Today is the last day of November and the last day of my 'post every day' project. I've succeeded, though it's questionable whether or not all of those posts were worthy of seeing the light of day. Still. I did it. :)
My new project is something that I've wanted to do for a while.
Last year...or was it the year before?
Hang on. *wanders off*
Wow. Hey. So it was two years ago. Yeah. Susanne, I'm getting old! :p Anyway. About two years ago Susanne did a series of posts as she was reading through the Qur'an. Just reflections, things that struck her. If she had them all tagged with a unique tag (HINT) I'd link to the series. But as it is, here's a link to her Qur'an tag. They're in there a ways back.
There was also a Muslimah (whose blog name I have forgotten and I can't find a link) who was doing a read through of the Bible and doing the same thing, making comments.
And these were both really interesting projects and I want to do it too because of course you all care *deeply* about my random thoughts!
But I can't decide which to do: the Bible or the Qur'an. So I'm putting it to a vote. Which would you guys like to see? And if I start with the Bible, should I start in the Old Testament or the New Testament?
Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Day 29: So close. So close.
We're almost at the end and I literally am having too many thoughts and feelings about too many things to pick one to write about.
I'm in the middle of intense Cold Days fangirling feels (I'm totally renaming the Dresden Files to the Dresden Feels in my head, thank you very much).
Anticipating both Hobbit and Les Mis feels of intensity.
Writing out my The Dark Knight Rises feels.
Watching history shows that basically end like this: and then the Muslims came along and invented all the cool stuff. The end. Also algebra. So that kind of balances it all out.
No. Seriously. A Muslim physician came up with an idea for human flight before Da Vinci. You don't learn about that stuff in school, do you? Nope.
I want to start like a book club but I have no way to organize it and I think I'd read too fast for everyone.
I want to reread the Dresden Feels and plot everything out in a chart or something and See the Meaning of the Universe.
Somewhere outside my window something is making goat noises.
I'm not going to look. Nope nope nope.
I'm in the middle of intense Cold Days fangirling feels (I'm totally renaming the Dresden Files to the Dresden Feels in my head, thank you very much).
Anticipating both Hobbit and Les Mis feels of intensity.
Writing out my The Dark Knight Rises feels.
Watching history shows that basically end like this: and then the Muslims came along and invented all the cool stuff. The end. Also algebra. So that kind of balances it all out.
No. Seriously. A Muslim physician came up with an idea for human flight before Da Vinci. You don't learn about that stuff in school, do you? Nope.
I want to start like a book club but I have no way to organize it and I think I'd read too fast for everyone.
I want to reread the Dresden Feels and plot everything out in a chart or something and See the Meaning of the Universe.
Somewhere outside my window something is making goat noises.
I'm not going to look. Nope nope nope.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Day 28: I still have a problem with this and I don't have a horse in the race
Okay, I've been trying to figure out how to say what I want to say and it's just not coming out quite right.
Yesterday Heather posted a link to an article about woman only mosques in China. These are mosques where even the imam is a woman - no men at all. However, one of the mosques that was talked about is not (in my opinion) an actual mosque because it's still led by the male imam in the mosque 100 meters away. So the building is a part of the mosque, but not it's own unique mosque, see?
And yes, I would think that having their own building is most likely nicer and far roomier than many women's spaces that I've heard of in basements or second floors or tiny rooms off to the side, but here's my issue:
There seems to be, from what I hear from men and women who are Muslims (so this isn't just my opinion), a tendency to shunt women out of the majority of mosques in the world. They're not afforded the same opportunities for leadership within the mosque community, their opinions and needs aren't taken as having as much weight as their male counterparts and they are relegated to second-class in many instances. This is, perhaps, a function of the belief that women don't *have* to attend prayers at the mosque like men do and so why should time/effort/money be wasted on facilities for them?
Still, women do want to attend services at the mosque, at least jumah in many cases, and so there are these token spaces that are woefully inadequate and not kept as nicely as the spaces for the men. Again, this is me going off of what I have read from Muslim men and women. I've only personally been to one mosque, one time, and while the space was significantly smaller than that designated for the men, it was not as bad as some of the stories I've heard. It was beside the space for the men, separated by sliding glass doors that had been mirrored on the men's side so that they couldn't see in but the women could look out and watch the imam as well as hear him through the speaker system. Anyway.
