Mountains, Mountains, Everywhere Mountains

It's been a while since I did a blog so I thought that I would just put out some thoughts on the Frye chapter that my group did their presentation on. Anyways, I remember all the times that Moses went onto a mountain or later Jesus. In fact, most of the profits would go to the top of a mountain to communicate with God. The further into the bible I got, the more it seemed that people had to ascend a mountain in order to talk to God.

In the beginning of Genesis, God walked with man in the garden of Eden or with some of his most trusted servants, but as time went on God seemed to withdraw from the world as if he had grown tired of us or something. He would appear to Jacob and Joseph in dreams but other than that he remained silent, watching. Only after Moses came onto the scene did God once again appear to man, but this time he would descend only so far as the top of a mountain. Mountains, then, became sacred places of communication with God. Eventually, he would descend to the temple, but at the same time there is an almost lesser sense of the God that can press himself into a building rather than the one that at most can be communed with at the top of the mountain.

For several centuries, God is said to be in the temple of the Jews and it is only after Jesus begins to preach that we see another prophet that goes to the top of a mountain and attempts to truly speak to the vastness that is an all-powerful God. It is as if he is attempting to return his fellow people to the basis of what they were before they got caught up in the statutes and laws that had been around for generations. Laws, as Jesus seems to see them, are a man made construction much like the Tower of Babel that man attempted to use to reach God. This, Jesus would argue, is wrong. We do not attempt to work our way to God, but allow Him to come to us.

In fact, as I think about it, I begin to make a connection between the power of fasting and a connection with God. Fasting would seem to be the ultimate attempt at waiting for God, to the point that one forgoes even the basic necessities of life in order that they might be approached by God. Instead of trying to force him to see us through our actions we are supposed to pray, the use of the word in all its power, in order to allow for that final step of the ascension.

The Awakening

So I've started reading this new book that James and I found called The Awakening. To say that it is one of the strangest books that I've ever read is probably a bit of an understatement. I've only managed to get through about fifty pages so far and already I feel like my mind has been running on sand for about five hours. Seriously, I can barely get up enough energy to form enough coherent thoughts to write this down before it goes fluttering out of my head.

Despite how much this seems to have assaulted my conscience, there is one thing that I found that was interesting in the book so far. The author mentions music as one of the most basic and underlying foundations of the human psyche. That is, it is something that not only connects each of us to each other, but to everything around us as well.

It may sound weird to say this but all I could think of while I was reading was Roberto's, and so many other listeners for that matter, response when he listened to the meseirer (sorry about the spelling). He described it, I believe, as something that brought about a powerful emotional response, much like the men and women that we listened to on the recording described it. For each of them there was something that they could not describe, something deeper. It delved into an inner part of them that they may not have understood or known about before, but I think that The Awakening may provide me with an answer to exactly what that was. I can only hope that I can understand it when I get there.

Primum Movile

This image is illustrates the idea that much of the western world saw as the universe at the time. The important thing to note is the levels that are present, almost like the rungs of a ladder that represent the most ethereal and otherworldy sphere at the outermost reaches to the most earthly at the center.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/paradiso/siteimages/09primum.jpg&imgrefurl=http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/paradiso/09primum.html&usg=__gL-wPvkY6c7CBEI1Yf47Inss5Fg=&h=586&w=624&sz=117&hl=en&start=4&zoom=1&itbs=1&tbnid=zob5PiPVZOBxjM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dprimum%2Bmobile%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us%26tbs%3Disch:1%26prmd%3Div

Need to Read

Check out this blog about the descent of man and consciousness. There are some pretty good ideas here. While there is some very interesting material here. I would advise anyone who is going to read it to first look at Frye's chapter on mountains which seems to be getting to the same points as this author.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://hiddenlighthouse.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/angel.jpg&imgrefurl=http://hiddenlighthouse.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/descension-the-fall/&usg=__WNpaCedzpwBI8N3nfKomJYxBUZA=&h=495&w=450&sz=26&hl=en&start=5&zoom=1&itbs=1&tbnid=m5azTAFazpvmGM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=118&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dplato%2Bascension%2Band%2Bdescension%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us%26tbs%3Disch:1

