SV2pX0OiRZo0aDcg.js","jsShivUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/js/shiv.RI2ePTZ5gFmMgLzG5bEVAA.js","jsUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/js/main-base.bundle.cwZPMnAG9-3GLjIgqmPslA.js","facebookNamespace":"medium-com","highlightAnimationImg":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/img/highlight-educational-animation._BG4I2h0KF83wFb3fWnWbA.gif","editorTipsEmbedImage":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/img/help/embed.1BM0Di9vd91Kv8fLioJabw.gif","authBaseUrl":"https://medium.com","imageUploadSizeMb":25,"isAuthDomainRequest":true,"favIconUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/icons/favicon.n7eHNqdWyHhbTLN2-3a-6g.ico","algoliaApiEndpoint":"https://MQ57UUUQZ2.algolia.io","algoliaAppId":"MQ57UUUQZ2","algoliaSearchOnlyApiKey":"aadabda268e3bfaffe7b287709262fec","iosAppStoreUrl":"https://itunes.apple.com/app/medium-everyones-stories/id828256236?pt=698524&mt=8","iosAppLinkBaseUrl":"medium:","algoliaIndexPrefix":"medium_","androidPlayStoreUrl":"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.medium.reader","googleClientId":"216296035834-k1k6qe060s2tp2a2jam4ljdcms00sttg.apps.googleusercontent.com","androidPackage":"com.medium.reader","androidPlayStoreMarketScheme":"market://details?id=com.medium.reader","googleAuthUri":"https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth","androidScheme":"medium","iconsSvgUrl":"/_/static/_/fp/icons/icons.8Qoq9tmNBGkKbXkQdFLgIw.svg","cssFontHintedUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/css/fonts-hinted-base.BulGu6SCUyMW3yhqmBvnFw.css","cssFontFullUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/css/fonts-full-base.XEGOJcS2osPj2jxPkDzEgQ.css","cssFontFullHintedUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/css/fonts-full-hinted-base.a9n4iG4mvpotVcqKfbfyNQ.css","cssFontTntSetAUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/css/fonts-tnt-set-a-base.3Dn-uijkaUAOfc9E74yxyQ.css","cssFontTntSetBUrl":"https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/css/fonts-tnt-set-b-base.p2pEpc1SZW3OOKaxyW8SKw.css","embedded":{"value":{"id":"ab3aeb1563af","versionId":"bca10172ac58","creatorId":"2e6825272808","creator":{"userId":"2e6825272808","name":"Dale Marlowe","username":"dalemarlowe","createdAt":1377318190149,"lastPostCreatedAt":1438550455724,"imageId":"1*AdPXJSWA-aHGY2xpwoJo5w.png","backgroundImageId":"1*Qd0jtYVz4QCcGkZEnTP-7A.png","bio":"Author ~ http://bit.ly/sdmwebsite","twitterScreenName":"stevemarlowe","social":{"userId":"lo_6b33a45b8619","targetUserId":"2e6825272808","type":"Social"},"facebookAccountId":"1440611789525574","type":"User"},"homeCollectionId":"","title":"On Memorial Echoes & Latent Vocation","detectedLanguage":"en","latestVersion":"bca10172ac58","latestPublishedVersion":"bca10172ac58","hasUnpublishedEdits":false,"latestRev":323,"createdAt":1436841621392,"updatedAt":1438473234283,"acceptedAt":0,"firstPublishedAt":1436844080957,"latestPublishedAt":1438473234283,"isRead":false,"vote":false,"experimentalCss":"","displayAuthor":"","content":{"subtitle":"Myth","image":{"imageId":"","filter":"","backgroundSize":"contain","originalWidth":0,"originalHeight":0,"strategy":"","height":0,"width":0},"bodyModel":{"paragraphs":[{"name":"bab1","type":13,"text":"Myth","markups":[]},{"name":"785b","type":2,"text":"On Memorial Echoes & Latent Vocation","markups":[]},{"name":"6770","type":1,"text":"This detail of Shelby Lee Adams’ breathtaking portrait depicts Grace Holland, Marlowe’s great-aunt, along with her rattlesnakes and a copperhead. The full photograph appears below.","markups":[{"type":1,"start":0,"end":180},{"type":2,"start":0,"end":180}]},{"name":"6828","type":15,"text":"Detail from Grace Serpent Handling ’86 ©Shelby Lee Adams, 1986.","markups":[{"type":1,"start":12,"end":38},{"type":2,"start":0,"end":12},{"type":2,"start":39,"end":63}]},{"name":"1bcc","type":7,"text":"They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Mark 16:18 KJV","markups":[{"type":2,"start":158,"end":161}]},{"name":"6d9a","type":4,"text":"Shelby Lee Adams. Photo: