Those damn seeds

Tamar's husband died leaving her with no children. According to a law that scholars today call "levirate marriage" that meant that her husband's brother was supposed to take her to wife and make sure that she had an heir who would provide social protection for his mother. The son took her, and then "spilled his seed" upon the ground, meaning he enjoyed her body up to the point of satisfaction and then denied her the only thing that she needed out of the contrived relationship, the possibility to have a child. It is possibly a story of rape, you know how unyielding these ancient texts can be, we pull at their dead-animal enscrolled corners and try to decipher the codes of the transcendent runes, but still we are left what in the world they are saying at point.

But whatever the euphemisms present or direct interpretation possible, the dude (Tamar's brother-in-law lover) was struck dead. Bounce ahead millennia upon millenia and it is considered an unacceptable version of birth control to "spill your seed." Wasting of that which can create life is haram (forbidden) to God. No surprise really, if anything is filled with transcendent power it is life force and the ability to create.

So as I was vacuuming up the seed of my flowering fern today I was wondering how broken of an act I was doing ever so casually. With a deafening energy-draining suck-a-rama machine I was ending the possibility of propagation of a plant. And how many thousands of times have I done exactly the same act and not considered it? I don't expect this tree hugging moment to go viral around facebook. Heaven knows that there are more people worried about bearing children today rather than finding themselves in the shoes/sandals/bare feet of Tamar of old. Heaven knows that my own husband has spilled seed in an attempt for us not to be the father and mother of a nation (the crowing blessing of Abraham and Sarah). Pesticides, "weed" (aka wildflowers for wishes) killer, the pill, these all share the same poison--they are the preventers of unwanted life.

Hilariously enough, those who rally to protect the wildflowers are eager to end the human love-child and those who adore the embryos are spraying their grasses with the toxins to kill ladybugs, birds, and even their own babes who will crawl on toxic greenery. Whatever side a person falls on there is some form of life that most are eager to prevent. So empathy for those seeds of the fern is not going to be abundant, but I wonder how Tamar would have seen it. Would she have seen this as a tragedy of possible life? She who was willing to put on the dress of a harlot and entice her father-in-law into her room so that the circle of life would keep rolling, I think she would have ripped open the canister-dead-womb of the Hoover and found fertile soil.