Please do not give up on communicating with us! You add a dimension that
would otherwise be missing from this list. And please do not be insulted
if by our culture's lack of respect for the wisdom of elders. We're a
youth-oriented culture and we always consider older people as needing to
be tolerated or put away somewhere.
I will also take issue (respectfully) with your touting the Bible as the
only answer. There are people out there screaming that *their* book is
the only way- Bible, Torah, Koran, Baghavad Ghita, Book of Mormon... If
one of these is the only right one, the rest are wrong. So, the odds of
the Bible being the only truth are pretty high.
It's not that one is right and the rest wrong. When asked which is
right, I reply, "Yes." By this I mean that there is a common thread
through each- and a lot of commentary. Each of these attempts to express
a Mythos which resides somewhere in all of us. We are trying to express
our spiritual side- not a bad thing.
I think the violent reaction you've seen is from the implication in your
messages that the Bible is the only true document. And to say, "...with
strange heathen religions
worshipping spirits, ancestors, with fear of reprisal for even killing a
lizard
because it might be a reincarnated former ancestor, --blood sprinkled
around as
safety feature..." you are denigrating others' Mythos or beliefs. We
could just as well say, "Those Catholics are a strange heathen religion,
worshipping dead "saints" and icons (ancestors), drinking "blood" and
incanting --- water sprinkled around as a safety feature..." It is easy
to dismiss any rituals if we are not a participant.
So let's not dis other people's Mythos. Instead let us embrace all as a
common attempt at including spirituality in our lives and respect each
other's rituals as such- from the Catholic Mass to dancing in the garden
on Midsummer eve sprinkling whatever.
And what does this have to do with SA, some may ask? Without
spirituality we miss at least 50% of what's going on in our gardens and
on our farms. Those who work daily with the physical side of nature are
led to some expression of spirituality.
So, Bargyla, please do not be offended, and offend not. And please keep
sharing your wisdom born of time with us.
Alex
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail