Tithe One On

This morning, the minister had the thankless task of preaching about tithes. He knew it was thankless, too, and mentioned that he gets complaints any time he talks about how people are supposed to tithe. I find it thankless because this is one of those biblical ideas that, once you look at it, falls apart into interpretative problems that he might not be purposely sidestepping, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to get into.

For one: there's the fact that an injunction to offer 10% of your earnings to "God" is a very, very different thing from offering them to "the church." Much less to any specific church. And then, when one gets into the biblical support for tithing, one discovers that some of the talk about tithes and "firstfruits" (as in Numbers 18 and 2 Chronicles 21) is about supporting the priesthood, which can be used as evidence for the Protestant viewpoint. But there's also a lot of "the blood of your sacrifices must be poured beside the altar of the LORD your God" business, where tithes are discussed as part of the system of animal sacrifice. (Deuteronomy 12:27. Thank you, Bible Gateway!)

What I like even better, also in the same intriguing chapter of Deuteronomy, is this: "You must not eat in your own towns the tithe of your grain and new wine and oil, or the firstborn of your herds and flocks, or whatever you have vowed to give, or your freewill offerings or special gifts. Instead, you are to eat them in the presence of the LORD your God at the place the LORD your God will choose." (Deut. 12: 17-18) You're supposed to take those tithes, and the firstfruits and your special gifts, and eat them yourself! There's even a handy loophole: "If the place where the LORD your God chooses to put his Name is too far away from you, you may slaughter animals from the herds and flocks the LORD has given you, as I have commanded you, and in your own towns you may eat as much of them as you want." (Deut. 12: 21).

I'd say that if I don't know where this place is, that God has put his Name on, it's not too legalistic to say that it's "too far away." (A scan of religious scholarship shows that most people assume that place was the Temple, long since destroyed, which is used to explain why the animal sacrifices fell out of vogue. As the religion evolved in a new direction without an official, Temple-based center, the ritual of bringing the tithes to the place that was destroyed didn't work any more). But if we're still tithing, and I accept the available evidence, then the old Temple would be the site to go to and again, I'm not going to be able to get there with my offerings every year. So I guess I have to eat and drink them at home.

Deuteronomy 14 reiterates the same idea, especially the part about how it's fair to sell your tithes, get to the holy place, and then use the money to buy whatever you want to eat there in God's name. Then it adds that every three years, the tithes should stay in your own town and be distributed to the needy. By this logic, I can party in God's name two years out of three, and then the third year, donate my ten percent to a local food bank (maybe the one where my dad works!), and be Old Testament certified!

Well, you know. From a certain point of view.

Deut. 14: 26 even kindly specifies "And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God." Personally, I much prefer the wine to the oxen, so it's nice that it's perfectly fine for us to lust after what we like, at least in the eating and drinking department.

By the time of the New Testament, the majority of the offerings and firstfruits are metaphorical. Individuals are offering spiritual sacrifices instead of physical ones, and are standing themselves in the place of firstfruits.

Research caused me to stray, as research so often will, and I stumbled into Acts 4: 32-35 as an example depicting financial obligation in the early church. (And I found a delightful article arguing that Christian attempts at "social Gospel" -- helping the poor and fighting social ills -- are based on "twisting and misunderstanding" how the finances of the early church worked in these verses). Here they are:

"All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

I'm not really clear how that's twistable. Umm. Well, that website was using the venerable King James for their quotes, so let's try there!

"And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need."

That's even more so! The New International Version I started with said that "from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them," whereas the KJV says that "as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them." Not just from time to time, as needed, but that everybody who owned something got rid of it upfront, and the funds were distributed to everyone.

Was the whole notion of "biblically"-based tithing, giving donations of 10% of one's income (a tax tradition going back to Babylon, if some people are to be believed), developed in order to avoid the implications of New Testament "communism"? Because it's obviously hard enough to get offerings out of people, much less get them to sell everything and put it into a common pot...

