Can I suggest you head over to Akma’s blog to read his post about the death of Aaron Swartz. It is moving and thoughtful and expresses more eloquently than I can how I feel about this death.
Most people won’t know Aaron’s name. However we all get the benefit of his work.
As Akma says, “the churches have an intrinsic interest in communication, free communication, profligate communication.”
Hear, hear.
How about the wife of Jesus, airbrushed out of the story by later misogynist Christians? See Starbird, M “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar” and other books by her. She is an ex-Catholic who set out to refute the Holy Blood, Holy Grail story and ended by being convinced that Jesus and Mary were a married pair (and an archetype of the male/female balance principle). There’s a wonderful window in Kilmore Church, Mull. Check it out – whoever created it intended it to represent J and M as husband and wife, and M is clearly pregnant. Of course, there is no unchallengeable evidence that Jesus was married, but what I would like to ask the sceptics is why, given that He was the word made flesh and dwelt among us, is it unacceptable for Him to have been a sexual being? Why have later Christians considered sexuality, even in a loving relationship, to be something disgusting? Because they have, we are now stuck with the nasty views of the NotW brigade that sex is either an acceptable leisure activity or something gross. As Margaret Starbird points out, if we restored Mary as Jesus’ beloved consort we would be creating a much more wholesome myth!
It is a little like the arguments that might be made of the relationship between Jesus and the beloved disciple though, isn’t it? All very attractive and neat if you come from a particular point of view but not really backed up with enough evidence apart from modern presumption, presupposition and desire.
I think the arguments on Jesus being married are very far from being liberationary. Rather, they’re the natural end-point of the Evangelical mindset that homophobically (and unbiblically) divides the world into Normal Heterosexual Married types and the demonised Other. “It is better to marry than burn” might have some mysognistic readings conducive to the fundamentalist world-view, but it hardly most naturally supports the idolatarisation of particular heterosexual relationships.
If I had a pound for every time a nominal Sola Scriptura type had told me that St.Paul had to have been married (presumably because Our Lord’s asceticism and disinterest in heterosexual marriage is bad enough) then I would be a very rich man indeed 😉
Interesting post Kelvin! Had no idea that St.Mary M even had red hair Perhaps she could be reclaimed as the Patron Saint of Gingers and Other Persecuted Minorities? 🙂
Oh, her hair was red, Ryan. Flaming Red I believe.
How reginal! 😉
The day begins with the discovery that someone (a member of the Orthodox church community who use the church sometimes) left a box of candles on a heater yesterday. The mess and stench greet me when I go into church at 0730 to get ready for the early service.
There was an outbreak of chiasmus in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, with this comment coming from David McLetchie: “Wouldn't it be ironic if … the criminals can be smokers but the smokers will become criminals?”Very clever. Of such stuff preachers are made and preachers make stuff of.
That last blog entry about the Election is an example of an apophatic blog entry. Not many of them about in the blogsphere.
I'd just like you to note how good I am being at not blogging anything about the Episcopal Election in this diocese.Lead us not into temptation.
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