Just shut up and get me an actuary.
Feb. 15th, 2007 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariI have no religion. The closest I have is some sort of pagany projection of self-reliance thing, and that's only on good days. A lot of the time I just try not to think about it because if there is a supreme being, I'm very unhappy with him/her/they.
That isn't to say I'm not INTERESTED in religion. I love reading religious stories and seeing the kinds of threads and myths and thoughts that are behind some of the stories and what not. Of all the Judeo-Christian sects out there, I've always liked the Gnostics.
I loved the storytelling and the people behind the storyies attitude they had to most of their religion. A lot of their ideas ping with my own (What is the serpent in Eden was doing us a favor, and the Old Testament god was a jerk? Creation as error upon error upon error...). One of the the ideas, which really sits deep with me is the idea of the body as a punishment, or even torture.
When I finally finished the two "Books of Adam and Eve" I joked about them dying every three or four minutes, but at the same time, it really kinda got to me, since part of the Fall of Man was the "Brutishness of their Bodies." In a nutshell, in this story, Adam and Eve lived in Eden as a sort of Jehova Junior. Above the angels, below the big guy.
When they fell, they essentially translated down to animal flesh. NOW they needed to eat and sleep and drink and all that lovely stuff...and they hate it. They're not used to it. Their first meals don't sit well with them, they don't know how to drink, they end up passing out because they don't recognize the signs of sleep, Adam has his "heart enflamed" a few times and he's not sure what to do about that.
Their punishment is to be these Jehova Juniors in animal form. And they hate it. It's something that rings true for me, since I've always seen humans as something more than just the end result of evolution. Wether it's being translated gods, or space aliens, playing with our genetics or a well of souls somewhere, I've always believed that we were more than the sum of our parts.
So part of the punishment of the fall is their bodies...which for being an Oriental Orthodox book is an incredibly Gnostic idea. And one that rings very true for me, as I see my body as a punishment (on good days...on bad days, it's just torture). It's amazing how having that one single bond with characters in a story can really suck you in.
I'm wondering if I could possibly rework some of this into AWFW. Allegra, who is now a soul deposited into a new body, wouldn't know a thing about it, but the angels watching the flock might talk about it. There's been a small piece I wanted to write around this time about how Hanna watched over Nen'a's incarnations over the centuries until she "lost" her to the crowd.
Despite God having to use the Konami Code to keep the game going, I really enjoyed that book.
That isn't to say I'm not INTERESTED in religion. I love reading religious stories and seeing the kinds of threads and myths and thoughts that are behind some of the stories and what not. Of all the Judeo-Christian sects out there, I've always liked the Gnostics.
I loved the storytelling and the people behind the storyies attitude they had to most of their religion. A lot of their ideas ping with my own (What is the serpent in Eden was doing us a favor, and the Old Testament god was a jerk? Creation as error upon error upon error...). One of the the ideas, which really sits deep with me is the idea of the body as a punishment, or even torture.
When I finally finished the two "Books of Adam and Eve" I joked about them dying every three or four minutes, but at the same time, it really kinda got to me, since part of the Fall of Man was the "Brutishness of their Bodies." In a nutshell, in this story, Adam and Eve lived in Eden as a sort of Jehova Junior. Above the angels, below the big guy.
When they fell, they essentially translated down to animal flesh. NOW they needed to eat and sleep and drink and all that lovely stuff...and they hate it. They're not used to it. Their first meals don't sit well with them, they don't know how to drink, they end up passing out because they don't recognize the signs of sleep, Adam has his "heart enflamed" a few times and he's not sure what to do about that.
Their punishment is to be these Jehova Juniors in animal form. And they hate it. It's something that rings true for me, since I've always seen humans as something more than just the end result of evolution. Wether it's being translated gods, or space aliens, playing with our genetics or a well of souls somewhere, I've always believed that we were more than the sum of our parts.
So part of the punishment of the fall is their bodies...which for being an Oriental Orthodox book is an incredibly Gnostic idea. And one that rings very true for me, as I see my body as a punishment (on good days...on bad days, it's just torture). It's amazing how having that one single bond with characters in a story can really suck you in.
I'm wondering if I could possibly rework some of this into AWFW. Allegra, who is now a soul deposited into a new body, wouldn't know a thing about it, but the angels watching the flock might talk about it. There's been a small piece I wanted to write around this time about how Hanna watched over Nen'a's incarnations over the centuries until she "lost" her to the crowd.
Despite God having to use the Konami Code to keep the game going, I really enjoyed that book.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-16 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 10:05 pm (UTC)I can still get a little uneasy if I stretch and become "aware" of the ends of my limits.
Hopefully some of that makes some kinda sense. :D
I think...
Date: 2007-02-16 08:58 am (UTC)