#not a monk. a boy nun. which is not a thing that exists | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dahniwitchoflight · 3 years

Text

KH: The Foreteller’s Animal Masks

This is half fun facts / half theory but basically it’s a list of which Sins/Foretellers are associated with which animals AND where the inspirations for the animal associations came from, since there’s actually a few different sources!

The first would be the Ancrene Wisse, which was a sort of field guidebook for Anchoresses (Female Abbesses/Monks/Nuns basically) containing rules of conduct and behavior

https://www.hermitary.com/articles/ancrene.html

This goes into many things that honestly have cool thematic ties with symbolism for stuff in Kingdom Hearts, which I could honestly make a whole post in it’s own for tbh, but for here were focusing on one passage:

“The wilderness is the solitary life of the anchoress's dwelling, for just as in the wilderness there are all the wild beasts, and they will not endure men coming near but flee when they hear them, so should anchorites, above all other women, be wild in this way, and then they will be desirable, above other women, to Our Lord.

In this wilderness are many evil beasts: the lion of pride, the snake of poisonous envy, the unicorn of anger, the bear of dead sloth, the fox of covetousness, the sow of gluttony, the scorpion with the tail of stinging lechery, that is, lust.”

So, we start out with a nice base for some of the Sin/Foretellers:

Ira - Wrath - Unicorn - Unicornis

Avaritia - Greed - Fox - Vulpes

Acedia - Sloth - Bear - Ursus

Invidia - Envy - Snake - Anguis

but then wait, here Gula/Gluttony is a Sow, a Pig, but in KH it’s a Leopard

As well as recently in KH, they’ve made it clear that Luxu/Luxuria is a Goat, not a Scorpion (As cool as a Scorpion would have been for Luxu’s emblem, but a bit too on the nose I suppose haha)

Well, interestingly enough, did you know that back when the 7 deadly sins was actually more like the 8 Evil Things once? And that they were also grouped into a Trio of their own?

(Despair as Tristitia being the 8th one, because it’s essentially the sin of falling to sorrow/sadness or giving up, of blinding yourself to other’s troubles and causing sorrow in return or being too sorrowful to act, later it was folded into Sloth as a lack of diligence)

But the 3 Major sin groupings was essentially the three Reasons that people would sin the deadly sins

Incontinence: Doing wrong because they couldn't help it. Or sinning from a lack of moderation or self-control.

Violence: Doing wrong because of anger, revenge or retaliation. Or sinning from by trying to force your will externally

Fraud/Corruption: Doing wrong on purpose in order to hurt other's. Or sinning from betrayal, lies and manipulation.

These three things form a sort of Unholy Trinity in opposition with the Divine trinity of Father-Son-Holy Spirit

And, very famously, Dante’s Inferno links these three groupings to three creatures from a famous bible verse describing the destruction of humanity via it's own nature:

Jeremiah 5:6 - “Therefore a lion from the forest shall slay them, and a wolf from the desert shall destroy them. A leopard is watching against their cities, every one who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces because their transgressions are many, their apostasies are great.”

A Lion, A Leopard and A Wolf.

Now based on Dante’s actual writing which grouping with which animal and which sins is often debated, but usually it’s roughly as follows:

Leopard of Incontinence: Gluttony, Greed, Luxuria (from Immoderation, Extravagance, Wastefulness)

Lion of Violence: Wrath, Pride (from Murder, Suicide, Squandering, Blasphemy)

Wolf of Fraud/Corruption: Envy, Sloth, Sorrow/Despair (Tristitia) (from Corruption, Thievery, Falsifier, Betrayal) (yeah... old timey people did indeed view what was essentially depression as a “willful” sin aka something people did on purpose to hurt themselves, like they drown in their sorrows willingly because of a refusal to heal themselves or as a willing corruption of their soul, nowadays if it existed would definitely be thought of a Leopard sin I’d think)

So here it’s very easy to see where Leopardos and Gula get tied together, because in KH the sin of Gluttony is lifted above the other’s in the group, which makes sense because being gluttonous for money is greed, being gluttonous for luxuries was Luxuria (or sex for lust)

And here also, the Sin of Pride/Superbia is again associated with the Lion as it is in the Ancrene Wisse (though it’s also associated with Wrath strongly as well, so no wonder MoM chose Ira to be the next leader after he was gone)

So in all likelihood, this means that the symbol of the Master of Masters is most likely a Lion of Pride, Superbia (and if he had his own union, it might be something like Leo or Panthera)

But honestly the biggest thing that definitely makes MoM the Lion of Pride is the passage in the Ancrene Wisse that elaborates upon the Lion of Pride, describing it as having “many cubs”:

“But the author continues the animal analogies, enumerating a classification of the sins. "The lion of pride has very many cubs," he states, and enumerates them: vainglory, indignation, hypocrisy, presumption, disobedience, loquacity, blasphemy, impatience, contumacy, contention, "airs and graces." “

Reminds me of both MoM’s many apprentices or Master Xehanort’s collection in the organization

Though the REAL reason is also because did you know when KH was still being thought of and designed, Nomura actually wanted to make Sora a Half-Lion Chainsaw Wielder and we all know Sora is secretly the MoM right lol

But anyway, that explains Gula being a Leopard

So then where did all this talk of Luxu being a Goat come from?

Well one reason could be that later on as the deadly sins got solidified as just the seven of them, and as their meanings changed from umbrella terms to more specific sins, their animal interpretations also started to differ:

Avarice/Greed = Toad/Frog

Invidia/Envy = Snake

Ira/Wrath = Lion

Acedia/Sloth = Snail

Gula/Gluttony = Pig

Luxuria/Lust = Goat

Superbia/Pride = Peacock

Also Ira with a Lion mask would be cool but can you imagine a Snail Aced or a Froggy Ava? lol

But it IS Cool to think that these “Modernized” animals could then become the emblems of the Union Leaders that inherited Ava’s legacy, since they are the newer versions of those Unions, obviously there’s no one to Inherit MoM’s legacy

But you could easily think of Ventus as the “Traitor” aka the scapeGoated 6th for the new group, leaving Frogs, Snakes, Lions, Snails and Pigs for the other five

(I wonder who I’d put with who... Ephemer, Skuld, Lauriam, Strelitzia and Brain... the only sin associated with Death would be Wrath (As Suicide) and the “Ira” position appears to be the one who inherits the leader, and it’s theorized Strelitzia was the circled name supposed to get the Book of Prophecies

So Strelitzia = Lion/Wrath

Ephemer and Ava always seemed to be the closest and he was the one who seemed to inherit her Legacy the most so he can get Frogs/Greed

Brain is similar to Gula in how they calmly investigate issues and try to uncover the truth and got extra information than the others, so Pigs/Gluttony for him

Lauriam was the poster boy for temptation into darkness, which is what Darkness was intended when his sister Strelitzia was killed, for him to be the first to fall to rage and grief, nice Aced parallel as the one everyone suspected of falling to darkness first so he gets Snails/Sloth, fitting for the flower elemental lol

and that leave Skuld and Invi which also makes sense as the parallel for the person who tries to intervene in conflicts and mediate for the group, so Skuld gets Snake/Envy

Neat!

But anyway back to Luxu, I think Luxu is represented by the Goat not just because of the above modern listings, but also because of the special place of evil that Christian religions tend to place on Goat itself

If the Lamb is the most common symbol of Jesus Christ, the Goat has always been a symbol of the Evil of Lucifer. Sheep and Goats, despite being so similar, have always been seen as this symbolic duo. Sheep and Lambs being submissive, complacent, docile, while Goats are crazy, willful, destructive and etc likely because since they are so close in nature, they are basically seen as the Good and Evil version of the same animal, a Goat is essentially a heretical false Lamb

They are very commonly associated with the Devil/Lucifer himself and goats have always gotten the short end of stick, all the way back to the old tradition of using goats as well, scape-goats literally. The practice of singling out a particular creature or person and placing all the sin and blame onto it, and then driving it away

Luxu is singled out from the group, likely given the role of “Traitor” amongst the six of them and then is forced into essentially exile to the future by MoM where he can do nothing but watch and wait, never able to interfere or meddle with anything

And this reasoning of the Goat fits Luxu above all others.

So there we have it, finally at the end:

Ira/Wrath - Unicorn/Unicornis

Avaritia/Greed - Fox/Vulpes

Acedia/Sloth - Bear/Ursus

Invidia/Envy - Snake/Anguis

Gula/Gluttony - Leopard/Leopardus

and if Luxu and MoM had union names, (which seem to be just be taken from the genus of the animal directly) they’d likely be:

Luxuria/Lust - Goat/Caprini

Superbia/Pride - Lion/Panthera

But I think the Most Interesting Thing to glean from all of this, is going back to the 3 Groupings for the 8 evil things, can you imagine if KH ever decides to give MoM a little backstory, and a figure based on the Wolf of Fraud/Corruption, emblem of Despair came into the picture somewhere?

Something that might look a little like this?

Hey that’s interesting, isn’t this the special secret boss Dark Hide from Aqua’s Fragmentary Passage? Y’know, that journey all about Aqua falling into the pits of Despair where she then ends up fighting The First Real Pureblood Heartless she ever faces in the Realm of Darkness? Something that Aqua felt was Willfully and Intentionally Stalking her through the depths, instead of mindlessly attacking her?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQGONhqs0mU

Isn’t that interesting how all of things, they give this boss the opportunity for the player to see through it’s eyes, something very unique, and how it initially appears as a formless Darkness

And isn’t Darkness itself, given a will and a personality, now a figure in KHUX Dark Road, that has specific ties to the MoM, as Luxu describes as being a fellow student and/or old friend of MoM?

Could the Will of Despair manifested from darkness come to be a secret 8th apprentice of MoM?

Who knows, but it’s interesting how that symbolism lines up isn’t it?

#KH #Kingdom Hearts #KHUX #KHUXDR #Darkness

45 notes · View notes

picsofsannyas · 3 years

Text

Osho says. Hein Steff, there is nothing wrong in being homosexual.

BELOVED MASTER, I AM HOMOSEXUAL. I FEEL TERRIBLY OPPRESSED AND STRICKEN BY THE STIGMA OF HOMOSEXUALITY. IT SEEMS FALSE TO ME TO COME HERE TO FIND A WAY TO COME CLOSER TO MYSELF AND AT THE SAME TIME NOT TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO SHOW MYSELF THE WAY I AM. THEN I WANT TO RESIGN AND RETURN HOME SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT ANY LONGER. WHAT CAN I DO?

Hein Steff, there is nothing wrong in being homosexual. You need not feel guilty about it. One certainly has to go beyond sex, but that is as much applicable to heterosexuality as it is applicable to homosexuality. Heterosexuality or homosexuality are just styles of the same stupidity! You need not feel guilty.

In fact, looking at the population of the world, homosexuality should be supported. At least you will not be increasing the population of the world, you will not be loading the earth more. It is already loaded too much. Homosexuality should be valued, respected -- it is pure fun! Heterosexuality is dangerous. And what is wrong? If two persons are enjoying each other's bodies, nothing is wrong. It should be their concern; nobody else's business to interfere.

But the society is continuously interfering in everything; it does not leave anybody any privacy. It enters in your bedroom too. Your society is not a free society. It talks of freedom and democracy and all that rot, but it is pure slavery. It is a big prison. And your priests and your so-called God are all Peeping Toms. They are all looking into your private lives, what you are doing. It should be nobody's business.

What is wrong in loving a man or a woman? Two men can love each other, two women can love each other. Love is a value in itself. And fun should not be condemned. Life is already such a burden, such a drag, such a boredom. Leave at least something in life so people can feel a little less bored.

Here you need not feel afraid to show yourself the way you are. My whole approach is to help you to be the way you are because that is the only way to help you transcend it. Feel guilty and you will remain the same. Guilt never transforms anybody.

And homosexuality is such an innocent phenomenon. Why is it so much condemned? The reason is that if it is not condemned, the fear is that almost everybody will turn homosexual because every child has the tendency. Every child passes through the stage when he is homosexual. Every boy, every girl, passes through a time when boys like boys and girls like girls. The fear is that if many people turn homosexual -- and particularly in the past when the population was not big and every society wanted more numbers because numbers meant power.... To allow homosexuality was dangerous; it had to be condemned, absolutely condemned, so much so that in a few countries it is the greatest crime.

For example, in Ayatollah Khomeiniac's country, Iran, it is one of the greatest crimes. You can be imprisoned for your whole life or you can even be sentenced to death, just for being homosexual. It seems absolutely absurd, ridiculous, but in the past there was some reason in it. Every society wanted to be more powerful. It was a constant struggle -- a struggle between groups, struggle between tribes, struggle between clans -- the deciding factor was your number, how many you are. If people become homosexual, then the population will decrease; hence it has to be condemned as the greatest sin.

