Month: March 2006

  • If only... (with acknowledgment and kudos to Louis Sachar)

    "If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,
    "The bark on the tree was just a little bit softer."
    While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely.
    He cries to the moon,
    "If only, if only."


    If only, if only, the moon speaks no reply;
    Reflecting the sun and all that's gone by.
    Be strong, my weary wolf, turn around boldly.
    Fly high, my baby bird,
    My angel, my only.


    Thus sings Madame Zeroni.... and she speaks for those of us who have ever felt like howling at the moon.  If only I were better looking, if only my life were easier... If only my food/sustenance would fall into my mouth... If only...


    If only I had the money.. if only I had the time... If only it weren't always so hard... If only there were a little more wine...If only he lived closer... if only she were here... if only it were last week... if only it were next year...


    she wants to be older so she can drive a car, while he wants to be younger for the same reason... if only it were summer, when weather is warmer... if only it were winter - that's my favorite season...


    we all have wishes we howl to the sky... they seldom seem answered, i can't say why.


     

  •   on thetheologianscafe blog, it was suggested that a good piece of xanga (xanganese?) ettiquette is to update every day... i was thinking about that and how i used to do that very thing.  but then my husband started to complain about the time i spent online instead of in front of the tv with him.  so now i wonder, which ettiquette trumps?

  • i went over to Jb's house, and Bj and Jg were there as well... i barely got in the door when i was ambushed by the question"where is the soul located in the body?"  and so we were off and running....

     

    i told them that in greek thought, theologically and philosophically, we are in three basic divisions: the flesh sarc (sarx) or skin soma (soma), the mind psych (psyche), and the soul pneuma (soul).  this is how most of us in western Christianity have been taught to think, and this concept of an immortal soul, indwelling but separate from our bodies, is the way we envision reality to be. but is it the way things actually are?

     

    in hebrew thought, the soul, the mind, and the body are one - it doesn't make sense to speak of one separate from the other.  (this is part of the reason why Jewish cemetaries will not inter persons who have had tattoos > by defacing the body, the soul has been defaced, and it is behind many of the laws of ritual purity as found in deutoronomy). so for the Jew, the soul and the body are one, a more holistic view of existence.

     

    the next question was, therefore, "what happens to your soul, then, if you have an amputation? don't you lose some of it?"  it would have been easy to dismiss this as one of those questions usually asked by children that adults consider simply annoying, but there is evidence in the creeds, esp the Apostle's Creed, that indicates early Christians might have thought this way.  and so, i set out to answer the question...

     

    so, have you ever read "Jurassic Park"? i don't mean seen the movie, i really do mean read the book... at the beginning of each chapter is an exerpt, in italics, of someone's thoughts on chaos theory.  while i find the entire concept fascinating, what is most propos to a discussion on souls and amputation is the concept of fractals.

     

    "A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole. Fractals are generally self-similar and independent of scale."  the (mathematical) discovery of this concept has given credence to the popular concept of "worlds within worlds" or "parts are equal to the whole"... one's life could be seen as a microcosm of one's larger society... etc.

     

    recapping our postition> taking the Hebrew view that the body and soul are one, and inseperable, the soul is integral to the body. the question was then, what would happen to the soul if part of the body were amputated? if you see the soul as a fractal, then the entire soul is duplicated within each fragment of soul. therefore, amputation would only remove a part of that soul, and that part would not be missed because it is already duplicated within any other part.  likewise with the issue of cremation > as long as any particle of the corpus remained, regardless of its condition, there would be a fractal of soul remaining, and therefore the soul would be intact.

     

    now, vis vis Stargate SG-1 or Star Trek or Star Wars, i do not know what would happen (in this postulation) to a soul that inhabited a body that was demolecularized.  if the demolecularization were occuring in a wormhole or transporter, my understanding is the transmorphing is into mathematic code, which would still, in theory, preserve the soul fractal since fractals are a mathmatical concept.  however, what blaster fire, phaser fire, or the third firing of a zat would do (demolecularization w/o the intent/ability to remolecularize) that i have no idea....

     

    i don't know if any of this is true, or it is just my bent musings... but you must, or at least i hope you do, find it an interesting and perhaps compelling argument

  • And so we begin the penitential season...

    lent and advent, the two penitential seasons of the church year, have always been observed by me, both in my family of origin, and any other family to which i belong/have belonged. 

