Oh, I suppose I could post the April reading report. It will be short, because I don't have enough energy to go on and on. but THREE great books this month, which is like manna from heaven, don't you think? I can't even remember the last time I read three good books in one month.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Well, of course I've heard of her. But I'd never read anything by her. This is one amazing book. It's received so much press I probably don't have to say much about it, but briefly, it's the chronicle of the year following her husband's unexpected death. She is just ferociously intelligent, you can see it in every paragraph. And the writing is so clean and sharp it's like a razor. It's a wonderful read, even though her grief shadows every page. Highly recommended. the new "best book so far this year."
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Another amazing book. It's about a young boy whose father was killed at the Top of the World restaurant on 9/11. Foer's great achievement is the voice of the boy, Oskar-- it almost echoes in your head, it's so clear and distinctive. You're almost relieved when he (briefly) moves to a different narrator. but it (the narrative voice) starts to falter and drag a bit toward the end. Otherwise it would have knocked the previous entry out of the "best book so far this year" spot. The plot is very carefully worked out, though, I thought it ended well-- which doesn't always happen, as previously discussed.
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. Very moving and inspiring account of a former mountain climber's determination to build schools in Central Asia. I actually still have about 50 pages to go, but it's a great read, very absorbing.
and that's all for now.
Aunt BeaN
Monday, April 30, 2007
It has been quite a long time since I posted, and it's for a very good reason: nothing to say. I make it one of my goals not to bore you to death. I think I'm going through my midlife crisis. Will let you know when I get out the other side. I thought I was almost there this weekend, but it has returned in force today, so boring-ness abounds.
Love and kisses,
The Menopausal BeaN
(except it might only be PERI menopause, which is reason enough for a week-long pout if you ask me)
Love and kisses,
The Menopausal BeaN
(except it might only be PERI menopause, which is reason enough for a week-long pout if you ask me)
Monday, April 09, 2007
If you're at all a fan of classical music, you should check out the Washington Post article about Joshua Bell playing incognito in the subway in D.C. Try this link, I don't know how long it will work. Joshua Bell is one of the greatest violinists in the world, and he plays on a priceless Stradivarius. The Post convinced him to play for about 45 minutes unannounced at the entrance to the L'Enfant Plaza subway stop. You'll have to read the article to find out what happened, but one of the main points is how so many of us are too busy to appreciate beauty. I wonder which group I would have been in-- the ones who hurried on by, raising their voices on their cell phones to be heard above the music, or the ones who stopped to listen. I think, I'm sad to say, that it would depend on the day. There would be days where I would rush right on because I was late for something "important." But there would be days when I would stop. I've stopped for lesser musicians than that, I know. I remember once on a subway in-- let's see, it must have been D.C. because that's the only true subway I've been on in the past four years-- there was a guitar player playing. He probably wasn't a professional-level player, I'm not enough of an aficionado to know, but he was good enough that it sounded heavenly in the echoing subway chamber. We were tourists, with time on our hands, so we stopped to listen for awhile. But there are plenty of times when I'm late for something and anything that stands in my way is just a nuisance. And that's a shame.
Aunt BeaN
Aunt BeaN
Saturday, April 07, 2007
The prom (again) now that it's over
Well, she looked gorgeous and the dress fit and the shoes matched. Her date looked handsome in his rented tux. They had a great time. I never experienced a high school dance as anything but torture, although a torture I would have been heartbroken to miss. So it came as a great surprise to me that they were having so much fun they didn't want to leave when it was over at midnight. So much fun they couldn't be bothered with calling home to check in. So much fun they couldn't be bothered to get home by 12:30 (which was their curfew). I had gone on to bed and my spouse was waiting up, or it might have gone a little differently. But finally at 1:15 she got home, safely, which is the main thing, of course, but still-- 45 minutes late. We didn't find out until the next day that she had also stranded a friend that she was supposed to drive home, and that his parents received a call at 2 a.m. to come pick him up because he didn't have a ride.
Oh, it was a lovely experience. We're not used to this. It was not good.
She had a variety of school things scheduled over the next week and weekend that she couldn't miss, so she ended up being grounded this weekend. She doesn't like being grounded. She keeps asking if she can go do this or that thing, some of which we've said yes to, but to anything in the evening we've said no. On the plus side, she stayed home for an entire evening (on a weekend!) and worked on her homework. It was nice to see her that much. On the minus side, it's made us all into real grumps.
the continuing saga.
Aunt (Mom) BeaN
Oh, it was a lovely experience. We're not used to this. It was not good.
She had a variety of school things scheduled over the next week and weekend that she couldn't miss, so she ended up being grounded this weekend. She doesn't like being grounded. She keeps asking if she can go do this or that thing, some of which we've said yes to, but to anything in the evening we've said no. On the plus side, she stayed home for an entire evening (on a weekend!) and worked on her homework. It was nice to see her that much. On the minus side, it's made us all into real grumps.
the continuing saga.
Aunt (Mom) BeaN
atheism, the new religion
In the last couple of months, I've listened to interviews with controversial atheists Sam Harris (once) and Richard Dawkins (twice), and also read the recent column Mr. Harris syndicated nationally. I haven't read their books, though I do plan on reading The End of Faith, which has been sitting on my shelf for a year now. I'm mainly responding to Harris. Richard Dawkins strikes me as someone who enjoys fanning the flames, being at the center of a storm of controversy -- someone who relishes stirring things up. I just don't have a lot of energy for that. His arguments seem to me to be as much about getting his fifteen minutes of fame as anything else. But while that element is present in Mr. Harris's arguments, I find them much more interesting and thought provoking.
At the heart of both Mr. Harris's and Mr. Dawkins' argument is a firm belief that fundamentalism is the true face of religious belief. Mr. Harris mostly pokes fun at religious moderates; he claims that theologically they are on shaky ground compared to their fundamentalist counterparts. Mr. Dawkins claims that religious moderates make extremism possible, by mainstreaming religious beliefs that are centuries out of date. But who says? They have no way to back that up, it's just their opinion about the religious experience. And it has the added bonus of making their argument 100% easier-- then they only have to respond to the extremists.
At the heart of both Mr. Harris's and Mr. Dawkins' argument is a firm belief that fundamentalism is the true face of religious belief. Mr. Harris mostly pokes fun at religious moderates; he claims that theologically they are on shaky ground compared to their fundamentalist counterparts. Mr. Dawkins claims that religious moderates make extremism possible, by mainstreaming religious beliefs that are centuries out of date. But who says? They have no way to back that up, it's just their opinion about the religious experience. And it has the added bonus of making their argument 100% easier-- then they only have to respond to the extremists.
In short, at the same time that they criticize the fundamentalist mindset, they insist that fundamentalists have the only correct way to experience religion. The millions of us out here who have religious beliefs but don't share fundamentalism's strict (biased) interpretation of some ancient text are just dismissed with a jibe about "believing what we want to believe." It's easy to set up the terms of your argument and then insist that that is the only way the discussion can be conducted. Good job, guys. But it ignores the truth of the experience of millions of people on the planet who have deeply-held religious beliefs that are based on compassion and tolerance.
never finished this one but I'm posting it anyway.
never finished this one but I'm posting it anyway.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Reading Report-Feb/March
First up: Wintersmith, the third in Terry Pratchett's young adult series about 13-year-old apprentice witch Tiffany Aching. I love this series. Warning, though: Pratchett has an off-kilter, rowdy sense of humor that won't appeal to the refined. Anyway. In a fit of autumn exuberance, Tiffany jumps into the ritual dance that heralds the end of summer. The Wintersmith, an immortal being who is in charge of creating snowflakes, icicles, and winter storms, falls for Tiffany like a stone. All manner of havoc ensues: Tiffany-shaped snowflakes begin to fall, ice crystal roses appear in her garden, and so on. The Feegles, little blue men who are sworn to protect Tiffany but mainly get in the way, do their, um, best to help Tiffany out. If you're a fan of the series, you won't be disappointed.