Tinette","markups":[],"layout":2,"metadata":{"id":"1*N6scrZ55l2_9Ks6ivVb3sQ.jpeg","originalWidth":1483,"originalHeight":2209}},{"name":"e0bf","type":1,"text":"As a college sophomore, I stumbled upon Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachian Portraits, and the book gave me a reference for describing a set of conditions against which my kin have long struggled.","markups":[{"type":3,"start":40,"end":56,"href":"http://j.mp/shelbyleeadams2","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0},{"type":3,"start":58,"end":79,"href":"http://bit.ly/shelbyleeadams","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0},{"type":2,"start":58,"end":79}]},{"name":"fff0","type":1,"text":"In my heart, Adams ranks with Johnny Cash and Hank, Sr. — without them, I’d have had no vocabulary, visual or otherwise, to explain myself to people who’ve no context for Appalachia and its unique population.","markups":[]},{"name":"a9dd","type":1,"text":"At the time my concepts of faith, morality — reality, to be precise — were evolving. Obviously, everyone around me was full of shit. That much I’d known for years — my family and faith community had lain clear borders splitting word and deed, intention and action, sense and nonsense, truth and fantasy, but as I aged, those borders seemed to spread, blur and fade.","markups":[]},{"name":"b15f","type":1,"text":"Nobody knew anything. They were all faking it, and hypocrites to boot. Like a serpent molting, I was wriggling from the ill-fitting sleeve of evangelical fundamentalism, hoping to emerge with the sheen that marks those illuminated by a life of art, music, and literature. What I’d been unprepared for was the realization I too was full of shit.","markups":[]},{"name":"cd61","type":1,"text":"I didn’t want my family’s way, yet I had nothing to offer them, or myself, in place. I was the worst kind of young-adult asshole: the one who acts up, makes a mess, and splits without cleaning. Pangs of self-consciousness set me adrift. But lacking a point of origin, I had no place from which to set a course for living a moral life.","markups":[]},{"name":"2665","type":1,"text":"Desperation — of the kind that leads to frequent intoxication and light property damage — settled in, and it remained, long and heavy, to dust each day in the charcoal gray of coal ash. I fretted the funk would never lift.","markups":[]},{"name":"d971","type":1,"text":"During that turmoil, I showed Appalachian Portraits to my father, Ernest. My father is a sweet, quiet, and gentle man, but he goes sour quick, without warning, and often for reasons no one understands until long afterward. He was impressed with the photography, but less so with the subject matter.","markups":[{"type":2,"start":30,"end":51}]},{"name":"e86e","type":4,"text":"Grace Serpent Handling ’86 ©Shelby Lee Adams, 1986.","markups":[{"type":1,"start":0,"end":27},{"type":2,"start":27,"end":51}],"layout":4,"metadata":{"id":"1*rytExdMMm9d2FOQkryH9fw.jpeg","originalWidth":592,"originalHeight":768}},{"name":"55e8","type":7,"text":"“I got a headful of memories sharp enough I don’t need pictures to remind me what I left.” He thumbed through the glossy pages, then stopped and grunted, as people do when stubbing a toe: “Aw, Hell,” he said. “That’s Aunt Gracie.”","markups":[]},{"name":"1dd3","type":1,"text":"I stepped nearer and looked again: I lost myself in her clement face and the trio of serpents in her clutch. The juxtaposition stung me; Adams caught peace itself in her expression, but not two feet below her set jaw, mankind’s first enemy hung tamed, but untrustworthy still.","markups":[]},{"name":"53de","type":1,"text":"Straightaway, I fell into a trance that yanked me back to high school, where on a field trip to one museum or another, I’d seen a Minoan idol — small, ornate, stylized, gone green under a thousand-years’ patina. I can’t explain why the tiny figurine branded itself so distinctly into memory.","markups":[]},{"name":"c597","type":1,"text":"Of course, I was a heterosexual teenage boy. Breasts, no matter how small, abstract, or crudely carved, were of great interest. Despite that, I couldn’t fix misplaced erotic longings on the idol. Those tits — my — they