Monday, April 19, 2004

PAGE 23, FIFTH SENTENCE UPDATE: Sophron Mambrina has posted:  A 'Fifth Sentence' Poem Composed from the Books on My Desk The myth of the Godman Jesus can only be properly understood alongside the myth of the Goddess Sophia. Sometimes pure light, sometimes cruel, trying wildly to open, this image tightly held within itself. It looked so smart on you. How wonderful it would be if the divine warrior should again come righteously to Israel's rescue! To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself. According to the Eberus Papyrus, a 68-foot-long scroll on alchemy that has been called the oldest book in the world: "Man's guide is Thoth, who bestows on him the gifts of his speech, who makes the books and illumines those who are learned therein; and the physicians who follow him, that they may work cures." The patients spit out bloodied confessions, trade bacilli, compare fever charts, settle into a friendship of danger signals. Similarly, a man who is violently in love feels that if he could possess the girl, his freedom would be infinite; the delights of union would make him undefeatable. Actually the poor bugger was in a trance. Each of these phenomena has been associated with divine activity in other biblical episodes. How else to get attention for one's product or one's art? We refuse to listen to our clamoring inferiors and their arguments. _____________________________ The books, in no particular order, are: Fires, by Marguerite Yourcenar Glass, Irony and God, by Anne Carson A Guide to the I Ching by Carol K. Anthony The Illuminated Prayer: The Five-Times Prayer of the Sufis by Coleman Barks and Michael Green  (there are only two sentences on p. 23 of this book, so I've used the last one) The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Occult by Colin Wilson The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation, by Dennis William Hauck Christ: A Crisis in the Live of God, by Jack Miles Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag The Hidden Face of God, by Richard Elliot Friedman Jesus and the Lost Goddess, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller 8:01:44 PM    comment []

THE FIFTH AND SIXTH INSTRUCTIONS The latest viral meme passing from blog to blog is a set of instructions: 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 23. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions. To which I append fifth and sixth instructions: 5. Cut and paste the some or all of the fifth sentences into a collage poem, as far back as you care follow the chain. 6. Post text of fifth sentence poem to your blog, and cc Dr. Omed. Vincent Nusunginya of Religion Related Injuries has posted his own "short poem made from fifth sentences of the pages 23 of random books... because everyone else is doing it" and even provides a bibliography to go with. He discovered Burns when he went to the cobbler to have the shoes he was wearing, his only shoes, repaired. By mid-morning he had in turn been murdered in blood vengeance. This was a prophecy of the Messiah which was unmistakable because it referred to His eternal pre-existence... Any reader who came upon BJn unprepared would surely have been puzzled by many of its obscurities. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness..." But there is no "we" at this meeting. Zarathustra again emerges from his ten-year solitude, but now the mankind to whom he wants to address himself rejects him and he turns from it. Kahn, who had moved to Paris to work for the Herald Tribune, was placed on the NSA's "watch list," enabling eavesdroppers to read his mail and monitor his conversations. We want to win a tournament, but we lose. This view in P of the necessity of the Tabernacle's presence forever further supports the linguistic and historical connections of P to the era in which the first Temple was standing in Jerusalem. And the angel said unto me: Behold thy seed, and also the seed of thy brethren. They replied: 'We will worship your God and the God of your forefathers Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac: the One God.' As Lott tells the story, Richman asked him how many cows would have to be imported to produce a red heifer in Israel. "Excuse my skepticism," I said, "but would anyone have had a motivation to lie by claiming these people wrote these gospels, when they really didn't?" Humans possessed a reflection of his wisdom, but they had free will, as did all intelligent life, including angelic helpers in his creation of the universe. In perhaps its most radical departure from the classicists, however, it adopted the assumption that there is no limit to economic growth. Bibliography Robert G. Ingersoll - A Life, Frank Smith The Nag Hammadi Library, James M. Robinson The Late Great Planet Earth, Hal Lindsey The Gnostic Scriptures, Bentley Layton The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible, Ruth Hurmence Green Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Niezsche Crypto, Steven Levy The World's Religions, Huston Smith The Bible with Sources Revealed, Richard Elliott Friedman The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith ("translated") The Koran, N.J. Dawood (translated) The End of Days, Gershom Gorenberg The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel Strange Birds from Zoroaster's Nest, Laina Farhat-Holzman Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train, Brian Czech 5:53:23 PM    comment []