It may have some meaning if you think of the past, but in the present it is absolutely meaningless. In fact, the whole situation has become just the opposite: now heterosexuality is the danger; less numbers are needed. If humanity goes on growing this way, then we cannot support humanity, we cannot live any longer. By the end of this century the population will be so much, the poverty will be so much, that there seems to be no way out except a third world war which will kill almost everybody -- so that a few people can start the whole story again.

I have heard a story, a twenty-first century story: The third world war has happened, and a monkey is sitting on a rock taking a sunbath. A female monkey comes with an apple and gives the apple to the monkey. And the monkey says, "My God, are we going to start it all over again?"

Homosexuality is condemned because there is every possibility that if it is not condemned many more people will turn towards it. The inner tendency is there in every person. In fact, the person who is against it... the more he is against it, the more he has the tendency. Deep down, unconsciously, he knows it is there. To repress it he has to be very much against it; he feels disgusted by the very idea.

But nobody is telling HIM to become homosexual. If others feel attracted, then it is not your business to interfere or to condemn them. It is their freedom, and they are not doing any harm to anybody. It is a harmless game -- stupid, certainly, but not a sin. But as far as stupidity is concerned all sex is stupid, for the simple reason that it is a biological urge and you are not the master of it, you are just a victim.

And you need not be so much worried about it, Hein, because homosexuality has a very beautiful origin: it originated in the monasteries. It is something religious! The first homosexuals were monks and nuns -- Christians, Buddhists, Jainas; all great religions have contributed their share to it. It was bound to be so because there are monasteries even now in existence where no woman has ever entered.

In a Catholic monastery in Europe, Mount Athos, for one thousand years no woman has entered; not even a six-month-old girl has been allowed to enter in. What kind of people are living there? A six-month-old girl and they are afraid even of that! What can they do? But repressing sex creates fear, so the whole monastery is full of men; and homosexuality is a natural by-product if only boys are together or only girls are together.

Religious people have contributed greatly. Educationists have contributed greatly, because boys have to be educated separately. They have to reside in different hostels specially for them and girls have to stay aloof in separate hostels, in separate schools. If you put too many girls together they are bound to become lesbians, because when the sexual urge takes possession of them and they cannot find a boy, then anything is better than nothing.

In zoos even animals turn homosexual -- only in zoos, remember. In their wild state they don't become homosexual. There is no need -- females are available. But in a zoo, if females are not available, they become homosexual. A zoo is worth studying. I used to study zoos because the zoo gives you many indications about human society. The human society is a big zoo because everything has become so unnatural.

Go to a zoo and watch the animals and you will be able to see many things. They become homosexuals; they never become homosexuals in their wild stage. They are FORCED to become homosexuals. They go crazy, they become insane, mad. In wild states they never become insane. No animal ever becomes mad in his wild state; he remains sane. But his sanity needs a little freedom.

A lion has a big territory in his wild state, miles of territory, and he is the king of the whole territory. In a zoo he is in a small cage. If you go to the zoo you will see the lion walking up and down the cage, up and down, up and down, the whole day. It can drive anybody mad. He needs freedom, he needs a certain territory. In such a small space he is overcrowded. He becomes angry, enraged, violent.

Many diseases never happen in the wild. For example, no animal suffers from tuberculosis or cancer, but in a zoo animals suffer from tuberculosis and cancer. Strange! In the wild there are no medical facilities for them and in the zoo every kind of medical facility is available. Doctors are there to look after them, great doctors, doing something great! What they cannot take care of on their own -- cancer, tuberculosis -- doctors help them with. Animals become victims of illnesses which they have never known before.

Human society has been so much forced to live in unnatural circumstances -- and the monastery is one of the most unnatural circumstances. It is a zoo, a religious zoo! Homosexuality was born there, so you need not feel very bad about it. You are a religious person! And you have a great lineage of homosexuals....

If you look for homosexuals you will be surprised. Many poets, many authors, many painters, many musicians, many dancers, many great people, many creative people, were homosexuals. Many Nobel Prize winners have been homosexuals.

And don't be worried about enlightenment either, because at least one homosexual I know has become enlightened -- Socrates; he was a homosexual. And there are suspicions about Jesus. I cannot prove it, they are only suspicions -- because he always moved with the boys. Those twelve apostles... who knows? But if he was, nothing is wrong in it. Socrates was certainly a homosexual. Plato was, Aristotle was. Greeks are great people!

One American girl was going to marry a Greek. The mother was very much worried. She said, "Wait! If you can avoid this marriage...." The girl was mad. She said, "No. He looks so beautiful, just like a Greek god!" The mother said, "I know, but after only a few days you will know he is nothing but a goddamned Greek! And one thing more," the mother said, "if you marry this man then remember one thing: never turn your back towards him, never! Whatsoever happens sleep on your back the whole night!" The girl got married. She insisted, and soon she found the mother was right: the Greek god was nothing but a goddamned Greek! And she was also puzzled because he was always trying to tell her, "Why don't you turn over?" -- but she wouldn't turn over; she was also stubborn! After six months all efforts failed. The Greek said, "Listen. If you don't turn over you are not going to have children ever." Then the girl had to turn because she wanted children. The Greek played a logical trick.

Greeks have been homosexuals for centuries. All their great people have been homosexuals. So you need not worry -- you have a great history behind you! Walt Whitman was a homosexual -- one of the greatest poets of all the ages. There seems to be something in homosexuality that makes people creative, or creative people homosexuals. There is something in it and I can see the point. When you stop creating children, your creativity takes new turns, new dimensions. You create poetry, you create painting.

And the people who have been condemning homosexuality for ages are also condemning it for one more reason. As far as the man/woman relationship is concerned it is always on the rocks, because man cannot understand the mind of the woman, the woman cannot understand the mind of the man. They are poles apart. That is their attraction, but that is also their conflict, constant conflict. If homosexuality is allowed, accepted, the fear is that many people will settle into it because a man can understand another man more easily -- they have the same mind. And women can understand each other more easily -- they have the same mind.

That's why homosexuals are called "gay" people. They are really gay! The heterosexuals look so sad. Whenever you see a couple you can immediately know whether they are married or not: if they are sad they are married, if they are looking dull and dead they are married. Marriage kills all joy for the simple reason that it creates so many conflicts. Hence all societies have condemned homosexuality, for the simple reason that if it is not condemned, what will happen to reproduction? In the past it had some meaning, but now it has no meaning.

Now the day has come when homosexuality CAN be accepted, should be accepted as a natural outlet of your sexual energies. I am not against it, I am not for it either. I am simply saying that if you have to live your sex you can choose your style, you are free to choose your style. If you decide to be stupid, at least you should be given the freedom to choose what kind of stupid you want to be! I give you total freedom.

My effort here is to help you to go beyond it, so if you are homosexual you have to go beyond homosexuality, if you are heterosexual you have to go beyond heterosexuality. And there are other people also who are neither, who are autoerotic, autosexual. They have to go beyond their autoeroticism. Man has to transcend sex, whatsoever kind of sex it is, because unless you go beyond your biology you will never know your soul. But meanwhile -- before you go beyond -- it is your freedom to be whatsoever you want to be.

You say, "I am homosexual. I feel terribly oppressed and stricken by the stigma of homosexuality."

There is no need to be "terribly oppressed." You must be accepting people's condemnation. Deep down somewhere you are also against it; otherwise, why feel oppressed? If people are against, let them be against! You need not declare to everybody that you are a homosexual. You need not move with a flag that you are a homosexual! You can remain a homosexual. Of course, you cannot hide it because your sex style changes your body language. The way the homosexual walks is totally different from the heterosexual; the way he talks is totally different. And he looks so gay, so happy!

So you will have to remain a little less happy, that's all. Don't look so happy, and walk a little more consciously, that's all. Don't feel oppressed and don't feel stricken by the stigma of homosexuality. That is all nonsense! And you say, "It seems false to me to come here to find a way to come closer to myself and at the same time not to have the courage to show myself the way I am."

What courage are you talking about? Here there is no question of courage. If you are homosexual you are homosexual! Here it does not need courage to declare it. Here you can write on your shirt, "I am homosexual." Nobody will take any notice of it. People will say, "So what?"

This is a totally different world. Here we accept all kinds of people: sane, insane, crazy -- we have no objection. Unless you start harming others we have no objection. And homosexuality is a harmless game, absolutely harmless. But you think that this is courageous that you are declaring that you are a homosexual. Here it is not; anywhere else it will be. And I will not suggest that you declare it anywhere else; there is no need. Why brag about it? Accept it silently, relax into it.

But you wanted to say it because it is boiling within you. Don't be worried what others say. Just look within yourself, what you are saying to your own homosexuality. You are not at ease with it. The society has corrupted you, contaminated you. The society has given you ideas. It has created a certain conscience in you and that conscience is pricking, continuously feeling hurt. Now you say, "Then I want to resign and return home so that I don't have to think about it any longer."

Just by going back home you will not be getting rid of it. Neither you will get rid of homosexuality nor will you get rid of the stigma or the feeling of being oppressed. You will have to drop your conscience that has been created by the society in you. You will have to understand yourself and clean yourself of all ideas imposed by others; only then will you be able to relax.

You ask me, "What can I do?"

Hein, don't make a problem out of it. Nothing has to be done about it. I don't tackle individual problems. My whole approach is that there are millions of diseases, but there is only one cure, and that cure is meditation.

You meditate -- homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual.... You meditate. You become more still and more silent. You create inner emptiness. You become more transparent, and then things will start changing. You will be able to see what you are doing to yourself. If it is right you will go on doing it with more joy, with more totality, with more intensity, with more passion. If it is wrong it will simply drop, just like dead leaves falling from a tree.

So I cannot suggest any specific method because to me all the problems are arising because we have become minds and we have forgotten that deep down there is a space within us which can be called no-mind. Entering that space, no-mind, will give you perspective, vision, clarity.

Meditate. Sit silently watching your thoughts -- homosexual, heterosexual, whatsoever they are, it doesn't matter. You watch, you become the witness. Slowly slowly, a distance will be created between you and your thoughts. And one day suddenly, the realization that you are not your mind. And that day a revolution has happened within you. After that day you will never be the same again. A transcendence has happened. After that, whatsoever you do is right; you can't do wrong then. And before that, whatsoever you do is wrong. So when I say I have nothing against homosexuality I am not supporting it, remember. I am not saying, "Be homosexual." I don't have anything against heterosexuality either, but I am not supporting heterosexuality. I am not supporting anything. These are all mind games -- and you have to go beyond all the games.

Your mind is created by the society.

Fifteen-year-old Bobby was running out of a theater where he had just seen a porno movie. The manager stopped him. "Why are you in such a hurry?" "My mother told me," said Bobby, "that if I ever looked at anything bad I would turn to stone -- and I have started!"

Two members of London's exclusive Explorers Club were discussing a mutual friend over large brandies and soda. "Well, I'll be damned," said the first old boy. "You say Parkhurst has gone to Africa and married an ape?" "Quite so, old man." There was a pause and the first clubman asked in a discreet tone, "A female ape, naturally?" "Of course," came the reply. "There is nothing queer about old Parkhurst."

The mind functions as an agent of the society within you. To go beyond mind is to go beyond society. To go beyond mind is to go beyond the whole history. To go beyond mind is to go beyond past. To go beyond mind is to enter into God. And then whatsoever happens is good, is virtue.

Osho.

The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10

Ch. 12. Question 3.

#Osho #meditation #sannyas #spirituality #homosexuality

2 notes · View notes

dansedan · 4 years

Text

I threatened on the Disco Writer’s Nook server to share my notes from this latest fic, but since they’re wildly incomprehensible and kind of silly I thought maybe I’ll just... chuck ‘em on here instead, under a readmore where they can pass by easier so uhhh xX WeLcOmE To My TwIsTeD mInDXx !!!1!!

(warning for LONG LONG post- I write full sections and asides from the universe that aren’t even in the damn fic within the same notes document a lot... I’m also insufferably pretentious on notes I KNOW and I cull it on the final as much as I can, as well as mild possible spoilers for a fic I haven’t written in the same au-timeline-thing I suppose and NSFT stuff)

(also a lot of this gets discarded because it’s so stupid and I write it at terrible brain moments)

"Por la mañana me di a la estúpida tarea de esconder mis cigarros por los rincones de la casa. Los encuentro, claro, pero fumo poco, fumo menos, hago esfuerzos por mejorarme de una vez."

meditative cigarettes and quitting fic.

