now) is a tenor in the singing choir.

I sit at church with Pat and Beth. It is a delight to sing the hymns with them: Pat's fine clear tenor, Beth's clear intelligent alto, all three of us singing the harmony parts. I notice how well they sing, with good phrase shape and diction. I had made music with them for seventeen years, but never until today had I sung at their side.

Several passages in the Revelation of St. John the Divine imply that the Body of Christ will finally be one, fulfilling the prayer of John 17, only when we sing together (e.g., Rev. 5:8-14). Today, singing with these old friends, is a glimpse of that day.

They take me around the church. The parish hall has been redone, now primarily designed as the worship space for their contemporary congregation, with stage, drumset, microphones, amps, speakers, screens, and no cross or other Christian symbol in sight. It is the larger of the two Sunday congregations.

The old Chapel is about the same, with its fine 19th century stained glass, moved from the congregation's previous building. The Hammond organ is gone, but the fine old wooden chairs remain. In room after room I encounter more old friends -- the pianos I used to tend. The church used to have thirteen upright pianos; I see six today, and others may be in the education wing. The old choir room Baldwin grand is now in the chapel, replacing the Hammond; the big nine-foot Knabe that was rebuilt during my tenure is still in the front of the nave; the seven-foot Steinway (which I had restrung) has been moved from the organ gallery to the choir room. Most of all, the pipe organ that was installed during my tenure remains in place, impressive and full-bodied.

In the evening, Pat and Beth make a dinner for me. The guests are Al and Loretta, whose three girls were choristers, and whom (all of them) I had grown to love; Ann and Pete, who sang in the church choir and whose two girls were also choristers; Steve and Vicki, my successors at the church. I am pleased to finally meet them, and even more pleased to see how deeply they have immersed themselves in this congregation and community. They have done excellent work, better than mine.

[Before church, I had stepped into the parish library, unchanged from my days, and saluted the portrait of my predecessor of blessed memory, Clifford L. He was there longer than any of us, almost forty years, and was the one who made F.P.C. a place for good music.]

I am glad that I came back. I miss this place and these people. But my parting from them is not forever.

From the "About Me" sidebar of this blog:

There is no greater privilege for a church musician than to help the congregation give voice to its prayers and praise. I sing the Daily Offices; the constant flow of Psalmody, Scripture and prayer are the foundations of my life... I look "for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). I hope to follow him as long as this life lasts, and be granted mercy when I see him face to face. I hope to sing his praises forever, alongside the choristers I have worked with in this life and alongside every creature in heaven and on earth.

A "hidden" God of wrath and vengeance?

Fr. Tim Chesterton recently pointed to an essay by Roger E. Olson:
Every known theistic approach to Old Testament "Texts of Terror"

If one is to take Scripture seriously, one must ponder such texts as I Samuel 13, which recounts the genocidal destruction of Amalek at the express command of the LORD, on the basis of an incident hundreds of years before, when Israel was coming out of Egypt (v.2-3).

How does one reconcile this with the teachings of one who tells us to love our enemies?

I cannot speak to this matter as well as the Rev'd Olson has done, so primarily I point to his discussion, and his comment that all of the nine approaches he outlines "have serious problems."

For the record, I fall into the camp of number 9, Paradoxical Interpretation:

No attempt at harmonization should be exercised; we ought simply to accept at face value the texts of terror and Jesus' teachings about God's love and will (e.g., for peace) and not attempt to diminish either of them or reconcile them. (This is a version of "3" above [Literal interpretation] but attempts to explain it hermeneutically and theologically.)

*Problem: For inquiring minds [this] leads inevitably to belief in a "hidden God" (Luther) behind Jesus who willed (and possibly still wills) extreme violence such as genocidal holy war.

I find Olson's number 8, Narrative Intrerpretation, of interest as well:

God included these texts of terror in the canon as a warning to his people about how far it is possible to misunderstand God's will. To what extent they describe actual, historical events is undecideable at this temporal remove and is unimportant.

I do not subscribe to the second sentence of this, because it is all too plausible that the mass slaughters described in these passages actually took place. They are characteristic of our behavior toward one another throughout history.

But are these accounts indeed in the canon as a warning? If so, they are a dire warning indeed. For if the prophet Samuel (and Moses, for that matter: see Numbers 21) can so completely misunderstand the will of God, what of lesser folk such as us? To mention an example from recent history, it is easy to construct a Biblical justification from both Old and New Testaments for the practice of slavery, and as recently as 150 years ago, many Americans would have subscribed to such a doctrine. It seemed that the ethical issues for a Christian lay in the manner in which one should act toward one's slaves and in how slaves should act toward their masters, not in whether or not there should be slavery in the first place.

At this distance, it is clear that slavery is wrong, and has always been wrong. But where else are we equally wrong in our understanding of the will of God, so wrong that we cannot see it?