from Handel's Semele

ongoing tragic misunderstandings

I have come to believe that the majority of human communications are misunderstandings.  We get caught up in our emotions, and tend to express them in commonplace metaphors which at once solidify the issue in ways we never intended, and then we send this package off to impact another person, thus bringing about their emotionally charged reaction and metaphoric response.

Just be careful of what you say and how you say it.

the core of a (hu)man

since my friend got sick
I cam see quite clearly
the place from where
angry religion arises.

John Knox the righteous man
beating and swearing on his book
words that claim to hold the world together
words to which all must submit...

but earth and sky were here before those words
and people will dance
long after they are forgotten

Toothpaste

When you go out to buy toothpaste, you see a multitude of options...one has a coupon, another is on sale, yet another you just bought the last time.  But when I go to buy toothpaste, I see only one option...Pepsodent. Is this a female vs. male brain thing, or is it two different survival modes...being open to all options vs. clinging to what we know and trust? I don't have an answer, and perhaps there is none. But I will continue to learn from you.

Stieg Larson's Millennium series

I just loved these books, and I was rooting for Lisbeth Salander all the way. At work I was asked to take a personality evaluation test, and it revealed that I am  person who values the human contact and relationship above the rules. Now that is definitely not to say that I am not a law abiding citizen. rather I see that each act, each thought arises from it's own unique set of circumstances.  I will grant that we must use some generalities in  order not to be bogged down in over thinking every thing, but in cases that give us pause, that upset us, or that we perceive that damage has been done to us or to those in our oikoumene, we must, yes absolutely must examine as best we can all the circumstances that lead up to that event.

With the character of Lisbeth Salander we see this quite clearly, as the author draws it out in microscopic, forensic detail. Who is she? How did she get to be who she is?  The media rushes to judgement in the most salacious, titillating way...of course she is an insane lesbian satanist, and thus a threat to all that is good and holy and true.  But that is how we are told to perceive ourselves..we are the good, the holy, the true...all others are to be excluded and condemned.

But is this really the case? It is the easy way out, and for Lisbeth and her circumstances. it is the cowards way.  Her friends...those people who have come to know and appreciate her...rally to give us all that we need to know to realize that the whole is so much more that the sum of the isolated and Fox-news/Rush Limbaugh-interpreted parts.