Epiphany
Yesterday, to give thanks for the winning score in the Harvard-Yale game (Harvard won, 37 to 19), I browsed the Net to find the religious significance, if any, of the number “37.” I encountered the picture at left below, of a burning bush. (It was frame 37 in a sequence of frames from an episode of The Simpsons.) The finger of flame did not seem to lead to anything meaningful, so I ignored it. (Frame 38 in the sequence seems to be a Simpsons version of Edward G. Robinson in “The Ten Commandments.”) Then today, lo and behold, the Commandments themselves appeared before my very eyes, as yet another cartoon… this time, on the editorial page of my local paper (reprinted from McKee in the Augusta Chronicle). Combining the two cartoons, we see the Flaming Finger of God in action.
The above thought process is, of course, less than mentally healthy, but may be of anecdotal interest to some. Several other examples of religious insanity seem relevant:
- Jesus Christ: The Number of His Name, by Bonnie Gaunt, which contains a riff on the number “37” that John Nash at his looniest would be proud of.
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Mel Gibson on his new film,
“The Passion” —When Gibson was in Rome shooting the film, he told an Italian interviewer that he had felt moved by God’s spirit to undertake the project. I asked him what he’d meant by that. How did he know that God wanted him to make “The Passion”?
“There are signals,” he said. “You get signals. Signs. ‘Signal graces,’ they’re called. It’s like traffic lights. It’s as clear as a traffic light. Bing! I mean, it just grabs you and you know you have to listen to that and you have to follow it.”
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Finally, for religious enthusiasts who, like our President, have a Yale background, an article on the mystical properties of Yale’s score yesterday in the big game —