Recent Doings

MUSE

Our Lady Elation, the Joy of Creation.

She rises from a bright Horizon, into Dark that is palpable, but not tangible,

on her gaudy gauzy Wings

another Chrysalis motif, from a sketch i did maybe a year ago

in the Moleskine which has become one of my favorite things

sketch



around-the-housecoat

Flannel and fleece and those little coins as buttons. Surely a prosperity charm will work better if i wear it.

A Mask

i made for a friend's altar to San Simon, or Maximon as he is called in the folk traditions;  a wooden deity, a troublemaker, a link between the underworld and Heaven. more here.

More on the St Matthews business, Sacred Cow Tipping

my comment on their page

"I recently heard aloud a saying that was already engraved on my heart - "What is truer than true? - the Story"
I love myths and stories; they inform me of a larger self that includes all of humanity. I think there's much grace in Rev Cardy's statement,(paraphrasing) none of us have all the truth, others who believe differently are not evil, WE NEED ALL THE STORIES to be complete as human souls.
Mary's story is not made untrue by considering its relevance.  There's rather a disconnect between that revered unwed mother and today's condemned ones; the fact that a Church is inviting thought and discussion on the subject is quite heartening.
My own opinion says the literal interpretation of a virgin birth is not the meat and bones of the story, more likely it was added in later years to establish divinity, just like many other myths. We all want our stories to be true, but why? Does the meaning vanish if Jesus was just a man who said, "Love one another"?
Does it remove the blessings we would give and receive? Can we not maintain faith in God, if we must seek out God for ourselves? We need the stories, but we need ALL the stories.
And as a woman, as a mother, I need the realism. Pregnancy doesn't *just happen*. Maybe it did for Mary, but not in the reality I live in. Women, mothers, daughters and Sons need to be mindful of our human reality and the roles we all play.
Bravo to this Church for speaking these truths. "

I'm not sure this will change anybody's opinion, nor even let in a crack of light.
I got fairly frustrated reading some of the commentary. Very narrow-minded, to my mind.
I get that people have Faith. I get it, I really do.
But the picture on the billboard is just that, a picture. It isn't the actual real Virgin Mary, you know. Not the one who appeared in Guadalupe, or on the grilled cheese sandwich, OR THE ACTUAL 12 YEAR OLD GIRL THAT GOD IMPREGNATED (link), If your faith-mixed-with-reality will allow you to wrap your mind around such things. It is a picture that presents an altered truth, for surely there were not pee-on pregnancy tests in those days. There weren't c-sections, or antibiotics, or epidurals. There weren't social programs to provide for unwed mothers, either. She's lucky Joseph stuck around. This altered truth allows for thoughtful analysis.

The unwritten reality of this Greatest Story Ever Told is an unrealistic one. The  Church has devoted vast tracts of dogma to explaining how Mary conceived without a penis (nother link), with dire consequences for any doubters (another other link). One wonders the spiritual value of these beliefs.  Faith in God? Promoting that suspension of disbelief which produces malleable followers?
Really, why do we NEED this story to be true? What good do we glean from it that couldn't otherwise be found? No, really, I'm asking. Anybody with an explanation, their own truth, is warmly invited to share it in a comment.

Amen to that!

 "When will we recognize that none of us have the whole truth?  When will we recognize that those who hold contrary opinions are not ‘of the devil’?  When will we recognize that truth comes in many guises, often in unexpected ways?"

from St Matthew in the City, an Anglican Church in Auckland, New Zealand, in response to the vandalism of their billboard, below:

Commentary, links and photos at http://stmatthews.org.nz/

The Bible and Stuff

So this is an ongoing project for some of my friends that are "recovering Christians" so to speak, who have found that religion to be unpalatable, exclusionist, & generally not representative of their selves & souls.
So they won't be forever unmoored from what was a meaningful tradition during many of their formative moments, I'm going to point out some of my favorite Bible verses, the ones that ring true in my life. Winnowing the good from the bad is a life skill, so the next post on this theme will be the points i find most contentious & in need of updating & improving. That's right Sirs and Madams of my anonymous internet audience, I intend to start some arguments!

(cheering, tossing of hats into the ether)

I'm hoping the whole thing will be cathartic and healing. I once met an angry young man on the internets, could tell you all day long why he was shaking his fist at God, but hadn't yet got to the point of believing in anything else he could express. Here, maybe, are some raw materials from which to create.

 & there will be some fun bits, too, like when I was 6 years old and they told me Jesus would go everywhere with me if I believed in Him, so when I rode in the car I tried to buckle the seatbelt for Him so He wouldn't get killed if we had a wreck, even tho i didn't really think he could get killed but anyway I went to put His sealtbelt on, and this is the really crucial part of the story THE SEATBELT WAS FLAT AGAINST THE SEAT!!! Like there was nobody sitting there at all! I was OK with Jesus being invisible and all, but total incorporeality? my childish faith furrowed its brow and said Hmmmm...

And there are other hmm-inducing bits as well, like this which i found on Wikipedia:
....1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,^[8] in which they asserted:

The symbolic significance of Jesus is that he is God exposed to the spectrum of human experience – exposed to the first-hand knowledge of what being a man entails. But could God, incarnate as Jesus, truly claim to be a man, to encompass the spectrum of human experience, without coming to know two of the most basic, most elemental facets of the human condition? Could God claim to know the totality of human existence without confronting two such essential aspects of humanity as sexuality and paternity? We do not think so. In fact, we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolises what it is intended to symbolise unless Jesus were married and sired children. The Jesus of the Gospels, and of established Christianity, is ultimately incomplete – a God whose incarnation as man is only partial. The Jesus who emerged from our research enjoys, in our opinion, a much more valid claim to what Christianity would have him be.^[8]

Copypasta is my favorite kind of pasta.  But please, discuss. These are big things and i wish to understand them.