The Bad Day

I've had to think about this blog for a while actually. It's not that it was difficult to pick out a day among all the horrible ones that I've faced in my life but quite the opposite. I'm almost like Job in the fact that most of my life has been extremely happy. I've been very fortunate to be able to gothrough life without many of the hardships that I know others have had to face. So I guess the hardest part is for me to type this as a "bad day" when I know that there are others who have suffered far more than I have, who have had to endure as I have not, and yet who still manage to make it through each and every day with a smile.

That being said, here's what I've come up with: I first thought that I might write about the death of one of my mother's parents. However, my grandmother died when I was very young and I only remember her from flashes. My grandfather died several years later when I was in eighth grade, but he had been very sick for a long time and, although the moment in and of itself was very sad, I think that I had already come to the realization that there was nothing that I could do when he finally did die.

My worst day, then, was actually when my first dog died, a little less than a year before my grandfather. Her name was Montana by the way. My parents had gotten her after they had visited the state for the first time and fell in love with the place. Anyways, I don't remember the exact day, but I remember that it was cold. Of course, this is an Alabama cold we're talking about so I guess that it probably wasn't as cold as I've experienced to date, but at the time I thought it was freezing. I remember that it was my turn to feed her, and so I "bundled up" to take a large bowl of food out to the old shed where she slept at night.

The first thing that I noticed when I got out there was that she wasn't in her usual spot. At this point, I'm kind of anoid because I have to go to school and I can't find her. There was a main opening to the shed that had plenty of room for her to lay down and have tons of food and water, but around to the side there was a smaller door that she sometimes went into when she was hiding or feeling playful. So I went to the side door and sure enough she was laying there, but something struck me as odd. She seemed peaceful, but there was something that didn't strike me as right. I remember at that point thinking for the first time that she might be dead. I bent down to touch her, and that's when I knew.

A long, sad story short, my dad had to come home from work to bury her, and I still had to go to school that day. Something that I am still kind of bitter about to this day. The whole time I kept thinking about Montana. She had been there for twelve of the thirteen years of my life and so it was disconcerting to know that something so stalwart in my life could be so easily taken away. I can remember so many of the times that we had together, all the memories and fun. I can remember what she looked like, what she felt like, how she sounded when she barked. But every time that I think about her now, another image of her laying perfectly still comes to my mind now, and the image of me reaching out and touching that still form will probably remain one of the saddest moments of my life.

Judges: The Best Stories (and the saddest)

Judges deals with the fact that Israel seems to suffer from constant short term memory loss, or maybe its longterm. I don't know. Either way they are some of the most forgetful people that I've ever even heard of. Basically, here is the pattern:

1. People forget to worship God.
2. God sends nation x to conquer Israel.
3. People pray to God for forgiveness.
4. God sends judge (aka man or woman that totally kicks ass) to save Israel.
5. Rinse and repeat.

The entire book of Judges deals with the fact that Israel constantly turns from God and then remembers that he's the one who actually got them to where they are in the first place. Eventually God sends someone to save his people and while that person is alive the Israelites are good, but once he or she dies they instantly revert to their old "heathen" ways like they just forgot the fact that they had prosperity while they were following God.

While the pattern and repetition become rather tedious after about five or six judges, the stories themselves are anything but. From Deborah who is the first powerful woman since probably Ziporah to Ehud, the guy that Plotz calls the left handed assassin to Samson, all of the judges deal with the oppressors in different and often violent ways.

However, none of these stories is more heartwrenching than the story of Jephthah's daughter. Jephthah, as the current judge of Israel, is in a war with the Ammonites and in order to assure victory he asks the lord for favor in exchange for the sacrifice of the first thing that greets him when he returns home. He wins, of course, and returns to his house only to be greeted by his daughter whom he must now sacrifice. In a show of faith unlike almost anything I have ever read the girl accepts her fate. She asks only that she may go and morn the fact that she is a virgin for one year, which her father grants. (Gee how nice of him.)

