Spring Break is over, and I've got a lot going on again. I'm going to have a CT scan this Friday to determine if I need surgery right away. Lots of pain, life has felt like a struggle. I'm grateful for yoga and for the Gitas. By the way, big sister, I got the Mitchell translation of the B. Gita this week : )
For now, here is some old stuff; there are only about four more of them.
July 25, 2007
One of my other books from the library is The Gospel According to Judas, by Jeffrey Archer, and no, it is not the Judas Gospel. It is a novel, written in the form of a gospel. But it is an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the red-headed apostle. Unlike the actual gospel, this novel does not have Jesus ask Judas to betray him, to set free his spirit, or begin his transformation, or whatever. No, instead he has Judas as first a disciple of John the Baptist (which is from the Gospel of John, I believe).
Following John the Baptist's advice, he joins Jesus, believing him to be the Messiah who will lead them in kicking out the Romans. Over time, as Jesus refuses to amass an army or wealth, or even to publicize his being the messiah, Judas has doubts. He believes Jesus is a man of God, but not the Messiah. He doesn't want Jesus to get into trouble, and through the trickery of a Scribe who pretends to want also to save Jesus, he agrees to identify him. He believes the Scribe will help him hustle Jesus out of the city and keep him safe. He is horrified at what actually happens, and at the cowardice of the other apostles. He doesn't hang around, and so he doesn't know, but does not believe that Jesus rose from the dead, doesn't believe he was either the Son of God or the Messiah, and denies all of the other nature miracles.
In my opinion, it wasn't very well done. It didn't add much in the way of new understanding; didn't even include or make as much use as it could have of things in the gospels that would have supported the story. Very disappointing. I'm intrigued, though, by all of the energy and effort that is currently going into reinterpreting Judas.
July 26
In Brother Odd (Dean Koonz), finished yesterday around 1:30, there is a physicist who penetrates below the level of quantum foam and finds that reality is constructed of thought waves. God's thought. So he makes a machine that reads his thought waves and produces a hideous imitation of life, instead of getting that we ourselves create reality, as we are God's mind, God's thought waves – with our thought.
And in Ghostwritten [David Mitchell – well-crafted first novel that is hard to describe. You'll have to check it out for yourselves. It weaves together the stories of several seemingly random lives – scattered across the globe – brings multiple cultures to life, all of them glaringly up-to-date, enmeshed in the world of today and not buried in some nostalgic yesteryear; characters were real even when we only saw them briefly – I guess what I'm trying to say is that he never reproduced stereotypes] I came across a passing reference that made it clear that it is au currant to have conversations with new acquaintances in which the similarities between Eastern philosophy and quantum physics are established. Apparently "everyone" knows this now. So why not wholesale conversion?
Probably because people don't actually spend that much time thinking about it. Especially in Great Britain where the Church of England is almost a secular institution and people attend out of patriotism and a sense of nationality, not faith. I'm sometimes surprised to find out how little even the members of my own family think about these things. Maybe I am really a weirdo.
August 20
Have a great deal of pain. I haven't felt like writing at all. Just get up, meditate, wait for the pain meds to kick in, and go to work, where I stay until I'm too exhausted to do any more. Come home. Rest.
September 1
I don't know if I'll take up writing regularly here or not. I haven't seen the point lately at all. With 8 am classes twice a week, I'll have to get up and go, and it is more important to do the spiritual work. I can read the Gitas and Upanishads without writing about them. In fact, I think it might be better for me to read them without writing about them for awhile.
I did this for the first two months of the semester – read and meditated each morning. But as the days got busier and busier, and my work load got heavier, and the pain and stress grew worse, I dropped the reading, and I began to miss meditation sessions here and there. I forgot to rely on the mantra quite as often . . .
November 27
1:30 am. Can't sleep. Can't possibly catch you up and am not even going to try. But as I lay here, a thousand thoughts spinning around at least 30 poles, it occurs to me that I am going about some things in a very wrong-headed way. Well, it has occurred to me before. Now I am convinced. Maybe writing it will give me peace enough to sleep.
First, where has the spiritual gone? How much of the day is given over to joy? If I make no room for miracles and joyfulness, how can any enter? I must get back to daily meditation and nightly reading of scripture. My spirit is about sucked dry.
[Rest is all course-related]
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