(7:45)

    “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’  ‘I know not,’ he replied.  ‘Am I my brother's keeper?’

    Then He said, ‘What have you done?  Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground!  So now you are cursed from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood you have shed.  If you work the land, it will never again give you its yield.  You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.’

    But Cain answered the Lord, ‘My punishment is too great to bear!   Since You are banishing me today from the soil, and I must hide myself from Your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, whoever finds me will kill me.’

    Then the Lord replied to him, ‘Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain vengeance will suffer vengeance seven times over.’  And the Lord set a Mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.   Then Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”

                         From:   The Bible:  Genesis 4:9-17

    ...But what, exactly, is this “Mark upon Cain”?  What is this symbol?  What should it look like?   How will we know it?

     And so, I made for myself this most unsettling video in an attempt to contemplate a contemporary construction of this “mark”.  For regardless of Herman Cain’s sexual infidelities, or his blackness, or his enigmatic smile, or even his narcissistic media messaging; this Cain has marked himself, indeed punished himself, through his own media blood-lusting.  

     Perhaps, whether or not we can recognize the hand of the Lord, some essential mark must be publicly evidenced.

UPDATE:  5 July 2012

UPUPDATE:   Only a bit later.