What book are you reading at the moment?

[Jonn]

At present, I am reading Falling Backwards by Marti Leimbach.

[dauer]

I started reading Meditation and the Bible by Aryeh Kaplan and really should have known better. I read his practical guide to Jewish meditation a long time ago and got a lot out of it. I bought it and will be re-reading it soon. But he uses many later sources as proof texts, which should be expected from an Orthodox scholar attempting to show something that might seem radical. So I guess I walked into this one myself. I was hoping it would give me a few new ways to view Torah but everything he says he has alluded to in the other book. He's merely offering sources which usually don't mean much to me.

However, the fact that he gathered together so many references to meditation within Judaism is useful and I will probably come back to the text for the sources themselves, if not for his own writing.

Dauer

[BluejayWay]

Just finished Parthian Shot, by David Wishart. It's a guilty pleasure sort of a book--historical murder mystery set in First Century Rome, plenty of hardboiled attitude and street slang, with lots of local color. Hey, the plot is secondary--this is reading for fun stuff, and I plan on reading more of Wishart's series featuring Marcus Corvinus, the rough-talking, wine-swilling detective with the uppity servants and the bookish and long-suffering better half, Perilla.

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by BluejayWay

Just finished Parthian Shot, by David Wishart. It's a guilty pleasure sort of a book--historical murder mystery set in First Century Rome, plenty of hardboiled attitude and street slang, with lots of local color. Hey, the plot is secondary--this is reading for fun stuff, and I plan on reading more of Wishart's series featuring Marcus Corvinus, the rough-talking, wine-swilling detective with the uppity servants and the bookish and long-suffering better half, Perilla.

That does sound like a fun read. I might just pick that one up to mix in between heavier books.

Let's see. I finished Seven Story Mountain. I liked it a lot at first but then got kind of bored with Merton's agonizing over whether or not to go into the monastery (or more accurately, agonizing over whether to even look into whether he'd be accepted. Guess I'm just too pragmatic; felt like saying to him, 'go on already and ask if you'd be accepted!'). The descriptions of some of his glimpses into transcendence were inspiring. He really was quite down on Protestantism and all other religions at the time he wrote that book, which was early in his vocation. Guess he widened his view with time.

I also recently read The Heart of Christianity, by Marcus Borg. I haven't gotten much into the Jesus seminar stuff very much, although I have read a couple of books by D. Crossan as well. I was very inspired by The Heart of Christianity and recomend it to anyone seeking to reconcile the struggle between heart and mind as a Chrisitian.

Also reading Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is within You. Very interesting stuff especially knowing the impact this book had on Gandhi. Tolstoy hated the Church and thought it was an impediment to understanding Christ's message. Tolstoy basically distills Christ's whole message to the transformative teaching of non-violence and non-resistance to evil. He rejects all mystical aspects of Christianity, except belief in God, which I think is an extreme view and also cuts the teachings off from their roots. However, I'm not done with the book yet and supposedly the last chapter is the most inspiring.

[suanni]

Presently Gateway to Atlantis. Interesting!

[juantoo3]

In the middle of The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. Maybe some fuel for the morality in evolution thread?

[ISFP]

honestly, i think some of the best books in existence are written for young adults. there's a rawness to the writing, like a skinned knee, that you don't often find in adult books.

i'm reading On My Honor by Marion Bauer. it's about a kid whose best friend accidentally drowns when the two swim alone in a dangerous river. the book describes in gut-aching detail the guilt and emotional nausea the surviving kid feels that this has happened, and how he must go about returning home and telling his parents and his friend's parents what has happened.

good, good writing.

[lunamoth]

I finally just finished reading The Kingdom of God Is within You, by Tolstoy. Tolstoy...why say it in 60 pages when you can use 368 .

Anyway, it was interesting, if too drawn out, and many passages really pack a punch. I think that Tolstoy has nailed the heart of Christ's message, it was radical 2000 years ago and it is radical when Tolstoy says it. Underscores how very hard it is to carry out Christ's message, or actually that of the Pentateuch, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Much of the book is a call for individuals to recognize the hypocisy of being a Christian yet supporting a government, and especially a government-run military, that uses force to uphold its authority. Yes, this is the book that inspired Gandhi. It is the ultimate call for universal non-violence rising up in a grass-roots fashion. One squirms throughout most of the book, and our rational mind, used to the comforts and security afforded by state and nation, rails against the message. He's calling for anarchy, our mind says, at least my mind did.

Take thought, oh, men, and have faith in the Gospel, in whose teaching is your happiness. If you do not take thought, you will perish just as the men perished, slain by Pilate, or crushed by the tower of Siloam; as millions of men have perished, slayers and slain, executing and executed, torturers and tortured alike, and as the man foolishly perished, who filled his granaries full and made ready for a long life and died the very night that he planned to begin his life. Take thought and have faith in the Gospel, Christ said eighteen hundred years ago, and he says it with even greater force now that the calamities foretold by him have come to pass, and the senselessness of our life has reached the furthest point of suffering and madness.

