good point.Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
good point.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
They want to protect themselves from the wild allowance of the Song of Songs.
What's the Song of Songs?
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Saucy poem in the Old Testament, sometimes called Song of Solomon.
It's kind of a call and response poem between two lovers.
sorry to ask what does a call and response poem mean?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
God as Father-Mother, which has been gaining as of late, may not make everyone here happy, but it is a worthy stance. Also, as capital letters, not small letters, keeping the Creator (Spirit) distinct from, but available to, the realm of human and physical matters.
Ahh, I see. So it's "no no, it's not about sex between two lovers - it's symbolic for god and the church, yeah that's it!"
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
As for me, I believe that it's a love story between Solomon and his true love. It's ironic though that this is the man who had 300 wives and 700 concubines. How do you really make that ONE woman feel special in his situation?
Les Miserables,
Volume 1, Fifth Book, Chapter 3
Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.
That's insane. You'd have to have intercourse 3 times a day with 3 different women everyday for almost a year to get through them all.
Who said that he had intercourse with them all? Some of them were just a token of an alliance between two kings. Some were probably a mere status symbol or trophy. He may have slept with some of them just one time. It IS insane, and when you read some of his writings, you can see that he later condemns the idea of even having TWO women in the same house.
Les Miserables,
Volume 1, Fifth Book, Chapter 3
Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.
I think that if a god exists, it might be beyond being feminine or masculine. Then again it might even have a gender, but this would assume that god is not perfect by itself, since genders exist so as nature can divide the burden of any complicated species (or at least it seems possible that this is so).
Personally i would not mind if god was a female, but obviously it would not be something having to do with human base understandings of a female or male
I think humanity has personalized things since the dawn of the realization of time.
Before there were Gods, we believed in the spirits of ancestors, and that even rocks had personality.
To think that the very cobblestones and pavement we walk today has a 'soul' or a 'spirit' that reacts to the vibrations of our footsteps.
I think that we're looking at this all wrong. Man? Woman? Genderless? The concept of something that we can't even comprehend, something that actually began the universe, perhaps is not even conscious in the way that we might conceive. It could be a force working in much the same way as gravity, or time.
The imagination of humanity is sometimes astounding, and even amazing. But Richard Feynman said it best:
“I think nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s that she’s never going to let us relax.” - Richard P Feynman
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. ~Oscar Wilde.
Jesus was a dude. Does that make God a dude? I mean, Jesus had flora in his stomatch but that doesn't make God a bunch of cells. If we still had the overzealous theological mindset of the early/mid christianity, it would be classified as a heresy in two seconds. I like mixing modern science with ancient world conceptions, it always makes for fun discussion.
That said, there is this part of the Genesis about the original sin that I always found interesting form the narrative standpoint, which related to this difference between men and women. According to the book of genesis, the Adam disobeyed a direct order from God, while Eve only disobeyed the order from Adam who told her the rule God had imposed. Because of it, Adam owns a big debt to God, but Eve implicitly has a debt to Adam because he's the one she actually disobeyed. Hence the servitude of women. I don't claim this to be an accurate depiction of theology or religious thinking behind the passage, but from a folktale point of view it seems coherent.
My blog about literature (in spanish): http://otrasbentilaciones.wordpress.com/
Why is "neither" not an option?
"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." -Thoreau
Ní mar a dtarraingím mo chuid anála ach mar a dtugaim mo ghrá a bhfuil mé i mo chónaí
(Not where I breathe but where I love, I live)
I think these arguements would be exclusive to Christians. There are those of us Abrahamic individuals who believe entirely in God but hold Jesus as a prophet only.
God, in my opinion, is neither a male nor a female, but was simply given the gender of male in English/German/etc. holy texts because the English/German/etc. languages lack a gender-neutral word for a human being other than "it". "It", when refering to a human, is dehumanizing and is used in derogatory ways so it would hardly be appropriate to associate that term with God. Therefore, God has been called "he" ever since.
Food for thought: If God had not been called "he" throughout these holy texts and had been refered to as "she" instead (perfectly acceptable considering God doesn't have an exclusive gender), how would our perceptions of God change? What characteristics would we apply to "her" simply based on what gender "she" is called in the holy texts?
Using this reasoning, this puts into perspective why some Abrahamic peoples, namely Muslims, do not have pictures of God. To have a picture of someone is to associate characteristics with them automatically. Depending on what God would "look like" would be what he would "be like." If he were depicted as a male, we would always associate him with masculinity and not with femininity. If he were depicted as strong, with a beard, with brown hair, with curls, with a crown, etc. we would automatically view his personality depending on those physical characteristics. I think putting a gender to God holds the same kind of "sin." It limits God to a box which he far transgresses. In order to create both males and females, God must have male and female characteristics. God must "be" both.
