Translations are Interpretations
JOEL SHOEMAKER
She said
“Did you introduce your friend to grandma?”
I said
“Uhhhhhhhh”
(Btw friend equals fiancé. Now you know.)
I said
“Oh. No. I didn’t.”
She said
“Well. I told her.”
I said
“...............”
She said
“I just wanted to talk to her about it. And, you know what she said.”
Grandma,
She said
“‘I’m happy for him. I’m not going to think any differently of him. I just want him to be happy.’”
----
My grandmother was a devout Catholic, the kind that prayed the rosary every single evening. The sweetest woman in the world. I know everyone says that about their grandmother. I’ll fight you on it and I’ll win, but right now I have a word limit to observe.
Growing up Catholic I believed in the Bible, but I had no idea what it actually said. When I became a freshman in high school, I got a lot more serious about my faith and started reading it daily. It’s a habit that hasn’t stopped to this day.
In youth group we’d say these things, lots of things, like chants, week in and week out that would vary only slightly but basically echo the pastor saying the bible was the unchangeable, immutable, word of God and essentially we would learn that every word was God-breathed and useful and somehow that meant whatever translation du jour was to be taken literally and I never, ever questioned this. I didn’t need to.
Except, only, well, there’s just a few, lingering verses. Here and there. Something about, I donno, being unnatural or abominable or something else awful to lie with other men.
I’ve been gay longer than I’ve been a Christian. Christians always argue this choice business which is hilarious and ironic because I remember, distinctly, choosing to be a Christian. So I did, in fact, make a choice. Jesus was my choice and remains so today.
Yet there are those few, lingering verses. And I was told to take them literally, so I did. I figured I just didn’t need to lie with anyone. So. Remain standing?
But we’re always learning. Aren’t we? It’s an annoying sidebar, perhaps, and I’ve got the word limit to observe, but I just love being a lifelong learner.
And so, at time of writing, less than one month ago, I learned something. This delightful woman came and taught on one of these pesky, lingering verses. She said the word homosexual was invented 150 years ago!
How about that?
Also, it’s true. I looked it up. Wikipedia and elsewhere. Wikipedia really wants $2.75 by the way.
She said these verses have been translated over time and translations of translations side by side add confusion and who really knows what they mean?
She said something like that anyway. It was infinitely more eloquent. Seriously. She was a delight.
Anyway, as I read the Bible, not more than two months ago I read something that really struck me. A dude picking up sticks on a Sunday was stoned to death.
My husband asks me to pick up sticks, so our dog doesn’t eat them. So, now there’s a verse to get me out of that chore on select dates.
Wow. Right? Turns out, in parts, the Bible celebrates slavery and silences women. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful, wonderful book that I love very deeply.
My grandma, one of the sweetest women I ever knew was also one of the smartest. I never had the guts to introduce her to my now-husband. I can only guess she would have loved him. She would have baked with him. Maybe shown him how, or something. That would’ve been useful.
Someone told her about him. About me. And she didn’t reach for an ancient and possibly misguided piece of text.
She expressed happiness.
Joel Shoemaker is the library director for the Illinois Prairie District Public Library and has been a magician for more than twenty-seven years. He married up. His dog, Maximus, still eats sticks.