Nowadays, after so many centuries of fruitless efforts to make our life secure by the pagan organization of life, it must be evident to everyone that all efforts in that direction only introduce fresh dangers into personal and social life, and do not render it more secure in any way.

Whatever names we dignify ourselves with, whatever uniforms we wear, whatever priests we anoint ourselves before, however many millions we possess, however many guards are stationed along our road, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so- called criminals, revolutionists, and anarchists we punish, whatever exploits we have performed, whatever states we may have founded, fortresses and towers we may have erected--from Babel to the Eiffel Tower--there are two inevitable conditions of life, confronting all of us, which destroy its whole meaning; (1) death, which may at any moment pounce upon each of us; and (2) the transitoriness of all our works, which so soon pass away and leave no trace. Whatever we may do--found companies, build palaces and monuments, write songs and poems--it is all not for long time. Soon it passes away, leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the significance of our life cannot lie in our personal fleshly existence, the prey of incurable suffering and inevitable death, nor in any social institution or organization. Whoever you may be who are reading these lines, think of your position and of your duties--not of your position as landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, soldier, which has been temporarily allotted you by men, and not of the imaginary duties laid on you by those positions, but of your real positions in eternity as a creature who at the will of Someone has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of non-existence to which you may return at any moment at his will. Think of your duties-- not your supposed duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your business, as emperor, minister, or official to the state, but of your real duties, the duties that follow from your real position as a being called into life and endowed with reason and love.
Are you doing what he demands of you who has sent you into the world, and to whom you will soon return? Are you doing what he wills? Are you doing his will, when as landowner or manufacturer you rob the poor of the fruits of their toil, basing your life on this plunder of the workers, or when, as judge or governor, you ill treat men, sentence them to execution, or when as soldiers you prepare for war, kill and plunder?

You will say that the world is so made that this is inevitable, and that you do not do this of your own free will, but because you are forced to do so. But can it be that you have such a strong aversion to men's sufferings, ill treatment, and murder, that you have such an intense need of love and co-operation with your fellows that you see clearly that only by the recognition of the equality of all, and by mutual services, can the greatest possible happiness be realized; that your head and your heart, the faith you profess, and even science itself tell you the same thing, and yet that in spite of it all you can be forced by some confused and complicated reasoning to act in direct opposition to all this; that as landowner or capitalist you are bound to base your whole life on the oppression of the people; that as emperor or president you are to command armies, that is, to be the head and commander of murderers; or that as government official you are forced to take from the poor their last pence for rich men to profit and share them among themselves; or that as judge or juryman you could be forced to sentence erring men to ill treatment and death because the truth was not revealed to them, or above all, for that is the basis of all the evil, that you could be forced to become a soldier, and renouncing your free will and your human sentiments, could undertake to kill anyone at the command of other men?

It cannot be.

Even if you are told that all this is necessary for the maintenance of the existing order of things, and that this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disasters would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all that is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it--and they are ten times as numerous--think and say quite the contrary. And at the bottom of your heart you know yourself that it is not true, that the existing organization has outlived its time, and must inevitably be reconstructed on new principles, and that consequently there is no obligation upon you to sacrifice your sentiments of humanity to support it.

But, perhaps like Tolstoy (who also never gave up his title and lands), I found a bit of relief at the end.

I do not say that if you are a landowner you are bound to give up your lands immediately to the poor; if a capitalist or manufacturer, your money to your workpeople; or that if you are Tzar, minister, official, judge, or general, you are bound to renounce immediately the advantages of your position; or if a soldier, on whom all the system of violence is based, to refuse immediately to obey in spite of all the dangers of insubordination.

If you do so, you will be doing the best thing possible. But it may happen, and it is most likely, that you will not have the strength to do so. You have relations, a family, subordinates and superiors; you are under an influence so powerful that you cannot shake it off; but you can always recognize the truth and refuse to tell a lie about it. You need not declare that you are remaining a landowner, manufacturer, merchant, artist, or writer because it is useful to mankind; that you are governor, prosecutor, or tzar, not because it is agreeable to you, because you are used to it, but for the public good; that you continue to be a soldier, not from fear of punishment, but because you consider the army necessary to society. You can always avoid lying in this way to yourself and to others, and you ought to do so; because the one aim of your life ought to be to purify yourself from falsehood and to confess the truth. And you need only do that and your situation will change directly of itself.

There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.

And yet simply from the fact that other men as misguided and as pitiful creatures as yourself have made you soldier, tzar, landowner, capitalist, priest, or general, you undertake to commit acts of violence obviously opposed to your reason and your heart, to base your existence on the misfortunes of others, and above all, instead of filling the one duty of your life, recognizing and professing the truth, you feign not to recognize it and disguise it from yourself and others.

