Chad and Chew

Haggard Ted Haggard

It would be too easy to gloat over the recent events surrounding Ted Haggard. For those of us who may often feel that the religious right is out to get us, Haggard's fall could be seen as a celebration...a gay evocation of Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead. To adopt this stance, however, is not contributing to a solution.

I am hoping that over the next few days..indeed, the years going forward...that we as a community, whatever our commonalities or differences, choose not to castigate Haggard for the choices he has made. Clearly, we do not want to be judged for decisions that we make. Granted, I know that Haggard and others have fought adamantly against gays, their rights, and their salvation. I feel, however, that the system itself needs to be attacked. If you work within a framework that condemns certain people, how can you truly address the dormant feelings within yourself? Am I arguing that Haggard is not accountable for his own venom spewing? No, but what I am trying to illumine is the deep complexities of the situation. Our militancy should not be spent in lambasting others but rather in educating people in all spheres of influence, whether public or private, as to the nature of our cause. We are as different and as alike as everyone else. Our sexual orientation does not detract from our ability to lead constituents or congregations, or from our ability to raise taxes or raise families. Marginalizing someone else will not erase the marginalization that we sometimes feel ourselves.

My closing thought is to ask anyone who reads this to think through the whole situation and how so very often we become the product of our enviroments. By reflecting on this, we can choose to criticize the action and not the man.

Things I Love About The MTA

1. The fact that the operator either wants to deepthroat the PA system, mimic Charlie Brown's teacher, or decide he's going to do stand-up the length of the A train.
2. The fact that there never "is a train directly (said DIE-rectly) behind this one."
3. If it's raining outside, the internal AC will be set on 68 contributing to summer colds.
4. If it's hot outside, the train tracks will buckle.
5. If it's cold outside, the train won't come.
6. The passenger beside you (if male) will sit with his legs spread so far apart that you'd feel he was carrying gonads the size of Africa between his legs.
7. The passenger beside you that will so graciously and so deliciously spit their sunflower seeds on the floor.
8. The fact that grown men will sit as far apart from each other in an effort to not appear "gay" but will converse very loudly over you or around you in order to have their conversation.
9. The conductor will hold the doors open for a girl with a skirt barely covering her cookie, but if you're carrying three bags, he will shut it and give you a smirk for thinking you could make it.
10. The fact that there is a schedule of train times that's posted on the website, yet the MTA never follows it.

More to come as the MTA continues to make improvements daily.
If you see something, say something. Oh wait, I did.

A Brief Look At Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Work: On Religion & The Christian Faith: Theory and Method

In last week’s seminar, I mentioned the difficulty in discerning theory and method in some of the works of religious studies that we’ve read over the semester.  For example, I asked if a method could somehow lead back to a theory, as in the account of Geertz’ Balinese Cockfight.  This is not to oversimplify the issues of constructing theory and developing method, but rather to illustrate how the application of theory into method is often more opaque than I would like.  Through a reading of Wayne Proudfoot’s Religious Experience, however, one can see clearly how the theories on piety and religion of German theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, expounded in his book On Religion led to a hermeneutical method of studying religion and piety.

Firstly, one must consider Schleiermacher’s definition of religion, which lays the groundwork for his further theory and method.  To do this, however, requires a brief look into the purpose for his definition.  Schleiermacher sought, Proudfoot argues, “to show the artists and critics with whom he associated that what they despised was not religion but the dogmas and institutions that result from mistaking external forms for the inner life of the spirit, and that real piety is identical with the spiritual integrity and sense of harmony with the universe which they sought in the aesthetic and cultural life” (2).  Therefore, to show that religion was not a doctrine or an institution, Schleiermacher had to define religion in such a way as to separate it from its external forms; within such a system, he had to define it internally in a way that he hoped would avoid reductionism.  For Schleiermacher, then, religion was to be defined as “…a sense, a taste, a matter of feeling and intuition…It is an autonomous moment in human experience and is, in principle, invulnerable to rational and moral criticism” (2).  It is a “sense and taste for the infinite” (9). 

This definition enables Schleiermacher to construct what Proudfoot construes as an apology for religion.   For one, religion under Schleiermacher’s definition becomes perfectly sui generis.  Rudolf Otto drew on this in his own work by claiming that piety can only be known through direct acquaintance (8).  It could not be defined.  It could be evoked in another, but it could not be conceptualized.  Yet, Proudfoot takes umbrage with this.  Throughout his chapter entitled “Expression,” he argues that Schleiermacher’s intention of religion (his notion of absolute dependence) is a conceptualization in that the notion of dependence on something begs the question of what or whom the subject is dependent upon. Theoretically, he argues, Schleiermacher’s system breaks down (3). 