Personalized Pentecost Message

Back to church this morning with Mom and Dad, and interestingly, it's Pentecost: the day the Holy Spirit rained down on everyone, and they could understand each other's languages. During the announcements, I was skimming over the program and found this note "Take a moment following the message to reflect on what God is asking of you."

When I see something like this, I always think of Big Love, where Bill Paxton will pray on things, and emerge fully convinced that he knows specifically where God is leading him, and what God wants him to do. Fascinating. How could a person ever separate some amorphous clues of supposed divine communication from one's own thoughts? This would require a kind of certainty that I've just never had.

This brief musing was interrupted by the call to stand for the opening hymn. Randomly opening my United Methodist Hymnal, the first thing I saw, in big bold letters at the top of the page, were the words "Jaya Ho."

What the? Yup, hymn #148, attributed to "Anon. Hindi." Translated by Katherine Rohrbough, 1958, with phonetic transcription by I-to Loh in 1988. The Hindi portion was mainly repeated in variations, but here were the words: "Tera sana mukh ham hain ate. Ham hain ate, cha ra no may hain. Shisha navate. Jaya jaya teri ham hain gate."

While I can't say for sure what a higher power might be asking of me, this is pretty good evidence that I'm on the right track. Also that no cosmic forces have taken offense at my mentally picturizing them on Rishi Kapoor.

Hoodoo Book Club

(Something I'm doing through the folk magic listserve I'm still on, even though some of the regular posters annoy me. I thought I'd try to offer something constructive. We'll see).

The next selection is The Conjure-Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher."Originally published in 1932...(it) is the first known mystery novel written by an African-American." (book jacket cover) Let's say we discuss on June 15th.

This month's book is Last Days of Louisiana Red, by Ishmael Reed

I can tell I've been working in a public library for a long time, because when I re-read this book, I thought: oh no! There are things in here that could REALLY offend some people! I don't think that would have ever occurred to me when I was just a civilian reader.

If it's any consolation, it definitely attacks some of my sacred cows, too. I'm an idealist; an "all you need is love" type; a fan of Antigone as "the epitome of the free spirit against the forces of tyranny." (p. 29) I'm also a woman, but it would be naive to believe that there aren't tensions between the sexes, or that women are blameless in them, just because my conscience happens to be clear on that score.

Despite the sexual material (some of it a bit crude), and the political incorrectness, I do still the book has a sharp satirical humor, and was, in general, funnier than I remembered. For example: "Do you know what the people want? They want lots of blood; monkeys roller-skating; 200 dwarfs emerging from a Fiat, and lots of popcorn - that's what they want." (p. 90) Ha! Another favorite is "Ain't no ontology gone pay our light bill." (p. 73)

It also has a message I like about the place of magico-spirituality in the world: that it's always existed, it will always exist, albeit changing with the times, and the Workers have the choice whether to add to the conflict in the world, or try to heal the problems that create the conflicts.

For those of you who didn't read it, but might be interested some day, the book is largely a satire on the political, racial, and gender movements of the 70s. "Louisiana Red" is the name for the state of anxiety and pointless conflict in modern society. People "inflicting psychological stress on one other," (p. 6) while all the pre-existing problems don't get fixed. It's symbolized as "crabs in a barrel," (p. 140) in which people fight each other rather than working together to benefit everyone.

I love having a name for this concept (and it's kind of odd that there is no real term for this omnipresent state of affairs in public discourse).

In the end, the unpleasant state of Lousiana Red is shown to be the result of a corporation that profits off other people's misery (still a relevant metaphor, thirty years later). Opposed to it are the agents of the Solid Gumbo Works, who are using conjure to effect positive changes. The difference between the two groups is exemplified by the Gumbo Works' cheap cure for cancer, which makes them enemies. "You'd think they'd be glad to have a cancer cure. I don't know how their mind works," one of the characters says (p. 32).