And what are the conditions in which you are doing this? You who may die any instant, you sign sentences of death, you declare war, you take part in it, you judge, you punish, you plunder the working people, you live luxuriously in the midst of the poor, and teach weak men who have confidence in you that this must be so, that the duty of men is to do this, and yet it may happen at the moment when you are acting thus that a bacterium or a bull may attack you and you will fall and die, losing forever the chance of repairing the harm you have done to others, and above all to yourself, in uselessly wasting a life which has been given you only once in eternity, without having accomplished the only thing you ought to have done.

However commonplace and out of date it may seem to us, however confused we may be by hypocrisy and by the hypnotic suggestion which results from it, nothing can destroy the certainty of this simple and clearly defined truth. No external conditions can guarantee our life, which is attended with inevitable sufferings and infallibly terminated by death, and which consequently can have no significance except in the constant accomplishment of what is demanded by the Power which has placed us in life with a sole certain guide--the rational conscience.

That is why that Power cannot require of us what is irrational and impossible: the organization of our temporary external life, the life of society or of the state. That Power demands of us only what is reasonable, certain, and possible: to serve the kingdom of God, that is, to contribute to the establishment of the greatest possible union between all living beings--a union possible only in the truth; and to recognize and to profess the revealed truth, which is always in our power.

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matt. vi. 33.)

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

"The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke xvii. 20, 21.)

THE END.

lunamoth

[arthra]

I think Leo Tolstoy's books still resonate with us today and it was good to hear from Lunamoth that he is still pricking peoples' consciences...and packing more than a punch or two.

I've also been reading Tolstoy's "The Law of Love and the Law of Violence" which essentially you can tell from it's title extoll's the principle that

"Believing in the need to oppose evil by violence is merely to provide justification for our habitual vices - of vengeance, cupidity, envy, ambition, pride, cowardice and spite..."

Tolstoy's words are like moral and spiritual bombshells that explode the edifice of the evils of the immoral state and expose it's weaknesses!

Another book I'm reading is the "Gospel in Brief" where Tolstoy divides the life of Christ into sections of the Lord's Prayer. Here he composes a life of Christ that is free from the distortions of Church dogma and ritual.

Late in life, Tolstoy worked long hours in the fields with the peasant workers.

In 1881 he gave up his property to his wife and children:

"...Having children who were counting on my inheriting my possessions upon my death ... in 1881 I gave my heirs leave to dispose of my property as if I were dead. In this way I freed myself of all property ownership."

The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him in 1901 for his views.

He began corresponding with Baha'is and wrote: "I am very interested in the teachingsof Bahaism." A recent book entitled "Leo Tolstoy and the Baha'i Faith" was written by Luigi Stendardo describing Tolstoy's interest.

- Art

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by arthra

He began corresponding with Baha'is and wrote: "I am very interested in the teachingsof Bahaism." A recent book entitled "Leo Tolstoy and the Baha'i Faith" was written by Luigi Stendardo describing Tolstoy's interest.

- Art

Hi Art,

This is very interesting as I had heard of a connection between Tolstoy and Baha'i before, although no details. Actually, as I read TKOGIWY it didn't seem to me that Tolstoy would have agreed with some of the Baha'i principles. I'll have to find a copy of that book you mention.

peace,
lunamoth

[didymus]

Luna. interesting book there, I haven't read it but skimmed what you put up. I think people overlook or deny what Jesus really taught. Jesus was a radical, that is why they killed him. He went against almost every grain there was for the betterment of humanity. It is ironic that in spite of what he did and said man has gone and done the opposite. Jesus did not like organized religion and warned against it. Repeatedly he confronted the Pharisees and Saducees of their adherence to ritual and doctrinal rigidity and overlooking the kingdom of God within. But yet in spite of man's attempts to follow him we set the whole thing up all over again. Jesus' message was simple if broken down. Give to the poor, don'rt cling to material things, forgive, love one another, repent of your sins or transgressions, do God's will and obey the commandments. That was it.

I think it just shows our humanity, we are not fully capable of doing these things to perfection, we are inclined to hold grudges, covet, be selfish etc. We can always strive for perfection and by doing what Jesus said we have a shot at it. I think even with communism, the ideal was good but proved to fail because man corrupted that system also. You still had the haves and the have nots.

[Quahom1]

Hi all!

I am re-reading "Church History, in plain language" by Bruce L. Shelley, as well as a Sci-Fi book Titled "All these Earths", by F. M. Bisby. What does one have to do with the other? nothing, and perhaps everything

The Church History was given to me by a very special friend (who is Jewish), but takes particular heart in looking after my well being.

Told me he didn't want me to lose sight of who I am, else he'd have no one to argue with...

v/r

Q

[Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine]

I read The Beast Master by Andre Norton (another loaner from my friends) and I'm reading Mercedes Lackey's Gates of Sleep along with the stuff for the students who need their books read onto tape (I was reading a textbook on juvenile justice Tuesday.)

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

[ISFP]

is anyone familiar with the Wheel of Time series?

i don't often read fantasy or sci-fi, but i love Robert Jordan!

[Geist]

sorry I've heard of the series but never read it but it sounds like Terry Pratchett style maybe you should invest in one of his books.

Has anyone heard of an author called Lian Hearn?