evensong
Light Effects
Posted on: 12/16/2008 13:37
Fundamentalism is very controlling, but sometimes just out of sheer ignorance--when I learned to read, I was an insatiable reader. I read anything left in my reach, so I read a lot--no one stopped me; the problem though was that there was nothing to reach for. I do remember there was a book by John Ruskin on my fundamentalist grandparents' shelves. My non-religious grandparent had a whole room of books, but I was not allowed in there. Too bad. It was a nice sunny room with a view.
However, we can learn from any words at all--even cereal boxes :) I found out about libraries and got a card and when staying at cousins who lived in town we would go hang out at the library. Later, in grade ten, my mom who had left my father, was in a state of shock for a year and did not notice what we were doing--we not only got library cards, we brought books home and read non-stop. We read Shakespeare even. One book I chose was the Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman I think it is. I read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
The summer after grade ten, my great grandmother died and my mom and others went to the funeral about a thousand miles away. The aunt who was baby sitting us teenage cousins could not tell us what various words meant in a book we were reading--short title was Ask Any Girl, published in '59. Well, she asked uncle and he had a fit and the book was banned...needless to say we had to finish it at the library. :) We moved to California for my grade 11 and mom got a job and did not as a rule notice anymore what we were reading...
I cannot say I chose wisely in my reading--it would have been better perhaps if someone had given me some direction, but in those days I was allowed to be a free spirit which has its advantages also. When I got married and moved to the prairie town I have lived in since, I lost the boundless libraries or book stores. But I did find Ten Fingers for God in a church library which did give me glimpses that Christianity had other branches...
And now I cannot really write any more due to the TO DO LIST. I will just leave you with a word picture:
Have you seen the movie, Babette's Feast? It took the film maker 14 years to make that film--he had an idea and would not settle for less than perfection. So anything in that film is there for a reason. In the pietist church in the Norwegian town there is a crucifix on the front wall of the church--and as a rule that branch of the church has an empty cross if there is a cross to be seen at all.
There are several frames in the film where there is a brilliant shaft of light pouring in the window of the church and all the motes of dust are illuminated, the light is shattered, redirected to fill the room in front of the cross--the Christ on the cross is obscured behind the shimmering "dirt" of earth--it is the dirt that is glowing in radiant beauty. In reality the light is still the light, but the dust is where all the beauty is.
The light came to show us what we are. About ten years ago I heard a quote sort of like this--Jesus became human so we could become divine. I do not think that is a fundamentalist doctrine, but I think it was a "reliable" church father who said it. No doubt from the east; the west talks of "adoption" and that leaves us as poor feeble humans yet due to our ignorance of adoption in another culture.
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Eileenrl
Posted on: 12/16/2008 18:43
I have seen the movie of Babette's Feast - it is an excellent movie. I also took part in a morning service at camp when it was used as the basis for our meditation.
Arminius
Posted on: 12/16/2008 22:17
Hi evensong:
Your childhood and youth reminds me of mine. I too read voraciously and wildly, anything I could get my hands on. Nobody directed my reading. You, appearantly, got some formal education later in life, but I only had Grade 8, and everything I learned above that I picked up through reading, thinking, and contemplating.
I do, however, consider myself university-educated, or should I say universe-educated. All my life I attended God's magnificent university, the university of universities--the universe--with a wide open mind.