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[inti]

My Lenten observance, as it has been for the past few years, has been to read some spiritual text and then write (possibly about that reading) in my journal just before bedtime. This Lent, I have been reading Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love. Well, I decided that tonight I would write up a more public journal entry and share some of

Comments

[flamingophoenix]

I felt very much at peace at the one Friends meeting I've been to. Similarly at the Ekoji sangha, a Buddhist community in Richmond. I like religions that incorporate long periods of silence into their worship, I guess...but I still balk at the supernatural

[wondershot]

We have a copy of the Jefferson Bible at my house. I would say someting more about it, but I haven't read it either :P

I like your remark on the lion and the mouse, but here is my qualm about not having the historic weight placed on them-- the fact that a moralizable event happened once before convinces you that it's real, and a part of this world. But without the history, it's just another wacky metaphor that has not necessarily any relevance to your world. This doesn't mean I believe in everything in the Bible-- but still, I believe in the supernatural aspect of it.

[flamingophoenix]

I see your point--I can respect that and still disagree.

A bit of a silly tangent--some of the best moral lessons I've ever read have come from Terry Pratchett novels. Specific ones (not the general one I posted recently, which is not so much of a "do this" as a "this is how things might be"). For example, one of the books (Carpe Jugulum?) could be summed up as "Don't treat people like things." And just because this moral occurred in a silly fiction book that describes an imaginary world doesn't mean it's less valid as a moral.

Or something like that.

And: Jesus told parables that were just stories, and never actually happened. (Not sure where I'm going with this, just thought I'd point that out.)

And my take on the supernatural (if I haven't bored everyone with it yet) is not so much that I disbelieve as that I just don't think it's important. God is one, God is three, God is nine (or eight, as the case may be), God is fifteen million--it's still God. But I have trouble expressing myself here.

[monrovianvogue]

And my take on the supernatural (if I haven't bored everyone with it yet) is not so much that I disbelieve as that I just don't think it's important.

I'm totally down with, as Gaiman says, "Things need not have happened to be true," and though I believe that a great deal of the Biblical stories happened, it's not that important to me whether they did or not. They can still be true.

The only real sticking point for me is that with all the shit in the world, I have a real problem paying any attention to a God that has not suffered as we suffer, and experienced the world as a human. As far as I'm concerned he/she/they can pretty much fuck off unless he/she/they has been through it like one of us. So it's important to me that God became human, historically, not just in truth.