For me, this is where the theory becomes more interesting.  I agree with Proudfoot in that it seems that Schleiermacher has backed himself into a hole.  If feeling is piety, and exists autonomously from thoughts and actions, how can one describe it?  Humans are creatures of communication, whether verbal or nonverbal.  I may feel something, and John may feel something, but how do we communicate this to each other?  Or how are we to understand if each other “feels” the same thing?  Language would seem to be the medium in which to communicate these feelings, whether verbally through avowals such as “I feel”, or nonverbally, because that is a convention that appears to be the most pervasive in our own society.

Schleiermacher sees language in a different way.  It is not that language does not have utility in his system, but rather the opposite.  Schleiermacher argues that religious language results from the initial pre-linguistic feeling or intuition, or the whence of mutual dependence, rather than language leading to the artificial construction of a feeling that could plausibly occur within a religious institution rife with dogma and ritual.  To use terminology from William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience the feeling is the “root” for the “fruits” of doctrine and theology.  In this system, developed more in his work The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher pushes this further, and one begins to see how language grows out of and along with religious feeling.  Schleiermacher argues, “Christian doctrines are accounts of the religious affections set forth in speech” (CF 15, Proudfoot 16).

Religious language, therefore, is the expression of religious feeling.  It serves to express piety and is not conditioned by any antecedent concepts.  Piety expresses itself in facial expressions and other bodily movements, which then leads to the use of the voice, which then leads to mental self-reflection as persons and cultures develop (25).    This use of language (poetic, rhetoric, and didactic) is borne of the original religious feeling or affection of Schleiermacher’s argument. Ultimately, these uses of language expressed outwardly in speech lead to the formulation of doctrine.

These doctrines can take the form of sacred scripture, myths, stories, or legal documents bequeathed to them by previous generations, and some, if not all of them, are found in all religious communities (42).  How does one interpret these works?  If all of these works are expressions of a religious feeling, then it must follow that these expressions must require an interpretive model that takes into account the nature of religious language and religious feeling with respect to the culture and language in which they were written.  Here is where one finds a method that grows out of a theory: Schleiermacher’s hermeneutic method.  One recalls earlier that Schleiermacher and Otto argued that feelings can only be known through direct acquaintance.  Within Schleiermacher’s system, an interpretative method to studying religious experience employs the same rules. 

To understand or interpret the text, one must understand not only the individual or individuals who composed the text, but also the grammatical and psychological world in which they lived.  Both grammatical and psychological interpretations must be employed.  The grammatical interpretation refers to “the study of the history of a language, of the relation of the language to its culture, and of the general historical and social context of the discourse to be interpreted” (49).  The psychological interpretation can be seen as empathic, or a “walk in the author’s shoes.”  Schleiermacher terms this the “divinatory method,” which is “…that by which one, by turning himself, as it were, into the other, seeks to grasp immediately the individual in him” (Schleiermacher, 1959: 109, Proudfoot 49).  Hence, like his notion of piety, this grasping of the author’s intentions are immediate and intuitive. 

The work of Schleiermacher has continued to influence scholars since it first appeared in the early nineteenth century.  Scholars like William James and Rudolf Otto drew on his arguments to formulate their own, albeit with somewhat different conclusions, and scholars like Proudfoot use recent studies in psychology, especially those of Stanley Schachter, to show how feelings or emotions cannot always be separated away from conceptualizations (Proudfoot, 75-118).  Yet, what makes Schleiermacher’s work so interesting is that he implicitly argues that this notion of piety, or “feeling,” works cross-culturally among varied traditions.  James develops this further in his The Varieties of Religious Experience. 

Scholar David J. Hufford, in his work The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions works with this idea in regards to folk belief.  In one such study dealing with Mara experiences (experience of finding oneself awake and paralyzed in the presence of a frightening being), he “…was able to show that what Newfoundlanders called the Old Hag comprises a cross-culturally stable experiential pattern underlying many belief traditions in widely separated places” (Hufford, 12).  What this means for Hufford is that “a host of traditional beliefs actually seem to be produced by a particular kind of experience, the details of which are independent of prior belief or knowledge” (14).  This kind of interpretation is roughly in the same vein as the work of Schleiermacher, though with respect to folk belief rather than piety.  The resulting conclusion, however, appears the same: something exists, whether a “feeling” or belief that is autonomous to thought or knowledge.

