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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
thecosmicdance's InsaneJournal:
| Friday, September 11th, 2009 | |
| 5:35 pm | Apparently conservative Christians are not happy with the idea of national healthcare reform. Now I don’t know this for sure. I haven’t even bothered to research it. But aside from wackadoo conspiracy theories about Obama’s secret Muslim terrorist roots, there is no other earthly reason for Christians to oppose health care reform (except maybe really out there fears that the OWG will make us all get the Mark of the Beast or something). You’d think it’d be the one thing they wouldn’t oppose, even a hardline conservative fungelical can’t actually turn their back on sick little kids and old people, right? Most of the fungelicals I know spend hundreds of dollars on charities, both foreign and domestic and are always the first to show up with a fruit basket when you're in the hospital. But I think they’ve somehow got it into their heads that a national healthcare system would mean the government would force doctors to treat gay people and to give abortions, or even just provide Plan B when specifically requested. They’re probably right. Once the US government gets involved, unless you’re in the military, there is no chance you’ll be allowed to simply pick and choose your patients based on your opinion of their moral fitness. The British NHS came into being just after WWII, and homosexuality wasn’t legalized in the UK until the end of the 60s, so being a national healthcare system probably didn’t really stop people from discriminating. We are, however, now in a different era and many changes have occurred in European and American social attitudes. If it’d been created in the 21st century or even the 90s, that sort of discrimination would not have been allowed (and it wasnt' seen as discrimination because gay people and women who wanted abortions didn't see themselves as having the right to demand otherwise-the medical community at large diagnosed homosexuality as a mental disorder and abortions were not spoken of in polite company). And I seriously think that’s what people are afraid of, deep down. Public health care will be like public schools and public libraries-it has to be open to everyone regardless of how you feel about their lifestyle. Right now, denying care based on a person’s lifestyle is just bad customer service, with the feds involved it’d be a illegal. Of course, rather than totally flipping out at the mere mention of the idea… they could always lobby for the plan to be under the control of individual states, you know, kind of like public schools or the DMV, the federal government gives all the states a broad outline of what they want and then leaves it up to each state to interpret. I mean, I don’t think the federal government could manage a national healthcare system run entirely out of Washington, but this would be something, maybe even something that worked for everyone. Except those people who get stuck in a state run by conservative Christians. |
| Monday, July 13th, 2009 | |
| 12:25 pm | SPN and Spirituality pt 5 ( Continuing on the Subject of Jimmy Novak, spoilers for S4 ahoy ) |
| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | |
| 12:27 pm | Supernatural and Spirituality pt 4 One of the things I like about Supernatural is their ( Sympathetic Portrayal of Religious People: ) |
| Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | |
| 6:13 pm | |
| Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | |
| 6:04 pm | Wayward Son: Supernatural and Spirituality pt3 ( part 3 ) |
| Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | |
| 8:43 pm | Wayward Son: Supernatural and Spirituality pt2 ( part two ) |
| Friday, April 3rd, 2009 | |
| 7:22 pm | Wayward Son: Supernatural and Spirituality pt 1 I could’ve done a Meta Post on “Lost”, and I bet people are wondering “hey, where’s the promised “Lost” post?” Well, I realized that as cool and interesting as the parallels they’ve drawn this season are, they’re also pretty obvious. I mean, the only way you could miss it is if you never read the books in question and if you haven’t, it’s not likely you’re reading this post either. It’d be redundant to lay it all out for you as if you were small, stupid children. So I decided to do my first ever official “Supernatural” meta instead. I have hopes to publish this but there are two crimps in that plan, 1) I might be Jossed, and 2) I haven't yet found a venue for it. ( Supernatural ) |
| Sunday, March 29th, 2009 | |
| 12:48 pm | I have an opportunity to go and see a certain famous author+radio host at the Kennedy, which is a setting much smaller and more intimate than the last time I saw him, and I get to do it for free because I'm a member. The last time I saw him live, it cost $150 and I could barely see anything from where I was sitting (it was a birthday gift, so I didn't have to pay for it then either but I could also get the person who bought my tickets last time, in for free this time) The problem is, it's on Easter Sunday and there is no way I can travel to both Boston and Concord (NH where the relatives I traditionally visit are) in the same day. So 1) if I do this, I really feel like I no longer have the right to complain about the Blog Against Theocracy People repeatedly scheduling their blogathon for Easter weekend. 2) My relatives already think I'd rather do anything else than visit them. 3) It just feels wrong somehow. 4) I bought some food I intended to contribute to the Easter meal and I not only can't eat it all myself but there won't be another occasion for holiday cooking for awhile. 5) It just feels wrong somehow... But on the PRO side, if there was anyone my family would understand my missing Easter for, it might be this guy because they're actually bigger fans than I am. But I've been second guessing myself a lot lately- I keep wanting to slap a disclaimer on this journal that says I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT I"M DOING. |
| Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | |
| 9:11 pm | When people started talking about Mary Magdalene again, a lot of emphasis was placed on the "new information" that she "wasn't actually a prostitute". But when this was brought up, it was brought up on the assumption that everyone already knew Mary Magdalene was supposed to be a prostitute. And…not everyone did. The intent was to clear her name, but it actually backfired in a way. People seem to like it *more* when she’s a fallen woman, it makes everything more dramatic and significant and brings up whole new interesting symbolizism and metaphor. So what it really accomplished was that now everyone is going around saying “Jesus had a girlfriend and she was a hooker? That’s awesome!” The unfortunate truth is also that she wouldn’t need to literally accept money for sex to be thrown into the role of whore in her own era. Probably just hanging around with Jesus in the first place would draw such an accusation. In Mary Magdalene’s world, there was no gray area for women. You went from your parents house to your husband’s, and they didn’t just take your word for it that you were a virgin, you were supposed to keep your bridal sheets to prove it. That is why we have the confusion over Mary the mother of Jesus and the “virgin birth”. Because all young, unmarried women were assumed to be virgins, and later versions of the story just assumed that assumption was literal fact. She was *supposed* to be a virgin, so there is no way she couldn’t have been, since she obviously wouldn’t have lied to her parents or fiancé about that. In spite of the evidence of her being pregnant(And this is all bound in with men’s issues about their mothers. It’s because they are very uncomfortable with the idea of their mothers ever having had sex). So a woman who was not married and went around having sex with men and not even really trying to hide it was no better than a whore anyway, whether or not she was getting money for it. Women weren’t even really supposed to have prolonged conversations with strange men. |
| Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | |
| 5:37 pm | |
| Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | |
| 2:52 pm | Last Battle as tragedy ( Yes, The Last Battle is a tragedy, what clued you in? ) Current Music: Idan Raichel Hinech Yafah |
| 11:25 am | Vatican declares Evolution compatible with the Bible. "Gee, thanks for the permission", say all the Catholics, Anglicans, Jews, and educated mainline moderate Protestants who already figured that out. "You can't tell me what to do" say all the conservative evangelicals. "Science wins war over creationism" say all the anti religion people. Today is Charles Darwin's birthday. You know, I have no problem at all with Darwin himself. It's all that other stuff brought into play by all those other people that turns "Charles Darwin" into one of those "ohh no...this will end badly" names. Mostly because most people don't really know what they're talking about when they try to talk about evolution, and this is true of people who take the scientific position as well as those who take the religious one. Both scientists and religious scholars always forget that the general public doesn't really understand either one. Unless you plan to go into a scientific field, you never take another science class once you have that high school diploma in your hand. Chances are, while you still had to take them, you either weren't paying much attention or you were only learning, then forgetting, what was needed to pass exams. It's the same with religion. Most people don't understand it, they're just going along with it because it's what you do, so it's easy, really painfully easy, to confuse and mislead them down all sorts of interesting roads without even trying. I occasionally entertain a fantasy of writing a religious book filled from cover to cover with totally inaccurate information and see how long it took people to catch on but I don't want to be responsible for the results (the last time someone did this, it ended up with Tom Cruise losing his freaking mind). But generally, what people know about either is what they hear/see from scrolling past newspaper headlines or flipping through the nightly news, and journalists do their best to report on both science and religion as shallowly and sensationally as possible. So what people end up doing is not picking a side based on facts but on what they *wish* was true based on their personal politics. And often those politics are *really* about things like North versus South, rich versus poor, high church versus low, conservative versus liberal etc. According to the PBS documentary "Make'em Laugh", the majority of twentysomethings actually get their