First of all I think you know me well enough to know I would never be disrespectful of a family’s pain in grief. Secondly I think you know that I believe in a loving God who requires of us not our blood but rather our lives lived in love and faith. Ergo - we don’t have to have that debate. Given all that, these are my musings of the morning.
Think back. We are hunters and gatherers. We live in caves. Maybe we are far enough evolved to have learned to make tents out of the hides of the animals we hunt. Our lives and the lives of the plants and animals depend on the seasonal rains, snows and sunshine. Then the draught comes. There are no animals to hunt, no plants to gather. One young man becomes so discouraged that he goes into the woods and kills himself. Three days later the rains come. Did his death appease some rain god who now blesses us with rain? Is there a connection? We tell the story and wonder and when another draught comes, we do not wait for someone to take his own life. We remember the story, choose someone in the family tribe, kill him ourselves so that the rains will come again ~ and so human sacrifice is born.
Fast forward thousands of years. Long ago we gave up the notion of human sacrifice. We think of it as barbaric and horrible. We have the internet and weather predictions that can tell us to the minute when the snow or rain will come and go. We are always prepared. We are intelligent and wise. Then the draught comes. There is no snow on the mountain and a young man whose livelihood depends on snow becomes so discouraged that he goes into the woods and kills himself. Three days later the snow comes. More snow than the mountain has seen in one storm in almost three years. And something deep within the human psyche, something left over from long-ago ancestors cannot help but wonder . . .
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