Chaptah Five of The Great Code

This may be the first chapter I actually enjoyed from The Great Code. I was able to pay attention for more than a few seconds and wasn't forced into looking up numerous words per page. On the first page I found a thought provoking exert,

"If attained, enlightenment brings about the same kind of obedience to the moral code (dharma) that "salvation" does in the West, but without the legalism that Christianity is regarded as having abolished in theory."

This makes me think how we as an American community have made it impossibly "legally" to achieve enlightenment. If you were to achieve enlightenment people would question if it was even possible to reach such a thing. Just as we question if a person is able to connect with the dead. Is it the fact we fear the thought we are actually able to get in-touch with something in a different world or is it it true it is not possible to reach enlightenment (the third quote goes into this a bit more)? It is almost embarrassing to people to admit to their friends if they religious and it is the cool thing to be anti-religious. We as teachers in a public school can not even admit to believe in God without being punished.

As you hear kids driving around yelling out windows "faaaaag" or "Hail Satan!"things you would never hear in Palestine or current day Israel (The Holy Land as it is referred to in The Slave). A place where a person takes pride in their heritage and what their religion means to them while we (Americans) have made Sundays more religious for football than church in recent years. It makes our whole prior life questionable. Our ancestors for the most part have all lived their life by the Bible even if they lived by it for moral reasoning instead of having a true faith in God. People have questioned Gods existence for a while but now since we have scientific evidence it is highly unlikely their is someone above or so this is what we are constantly told in todays world.

p.110

"The world God made was so "good" that he spent his seventh day contemplating it--which means that his Creation including man, was already objective to God,"

Frye actually makes a joke? Nope, he turns it into a compelling argument. Although I do enjoy the thought of seeing God sitting back in his lazy boy with a cold as the Rockies Coors Light watching the Patriots in London this past Sunday. But I find it highly unlikely he was able to stay awake during the game because who wouldn't pass out after six days of creating the entire universe? I mean come on most Dungeons and Dragons players would be pooped after a day of JUST creating animals which walk on the land and swim in the sea. Frye continues on to say God created the rotation of sun/moon so he was able to "impose light and order on a chaotic darkness." It is then through the rotation of night and day we are able to see both sides of God's creations. Since God created all which evil and virtuous so we are ensured we remember both sides of God. That he can instill pain just as quickly as Jesus healed the blind.

p.116

"The explanation is generally that it was only an angel of God that was seen. The miraculously burning bush, as a visible object, is there only to catch Moses' attention: it is what is said from within it that is important."

Are we not always told how important it is to look into someone's soul to see how good of a person they are? We can not judge a book by its cover? Well, the same goes for Moses' he must look into the burning bush which he saw at Mount Horeb. I mean, maybe the burning bush is meant to represent God burning up with anger because of how self-conscious Moses is and how annoyed he is with all of Moses dumb questions; this all because God remains remarkably calm. Well, I guess they aren't dumb questions because God does seems to answer them with respectable answers.

Where The Wild P and J's Are and Chaptah 13 of Daniel

I saw Where the Wild Things Are over the weekend and by golly I thought it was wicked good. Spike Jonze does an interesting portrayal of the "Wild Things" since each one represents Max in a way (I cannot remember if this is how the book is done or not) it made me think of the Bible. Sorta sucked since I was really enjoying the movie and my mind got to wandering. But I was thinking of the P, J, and all the other writers and how they are used to explain the Bible in different ways to get different points across. I also thought of how Dr. Sexson spoke of the Bible being in our everyday life even if we do not "live" it. Whether it is through movies like Pulp Fiction and Where the Wild Things Are or by moral obligations of helping someone in trouble.

Wallace Stevens does a great job of putting his feelings for Susanna on "paper" for us. The way he describes everything through music is the perfect way for me personally to gain an understanding for his feelings. I love music going to a live concert no matter what type of music from classical to hip-hop hearing the instruments is completely different from through headphones. “Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, Is music. It is like the strain” allows us to see the sway of her dress in the wind. It reminds me of the scene in Boondock Saints, where the FBI agent played by Willem Defoe investigates the first murder and puts the headphones on to listen a classical song while pretending to conduct an orchestra.

Then in the book of Susanna (in the Bible) we are shown a man who falls for a woman. This is a story of how a woman's desirability can become troublesome for a man's thought process. We are able to see Susanna's connection to Eve even although she may does mean to seduce the two elders as it is all Eve's fault for the fall of mankind. It is womans original sin to have men fall in love with them. In Wallace Stevens poem we see a direct connection to Susanna in the lines, "Of a green evening, clear and warm, She bathed in her still garden," which is exactly how the two elders capture their peeping Tom images of Susan.

Finally we are able to see the devious elders get put into their place by Daniel who is the present day 'Super Trooper' and uses his police academy training and separates the two culprits. By doing this he discovers the true story behind seeing Susanna in the nude. But it is only when Susanna cries out to God that (s)he is able to send Daniel as if to say, "I am almighty and only save, once you bow down." Almost another sign of his loneliness an assuring himself through this "miracle" he has another loyal servant because he has proved he is almighty through this act of God.

So, I have been behind a bit in this class trying to catch up in the Bible as well as in Frye/Plotz. Then I look at the syllabus and find out I completely forgot about The Slave by Singer, so I started that this past weekend. I have found it rather enjoyable although I feel horrible in enjoying this man's troubles until Jacob finally drops the good guy act and does the dirty thang with Wanda. But for real, I really enjoy the man's commitment to the Bible even though his father-in-law wanted him to become a Preacher he didn't all he did was study. He eventually winds up memorizing most of the Bible, we as a class could not even remember the ten major commandments, Jacob on the other hand comes up with 47, and knows there are more to come to him since there are something like 347?!?! This man is dedicated and I don't even know if I could name or remember that many of anything. He also is able to recite numerous prayers on call but this is something that will happen when you find your one true love in life. He is able to engulf his life with Judaism even though it is not around him. Something few people could do today in a world that revolves around the internet (no journals just blogs), video games, and other useless junk would leave a number of us scrambling for the rope hanging in the barn.

Wo-Man in the Bible

So, Mrs. (Dr?) Sexson started the discussion off with a metaphor between Eve and the purification of women after menstruation. Which is an interesting position to hear from, especially after reading Plotz all semester, and how women in the Bible are only whores and do not serve a real purpose. But as we see in Hosea 2 (as Sexson showed us), Hosea continues to take back his wife repeatedly even though she strays away from him just as Yahweh takes Israel and the Israelites back a number of times. This allows us to see the women's larger part in the Bible; they are an extremely important lesson for us to see. We all make mistakes and need to be taken back by the ones we love because if we are thrown aside we will not truly learn from our mistakes. Which is important for us to learn in a religious class because it is all about learning from our mistakes. We fucked up, Jesus was crucified, and if we don't learn anything from it then he died for no reason. So what were we supposed to learn from the Bible? There are so many words and Frye makes it sound much more complicated than it truly is. Frye makes every word sound so needy and important but why? The Bible was written thousands of years ago, over thousands of years, and lots of work went into it. But I feel this much work went into it so it is somewhat understandable and Frye attempts to ruin my thoughts of this but he won't, I will hold out.