Harry smokes less than he drinks, because he smokes to keep sharp and he usually wants to be numb, down to zero, space-based. but after going tee-total and opening up on his quest to actual-human-persondom he finds himself chainsmoking constantly. A concern in his volition is raised, a thought project ruminated on, and strategems laid out.

Harry grasps at the first half at a low point in his attempts to get better without anyone knowing or helping. He wonders about Kim's life, Kim's control. The electrochemistry in him fantasizes about a free-wheeling party-boy sort of Kim, still cool, still quiet, but free and soft and in control of his lack of control- the aviator, the flying ace, at the mercy of the elements and gliding by by choice- lands on the question of the one-per day, the Kim he knows, who takes what he needs with trepidation and preparation.

The truth is that last one- Kim was a social smoker, an after-dinner-if-the-date-is-pleasant smoker, an after-sex smoker, a bumming-cigarettes-to-gague-his-interest smoker (it all started with a boyfriend) but police work and his neverending stint in Juvie drove him to once-per-day, a creature of obsession. He used to heavily resent it- until Harry came along and joined the ritual.

"bebiendo mate con el ademán gracioso de los novatos. Es lo que hago ahora cuando siento ganas de fumar, dijo, con una sonrisa."

Kim and Harry not so close together- the idea of Kim and Harry not knowing everything about each other, because that's just not how you survive, but somehow Kim aching to be up-to-date on Harry all the time.

Harry and his funny little excursions around town. Kim visits and finds cigarettes hidden around the house, smells them in fear of finding drugs, or Harry has to awkwardly shuffle around for one when Kim invites him to smoke. Harry tries to join a book club, starts cooking lofty meals for his yoga class, tries being vegan for a week, checks out a bunch of books on the history of the Coupris Corp (SUZERAINTY ERA MARK OF AUTHENTICITY BABEY) as a way to help him wean off substances but also off Kim. They want each other but they know they need to stand on their own </3

Harry starts going to this novelty/gourmet supermarket and buying one new thing every paycheck like furikake that says it has lead on it and mate and all that. He spends his ex-drinking, smoking money on it.

Harry makes Kim huevos rotos :'-)

You're barely holding it together- how the hell did you get to this newsstand? Is it a newsstand? This structure- round, metal, iron-wrought frame and squat stature- was once a newsstand. How do you know it isn't? What is it now? You feel yourself point someplace on a menu you can't see past the dew of heavy crying- the clerk does not react, he's seen you like this- slam your wallet on the counter. You receive a paper parcel slightly larger than your fist, long. It's warm through the paper, and you can feel the dryness of a light dusting of flour passing through it. Food.

Your legs and arms are moving on their own again, wallet shoved this way, steps stumbled past the other, clumsily bringing whatever it is to your mouth and feeling crumbs fall into your beard- like a shark. That's one of the first things you remember, the beautiful old ultraliberal woman, like a shark, on her boat. The joy of your first- no, second- idiom. The first was up on Marvel Hill where you can't live. Kim said that. Kim's gonna be there, when you do it like a shark and don't stop any of this on your way to work and you stop crying so nobody thinks you did what you're avoiding doing. Is there anyway you can forget the frittte? There's so many locations in your mind, what kind of man are you, remembering the placement of a store that's meant to vanish and appear out of convenience like it's a fucking pitstop (would a flask not be enough? A single habit to get rid of, easy- but you're never easy).

You feel dark-dark-light-darkness and then light again, and smoother flooring and your coat being too warm. You're at the precinct- fuck, you're at the precinct- and it's late, real late, but you are here and there's too many people to fuck up here and at least you aren't crying. Your red face and eyes blend perfectly into too many years and days of red and puffy eyes to call attention. Perfect, perfect- god bless the innocence (or is innocence god? You can't forget- Remember- something.)

"You're late, shitkid." At some point Jean appears beside you. He's walked the other way and stopped- he's grimacing- but more importantly you see his left arm raise and still and clench itself, like a restricted movement, natural instinct. "You smell like shit- is that fish?" You do not know if that is fish because your throat hurts so bad already that you cannot know if you've been swallowing bones for this past hour (minute? Minutes? The walk feels like forever and never enough. You're swearing like a pig now that you're standing, how adequate.)

You want to say it's agony, the end of days, the end of you- you want to say reprise, and sorry, and oh god I didn't want to see you please I don't deserve it Jean please leave and go away from me and also please oh god please hold me up I don't know what I'm doing but I'm trying to be better but I ate this thing that might as well be sawdust and I do not know what time it's been for several days.

Instead you say "it's my GOD-GIVEN RIGHT, VIC" and you move along like a fucking idiot.

"An image arises in your mind's eye-- a baby, dirty, hideous, its skin mottled and raw and red, peeling, stretching almost impossibly. The baby cries from pain- in it's brief stay on this earth it has already suffered more than some men do in their entire lives. He is built for it- thick skin, quite literally. He is being held by a slight, pale, ugly nurse- a nun in bloodied white rags with a terrible smell of herbs permanently attached to her. The scene is a caricature of mother and child- the hideous thing, held up to her chest, is drinking from an amber bottle, clouded over. In ten years, the contents of this bottle he will be legally too young for-- is this the reason you became the way you are? Are you just born-and-bred this way, surviving off of alcohol where most people had blood and human kindness?

-- It's not. The little pastiche you've thought up for yourself is half propaganda and half racist idiocy. Despite what the supposed "race-realists" may say, not everyone from the Insulindian is thrown on the bottle the moment they're weaned from the tit. In truth, you were barely even medicated, and those bitter, herbaceous spirits are not the cause of your current addiction. It's still on you harry, it's always still on you.

"Wake up- time to listen to the radio.

You love the radio. You really, really love the radio. You think the radio was the greatest purchase you have ever made- drunk you was horrible, and traumatizing, and entirely undebatably subhuman, but he did buy this radio, and by god fuck if that isn't his saving grace (a story comes to mind- a Dolorean allegory from your childhood- about a selfish rich woman and a lazy cheating bum both ferried up to heaven by a single onion that she'd given him during their lives as charity. You choose to ignore the part where they fight and fall back into hellfire). It's the thing that broke you off from your mazovian monk-like refusal to buy anything for yourself other than flour for a week after THE HANGED MAN, it's what got you into cycling and hanging out with the neon eyebleed catsuits crew, it's what reminded you that public libraries exist and nobody will ask you why you're in there reading about suzerainty-era motor carriage manufacturing and the homo-sexual underground. It's the greatest thing since communism, since disco, since-- since-- since cigarettes and kebabs and- and--

... And idolizing someone to the point of crucifixion. Which you aren't supposed to be doing.

Good thing the radio cranks up real loud!

"You've read everything in this section- theory, history, photography, even, notably, the single romance novel, comically bad, about a middle-aged Vespertine businessman travelling north to the harbour where he had experienced his first teenaged love-- and the young, strapping man he gets to know there. (There are boats involved- it's very biblical). All in all, you read it twice, meticulously rewrote its horrifyingly vague and unsafe sex scenes (in pen, inside. Not like the librarian's gonna check it) and masturbated at your efforts, winning you a very sore wrist and about 30 minutes of crying because you remembered being in a bookshop with Kim in Martinaise while you were remembering what books were, and then remembered Jean's apartment having a secret stack of equally terrible heterosexual novels bequeathed to him by an ex that you made fun of him for (rabidly, for years).

"Harry's apartment is no longer clean, but not as dirty as before, and its stalwart light-green walls seem, in the summer light, less queasy and foreboding than what they are now, almost dainty in the contrast of the sparse few frames and piles of knickknacks on the floor.

Believe it or not, this is good-- sometimes, life with Harry makes you feel like a zoologist, intricately analysing an animal's pile of leaves and refuse and knowing, despite all human standards, what these habits mean for the foreign species. And for Harry, mess like this is good. It means he's kept busy by any one of his million little projects, picked up and put down at a dizzying speed and constancy, each one increasingly out of left field in

Kim and harry talk about the radio, kim thinks about it "radio, what's new? Radio- some-one still loves you"

Harry talking abt agenda + library bc you can't smoke + planning for dinner with Kim :-)

Gotta go to the library so you don't chainsmoke

Gotta shower to go to the library

Don't wanna shower bc executive dysfunction

Grab a smoke before you shower

Oh wait you've been chain-smoking fuck (insert meditation on sharp vs smooth)

Hide all your cigarettes around the house feeling pathetic about it

You still don't feel like showering

But you just chainsmoked and you know you'll do it again because you JUST hid your smokes and the hiding spots are fresh in your mind

Birdbath (why are you so fucking dysfunctional that you can't shower like a normal adult)

Introspective rubber ducky selfhate momence

Rubber ducky encourages you through the power of nihilism and Kim

Thought project gain

Go to library and need comfort so you're going thru all your usual shelves (insert le funny homo shelf joke here)

What does he read about? Smoking? Idk

Kiiiiiim. Kimmy kim kim. Think about Kim

Maybe he reads recipe books to woo kim

INSERT EXISTENTIAL BROTH EPISODE HERE to talk about how you've never actually seen Kim cook (he told you it was good soup, clearly lying, you told him it was broth, and that you could teach him how to make soup out of it if he wanted...)

(broth episode was another note, inserted here:

ANOTHER harry coping fic. Miserable housebound weekend nights because he can't party but the house is horrible to be in and he keeps dunking his hands into more and more ice water and taking like half-body cold showers and he's like "maybe this is bad for my skin!!! I gotta get out holy shit" and he's like uhhhh fucking. Can't go to work. Let's go to the supermarket. And then he's almost there and he's like OH FUCK NO THERES ALCOHOL AT THE SUPERMARKET and he straight up bolts out of there and muscle memory gets him to a shady ass butcher shop in some random immigrant neighborhood and he buys so much fish because of a failed check and he goes home and basically he makes so much fish stock. He makes just so fucking much fish stock and Kim comes to pick him up the next day and panics because it genuinely smells like the dead in there but it's just harry making fucking. fish broth or something. Just harry coming up to the door in his work clothes with way too much cologne on and a thermos of fish soup like "uh... Do you want some Broth kim?" And Kim can't fucking cook but he takes some Broth anyway and he's trying to figure out why harry would do that but harry is being a little edgy about it and Kim is like oh god I need to help him a little and they have a sit down about it and he's like wanting to say "hey if you need somewhere to go I'm here for you" but it's hard and I don't even know if he ends up actually saying it. Okay bye)

Talking about the sexiness of supermarkets and how they make reptile brain go brrr

Think about alcohol vs smoking. Think about kimmy kim kim (insert european drinking joke here)

Have that get stuck in his head. Kim kimmy kim kimmy kimmy kim kim. Kimster. Kimbo. Kitsy. Kitty. Cutie. Oh god no fuck oh god I need to stop.

He goes home and still rlly wants to smonk

You hide the cigarettes around the house. It feels stupid, and you know you’ll be embarrassed having to pull the Jamrock Shuffle in your own apartment, that you’re a grown adult who could just *buy another box of cigarettes* whenever you wanted to, but you feel like it helps. Drag the killing thing away from the crappy little animal even for a couple moments more, let yourself get tired out like the old man you are below all the disco scaffolding. You can’t really bring yourself to shower, but you drag the radio into the bathroom with you and wash yourself in the sink. You try to be good about it- stay away from the mirror, really lather up and clear away the sweat that’s caked to you throughout the night and morning, feel the warm graze of the water on your skin. You brush shampoo through your hair and work it in in cycles, focus on the humming feeling of the bristles on your scalp, trying not to think of much of anything, just the smell of the cheap powdery soap and of what clothes you’ll wear today, try to settle into a better memory of this instead of picking at the shame you feel about how hard it is for you. ducking your head into the stream of the water in the sink and forgetting everything except the whishing, scratching sounds of cleaning.

Being clean feels good, and being dressed again feels maybe even better (knit sweaters are a revelation- who could’ve known polyester satin wasn’t made for seaside winters), so by the time you walk your way into the Jamrock public library the morning’s incidents are nigh-forgotten. The dry warmth of the old library is a reliable balm- the yellowed fluorescent lighting washing out the rows and rows of slate-grey plastic bookshelves lined up like soldiers over prerevolutionary tile, with its woven edges and dark, jeweled pinwheels of color, stretching out endlessly full of books, reels, and the rare intricate portrait hanging overhead. Before them, long wooden tables dotted with mismatched lamps, flickering in and out of use, occupied by antsy juveniles and sleeping hobos. It feels effortlessly like home, like a shared worldly past that welcomes everybody- and maybe that just means that it's generic and a little overdue for renovations, but you love it as it is.