At this point I have to stop and admit that I thought for sure that God would show back up and save her just as he had done for Isaac when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son. After all, how can a loving God ask for the only child of his most faithful servant of the time? Surely he will step in as he did before and release Jephthah from his bond.

Sadly that reprieve does not come, and I was forced to read in horror as the girl was killed in honor of battle. There is no crying mentioned, no condolences given, just a young girl murdered in honor of all the killing that had been done a year ago.It is a tale that disturbs me more than any other in the entire Bible if only because there is no dissent given. Where are the kind hearted individuals that follow a kind-hearted God? What is this bloodthirstyness that seems to crop up so often? And what of the law that says there shall be no sacrifice of children because that is abhorrent? If it's so disgusting to you than stop it. God saves a male child but not a girl, where is the fareness in that?

Before I go off and decide to ramble on this forever, I thought that I would connect it to another form of daughter sacrifice that many of us have seen before when Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order that his ships might sale to Troy. Both are virgins. Both accept their fate meakley and with a courage that I find hard to fathom and both are sacrificed by fathers who love their only child more than anything to gods that seem to not give much of a damn.

We've already talked at length about the rest of the book so I won't go into that, but if you haven't read Judges, do so. There are some very good if sad stories that you can enjoy.

Joshua: God's General

Okay, so I don't ever remember going to bible study and being told that Joshua was a general, but that's really the only thing that makes sense when you get down to it. After all, he's the one that lead's Israel into the promised land to take what God has "given" them, which is another interesting point considering the fact that there were other people already occupying the land so they couldn't have been to happy about that.

Anyways, Joshua seems like a competent man. He leads Israel to several great victories. Then they must get a little overconfident because they finally lose a battle, and the people just want to settle in what they already have. However, Joshua comes up with a brilliant plan that ends with his enemies outflanked and their city conquered.

The one image that I can't shake from this book of the Bible is the fact that Joshua seems to be an extremely bloodthirsty individual. I can almost understand killing the men that you've been fighting because they represent a threat to the future kingdom that you are trying to establish, even though you are invading someone else's land, but to kill women and children seems like a cold and heartless attack on the innocent. Hell, it doesn't just seem like, it is.

At what point does a God whose so powerful that he can destroy the entire powerful nation of Egypt simply to prove a point become so afraid of women and children subverting his chosen people that he has the Israelites kill all of them? Can God not simply convert these people with one of the many miracles that he has lying around?

I guess the wierdest part about really reading the Bible for the first time has finally come crashing down on me. The first time that I "read" it, I must have just skimmed through this section understanding only the basic concepts that I had been taught since I was a small child, that God had chosen this land for his people and so everyone else must be evicted. The problem is that in this sense evicted comes to the point of mass genocide, an act that the God I grew up believing in, but a God that is not yet present in the Bible, did not believe in. I am beginning to wonder what else I will find on my more careful reading, and some of the possiblilities, to be honest, scare the crap out of me.

Numbers: More Laws and Balaam

Numbers seems to me to be pretty much the same thing as Leviticus, except for the fact that God expounds on a few more laws than he did in the previous book and there is no long list of how the tabernacle should look. Thanks for that.

While most of the book is extremely dull, there is at least one story that struck me as both fun and interesting a little more than half way through the book. We are introduced to Balaam, a man who is greatly respected for his apparent power to both bless and curse those whom he wishes. Balaam is recruited by one of the many tribes that live in the "promised land" to come and curse the Israelites so that the tribes can destroy them before the Hebrews decide that it is a good time to make war.

Balaam is an interesting man, however, in that he is one of the first people that we hear of not among the Israelites that worships the same God. So when he learns that it's Israel that he is supposed to be cursing, he immediately turns the curse into a blessing.

However, it is not until his return home that the true humor of the story kicks in. While Balaam is riding his donkey home, an angel appears before him. The donkey is the only thing that can see the animal and so will not budge from his spot. At which point Balaam proceeds to hit the poor animal who instantly whips around and asks him why he's doing that. It is only then that Balaam is able to see the angel and begs forgiveness of the higher being, though never of the donkey surprisingly.