Granted, both the work of Hufford and Schleiermacher is not without criticism, as witnessed by Proudfoot’s critical work Religious Experience, which also gives a more critical look into the theories of William James and discusses pragmatic methods of interpretation.  What Proudfoot does, however, is illuminate the theories of Schleiermacher that would later be instrumental in Schleiermacher’s methods developed for studying religion.

Balinese Cockfighting

In past weeks, we have examined various definitions of “religion.”  Can it be defined, and who has the authority to do so?  Under these two questions, others beg to be asked.  For our purposes in discussions, we have looked critically at definitions from Durkheim and James to see what these definitions include and, perhaps more importantly, what they do not.  After such an examination, we can then ask ourselves for whom does the definition offer the most utility: the sociologist, the psychologist, the theologian, the anthropologist, and so on.

            

For example, if we look at Clifford Geertz’ definition of religion, which can be found in his work The Interpretation of Cultures, we can ascertain that Geertz has a different framework from that of Durkheim or James.  Even though he acknowledges that definitions are notorious for establishing nothing, they can nevertheless provide “…a useful orientation, or reorientation, of thought, such that an extended unpacking of them can be an effective way of developing and controlling a novel line of inquiry” (90).  For Geertz, this novel line of inquiry relates to symbolic anthropology and can be witnessed in his definition:

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (90)

What may strike one immediately is the absence of a divinity or a deity in this definition.  There is no supernatural element, even one of Nature’s forces upon humankind.  Rather, Geertz is arguing that humankind is creating religion by “formulating conceptions of a general order of existence.”  Yet, where does this general order come from?  It would seem from the definition that a general order comes from the collective who are vulnerable to this system of symbols that are jointly created.  Therefore, the individual exists insofar as the collective exists.  This is seen more fully in Geertz’s “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” where a rooster is seen not only as a symbolic ambulatory penis of the male, but also symbolic of his status within the social hierarchy (417). 

This is not the notion of religion that William James puts forth or the religion of beliefs and practices offered by Durkheim.  What exists in this definition is truly a religion of symbolism, where the “utilization of symbolic form becomes a social event like any other; they are as public as marriage and as observable as agriculture” (91).  Something stands for, or represents, something else. 

This is no more fully realized than in Geertz’s account of the cockfights he witnesses in Bali, where the cockfight comes to represent something more than itself.  He argues, “In the cockfight, man and beast, good and evil, ego and id, the creative power of aroused masculinity and the destructive power of the loosened animality fuse in a bloody drama of hatred, cruelty, violence, and death” (420).  He continues, “…in seeking earthly analogues for heaven and hell the Balinese compare the former to the mood of a man whose cock has just won, the latter to that of a man whose cock has just lost” (421). 

In Geertz’s definition of religion, then, a Balinese cockfight is a symbolic playground upon which the Balinese develop their knowledge and attitudes about life.  It is a powerful and pervasive arena that could almost be construed in Eliadean terms as sacred.  This is the sacred activity or space, which serves as the model for further social development.  Furthermore, it is bloody, and as Eliade remarked in the sacred and profane, blood propitiation may often be one of the hallmarks of constructing sacred space.  There are also these elements of noetic quality and transience that James refers to in his definitions of mystical experience, as the matches are self-contained and occur infrequently. 

Yet, Geertz’s account of Balinese cockfights are rather biased.  Although Vincent Crapanzano comments on some of these in his article “Hermes’ Dilemma,” I would like to suggest a few more.  Geertz has not asked the participants of the cockfight what the matches signify to them, nor has he approached the landlord, village chief, Brahamana priest, or police officers and asked them how they perceive the cockfights.  Or, if he has, he has not included them in his account.  Also, we have no account of his wife’s insight, and he has remarked that she is also an anthropologist.  Furthermore, he does not actively participate in the event.  If he did, quite frankly, he might have had a rather different interpretation of this event. 

It is this idea of interpretation that is so crucial to Geertz’s work.  If the culture is steeped in symbology, it stands to reason that the role of the anthropologist is to “interpret” these symbols for outsiders to understand.  The anthropologist is the translator of the text, to use Geertz’s terminology (452).  Yet, in Geertz’s account, which comes first: the text or the translator?  It would seem that it is the translator.  The text only exists because Geertz creates one by contextualizing an event so that he can interpret it for others.  His interpretations serves to orient his audience back to his own definition of religion.