What seems really interesting to me, after reading so much about traditional conjure, is at the end, when the whole organization is disbanded, and the Workers all go underground to quietly carry on the Work. Of course, this is a depiction of the historical state of independent conjure, which existed without any official hierarchy or central leadership, and an explanation for why it might work that way. So "everything the Business required was inside of each Worker...The Workers were dispersing, spreading out across the country, each person responsible for the quality of his or her own craft..." (p. 173)

I wouldn't agree that the accoutrements belong in a museum, as happens in the end, because as long as they work for people, why not use them? But it raises an intriguing question about the ends and the means. If the result is what matters, do people, myself included, sometimes get too hung up on the means? Am I attached to the tools, or to the results?

Anyway, those are my brief thoughts on the book. Thanks for reading, contribute if you want, and next month we can discuss "a Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem," with not one, not two, but basically THREE African-American detectives investigating a murder with magical undertones.

No wonder I'm a Kali fan

From a description of Kali in the book Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: the Ten Mahavidyas:

"She is gaunt, has fangs, laughs loudly, dances madly, wears a garland of corpses, sits on the back of a ghost, and lives in the cremation ground." (p. 70)

Apart from those last three (which make me wonder why Hindu imagery never caught on in the realm of heavy metal album art), that sounds exactly like me in my twenties! I'm a little less gaunt and madly-dancing than I used to be, but the crooked front teeth and the laugh are still intact.

Sect-of-the-Month Club

Okay, it's been so long since I had a selection, it's hardly "of the Month." But when you've got a catchy name, you have to run with it.

I have only begun to scratch the surface of my new find, but since they're known for their devotional poetry, there's bound to be more to come. And I was so eager to quote, I'm posting first and doing further researching later. Whilst finishing up Kshiti Mohan Sen's fine introduction Hinduism last night, I came across a brief chapter on the Bauls, who believe in "freedom from all outward compulsions," and "accept no divisions of society, such as caste or class," nor any particular deity. (p. 103)

According to Sen, the Bauls tend to be actually opposed to religious worship and the ephemera of temples and rituals (whereas I enjoy that sort of thing, when a particular point of view isn't being foisted upon me). Despite that difference, aesthetic on my part, I have to greatly admire the nutshell notions presented.

For example, Sen quotes an interview with a member of the Baul movement, whom he had asked about their non-belief in scriptures: "Are we dogs that we should lick up the leavings of others? Brave men rejoice in their own creation. Only the cowards are content with glorifying their forefathers because they do not know how to create for themselves." (p. 105)

Now that's punk rock!

In a less aggressive manner, here's some lines from their songs, voicing very fine sentiments:

"There's no worship in Mosque or Temple or on special holy day.
At every step I have my Mecca and Kasi; sacred is every moment." (p. 105)

"Man-made distinctions have no hold on me now.
I rejoice in the gladness of the love that wells out of my own being." (p. 103)

No iconophobia for me

I Interlibrary Loaned this book called Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images, which looked promising, but it's turning out to be more of a flipper. I learned that the famous paintings of the Head of Jesus, the Lord is My Shepherd, and Jesus Knocking at the Door were all done by the same guy, which surprised me. And I enjoy the use of the word "iconophobia."

However, the author says things like "I take the notion of 'commemoration' from the Foucauldian critique of such historiography" (p. 213). Really? Must you? I had hoped my days of hearing about the Foucauldian were behind me...

Dubious Mandir

So yesterday I got home from a ninth-grade basketball game to find an envelope from a certain Hindu Mandir (temple) in northern California. This didn't surprise me; in fact, I'm surprised more booksellers don't put me on mailing lists of one kind of another, the way you buy one thing from some companies and they, along with like merchants, inundate you for years. Anyway, I assumed they were doing a fundraiser, or promoting some new stuff, and were doing a mailing to all their previous customers.

Interestingly, such was not the case. It was a personalized letter thanking me for my "participation in the Mandir, and for all the beautiful blessings you shared with us throughout the year." Well, thanks, but it was the least I could do. Then there was a specific thanks for my "donations," a reminder of their tax deductibility, and their tax ID number for use in declaring it.
Now, the only contact I have ever had, in any way, with these people, is that earlier this year I bought a single book from their store through the Amazon Marketplace. The amount of my "donations" listed in the letter is the same as what I paid for this book.

