Enter the sparrow
One of my sons recently delivered the homily at the wedding of dear friends. He sent me a copy of the what he’d written for the couple, and I was delighted — because this is the sort of nerdy thing that delights me — to see that he’d written about The Book of Tobit, a particular biblical favorite of mine.
Tobit is an Apocryphal book, probably originally written in Aramaic. It dates to the 4th or 3rd century BCE, and is the tale of Tobit and his cousin, Sarah, Diaspora Jews who are living far from home: Tobit lives in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, where his job is to bury his fellow Israelites who've been killed by Sennacherib, the despotic Assyrian ruler, and Sarah lives in Media, where all seven of her husbands have died at the hands of a demon prior to any of the marriages being consummated, leaving her both childless and husbandless -- two major problems for a woman in the ancient world.
From Sennacherib’s Tinder profile: Despot. Jewelry-lover. Proud Unibrow. Hit me up for beard oil recs and mayhem.
Tobit is a pious Jew, but he’s gotten on Sennacherib’s bad side because of his insistence that Israelites should be properly buried, and has to leave town and wander for awhile until the heat dies down. When he learns that Sennacherib has died, however, Tobit returns to Nineveh and resumes burying the dead.
One day, while Tobit is taking a nap on the street (ostensibly with one eye open, a habit from all those years Sennacherib wanted to kill him), the dung of a sparrow falls into Tobit’s eye and blinds him. This is so devastating that Tobit prays that God will take his life.
Meanwhile, over in Media, Sarah’s also praying that God will end her life, because finding a man to be Husband Number Eight isn’t going so well. But luckily for Tobit and Sarah, At that very moment the prayers of both were heard in the glorious presence of God… (Tobit 3:16) and God, being a mensch, dispatches the angel Raphael to help Sarah and Tobit.
On the way, Raphael runs into Tobit’s son, Tobias. Together they set out for Media, to collect some money that Tobit had stashed there. Tobias stops to wash his feet in the Tigris, and while he’s tending to his toes, a “monstrous” fish jumps out and attempts to eat him. Raphael tells Tobias to pick the fish up by its gills, kill it, and save the innards, because burning the fish guts will drive away demons and cure blindness. Who knew?!
As the story unfolds, Tobias marries Sarah and uses the burning fish innards to drive away the demon that has killed all of her previous husbands. Tobias and Sarah then return to Nineveh, and use the leftover fish guts to cure Tobit’s blindness.
Hold still, Dad, while I smear these fish guts that have been in my pocket for a couple weeks on your eyeballs. Raphael, watch your wing.
Throughout the Book of Tobit, as in most tales, the person hearing or reading the story knows more than the characters do. We know, for instance, that God is at work on Tobit and Sarah’s behalf, but Sarah and Tobit don’t. We know that Raphael is God’s messenger, but Tobit and Sarah don’t even recognize Raphael as an angel. As the story unfolds, Tobit and Sarah remain clueless as to why unfortunate things are happening to them, particularly since they’ve always tried to be good people.
That’s the part I like best, that Tobit and Sarah don’t know that things are happening on their behalf, because isn’t that always the case?
Tobias and his fish. Other entrants in the PikeMaster Tournament claimed that Raphael’s angelic presence gave Tobias an unfair advantage, but it was actually Scrappy, Tobias’ loyal mutt, who caught the winning fish.
In The Wisdom of the Olive Tree, I had this story in mind as my character Beth grapples with the events of her life. So, as Beth struggles to make sense of the painful hand she’s been dealt, her uncle David says: “I want you to think about this, Beth. What’s happening now, as painful as it is, is happening for you, not to you.”
“What does that even mean?” Beth asks.
“That you are not a victim. That you will not only survive, but thrive, because whether you can see it or not, things are falling into place for you. You’re being set free from something you didn’t have the strength to leave.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Beth says.
“I understand that. But falling apart is the first step to rebuilding. When painful things happen, you have to ask yourself, ‘How will I craft my future, despite the pain I feel now? What do I need to let go of so I can move on?’ It’s a grieving process, and grieving has its own agenda. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or straightforward, but it has to be done, and ultimately, it will be what defines your life.”
Just like Tobit and Sarah, Beth can’t make sense of events as they’re happening. So often it takes time — a whole lot of time — to understand why things occurred the way they did, and what good came of them. It’s hard to accept that life is not linear, that bad things happen to good people, and that often there is no direct cause and effect. Sometimes chaos arrives. You’re trying to take a nap when a sparrow craps in your eyes, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.
So I blinded him; whaddya want from me?
All you can do is admit that you were temporarily blind, apologize for crashing into things, ask for help to navigate the obstacles that are still in your path, and move on, because the sparrow will be back! And sometimes he’ll sit and sing his cute little chirpy song, and sometimes he’ll wait until you’re exhausted and then blind you one more time.
The trick is to ask for, and accept, help — even if it arrives as fish guts. Because things will get better, and they will make sense. It just won’t be on your schedule or mine.