Some years ago I was rummaging around a second hand bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley California when I came across The Ancient City by Fustel De Coulanges.
It discusses how their deceased forebears were central to the religious and civil institutions of ancient Greece and Rome. It explains to us in the modern world that our progenitors in the ancient world worshiped their fathers, important ancestors and a select few others.
The gods in their graves were honored members of each family and offered food as part of the culture of taking care of the dead. They lay on or within the family estate the ownership of which descended from their graves.
Before the wonderful Gods we know, Angels, Grand Religions and Colorful Deities there were the simple house gods, and among them a father perhaps a grandfather - a small familial pantheon kept in the earth out back who would dependably work for us from within their graves.
And all the miracles and special circumstances could be attributed to them.
The rituals were within the family and a bond that held them together across the boundary of death. Smoking food upon the table offered to the gods and shared with the familial partners: objects and details have come down to us in whole or part such as a simple wood table; the plate of food with wine
From such simple beginnings come our holiday table piled with food and the prayer offered before the meal; the edifices wherein we genuflect and hold up our offerings of symbolic blood.
Some people were not so special as to have a god.
The godless were the unfortunates who for one reason or another did not have a god to whom to tender gifts: the gods were quite particular about who had that right. The godless went about the world unprotected and without the services of the dead.
The current God is democratic and universally accepting of gifts and no one need be godless now.
So we've come quite a long way from performing rites for our dead relatives to worshiping Gods who were never dead in the first place.
I wonder what happened to get us away from the edge of a grave containing someone we knew towards a God for whom we had no physical body somewhere that we could visit.
Our Gods are not substantial and proclaim their edicts through rare and special human intermediaries. Our Gods live in perpetuity and stand forever above us and beyond our understanding.
Think about that for a minute.
We have gone from gods we knew who were related to us to Gods that never physically existed.
People are known for their delusional behavior and imagined beliefs, for their inability to see the truth if it offends their prejudices or simply requires some thought. People also believe adamantly in Gods they cannot see whose hands were never available to be touched.
Are the Gods generically available today really dear to anyone?