Oddly, the letter includes in the statement "No product or service was given in exchange." I think that's because the IRS code says (among other very dull things) that "There is generally no donative element involved in a visitor's purchase from a museum gift shop." Then there's a lot of stuff about if you donate over so much and get such and such goods and services back (which makes me think of pledge week on PBS), the charity has to give some special statement, and my "donations" would be too small to be concerned with there.

But to the untrained eye, it doesn't really look it should be deductible at all. Either way, the notion that "no product ... was given in exchange" is absurd, since our only relationship was of a product given in exchange.

Either they're on the sly side here, or they're just too ethereal to keep the revenue streams separate. Since I was a girl who grew up in the seventies, I can't help being skeptical of California gurus, unfair as that is to what I'm sure are perfectly sincere Swamijis who just like the nicer climate...

A drink with Saint Ghalib

The text for this Sunday's sermon comes from The Oxford India Ghalib (p. 10), where editor Ralph Russell writes:

"When a man read him a lecture against wine-drinking and told him that the prayers of the wine-drinker are never granted, Ghalib replied: 'My friend, if a man has wine, what does he need to pray for?' "

As luck would have it, this needs no explication.

Embalmed in honey

So I came across a book (don't ask) called Nativity: The Christmas Story, Which You Have Never Heard. My first thought was, how would that be possible? I've already read the only real source material that exists. Turns out this is one of those "real history" books, albeit "real" filtered through a particular theological agenda.

Possibly the finest tidbit on the back cover (and yes, this is "sic"):

"Herod amazing genius whose architecture excelled Rome, and kept his murdered wife in a jar of honey!"

Wow! I definitely don't remember hearing that one before! Unfortunately, the actual "fact" is described in the book this way: "It was rumored in ancient times that Herod secretly kept Mariamne's body embalmed in a huge jar of honey...but this was never verified." (p. 119)

The online JewishEncyclopedia.com does include this factoid as a "Talmudic legend." But I definitely appreciate the enthusiasm of the back cover blurbage.

The widow's mite

Last week, I went in to my Place of Employment and found an envelope in my in-bin that was addressed to my colleague, SpyGirl. It was emblazoned with the message "The widow's mite represents the key to unlocking one of God's most powerful promises..." Some sort of new variation on the Prayer Hanky, I thought, and squealed with glee. (Which I then had to explain to the newish girl, who doesn't know me as well as SpyGirl does). I was especially delighted with the see-through part of the envelope, showing a little fake coin, a reproduction widow's mite.

The odd thing was the return address: Jewish Voice Ministries International. Of course, even the word "Ministries" rings a little false, but my first snap question was, since when do Jewish organizations resort to the sort of dubious mail-order fund-raising I'm used to from "Christian" churches who exist only as PO boxes? I can't prove they don't exist, but I've sure never gotten their mailings. For a second I thought, maybe some other religions are deciding to give up and start soliciting. Maybe thinking, why should those churches get all the money?

My next thought was: the widow's mite? Isn't that from the New Testament? (Answer: yes. See Mark 12: 41-44 and/or Luke 21:1-4).

When I opened the letter, it emphasizes that "every person who blesses the Jewish People will receive a blessing in return." Okay, I'm all for blessing the Jewish people. (And, well, everybody, for that matter. But I digress). The Jewish Voice Ministries, however, specifically thinks that the way to bless them is "to help them find their Messiah Yeshua!"

Yup, they're Christians, so the world hasn't gone all topsy-turvy. Calling themselves the "Jewish Voice" is a bit disengenuous (I imagine a group of mythical atheists who want to deprogram evangelicals, calling themselves the "Christian Voice"). But I was happy to add the mite to my collection of peculiar trinkets.

Sect of the Week

Well, okay, I don't have the attention span to have a regular feature, but for today, let's pretend that I do, and give a warm welcome to the Yezidis!