     

    ashes on the forehead have come and gone, depending on what the peculiar (in the sense of particular) practice of a church happened to be.  they are a symbol of our impending mortality, reminding us that all of our lives we walk in the shadow of the cross.  (remember, Jesus received funeral gifts at his birth)...

     

    i no longer hold to the idea that lent is the only time to be penitential, but try to hold that awareness within me all the time.  i know that God sees everything i do, both wise and unwise, a fact that freaks dj out when i remind him.  come to think of it, perhaps i have been my own worst enemy in that department if i am telling him that God sees us even when we engage in sexual acts...

     

    i used to 'give up' something as an act of self-discipline. we do not eat meat on Ash Wednesdays, and when i was growing up, since we always observed meatless fridays (big help to the budget as well as being a religious observance), we also abstained from eating meat on wednesdays during lent.  at various times we would go to the stations of the cross on fridays, but few churches offer that observance any longer. i gave up caffeine once for lent, and that was the second hardest addiction i ever had to break, the first being my addiction to nicotine. 

     

    now i try to add something to my spiritual life instead of taking away something from my physical life.  that is a harder self-discipline than the physical.  i think about who and what God is often, and so during lent i try to make that into a cogent and coherent statement of belief.  sort of like my personal theology.  it is meat and bread, life and love, to me ... and my discipline this year is to try to write it down more, in hopes that i will be able to get closer to what God's plan is for humanity.

     

    the other thing i strive for, but have more difficulty with and can only do with God's grace, is to make more time in my daily life for a STRUCTURED time of prayer.  i talk to God in my head all the time, like a running dialogue,  but a relationship needs more structure than a random connection, and so that is what i strive for with God.

     

    some people use this season to search their souls/hearts/lives for sinful acts.  but i am aware all the time of my shortcomings "for my sin is ever before me"... there is no point in denying that, or hiding from it, or waiting until twice a year to consider that.  and so i also direct my focus outward, towards bringing about Shalom... towards being a voice of reconciliation for people towards God, people towards creation, but mostly people towards each other. 

     

    the band Creed has a great song with the refrain "let's give love to all"... when i was a student in college (the first go 'round), which would have been about 1977, we were doing a Bible study, and the topic of the gifts of the Holy Spirit came up.  there is a passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul talks about the Holy Spirit giving gifts "severally as he will" (King James), and so we interpreted that to mean there might be some room for asking > each of us prayed and asked for a specific gift of and from the Holy Spirit. the gift i asked for was love, completely unaware of what the full ramifications would be, and i believe that i received that gift.  and so i have the responsibility of and to that gift to try to bring love, God's love and human love, into as many lives as i can... and working toward Shalom furthers that goal...

  • with thanks to Plutarch

     


    It was the day when the sun's rays turned pale with grief
    for his Maker when I was taken, and I did not defend myself
    against it, for your lovely eyes, [Sir], bound me. 


    It did not seem to me a time for being on guard against Love's
    blows; therefore I went confident and without fear, and so my
    misfortunes began in the midst of the universal woe.


    Love found me altogether disarmed, and the way open through
    my eyes to my heart, my eyes which are now the portal and
    passageway of tears.


    Therefore, as it seems to me, it got him no honour to strike me
    with an arrow in that state, and not even to show his bow to you,
    who were already armed.


     

  • yesterday there was a lot of discussion about rape, sex, and violence, prompted by someone else's post... it still boggles my mind that 30 years after all the consciousness-raising of the 1970s we as a society still believe that rape has something to do with sex.  it does not.


    to forcibly take something from someone is an act of robbery.  to injure or harm during that robbery makes it assault and battery on top of the theft.  the same conditions that would get a man robbed or beaten result in rape for a woman.  it doesn't matter the age, the level of attractiveness, what someone is wearing - the assault comes out of violence, not sexual attraction.  some people are aroused by violence, but that doesn't make it sex, since it is the violence that has gotten the response.


    men can be raped.  they can be raped by other men, being forcibly sodomized (anal sex) or forced to perform fellatio (oral sex).  they can be raped by women, since sexual arousal is to some extent not voluntary (how many boners, guys, have you gotten when you would have preferred not to?)...


    there is no shame in being raped, since it only means you have been a victim of violence.  my first sexual experience was involuntary.  however, until society treats the crime of rape as primarily a crime of violence, stigma will attach.  and it is worse for men since society presumes their ability to protect themselves even against violent attack...