Next up: Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilchrist. It's an autobiographical account of the author's experiences in the year after her very painful, protracted divorce was finalized. She spends four months in Italy learning to enjoy life again; four months in India at an ashram; and then four months in Bali, most of which (it seemed) was spent falling in love. You all know I love a good spritual autobiography, which this might have been. But the introduction, before she leaves on her trip, and the four months in Italy are easily the high point of the book. I was still pretty absorbed during her trip to India, but her time in Bali didn't do much for me at all. It is the nature of falling in love to be goo-ily sentimental, I guess, but in this instance it struck me as hopelessly naive. I wonder if they are still together. It's sort of like The Sound of Music in a way-- a person with a strong religious calling falls in love with someone older and somewhat mysterious and allows herself to be swept off her feet. That's not a great analogy, but the sentimentalism is definitely there. It's an interesting book, and I was glued to it for about the first half, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it.
Then I re-read Thirteenth Tale, reviewed previously. On second reading, I discovered it to be very different book than I was expecting the first time through. It's still a terrific book, probably the best one I'll read this year (I know it's early yet, but last year's best book, Shadow of the Wind, I read in January, so I'll go out on a limb here.) But it's not the one I wanted it to be, and that would have been one of the best books I'd read ever. I can't say anymore without ruining the plot twist at the end, so I'll just leave it at that. I will forever be grateful to Ms. Satterfield, though, for the madman in the attic. a touch of genius.
And re-reading that prompted me to re-read Jane Eyre. I love Jane Eyre. It's such a great book. But I hadn't read it in 20 years, and as you might expect, reading it through again at age 45 was a little different than reading it as a 24-year-old grad student. I remember the first time I read it, as an undergrad at age 19, our professor talked about how in Victorian soceity, the only way Bronte could imagine a marriage between equals was to maim and blind the man. We hissed and booed and objected that she was ignoring the power of true love. But you know, now that I'm a cynical middle-aged grump, I really think she's right. Jane had virtually no choices at any point in the novel, certainly no good ones. When she finds it necessary to flee, she must literally throw herself on the mercy of strangers to avoid starvation. I don't think I was aware when I was younger how extraordinarily lucky she was to happen upon Thornfield Hall for her first job as a governess, and then the Rivers, when she was destitute. But it still all works together. And it still has one of the greatest lines in all of British literature: "Reader, I married him." Which I really, really wanted to read at the end of the 13th tale.
Anyway. That's it for now. I may just re-read Wuthering Heights while I'm on a roll here. Although the characters in the 13th tale often refer to Jane Eyre, it really has more in common with Wuthering Heights than with JE.
ACK. This has gone on way too long.
The prom dress is STILL NOT HERE. KEEP OBLATING.
OK, I just looked it up, that's not really a word but you get the idea.
:-)
AB
Next up: Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilchrist. It's an autobiographical account of the author's experiences in the year after her very painful, protracted divorce was finalized. She spends four months in Italy learning to enjoy life again; four months in India at an ashram; and then four months in Bali, most of which (it seemed) was spent falling in love. You all know I love a good spritual autobiography, which this might have been. But the introduction, before she leaves on her trip, and the four months in Italy are easily the high point of the book. I was still pretty absorbed during her trip to India, but her time in Bali didn't do much for me at all. It is the nature of falling in love to be goo-ily sentimental, I guess, but in this instance it struck me as hopelessly naive. I wonder if they are still together. It's sort of like The Sound of Music in a way-- a person with a strong religious calling falls in love with someone older and somewhat mysterious and allows herself to be swept off her feet. That's not a great analogy, but the sentimentalism is definitely there. It's an interesting book, and I was glued to it for about the first half, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it.
Then I re-read Thirteenth Tale, reviewed previously. On second reading, I discovered it to be very different book than I was expecting the first time through. It's still a terrific book, probably the best one I'll read this year (I know it's early yet, but last year's best book, Shadow of the Wind, I read in January, so I'll go out on a limb here.) But it's not the one I wanted it to be, and that would have been one of the best books I'd read ever. I can't say anymore without ruining the plot twist at the end, so I'll just leave it at that. I will forever be grateful to Ms. Satterfield, though, for the madman in the attic. a touch of genius.
And re-reading that prompted me to re-read Jane Eyre. I love Jane Eyre. It's such a great book. But I hadn't read it in 20 years, and as you might expect, reading it through again at age 45 was a little different than reading it as a 24-year-old grad student. I remember the first time I read it, as an undergrad at age 19, our professor talked about how in Victorian soceity, the only way Bronte could imagine a marriage between equals was to maim and blind the man. We hissed and booed and objected that she was ignoring the power of true love. But you know, now that I'm a cynical middle-aged grump, I really think she's right. Jane had virtually no choices at any point in the novel, certainly no good ones. When she finds it necessary to flee, she must literally throw herself on the mercy of strangers to avoid starvation. I don't think I was aware when I was younger how extraordinarily lucky she was to happen upon Thornfield Hall for her first job as a governess, and then the Rivers, when she was destitute. But it still all works together. And it still has one of the greatest lines in all of British literature: "Reader, I married him." Which I really, really wanted to read at the end of the 13th tale.
Anyway. That's it for now. I may just re-read Wuthering Heights while I'm on a roll here. Although the characters in the 13th tale often refer to Jane Eyre, it really has more in common with Wuthering Heights than with JE.
ACK. This has gone on way too long.
The prom dress is STILL NOT HERE. KEEP OBLATING.
OK, I just looked it up, that's not really a word but you get the idea.
:-)
AB
Thursday, March 08, 2007
you knew someone had tried this, right?
from the Velcro website :
In Upstate New York, a radio station held a contest for the best use of VELCRO® brand products. A class of third graders won by playing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" by opening and closing their shoes.
In Upstate New York, a radio station held a contest for the best use of VELCRO® brand products. A class of third graders won by playing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" by opening and closing their shoes.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Shopping for prom dresses
I'm tempted to just stop right there, with the title. Because anyone who has ever gone shopping for a prom dress (redundant: with a teenage girl) will know exactly what I'm going to say without me having to type another word. There's your daughter, with stars in her eyes, and every nerve vibrating with excitement for her first prom. She wants it to be perfect. And then there's you. The one with the budget. The one who knows that even the most expensive dress will not guarantee the perfect evening. The one who knows that even the most perfect prom night ever will not end up being the highlight of her life (god help us if it does). And the one who already knows she will pay more than she can justify (on any level) for this dress, because if she doesn't, the evening will be a disaster before it even starts.
As my friend Susan said, sometimes you just have to shell out.
sigh.
Aunt BeaN
As my friend Susan said, sometimes you just have to shell out.
sigh.
Aunt BeaN
Thursday, March 01, 2007
There've been plenty of opinions about movies ("films") posted in the last few days in the wake of the Oscars on Sunday night. I didn't watch the Oscars this year because I hadn't seen a single one of the pictures that were up for major awards. (Of course, I had seen the ones that were up for best animated picture, because I have kids and we regard any excuse to have a family night out as cause for celebration). But anyway. back to the topic.
Several opinions I've read complain that no one went to see the "good" movies this year-- I read in one article that the combined audience for all five of the best picture nominees was around 38 million, which is pretty dang low. I'm among the ones that stayed home, and I'll tell you why. Two of them I did want to see (Dreamgirls and The Queen), but they left our area before we had a chance to get to the theater. The others I had no desire to see. They seemed to me to be part of a general trend in movies toward the violent and sordid, a trend which has been around for years and years, but which has come in recent years to dominate the movies which receive critical acclaim. For a movie to be taken seriously as "art," it seems, it has to be about violence, corruption, hypocrisy, child abuse, spousal abuse, addiction, and anything else that is awful about human beings. This is what movies should do, the opinion seems to be; they should rub our noses in our worst selves.
I get the point, and it's a good point. But my point is that I don't like to watch movies ("films") like that. I feel like I see enough human awful-ness around me every day. If I go to a movie, I just want to be entertained. I would try and think up a defense for this, but I don't think there is one. I'm totally lame, but at least I know it.
Sign me:
Shallow BeaN
Several opinions I've read complain that no one went to see the "good" movies this year-- I read in one article that the combined audience for all five of the best picture nominees was around 38 million, which is pretty dang low. I'm among the ones that stayed home, and I'll tell you why. Two of them I did want to see (Dreamgirls and The Queen), but they left our area before we had a chance to get to the theater. The others I had no desire to see. They seemed to me to be part of a general trend in movies toward the violent and sordid, a trend which has been around for years and years, but which has come in recent years to dominate the movies which receive critical acclaim. For a movie to be taken seriously as "art," it seems, it has to be about violence, corruption, hypocrisy, child abuse, spousal abuse, addiction, and anything else that is awful about human beings. This is what movies should do, the opinion seems to be; they should rub our noses in our worst selves.