If the Wikipedia knows what it's talking about, the opening of The Exorcist was filmed in Sinjar, a Yezidi village in Iraq. And who, we might ask, are the Yezidis? Of course, I was duty-bound to click on the link, and subsequently plunk some new books on my Wish List. They seem to use "Yezidi" and "Yazidi" interchangeably, but believe me, I understand the problems of going back and forth from non-Roman alphabets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yezidi

The whole section on "Religious Beliefs" is worth reading. First off, the fact that their primary supernatural connection is with a "Peacock Angel," when there's an embossed peacock on the puja plate I bought not long ago. Coincidence? (Well, probably).

"The Yazidi story regarding Tawuse Melek's (the Peacock guy's) rise to favor with God is almost identical to the story of the jinn Iblis in Islam, except that Yazidis revere Tawuse Melek for refusing to submit to Adam, while Muslims believe that Iblis' refusal to submit caused him to fall out of Grace with God, and to later become Satan himself."

Basically, their story goes that God had first ordered his angel not to submit to anyone. So later, when he ordered Tawuse Melek to bow to Adam, it was really a test. The point (besides acknowledging an arbitrariness in the Almighty that's certainly reminiscent of various Old Testament stories) seems to be that God gave him the will to choose, and it was correct for him to use it.

Because the Muslim version, Iblis, "fell" and became Shaytaan over the incident, they apparently think of the Yazidis as devil-worshipers. (Most of us know the name Iblis, of couse, because of the Patrick Macnee character on the old Battlestar Galactica).

Anyway, the "Yazidis believe that good and evil both exist in the mind and spirit of human beings. It depends on the humans, themselves, as to which they choose. In this process, their devotion to Tawuse Melek is essential, since it was he who was given the same choice between good and evil by God."

Good call on the good and evil, guys!

(PS, my friends at Sacred Texts have Isya Joseph's book on the Yezidiz online: http://www.sacred-texts.com/asia/sby/index.htm)

Mmmm...eyeballs

I had an eye exam yesterday; something I'm always very trepidatious about. You'd think wearing glasses for over thirty years would have hardened me to the reality, but no. Fortunately, the new eye office at the local medical megaplex made it pretty painless. (Except for that lingering vampiric sensitivity to light). I have a quarter degree worse astigmatism in one eye, and a quarter degree worse near-sightedness in the other. So the doctor doesn't think the new prescription will be the big shock it sometimes is when I've waited too long.

Also, I found some fun new frames.

For the interested, one of the saints associated with eye afflictions is St. Odile (or Odilia), who was born blind, and whose "attribute is a pair of eyes on a book," as the Wikipedia puts it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Odilia). It doesn't say whether those eyes are two-dimensional or three, which makes a difference in the connotation. Either way, her feast day is the day after my birthday, so I've gotta think she's looking out for me.

Then there's St. Lucy, patron saint of the blind, whose eyes were gouged out as part of her martyrdom. Her feast day is the same as St. Odilia's, as if the medieval church declared some kind of official day for the visually handicapped. The painting is from 1521, by Domenico Beccatumi, and would be right at home in my Bohemian Gothic Tarot deck.

She's the same saint they celebrate with the sweet "Santa Lucia" song we sang as little girls, while wearing crowns of fake candles. Funny, nobody ever mentioned the eyes on the plate, which is obviously the most interesting part of the story...

My favorite typo

During a discussion of tantric magicians by Sohaila Kapur in Witchcraft in Western India: "Most of these self-styled gurus were freuds, bent upon exploiting the people's gullibility." (p. 55)

That one speaks for itself.

The Horror of the Void

Couldn't sound much more like a Doctor Who episode title, could it? They're notorious, especially in the earlier seasons, for the formula of "The (Blank) of (Blank)." And both "horror" and "void" would totally fit. I'm surprised they haven't used it (although there was an adventure in the Colin Baker days called "Terror of the Vervoids").

But no, this is a phrase I come across in religious contexts. First, I believe, in that marvelous little book of photos of Mexican churches, Divine Excess: The Mexican Ultra-Baroque. Mmm, mmm, mmm. One of my "all-time faves" on my LibraryThing account. Then yesterday, it was mentioned as a reason why Sufi calligraphers had an interest in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, because their aesthetic was similarly informed by "the horror of the void." (In Egyptology: The Missing Millennium, by Okasha El Daly).

A quick online search of the phrase brings up the decorative arts of Morocco, and the monuments of Angkor (I checked out a documentary from the library about the latter, and I should watch it, but I kind of lost interest when I discovered it was narrated by Sharon Stone. Yes, I'm that shallow!)

And then of course there's Aristotle's Physics, and medieval writers elaborating on the concept of how "nature abhors a vacuum." Even though the words "abhor" and "horror" obviously have a commonality, I don't think of them in similar terms. The connotation has always been to me more like nature disdaining a vacuum...and there I go with the personification again.

But this is all relative. A crazy over-abundance might be motivated by a sort of existential fear, a la "horror of the void," but mightn't it also be motivated by -- for want of a better word -- love, for the physical creation? That is, why leave spaces empty, when there's all sorts of extra cool stuff you could throw in there?

Especially since a lot of the real "ultra-baroque," crammed-to-the-brim art comes out of desert environments, where people face the idea of the void all the time. When they have the chance to beautify, maybe they just go all out.

Of course, I probably just think this way because my own house is stuffed full of stuff: I'm a maximalist. But until I see some hard evidence that Mexican architects and Muslim craftspeople are actually motivated by "horror," I can't accept that judgment on face value.

The phrase is still delightfully Whovian, and also rather Lovecraftian, though...

Petty, primitive, weird

I picked up one of those facsimile reprints of The Village Gods of South India, and discovered it's a little too faithful to the original. Not remastered, shall we say. On some of the pages, the ink is patchily pre-faded; readable, but an irritant.

I also quickly learned that the Right Reverend Henry Whitehead isn't so obective and open-minded as the Catholic priest who wrote that book on Santal tribal religion, because while his information seems fairly sound, his adjectives aren't exactly unbiased. Thus we get "repulsive features," "grotesque figures," "gloomy and weird rites" (a personal favorite), and, it almost goes without saying, "primitive," "primitive," and "primitive."

One of my favorite lines so far is "The general attitude of the villager toward his village god is 'Let sleeping dogs lie' " (p. 46), which seems like a fairly sensible strategy in many respects. The one that most seems to miss the point is that the religion deals with "petty local deities concerned with the affairs of a petty local community" (p. 35).

As a Christian, he seems offended at the lack of devotion among the villagers. They're not loving and praising God in the abstract, but have a practical relationship. (Of course, most of the sources I've read name South India as the origin of the Bhakti movement, so there ya go).

In the first place: like there aren't Christians praying for what's in their own interest, lacking interest in larger theological questions and slacking off in sheer disinterested devotion. In the second, how are the life and death concerns of everyday existence really "petty"? Whitehead describes the village Gods being propitiated in times of epidemics (which had to be faced without access to our modern medicine). They're involved in all the agricultural issues, which would be absolutely vital to the community.

The village Gods are fascinating to me in part because of the way they strip religious belief down to an essential. (I'm definitely trying to avoid any hint of "noble savage," because frankly, I don't think any of these people were so primitive, or certainly unsophisticated. As far as I can know without having seen for myself). There are whole swathes of contemporary life which are still as interested only in their practical, local concerns, which is probably just human nature....

Condemned to bread

I was checking out this website that has a timeline of the decrees of various Roman Emperors in respect to religion at Fourteenth Century Religion.   On September 27, 365, in the time before Christianity became compulsory, but after it was being officially promoted, I find a decree from the Christian Valentinian I: "No one may leave the bread-making profession to become a Christian clergyman. Anyone found to have done such must return to his profession."
I agree. What could be more imporant than baked goods?

Miscellanous Madonnas

That's where the lady at the Catholic store told her co-worker to look for the box to my lovely new porch Virgin.

I've been meaning to pick up a new Mary for a while. Ever since I was a little girl, I've admired the people with the plastic shrines and grottos in their front yards. Of course, as a renter, I can't really plunk anything down on the lawn, but I figured I could somewhat simulate the experience.