Shuffling through the tall shelves of books, you weave through mindlessly to find your favorite sections- the history (both common and infra-cultural, with a surprisingly competent collection of industrial works and a predictably miserablly little shelf of homo-sexual underground interest), the art, and the meager offerings of political literature. You can hear your off-tune humming echo back to you somewhat feebly off the high, painted ceiling, done up in some lame facsimile of early Dolorian excess (therriers, noblewomen, forget-me-nots crowding the edges of each filligreed panel, dead-eyed faces in doleful expressions, pale and empty smiling). You've got all of daylight ahead of you, which is more than enough time to browse around as usual before you have to get yourself home and start cooking.

You turn the corner smoothly into the very back of the library, into a wider set of dusty and anachronistic wooden bookshelves-- history trends unpopular, considering the fact that all the books within are horrifyngly outdated due to a miserable municipal budget, maybe that's for the best. There are better places for students to get this information now, like the private library a couple blocks away at the Cycle Universitee, or from library dial-stations tuned in from the south, where the Bibliotheque Nacionelle Des Travailleures is run by Coalition-approved volunteers. The first thing to catch your eye is the pillar of works of infra-cultural expression and documentstion- essays and short stories from New authors, studies and zines on Disco, and of course, the particular political darling of the 20s, the homo-sexual underground.

You've read everything in this section- theory, history, photography- even, notably, the single commercial romance novel, comically bad, about a middle-aged Vespertine businessman travelling north to the harbour where he had experienced his first teenaged love-- and the young, strapping man he gets to know there. (There are boats involved- it's very biblical). All in all, you read it twice, meticulously rewrote its horrifyingly vague and unsafe sex scenes (in pen, inside. Not like the librarian's gonna check it) and masturbated at your efforts, winning you a very sore wrist and about 30 minutes of crying because you remembered being in a bookshop with Kim in Martinaise while you were remembering what the world was, and then remembered Jean's apartment having a secret stack of equally terrible heterosexual novels bequeathed to him by an ex that you made fun of him for (rabidly, for years). You shudder, now, at the sight of its cracked spine looking you from the middle sill. Its gaze feels hefty and judgemental, and you do not like it.

There are

KIM CHAPTAAAA

"you'd like him to take care of himself. You'd like to be there to do it for him when he can't"

"He opens the door, and immediately there are a million little things that test you (hell, with that thick-knit sweater he's wearing, any weakness in you would have him writhing on the floor in seconds). The half-up style of his now-so soft looking auburn hair, split across to reveal the pale white of his nape between the raised collar of his sweater, the kind wrinkling of his open smile upon seeing you walk in, the light, jazzy music of the radio backing his belly-deep laugh and the heady smell of incense in the room are all exhilaratingly Harry to you.

What to do with jean:Standalone fic for him?

Starts when he sees Harry with the eyebleed crew and he's the one who goes up to him like "WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING SHIT KID" and harry is like. Oh god oh fuck jean uh let's be... Cordial! Optimistic! (What jean sees is one of his signature pauses but like. Yeah it's the skills talking) and he's just like "oh it helps me stay sober and make friends, I found out about it on the radio🙂" and Jean is like holy fucking shit this is absolutely insane.

1) bc Harry used to be so repressed he was basically homophobic with his macho act

2)bc Jean originally didn't believe the amnesia thing but then when Harry genuinely did shit like this and never told him (which, if it was a cruel joke he would've tried to make it very public and obvious and drag jean into it to embarrass him)

3) because JEAN was his friend and why the fuck does he just. Run off with random people with a radio ad instead

4) because he's doing so well. He's like, fully at the sort of "this-side-of-pudgy" bear level that's hot enough to get him positive attention over the damage of the alcohol and he's wearing the sort of clothes that show it and he's got all these crew buddies where Jean is stuck with his hellish depression workouts where he sometimes works until he pukes and then feels like shit about self-harming like that. (what he doesn't know is that Harry is basically doing that same exact shit just he's using his swag alcoholic skills to lieeeeee about it. rip)

Maybe harry apologizes in their conversation about the romance novels. Like it blurts out.

eventually add in the previous consideration fic you were thinking of &quot

starting with bitter porno kimbo/viccy catfight bullshit

"no that's pathetic and he'd never go there." dynamic where kim cares quietly and jean is bitchy about Harry

then "no, he's dealt with harry so much already, I can't imagine." so it's all concern for him

and then that backslides into "how could I comfort him? how could he understand my need for comfort? "

we stan a mildly nonaccepted himself Jean so he's like "WAIT UH GAY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS GUY TOO? FUCK FUCK FUCK"

gotta make it panic horny. it's a Dan Gat fic. how would kim look.... yknow......

since the only other guy who's been like that with him has been harry -> third wheel dynamic going to ->

horny ot3 dynamic. old men doting on him because it's his fantasy and he gets to be the pampered one goddamnit

end somehow

THIS IS THE EXACT DYNAMIC WE'RE GOING FOR Jean liked Harry premart and Harry was unbearably machismo repressed homophobic bullshitero man (I need to decide if he was stupid enough to be like AS LONG AS IM ON TOP IT ISNT GAYYYY or smth sex/intimacy related like that maybe he just kinda. ""comically"" hit on Jean or said suggestive shit to him but never fully acted on it) and then he comes back from Martinaise all loyal puppy dog or whatever for Kim and Jean is like "??? OKAY SO I GO THROUGH ALL THIS BULLSHIT AND HE TALKS SO BIG ABOUT LOVING MUSCLE DUDES AND NOW HES GONNA FUCK THIS GRANDPA?" but then he's like self-aware enough to know that's stupid.(Jean's problem is that he looks for wounds on Kim and not Harry, so he's all like "damn this bitch stole my mans when he's actually good...." meanwhile Harry is like Very Obviously Self Harming All The Time and not even really with Kim so often rip)

Harry wants to reach out and ask him about his thing with Kim because he has memories of Jean either being gay or being less homophobic or just having Gay Energy that he was an asshole about or whatever plus it just feels natural to work through shit with Jean but he stops himself because he's like "well DRINKING also felt natural that doesn't mean we should do it..."

maybe they get into it because Jean makes an offhand comment about "stop ogling kim" and harry is like (computer warmup noises) and jean just kinda forces him to spit it out RE: meme description

Harry's whole deal with avoiding Jean is "some things are unforgivable and I'm fairly sure I've done things bordering on that to you for so, so long, and now I don't even know what they were or who I was when I did them, to me that person is dead, and I know then that I can't apologize to you thoroughly, genuinely, and I don't want to insult you by presuming that I ever could, at this point. I don't want to insult you by assuming I can just go back to what we were before, to each other, without an apology or an actual understanding of what went wrong. I can't speak for certain about his mind-my mind- but at least in some part that guy killed himself because of what he did to you, and to everyone around him, sure, but mostly to you. And now I'm here, and it feels horrible to try and go against that and push myself into your life. It feels horrible to see I've done something to you worth killing myself over and then still insist on coming back to bother you beyond the grave"

And Jean's response is "you thought everything was bad enough to kill yourself over! And you're still alive, you're still him, and fuck, yes it'll take a long ass fucking time for me to ever really forgive you, but you were my best friend and you're still fucking alive- I see you every single day, Harry, do you know what that's like? To see your best fucking friend every single day and watch him flinch and try to act like he doesn't exist every single time he sees you? Fuck you and fuck what you wanted before, *I* never wanted you dead, and your little stunt here with pretending you're finally fine and then keeping everyone at an arm's distance is just another, slower grave you're digging" etc etc "if this is the upswing at last, I’d better be there for it.**”

Jean is a frat boy that you do not expect to be a frat boy. He unironically gets along with mack and chester. He's only just started to grow out of it through dealing with Harry's horrible downfall

sequel to geste drole des debutantes but it's just a 3 chapter PWP masturbation fic..... of Kim and Harry after the dinner and then SHOOKETH SURPRISE IT'S JEANGST YEARNING TIME!

Kim trans.... Good for him...

Stroker shit

He wants to fuck Harry basically

...slow tease? Or fast and desperate?

Dry kissing

Hair pulling...

Youre hard, and you're wet, and you can't help but think of that smile on his face as you left and you want him to taste it, to get on his knees for what he's done to you and swallow it all down, feels the soft brush of his beard on your thighs.

Harry also trans... Good for them good for them...

Handkink shit

Wants kim to absolutely wreck his shit

... He's new at this

Slow....

Jean

Jeangst

Want to wreck harry's shit... Mouthfuck stuff maybe

Power bottoming?? Idk

Whoops my hardcore dom revenge fantasy has slipped into a getting bossed around by the guy I thought I disliked for taking away my partner UHH.... LETS NOT UNPACK THAT....

Some idiot makes like a homophobic stupid "ah the fucking lieutants off scissoring or something" comment and then jean is like "oh god what if that but sexual instead"

Gym shower...

Jean has a big dick too bad bitch

When harry du bois ruined his life, thinks satelitte-officer Jean Vicquemare- he might at least have had the decency not to also curse his dick. This shit was weekly and only getting worse, now that the shitkid didn't constantly smell like despair and carrion had scored a threesome with a bartender's manual.

#my writing #in a way!#my fic #long post

1 note · View note

kemetic-dreams · 5 years

Photo

Christianity in Africa Jesus in the Morning, Voodoo in the Evening

The old natural religions continue to thrive in Africa. While Christianity and Islam vie for supremacy in many countries, they have failed to banish the rain gods and spirits south of the Sahara. Frequently the pagan rites have fused with a faith in Jesus Christ.

Six men in flowing white robes stride across the square in Maryal Bai. One village elder, his features gnarled, is wearing a leopard-skin hat. Akoon Duong is a priest, as are his five companions. To demonstrate his spiritual power the old man brandishes an elaborately carved spear, as do the other "spear masters" - the high priests of pagan nature worship. Akoon Duong has inherited these trappings of power from his grandfather, who in turn had received them from his own grandfather.

The men thrust their spears into the muddy ground and dance. One of them pounds out the beat on a bush drum. Scrawny arms flail upward, quivering in ecstasy. They render their songs in high, reedy voices. If there were a drought, they would have had to invoke Deng, the rain god. But this is the wet season; malaria can strike at any time, so they pray for deliverance from disease.

Maryal Bai is in southern Sudan, 15 miles from the no-go area between the Islamic government's militias and the guerrillas of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). The village was the demarcation line for the recently ended North-South war and the escalating conflict in Darfur.

Just a few miles to the north, Sharia law - with its punishments extending from whipping to dismemberment - prevails. The South is mainly inhabited by Christians. For decades the region has been ravaged by fighting. Usually over matters of faith.

Camped along the majestic Gazelle River are thousands of refugees, the sableskinned, long-legged people of the Dinka tribe. Once they had fled to Darfur from the war in the South; now they are returning to the lands of their ancestors.

Time has stood still

The clash of civilizations and religions, the focus of so much debate in Europe and America, can be witnessed firsthand here in Africa. And today Maryal Bai is one of its many fronts. Islamic Fundamentalism is advancing from the west, penetrating all the way to the continent's eastern reaches. In some regions it collides head-on with an equally aggressive brand of Christianity. The clashes are becoming increasingly bitter because the desert is expanding, bringing more poverty in its wake. According to Georg Brunold, a Swiss expert on African affairs, a front line is crystallizing here that will spark "decades of war." Yet, as hard as the two great monotheistic faiths have struggled for supremacy, they have failed to wrest power from priests like Akoon Duong. With its nature deities, the old African mythology is often the only stabilizing force in a world full of suffering, displacement and death, where everything is in constant flux but rarely changes for the better, where - in many respects - time has stood still. This is a world populated by nymphs and sirens, by elfin spirits, sun and moon gods, and by animal deities such as cows, stags, lambs and calves. At the end of the 19th century, the British ethnologist Edward Burnett Tylor coined the term animism (the Latin word anima means soul or breath) to describe this pantheon, correctly assuming that plants, animals and objects also have souls in the minds of these "primitive peoples."

Cult of the dead

Despite the best efforts of Christian and Islamic missionaries, some 40 percent of the people in Burkina Faso, western Africa, are still considered animist. In East African Ethiopia, a largely Christian domain, the figure is still thought to be 10 percent. Yet these numbers remain pure conjecture. In truth, religious distinctions have long blurred, indeed evaporated, in Africa. Someone who attends church in the morning and the mosque at midday might easily invite a voodoo priest over in the evening to read the kola nuts.

DER SPIEGEL

Sub-Saharan Africa.

Practically everywhere the cult of the dead intermingles with Christianity, according to religious scholar Fritz Stenger from the Catholic University of East Africa in Nairobi. "There is scarcely any distinction between the secular and religious spheres; faith is omnipresent," says Stenger.

