wrong for dragons, wrong for the realm

crickin' it up at Keehner Park

Chloe had the day off school yesterday, since her elementary school was a voting location. She's been begging to go exploring in the woods again, so I headed up to West Chester and led the foray through the woods and the creek at Keehner Park. Ashley stuck with Zoey, and Chloe got some good practice at climbing cliffs. There was one where we scaled halfway up, and then I had to give her a good push to the top. Ashley was cringing below. We came across a massive fallen tree with its trunk suspended high above the creek. Chloe had never walked across a fallen tree, so I showed her the ropes. She crossed once, then twice, then three times. She didn't want to stop. We hiked back up to the main portion of the park and had lunch before sending the girls off to play on the playground. "You may not believe me," Ashley said, "but you've done more for my girls in the past month than their own father has in six years. They're not even your responsibility, and you've shown them far more love than he has ever shown." That pretty much melted my heart.

I've been refreshing on Old Testament history lately. There's three books I'm reading, all side-by-side: Israel Among the Nations, a survey of the biblical narratives. The Oxford History of the Biblical World, putting the biblical narratives in a wider cultural context; and The Peoples of the Old Testament, examining the foreign nations of the Old Testament narratives. Reading these books simultaneously helps me get a better perspective on the events. The debates between the "authenticity" and "historicity" of the biblical narratives are fascinating in their own right.

But let's be honest: the history of the Old Testament is fascinating. I mean, you have the patriarchs and all the crazy shit they got caught up in; you have a 400-year-long enslavement in Egypt followed by a Grand Exodus that puts the Egyptian gods to shame; you have the Wilderness Wanderings filled with grumbling, alliances, rebellions, and plagues; you have the Conquest of Canaan which is nothing short of epic; you have the Era of the Judges, where the gimp Samson "brings down the house"; you have the reigns of Saul and David shadowed by the Philistine threat; you have the spread of Israelite prestige under Solomon's commercial ventures; you have the House of David dividing and the story trailing off in two different directions; you have constant wars, rumors of wars, assassinations, and showdowns. The fall of northern Israel to the Assyrians is heart-wrenching, and it makes the Babylonian conquest of Judah look like child's-play. The Babylonian Exile, the restoration of Israel under the Persian regime, the constant changing-of-the-guard with new world superpowers lording it over the fertile crescent (the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, the Romans...). It's mind-boggling history and kick-ass storytelling. It's like Game of Thrones, except on steroids.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, here's a shout-out for Election Day: