I have to admit that the reason I bought this book was because of its title. Simply, I was curious whether the title had anything connected to the original story of Lilith... Of course, I had already learned through earlier readings that Lilith was Adam's (of the Bible's first wife.) And, yes, when I first heard her name, I searched in the KJV and found the name and identification... I decided to include the following video which I found quite astonishing... Was this analysis all about possible horror stories of that time? We, of course, will never know. But, it does lead to my early questioning of the Bible as the "Word of God." Let's take the fact that millions have already questioned just how Adam and Eve had supposedly been the first two people created by God... but then Lilith is mentioned some where along the way. Frankly, you all know that I'm an avid reader. I am also a word master... that is, I want to make sure that every word is logically presented as desired... I just cannot accept that the Supreme God of the Universe would make mistakes, choose to confuse, try to explain, "oops, I really meant..." I refuse to accept that. I don't know the answer but I do know God...
But I digress... here is how Rickstad created his story surrounding Lilith...
The private firing range below the shop is state of the art, or so Akers claims publicly. It sports fourteen handgun stations and five long gun stations. The place is claimed to be twenty feet underground, soundproof, climate and humidity controlled. At the far end of each firing lane hangs a target in the shape of a human silhouette. Akers shows me to the first rifle station and gestures for me to open the rifle case. The other men huddle close enough to see but not so close as to crowd, to betray fully how eager they are to set eyes on this weapon. This unicorn. I produce a key from my pocket and unlock the two padlocks attached to the cleated latches at each end of the case. I slip the padlocks out, unsnap the latches. Slowly, teasing, one at a time. Snick. Snick. Snick. Snick. I lift the lid. I can hear the men swallowing, blinking. Salivating. Hear their hearts beat. Akers licks his upper lip. “Mother of God. I joked in my email that I’d tongue f*** her gorgeous muzzle,” he says without compunction. “I may damn well do it. Look at that sexy thing.” The men laugh. They give off a ripe animal sweat. The air vibrates with toxicity. Akers’s head is bowed, and he holds his hand out so it hovers over the LAR, as if he’s the pope blessing a layperson more worthy of God’s grace than himself. “That right there,” says Gold Panner, “will stop the f***ing bad guy.” The men laugh. Their jowls ripple like rubber Nixon masks. “Take her out of her case,” Akers says to me. “Now is not the time to be shy.” Akers’s voice is loud yet remote, as if he is shouting at me from across a wide lake; his voice echoes yet is diminished by a vast space between us. His figure is smeared too, as if the lake between us is banked with fog.
My head is empty. Now is not the time to be shy. Sweat trickles from beneath my wig down my cheek as I slide my hands under the rifle, cradle it, and lift it out. I lever the rifle’s folding stock out and lock it into place with a quick, efficient, practiced snap. I work its action open. Akers ogles the weapon as if ogling a woman in a thong on a beach. He is all but panting with anticipation. I hand the black gun to him. He accepts the weapon, licks his mustache as he scrutinizes the LAR from every angle with a salacious grin. With the men’s eyes on the LAR, I reach behind my back and beneath my sweatshirt to feel the grip of the .45, adjust it.
“I gotta slip my finger in her and make her yelp,” Akers says, winking at me, his voice wet with expectation. “How many rounds did you bring?” I open the metal ammo box to reveal the stacked boxes of ammunition: 1,500 rounds in all. Akers whistles. “F*** me blind,” he says, leering. “We going to have us some fu-un,” Thing One says. Akers grabs the three loaded clips from the gun case. Each holds thirty live rounds. He picks up a pair of electronic earmuffs dangling on a peg, seats them over his ears. The four other men and I follow suit.
I dislike the muted dissonance of sound they create. It makes me feel even more detached, as if I am underwater, not fully here. Akers turns his neck to one side, then the other, working out kinks, and seats a loaded clip in the LAR. He positions himself at a rifle station, takes his stance, glances back over his shoulder with a grimy grin and another wink. He seats the LAR against his shoulder. His nostrils flare. He squeezes the trigger. Just like that, thirty rounds spit downrange in fewer than three seconds.
I shut my eyes, but I can still see Lydan in that classroom closet. I open my eyes. The target is shredded. The acrid odor of gunpowder pollutes the air. I struggle not to vomit. “Daaaamn,” Akers says. “She’s smooth as a twelve-year-old’s . . .” He catches himself. “A twelve-year-old scotch.” I know what he’d say if I weren’t here: Smooth as a twelve-year-old’s p****y. Or snatch or twat. Or cunt. And if any of his men objected, not that any would, Akers would lean back on the old reliable: It’s just a joke. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Lighten up.