news from political satire (which is prob. true of other age groups as well, for young people it's "The Daily Show", for older people, it's Leno). Charles Darwin is actually the great great great grandfather of Skandar Keynes, so there's that too(scroll down to #5). Can't be mad at a man for that. But speaking of exactly what I'm talking about, I got lost in Tv Tropes the other day and stumbled on their synopsis of Lamb. Please stop saying Levi Bar Alphaeus is not in the Bible. He is. He gets almost no lines and doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose but he is mentioned in the NT. I know this because when I was doing the Bible posts I saw his name and thought that was pretty funny. Also, re the MM red hair thing. No, she could’ve had red hair. Possibly not that kind of bright, northern European red hair and certainly not combined with IrishGirl!porcelain skin to go with it but there are many Biblical characters commonly thought to have red hair, such as David and Benjamin. And considering that the Jewish world had been conquered by Europeans twice at this point, it’s entirely possible there could be some kids with bright red or even blonde, hair. Mary Magdalene’s red hair is an old, old, bit of Christian fanon. I don’t know where it came from or precisely why, but depicting her as a redhead is so common it’s surprising to read the NT and see no mention of it. However, I totally understand the desire to make her dark haired because regardless of whether or not red hair is possible for her, it’s acknowledging “Hey, I get that this character is not European”. |
| Saturday, February 7th, 2009 | |
| 1:45 pm | |
| Friday, January 16th, 2009 | |
| 3:51 pm | I figured I should start up the Bible readings again. After all, I have absolutely NO excuse for not doing it now. So here are some amusing out of context quotes I found when going through the previous entries ( quotes ) |
| Sunday, December 21st, 2008 | |
| 12:16 am | So Obama invited Rick Warren to pray at the inaguaration. But I understand why he did it, and I’m not upset. Here’s why: ( here's why ) |
| Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 | |
| 10:53 pm | The Telmarine war cry is “Christ Amour”. This is not as bizarre as you’d think it would be (it isn’t in the books, but we’re not talking about what is or is not in the books right now). It only seems weird until you realize that there is no way the Telmarines could be unfamiliar with Christianity. They came into Narnia from an era in our world that was after the arrival of Christianity. The Magician’s Nephew tells the story of the creation of Narnia, from the pov of Edwardian era humans, and I once heard that C.S Lewis said the Telmarines arrived in the twenties. I have never heard anyone say this before or since though. But there’s a good chance (eighty percent, probably) that the Telmarines knew about Christianity before they entered Narnia. I think that may be the point of them. I read a fic from a Telmarine pov where Peter is referred to as “the pagan king” and I thought “that is exactly how they’d see him”. From their pov, the Narnians worship an animal and believe in a bunch of frightening minor nature gods. The Telmarines fear and hate anything related to Old Narnia, so they fear and hate Aslan, even to the point of desperately pretending he doesn't exist. And of course, Aslan is actually Jesus, so it's all about how Christians are cut off from their own god and are consequently terrified of perfectly normal things their god made. And you know, the horrible horrible things they do to other people in the name of the god they are carefully trying to keep locked away in some building. They don't understand that Aslan *is* the same being their ancestors worshipped in our world, so they spend the whole book (and movie) trying to wipe out Old Narnia. Partly because the reality of God scares them so they have to put up walls in order to deal with it. And also, partly because they just don't comprehend that any version but their own is valid. Like all those people who just couldn't understand that people who voted for Obama could also have strong Christian values and be voting according to them (although it's always been interesting that people during US elections say they're going to vote for "The Christian candidate"...as opposed to what, the Hindu candidate?) I wanted this to be longer but I strained my hand today. |
| Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 | |
| 3:55 pm | |
| Saturday, November 1st, 2008 | |
| 2:29 pm | Everyone at my parent's church is now on Facebook. There's a public facebook group for them, and they've been friending each other as well. But the current US election is causing a lot of nasty, nasty friction between people. I'm sure a lot of them never saw this coming, because they thought the people they went to church with all agreed with them on everything. This is because what they were seeing all the time was people's church personalities. It is not that everyone was being hypocritical but that when you only see people a couple of days a week at most, you only bother to show them one face, to keep the peace or because you just don't have time, it didn't seem important, whatever. You know about where people tend to stand on things, but laws and social convention prevent the congregation from getting too into it, and that church at least, was one that