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Glass_Web
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Interests: step dancing, music, fantasy, Irish culture/things, philosophy, literature, politics, artsy things, coffee, humor, irony
Occupation: lifelong studen
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AIM:  Orual309
Member Since:
6/22/2004
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| codependency doesn't make you forget what your morals, opinions, passions, and desires for yourself as a person are. but it does make you forget why. and you realize when those habits are set that the why is actually...very important. | | |
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Spoilers, people. Don't read unless you've seen both of these or don't care if they get ruined.
I find this very interesting, the interpretations of God in different series. In Angels in America, God is the great abandoner, and we never see him. And because he abandons us--or rather, regardless of his abandonment--we have to live by ourselves, independent, alone, but collectively striving because life is our only possession and we will be proud owners of it. In Ergo Proxy, however, we see and experience the Creator (even though he isn't technically God and has responsibilities to a higher power, he is higher than humans and has the Creator relationship with them).
The Creator is flawed (like the God in Angels in America; abandoning his people seems to be portrayed as a character flaw); the Creator has the human trait of weakness. His weakness is dissatisfaction with his creation because it reflects his own imperfections. And, like the A in A God, he fleas. He creates a new identity with which to hide, and camouflages himself so well that he himself forgets who he is. But he doesn't forget fast enough to escape his conflicting attempt to do himself justice and hold himself responsible--he reveals himself to a woman (Real) to make her aware of how dangerous and powerful he is so that her duty on earth is to kill him if he puts anyone in danger. Throughout the series, his relationship with Real as his human self develops simultaneously along with his relationship with his divine and destructive self. He slowly faces hidden personality traits and choices, such as his choice to erase his memory, until in the end he faces who he has really been hiding from. When he finds himself, and the world he created verses the divine world he came from, he chooses to reunite with the relationships he has made on earth. He understands the richness they have added to his life, and he desires the human life amidst its flaws.
Both series are theologically unorthodox, but I am not offended by these interpretations. Because though we my try to say we are interpreting who God is to us, all we are doing is finding a divine way to describe the human experience. Everything in these series was human. Nothing was divine. Why? Because we do not know the divine. Of course our literature and thought will say that the human experience is the preferable one, albeit dark. Because what have we to compare it to? It is our only experience. We can imagine what it is like to be perfect and flawless because we just imagine the way we are now and subtract our flaws from them...perhaps add a few strengths and some luminescence. But to say we know what it is like to be angels is flawed. Even if we prefer our darkness and imperfections, we don't know what sort of darkness angels must carry.
I liked Ergo Proxy, like I said, because I liked what it had to say about the human experience. The relationships, the self-loathing, the fleeing from responsibility and self-expectations that seem too great......the love that brings us back to it. Showing an angelic creature go through that just makes it seem all the grander and more artistic. And really, why settle for ordinary when we can make ourselves feel grand?
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| Where do we go now? Where do I go?
I know I should be praying about this instead of blogging, and I also know (but don't want to know, as Justin will tell you) that this blogging, pondering, and making a big deal of this is really just an overreaction due to the lack of anything happening in my life right now (ie--I'm making a big deal of this because I am bored as s*** and need to believe that something of significance, somewhere, somehow, is happening in my life right now).
That preamble said,
the only reason I attended Fair Lawn Baptist Church was because of Pastor Bob. He's intelligent. He knows his stuff. He'll tell you about discoveries they've made about plant dna on Jesus' burial shroud from the thorns used as his crown. Yeah. I've been agnostic for a long time. Bob is the first person who's started convincing me toward the idea that Jesus was who he said he was. Not because of some stolen (weak, if I might add) psychological hypothesis from C.S. Lewis that claims he could have only been in one of two mental states (theologians should stick to theology)...but because of actual evidence (who'da THOUGHT????????), and well...hypotheses that had more backing to them.
Well, now Bob is relocating, and I'm left with the decision. Do I stay and pick a new pastor? Or do I just say "not my problem" and continue to stop going to church? I will assert here that "fellowship," at least in the sense of the way it's done in church, does little for me spiritually, and remind the reader that Bob is the only reason I went to that church.
I feel two spiritual challenges here. One is the challenge to stick it out and stay for the body. That has a lot of cons...like the fact that I didn't initially care about the body. I kind of do now...you go to a church for a while, make friendships, and come to like some of those people. Also the con that the next 3 Bobless months are booked with probably *explative* pastors and I will have to endure empty Sunday after empty Sunday, which does more draining than filling. If I stick those out, and we end up with an intelligent pastor, I feel it will have been worth it.
If I don't stick it out, I lose nothing, and gain nothing. But the spiritual challenge to bailing is bearing fruit and leading people to God through humble and invested relationships without having a spiritual leader. The Biblical image I have for this scenario is the time after Jesus ascended and told the disciples to spread out in all directions (away from the comfort of each other) to do exactly what Jesus had done. Of course my job is much less demanding and scary, but it's still lonely when your spiritual leader leaves. Granted, I've only ever had a spiritual leader for.....when you add up all the months, maybe almost a year of my life?
Yeah I'll do that thing I so dearly believe in where I learn from people just because their experiences are different--that thing that requires a humble heart. But it's really a treat when you meet someone you can just learn from because they're smart and experienced, not because they're different.
And let's say I decide to do both spiritual challenges--be there for the body and also do it without a spiritual leader (if it doesn't work out that we get a smart pastor). Guess I have a lot of praying (meditating, dancing, concentrating, ect) to do.
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| I had a dream that I saved a baby from an evil emperor. It was like a videogame in that when it happened, everything went perfectly because I had apparently done it a few times. I swung around the banister with her in my left arm, past the guards, with the orange sunlight beaming in my face.
I laid her in a cradle in a patchwork blanket. She rocked back and forth smiled up at me with the happiest eyes I'd ever seen.
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| Why is it so dark?
In the beginning, it is always dark.
If we're going to die anyway, I'd rather die fighting than doing nothing!
Trust your heart.
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