It strikes me, here and now, a cold hand slapping my face. I am not here because of guns alone. I am here because of men. Men and their lust, their need, for violence. For blood. For killing. For death. That face in the school window. It was a man’s face. It is always a man’s face. The shooter in Indiana. A man. Connecticut. A man. Florida. A man. Nevada. A man. Colorado. A man. Pennsylvania. A man. Texas. A man. Ohio. Washington. California. Kentucky. Vermont. Louisiana. Missouri. Iowa. Wisconsin. Massachusetts. Minnesota. Oregon. Utah. Georgia. North Carolina. South Carolina. South Dakota. North Dakota. Virginia. Maine. West Virginia. A man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man a man . . . Every state. A man. Almost every single time. A man. Even the killer in China who stabbed his victims to death with a knife. A man. Akers and his ilk’s fight, their war, is not about their right to bear arms. It’s about their perceived right to violence. They do nothing about these killers, because they are them, in spirit; they just haven’t pulled the trigger yet, or don’t dare to themselves. They live vicariously. Let someone else pull it while they sit back and defend them, using their right as a straw man as they cash in.
And we, we women, and our children, must sit by and be quiet, must stand back and suffer it, must grin and bear it, over and over and over again and again and again, down through the ages, while these same men do nothing, because they like how things are. They like this world they’ve created. Men like Akers invented this war. As men have invented every war. They shape the world through violence and conquest, pillaging and rape and genocide, oppression and control; they use their own language to mold a world that’s male dominant, male centric, male first. Mankind. Human. Woman. Without man there is no woman. Without the male there is no female. Without he there is no she or her. Reality is a story, an illusion spun with the spider’s silk of the words of men (his story, history), man as the spider at the web’s quivering center, the rest of the world—women and children—caught for millennia in their web.
In the beginning, there was man. Just a man. No woman. Eve but an invention of man. Made from man. Nothing without man. Eve, named by Adam. Her man. Eve, the helper to Adam. Made from Adam’s rib to keep Adam happy and less lonely in his little garden. The poor, lonesome little Adam needed a helper, a little woman. Eve the villain. Eve the ill. Eve ill. Evil. Eve, nothing without Adam, the man, who said: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man. She is of me and from me and would not exist if not for me. She is part of me. She is mine. Property. Eve, the woman punished and banished for seeking knowledge. Eve, the cause of her man’s banishment. Eve, the guilty. The woman you put here with me— she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it, said Adam. Blame her. The woman. Not me. The man. The man absolved of accountability, a victim tricked by his woman.
The woman blamed by man’s god, himself. God said to the woman, What is this you have done? . . . I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. Rule over you. What is this, the word of God? It is story. Myth. Each and every single word written by and for men. Not a word written by or for a woman. The words of men who seek to rule over you. Lord over you. Over women. God is but men’s words on a page. Because of sinful Eve, who sought knowledge, poor Adam had to actually work, to labor with the thorns and the thistles. All of it Eve’s fault. If she had only adhered to her role as her man’s little helper, paradise would have forever reigned. Eve, who failed to know her place. Eve, a fictional character in a book written by men. No woman allowed to write her own story, or if she did, those pages were burned.
Or she was burned. Ask Lilith, the real first woman of the world, who came before Eve, but who was not made of man, not created of Adam’s rib, who was her own separate being, so whose story had to be ground into the mud by the heels of man. Lilith, who would not do. No. Even if she too was conjured by the words of a man. If man is made in God’s image, then God is a man and man is God.
I am here to rewrite the myth. I will no longer live in the myth of man, the myth of servility and pain and guilt and death, and be told this is a war but I cannot fight back with equal force and violence against the men who feel it is their God-given right to deal it out. I will write a new myth. Her story. Herstory. My story. And I will write it in men’s blood.
~~~
As I began to think this morning--yes it is a new day, even though just after midnight when I woke wide awake. Soon, I was ruminating--thinking of words, words that needed to come next here at Book Readers Heaven... I was planning to proceed with yesterday's beginning of my memoir. Suddenly, as now, I felt the warmth flood my mind, my head... Lilith... God reminded me that Mother's Day was a Day when this book should be announced...
When I started to read Lilith it was early last month, I think... I read, maybe two chapters. And stopped. I could not deal with the words that day, thinking no, not again...
After I finished the book, I had other commitments, so I did not immediately review. By today, I must reveal that I did not remember that the book actually explained the title... All I could remember was the mother's story... I was invested only in that Mother's life, seeing how she was affected in such a traumatic experience...
Her child had told her first thing that morning that he didn't feel like going to school. She was busy, he didn't seem sick. He even used words like he might have felt, might have had a premonition that something was going to happen... She wished she could allow him to stay home, in fact, she wished she could crawl into bed with him and cuddle, although he was older now and didn't really want to be babied anymore, sadly. She missed all the hugs and kisses of her baby boy... But she was a teacher at the same school, knew she had to get there, and didn't take the time to explore his feelings with him. She would regret that for the rest of her life...
For that day, like so many times--too many times, another school shooting would occur! She had sensed something was wrong. Even Lydan, her son seemed different than he was just a few months ago... She had asked him if he was having trouble with anybody at school. Silence was the answer. Finally, "I just got an icky feeling..." But his mother said he couldn't stay home if he wasn't sick... but her mind was in turmoil.