This brings me back to my introduction.  Before he explicitly defines religion, Geertz argues that a definition provides “a useful orientation, or reorientation, of thought, such that an extended unpacking of them can be an effective way of developing and controlling a novel line of inquiry” (90).  His orientation of thought is that of an anthropologist interpreting culture, and his extended unpacking of its symbols is not the only way, but he argues an effective way.  Therefore, perhaps we could argue that Geertz knew the dangers of too much subjectivity in observing and researching phenomena.  He is, therefore, subtly arguing that other interpretations could exist.  He even remarks at the end of his “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” that “…societies, like lives, contain their own interpretations.  One has only to learn how to gain access to them” (453).  Perhaps we can take this “them” as a plurality of meanings to be translated contingent upon the methods of interpretation, a method, in this case, dictated by Geertz’s theory of symbolic anthropology.

William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience

Within the work of William James’ The Varieties of the Religious Experience, one finds a fundamentally different approach to religion than the ones studied thus far as argued by Emile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade. For James, the source of religion authoritatively stems from the individual, rather than the Durkheimian collective or the Eliadean orientation of humankind and sacred. James argues, “Religion, therefore, as I now arbitrarily ask you to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine (39).

Such a definition allows for James to construct various arguments. Firstly, let one examine the latter part of the definition where James does not limit what the divine can be for the individual. The divine could be the monotheistic God of the Abrahamic traditions, the Transcendentalist view of nature, or the unity-with-God notion practiced by eleventh-century Sufis. Secondly, James’ focusing on the individual underscores his entry point into religion made in his introduction to The Varieties of Religious Experience. He states, “Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed…It would seem, therefore, that as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of [humankind’s] religious propensities” (16).

I argue that he is, in a sense, removing the divine from definition of a religion, or at least minimize it. A scientist can’t observe the divine. What he or she can do, however, is study the effects that the notion of the divine has on an individual. In a sense, then, religion becomes science-like in that it can be empirically studied. It moves religion from the history book to one of science. This is not to argue that faith is absent from the equation. Rather, it plays an instrumental role in shaping the feelings, acts, and experiences of the individual man in his solitude that a scientist can measure. By observing one’s behavior and making judgments as to its significance, James is able to adopt two modes of inquiry: the existential judgment and the spiritual judgment (17).

For James, the existential judgment seems to be the easier mode of inquiry. He notes that, “Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents” (17). He uses the construction of the bible to illustrate this fact, and then shows how contemporary forms of biblical criticism or exegesis build on this existential notion to bring one to a spiritual judgment about the work. Therefore, a spiritual judgment can only be made with regards to a previous existential one.

If one looks at his lectures devoted to mysticism, one sees a similar framework being employed. James notes, “One may say truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness” (328). What this means, or what James seems to be implying, is that mysticism is the fountainhead for all religious experience. In effect, it cannot be sectarian or particular, for if all things flow from it, it must be, in and of itself, universal.

This universality allows for the divine to be perceived in a variety of ways, hence James’ title The Varieties of the Religious Experience.” The majority of his lectures dealing with mysticism (in fact, the bulk of the lectures contained within this book) recount various peoples -- men and women, young and old, European and American, Christian and Sufi – detailing their religious experiences. What this seems to suggest, therefore, is that religious experience is ahistorical and atemporal. It is a living presence that permeates the whole of human existence, and it is a living presence that can be accessed in a variety of ways, whether an epileptic episode or pharmacological induction. What matters is not that the mystical experience be reduced to medical materialism (a phrase that James coins), but rather what the mystical experience means for the individual in terms of present behavior and future actions. Therefore, what holds more significance is the fruits of the mystical experience, rather than the seeds that bring about the fruit, although the seeds are important to bring about such fruit. Here again, one sees James’ framework of the existential and spiritual modes of inquiry.

James’ work regarding mysticism has not been without criticism. In his article “The Making of Modern ‘Mysticism’ from the Academy of American Religion, scholar Leigh Eric Schmidt traces the genealogy of “mysticism” from the sixteenth century to the present. His article concerns itself with mysticism being perceived for its essentialist illusions (273). We can read essentialist in this context as universal. For scholars like Wayne Proudfoot, Steven T. Katz, and Hans H. Penner, religious experience is not to be any more unique, ineffable, or perennial than any other kind of experience (274). These scholars, I believe, understand James’ work to say that history does not matter. For them, historicity seems to be more important, as it allows history to be a significant criterion of value for investigative research.