I actually remember laughing out loud when I first read this story, not only because of the near absurdity of it, but because it reminded me of so many of the fables that I had read as a child that I could not believe that this was one of the stories that had been cut from my early bible education, if for no other purpose than the fact that it could have provided a lot more amusement than some of the same old stories over and over again. In the end, the story of Balaam and his donkey may end up being one of the most fundametally engaging stories in the entire bible because there is very little religion that seeks to overpower the simple nature of the narrative. Now if only some more of the Bible were that way, I might be in good shape.

Leviticus: Laws and Family Sorrows

Okay, so I read Leviticus and I can't help but wonder why Plotz doesn't understand that it is boring. Sure he may have other motives for reading the thing than I do, but at no point did I find the entire book to be interesting. Basically God expounds on the laws that he's already given Moses. That's right, pretty much this whole book God is talking to Moses on a mountain and I guess the poor guy has got to trek back and forth up and down this thing for a few weeks so he can get all of this down word for word. After all, it takes forty days to get the ten commandments and we know that the Israelites weren't slacking in his absence. Nope. They were busy building a golden calf. (By the way, Aaron did that and there is no mention of a punishment for him anywhere in the book.)

Anyways, if you pay close enough attention while Moses is writing all of these crazy laws down, two pretty brutal stories take place. The first comes just after God explains to Moses what needs to be burned on the altar and what kind of oils and incenses to use. Of course, two of Aaron's sons must have messed up somehow because as soon as they take the oil that they made into the tabernacle their fried. Now I'm imagining this scene was pretty gruesome, especially for Aaron who has to watch his son's die, but they aren't even mourned. Instead God admonishes both Moses and Aaron to be more careful next time. (Thanks for the warning system. One strike and you're out I guess.

The other story is just as short and pretty much as brutal. Two guys get in a fight and one of them happens to say God's name in a way that the big man doesn't like. Solution: have everybody stone him. First up are the people who heard him, which if I read it right includes the guy's entire family. That's right swear at God and he'll not only execute you but have your family do it. I'm starting to see God as something less than the family man I saw him as before.

Exodus: The Whining Manual

I'm not going to sugar coat this one. Some of the things that happen in Exodus scare the crap out of me. I'm glad that whatever God decided to destroy Egypt hasn't come to the conclusion that I need to be taught a lesson. I don't think that anyone in my family for about seven generations would be safe.

Okay moving on. The first person that you see trying to whine and moan his way out of responsibility is none other than Moses. (By the way, Moses is Aaron's younger brother. See previous post.) Rather than accepting what God has to say and going to the Pharaoh immediately with all the power of God behind him, Moses does everything that he can to get out of his responsibilities. What if no one believes him? He can't speak well... etc. The only excuse he doesn't seem to use is that his head hurts. Here Plotz notes an interesting point that this actually ingratiates Moses with God who is not actually looking for "yes-men" as much as he is competent tools that are willing to even question him if it means getting the job done satisfactorily.

As we move through the first half of Exodus, God pretty much flexes his muscles at the world, and shows how cruel he can be by pretty much laying waste to Egypt. Every time it looks like Pharaoh is going to concede and allow the Jews to leave, God "hardens Pharaoh's heart" and proceeds to send another more vicious plague at Egypt.

Finally, after every firstborn son (again with the hating of the firstborns), the Israelites leave. They're not even in the desert for five minutes before they start complaining. Why are they complaining to a guy who just proved that he's like the ultimate smiter (my spell-check hates me for this)? Who in their right mind decides its a good idea to complain to someone that can snuff you out in an instant? God, though, seems pretty patient with Israel for some reason. There is the occasional smiting for disobeying and at one point he almost kills everybody for making a golden calf. In the end though, for some reason, God is very patient with Israel. Though he doesn't actually take them to the promise land, instead condemning them to wander the desert for 40 years.

