Library and Lunch

Monday, I went to the Willamette U Library, which in all these years of coming to Salem I had never set foot in. We have been reading aloud in the car a book by Elaine Pagels, Why Religion?  - a very compelling and also sometimes emotionally wrenching account of Pagel's personal life and the way it has been integrated with her scholarship, which has been focused on the Gnostic Library of documents uncovered in Nag Hammadi, Egpyt, in  the middle of the 20th century, in particular the Gospel of Thomas. Pagels has endured the loss of her infant son, Mark, who died at age three as the result of a cardio birth defect, and then the sudden death of her husband just a year later, the result of a fall while hiking in the Rockies. She has found unexpected and strange comfort in the "secret gospels" and other Gnostic works, relegated to the category of "heretical" and destroyed by the orthodox Christians of the fourth century and known only in fragments until recently. So my trip to the library was to follow up a bit on that reading - to look at other works by Pagels and also to look at English translations of the Nag Hammadi texts. I was able to do both. I looked at several works by Pagels, in particular The Origin of Satan, and I found two comprehensive English  translations of the Nag Hammadi texts, one made in 1988 and the other in 2007. One of Pagels' favorite texts from that collection is one titled Thunder: Perfect Mind, which is written by a (divine?) woman speaking in the first-person in a series of highly paradoxical pronouncements. Here is the first page:

Thunder, from the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library

The text goes on in this vein for several pages. Male scholars are bewildered by it, but Pagels found it speaking to her in profound ways.

Today, Ellen and I met her god-daughter, Ruth Thatcher, at a Salem restaurant, The Acme Cafe, for lunch. Ruth is now living in Portland, OR. I had met her earlier both  in Ann Arbor, MI and in Chicago. She also had lived in Philadelphia for a while. But she was born in Salem  - which is how she became Ellen's god-daughter - and her mother now lives in Portland, so she has "come home" in a way. She is currently working part-time and attending Portland Community College. The Acme Cafe is a restaurant run by Cecilia Ritter James and her husband, a couple I met at the gathering Sunday evening, because Cecilia and her sister, Jessica, worked at the Arbor Cafe as teenagers and were inspired to go into the restaurant business themselves. Cecilia and her husband (who is a chef) manage three Salem restaurants, Acme Cafe, The Wild Pear, and Ritter's. They are a very interesting and out-going couple, and I enjoyed talking with Cecilia at some length Sunday evening. The Acme Cafe is housed in a former filling station, and we enjoyed, e.g., the split pea/ham soup and the ruby grapefruit sorbet immensely, plus having a nice visit with Ruth, who had graciously driven down from Portland to see us.

The Acme Cafe interior

Ruth and Ellen

Ellen and me, taken by Ruth

This evening, the Hulls are coming over to J. E.'s place for supper, prepared by Ellen. Tomorrow, we head for Boise.