I do not think, however, that James’ work negates historicity. Rather, I think he recognizes that social factors and the environment give the context for a religious experience, and he believes that to “…understand a thing rightly we need to see it both out of its environment and in it, and to have acquaintance with the whole range of its variations” (31). Furthermore, “Religion, no matter what it is, is a man’s total reaction upon life” (42). This total reaction, therefore, includes man both in its environment and out of it, both inside his history and outside of it. Mystical experience is not a mere way to avoid reductionism amid modernity as Proudfoot argues, but rather to allow religious experience to exist alongside and within modernity. Again, I reference James’ quote on religion being man’s total reaction. For him, this reaction could be studied empirically. Perhaps this is why he could be better understood as founding the science of religion. Mystical experience is the single-cell that evolves into the organism of religious experience. Therefore, mystical experience must be, in and of itself, a religion. Perhaps it is not a religion in how Emile Durkheim may have defined it or how Eliade chose not to define it, but definitely within the psychological and philosophical framework that James provides.

Why Study Religion, Part Deux

Why study religion? This is a question I often field from co-workers or family members trying to understand why a thirty-three year old is back in college studying something different than he did the first go-around. My usual retort is, why not? I go on to explain that religious thoughts, ideas, and practices continue to influence history, philosophy, pop culture, and politics. For me, religion is more than merely poring over a sacred text. It is a critical study into why people choose to believe certain things, rather than what they choose to hold sacred. Not that I think what they hold sacred is without merit, but as Emile Durkheim argues, the sacred object is usually merely a symbol representing something more profound.

Recently, I have been debating religion with my boyfriend who is a Ph.D. candidate in cognitive psychology at Rutgers. We have many thought-provoking, often heated, debates about not only what religion is, but also what is its function in society. Was Marx correct in labeling religion as opium for the masses? Is it an archaic way of searching for answers to humankinds’ existence and how we fit into the scheme of things? Is it a hypnotic tune that the politician pipes away to lead a country into battle? Or is it all of these, or none of these?

Durkheim takes a rather interesting and sociological approach to the topic by arguing that rather than religion holding court over humankind, humankind (functioning as a society) commands a sort of power over religion. This sense of force is achieved by humans imposing a structure upon religion that is analogous to the structure that humans experience from their social interactions within the community at large. One such example would be a power of subordination. Another example is that because humankind learned how to collectively group themselves, they now have the model for grouping other things as well. This community at large, ultimately, becomes the model and the teacher its members’ cosmological view. The cosmology is then represented by society. Therefore, the community is eminently important as it contains within it the beliefs and practices that perpetuate this cosmological view. This can be seen in Durkheim’s definition of religion: A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

Religion, therefore, is formed and shaped by the collective. One learns what is sacred and profane from the community. This learning is then passed along from generation to generation, which evokes an idea of a living spirit moving from society to society. This living spirit can be perceived also as some form of moral obligation, which serves to unite the individual to the community. Each community, then, serves as a teacher to new members and subsequent generations.

In this sense, community can be seen almost as a divinity – something that is eternal, connected to both past and future. Therefore, one could argue that religion is society. A definition like this keeps one from being mired in the particulars of a certain faith or denomination. It allows for the complexities of varied individuals and their multitude of beliefs and practices. It allows for each religion to be based in truth, for as the sociologist Durkheim argues, nothing built on a falsehood could endure.

A different way of looking at this is creatio ex nihilo. In this context, every religion is borne out of something (for Durkheim, this is the community) and also contains within it some kernel of truth about the human existence. What this ultimately means for Durkheim is that there can be no a priori concepts. We cannot get something from nothing. There has to be a teacher of sorts. This is not to imply that the educator is “divine.” As he demonstrated with his definition of religion, Buddhism functions without a divinity. In Durkheim’s argument, community functions as this educator.

Yet, how does this argument hold up today? Last year, an article ran in TIME magazine stating that some scientists believe that we have something akin to a “god gene” encoded within us…something that makes us seek something outside ourselves. For these scientists, it would seem that there are a priori concepts mapped into us, or something innate that waits to be made manifest. Perhaps Durkheim would concede to this idea. He does state after all in his introduction that science has oftentimes led us to re-examine things previously held absolute, especially in biological terms of unicellular development. With regards to the “god gene,” Durkheim would argue that it is society that makes manifest the latent. Just as society brings about the fervor and creates the notion of the sacred for its members, it also generates the fervor necessary to awaken the individual.

In conclusion, I return to my introduction: why study religion? If, as Durkheim argues, no religion can be false, then every study of religion offers one the chance to see how communities of people gather together and endure, and how this process of enduring as a society shapes their practices and beliefs.

