Not quite so heavy...

[rosa_heartlily]

Heh - no comments on last night's entry tells its own story :D :D

Today has been a Good Saturday. I managed to Wrangle The Words for tomorrow's talk, so I'm feeling better about that. My challenge to the congregation, and myself, is 'what is your part to play this year?'. I didn't really have an answer for myself - I thought I was still waiting for the Universe to speak to me. Then I read today's Daily Meditation from the Centre for Action and Contemplation and found a very similar challenge there - if you knew you couldn't fail, what would you do to bring about the healing of our world? This was followed by a series of questions designed to make it happen, such as what resources would you need? what would you need to learn to do? what would be your first step. Again, I didn't have an immediate answer but as I was doing the dishes it hit me - the challenge I took up in the summer following the Parish Away Day! To create a 'new monastic community' to be the prayerful heart of the Parish. Doh...

We're picking up the Tuesday evening prayer group again this week and I want to start making some Proper Plans with them. But first, I want to reread 'Highstreet Monastaries' and make notes, which will be my writing task for the next week or two. And then we can get to grips with WTF this new monasticism even is and set some proper goals.

I also watered my houseplants (chanelling my inner Tsugumi :D) and planted the lily of the valley plants that arrived yesterday. Lily of the valley is my birth flower, so I'm hoping they thrive. I believe it's one of those plants that can take over, though, so I've put them in a pot next to the back gate. They should provide a nice waft of fragrance whenever we enter or leave. I do need to find a way to keep our local squirrel out of the pot, though, at least until they get established.

And, of course, I played some more of Sea of Stars. It's VERY linear at the moment. No sidequests to speak of, although there are collectables. Oh, and there's fishing and cooking - because OF COURSE there is. And there are trophies for catching every fish and cooking every dish. There's a character who mocks video game tropes, who makes me giggle. An example - why do the blacksmiths make stronger swords the further North you go? and why do they all live in wooden huts when they charge 25,000 gold for a dagger?! I enjoy games that are made by developers who enjoy games. There have also been some Easter eggs for other games - like one boss had a move called Shovel Night that was just like the attack of Shovel Knight. I'm not going to catch all of them but I'm enjoying the ones I do spot. I'm also levelling up at a good pace without the need for grinding.

Nothing stressful, nothing too involved, just gentle progress on a number of fronts.

Comments

[lassarina]

Lily of the Valley are beautiful, though I can't have them due to cats. (I am just now catching up to several days of posts; I read the prior post but as I've got a rather different religious viewpoint I didn't have anything to say.)

[rosa_heartlily]

I'm open to respectful discussion on religion. We might even find we agree to a greater extent than we expect. For example, I am endlessly amused by the irony that I belong to an organised religion whose central figure was not a fan of organised religion :D This makes me wonder if Jesus would recognise even my open, liberal, person-affirming, living-the-questions congregation as followers of his Way.

As for the specific queries about what CS Lewis had to say - well, I'm struggling with that, too. I'm hoping that writing about it will help me work out my own position more clearly. If you want to challenge Lewis' conclusions (or mine!), I'm open to that. The benefit of written comments is that we can read them and give ourselves time to think them through without reacting instantly.

Or you can simply continue to read and choose not to comment. I appreciate this is a sensitive area for a lot of people.

[lassarina]

It's more that my path doesn't acknowledge "sin" and therefore redemption (in the Crucifixion sense) as extant and therefore relevant. And the gods are imperfect. So there's not really a question of whether a perfect God(s) can see imperfect sinful humans and engage with them, because that concept isn't present at all. An individual god could take offense at something and enact that in a variety of ways (from refusing to answer requests to actively hindering actions in her sphere), but they also have a lot of other things to be getting on with that are beyond mortal ken and power.

[rosa_heartlily]

Not what I was expecting at all! This is why one should never assume.

My response is, obviously, very much coloured by my own tradition, so if I appear ignorant it's because I am! But, hopefully, not offensively so.

I find it hard to conceive of imperfect gods outside of myths and stories - eg, FF games generally have a dim view of deities :D Was the world created by them? And for what purpose?

[lassarina]

So, I'm Pagan and therefore the "myths and stories" comparison is applicable - my personal tradition is Irish Celtic and has that creation myth, but I also take the viewpoint that there's a difference between the stories we tell ourselves to explain the world, and science. That is to say, I don't find creation myths incompatible with e.g. the Big Bang; they can both be "true" for values of "true" that can either mean "scientifically accurate and provable" or "religiously correct," and which one needs to apply is context-dependent. (....obviously, layers.) Other people who have a Greek Pagan path might have the Gaia and the Titans variation on creation.

[rosa_heartlily]

I have a favourite saying - truth and facts are not necessarily the same thing. I think the Bible is full of truth but light on facts. I also don't think we can pick and choose the bits we like; we have to face the difficult passages, too.

I've always been fascinated by ancient legends and have no problem seeing them as being just as 'true' as the stories in the Bible. They are all the result of mortals fumbling their way to knowledge of the divine with the best tools they have to hand.

That also means I take the outputs of our best scientific minds just as seriously, because those are the tools we have access to, now.

[lassarina]

"truth and facts are not necessarily the same thing" is a good way to put it, I think. Though given [gestures at US public life right now] it's a little difficult to deal with that concept practically.

[rosa_heartlily]

Geez - I hadn't even thought about that! The problem, I think, is that people assume truth and facts ARE the same, so if I believe something is True it must also be a Fact - and Facts Are Facts. You can't deny Facts. And so people get more and more entrenched in their position, everyone believing that their Truth is the Real Truth (because Facts), and less and less likely to consider anyone else's POV, let alone change their own.

So we end up here - in a world where we have greater access to knowledge and information than we've ever had, surrounded by people with less wisdom and understanding on how to discern what's true and what's false.

[lassarina]

Basically, yes. Because we've been taught that was is "true" is what "actually happened" (as children), and then people don't....learn critical thinking as they get older, alas.