last of the four scenarios Johannes de Silentio wrote:
When the child is to be weaned the mother has stronger
sustenance at hand so that the child does not perish.
How fortunate the one who has this stronger sustenance at hand.
This fourth weaning story helps us to understand the failures
of the other three for in none of them was better food provided.
Mother, like Abraham, grew in her faith by its often being tested.
How else could she have come to a loving, forgiving heart toward
her father when he was callous with black sheep bum-lambs like hers?
How else could she forgive the boy who ridiculed her cross?
How could she grow in love toward drinking, rowdy relatives?
Her mother helped her to understand and discover the better food
of loving forgiveness and thus mother was not enclosed in
the failed mourning process of merely aesthetically blackening
the breast or ethically of hiding the breast or in the resignation
of a mutual mourning since better sustenance was provided.
But the four Isaac-Abraham binding stories that parallel
the four weaning stories show us the inadequacies of even
the fourth weaning story for Abraham is not graceful in
his infinite resignation which indicates that he lacks faith
and that he will still retain Isaac and thus Isaac loses faith.
Gramma Coates as an only child must have been well weaned
by her mother and when her great test of being abandoned came
she must have been graced through her father and Aunt Sadie
so that like Abraham she could be graceful in her resignation.
Even though Gramma Coates provided mother with understanding
there was much more than only that food for conscious thought.
Gramma Coates’ attitude, mood and feeling had a buoyant faith.
After all she had been through and successfully mourned
she could be an exemplar for mother so that when her father
or friends or relatives looked offensive she did not take offence.
I.2.7 Pauline Universalism—Johannine Exclusivism
What mother experienced even though it was not articulated was
the difference between her mother’s Episcopalian universalism and
her father’s and the Mormon’s Beloved Community’s exclusivism.
When the boy showed no tolerance for the cross she experienced
a thought, word and deed that was deeply rooted in an attitude
that was very surprising to her because it was not her mother’s
universalistic attitude with which she had come to identify.
Her father, even though he was not a practicing Mormon, had
an attitude that may have been influenced by the English class system.
Later he would wonder why one of his children would marry a Basque,
another an Italian, another a Mexican and the other a poor girl.
Why didn’t they just marry some nice white Anglo-Saxon types?
In John’s Gospel the Word became flesh for the salvation of all
but the world of darkness that did not receive him remains
unsaved just as did Judas and the Jews upon whom John is hard.
Paul and John give different accounts of the Kingdom and the Cross.
Paul has his atonement view of the Cross that Christ died
in order to redeem all the fallen children of Adam and thus
the Kingdom was to come for all humans for there are
no longer Jews or Gentiles, Greeks or Barbarians but
with Christ’s death and resurrection we are all members of
his body and can be members of the family of God and man.
John has a prophetic view of the cross that because Christ
was a prophet he made enemies of the authorities as did
so many of the prophets and thus they put him to death.
John and his people think that the second coming has
already happened at the resurrection and that Christ is
here now judging us and all those who fully believe
and keep his commandments are in his community or
his Kingdom now and mother could see these two views
in her mother’s universalism and in the Mormon’s exclusivism.
I.2.8 Dyadic Johannine Glory
Mother greatly loved her father and knew that he greatly loved her.
He seemed harsh and callous at times but she knew him better.
Gramma and Aunt Mid were helping mother get ready for her
junior prom and they came downstairs and Grandpa was reading
his paper and Gramma asked him: “Well Levaur, how does she look?”
And Grandpa stood up and came over to her and looking
at her from head to foot he said: “Sissy, you are so beautiful.”
And he was so proud of his daughter and a lump welled up
in his throat and he nearly started to cry and mother had seen
him that way before and she began to wonder why he would cry.
Slowly over the years it began to dawn on her that he had the gift
of tears and that it was not sorrow or pain that would make him cry.