I get the point, and it's a good point. But my point is that I don't like to watch movies ("films") like that. I feel like I see enough human awful-ness around me every day. If I go to a movie, I just want to be entertained. I would try and think up a defense for this, but I don't think there is one. I'm totally lame, but at least I know it.
Sign me:
Shallow BeaN
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
I've been thinking a lot more about being aspergers-ish. Actually, nearly all the posts in the 2nd edition of Aunt BeaN's blog were on this topic, which is why I didn't save them-- they seemed a lesson in how to bore my gentle readers to death. But I'm still thinking about it, so here's another one. Apologies in advance for being self-absorbed.
I've always thought of myself as introverted. I could put in a lengthy list of examples, but I probably don't need to convince anybody. The new thing I've been noticing recently, though, has more to do with how other people are-- i.e., how different I am from other people, and how the ways I am different confuse other people. For example. I consider someone a dear friend if we get together once every 3-4 weeks and have a deep and/or wide-ranging conversation about what's going on in our lives, what we've been reading, politics, whatever. What I'm discovering is that other people consider that to be an acquaintance. Their close friends are the ones they talk to several times a week, sometimes every day. Sometimes several times a day.
Right.
Just thinking about talking to the same person more than once a week stresses me out. What would we talk about? The things that change on a day-to-day basis are things that aren't worth talking about, in my opinion-- with some obvious exceptions, of course, like a friend who is going through a particularly trying time or illness. But I'm noticing as I watch other people, especially women, that this is how they connect. They talk to each other about the little mundane details of their lives. The new recipe I tried last night, my aunt is in the hospital again, one of the kids has a cold, I got a new rug for the hallway.......... OH! I get it!
But I can't DO it. I can't bring myself to talk about little everyday things that seem boring and banal to me. But other people do it all the time. I listen to them. I even like listening to them, as long as it doesn't go on for an hour and they don't expect me to respond in kind. But when it comes my turn to say something, I just kind of sit there and STARE at them, like NOW WHAT? Because I honestly can't think of a thing to say.
The complication of this that I've become aware of recently is that many of my friends (whom I consider to be very good friends) think that I must be better friends with someone else, because I don't talk to them very often. My friend at church thinks I'm better friends with the women in my neighborhood, because I only see her once a month or so. My friends in our neighborhood think I must be better friends with the women at work because otherwise I would call more often. My friends at work think I must not be interested in being friends with them because I never call them outside of work. (I won't presume to guess what the women in my women's group think since they might actually read this.) When the truth is that just adding up the once a month (or so) that I've talked to each of these women (and every day to the women at work) makes me feel so overwhelmed socially that I just want to go hide somewhere for a week not talk to anybody.
I can't figure out what to do about this. I've considered making an announcement: "You know, I'm a really introverted person, so if I don't call, it doesn't have anything to do with you, it's just me. But if you ever need to talk about some really big issue, I'll be right there." But I don't think that's going to help. Because the truth is that the pre-requisite for getting called for the really big issues is that you were there for all the little ones, too. In other words, I don't know how to be a good friend, in a way that other people see as being a good friend.
The odd thing, though, is that on a number of occasions, I've been sitting in a group of women, all chattering away, and I'm the only one that notices that someone's feelings have been hurt. Or I'll be the one that remembers some little thing someone said a couple of months earlier. It's not that I'm heartless or insensitive, or at least not usually. It's just that I'm not good at "social reciprocity," which is the technical term for what normal people do with their friends, as opposed to doofuses like me. Which is why I have a lot in common with the asperger's folks, even though I'm a lot different, too.
nuff said.
Aunt BeaN
who is off to hide in a closet somewhere
I've always thought of myself as introverted. I could put in a lengthy list of examples, but I probably don't need to convince anybody. The new thing I've been noticing recently, though, has more to do with how other people are-- i.e., how different I am from other people, and how the ways I am different confuse other people. For example. I consider someone a dear friend if we get together once every 3-4 weeks and have a deep and/or wide-ranging conversation about what's going on in our lives, what we've been reading, politics, whatever. What I'm discovering is that other people consider that to be an acquaintance. Their close friends are the ones they talk to several times a week, sometimes every day. Sometimes several times a day.
Right.
Just thinking about talking to the same person more than once a week stresses me out. What would we talk about? The things that change on a day-to-day basis are things that aren't worth talking about, in my opinion-- with some obvious exceptions, of course, like a friend who is going through a particularly trying time or illness. But I'm noticing as I watch other people, especially women, that this is how they connect. They talk to each other about the little mundane details of their lives. The new recipe I tried last night, my aunt is in the hospital again, one of the kids has a cold, I got a new rug for the hallway.......... OH! I get it!
But I can't DO it. I can't bring myself to talk about little everyday things that seem boring and banal to me. But other people do it all the time. I listen to them. I even like listening to them, as long as it doesn't go on for an hour and they don't expect me to respond in kind. But when it comes my turn to say something, I just kind of sit there and STARE at them, like NOW WHAT? Because I honestly can't think of a thing to say.
The complication of this that I've become aware of recently is that many of my friends (whom I consider to be very good friends) think that I must be better friends with someone else, because I don't talk to them very often. My friend at church thinks I'm better friends with the women in my neighborhood, because I only see her once a month or so. My friends in our neighborhood think I must be better friends with the women at work because otherwise I would call more often. My friends at work think I must not be interested in being friends with them because I never call them outside of work. (I won't presume to guess what the women in my women's group think since they might actually read this.) When the truth is that just adding up the once a month (or so) that I've talked to each of these women (and every day to the women at work) makes me feel so overwhelmed socially that I just want to go hide somewhere for a week not talk to anybody.
I can't figure out what to do about this. I've considered making an announcement: "You know, I'm a really introverted person, so if I don't call, it doesn't have anything to do with you, it's just me. But if you ever need to talk about some really big issue, I'll be right there." But I don't think that's going to help. Because the truth is that the pre-requisite for getting called for the really big issues is that you were there for all the little ones, too. In other words, I don't know how to be a good friend, in a way that other people see as being a good friend.
The odd thing, though, is that on a number of occasions, I've been sitting in a group of women, all chattering away, and I'm the only one that notices that someone's feelings have been hurt. Or I'll be the one that remembers some little thing someone said a couple of months earlier. It's not that I'm heartless or insensitive, or at least not usually. It's just that I'm not good at "social reciprocity," which is the technical term for what normal people do with their friends, as opposed to doofuses like me. Which is why I have a lot in common with the asperger's folks, even though I'm a lot different, too.
nuff said.
Aunt BeaN
who is off to hide in a closet somewhere
Monday, February 12, 2007
You know, another problem with trying to discuss religion these days is that everyone is so damn touchy about it. It's nearly impossible to have a reasoned, intelligent discussion with someone about their beliefs (or the things they don't believe)-- a discussion in which you might learn something and/or change your own ideas based on contact with new information-- because as soon as you bring up religion and/or spirituality, you're touching on an issue where people's minds are already made up-- including atheists. I've read some stuff written by atheists recently that is every bit as adamant and closed-minded as fundamentalism. I think of Richard Dawkins as an fundamentalist atheist. Wait! let's not get off on that topic.
anyway. I'm still thinking about The Secret but anticipating before even typing out my thoughts that this might be somewhat controversial. So, let's try making it into a fable.
Imagine that we live in an alternate universe. A universe where it is a firmly established fact that your thoughts and the thoughts of everyone around you create the reality we all inhabit. You think about something you want and that something appears in your life. BUT the thoughts of everyone around you do the same thing, and although the country where we live in this alternate universe is big and diverse, the resources which produce these "thought manifestations" are limited to a reasonable amount per person--plenty for health and happiness, but not enough for fabulous wealth. Let's further imagine that the ability to manifest your thoughts is a learned skill, just like riding a bike or baking a cake. In this alternate universe, given these circumstances, would you as a thinker/manifester (is that a word?) have an ethical responsibility to not manifest more than your fair share of the planet's resources? If you have an innate gift for manifesting your thoughts (i.e., you're better at it than your neighbors), should you scale back on what you "could" manifest out of deference to the needs of those around you? should you be aware that you might strip the planet raw? what happens if you are visualizing living in a peaceful, quiet neighborhood where you can meditate on your back porch every morning, but your neighbor is visualizing raising two dozen chickens, so they can have free-range, naturally nested eggs every morning for breakfast? whose visualization is going to "win"?