always toed the line when it came to the law about politics in the pulpit. But now, thanks to the miracle of Facebook, everyone's discovering what everyone else is *really* like. And this election is really dividing the congregation. There are, as you might assume, *a lot* of conservatives, who are almost purposely antagonizng the handful of Obama voters. They are mostly of a certain age group, but they're acting as childishly as the litters of children they keep popping out. You know, posting pointed notifications like "Ann is wondering whatever happened to morality?" or "Tom wants to know why capitalism is dead in America". They also post Youtube stuff that is frequently inaccurate or just plain wrong- like a clip from Obama's *Senate* campaign and either claiming or just not understanding, that when he admits he doesn't have much experience, he's doing so in a clip that is a few years old. One of the Obama people tried to educate them and they only got nastier as a result. One woman has been saying such ridiculous stuff that my sister admitted to me that she was thinking "You should be glad my sister's not on Facebook, she would rip you a new one. Hahhaa. I kinda would have. And I don't even care, because I don't go to that church anymore so I *don't* have to face them on Sunday. I can tell people off like they have never been told off before. I'm planning to join Facebook anyway, although I think if I do say anything I'll try to tone it down and tailor it to the audience. No yelling at anyone unless they insult me first- just seemingly random and thoughtful posts that look like they're coming from someone who had no idea (big, inoccent eyes) that anyone was fighting over this. My dad posted and said to stop fighting. This other guy who I had pegged as a hardline scary type actually gave a speech recently telling people to stop fighting. Another guy (who is one of the young adults so it's not just the old dudes) said stop fighting. The pastor said to quit it. But it just keeps getting worse. What disappoints me the most is how cliched it all is. Not only would most non or ex Christians just assume this is the way it'd go down but *I'm* sadly not even surprised. Which is, you know, why I don't go to that church anymore. |
| Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 | |
| 7:51 pm | Why Context Really Is Important After All There’s a line in the NT when Jesus tells his followers “the poor will always be with you.” Many Christian denominations and individual leaders have spent an awful lot of time trying to figure out just what he meant by “the poor will always be with you”. I am not about to start claiming that I’ve discovered something no one else ever has but it might help if they remembered the line that comes after “the poor will always be with you.” The next part is basically “but I won’t be here much longer.” People concentrate so much on the first part that they forget what story that verse actually comes from. It’s from the story in which Mary Magdalene smashes that jar of perfume and uses it to annoint Jesus’s feet. The disciples were upset because they thought she could have sold the perfume and used the profits to help the poor. So Jesus dismisses that with “the poor will always be with you.” The focus of the story is not the poor, or what we should do with the poor or why they will always be with us. That's important to discuss, sure, but the Bible gives us many other opportunities to do so. By obsessing over what that one line means, you’re kind of ignoring the whole point of the scene. In context that line is about Jesus saying “look, forget about the poor for a second, something amazing is happening and I need you to be watching.” You can debate about what the amazing thing was that was happening. Was MM performing an ancient, sacred ritual designed to formally announce Jesus as their king? Or was she symbolically annointing him prior to his death? Or was it important because she was a worldly sinner who is so overwhelmed by her religious experience that she smashes her most prized possession? Did she know why she did it, or was it just a coincidence? All of those questions are more important here than "why did he say the poor would always be with us?" |
| Thursday, September 11th, 2008 | |
| 10:57 am | Maybe non religious people get annoyed by Christians acting like they own Narnia. Because there are lots of Christians who keep using the stories to try and push their beliefs, in ways that I’m betting would have driven the original author absolutely nuts (it didn’t work on him, after all). They’re pushing Narnia as a “witnessing tool” so much that they’ve forgotten Narnia doesn’t need their help. I mean, if the books are a metaphorical, child sized version of the author’s personal testimony, you might want to pause and take a look at how belief in Aslan and Narnia is handled in the books. The more you push, the more annoyed people get and the less likely they are to want to keep enjoying a series that so many obnoxious people are big fans of. One of the secrets to the popularity of this series with children is the narrator’s voice, I think. It has a very “this is just between you and me” vibe. The books were a conversation between me and the author, not me, the author and five grownups standing behind me telling me how to interpret things. So maybe it doesn’t matter if people are getting things “wrong”. |