Please, I really want to come to your party

Charges against Ohran Parmuk, a Turkish novelist, were dropped recently by the Turkish government.  Parmuk had come under national scrutiny for his beliefs that the Armenian genocide happened in the early part of the twentiety century?

Why were these charges dropped?  Turkey wants to join the EU...and has come under scrutiny itself regarding civil right liberties.  So is Turkey saying that the genocide did happen at the hands of the Ottomans, or is it alluding to it, or is it saying that regardless of the past, from this point on we will protect liberties.  But please, I really want to come to the EU party...I'm all growed up.

Granted, this is a very complex issue that relates to Turkey's modern identity and the country first formed in the aftermath of World War I.  But, does a nation really lose by trying to make reparations...or at the very least, although certainly not the best recourse, acknowledging an atrocity....

What is that saying?  With great power comes great responsibility.  Responsibility not only to the privileged, I may add...but rather to all.

Firefly - Serenity

Suffice it to say that there is a huge sci-fi geek in me.  Maybe huge is an understatement for I love this genre.  And I think the reason that i love the genre so much is that it blends so many other genres into its fabric.

Take for instance Joss Whedon's FIREFLY.  For anyone that doesn't know Whedon....Buffy, Angel, Toy Story, Alien Resurrection, Wonder Woman...this may jog some mammaries..um, memories.

FIREFLY (the tv series) and Serenity (the movie based on the series) is a great example of why I love sci-fi.  The premise is simple.  Four hundred years into the future, Earth has discovered (rather belatedly) that its resources have been depleted.  Also, the superpowers of China and America have combined...think of a cosmic Microsoft.  Many previously uninhabited planets are terraformed to make life possible for new citizens.  Therefore, new civilizations can be cultivated and developed. 

I'm not going to launch into the rest...I strongly suggest you guys to at least watch the movie to get a sense of the cosmic Big Brother feel. 

Anyone that wants to talk about this further...please email me.  I would love to riff ideas with you.

Swatch

Catchy title, I know.....one recalls either pockets of fabric...or Swiss watches sometimes made to resemble fabric...i mean, what "in" highschooler didn't ogle the argyle one at Dillard's while singing along to Swing Out Sister on the overhead muzak?  Or the polo striped one...or the...or the....or....it's actually the watch itself that interests me more.  Or any watch.

Is God digital, or does God need to be wound up?

Does God need a backlight?  Is a backlight really a nimbus? (More than the model of a Harry Potter broom, I assure you)

But what I am not assured of....is God a watch...marking all of our progress/regress..does God sometimes fall behind as we do?  If God is on Greenwich Mean Time, is that when bad things happen?

I jest...i know, but i'm truly wondering...

Is God a watchmaker? 

At the end of 2005, I'm saying no.  I'm actually thinking that the idea of a transcendent God is difficult to fathom.  This begs the question how can one fathom God, which begs the question is there a God which one can fathom.  Therefore, my premise is that there is a god.  Or a God.  Or something(s).  Or that we are the god(s).  Or that maybe we are watchmakers ourselves.  This doesn't necessarily mean that I'm arguing the God's own image position, either. 

I think of my spirituality as a dynamic structure. I don't allow it to attach to an extreme fundamentalist point of view nor do I fully endorse an agnostic view.  What this means outside of a blog is that I think we can see an idea of God in a multitude of ways: a dog wags its tail, a soup kitchen feeds the homeless, I find a twenty in a pair of jeans that fit more than three years ago, I kiss my boyfriend, when I cry at a soloist in church, when I read a sutra and find a new path into my mind/heart, when Maria Carey takes time off.

Are the above things chance, fate, destiny?  Or are all of these, including the concept of God, a way to systematize a life that is extremely fragile and expendable....like a Swatch.

I knew I should have bought a  Breitling.

Isn't It Rich...Aren't They A Pair

According to yesterday's IMDB entertainment notes, Madonna has gone on the record saying that she doesn't appreciate Paris Hiltons' wearing of a Kabbalah bracelet.  IMDB quotes, "Madonna tells website The Scoop, "People like Paris Hilton come into a centre and buy a book or a band and that's it for them. It doesn't mean they study it. It's very hard to be a believer. I'm very serious about it." "

Ok, now I love Madge as much as the next Palmolive homo...but enough already.  Was Madonna a serious believer of Catholicism when she writhed on the floor wearing a crucifix and a bustier? 

I think she better soak her hands some more...she can soften her hands while she does some more dishing.