Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year!

So, another year has passed. Not much has changed. I'm in the same job, same town, same house, married to the same guy, with the same issues. Family of origin has had no deletions or additions, although my grandmother has a new pacemaker, which probably means that she'll now live forever. I'm sure my mother, who has given the past 35 years of her life to taking care of her, is thrilled about that prospect.

The most notable happening in the year was the death of Cali Cat in November. She was almost 19 years old, with 12 of those sharing a bunk with me. I don't want to cry again, so I won't say much other than that she will be very much missed.


As for 2013, I'm hoping that it will bring a great deal of change -- that my husband will become a grown-up again, that I will get my career on track, that climate change, will stop, that airline prices will go down enough for me to visit the people I love, that Americans will get their heads out of their asses. I'm not holding my breath though. As for me, if I can move somewhere beyond just trying to get through, I will feel an improvement.

Hark, A Vagrant

Hark! A VagrantHark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Intelligent, wry humor based on history and literature and great illustration that includes the occasional ass joke. What's not to love?



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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Revelations, by Elaine Pagels

Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of RevelationRevelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I turned 40 this year, something that as a teenager I never expected to do. Not because I had some dread disease or abusive boyfriend, but because I had been taught that Jesus would be coming back any day -- most likely before my high school graduation in 1990 but definitely before I reached middle age. The signs were all there, as I learned in a Sunday night sermon series that featured a movie depicting the horrors of waking up to find all your loved ones gone. Because my parents didn't attend church, I didn't have a sane voice to counter the apocalyptic visions, which eventually spurred several panic attacks that the Rapture had occurred and I had been left behind. I really didn't think much about my future life because I didn't imagine that I would have one. Eventually I gained some real knowledge about religious history and left that all behind, but there's still a bit of fear of getting it wrong somewhere down in my lizard brain that pops up whenever someone doesn't answer a phone.

So, reading Elaine Pagels' Revelations was more than an academic exercise for me -- it was a cleansing of sorts. Like her previous books, Revelations presents scholarly information in a way that lay readers can understand. Her focus here is on the history of the text itself (one among many books of revelation circulating in the early days of Christianity) and how it came to be included in the canonical Bible.

A few issues in particular struck me while reading. First, Revelations as we know it is sort of a 3rd Century "Apocalypse Now," a tale of war and horror at a time of war and horror for its readers as well -- rather than prophesying the future, it reflects the circumstances of the time in which it was written, when the Jews and the Romans were in almost continual war. Along a different track, Pagels reveals that the most frequently read portions of Christian teachings largely involved those texts available to the lowest common denominator of believers, as opposed to the "secret" texts and teachings for those interested in a higher level of enlightenment. Of course, and not a surprise to those familiar with Pagels' other works, politics and power determined the direction of Christianity and the eventual "approved" interpretation of texts (the Council of Nicea was a dogfight for whose truth would become the Truth). For example, the beasts and enemies mentioned in the revelations of John originally were thought to represent Rome, until Constantine jumped on the Christianity bandwagon, when suddenly "heretics" who didn't toe the party line suddenly became the harbingers of the apocalypse. These heretics were mainly those who believed in intrinsic spirituality and individual enlightenment as opposed to a god working through a hierarchical organization defining the spirit as it sees fit. As people who thought for themselves, naturally, these independent sorts had to be destroyed and largely were, thanks to early bishops like Athanasius.

In the end, Revelations was chosen to finish off the canonical Bible in large part because it sets in stone the "my way or the highway" attitude of these bishops with its statement that if anyone adds or takes away to the Bible, as written by the powers that be, they are false prophets. The goal was to silence all critics of the orthodoxy by portraying them as led by Satan. Jeez, where have I heard that before.

And therein lies one thread that ties the lessons of the book together. That everything old is new again. That the prophesies of 2000 years ago are the prophesies of today not because they simply happened yet but because of the power they hold over the psyches of adherents and the power they provide to proponents: the idea that the horrors of today are just portents of some greater struggle of forces beyond our control, so we might as well just do what we're told, hope we do everything right, and look forward to the new Jerusalem to come since this world is just going to suck. So many of the evils of the past 2100 years come down to this simple but poisonous idea. It explains so much.

As for me, I've come to realize that no matter how much more time I may have, it's the day to day time on earth that matters.



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Monday, December 10, 2012

Something Red, by Douglas Nicholas

Something RedSomething Red by Douglas Nicholas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Something about this book led me to read it in one day (other than being on vacation and having a whole day to spend on reading). The book's structure around the protagonists' physical journey gives the story a movement that makes you want to keep going along with it. Of course, it's also a great story that takes place in a time period I haven't often seen in fiction.



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