In this universe, it seems to me that the most important spiritual task would be to learn enough about yourself to know what you need to support a healthy, creative, and useful life. And even more importantly: how to be content with that. Rather than learning how to manifest the ultimate most that you possibly could.
Do you see my point?
Back in our universe, different bits of this will be problematic to different people. The skeptics, of course, think the whole "thoughts create reality" idea is just a clever ruse to get people to pay big bucks to the infomercial folks. Theist types will be bugged that you don't need God in this scenario. The New Age folks would disagree that there are only finite resources: they seem to believe that the universe has unlimited ability to meet all our desires, and there really is enough for everybody to have everything they want.
But even given all that (none of which I can really argue with, because I don't really know the answer to any of this and maybe they're right)-- I still think my alternate universe makes a point. Because just imagine a universe in which every one can manifest exactly what they're thinking but they are competing for limited resources with which to do it. So you would have some people who have stronger personalities who would charge ahead and get whatever they want; you'd have people who wanted to make sure everyone else got what they wanted and so ended up with nothing; you'd have people who live in the country to the (um, let's say) west of here who are resource poor, so they don't have nearly as much as we do; you have people in the country to the (say) east of here who don't really care about manifesting their thoughts, so the people in our country feel justified in using their resources to get what they want. IN SHORT, you'd have our world.
Which is why I think that if you ever hear anyone say, All you have to do to have everything you ever wanted is just..... (insert anything here) you should run fast and far in the opposite direction. If you're teaching this stuff, you have a responsibility to teach that our heart's desire, our true spiritual path, is not the same as the path to monetary success.
It's just my opinion of course.
Aunt BeaN
anyway. I'm still thinking about The Secret but anticipating before even typing out my thoughts that this might be somewhat controversial. So, let's try making it into a fable.
Imagine that we live in an alternate universe. A universe where it is a firmly established fact that your thoughts and the thoughts of everyone around you create the reality we all inhabit. You think about something you want and that something appears in your life. BUT the thoughts of everyone around you do the same thing, and although the country where we live in this alternate universe is big and diverse, the resources which produce these "thought manifestations" are limited to a reasonable amount per person--plenty for health and happiness, but not enough for fabulous wealth. Let's further imagine that the ability to manifest your thoughts is a learned skill, just like riding a bike or baking a cake. In this alternate universe, given these circumstances, would you as a thinker/manifester (is that a word?) have an ethical responsibility to not manifest more than your fair share of the planet's resources? If you have an innate gift for manifesting your thoughts (i.e., you're better at it than your neighbors), should you scale back on what you "could" manifest out of deference to the needs of those around you? should you be aware that you might strip the planet raw? what happens if you are visualizing living in a peaceful, quiet neighborhood where you can meditate on your back porch every morning, but your neighbor is visualizing raising two dozen chickens, so they can have free-range, naturally nested eggs every morning for breakfast? whose visualization is going to "win"?
In this universe, it seems to me that the most important spiritual task would be to learn enough about yourself to know what you need to support a healthy, creative, and useful life. And even more importantly: how to be content with that. Rather than learning how to manifest the ultimate most that you possibly could.
Do you see my point?
Back in our universe, different bits of this will be problematic to different people. The skeptics, of course, think the whole "thoughts create reality" idea is just a clever ruse to get people to pay big bucks to the infomercial folks. Theist types will be bugged that you don't need God in this scenario. The New Age folks would disagree that there are only finite resources: they seem to believe that the universe has unlimited ability to meet all our desires, and there really is enough for everybody to have everything they want.
But even given all that (none of which I can really argue with, because I don't really know the answer to any of this and maybe they're right)-- I still think my alternate universe makes a point. Because just imagine a universe in which every one can manifest exactly what they're thinking but they are competing for limited resources with which to do it. So you would have some people who have stronger personalities who would charge ahead and get whatever they want; you'd have people who wanted to make sure everyone else got what they wanted and so ended up with nothing; you'd have people who live in the country to the (um, let's say) west of here who are resource poor, so they don't have nearly as much as we do; you have people in the country to the (say) east of here who don't really care about manifesting their thoughts, so the people in our country feel justified in using their resources to get what they want. IN SHORT, you'd have our world.
Which is why I think that if you ever hear anyone say, All you have to do to have everything you ever wanted is just..... (insert anything here) you should run fast and far in the opposite direction. If you're teaching this stuff, you have a responsibility to teach that our heart's desire, our true spiritual path, is not the same as the path to monetary success.
It's just my opinion of course.
Aunt BeaN
Sunday, February 11, 2007
The Secret
A friend of mine loaned me the DVD of the movie The Secret this past week, which I have dutifully watched about half of ('scuse dangling preposition). I don't know anything about the background of the movie beyond what you can find out by watching it, although I did see the book in Borders last week, so I know there is a book, too. Probably also seminars and weekend retreats and a newsletter and a website. But I digress.
Basically, the movie is about a woman who, in a time of great personal despair, finds out about an ancient secret that has been known by various wise and well-known people throughout the ages, but through some sort of conspiracy has been hidden from your average Joe/Josephine. If we had all known about this secret, our lives would be completely different, because we would all be millionaires if only we'd known. The secret is the "Law of Attraction," which, simply stated, says: like attracts like. So if you think about and/or visualize the things that you want, you will attract those things into your life. If you think about the things you don't want (debt, loneliness, whatever), you will attract those things, even if what you're thinking is that you don't want them. Otherwise known as "Your thoughts create reality."
Of course there's enough truth in this to make it pretty compelling. It is true that the way you think about a certain situation will entirely color your experience of that situation, thus in effect changing your reality. I could relate dozens of experiences with this in my own life, some of them fairly profound. For example. You already know how hopeless I am in social situations. If I go into a social event feeling paranoid and anxious, I am sure to project paranoia and anxiousness, thus attracting experiences befitting paranoia and reinforcing my belief that I am hopeless at social situations. Or I can go into exactly the same event feeling a little nervous, but hopeful that I might see a friend or two and it might turn out to be a pretty good time, and what the hell, even if I make a fool of myself, I might meet a new friend who doesn't mind social misfits. And what do you know-- almost invariably if I have that attitude, everything turns out fine. And occasionally I even manage to get away with looking like a socially competent person, because I'm not such a nervous wreck that I look like a weird, anxiety-filled dork.
So I can buy that. And the movie adds the interesting twist that even if you are thinking that you don't want something-- I hate being lonely, I don't want to be lonely, why am I always alone? -- you are still attracting what you're thinking about. So the antidote to loneliness isn't thinking about how much you hate it, but thinking positively- hopefully, optimistically- about making new friends, ways you can get involved with other people, etc. That's not really a secret, it's just common sense. But it's still news to some of us, and it's a good thing to learn.
So from that limited perspective, this is a great movie to watch, because it's like a 90-minute infomercial reminding you to think positively--- and those parts of the movie are quite well done and motivational. But where I quickly lose interest-- wait, that's not strong enough-- but where I quickly become completely disgusted-- is when that is taken a step further to "if we just think positively, we can all be millionaires." If you imagine checks arriving in the mail, checks will start arriving in the mail. If you imagine owning an expensive gold necklace you see in a jewelry store window, before you know it, someone will give it to you. If you imagine your small business becoming a multinational conglomerate, there you'll be in a couple of years. And so on.
First of all, if this is true, why haven't we all won the lottery by now? I've never bought a lottery ticket on my own, but every few months, my office mates and I all donate a dollar and someone goes and buys a fistful of lottery tickets. Then we spend our whole lunch hour thinking, visualizing, and talking about what we'd do if we won the lottery.
Hasn't happened yet. Nor has it happened for millions of other ticket buyers who spend a whole lot more than their lunch hour dreaming of winning the lottery.
Secondly, I have no patience with any spiritual practice that has wealth as one of its goals. Please. I could write a whole post just about that. Every major world religion I've ever heard of speaks of materialism as an obstacle to spiritual growth. Love people, use things, not the other way around. It just makes me mad thinking about it.