Should a child succumb to malaria, the relatives - according to Stenger - would partly blame the lack of effective medicine. However, the belief that its death was willed by God would carry greater weight. It is therefore no surprise that doctors attending to the sick often arrive with the preacher, medicine man and local sorcerer. Stenger, who has spent more than three decades in Africa, has observed this coexistence of divergent faiths throughout the so-called "Dark Continent."

In Kenya, for example, the modern minded Kikuyu, flashing cell phones and Ray-Bans, happily journey to Mount Kenya and pray to Ngai, the supreme God of the animists - despite often being members of one of the numerous Christian sects, such as the Pentecostals or the gospel churches. In this way, Stenger adds, Christianity and the pagan belief in nature deities and demons mutually impact one another. The existence of a god of creation in nearly all pre-Christian African religions encourages this process.

This cross-fertilization is not as strange as it may sound, even to Christians in the West. Something quite similar occurred there centuries ago, "when pagan Germanic customs mingled with Christian rites," says Stenger. "Even Christmas - that most traditional of Christian celebrations - has ancient Germanic roots."

In Benin City, Nigeria's "human trafficking hub," where the women from the region's slums begin their journeys to Europe's red-light districts, the path to the gods of nature runs through a backyard reeking of urine. The voodoo priest Chief John Odeh receives his flock in a white gown. His upholstered throne is trimmed with red satin. Beside him hang drums made of cowhide and the sword-like insignia of his position, known as Eben and Ada.

"Christianity has destroyed our culture. The people have lost faith in our ancient gods and values," the animist priest laments. Ape skulls, amulets and shells are laid out on the concrete floor of the adjacent garage. Figures of Ogun, the god of iron, Orunmila, the god of wisdom, and Olokun, the god of waters, adorn this unusual shrine. Osalobua, the supreme God, punishes theft swiftly and without mercy, says Odeh. And the dead hear every lie told by the living. "The pastors go to church in the morning and preach Christianity," says the voodoo priest. "And in the evening they come to me and speak with their forefathers."

A woman carrying a bowl of blood in Ouidah, Benin following an animal sacrifice.

Does He approve?

Odeh shrugs his shoulders. "Christianity cannot compete with our ancestors. Your God is impotent against Shango, the god of thunder and lightning. That's why the Christian pastors in Nigeria all die so young." The voodoo priest is holding some kola nuts in his hand. He scatters them on the dusty floor and prophesies the future. His predictions are as accurate as horoscopes in the yellow press.

Odeh celebrates his masses in Otofure, a village some 20 minutes from Benin City. This, inside the tropical jungle, is the realm of Owa Oba Asoon, a weathered wooden figurine with a greenish sheen that embodies the King of the Night. The priest blows into his cow horn, the altar boys beat their drums. The ground is littered with animal skulls, fetishes - and empty liquor bottles.

As the voodoo mass begins, Odeh flourishes a chicken over his head, mumbles unintelligible incantations and pours liquor over the skulls. Then he takes a knife and cuts the bird's throat. Blood fountains in every direction, splattering onto the wooden fetishes - crudely carved figures with huge penises. More liquor is dispensed, another invocation mumbled, bringing the juju ceremony to its conclusion. Tribute has been paid and the King of the Night appeased.

Satisfied, Odeh pockets the $100 this service nets and hustles to his car. The faithful are waiting in the city. Nervously he glances at his watch, which is made of gold. His car too suggests an affluent lifestyle. "Oh well," he says disingenuously, "that's how things are nowadays. Nothing's free in life except death."

Article...

Feedback

Related Topics

Africa

Religion

TOP

Die Homepage wurde aktualisiert.

Jetzt aufrufen.

Hinweis nicht mehr anzeigen.

#kemetic dreams #vodun #african spirituality

90 notes · View notes

theseadagiodays · 4 years

Text

May 11, 2020

Sanctuaries

My favorite refuge: The view from the summit of my backyard park

I’ve been thinking a lot about sanctuaries lately. Defined as “a place of refuge or safety; a nature reserve; or a holy place,” the meaning of the word is entirely interpretable by each individual.

Recently, the term has proliferated in reference to US cities who claim they will protect migrants from a certain unnameable leader’s xenophobic policies. Unthinkably, this same buffoon has even threathened to withhold coronavirus relief funding to such cities if they continue to harbor “unwanted” residents.

It seems, for every sanctuary, there exist forces who want to threaten them. This is as true of religious persecution around the world, as it is with safe houses for women escaping violence.

In our Lullaby Project, Instruments of Change works quite intimately with this population. Through this time, we’ve been fortunate to continue supporting single mothers to write original songs about their hopes and dreams for their children. What we’ve learned from them is that, ironically, while many of us have struggled to self-isolate at home, these women have never felt safer, with the prospect of being found, or of unwelcomed visits from their abusers temporarily lifted.

In Women Rock, another program that we’ve shifted to digital engagement through Google Classroom, our participants have written a secular choral hymn identifying nature as the sanctuary that has provided them the most solace during this time. A verse from their song, Hidden Symphonies is below.

Listen to the silence

Morning bird calls at play

Soul refreshing music

Through isolation days

It is interesting that more and more evidence suggests people rarely catch the virus while outdoors (https://globalnews.ca/news/6906508/coronavirus-outdoors-parks-closed/). Intuitively, this resonates with me, as someone who has always found sanctuary staying active outdoors. So, while experts stress that social distancing in public parks is still necessary, simply sharing these wild places six feet away from strangers has been a blessing.

Art has always been another refuge for many. And it’s no wonder some artists have been turning to nature as their canvas. The Swiss artist, Saype’s work is perhaps the most ambitious example. His stunning ephemeral piece, Beyond Crisis, made with biodegradable spray paint, is designed to fade naturally as the grass grows, in much the same way we all hope this virus will eventually disappear once nature takes its course (with ample cooperation from humans).

https://twistedsifter.com/2020/05/giant-biodegradable-artwork-of-hope-appears-atop-swiss-hillside/

And finally, another creative community, in Sag Harbour, NY, has found an inventive way to share their work while galleries are closed. Barns, front yards, and back gardens have become museum walls for dozens of installations that locals are welcome to view, as safely distant drive-bys. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/arts/design/drive-by-art-long-island.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Art%20%20Design

Paintings by Darius Yektai; Diane Blell’s “Table for Two Separate tables”; Erik Fischl’s “Young Dancers Dancing”

May 12, 2020

Daily Delights

I have also been trying to hone my lens for finding a different kind of art in nature. With time to slow down and stay close to home, I have paid much closer attention to the little wonders that surround me. I began the practice of doing this shortly before self-isolation, when I learned about Ross Gay’s poetic essays collected in his book Daily Delights. https://www.amazon.ca/Book-Delights-Essays-Ross-Gay/dp/1616207922

As if prophetically, NPR featured him on my favorite podcast This American Life, in late January. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/692/the-show-of-delights

And this reminder, to savor life’s small pleasures was exactly the armor I needed for this period. Since February, I’ve kept my own daily delights journal. And here are just a few snapshots that have made the cut since quarantine began.

Baby ducks, Hula hoops, Elderly couple park bench massage, Backyard swing

May 13, 2020

Radio Days

While so much has changed about my daily rhythms, of late, there are a few pillars that I’ve kept in place to give my life some necessary scaffolding, in order to maintain a sense of familiarity and grounding.

One of these is the ritual that my partner and I have had for years, of listening to This American Life every weekend. Ira Glass’s strangely pleasing-though-nasally drone has accompanied hundreds of our road trips to mountains, lakes and forests, as we’ve sought weekend adventure. But for now, living room listenting has had to suffice.

On May 4th, the show just happened to be honored with the first ever Pulitzer Prize for audio journalism. So, that’s a well-earned feather in a podcast’s cap. But, awards or not, their carefully curated slices of life never fail to amuse and inspire.

Interestingly, I think more and more people are turning to podcasts, perhaps as an antidote to screen fatigue, and also because it seems to align with the nostalgia for days past that is so alive right now. So, I wanted to suggest a few podcasts that might particularly resonate at the moment.

If it’s a longing for “other” that’s calling you, there is an incredible website called Radio Garden that lets you travel anywhere in the world, to sonically “drop-in” to whatever environment intrigues you (http://radio.garden/listen/alpha-boys-school-radio/ijKUlByg). For a real time sense of what moves people across the globe, you can experience the music, stories, and language of cultures from Antanarivo to Zagreb, with just a spin of their online globe and a simple click. Here, you can access literally thousands of radio stations. However, in my experience, their interface works best on a Chrome rather than Safari browser.

Early in quarantine, when I was in sorest need of a good laugh, This American Life put together an episode on fiascos that really helped bring levity at a time when we all began to feel our world fall apart. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/699/fiasco

And speaking of when things fall apart, Buddhist nun Pema Chodron’s book of the same name has served as a sort of bible for many westerners, as they’ve turned to the ancient Tibetan tradition in which she was ordained. Another podcast favorite of mine is Krista Tippet’s On Being. And her most recent May 7thepisode featured herself and musician/meditator Devandra Banhart alternatively reading passages from this sage book, while reflecting on its relevance for the times.

https://onbeing.org/programs/devendra-banhart-when-things-fall-apart/

May 14. 2020

Finding Bliss

Ai Weiwei’s 2010 “Grapes”, with a coincidental resemblance to the coronavirus

Interviewed about how he’s responding to the virus, Ai Weiwei replied, “I never create anything. I just try to cope with the situation at hand.” We all need coping tools and strategies for those times when things fall apart. Ai Weiwei’s plainspoken answer sounds almost religious, the way he describes art as his salve. And this makes sense to me. But for many years, faith in an actual religion never did. Raised as a half-Catholic, half-Jewish Unitarian, I only attended services until I was about 11, when Sunday youth orchestra rehearsals took their place. So, I never fully understood the role of weekly church service until we travelled to India, for 10-days of Dalai Lama teachings. This annual offering, which he made for 30 years, was an even greater gift than we expected, given that these Kalichakra teachings ceased just after our 2007 trip, unbeknowst to us. Every day, for 5 hours, 1,000s of seekers flocked to the grounds of his Dharamsala temple, and listened by radio simulcast, in 1 of 17 native tongues, to his special blend of humor and clarity. Each day, we all left bubbling to the rim with reaffirmed intention to be our best selves. The coffeeshops, all over town, were a twitter with armchair philosophy between strangers trying to understand and integrate his words. Uncanny kindnesses abounded. And you could feel our resolve get ever more reinforced with each return to his daily talks. However, it’s only once we left Dharmasala, with equally grand intentions to “remember”, that I recognized the role of these daily infusions. Because with each passing day, best behaviors, careful speech, and pure thoughts deterioritated, if only a little at a time.

Note the curly-haired, golden-sweatered sore thumb in this sea of burgundy-robed monks...

So, while that did not instill in me a renewed church-going tradition, I have found my own ways to be “reminded.” They’ve just come in different forms.

For Geoff, it’s long runs and bike rides that serve as his spiritual medicine. And for me, it’s a panoply of things. Sometimes its communion with nature. Other times yoga. Writing. Handstand therapy. Or even what my favorite yoga teacher likes to call “Hammock Enlightenment.”

Eoin Finn is an artist of the highest order. Good living is his canvas. The body is his brush. And bliss is his paint. He calls his teaching Blissology, and spreads his backbends, heart-openers, and ocean loving vibes from Indonesia to Byron Bay.

He and his family have been quarantining in Bali, since they were leading teacher trainings there, just before global travel nearly shut down. And fortunately, he continues to extend his generous spirit through free weekly livestream Stay Om yoga classes, on Facebook. If you happen to miss his 5 pm Sunday classes, the videos remain online to follow any time. So, I hope some of you take the opportunity to worship the DUDE (Delight in Universal Divine Energy) with him some time. I promise there will be plenty more acronymns and puns where that one came from. Plus, a good dose of deep stretches for your limbs and soul.

https://www.facebook.com/blissarmy/?__tn__=%2Cd%2CP-R&eid=ARD502BDBWegIvZPmn6ec9pFCtdEPtRnELt_iabxb0_c5Mmnzq3UPiAddV8fEanrbJLeSOhgYWdeQOlu

May 15. 2020

Birthday Bash

Those who know me are aware of the special challenges birthdays pose for my creativity. I relish the quest for the perfect homemade card, surprise gift, Bitmoji or GIF for a friend or family member. And I love throwing a good bash. I am also aware of the undue pressure this has caused my partner, over the years, to come up with a reciprocal gesture or party idea. But given the added constraints of a quarantine, Geoff went over and above the call of duty this year to produce!

