Chapter 6 of The Heart's Landscape

[tocryabout]

The Name for Its Own Sake, first chapter of the second part, so maybe everyone who was wondering if I'd abandon it will relax now. I'm slow, but I am not faithless, for the names of my readers are written on the palm of my hand. (Anyway, it's only like three weeks since the last update! And I was in the hospital and not writing for one of those weeks, which means I am ON FIRE.)

Words not recognised by OpenOffice's spellcheck:
wasabi
Toyotas (got a problem with the Japanese, OpenOffice?)
headbutt
subarachnoid
MedicAlert
telepath

[Read from the beginning.]

Comments

Re: reactions

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

I also kinda love you spell it "Dr" without the "."

It's a little faux-British, but somebody pointed out that it's illogical to use the dot (indicating missing letters) when the end of the abbreviation is the end of the word, so now it bugs me to do it the North American way.

((headdesk)) ((headdesk)) Yes, lovey, but have we ever read Foucault?

Bleh, I have. Someone in pastoral theology would have too. Joel's read enough that maybe he should be suspicious, but I hope his reasons for instinctively buying into the status quo are clear too.

((facepalm facepalm)) Oh no, it's called SYMBOLISM and I think it's going to bite Joel on the ass. Oh dear.

I don't take a uniformly negative view of the Eden Incident, if that helps. Nor do I think it's about sex, at all, so that's not where I'm headed.

That's it because I had to break the chapter in two there. More (relatively) soon.

Re: Not easy being a mystery, is it?

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

It is "so do we", but it's somewhat common amongst the rubes of Eastern Ontario to say "so don't I", which is so ungrammatical it should cause space-time to fold in on itself.

Snogging I can promise you. Yes.

All shall be revealed regarding the telepaths in Neurocherche, but probably not all in the next chapter. Three or four plots going here, c'mon. :P

Re: reactions

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

They were having guilt-free sex in the garden, guaranteed (since they were like the animals) so I think it's just that Europeans are horny control-freaks and as soon as they got hold of this Middle Eastern religion they had to sexx it up good. Judaism is amazingly non-sex-obsessed, so obviously it's our problem.

Anyway, I'm always annoyed by feminist readings of it that only care about what OUR society has interpreted it as in the past, ignoring what other cultures thought of it (like the East) and what the story itself may still have to offer to a new perspective. And this is why I hate English courses. [Although I still hate them less than philosophy.] THE END.

Re: reactions

[youngest-one.livejournal.com]

So what do you think the whole Eden incident was all about? I have my own ideas, but I'd love to hear yours.

Re: reactions

[waterstrider.livejournal.com]

My view is pretty orthodox--I think that Judaism has always been focused on doing God's will, even before the giving of the Law. Sex is a part of that, but it's very, very far from the whole story. Being in the presence of God and still choosing not to follow him is the Old Testament definition of wickedness. It's a moral problem, not a sexual one (in our English-speaking culture "immorality" is often synonymous with sexual indiscretions, so I think it's important to pick up on that).

The other side of the coin is that the temptation was very understandable, even noble: surely it's a good thing to want to know good from evil, and be like God? Later in the NT we find that yes, God did have that plan for us, and still wants to share his life with us so that we can be like him. The desire wasn't a bad one. The problem was that we second-guessed God and his timetable, and the bond of trust was broken. What followed was (I think) not so much a punishment as a natural consequence of not dwelling in God.

This is why it makes me roll my eyes when feminist critics reduce it to OMG THEY ARE BLAMING THE WOMAN. No. The man was with the woman when the serpent was making its pitch; that's in the text. Have people blamed Eve? Yes. Is that what the story is about? No. Both sexes had an equal opportunity to sin or not, and both chose to sin. That Adam blamed Eve is, well, the story of humanity. A real feminist reading would recognise this as a realistic detail, not a normative claim about uppity women ruining everything.