Okay Judith. There’s the tsk-tsk I told you I’d fear more than the eternal finger-wag. And it’s true I don’t know what this forum is all about. I joined b/c I wanted to read Bart’s blogs and support his work for the hungry. I didn’t know there was a forum. So I’ll beg off this part of it, but know that I wasn’t trying to subvert it or hijack it. I’ve just lost the ability to differentiate as neatly as I used to. Cheers
Thank you for that, LaoWho!
I’ve never blogged before until here and it’s the only sort of thing like it I do. Am real aware there’s nothing I can contribute scholastically and feel privileged just to be here, thanks to the kind acceptance of these amazing members.
Will send a pm later on.
My pleasure, really. And thank you!
No, I can’t follow the forum scholarship here either, from Robert and Steefen at least. How could we? I’m after the broad strokes of history, and this particular stream of it. But when Steefen showed me that there were many messiahs during this narrow time, and that there might be some new form of adaptive, suffering messiaship, well I just got a little excited, b/c I can’t help but see the OT now as one long scream for justice against injustice. And for me, where there’s any legend, the truths/circumstances which formed it are much more meaningful and interesting, and I dare say even useful.
This is why I can’t afford to put myself in camps, even if I still retained the ability to belong to any of them. To wit, what might happen if we learned from anthropology and history the actual history behind the OT? If god, then a more real god than not. If Man, then a more humane man than not. Then combine this with the new cross-discipline studies of origins–physics, geology, chemistry and biology.
It seems there are still two major camps–atheism or christianity (for the west). And I say, come on, you’re joking. Those are my choices? Or agnosticism–it’s only a choice of this god or none other. I’m just a pagan, and I can tell you that those gods are real, whatever they are. And that 35k years ago (when Neanderthals were dying off!) we were ritualizing our dead, and consulting them. Where did Darwinism, or history skip this beat? Did anthropology just dismiss these? I don’t know nor care, and it’s way too far down the beaten path, but I do know it’s a disconnect, an embarrassing neglected stepchild.
Sorry, I’ve gone too long. But thanks for writing back.
Cheers
Camps?
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.
Not any religion or cultural system.
I am not from the East or the West,
not out of the ocean or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story.
My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.
Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only that breath breathing
human being.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there!
-Rumi
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)