While the novelty of Zoom parties had already worn off, he still managed to find a brilliant way for my loved ones to send serial video messages throughout the day, with the bonus of a clever twist. I’m not quite sure how he found the time, in his manic 70-hour work weeks, to put this together. But, 43 clues later, I was delivered a personalized crossword puzzle, with each hint related to the messenger. He really outdid himself this time, and I could not feel more grateful.

Meanwhile, unsure if he had anything up his sleeve, I got up to my own fun messying my hands to make this Covid Pinata. I confess, I borrowed the idea from an article I saw online, but just couldn’t resist.

And last night, of course with proper social distancing, we took great delight in beating the crap out of this brutal virus with a couple of friends.

0 notes

hawkeabelas · 7 years

Note

1-10 and D for Amity, 11-15 and E and H for Kailyn, 16, 18, and 20-23, A, B and C for Izzy, 30-40 even, and F and J for Stella plz and thank you :D

This took me awhile but it’s all done. Please enjoy reading about my disaster children below the cut.

(Amity, my tiefling gunslinger from @theladypirate’s pirate game)

1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

Depends on your definition of “still.” They’ve had to take guard jobs before that meant sitting “still” for hours, alert. They find quiet ways to fidget though, because idleness drives them nuts.

2. How easy is it for your character to laugh?

Depends on who you are, and what mood they’re in. They have a pretty dry sense of humor, but it exists. Even if they don’t laugh out loud often (while sober) you’ll get a smile or a chuckle pretty easily in some situations.

3. How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)

If it’s available? A good nightcap. If not, they’ll stay up doing something - cleaning their guns, going over plans - until they’re so exhausted they pass out without much trouble.

4. How easy is it to earn their trust?

Usually not very easy at all. Apparently if you’re a pyro half-drow, a suspiciously rich-looking holy person, and a proselyting birb boy, it’s very easy.

5. How easy is it to earn their mistrust?

It’s a fucking hair trigger. Pun absolutely intended.

6. Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable?

Ignorable.

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

Tastes and smells. They don’t care much for dwelling on a lot of their past, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have good memories of old friends, alive or otherwise, of past flings, of all the places they’ve explored and loved.

8. What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a child?

“Look people in the eyes when you talk to them, Amity.” “Don’t talk back to me, Amity!” “Speak up, stop mumbling.” “You treat the nice gentleman with respect, do you know what that is?” “Say your prayers before bed. Yes, every night.” “Don’t get an attitude, no one adopts little tieflings with sour attitudes.”

9. Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?

They’ve been swearing nearly since they could speak, which was quite a difficult thing in a building full of nuns. Their first swear word was probably fuck.

10. What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?

It’s so cliche, but - “I’m fine.” Mostly they wish they knew when they were younger that it was ok to let people help, or even to ask for help. This isn’t…. Necessarily a lesson they’ve fully learned yet. They’re trying.

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

Physically, they’ve always been very tall and lanky in my head, and I always imagined them darker skinned. I also always knew they didn’t dress traditionally feminine, even before I understood their gender identity, but that had less to do with gender presentation and more to do with them being a badass gunslinger who dresses like they’re in some dystopian sci fi western (leather jacket, neutral colors, belts with too many pouches). Idk I don’t think it’s changed that much since Amity’s conception, so to speak.

(Kailyn, a halfling monk-turned-underground pit fighter in the game I DM)

11. How do they cope with confusion (seek clarification, pretend they understand, etc)?

She’s pretty comfortable asking for clarification usually. Something she learned from the monks is that ignorance has a cure, but only for the humble.

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

Find a stick, or a door frame. Or a friend.

13. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

She has a thing for red. She’s convinced it makes her intimidating. Also she owns a LOT of white tank tops and looks hot in them ijs

14. What animal do they fear most?

LIzards. Not like, dragonborns, or even dragons, but something about the tiny little lizards freaks her out.

15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?

She’s pretty blunt, and doesn’t tend to mince words a lot. As a result she doesn’t always think things through before speaking which… causes problems. Usually problems she can punch. She’s ok with that.

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

I like to think we’d get along. At the very least I’d be really nervous talking to the pretty buff girl and she’d find that adorable.

H) What trait do you admire most?

The fact that she hasn’t given up, even after losing basically everything and everyone. She gets up in the morning, she finds a reason to keep going and keep pushing forward. That’s not an easy thing.

(Izzy Feldermere, my gnome Disaster bard from @stresspainting’s campaign)

16. What makes their stomach turn?

Gross dudes talking to her or even looking at her. Or her friends.

Also sheep.

18. What embarrasses them?

Honestly? Not much. Maybe even nothing, at this point.

20. If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?

“Listen. People are going to tell you romantic love is the most important thing on this earth. And like, it’s great, stories are written about it, epic poems and songs and shit - I’ve written a few, I know. And then there’s all that shit about blood is thicker than water or whatever with family, but I think they got that backwards anyway. But you know what? I think platonic love is more important. It’s more durable, it sticks around, it’s not as flighty. Maybe it’s just because no one’s ever loved me back romantically, like, wants to marry me and adopt a hundred tiny gnomelets loved me, but I know a few assholes who love me as their friend. They’re not going anywhere. They wouldn’t. That’s better than romance.”

21. Why do they get up in the morning?

Because Arusha will wander in and check her vitals if she isn’t up at a reasonable time, just in case she’s sick or died or fell into a coma in the middle of the night, and to make sure she gets a healthy breakfast that’s not just a mug of mead. It’s not the worst way to wake up.

22. How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)?

She turns into even more of an asshole and maybe even insults someone to death. But, naturally, doesn’t actually talk about the problem.

23. How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)?

See question 22. Izzy is Very Bad at healthy expression of emotions and hides it behind snark and insults, when she’s not trying to charm you into shutting up and leaving her alone.

A) Why are you excited about this character?

She’s fun to play. Bards are pretty anything goes as far as dnd classes, and Izzy in particular is pretty wild. One time I had to roll dice checks to see if my party mates heard me masturbating - ahem- “tuning my violin”.

B) What inspired you to create them?

Scanlan Shorthalt. No, really. I wanted Scanlan, but a woman and a lesbian. She’s definitely taken on her own life and personality, but that was the inspiration. So there you go.

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?

A bit. There’s a depth to her it took some time for me to sort out. But these sorts of questions definitely help with that. Wink wink.

(Stella, or Estelliese, the half elf warlock in @theladypirate’s other campaign)

30. Who do they most regret meeting?

Can you regret meeting your father? She regrets meeting her father. Also the Archfey, probably, if she can remember meeting that fucker.

32. Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke?

Currently? “Hey did you know I lost my memory?” Alternatively she’ll tell you how the Raven Queen became her divine mom.

34. How hard is it for them to shake a sense of guilt?

Hooooo, boy. Near impossible. She eats guilt for every meal lately.

36. Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap?

Well, let’s see. She forgot her wife existed, so that one literally fell into her lap. But she never really went looking for it, not while there were more important things to do. She married a party member, so I can only assume it found her.

38. What memory do they revisit the most often?

Currently in her campaign, she’s stuck on the events that lead to her party’s memories being wiped, and what that might mean for herself and her family, and their kingdom. When she needs a happy memory, she remembers the day she finally ran away from home.

40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?

Not necessarily sensitive, but certainly hyper aware. Pointing out her flaws in most situations will be met with agreement and self deprecating humor. In an argument, usually she’ll just kinda shut down.

F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?

Pride, pain, overwhelming love for this disaster brain child. She cares so much and just wants people to love who love her. She found them, and forgot them, and barely remembers loving them, and they don’t quite remember loving her, and it kills me.

J) Did you have to manipulate or exclude canon factors to allow them to create their character?

Sort of, but not? In this campaign, I was given a pre-rolled character who had zero memories of who she was before the first session. Moving forward, I’ve been able to piece together some of her life before, and the DM has told me a little more OOC. So there is a sort of canon history and personality, but I’ve still had the freedom to figure out who she is now? So it’s not so much manipulating canon as it is adapting to new information. It’s been a challenge, but a welcome one.

#my oc tag #my dnd character tag #DND:Amity #DND:Izzy #DND:Stella #DND:Kailyn #ask meme #theladypirate #Ask me shit

2 notes · View notes

garywonghc · 8 years

Photo

The Perfection of Enthusiastic Effort

by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

The fourth paramita is that of viriya, which means perseverance or enthusiastic effort. We all appreciate that if we want to succeed in any skill we first have to practice. I knew a young boy in Australia who from early youth deeply loved the guitar: classical and Spanish guitar. Even as a young schoolboy, he would practice many hours every day on his guitar. Now as an adult he is a brilliant guitarist who wins many competitions. The point is that, although he had a natural talent for music and he loved the guitar, nonetheless he still had to practice.

If we want to be a footballer or engage in any kind of sports, or to become a dancer or a computer expert or anything at all, we need to practice. Even if one has a natural talent, one still has to repeat the same exercises over and over and over until they become spontaneous. If we can accept this about mastering a physical skill, why do we sometimes imagine that, on a spiritual path where basically we have to completely rework our own mind, somehow it’s just going to happen automatically?

Nowadays, it’s popular in certain spiritual circles to say: “Oh well we already have everything, so there’s nothing to be done. We already are Buddha, so therefore we don’t need to do anything.” This is why sometimes Dzogchen and Mahamudra are popular. People think: “Oh, you just sit and there you are. You have nothing to do. You just have to be.” But do we realise the difficulty of just being? It probably takes years and years of effort to become effortless. It’s like professional musicians who spend years and years practicing and practicing until finally the music plays through them. But we can’t just sit down and expect that to happen without putting in so much time for just practice. When we see great musicians playing it looks completely effortless as if they’re not doing anything and just the music is pouring through their fingers. But we know how many hours everyday for so many years, they have dedicated to being able to appear so effortless!

There is a story in our Drukpa Kagyu tradition of a ‘crazy’ yogin called Drukpa Kunley. One time he went to Lhasa and visited the main temple called the Jokhang. The principal statue in the temple is a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha called the Jowo Rinpoche which is said to represent Shakyamuni Buddha as a youth. So then Drukpa Kunley bowed down and he said to the Buddha: “Okay, you and I started out at the same time. You became a Buddha and here I am still stuck in samsara! What’s the difference between us? The difference is that you made efforts and I was lazy!”

The reason we’re all sitting here in samsara is because we’re lazy. Of course we must have done something right and made some efforts in past lives, otherwise we would not have an interest and connection with the Dharma now. But the point is that although we have this tremendous potential for realisation because that is our true nature. Nonetheless, unless from our side we take the Dharma and put it at the centre of our hearts, at the centre of our lives, nothing much will change, nothing will transform.

People complain that they would like to practice, but they have no time. This is one of the reasons why I chose to talk about the Paramitas — generosity, discipline, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom — because not only do these bodhisattva virtues comprise the path to Buddhahood, but they are our own intrinsic qualities which we need to develop in our daily lives. So therefore we must not think that Practice is only when we are sitting on our meditation cushion or when we come to a Centre to listen to Dharma talks or when we are doing our rituals, and so the rest of our daily life is just so much worldly activity. Because if we make this separation, then the time we give to the Dharma is so tiny, while the time which we are caught up in worldly distractions is so great.

But if we think of our Dharma perception, our understanding of the Dharma as like yeast, then we mix that yeast with the heavy dough of our worldly life and it will rise up and the whole of that dough will become light and nourishing. Instead of being a big indigestible lump, the dough rises up and we bake it and it is delicious! This is so important. Everything that we do, if we do it with awareness and kindness, if we really use all our experiences as an opportunity to bring into play the various principles of the Dharma which we have heard and read about, if we really use our daily life as a practice, then everything is transformed.

It doesn’t matter how many great Lamas we meet, how many wonderful teachings we hear, how much inspiration we gain from others, in the end it depends on ourselves, what we do with our lives, what we do with our own mind.

So this question of effort and perseverance doesn’t mean a kind of heaviness and panting exertion that tires us out. It’s not a joyless doggedness. When we’re doing something we really love, it doesn’t seem difficult at all. It seems easy because we have so much joy in doing it. The Dharma should be a cause of joy. It’s like any activity: if we really enjoy doing it, then even though we devote such a lot of time and energy to it, it doesn’t tire us. So if we see that everything in our lives — our family life, our time with our friends, our colleagues and society in general is our Dharma practice, and everything that happens to us is our opportunity to learn and develop — then what seemed like a pretty dull, boring, pointless existence is transformed into something profound and meaningful!

