RevBob1957

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  2. There Are More Similarities That Unify Us Than Differences That Pull U

    in Stories & Texts Archive

    Posted

    "The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God, Who alone was great; yet there was a homeliness, an everyday-ness of this climactic Arab God, who was their eating and their fighting and their lusting, the commonest of their thoughts, their familiar resource and companion, in a way impossible to those whose God is so wistfully veiled from them by despair of their carnal unworthiness of Him and by the decorum of formal worship. Arabs felt no incongruity in bringing God into the weaknesses and appetites of their least creditable causes. He was the most familiar of their words; and indeed we lost much eloquence when making Him the shortest and ugliest of our monosyllables.

    This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought. It was easily felt as an influence, and those who went into the desert long enough to forget its open spaces and its emptiness were inevitably thrust upon God as the only refuge and rhythm of being. The Bedwai might be a nominal Sunni, or a nominal Wahabi, or anything else in the Semitic compass, and he would take it very lightly, a little in the manner of the watchmen at Zion's gate who drank beer and laughed in Zion because they were Zionists. Each individual nomad had his revealed religion, not oral or traditional or expressed, but instinctive in himself; and so we got all the Semitic creeds with (in character and essence) a stress on the emptiness of the world and the fullness of God; and according to the power and opportunity of the believer was the expression of them." -- from Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence

    Today's society, so full of THINGS yet empty of spirit, is our desert; and I believe we, here gathered, are the new "Beduin".

    The Divine exists within each of us, as we exist within the Divine, only the manifestation -- the perception -- differs. Some see Unity, some Trinity, others a Pantheon. It is WE who label the Divine He or She or It or They, and then argue about the difference. Yet it all is the same; only our flawed mortal perception differs.

    I claim only to be a Deist. I pursue enlightenment.

    Peace through Understanding.

    RevBob

  7. Recommended: Fantasy/sci Fi

    in Creative Expression & Cultural Arts

    Posted

    For anyone not afraid of mixing a little film noir detective with their sci-fi I would highly recommend S. Andrew Swann's "Moreau" series (in order):

    Forests of the Night

    Emperors of the Twilight

    Specters of the Dawn

    Fearful Symmetries

    I haven't read much sci-fi in years, but these were recommended to me by a friend and I found them thoroughly enjoyable.

    Imagine an anthropomorphic tiger as the detective in a Raymond Chandler type story with a plot that has more twists than a corkscrew. :thumbu:

    WARNING: Some violence and adult situations.