weren’t an advertisement, but an invitation, and a warning, justifying the holy woman they adorned.","markups":[]},{"name":"8e62","type":1,"text":"The grammars of modern faith default masculine; they tend to cast women as villains — distant as Eve, foreboding as the Whore of Babylon. For their sakes women endure indignities: unadorned flesh, vestments of denim, hair uncut and unstyled.","markups":[]},{"name":"3078","type":1,"text":"Modern sensibility, conventional wisdom, and superficial critical “readings” of images like Adams’ often miss more than they expose. In this case, they belie the mysterious ecumenical agency present in Aunt Gracie’s face, and the mandorla of calm she inhabits.","markups":[]},{"name":"ef8e","type":4,"text":"Minoan Snake Goddess. Moscow. Credit: Shakko","markups":[{"type":3,"start":38,"end":44,"href":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Shakko","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0}],"layout":2,"metadata":{"id":"1*rOPwDOnwVIPAHfgX3Ccz9w.jpeg","originalWidth":761,"originalHeight":1174}},{"name":"cabb","type":1,"text":"Like thousands before, she was the priestess of a shackle-shattering shock gospel. In the moment, moved by the Spirit, she was an avatar too ancient to name, too pervasive to see, and too big to understand.","markups":[]},{"name":"921d","type":1,"text":"No matter their professed religions, Aunt Gracie and her sisterhood are granted immortality by devotion to a secret faith, embedded so deeply in womanhood it remains concealed, even to many of them, their entire lives.","markups":[]},{"name":"5213","type":1,"text":"It indwells them nevertheless — be they lying head-wounded in Swat hospital triage units, risking their lives to defend the abused and exploited, throwing their fragile bodies against unforgiving steel, breaking the bonds of the subjugated or, by force of word alone, unifying movements that would liberate peoples toward the greater goal of protecting the human rights of all.","markups":[{"type":3,"start":35,"end":39,"href":"http://j.mp/malalahome","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0},{"type":3,"start":98,"end":103,"href":"http://j.mp/aungsansuukyi2","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0},{"type":3,"start":155,"end":160,"href":"http://j.mp/1GipHNv","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0},{"type":3,"start":203,"end":221,"href":"http://j.mp/1GipIRI","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0},{"type":3,"start":357,"end":362,"href":"http://j.mp/eleanorroosevelt","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0}]},{"name":"edfa","type":7,"text":"They give life. They walk in faith. They fear nothing. They hold close what would kill, as they are stronger than death.","markups":[]},{"name":"def5","type":1,"text":"At once, I emerged at once from the recollection and the desperation besetting me. Adams’ portrait has never looked the same — joined to a chance pairing of memory and affinity, it hints at forever. This, to a man grasping desperately at now, is if trying to snatch a fly from the air.","markups":[]},{"name":"532c","type":1,"text":"I thought I’d set out on the road to enlightenment. An image of what lay behind made me understand the reality I sought, and still seek, exists beyond time. The only answer to life’s tragic brevity is a claim to eternity, which is the only truth that’s ever mattered.","markups":[]},{"name":"7129","type":1,"text":"My sincerest thanks to Shelby Lee Adams, without whose gracious cooperation, including well-taken notes, and the generous provision of permissions for use of Grace Serpent Handling ‘86, this essay could not have been written.","markups":[{"type":3,"start":23,"end":39,"href":"http://j.mp/shelbyleeadams2","title":"","rel":"","anchorType":0},{"type":1,"start":158,"end":185},{"type":2,"start":0,"end":23},{"type":2,"start":39,"end":158},{"type":2,"start":185,"end":225}]},{"name":"cacc","type":1,"text":"Originally published at stevemarlowe.net on August 6, 