Our lives can have meaning for us. It’s so important to realise that this particular human birth is our great opportunity and we won’t probably get it again if we waste the chance now. This is the opening. No great master is going to come along and click his fingers and we’re just going to get it. It doesn’t work like that. Even if we are fortunate enough to experience a glimpse of the true state, it still needs so much time and practice to stabilise this understanding. Even if the Lord Buddha himself was sitting in front of you, all he could say would be: “Practice.”

Many of the Buddha’s disciples were ordinary people — they weren’t all monks and nuns. They were kings, businessmen, farmers and housewives. In fact it’s noticeable if we read the early Sutras, how much time the Buddha actually spent around towns, talking with ordinary people and encouraging them to transform their lives. They didn’t all become monks. They just used his teachings in their daily lives and attained very high levels of realisation. So if we use our everyday lives as our spiritual practice, things will definitely change. Then our biggest problems will become our greatest opportunities.

26 notes · View notes

liberal-brainwashing-blog · 7 years

Text

Women & The Protestant Reformation: A Historical Examination

(Pictured Above: Katharina Von Bora, Martin Luther’s wife)

Two concepts I never expected to hear together were brought to my attention the other day. This being “The Protestant Reformation” and “Women’s Rights.” Apparently, some would like to accredit the status of current Women’s Rights movements, among other Feminist Movements, to the way women were treated in the reformation era. Some argue that it is because of reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, who “gave” women the “choice” to be housewives and mothers, that we have such a state of female empowerment today. Women, among men, were now able, in the reformation era, to receive education in reading the bible in order to become better housewives and mothers. These types of critics think that allowing a woman the option to be a housewife is a liberating and pro-women thing. Now, while this does seem to be the case, such a naive, and a-historical examination of women’s roles in the reformation era erase much of the struggle and oppression women faced within such times. I would like to argue that although women were “given” some form of “choice” of a societal role and education, that this really didn’t amount to the type of choice in women’s lives we examine today, and are indeed not synonymous.

Part 1: Reformation Prefers Domesticity

According to Dr. Kathryn Kleihans,

“At the beginning of the 16th century, women’s life choices were limited. Living as a single, independent woman was simply not acceptable. Most women transitioned from being under the authority of their fathers to that of their husbands and then, if they outlived their spouses, that of their eldest son.” (Kleihans).

So, before Martin Luther and the rest of the revolutionaries shook the world with their ideologies, women were often relegated to a patriarchal dictation in society. Women, effectively, were bounced around from different men with independently living being a non-option. The only other, seemingly practical option for women, was to join a convent. While this seems all fine and dandy, most of the time this decision was not even left up for women to choose. As Kleihans states,

“Some women joined convents, but this was often their parents’ choice rather than their own. For example, 12th-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen was the 10th child in her family and her well-to-do parents gave her to the convent as a tithe” (Kleihans).

So here we have two roles to which women could exist within society. Mind you, these roles are not chosen by women, they are dictated by men. These are not independent choices women are making. This is crucial to keep in mind.

Continuing, during the middle ages, as Kleihan states,

“the celibate life of a nun, monk or priest was seen as a “higher calling” than the married life of ordinary people. The reformers rejected this idea. Instead, they praised both marriage and parenthood as worthy callings for all Christians.” (Kleihan).

The reformers hated the idea that “choosing,” again, for women this was not a choice, the path of a nun or any other higher spiritual role in society over that of marriage. Thus, the reformers focused heavily on marriage and holding familial places as perfectly acceptable Christian things to do. While the Catholic Church promoted marriage as an outlet for child bearing and sexual pleasure (usually just for the man), the reformers focused more on a definition of marriage related to love and faithful companionship. Unlike Catholics, the reformation celebrated women’s roles as mothers and wives.

Another interesting thing that was brand new to the times was educating women how to read, the bible. While women were now granted opportunities to education, this education merely amounted to “reading the Bible, managing a household and teaching the faith to their children.” (Kleihan). In fact, this form of education was hardly the door opening, life changing experience some may think. Sure, now women can read the bible, but rarely did this lead to them being able to pursue other forms of work.

Given the education recieved by women, some would think that now they have more freedom to engage in other types of work, however, this is simply not the case. According to Dr. Kirsi Stjerna,

“First of all, the reformers' visions for enhanced basic lay education for the sake of enabling laity to read their vernacular bibles did not really open doors for women in higher education. Even the basic education maintained a distinction between the sexes as girls' curricula tended to be less demanding, with shorter school days than boys' schooling. Higher education continued to be a privilege of men and of a relatively small group of wealthy and culturally well-connected women. Nothing even remotely equivalent in terms of educational opportunities for women replaced the convents in Protestant towns. In other words, women lacked the appropriate preparation for conventional theological writing.” (Stjerna).

Although women were granted a form of education, the desired result of society for such education seemed to simply be the better training and assimilation of women into Christian ideology that female bodied people ought to be housewives.

So, in all, while the reformation did grant somewhat more of educational resources than before, these resources were often put towards teaching women to be housewives, not independent women. The reformation desired women to become housewives and mothers, not autonomous, free thinking, independents.

(I know that was long but we are getting to the point.)

Part 2: Given the “Option”

Following from the evidence presented in Part 1, it can be easily seen that women, within the reformation era, were hardly presented with the freedom to chose what they wanted to be in society. Instead, women were effectively forced to become housewives and mothers. According to Stjerna, “women's legitimate place was at home.” Women could not become bakers, academics, butchers, etc. . . The only viable choice for a women was either becoming a housewife, or to effectively be shunned. This is hardly a reasonable choice making environment. It would be as if someone held a gun to my head and gave me two options. 1: Die or 2: Lick that persons feet. We definitely would not call the gun holder an emancipator for giving me the option to lick their feet. After all, the only other available path is death. The only legitimate available option for women in the 16th century during the reformation was to become educated in the bible and become housewives and mothers. This is hardly a free autonomous choice if it is literally the only choice.

Part 3: The “Gift” of Reading

Some argue that it was because the reformation gave women an outlet to learn to read that such Women’s rights movements were helped made possible. This is a tricky statement to make since many other factors play into a women’s rights movement moving to fruition, but I think this is a fairly reasonable point to make. It is certainly true that learning to read is a good thing, but this was not because of the benevolence of the reformers. It was because the reformers wanted women to become better acquainted with a text and ideologies that were intended on making women better housewives and mothers. Would we say that a slave master teaching a slave to read the book “How to be a better slave” is liberating? Of course not. Here we see learning to read as a means of oppression. What we can say about learning to read is that women deceptively utilized such a newfound skill in order to become more educated and autonomous people. This was not because the reformers wanted them to be this way, but instead it was because women were utilizing the means of their own oppression to attempt to become free from it.

This is all speculation of course but I do think, logically, it is fairly consistent. Women had to navigate the, clearly, oppressive space they were in and used their reading skills to become educated on other things down the line. So here, we are not to thank the reformers for this grand “gift,” but instead, we view the women as effectively tricking and exploiting the oppressive intentions of their reading skills, using them for other such things than learning to become better housewives.

Sources:

Dr. Kathryn Kleihans: https://www.livinglutheran.org/2015/09/women-reformation-now/

Dr. Kirsi Stjerna: https://www.elca.org/JLE/Articles/1145

#social justice #feminism #critique #chrisitanity #religion #womens rights #oppression #atheism

1 note · View note

mayaagonemissing-blog · 6 years

Text

Italy,the 5th most visited country in the world is where I went missing this summers with my partner #oldmonk and I come back with a bag full of happy memories.To add anything to already existing travel articles and data about Italy on the Internet can be difficult as there is no dearth to it, so I will just write about what we enjoyed the most and what you can add in your bucket list if it matched your wavelength:)

Ah!This Turquoise 🙂

Now the order that I list are almost equal in terms of my experience, the thing is that when you are there in flesh and blood experiencing it, it’s all together a different high so the list is in the sequence we visited.

1.Cinque Terre:Hiking,Wandering,Sunset and Night Photography

��Cinque Terre”,the cluster of five villages on the rugged Ligurian coast are very picturesque and you can hike all of them.As my Old Monk is not a big hiker and he reluctantly agreed to do only one, we chose the blue hiking trail from Monterosso to Vernazza and boy, it is just spectacular!!

The hike gives you an opportunity to take in gorgeous views of the sea and as you keep hiking and look back at the village you have left behind, it just keeps getting cuter and tinier.

The highlight for me was when I got the first glimpse of Vernazza from a distance and second was when I saw Monterosso again from Vernazza’s harbour:) So I suggest a hike is a must if you can.

Views while Hiking.This is Monterosso!!

View of Vernazza while Hiking

Also,be a early riser as the sun can get strong and this comes from someone who stays in Delhi where we experience excruciating heat:). Also the crowds can get to you.Again from someone who lives in the second most populated country in the world:) So starting early can be a really good idea.

Hiking Trail!

Secondly,when we reached Riomaggiore (our 5th village) by train of course, we climbed up the stairs on left of the harbour and it had gorgeous views of the village, sea and sunset, this was an absolute highlight.See the sunset time online and make sure you don’t miss it.

Finally we planned and got back to Vernazza again after the sunset to take night shots of the village.The best part,at night the village was almost empty ,with all tourists gone and it thus became the best time to spend eating focaccia and admiring the village harbour while experiencing the softest sea breeze.

Vernazza

2.Detour- Porto Venere

So when we were doing “Cinque Terre” our Airbnb host suggested we must take a detour and visit Porto Venere, and we are glad we listened because we just loved it.My highlight was the view from the Window and then Balcony of San Pietro Church.I also liked walking the steps of Byron’s Grotto,Sipping a coffee in a corner tucked away cafe, walking the oldest lanes of Porto Venere ,chatting with a Nun who lives there from Kerala and buying the best Pesto I ever had.Ah!

Views from the Cathedral

Byron’s Grotta

Try Pesto here, the best!

3.Staying in a Vineyard in Chianti-Tuscany

We chose Chianti Classico region for the first part of our stay in Tuscany.Our stay was in the midst of endless vineyards of Casa Sola, in absolute wilderness.

My Chianti Abode (only a section of it of course!)

View from my Tuscan Window

From here we drove around the Chianti Classico region…The landscape was serene with endless vineyards, olive trees and the beautiful red poppy flowers.

We did the Castellina in Chianti (beautiful village where we had a hearty breakfast), Radda in Chianti (I bought traditional coffee makers from this village), Gaiole in Chianti (famous for L’Eroica cycling event each year) and Greve in Chianti.

We also did day trips to two beautiful town/city San Gimignano and Siena.

4.Staying in an Ancient Castle in a tiny Tuscan Village, Castle Muzio.

With a population of just 35 residents, Castle Muzio was the perfect, fairy tale village we chose for staying during our later part of Tuscany. Here we divided our time checking out the Tuscan villages and landscape .The castle stay was cozy and here my window overlooked the village’s chapel and it’s bell tower that rang every hour:)

Castel Muzio

View from my Room in Castel Muzio

So our highlights here were Val’Orcia,San Quirico and Crete Senesi regions…endless rolling hills and Poppies made us so happy.Our cameras kept clicking but to just be and soak in everything that Mother Nature has to offer was just soul satisfying.

My most cherished spot if I have to pick will be “Capella Della Madonna Di Vitaleta”,the chapel with cypress trees.So simple yet so profound.

In terms of Villages I definitely recommend “Montepulciano” and also “Pienza” actually.

Montepulciano

Street in Pienza

Pienza

5.Salerno a Lovely Surprise

After doing the famous Amalfi Coast we relaxed in Salerno.We had done absolute zero research on Salerno and hence it became a sweet surprise.Firstly we stayed in a Port facing room in the apartment of an Old Couple who were the sweetest.The view of Yatchs, Ships and the Sea was so cool and the sound of Seagulls made it all so unforgettable..

View from My Window!

The old town of Salerno has also so much to offer.Because it is less touristy we saw Italians in their weekend bests enjoying the promenade and in the shopping streets of the old town .I got two pairs of Italian Shoes here, probably that’s why it is also a highlight:)

The Cathedral was hosting a music performance by different schools and it was open for all to visit, which we did.Supernice!

Also we had a very authentic Atypical but Gourmet dining experience in Cicirinella,Salerno.A definite recommendation, but book your table in advance here.

6.Lecce-For Art,Music and Culture

For a few nights we made the historic centre of Lecce our Basecamp to explore the Southern Puglia region. The Old town of Lecce is beautiful and we liked it because of it’s eclectic mix of Working Artists, University Students, Monks,Nuns and Musicians.

We were happy to catch up with the Lecce music scene too with the band “Almoraima”.

It just had a good feel to it and people peacefully were having a great time.