I loathe each syllable I speak, each cell of myself. Because I can feel it. Something is wrong. This is not the same day as all the other days before it. This is the start of something, yet I cannot know what that something is. I can only feel its edges, as if I am in a deep, dark cave, trying to find my way with my fingertips out to the sunshine. All I can muster is a cliché response, as if I am reading a line from a play written for me by someone else, but I have no free will to go off script. “You’ll get to see your friends after being stuck here with boring Mama all weekend.” “I won’t go.” “You have to. I can’t just play hooky.” A lie. To soften it, I say, “It stinks to go to school on any Monday, let alone this Monday. I’d like to get in my pj’s and snuggle in with my buddy, eat doughnuts, tell each other riddles, organize your Pokémon cards.” “I won’t go.” I snatch a bowl crusted with dried cereal from his nightstand. “Get up,” I say. “We leave in fifteen minutes.”
When they got to school, Lydan continued to ask to go home and during their conversation, his mother seemed to think he knew something, that he was about to tell her... And then a boy called to him from the playground... And he picked up his bookbag and ran off...
On Mondays, Lydan's mother comes early--she needs the time, for herself, to prepare, to start a new week. But the dread that surrounds her lingers...
What has become of this world? I wonder for the thousandth time. The millionth. What went so wrong that the morning’s task before me has grown so rote that teachers and children alike perform it without qualm or question, as if it is normal? It is not normal. It is a tear in the fabric. A societal psychosis. It claws my heart ragged, drowns me in helplessness, as if I am the one failing the children, as if I am the one responsible for this godless state of affairs. I sit at my desk. My temple flutters. I stare at the nap mats stacked in the corner of the room. Goldfish swim in endless circles in their fishbowl perched on the window ledge. The two hamsters scurry on their wheels, getting nowhere for all their effort. The second hand of the analog wall clock ticks. tick tick tick tick tick tick tick...
When it happens, Lydan's mother knows exactly what she has been taught during drills. Instead, she acted intuitively and did what she knew was needed to save her students... She got them out of the building and out of danger... She saved their lives... and then went back to try to save her son...
Lydan's mother carried her wounded son...you must read the words, the thoughts that went through her mind during the aftermath... The writer has created her devastating world, the words that are too realistic to even share. Needless to say, it can only be imagined, never really experienced...
And while her son in a coma, the school leaders called Lydan's mother to their office to discuss why she had not followed the established rules as they had drilled month after month after month...
While admitting that she had saved the lives of many children, they were suspending her for investigation of her not following the rules...
As I write this I am reminded of the words of Jesus about rules--at first I was thinking of the pharisees as He was being accused... but as I read, I saw the word teacher being used...often...and I knew the entire quote from Him should be included...
Matthew 23: Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples:
2"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. 3So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.4 They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.5" Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long;6they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues;7they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them `Rabbi.'8"But you are not to be called `Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers.9And do not call anyone on earth `father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.10Nor are you to be called `teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ. 11The greatest among you will be your servant.
For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.13"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. 15"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.16"Woe to you, blind guides! You say, `If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.'17You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?18You also say, `If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.'19You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?20Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.21And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it.22And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it.23"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.25"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.27"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.29"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous.30And you say, `If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.'31So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.32Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!33"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?34Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.35And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.36I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.37"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.38Look, your house is left to you desolate.39For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, `Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' "
When you read how Lyden's mother was treated by school officials, you, too, will cry out calling them hypocrites... For, what is more important than a mother saving her child's life? Her students' lives?
And there, then, comes the reality of where we are in today's world. A world where a political party refuses to permit the creation of needed laws to ensure the safety of not only school children, but all of God's children, by implementing gun control in all necessary ways. When you read this important book, and I humbly suggest that you do, you will see the hands of Jesus as he guides Lyden's mother--note that I have written only one identification for the main character--for what occurs in this book is really all about Lyden, her son, and what a mother would do for her child... Really? Read the book and decide for yourself... Could you be Lyden's mother?
No matter what you decide, this powerfully written book is a masterpiece for you to help somebody decide just how many guns should be in the hands of Americans...and for what reasons...
"People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.' And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them." — Mark 10:13-15
God Bless Us All
In 2012 Sandy Hook Promise Was Created
Don't know how to help ensure Mothers will Never Have Another Child Lost to Gun Violence?
One Mother started Sandy Hook Promise
I remember the first contact and an occasional one since then
I Try to Help As I Can - This Spotlight is One Way I Can - Think about how You can be involved!
Is the life of your child worth thinking
about
voting to ensure that Gun Control Will be Addressed by President Biden
Just as Former Obama Did
If Only The Republican Party Would Support IT!!!
Read This Book!
Face the Reality of
Just ONE Child Murdered!
Do Your Research!
Which Political Party Refuses to Deal with Gun Control?
Visit Sandy Hook Promise
Remember the First Graders Murdered
And Fight With Others To Speak to Prevent
Murder of Our Children!!!
I Speak Jesus
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