So these women (and the same set up occurs in the US and Canada from what I read) have a separate building that is only for them. They're responsible for the upkeep, etc. and so it's a nice place for them to go and pray. Which, I would think, would encourage more women to go more often. And that's a good thing, right? Right.
But is having a separate building a step in the right direction?
I just can't help but feel, looking at it from the outside, like I've said, that it's just a further separation between men and women. Now the women aren't even in the same building. They've been shunted *further* from the imam who is supposed to be a teacher to them.
It feels like an extension of the 'out of sight, out of mind' mindset.
For anyone interested, here's the original article: China's Women-Only Mosques and a second article, China's Female Imams, that was linked by a reader in the thread.
Yesterday Heather posted a link to an article about woman only mosques in China. These are mosques where even the imam is a woman - no men at all. However, one of the mosques that was talked about is not (in my opinion) an actual mosque because it's still led by the male imam in the mosque 100 meters away. So the building is a part of the mosque, but not it's own unique mosque, see?
And yes, I would think that having their own building is most likely nicer and far roomier than many women's spaces that I've heard of in basements or second floors or tiny rooms off to the side, but here's my issue:
There seems to be, from what I hear from men and women who are Muslims (so this isn't just my opinion), a tendency to shunt women out of the majority of mosques in the world. They're not afforded the same opportunities for leadership within the mosque community, their opinions and needs aren't taken as having as much weight as their male counterparts and they are relegated to second-class in many instances. This is, perhaps, a function of the belief that women don't *have* to attend prayers at the mosque like men do and so why should time/effort/money be wasted on facilities for them?
Still, women do want to attend services at the mosque, at least jumah in many cases, and so there are these token spaces that are woefully inadequate and not kept as nicely as the spaces for the men. Again, this is me going off of what I have read from Muslim men and women. I've only personally been to one mosque, one time, and while the space was significantly smaller than that designated for the men, it was not as bad as some of the stories I've heard. It was beside the space for the men, separated by sliding glass doors that had been mirrored on the men's side so that they couldn't see in but the women could look out and watch the imam as well as hear him through the speaker system. Anyway.
So these women (and the same set up occurs in the US and Canada from what I read) have a separate building that is only for them. They're responsible for the upkeep, etc. and so it's a nice place for them to go and pray. Which, I would think, would encourage more women to go more often. And that's a good thing, right? Right.
But is having a separate building a step in the right direction?
I just can't help but feel, looking at it from the outside, like I've said, that it's just a further separation between men and women. Now the women aren't even in the same building. They've been shunted *further* from the imam who is supposed to be a teacher to them.
It feels like an extension of the 'out of sight, out of mind' mindset.
For anyone interested, here's the original article: China's Women-Only Mosques and a second article, China's Female Imams, that was linked by a reader in the thread.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Day 26: It's hypnotic!
I've got nothing for you guys. I'm writing and waiting for Cold Days to be released so that the fangirling can begin.
Have some Avengers Caramelldansen!
Have some Avengers Caramelldansen!
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Day 25: Just me, rambling about sin
No movies again this weekend. My buddy had to work and I have a surprise!cousin visit going on so I couldn't go later in the evening. :(
Short, rambling post tonight.
The hardest thing I find, personally, to understand about Christianity is the entire...Jesus died for my sins portion. So, you know, a large chunk of it.
1. The Bible is of two minds about the whole 'sins of the father' being visited on his children bit. There are more verses that point to sin being 'inheritable' than not, but it makes no sense to me. If we're to be held responsible for the sins of everyone who came before us in our family line, then what good is free will? Even if we choose the right path again and again, we're still burdened by the smudge of *their* choices. I can understand if it's a way of saying that the *consequences* of those choices affect the descendants of the people who made them - that's just common sense. But it's taken to mean (at least when we're talking about 'original sin') that we are actually, literally responsible for the sin that someone made thousands/millions of years ago.
