Twenty-Nine Days To Christmas, With Sand In My Wedjat

WORD COUNT: 40,288

We'll get to what a wedjat is in a minute; by the time I've arrived at work today, I've left our house and in our dining room we have our table set up with seats around it. Putting that together was an interesting adventure yesterday … we had misplaced the screws to attach the legs onto the table, and Martha's parents Robert and Sharon bought us some more and met us after church where following the morning service we were treated by Breakfast with the Boys to a breakfast of pancakes with rhubarb syrup. I got to read the lessons for this Christ the King Sunday (always the Sunday before Advent begins in December) and I don't know why, but I felt more dynamic and got into the passages from Daniel and Revelation – excerpts from both books have appeared frequently in devotions the last few weeks, and it bothers and doesn't bother me at the same time – as though I was reading the Word of God. And I believe that I am.

How little we understood about Egypt before the 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone! (Not the language software, the stone discovered by a soldier of Napoleon's with the same passage in hieroglyphics, Demotic script, and ancient Greek.) Far from being a society that developed from a death-worshiping cult around the Nile, Egyptians were big on celebrating life and quite intelligent. Almost sorry to say our coloration of ancient Egypt that way comes from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures where the Egyptians are portrayed as worldly and burdensome taskmasters (keep in mind, gents and ladies, that at the time of Exodus there were plenty of other slaves in Egypt too) and whether or not you think the leadership of modern Egypt has lost its collective mind, we still have a lot to learn from this great culture. Anyway, the wedjat – told you we'd get back to that! – is what the people of ancient Egypt called the Eye of Horus.

Know that Horus faces death contempuously, demon! (Thor Annual #10, cover dated November 1982)

According to my daughter Sarah, I drew a good one. Anyway, the wedjat that's come to be a symbol of good luck in modern times derives from the myth that Horus' uncle Seth gouged out the falcon-god's eye and though other members of the pantheon helped Horus restore it, he offered the restored eye to Osiris, Horus' dad and the lord of the dead due to another plot by Seth involving fitting his brother into a coffin … dang, and you thought mythology was boring! Or that gods – little 'g' – were necessarily more honorable beings than you and I plodding out a living tilling the soil, hewing the wood, and drawing the water. But I digress. The Eye came to be and among many people still is a sign of protection and good fortune. One of many things to find out in this latest read of mine, Joann Fletcher's Ancient Egypt: Life, Myth, and Art (ISBN 0760748578). I expected more of a straight read, but I'm glad this wasn't one. Also, this is the earliest culture we know of that used an aspect of the afterlife as a reward for good behavior – so behave!

Saturday afternoon, our son Jeffrey got to go to his first birthday party himself. One of his classmates Aleshia who turned six yesterday had her party at Planet Pizza (yay I got that right, I keep wanting to say Pizza Planet from the Toy Story movies), and her kindergarten class got invited there. Jeffrey was one of five (?) kids from there who showed up, and Aleshia's mom Shanda – who was so bubbly and fun to talk to when I confirmed Jeffrey would be there a few days before – said Jeffrey would not start playing with the other kids, just sat quietly until the streamers and blowers came on. Then he got into a good time; Sarah and Martha and I went to Pizza Hut for lunch (because according to Sarah who picked it “it was fair”) and it was actually hard to eat without Jeffrey there. Oh, the pizza and garlic bread with cheese wasn't bad … just miss the guy. I need to keep up those tender moments and keep track of them, don't I?

David