And the more you think about it, the more appalling it becomes. Let me make an aside here before I really get into rant mode: the movie consists mostly of snippets of interviews with various spiritual leaders (described as authors, metaphysicians, teachers, etc), not all of whom talk about wealth, so this may not apply to all of them. But let's just take one in particular. Jack Canfield is one of the main speakers. I'm assuming this is the same Jack Canfield of "Chicken Soup for the Soul" fame. This is almost a direct quote: "And you can see that it [the secret] works because look at me!! I live in a four and a half million dollar home, I have a wife that's to die for, I travel all over the world and have great adventures..." I'm not kidding, that's really in there. How in the world would human society continue to function if we all lived in 4 1/2 million dollar homes? It's little better than a pyramid scheme, if you ask me. Just listen to me (buy my book/DVD, pay to hear me speak, pay $500 a pop for an hour-long personal consultation, pay who-knows-how-much for a weekend retreat) and you too can be fabulously wealthy just like me. And of course they always have the easy out: if it doesn't work for you, it's because you're not thinking positively enough, or because your subconscious is working against you, or or or...
I think the reason why this feels so wrong to me is because of familiarity. It's like a revival speaker or a faith healer or a snake oil salesman. It worked for me, and if it doesn't work for you, it's because you didn't have enough faith, or you didn't pray hard enough, or whatever. And the fact that in the meantime I got rich off of unsuspecting people like you, well, it's what you deserved, because you're just not quite as good as me. Whatever. Ack.
Ok, I'm done. Excuse me while I get down off my soapbox and pack it up.
Aunt-y BeaN
Basically, the movie is about a woman who, in a time of great personal despair, finds out about an ancient secret that has been known by various wise and well-known people throughout the ages, but through some sort of conspiracy has been hidden from your average Joe/Josephine. If we had all known about this secret, our lives would be completely different, because we would all be millionaires if only we'd known. The secret is the "Law of Attraction," which, simply stated, says: like attracts like. So if you think about and/or visualize the things that you want, you will attract those things into your life. If you think about the things you don't want (debt, loneliness, whatever), you will attract those things, even if what you're thinking is that you don't want them. Otherwise known as "Your thoughts create reality."
Of course there's enough truth in this to make it pretty compelling. It is true that the way you think about a certain situation will entirely color your experience of that situation, thus in effect changing your reality. I could relate dozens of experiences with this in my own life, some of them fairly profound. For example. You already know how hopeless I am in social situations. If I go into a social event feeling paranoid and anxious, I am sure to project paranoia and anxiousness, thus attracting experiences befitting paranoia and reinforcing my belief that I am hopeless at social situations. Or I can go into exactly the same event feeling a little nervous, but hopeful that I might see a friend or two and it might turn out to be a pretty good time, and what the hell, even if I make a fool of myself, I might meet a new friend who doesn't mind social misfits. And what do you know-- almost invariably if I have that attitude, everything turns out fine. And occasionally I even manage to get away with looking like a socially competent person, because I'm not such a nervous wreck that I look like a weird, anxiety-filled dork.
So I can buy that. And the movie adds the interesting twist that even if you are thinking that you don't want something-- I hate being lonely, I don't want to be lonely, why am I always alone? -- you are still attracting what you're thinking about. So the antidote to loneliness isn't thinking about how much you hate it, but thinking positively- hopefully, optimistically- about making new friends, ways you can get involved with other people, etc. That's not really a secret, it's just common sense. But it's still news to some of us, and it's a good thing to learn.
So from that limited perspective, this is a great movie to watch, because it's like a 90-minute infomercial reminding you to think positively--- and those parts of the movie are quite well done and motivational. But where I quickly lose interest-- wait, that's not strong enough-- but where I quickly become completely disgusted-- is when that is taken a step further to "if we just think positively, we can all be millionaires." If you imagine checks arriving in the mail, checks will start arriving in the mail. If you imagine owning an expensive gold necklace you see in a jewelry store window, before you know it, someone will give it to you. If you imagine your small business becoming a multinational conglomerate, there you'll be in a couple of years. And so on.
First of all, if this is true, why haven't we all won the lottery by now? I've never bought a lottery ticket on my own, but every few months, my office mates and I all donate a dollar and someone goes and buys a fistful of lottery tickets. Then we spend our whole lunch hour thinking, visualizing, and talking about what we'd do if we won the lottery.
Hasn't happened yet. Nor has it happened for millions of other ticket buyers who spend a whole lot more than their lunch hour dreaming of winning the lottery.
Secondly, I have no patience with any spiritual practice that has wealth as one of its goals. Please. I could write a whole post just about that. Every major world religion I've ever heard of speaks of materialism as an obstacle to spiritual growth. Love people, use things, not the other way around. It just makes me mad thinking about it.
And the more you think about it, the more appalling it becomes. Let me make an aside here before I really get into rant mode: the movie consists mostly of snippets of interviews with various spiritual leaders (described as authors, metaphysicians, teachers, etc), not all of whom talk about wealth, so this may not apply to all of them. But let's just take one in particular. Jack Canfield is one of the main speakers. I'm assuming this is the same Jack Canfield of "Chicken Soup for the Soul" fame. This is almost a direct quote: "And you can see that it [the secret] works because look at me!! I live in a four and a half million dollar home, I have a wife that's to die for, I travel all over the world and have great adventures..." I'm not kidding, that's really in there. How in the world would human society continue to function if we all lived in 4 1/2 million dollar homes? It's little better than a pyramid scheme, if you ask me. Just listen to me (buy my book/DVD, pay to hear me speak, pay $500 a pop for an hour-long personal consultation, pay who-knows-how-much for a weekend retreat) and you too can be fabulously wealthy just like me. And of course they always have the easy out: if it doesn't work for you, it's because you're not thinking positively enough, or because your subconscious is working against you, or or or...
I think the reason why this feels so wrong to me is because of familiarity. It's like a revival speaker or a faith healer or a snake oil salesman. It worked for me, and if it doesn't work for you, it's because you didn't have enough faith, or you didn't pray hard enough, or whatever. And the fact that in the meantime I got rich off of unsuspecting people like you, well, it's what you deserved, because you're just not quite as good as me. Whatever. Ack.
Ok, I'm done. Excuse me while I get down off my soapbox and pack it up.
Aunt-y BeaN
I've tried to write the third post in that last thread half a dozen times now and I just can't get it to say anything worth posting. My original point was that it is nearly impossible to intelligently discuss religion because there are so many, infinite varieties of religious experience (hey, somebody should write a book about that). Well.................. DUH. as my daughter would say. But after I typed out the second post, I couldn't really pin down what I was trying to say, and I still haven't figured it out, so I guess for now I'm just bagging it. Sorry to leave the unfinished thought out there. It seemed fairly important at the time, so maybe I'll figure out a better way to say it eventually and revisit.
alas.
AB
alas.
AB
Saturday, February 10, 2007
... the snow turned into rain.... (Dan Fogelberg, a very long time ago)
I mostly grew up in a climate where one assumed warm was better, at least until you were above 100 degrees. But now I live in a climate that has a real, bona fide winter, and I know that sometimes cold is better. We've been in and out of the deep freeze half a dozen times over the last few weeks, and here is my opinion: when you have 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, and then it "warms up" to 35 degrees, you have nothing but a big sloppy mess on your hands. And if it snows, which it has been off and on all day today, it turns into slushy rain, which is just nasty. Here is the perfect winter: highs in the mid-20s the entire time, with occasional forays into single digits, so that they mid-20s feels balmy by comparison. If you live in florida, that probably sounds crazy, but you can trust me on this-- everyone I know here locally feels the same way.
Hugs and kisses,
Aunt BeaN (who stepped into top-of-shoe slush in the grocery store parking lot this morning)
I mostly grew up in a climate where one assumed warm was better, at least until you were above 100 degrees. But now I live in a climate that has a real, bona fide winter, and I know that sometimes cold is better. We've been in and out of the deep freeze half a dozen times over the last few weeks, and here is my opinion: when you have 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, and then it "warms up" to 35 degrees, you have nothing but a big sloppy mess on your hands. And if it snows, which it has been off and on all day today, it turns into slushy rain, which is just nasty. Here is the perfect winter: highs in the mid-20s the entire time, with occasional forays into single digits, so that they mid-20s feels balmy by comparison. If you live in florida, that probably sounds crazy, but you can trust me on this-- everyone I know here locally feels the same way.