2014.","markups":[{"type":3,"start":24,"end":40,"href":"http://stevemarlowe.net/2015/07/02/sally-field/","title":"","rel":"nofollow","anchorType":0},{"type":2,"start":0,"end":59}]}],"sections":[{"name":"f80b","startIndex":0,"backgroundImage":{"id":"1*PDJWB7c4GC1mnBlVNNHhcQ.png","originalWidth":1400,"originalHeight":1120},"textLayout":3,"imageLayout":9},{"name":"b7ca","startIndex":4},{"name":"2d3b","startIndex":5},{"name":"e93f","startIndex":27},{"name":"b7ab","startIndex":28}]},"postDisplay":{"coverless":true}},"virtuals":{"statusForCollection":"","createdAtRelative":"2 months ago","updatedAtRelative":"a month ago","acceptedAtRelative":"","createdAtEnglish":"July 13, 2015","updatedAtEnglish":"August 1, 2015","acceptedAtEnglish":"","firstPublishedAtEnglish":"July 13, 2015","latestPublishedAtEnglish":"August 1, 2015","allowNotes":true,"languageTier":1,"snippet":"Myth","previewImage":{"imageId":"1*PDJWB7c4GC1mnBlVNNHhcQ.png","filter":"","backgroundSize":"","originalWidth":1400,"originalHeight":1120,"strategy":"resample","height":0,"width":0},"wordCount":995,"imageCount":4,"readingTime":4.4547169811320755,"subtitle":"Myth","publishedInCount":0,"usersBySocialRecommends":[],"notesBySocialRecommends":[],"proposedAtRelative":"","latestPublishedAtAbbreviated":"Aug 1","firstPublishedAtAbbreviated":"Jul 13","emailSnippet":"On Memorial Echoes & Latent Vocation ¶\n\nThis detail of Shelby Lee Adams’ breathtaking portrait depicts Grace Holland, Marlowe’s great-aunt, along with her rattlesnakes and a copperhead. The full photograph appears below. ¶\n\nThey shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Mark 16:18 KJV ¶\n\nAs a college sophomore, I stumbled upon Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachian Portraits, and the book gave me a…","recommends":0,"socialRecommends":[],"isBookmarked":false,"tags":[{"slug":"mythology","name":"Mythology","type":"Tag"},{"slug":"feminism","name":"Feminism","type":"Tag"},{"slug":"sacred-feminine","name":"Sacred Feminine","type":"Tag"}],"socialRecommendsCount":0,"responsesCreatedCount":0,"proposedAt":0},"coverless":true,"slug":"they-shall-take-up-serpents","translationSourcePostId":"","translationSourceCreatorId":"","isApprovedTranslation":false,"inResponseToPostId":"","inResponseToRemovedAt":0,"isTitleSynthesized":false,"allowResponses":true,"importedUrl":"","importedPublishedAt":0,"visibility":0,"isViewed":false,"uniqueSlug":"they-shall-take-up-serpents-ab3aeb1563af","previewContent":{"bodyModel":{"paragraphs":[{"name":"f80b","type":4,"text":"","layout":10,"metadata":{"id":"1*PDJWB7c4GC1mnBlVNNHhcQ.png","originalWidth":1400,"originalHeight":1120}},{"name":"bab1","type":13,"text":"Myth","markups":[],"alignment":1},{"name":"785b","type":2,"text":"On Memorial Echoes & Latent Vocation","markups":[],"alignment":1},{"name":"6770","type":1,"text":"This detail of Shelby Lee Adams’ breathtaking portrait depicts Grace Holland, Marlowe’s great-aunt, along with her…","markups":[{"type":1,"start":0,"end":114},{"type":2,"start":0,"end":114}],"alignment":1}],"sections":[{"startIndex":0}]},"isFullContent":false},"license":0,"inResponseToMediaResourceId":"","canonicalUrl":"https://medium.com/@dalemarlowe/they-shall-take-up-serpents-ab3aeb1563af","approvedHomeCollectionId":"","newsletterId":"","type":"Post","_isPopulated":true},"collaborators":[],"collectionUserRelations":[],"mode":null,"references":{"User":{"2e6825272808":{"userId":"2e6825272808","name":"Dale Marlowe","username":"dalemarlowe","createdAt":1377318190149,"lastPostCreatedAt":1438550455724,"imageId":"1*AdPXJSWA-aHGY2xpwoJo5w.png","backgroundImageId":"1*Qd0jtYVz4QCcGkZEnTP-7A.png","bio":"Author ~ http://bit.ly/sdmwebsite","twitterScreenName":"stevemarlowe","social":{"userId":"lo_6b33a45b8619","targetUserId":"2e6825272808","type":"Social"},"facebookAccountId":"1440611789525574","type":"User"}},"Social":{"2e6825272808":{"userId":"lo_6b33a45b8619","targetUserId":"2e6825272808","type":"Social"}}}}}
// ]]></script><script charset="UTF-8" src="https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/js/main-base.bundle.cwZPMnAG9-3GLjIgqmPslA.js" async="true"></script><script charset="UTF-8" src="https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/js/icons.8E1swISV2pX0OiRZo0aDcg.js"></script></body></html>