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Taken from: http://muslimahsoapbox.blogspot.com/2011/12/god.html
I believe that human beings have the instinct to turn mysterious things into something relatable in order to understand it. The way a cat lowers its legs and sneaks around in caution when it sees something it doesnt know, a human reacts much the same way mentally. We are afraid of the unknown and, if it is not relatable to us, we cast it away as something that is not OF us and, therefore, dangerous to us. We've seen ourselves do this to other humans since humans were able to record history.
In order for human beings to relate to God, we naturally turn God into one of us. Whether we are the Druids of the ancient Celts, the shamans of the Native Americans, or the Arabs and Jews, we give God our own face and call Him by our own names and turn Him into a member of our family so that we feel safe around Him. "Our" God is different than "their" God because "our" God would never do the things that they do.
....
Unfortunately, humans naturally have turned God into "one of us" and have made Him part of our posse and unattainable to others. It is as though in order for other people to have access to God, they now have to view Him the same way that the followers of certain religious paths view Him. Unfortunately, this mindset has caused a great battle within myself. Perhaps if I only knew Christianity before I became a Muslim, I wouldnt have a problem with this way of thinking. However, I come from a way of life that is NOT considered Abrahamic. I come from a very spiritual path, where I could see God however I wanted to and no one had the right to tell me that I was wrong. I wish I could say that I hated my pagan past and that it was awful and that Islam is the best thing that has ever happened to me but that is simply not true. I love Islam but I love God more than a religious path. Islam, for me, is not "my religion" at all. It is simply my existance. My life. I do not want to buy into the doctrine and strict, cold rhetoric that many sheikhs and leaders use because I often disagree with them. They dont come from the same world that I come from and they dont see through the same eyes as me. Therefore, we may interpret things a little differently. We both share the same book, but we may read it through differnet eyes and read differnet things between the lines. Who is right?
This is not Islams fault nor it is Gods fault. This is the fault of mankind. It is our natural instinct to take God and mold Him into what we think He is and then tell others that they need to see Him that way too. Muslims are victims of this as well. If you think you don't do this, I want you to test yourself. I want you to picture calling God "she" instead of "he." Could you do it? Could you say "I love God. She's a wonderful God." I know I couldn't. It would feel unnatural. However, I find it entirely comfortable to say "I love God. He's a wonderful God." God is neither male nor female so why are we comfortable calling God "he" but we suddenly feel as though we are worshipping something else if we call God "she?" This problem stems from the fact that we have no gender-neutral term in English that can refer to a human being without being gender specific. The only word that we have that comes close is "it" but that word is hardly appropriate for God. "It" is only attributed to people when we dehumanize someone. "It" carries too negative a connotation for it to apply to our diety. Therefore, we have decided to call God "he" instead. What if we decided to call God "she"? How would our perception of God change? Would we view God differently? Would we attribute different characteristics to God if we called him "she" all along? I think perhaps we would have.
Now that we have touched on God's "gender" (or lack thereof), why don't we take a look at God's characteristics. I think the world is under the assumption that God needs to be a 100% "positive" god in order for God to be true. If things like war or famine plague the earth, people question Gods existance as though God would never allow negativity to happen. However, I have learned to view God very differently when I viewed God in nature. Take a look at nature: it is a constant struggle for survival. There is death and darkness in nature, but there is also light and birth. Nature is a yin and a yang and it has to be. In order for happiness to exist, there must be sadness to counter it. If humans never felt sad and they only felt happy, happy would become the new "medium" and happiness wouldnt exist anymore. Happy is only happy because it has the ability to get worse. God is not always positivity. God has characteristics that are "negative." God feels anger and wrath and jealousy. God addresses things like war and death and punishment because God understands that this is reality. This is nature. War is in the Qur'an because war is inevitable and a reality.
There is a verse in the Qur'an that says that all animals, doing their natural thing, are worshipping God. If that is true, then both death and life are of God. A lion killing a gazelle, a wolf eating a bunny, etc. are things that God willed to happen. These actions have a purpose (to keep the animal alive. Survival of the fittest), but the point is that these actions are not always entirely positive. It is positive for the predator; he gets to survive. It is negative, however, for the prey. Sometimes negativity happens, but that is essential for positivity to exist. Positivity without negativity is no longer positivity at all.
Last edited by PMLondonderry; 02-07-2012 at 09:53 AM.
"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." -Thoreau
Ní mar a dtarraingím mo chuid anála ach mar a dtugaim mo ghrá a bhfuil mé i mo chónaí
(Not where I breathe but where I love, I live)
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