Hugs and kisses,
Aunt BeaN (who stepped into top-of-shoe slush in the grocery store parking lot this morning)
Friday, February 02, 2007
So where exactly was that long-winded thread going? you might ask, and it would be a good question because I'm not sure I know now that it's all typed out. It ended up going an entirely different way than expected. But here is where I was going at the outset.
When it started, I was headed towards something like this: it's nearly impossible to intelligently discuss religion or religious people if you make generalizations, because the variations are infinite, even among people who say they believe the same thing. (which is, of course, a generalization, but I will proceed anyway). I know conservatives who are pro-choice; I know Democrats who have moral standards that are like something out of the Victorian era. I know conservative Christians who have no problem with evolution. I was raised as an Evangelical, but even in the days when I was most vehemently Evangelical, I still believed quite firmly in the separation of church and state, and I've never seen the point of prayer in the schools. And the converse of each of those statements are all generalizations I've heard or read in the last couple of weeks as the lead-in to a lengthy discussion about "those" types of people.
Here's my theory. None of us can take in the totality of the infinite amount of data around us at every moment. If there is an infinite being out there, the human mind will never fully comprehend it. So we choose a way of seeing our experience that helps us understand it. It's like walking outside on an extremely bright and sunny day. You reach for your sunglasses. Maybe you like the blue-blockers, maybe you want polarized, maybe you prefer a pink tinge. Or maybe you don't like sunglasses and you have to squint against the glare so you don't see as much. Whatever.
We all filter our experience somehow. a way of looking at the world that helps us make sense of what we perceive. We're probably unaware of our most basic assumptions because we breathed them in with our first breath. Others we take on by choice or training as time goes by. Religion is one of those filters; it helps us make sense of the world around us. It can be a crutch, of course, if it keeps you from thinking or leads you to make false conclusions. But it can also be a legitimate way of trying to understand certain phenomena that science doesn't explain very well. And to claim that science doesn't have its own set of biases is just silly. maybe over time those who hold to a scientific worldview do a better job of discarding outmoded ideas and accepting new ones based on better data. But there's plenty of evidence that even brilliant scientists have a hard time with that-- check out Einstein and quantum mechanics, to name just one.
So no matter what your point of view, you can't take it too seriously-- it's just a filter, like everyone else's. You've found one that works well for you, great. But it's not perfect, and it's not the only way to look at things. (Which would preclude fundamentalism, if only they'd just listen to me, dang it.)
more later, the battery's dead.
When it started, I was headed towards something like this: it's nearly impossible to intelligently discuss religion or religious people if you make generalizations, because the variations are infinite, even among people who say they believe the same thing. (which is, of course, a generalization, but I will proceed anyway). I know conservatives who are pro-choice; I know Democrats who have moral standards that are like something out of the Victorian era. I know conservative Christians who have no problem with evolution. I was raised as an Evangelical, but even in the days when I was most vehemently Evangelical, I still believed quite firmly in the separation of church and state, and I've never seen the point of prayer in the schools. And the converse of each of those statements are all generalizations I've heard or read in the last couple of weeks as the lead-in to a lengthy discussion about "those" types of people.
Here's my theory. None of us can take in the totality of the infinite amount of data around us at every moment. If there is an infinite being out there, the human mind will never fully comprehend it. So we choose a way of seeing our experience that helps us understand it. It's like walking outside on an extremely bright and sunny day. You reach for your sunglasses. Maybe you like the blue-blockers, maybe you want polarized, maybe you prefer a pink tinge. Or maybe you don't like sunglasses and you have to squint against the glare so you don't see as much. Whatever.
We all filter our experience somehow. a way of looking at the world that helps us make sense of what we perceive. We're probably unaware of our most basic assumptions because we breathed them in with our first breath. Others we take on by choice or training as time goes by. Religion is one of those filters; it helps us make sense of the world around us. It can be a crutch, of course, if it keeps you from thinking or leads you to make false conclusions. But it can also be a legitimate way of trying to understand certain phenomena that science doesn't explain very well. And to claim that science doesn't have its own set of biases is just silly. maybe over time those who hold to a scientific worldview do a better job of discarding outmoded ideas and accepting new ones based on better data. But there's plenty of evidence that even brilliant scientists have a hard time with that-- check out Einstein and quantum mechanics, to name just one.
So no matter what your point of view, you can't take it too seriously-- it's just a filter, like everyone else's. You've found one that works well for you, great. But it's not perfect, and it's not the only way to look at things. (Which would preclude fundamentalism, if only they'd just listen to me, dang it.)
more later, the battery's dead.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Part 2. Continued from previous post.............
Not too many years later, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was in the process of leaving Evangelicalism behind, but I still had a number of close friends who were Evangelical, and I was still involved in a Bible study group that, while it didn’t have any stated criteria for membership, was mostly full of Evangelical Christians. I got into a discussion one night with a highly intelligent man about why I was leaving Evangelicalism behind. I think one of the most common mistakes made by the general public about fundamentalism is that there are no intelligent people who are fundamentalists; if you’re intelligent, you would see through the illogic of fundamentalism in a heart beat. But this is absolutely not true. Just as one example, this Bible study was made up of graduate students at a prominent university—there were half a dozen medical students, also students from the law school, school of public health, and the English dept (me). In fact, Evangelicals take particular pleasure in a very scholarly, erudite approach to the study of the Bible, including references to “the Greek” (i.e., the original version of the New Testament) and inductive studies of whatever text is being studied-- that might involve grammar, history, references to various other biblical texts, etc.
So, back to the story. So this friend and I were discussing the reasons why I no longer considered myself an Evangelical Christian. I’m always hesitant to discuss this, because having been an Evangelical myself, I know firsthand that they’ll never be persuaded. For me to explain why I no longer believed in inerrancy (the belief that the bible is literally, word-for-word true) was never going to convince him, because once I state that I don’t believe in inerrancy, any subsequent words that come out of my mouth will be seen as the words of someone who is wrong. I know this because I’ve done it myself, though thankfully it’s been a long, long time.
But I had been friends with this guy and his wife for several years (still am, as a matter of fact) and I didn’t want to blow him off. So I tentatively trotted out my reasons, which were less a matter of reasoned logic than a slowly gathering swell of experience that finally was too much for me to ignore. When I was done, he was silent for a second or two, and then he said, “But for me to agree with you would be to go against everything I was brought up to believe. It would be against my parents, my grandparents, everything I value. I can’t believe that.”
I was so surprised by his response that (obviously) I still remember it twenty years later. He didn’t give me any of the standard Evangelical arguments for inerrancy, which is what I was expecting and what I would have done myself five years before. He said that Christianity, the way it existed in his head and the way he was raised to believe, was more important to him than making sense of his/my direct experience of life. i.e., even if my reasoning was persuasive to him, he wasn’t going to give up his beliefs, because they were important to him for other reasons—heritage, tradition, habit, comfort.
It is common for non-believers to sneer at this sort of reasoning. “Religion is the opiate of the masses” and all that. But I can’t do that. I can understand why people sneer. Christianity has been used to support so many bad ideas in the cultural history of Western Civilization that we tend to look down our noses at people who cling to it out of cultural loyalty. But I can't participate, because I've been on the other side, too. We would never sneer at (say) an Eastern Indian who devoutly practices Hinduism, even though they know there aren't dozens of gods out there. Or a cultural Jew who observes Purim even though she hasn’t said more than half a dozen prayers in her entire life. And there are a whole lot of us out here for whom our cultural heritage is conservative Christianity. We can’t betray it without betraying a piece of ourselves, and I guess it just depends on the person how willing you are to do this. And even if you are willing to do it, it lives on inside you. I walk into a conservative church and I feel at home-- with the language, the music, the mood, the atmosphere-- even though the things that are said and done may make me furious, and even though I no longer consider myself one of them. It's a strange thing.
I think there is still more to come but once again I am out of time.
Aunt BeaN
Not too many years later, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was in the process of leaving Evangelicalism behind, but I still had a number of close friends who were Evangelical, and I was still involved in a Bible study group that, while it didn’t have any stated criteria for membership, was mostly full of Evangelical Christians. I got into a discussion one night with a highly intelligent man about why I was leaving Evangelicalism behind. I think one of the most common mistakes made by the general public about fundamentalism is that there are no intelligent people who are fundamentalists; if you’re intelligent, you would see through the illogic of fundamentalism in a heart beat. But this is absolutely not true. Just as one example, this Bible study was made up of graduate students at a prominent university—there were half a dozen medical students, also students from the law school, school of public health, and the English dept (me). In fact, Evangelicals take particular pleasure in a very scholarly, erudite approach to the study of the Bible, including references to “the Greek” (i.e., the original version of the New Testament) and inductive studies of whatever text is being studied-- that might involve grammar, history, references to various other biblical texts, etc.