7.Puglia Coastal Routes

This Mediterranean coastline is endless with it’s Azure water.We drove down from Lecce to Leuca and had the best time.We hopped from town to town dipping in the Azure waters, swimming,relaxing on the rocks and savouring seafood.

The halts on the route we took and recommend is Porto Badisco- Castro Marina – Tricase Marina – Marina Di Novaglie – Il Ciolo (the bridge that’s famous for jumps, though I just swam underneath!) and Pescoluse (Maldive del salento).Just Fab!

Castro Marina

Porto Badisco

Ciolo

Pescoluse

8.Staying in a Trulli

Ah!The truly magnificent experience ever.We stayed in a 200 yrs old Trulli in the fairy tale “Itria Valley” of Italy right outside Alberobello. This Trulli was our home for four days.I felt like a wealthy farmer of medieval times.I had an underground room to myself which the owners have converted in to a Museo, an underground cellar which was so cold I could imagine it acting like a big natural refrigerator of those times and a room in the air practically, basically a wooden loft with a wooden ladder.I love restoring things so this was such a delight.

The host left us unlimited table wines to savour and other goodies.Here we went to the local market, cooked food and basically relaxed as if we were locals.

9.Walking the lanes of Old Towns of Puglia

You pick any town in Puglia region you will like it for it’s stone washed buildings, the sea view,harbor and marinas.We visited so many towns and it ‘s hard to choose the best but I am going to # some so you can google and pick yours.Just wander and get lost in these towns, you will love it.

Otranto

Polignano a Mare

Trullo-Alberobello!

Ostuni

Street in Martina Franca

#Otranto #Polignanoamare #Ostuni #Alberobello #Locorotondo #gallipoli #Martinafranca

10.Binging Out in Italy

Now Italian Cuisine is every kids favourite and we were absolute childlike in eating our Pizzas and Gelatos for sure.We ate absolute amazing pizzas but our favourite Pizza was at La Pia in La Spezia and it was right next to our bnb.

You will see locals and tourists queuing up.We saw locals ordering a slice of Pizza with Farinata (a local chickpea pancake) and we did the same.But the Slice was so good that we then ordered a full size Pizza (that just melts in your mouth) and we also went there the next day and the day after:)

I am also going to pick L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele for our Pizza journey in Naples for the sheer theatre of it.First you get a slip with your queue number, ours was 84 so imagine we had 83 tables before us, practically a wait of 1hr:30mins, but the best part is you have people from around the world waiting outside for that one bite of the legendary “Margherita Pizza” or “Marinara Pizza “(my pick is the Margherita )and it is more like a celebration.Due to the crazy waiting line, we saw people having beers,gelatos and even pizza from another shop before they entered to have the legendary one.haha!!

Btw,you won’t believe where I had the third best Pizza.It’s the authentic Neapolitan Pizza I made myself..haha..! We did a cooking class with Tonino Academy in Naples and the Pizza we made was so soft and yum and I just couldn’t believe that I could make such a yum tum Pizza:)

My coffee cravings was satisfied in many cafes where I would have a shot of cafe macchiato and I like to have it with fresh orange juice which may sound weird but it’s my fav pair.

In the land of Gelato it’s difficult to pick one right ? but I think we know our favourite and it’s at Perche No! in Florence.In midst of the historic centre this melt in your mouth Gelato was the sweetest experience ever.We highly recommend it because you cannot go to Florence and not have Perche No! gelato.You just have to.

On that sweet note, Go Missing!

Ciao!!

#italy #puglia #tuscany #gelato #pizza #rollinghiils #cinqueterre #trulli #salerno #lecce #castlemuzio #italytravel #traveleurope #europe #siena #florence #travelaroundtheworld #italianholiday #italyroadtrip #italymustdo #italythingstodo #travelitaly #holidayinitaly #italybucketlist #europebucketlist #thingsdotoinitaly #pugliaregion #chianti #tuscanyroadtrip #trulli #trullo #tuscanvillages #cinqueterrehiking #cretesenesi #valdorcia #sanquirico

Ps:-All pictures are clicked by us!!Except the Riomaggiore Sunset(taken from Google) as our Camera acted up a little that time.

Ciao!! x

My Top 10 Italian Holiday Experiences Italy,the 5th most visited country in the world is where I went missing this summers with my partner #oldmonk and I come back with a bag full of happy memories.To add anything to already existing travel articles and data about Italy on the Internet can be difficult as there is no dearth to it, so I will just write about what we enjoyed the most and what you can add in your bucket list if it matched your wavelength:)

0 notes

epistolizer · 6 years

Text

Hit & Run Commentary #111

A missionary said that Christians ought to share the Gospel with those that do not look like them. But shouldn’t the Christian also be willing to share the Gospel with those that DO look like them, even if this includes White and Americans? If missiological theory now holds that it is often best to let the natives reach out to other natives if at all possible, why should Whites and Americans be chastised if they are most comfortable with reaching out to other Whites and Americans?

A missionary praised a letter by Adoniram Judson to his prospective father in law essentially berating him that he was a bad Christian if he did not consent to surrender his daughter to a man readily admitting he was unfit to provide for her in the name of missionary outreach. That’s certainly a ballsy approach to persuade a father to grant the hand of his daughter in marriage.

Reflecting on a missionary’s admonition on the need to genuinely respect Muslims, a pastor confided that in public he is careful not to directly look at Muslim women for fear of offending their high moral standards. First, if Muslim women do not want to be looked at, they can return to their excrement pile homelands. This is America. If you are a woman and you don’t even want to be looked at, don’t come here. Given that where many of these women come from they can pretty much be raped if caught in public unaccompanied by a male family member, one would think simply being looked at would be a welcomed improvement. If Americans are obligated to pander to this extent to the Islamist adversary, this global worldview war is already lost. What other defeatist postures are Christians obligated to assume? Are believers in Bible Belt states such as North Carolina now expected to eliminate their thriving pork barbecue culture?

Because of the wave of a missionary’s hand, the congregation of a Baptist church where the pastor once regularly went out of his way to emphasize what a wretched religion Islam is is now harping how believers are obligated to show “genuine” respect to Muslims such as at least hearing out what the Koran has to say. One must ask will such an open approach now be extended to Catholics, science fiction enthusiasts, and women that wear pants?

If ever criticized in Independent Baptist circles for my interest in science fiction and comics, I might just ask how is this different than the “genuine” respect and interest we are now obligated to manifest on behalf of Muslims. If I was any good at outstretching my hand and expecting something to be placed into it, I should have claimed I need funds for outreach to ComiCon.

Of Adoniram Judson, he and his first wife lost their first child through miscarriage, their second child eight months after his birth, and their third child sixth months after his first wife’s death. Of the 13 children he sired, only six survived. Given that these deaths were likely attributable to the squalor endemic to the heathen world, though he is worthy of praise as a missionary, is anyone going to have the courage to point out that he was a lousy husband and father?

Baptist functionary Paige Patterson ahas been castigated for remarks suggesting that teen boys often display an enthusiastic appreciation for female physical attributes. If these marms are eager to chastise men for determining a woman’s worth based on the size of her measurements going to be as eager in disabusing the young women that the value of a man is determined by the size of his bank account or the horsepower of the automobile that he drives?

Because the thoroughfare is named after the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis Highway in Northern Virginia is slated to be renamed Richmond Highway. But since Richmond was also the capital of the Confederacy, shouldn’t that name itself also be just as offensive? If we are to be consistent, shouldn’t the entire city of Richmond be “renditioned” in a manner similar to that which occurs on the USA drama “Colony” in order to remove this geographical “trigger”?

A 104 year old scientist who technically wasn’t terminally ill killed himself at a Swiss suicide clinic. Is there no reason he couldn’t have waited a few days

Technically, isn’t the Captain Marvel being foisted upon the movie going public in the upcoming film actually just Ms. Marvel from the comics before these periodicals become hyper-political?

Regarding this level of abuse that Southern Baptist functionary Paige Patterson is alleged to have endorsed. Does that consist of actual hitting or is this merely of a man simply articulating disagreement with a woman and raising his voice in reply to a voice that was first raised at him? Do these Dana Carvey-style good church women intend to say anything about the increasing number of women that mistreat and disrespect men as well?

If professional sports teams can ban fans living outside of certain zip codes from purchasing play off tickets or from wearing the paraphernalia of the visiting team as in the case of the NHL playoffs, why should we give a flip when these enterprises cry a river about decreasing attendance at these high priced competitions? If people want to be berated and ordered about in a surly manner, they can just go to the DMV.

So will authoritarian progressives feigning opposition to human oppression to the extent that all vestiges of the Confederacy from statues to road names must be obliterated from public consciousness toss hissy fits as vehement against the erection of an 18 feet tall Karl Marx statue paid for by the Red Chinese in his hometown of Trier, Germany to celebrate the bicentennial of the deadbeat philosopher?

In a tweet, Maxine Waters quipped, “How many diet Cokes did Trump consume while he gulped and waited for the defeat of his pedophile candidate?” How is Trump’s consumption of diet soda any more outrageous than those in her preferred constituency known for their proclivity for gape soda? Roy Moore might have dated a few a bit young for his age. But unlike many in the community this particular legislator claims to represent, at least Moore did not leave these gals with a litter of out of wedlock children in his wake.

If it is unacceptable irrespective of what statutory law allows for 30 year olds to date 18 year olds because such young minds are impressionable and easy to manipulate into compliance, why is it acceptable to manipulate those of that age into giving their lives in their country’s wars? Is not the government making promises of education and enlistment bonuses not much different than a man promising to lavish nice things upon a compliant young woman?

It is insisted that Confederate statues should only be allowed to exist if these memorials are placed in an historical context. That means they must be exhibited in a way so as to maximize the amount of White guilt elicited. So if exacting nitpicky detail is the ultimate goal, will additions be made to the Martin Luther KIng memorial pointing out that he fooled around on his wife, denied a number of fundamental Christians doctrines, and that he received support from a number of avowed Communists likely themselves at the behest of the Soviet Union? Or is this one of those instances where we are supposed to overlook Russian meddling in American affairs but are expected to react as if it is the opening scene from Patrick Swayze’s version of Red Dawn if subversive operatives are accused of conducting under the table discussions with Trump administration representatives?

Outrage erupted when Ben Carson observed that a good measure of poverty is actually a mindset. Are those jacked out of shape that this is a criticism of individuals or that government complicity in the welfare racket has been exposed.? This mental shackling has ensnared nearly all of us to some degree. When considering an undertaking or an enterprise, often thoughts no longer dwell upon do I possess the skill need to succeed or what will happen if the idea we think is so great turns out to be a flop. Rather, we calculate is it even worth the effort given the penalties likely to be incurred for failing to comply with with the intricacies of complex taxing regulations or even the violence one is likely to incur for criticizing ideas contrary to the orthodoxies of entrenched elites.

Homeschool activist Kevin Swanson suggests avoiding the public library because of books on the shelves that promote the homosexual agenda rather than simply avoiding those books. Among certain fundamentalist sects, attendance at places such as amusement parks, beaches, and the cinema are also forbidden. Children probably shouldn’t visit museums either because their impressionable minds might be exposed to evolution. Extending this logic a bit further, one supposes these youngsters should not be allowed to go to the supermarket either because they might catch a glimpse of the condom display or the heaving bosoms of the tramps on the covers of Cosmo magazine or those trashy paperback romances. So when is the homeschool child ever allowed to leave the house? Even if they aren’t allowed to date, won’t their mail order brides be exposed to assorted carnal evils racing through the airport on their way to the cordoned off family compound? If those from this Evangelical sociological subgrouping are to live lives this sheltered or separated, on what grounds do such thoroughgoing Protestants gripe about cloistered monks and nuns?

Mitt Romney has condemned the selection of Robert Jeffress to offer the opening prayer of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem on the grounds that the Baptist minister is a religious bigot. So what Romney is saying is that it is unacceptable for someone to articulate why they are reluctant over religious grounds to vote for a candidate running for elected office but perfectly acceptable to exclude that individual from a public event over refusal to embrace religious universalism. Technically, Romney is not much different then philosophically from the Romans that tossed Christians to lions in the gladiatorial arena. If dedicated temple Mormons like Mitt Romney really do believe no religion is better than any other with all sincerely held paths leading the individual to an eternity with God in Heaven, why does his sect spend so much time canvassing the neighborhoods of the world with missionaries many of whom have been strongarmed pretty much into this service taken away from their families?

President Trump is being criticized for acknowledging the hero in the Waffle House mass casualty incident three weeks after the fact. Had Trump thanked the individual at the time, the President would be accused of being a media whore having to interject himself into the story.

By Frederick Meekins

0 notes