The first Mary that caught my eye was Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. She had a Sacred Heart with seven knives sticking out of it, sort of like a Tarot card. Wow. But her face just didn't seem right to me, and I figured, if I was going to spend over a hundred dollars, it had better be just right.

Then I saw the one I thought was the One. A much larger Immaculate Heart of Mary, with a golden halo, sitting on a golden throne. I really liked that she came more or less with her own accessories, and that her throne was like a pre-built grotto. She was beautiful, detailed, perfect. Four hundred and fifty dollars. Yow!

So, she was out. But there was no law that I had to get a larger size, especially since the area on the porch isn't that large. I was willing to overwhelm the space, but I was open to the possibilities. To the shelves of smaller, up to foot high Madonnas I went. And had myself a winner.

She has one of those round crowns with the cross on top, an elaborate cloak that's the plaster equivalent of brocade, and loads of gilt. The irony is that at $45 dollars, she was one of the cheapest options there, even though she looks richer and fancier. Obviously my kind of Our Lady.

You can check out a picture that looks basically like her, but without the cherubs, at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_San_Juan_de_los_Lagos

Semi-random quote for the day

"The acceptance of a mode of thought felt to be new does not mean the supersession of another imagined to be obsolete."
-- Jose Pereira, Hindu Theology: Themes, Texts and Structures

You rock, Jose!

On the interconnectedness of freaking everything

I was barely into the first chapter of this book called Solomon's Temple: Myth and History, and I came across a linguistic factoid that had never occurred to me, although it should have. The word "orientation" comes from the same word that "oriental" does (Latin, oriens, meaning "East"). To orient yourself is to determine your position in relation to other things, and originally, the term would refer to the East, the direction of the rising sun, as a reference point for that purpose.

It struck me kind of funny: I'm so used to the seemingly random, arbitrary nature of the English language, I don't even notice when the links between words are totally obvious. Maybe if I got that OED out of storage...

Anyway, this came up in the book in comparing the orientation of Solomon's temple toward the east with the similar lay-outs of earlier Canaanite temples. On the same page, the authors (William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely, by the way) refer to the fact that the ceremonial basin the priests washed with before their rituals was called the "yam," meaning "sea." They compare the Biblical creation story to Mesopotamian ones, about how the earth was wrested from "Chaos--represented by the primeval waters" (p. 10). The name of the watery chaos being was, of course, Yam.

(You can read up about this on the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_%28god%29, with a whole freakin' boatload of bibliography that I'd like to read, if I had the time to clear off the enormous stacks on my coffeetable right now).

Me being me, I said, "Hey! In Sanskrit, Yam (with the added intrinsic "a" sound, to make him Yama) is also the name of the Vedic god of death!" Now, beyond any sort of tenuous conceptual connections one would like to make between chaos and death, there doesn't seem to be any real similarities in their stories. At least as far as someone like me can tell, who couldn't read the original sources even if they were available in handy forms. (My English Rig Veda hasn't come in the mail yet, either). Not in their broad outlines, shall we say.

Nonetheless, it's an intriguing coincidence.

Of course, the chorus to the old punk rock hit "I'm a Cliche" (by the fabulous X-Ray Spex) also contains the lines "Yama yama yama yama yama yama." And later, after the band broke up, lead singer Poly Styrene became a Hare Krishna. Once again, I draw no conclusions. Maybe I need to add a new category for my posts, called "Lattice of Coincidence."

Maybe my work ethic isn't Protestant, after all

I ordered this book An Introduction to Jainism by Bharat Shah, and found in the intro: "it is an Atichara (a transgression), not to do something that needs to be done, even though one is capable of doing it."

Not only does this philosophy guide the majority of the actual work I do (in the sense of for-money and otherwise), but I'd say it's an underlying theme of most of my favorite horror and action-adventure films. Someone needs to fight the Alien, to stop the Terminator, to drive Freddy Krueger away, and the hero is just an ordinary person who's like, "I'm here, it needs to be done, FINE!"

On a side note, I've got to like a religion for which converting people to the religion is against their religion...