So, back to the story. So this friend and I were discussing the reasons why I no longer considered myself an Evangelical Christian. I’m always hesitant to discuss this, because having been an Evangelical myself, I know firsthand that they’ll never be persuaded. For me to explain why I no longer believed in inerrancy (the belief that the bible is literally, word-for-word true) was never going to convince him, because once I state that I don’t believe in inerrancy, any subsequent words that come out of my mouth will be seen as the words of someone who is wrong. I know this because I’ve done it myself, though thankfully it’s been a long, long time.
But I had been friends with this guy and his wife for several years (still am, as a matter of fact) and I didn’t want to blow him off. So I tentatively trotted out my reasons, which were less a matter of reasoned logic than a slowly gathering swell of experience that finally was too much for me to ignore. When I was done, he was silent for a second or two, and then he said, “But for me to agree with you would be to go against everything I was brought up to believe. It would be against my parents, my grandparents, everything I value. I can’t believe that.”
I was so surprised by his response that (obviously) I still remember it twenty years later. He didn’t give me any of the standard Evangelical arguments for inerrancy, which is what I was expecting and what I would have done myself five years before. He said that Christianity, the way it existed in his head and the way he was raised to believe, was more important to him than making sense of his/my direct experience of life. i.e., even if my reasoning was persuasive to him, he wasn’t going to give up his beliefs, because they were important to him for other reasons—heritage, tradition, habit, comfort.
It is common for non-believers to sneer at this sort of reasoning. “Religion is the opiate of the masses” and all that. But I can’t do that. I can understand why people sneer. Christianity has been used to support so many bad ideas in the cultural history of Western Civilization that we tend to look down our noses at people who cling to it out of cultural loyalty. But I can't participate, because I've been on the other side, too. We would never sneer at (say) an Eastern Indian who devoutly practices Hinduism, even though they know there aren't dozens of gods out there. Or a cultural Jew who observes Purim even though she hasn’t said more than half a dozen prayers in her entire life. And there are a whole lot of us out here for whom our cultural heritage is conservative Christianity. We can’t betray it without betraying a piece of ourselves, and I guess it just depends on the person how willing you are to do this. And even if you are willing to do it, it lives on inside you. I walk into a conservative church and I feel at home-- with the language, the music, the mood, the atmosphere-- even though the things that are said and done may make me furious, and even though I no longer consider myself one of them. It's a strange thing.
I think there is still more to come but once again I am out of time.
Aunt BeaN
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
I've been reading lots of opinions lately online (things are still slow at work). It strikes me that so much of the huffing and puffing that goes on about religion these days comes because we are arguing about apples and oranges: religion (any religion) as perceived by the people who don't believe it, and that same religion the way it exists in an individual believer's head. I suppose there is also a third thing (plums?): a specific religion as it is formally codified by the institutional version of it. Do you see what I'm getting at? (Grammatically correct: Do you see the thing at which I am getting? LOL, sometimes I just crack myself up).
I'm thinking this up as I type, so bear with me here.
When I was a junior in college, I took a course on feminist literary criticism. At that point I was still a dedicated evangelical Christian, and I was also a feminist. But because of the way I interpreted my religion, I didn't see any conflict. In my head, there was no problem. That will seem impossible to some, and obvious to others. Anyway. I wrote a paper about some 19th century novel (I can't even remember which one at the moment) in which I argued that God was not male, but existed outside human categories of gender. It seemed absurd to me then (as it does now) to think of God as an infinite, omniscient being but with a penis and Y-chromosomes. I backed up my argument with quotations from the Bible in which God is referred to as female or at least as having female attributes (there aren't many, but there are enough to make a valid argument). I then concluded that any misogyny exhibited by people in a Christian society at any particular point in history (including the novel I was discussing) wasn't based on the reality of who “God” is (which none of us can fully comprehend), but on the cultural practices and expectations of the times. That was just the start of the paper, but the rest of it is irrelevant (and I can't remember it, anyway).
You probably won't be surprised to hear that this went over like a ton of lead bricks with my professor. He didn't even bother to argue with me, he simply said something to the effect of "This is hardly an accurate representation of Christianity" etc etc. and gave me the lowest grade I ever received on a paper. Of course, in an academic setting, he was right and it was a great lesson for me about what one can and cannot argue in an academic paper. To an academic, Christianity IS the historical and institutional entity that must own all of the actions it has produced over the past two millennia. And although any academic would acknowledge that Christian beliefs have changed over time, my individual interpretation of Christianity is meaningless as an academic argument-- though it might provide an interesting paragraph or two. But it points out the distinction I'm trying to make here: there is a (sometimes vast) difference between the formal existence of a body of Christian theology and history, and the way that all gets interpreted by a particular individual (in this case, me). Not to mention that, although I don't know for sure, I suspect I was also dealing with the professor's opinion of what Christians believe, which is that Christians are patriarchal and misogynist.
to be continued.... I got half of the next story written and had to stop, so I'll just save it for the next post.
A.B.
I'm thinking this up as I type, so bear with me here.
When I was a junior in college, I took a course on feminist literary criticism. At that point I was still a dedicated evangelical Christian, and I was also a feminist. But because of the way I interpreted my religion, I didn't see any conflict. In my head, there was no problem. That will seem impossible to some, and obvious to others. Anyway. I wrote a paper about some 19th century novel (I can't even remember which one at the moment) in which I argued that God was not male, but existed outside human categories of gender. It seemed absurd to me then (as it does now) to think of God as an infinite, omniscient being but with a penis and Y-chromosomes. I backed up my argument with quotations from the Bible in which God is referred to as female or at least as having female attributes (there aren't many, but there are enough to make a valid argument). I then concluded that any misogyny exhibited by people in a Christian society at any particular point in history (including the novel I was discussing) wasn't based on the reality of who “God” is (which none of us can fully comprehend), but on the cultural practices and expectations of the times. That was just the start of the paper, but the rest of it is irrelevant (and I can't remember it, anyway).
You probably won't be surprised to hear that this went over like a ton of lead bricks with my professor. He didn't even bother to argue with me, he simply said something to the effect of "This is hardly an accurate representation of Christianity" etc etc. and gave me the lowest grade I ever received on a paper. Of course, in an academic setting, he was right and it was a great lesson for me about what one can and cannot argue in an academic paper. To an academic, Christianity IS the historical and institutional entity that must own all of the actions it has produced over the past two millennia. And although any academic would acknowledge that Christian beliefs have changed over time, my individual interpretation of Christianity is meaningless as an academic argument-- though it might provide an interesting paragraph or two. But it points out the distinction I'm trying to make here: there is a (sometimes vast) difference between the formal existence of a body of Christian theology and history, and the way that all gets interpreted by a particular individual (in this case, me). Not to mention that, although I don't know for sure, I suspect I was also dealing with the professor's opinion of what Christians believe, which is that Christians are patriarchal and misogynist.
to be continued.... I got half of the next story written and had to stop, so I'll just save it for the next post.
A.B.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
I haven't talked to any English majors who have graduated in the past ten years, so I don't know if things are still the same. But back in the dark ages when I was an English major, the works that most of us loved the very best were the Victorian novels. A few might profess that it was really Romantic poetry that they loved, or post-modernist fiction, but secretly, we all adored Jane Eyre. taking a class in the Victorian novel was like getting a three-month free pass to a candy shop: the Bronte sisters, Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins. Even Jane Austen-- she's a little early to consider Victorian, but every class on the Victorian novel starts with Jane Austen, so we'll throw her in, too. I still look back on the days when I was first reading Bleak House, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Barchester Towers and the rest, and sigh with envy of that younger self.
So when a novel comes out that makes you feel like you are back in college reading Wuthering Heights for the first time, it is a treat indeed. And that is exactly how The Thirteenth Tale (by Diane Setterfield) made me feel. At first, anyway. It was as if someone had taken all the best plot devices out of all those classics (false identities and plot twists from Dickens; madness, obsessive love, and the narrative frame of Wuthering Heights; too much to mention from Jane Eyre, and so on) put them in a jar, shook them up, and pulled them back out again to insert in a contemporary novel. The effect is mesmerizing. I could go on and on but I'll spare you. For about the first 200 pages, I thought it was the best book I'd read in the last five years. I was immersed, driving my family crazy.