2. The concept of 'original sin' is a 2nd century construct that was made popular (and worse) by Augustine. It's not found in Judaism, where the story of the 'fall' originates. (I am aware that not all Christian denominations believe in the concept of original sin as it is commonly understood in Western Christianity.)
3. We have God rejecting human sacrifice in the Old Testament, in the story of Abraham and Isaac. That has long been taken as a complete repudiation of human sacrifice to God, as opposed to the gods of the people that surrounded and conquered the Jews who did accept human sacrifices. Then we come to the New Testament which is based on God accepting a human sacrifice as payment for all the sins of those who believe that the sacrifice paid for their sins.
4. If Jesus was God, then how could he leave himself at the cross? How can God withdraw His presence from Himself? In Matthew he cries out, asking why God has forsaken him? I've seen some people argue that God, because He is unable to look at wickedness (which makes no sense to me either - He's God. Are you telling me that if we're bad enough then God just can't look at us any more? Then He's not omniscient, is He? And how does He have a conversation with the devil in Job? How?) that God 'spiritually' turned His back on Jesus at that point.
Okay. How do you turn your back on yourself? If the Trinity is not, in fact, some form of polytheism, then all three Persons are *one* in a way that we don't quite get. I am failing to grasp how one being can turn its back on itself in any sense of the term.
Short, rambling post tonight.
The hardest thing I find, personally, to understand about Christianity is the entire...Jesus died for my sins portion. So, you know, a large chunk of it.
1. The Bible is of two minds about the whole 'sins of the father' being visited on his children bit. There are more verses that point to sin being 'inheritable' than not, but it makes no sense to me. If we're to be held responsible for the sins of everyone who came before us in our family line, then what good is free will? Even if we choose the right path again and again, we're still burdened by the smudge of *their* choices. I can understand if it's a way of saying that the *consequences* of those choices affect the descendants of the people who made them - that's just common sense. But it's taken to mean (at least when we're talking about 'original sin') that we are actually, literally responsible for the sin that someone made thousands/millions of years ago.
2. The concept of 'original sin' is a 2nd century construct that was made popular (and worse) by Augustine. It's not found in Judaism, where the story of the 'fall' originates. (I am aware that not all Christian denominations believe in the concept of original sin as it is commonly understood in Western Christianity.)
3. We have God rejecting human sacrifice in the Old Testament, in the story of Abraham and Isaac. That has long been taken as a complete repudiation of human sacrifice to God, as opposed to the gods of the people that surrounded and conquered the Jews who did accept human sacrifices. Then we come to the New Testament which is based on God accepting a human sacrifice as payment for all the sins of those who believe that the sacrifice paid for their sins.
4. If Jesus was God, then how could he leave himself at the cross? How can God withdraw His presence from Himself? In Matthew he cries out, asking why God has forsaken him? I've seen some people argue that God, because He is unable to look at wickedness (which makes no sense to me either - He's God. Are you telling me that if we're bad enough then God just can't look at us any more? Then He's not omniscient, is He? And how does He have a conversation with the devil in Job? How?) that God 'spiritually' turned His back on Jesus at that point.
Okay. How do you turn your back on yourself? If the Trinity is not, in fact, some form of polytheism, then all three Persons are *one* in a way that we don't quite get. I am failing to grasp how one being can turn its back on itself in any sense of the term.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Day 24.5: I will need to bring a box of tissues and hide in the theater until the red goes away
Director Tom Hooper on yesterday’s first screening of Les Mis: ”Towards
the end of this film today this weird thing happened like a rustling
kind of sound. For a minute I freaked out wondering what’s that odd
sound on the soundtrack? I looked around and realized it’s the sound of people crying en masse.”
My feels: this movie will be right in them.
First The Hobbit and then Les Mis.
I'm not going to survive December.
I'm going to be dead of excessive fangirl feels.
My feels: this movie will be right in them.
First The Hobbit and then Les Mis.
I'm not going to survive December.
I'm going to be dead of excessive fangirl feels.
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