Easter Musings

Was Jesus Born of a Virgin Pure
With narrow Soul & Looks demure?
If he intended to take on Sin
The Mother should an Harlot been...

Let us now praise Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, and the Muggletonians. William Blake, poet and engraver, lived 69 long years around the turn of the 19th Century. He was thought insane by many then and by others now.

I like him for many reasons, but among them, because he rejects the Law--yes, again, this word "antinomian." One scholar calls him "The Last Antinomian and the First Prophet of the Modern World."

Now let's move from Blake to that great 21st Century philosopher, Dwight Yoakum:

You don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Thank you, Dwight, we will get back to you.

So why would Blake think it more appropriate for Mary, Mother of Jesus, to be a harlot than a virgin?

If He were well-born, He would have no basis for knowing the suffering of the sinner.

Robert Graves, for instance, wrote a fictionalized biography of Jesus. Graves posits (as I recall, because I won't read the book again to make sure) that Jesus was secretly the son of some type of royalty. That way we don't have to admit that low-born people might be equal or better than the high born (such as Graves).

John Dominic Crossman in Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography, has, for me, a more satisfying portrait. Jesus was illiterate and illegitimate. He was never buried, but the dogs ate His body off the cross, because that is what happened to people of His status and power who challenged the Empire. The other stories were invented later to comfort the well-born.

How could Graves' royal Jesus with a secret, worldly and human Santa Clause-like father to care for him be the savior of the unwashed masses. Crossman's Jesus could be the Savior, because He had walked the streets of Bakersfield.

Many of our brothers and sisters do have mothers who were, in fact, whores. Prostitutes are guaranteed in this Man's America (and Mexico, etc., etc.) When women can't get educations or jobs and men can't make enough to support families, there will be prostitutes and children of prostitutes. We are not talking about the Happy Hooker. We are talking about grinding poverty and hungry children and a mother who is trying to get by.

My friend Jeff used to be a syphilis hunter for a living. He would wander first Chicago and then Houston talking to the hookers to find out who had syphilis so he could refer them to treatment.

I have represented many prostitutes, usually when they were charged with drugs, or assault or theft or coming into the country illegally, or in one case a 14-year old child who was being held as a material witness in a pornography case.

Jeff and I have discussed this and concur we both have high regard for the women in this world. (I mention Jeff, because he is obviously an expert in the subject and supports my more limited impression). And many were mothers and good. Madonnas, even.

Many of my clients have mothers who were prostitutes and do not know their Dads. This is not something I usually ask in the initial interview, but the pieces fall together. Many children of prostitutes, boys and girls, become prostitutes themselves.

So, Blake asks, with a world full of children of prostitutes, how can you take on sin if you are not one of them? Blake was historically square in the middle of the "Enclosures" that drove subsistence farmers off their land to make room for cash crops to make room for capital to make room for the industrial revolution. Hence the uprising of Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, and the Muggletonians. Hence the antinomians. Hence the prostitutes and the children of prostitutes.

Happy Easter, Mr. Blake. Happy Easter, Mr. Yoakum. Happy Easter, Jeff. Happy Easter to the prostitutes, past and present. Happy Easter to the children of prostitutes. And happy Easter to you, as well.