But unfortunately it sort of falls apart toward the end. It must be enormously hard to end a novel well, because it often seems that a novel that could be great either has a bad ending, or just fizzles out at the end. Memoirs of a Geisha, for example, or Smilla's Sense of Snow. This one is in the same vein. It's not that the ending is awful, it just disappoints. As if you had the bases loaded and the score tied at the bottom of the ninth, and what you want as a reader is the grand slam-- but instead you get a base on balls, and the runner on third walks in to win the game. It's OK, and it's still the best book I've read in a long time, but it's pretty disappointing. She sets herself up to make some pretty sharp observations on the nature of human evil, but then she ducks out and leaves it undone. Almost as if she didn't realize exactly what she had done in the first two-thirds of the book.
But it's still highly recommended. It's a great read and will keep you absorbed for a couple of days. The gist of it is: the most popular novelist in Britain, about whom nothing is known outside of her published works, decides on her death bed that she wants to tell her own story. So she invites a bookish, introverted young woman, practically unpublished, to her home to write it down. The story turns out to be a thriller on its own-- and you have the double narrative frame-- the story you read is being controlled both by the dying author who is speaking it, and the young woman who is writing it down. (and of course both of those are the creation of the writer.) It's a fabulous setup.
OK, that's all for now. It's so rich with detail I may end up having to go back and read it again. Maybe I'd find the ending less disappointing the 2nd time through.
Aunt BeaN
So when a novel comes out that makes you feel like you are back in college reading Wuthering Heights for the first time, it is a treat indeed. And that is exactly how The Thirteenth Tale (by Diane Setterfield) made me feel. At first, anyway. It was as if someone had taken all the best plot devices out of all those classics (false identities and plot twists from Dickens; madness, obsessive love, and the narrative frame of Wuthering Heights; too much to mention from Jane Eyre, and so on) put them in a jar, shook them up, and pulled them back out again to insert in a contemporary novel. The effect is mesmerizing. I could go on and on but I'll spare you. For about the first 200 pages, I thought it was the best book I'd read in the last five years. I was immersed, driving my family crazy.
But unfortunately it sort of falls apart toward the end. It must be enormously hard to end a novel well, because it often seems that a novel that could be great either has a bad ending, or just fizzles out at the end. Memoirs of a Geisha, for example, or Smilla's Sense of Snow. This one is in the same vein. It's not that the ending is awful, it just disappoints. As if you had the bases loaded and the score tied at the bottom of the ninth, and what you want as a reader is the grand slam-- but instead you get a base on balls, and the runner on third walks in to win the game. It's OK, and it's still the best book I've read in a long time, but it's pretty disappointing. She sets herself up to make some pretty sharp observations on the nature of human evil, but then she ducks out and leaves it undone. Almost as if she didn't realize exactly what she had done in the first two-thirds of the book.
But it's still highly recommended. It's a great read and will keep you absorbed for a couple of days. The gist of it is: the most popular novelist in Britain, about whom nothing is known outside of her published works, decides on her death bed that she wants to tell her own story. So she invites a bookish, introverted young woman, practically unpublished, to her home to write it down. The story turns out to be a thriller on its own-- and you have the double narrative frame-- the story you read is being controlled both by the dying author who is speaking it, and the young woman who is writing it down. (and of course both of those are the creation of the writer.) It's a fabulous setup.
OK, that's all for now. It's so rich with detail I may end up having to go back and read it again. Maybe I'd find the ending less disappointing the 2nd time through.
Aunt BeaN
Monday, January 22, 2007
The Reading Report
I'm still trying to get through Wise Blood, believe it or not (by Flannery O'Conner, part of my current reading project). It isn't even very long, more of a novella than a novel. More on that another time.
My book group read the Devil in the White City by Erik Larson this month. We were all fascinated by it, and also repelled. It's a nonfiction account of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 told in alternating chapters with the story of a serial killer who took advantage of the World's Fair to kill (probably) dozens of people. It was interesting to see who skimmed the serial killer chapters to get to the next installment of the building of the fair (like me) and who skimmed the building chapters to get to the next installment of the serial killer. That's what I love about book clubs-- it gets me to read books that I would never pick up otherwise but that later I am glad to have read.
So in the midst of the "freaks" in Wise Blood and the serial killings in White City, I needed a break. For some reason I picked up the original Mary Poppins. I really enjoyed it, unlike some other childhood classics that I've re-read, I thought it stood up very well to the passage of time. So I tried reading it to my son, who did not feel the same. We made it through the first three chapters before he (very politely) asked if we could please read something else.
This past weekend I read The Shadow Thieves by Anne Ursu, a young adult novel about two children who have to travel to the Underworld to save the lives of their friends who have fallen ill. She has a very interesting writing style that reminds me a little bit of some of the things I've written, so of course I thought it was very cool. But the mannered, distanced narrative style got really old when she was in the midst of the exciting parts-- which is a good thing for me to know. I skimmed quite a bit starting about halfway through. BUt still it held my attention better than anything else I've read in the past month or so, I whizzed through it in a couple of nights.
It brought up something I've noticed off and on for a couple of years now, which is the proliferation of books and movies that are either told from the point of view of someone that is dead, or that are about the afterlife or what happens to people after they die. American Beauty (the movie), The Lovely Bones and Saving Fish from Drowning (adult books), Garth Nix's young adult novels (and this one, of course) come to mind, and I bet there are others. It's an odd thing, isn't it?
That's all for right now.
Aunty BeaN
My book group read the Devil in the White City by Erik Larson this month. We were all fascinated by it, and also repelled. It's a nonfiction account of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 told in alternating chapters with the story of a serial killer who took advantage of the World's Fair to kill (probably) dozens of people. It was interesting to see who skimmed the serial killer chapters to get to the next installment of the building of the fair (like me) and who skimmed the building chapters to get to the next installment of the serial killer. That's what I love about book clubs-- it gets me to read books that I would never pick up otherwise but that later I am glad to have read.
So in the midst of the "freaks" in Wise Blood and the serial killings in White City, I needed a break. For some reason I picked up the original Mary Poppins. I really enjoyed it, unlike some other childhood classics that I've re-read, I thought it stood up very well to the passage of time. So I tried reading it to my son, who did not feel the same. We made it through the first three chapters before he (very politely) asked if we could please read something else.
This past weekend I read The Shadow Thieves by Anne Ursu, a young adult novel about two children who have to travel to the Underworld to save the lives of their friends who have fallen ill. She has a very interesting writing style that reminds me a little bit of some of the things I've written, so of course I thought it was very cool. But the mannered, distanced narrative style got really old when she was in the midst of the exciting parts-- which is a good thing for me to know. I skimmed quite a bit starting about halfway through. BUt still it held my attention better than anything else I've read in the past month or so, I whizzed through it in a couple of nights.
It brought up something I've noticed off and on for a couple of years now, which is the proliferation of books and movies that are either told from the point of view of someone that is dead, or that are about the afterlife or what happens to people after they die. American Beauty (the movie), The Lovely Bones and Saving Fish from Drowning (adult books), Garth Nix's young adult novels (and this one, of course) come to mind, and I bet there are others. It's an odd thing, isn't it?
That's all for right now.
Aunty BeaN
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Random acts of kindness
After my previous rant, I figured I'd better post this. Tonight as I was driving home from a friend's house a bit after nine, I discovered a good reason to live in a small town. This isn't a particularly nasty night by Montana standards, but it is cold, and snowing a bit, and the roads are slick and icy. So I'm sitting at a light about four cars back from the front, when it becomes obvious that the pickup at the front of the line isn't going to be able to move. A couple of guys got out and came around the back to get ready to push the next time the light turned green. And I'm not kidding you, in about 30 seconds, everybody in the line had piled out of their cars and gone up to help push this guy across the street-- even a guy that was coming the opposite direction pulled over and got out to help. You probably don't see that every day in a big city.
It was nice. Nice is good. Do a nice thing today.
Aunt BeaN
It was nice. Nice is good. Do a nice thing today.
Aunt BeaN
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