Genesis- the fall of the first born

Okay so it's about time that I started blogging on this big book that I've been reading for the past couple of weeks. I thought I'd start where it all began, in Genesis. Of course we all know the story of Adam and Eve, many of us have heard the stories of Noah and Abraham. Some of us can even recall the details of Issac, Jacob, and Joseph. While I was reading though, I noticed something that was rather interesting. That is that God seems to be more fond of the second or third child in a family than he does the firstborn. First of all is weird because you would think in this kind of culture that the firstborn son would be the most important and that God would favor him, but I cannot find a place in Genesis where that is actually the case.

First there is Adam, who may or may not be the first man on Earth. (I haven't actually decided that yet.) We see a creation in Genesis one and then another in chapter two, but whether or not the two are two separate events or two varying accounts of the same event is unclear. I like to think of them as separate because that supports my God and the younger sibling theory.

Anyway, after Adam and Eve get to "know" each other, Cain and then Able are born. Who does God favor? Able of course, the younger son who is also the one that is willing to sacrifice animals to him rather than the vegetables that his brother offers. God, therefore, adores Able, and Cain, being the rational older brother that he is, decides to kill the upstart.

Time passes and we come to Abram, or Abraham, whether or not he is a younger brother I can't say, but I know for a fact that Isaac is younger than Ishmael, but it is to Isaac that God passes the covenant he made with Abraham. Ishmael is, instead, forced to wander the land, and although God promises to help him as well, the overall effect is that he kind of gets shafted even though he is the first born.

Of course, most of us know that Jacob steals his older brother Esau's birthright, and Joseph eventually has his brothers kneeling at his feet. Even when Jacob is dying in Egypt he blesses the younger son of Joseph, Ephraim, over his older brother Manasseh. In other words, God continually shows favoritism not to the eldest son, but to a younger brother. I like this actually because I'm the youngest so that means that I've got a good shot at having about a million kids some day.

In the Beginning...

First thing's first. I thought that I would put out some of my initial thoughts about the bible before I got started reading it just to see how much I remember give myself a place to go from here.

I grew up in the church but I never really read the bible until after I stopped going full time. Being a little too young for the task, much of what I read simply washed over my head as I sat in my bedroom trying to understand why there were so many lists and why the book itself was so long. After finally wading through it a first time my plan had been to go back and read it more slowly a second time through, but I got somewher near the end of Leviticus or Numbers... one of those really elaborate books on rituals and temples and stuff that I really didn't care about at all before I finally gave up and quit the process all together. I never really stopped to think about what I had read the first time through.

Now that I am in this class however, I have kind of taken a moment to think back on the one time in my life when it seemed like I had nothing better to do than read a 1500 page book and some of the things that came to mind astounded me.

The first thing that really struck me is the difference between the two Gods in the old and new testament. Yaweh (not sure if that's how you actually spell it, so don't get too mad if it's wrong) I've decided is the guy you want on your side in a fight. You know what, scratch that. He's the guy that you just want as your friend because you know that anyone that messes with you is going to be in for a serious ass whipping, along with everybody else that that guy knows. He's like the best bodyguard ever, if that bodyguard had bipolar disorder and sometimes decided he didn't really appreciate you too much either. At those points you've just got to kind of make yourself invisible.

God the father from the new testament reminds me of like a rich father that you never knew you had. He'll make sure that you get everything that you want or need in time as long as you trust that he can do it without any proof. Otherwise, he'll make sure you go to the worst prison on a small deserted island with the worst criminals in the world. So maybe they're not so different after all.

I also noticed, after reading the first chapter of Good Book that there are two creation stories. The first occurs in chapter one of Genesis when man and woman are created together. The second occurs in chapter two when woman is created from man. Was God not happy with the results of his first creation, he seemed to think that "it was good" at the end of the first chapter but after day seven he creates man again. This time though there is no mention of creating in his image but only from the dust of the earth.

It's something to think about anyway as we get started. Did the writers of the Bible not notice the contradiction or are they trying to imply something different? Food for thought.

Okay, deep breath. here we go.

"In the beginning..."