What I’m Blogging

It’s the birthday of author and communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (1911). In his Understanding Media (1964), McLuhan wrote, long before the invention of the Internet, that electronic media was creating a global electronic village in which books would become obsolete.

For me the summer vacation is a time for reading and reflection. I absorb fiction and non-fiction. This week I’ve just finished off this work;

Harpur, Tom. 2005. The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Walker & Company. ISBN 0676975739.

Right of the mark, if you happen to be a dyed in the wool ultraorthodox fundamentalist, you are going to hate this book. You are going to hate this book large. Harpur’s main thrust of argument, is that in the third and fourth centruies, Chrurch Fathers made a conscious decision to interpret the Christian message as a literal historical occurance rather than as a spiritual allegorical experience. They conducted a great suppression of information that would be contrary to their literalist ideal. Harpur sites the destruction of the Library of Alexandria by Christians, the elimination of “heretical” writings and their authors, as well as the purging and termination with extreme prejudice of any remaining pagan thinkers and institutions like the academies of philosophy in Athens. Granted, they were tough times for the nonbeliever.

Harpur’s more compelling arguments arise from information that historical research has brought to light through archaeology. While the Church Father’s were on the rampage of information censorship, they did not erase all conflicting evidence, and it is this evidence that Harpur brings for evaluation. Namely, how the story of the Christ and the Eygptian Horus, are nearly identical down to the virgin birth, the death and resurrection. How key passages in the New Testament bear no corroboration in non-christain sources of the same period despite being at a time when documentation of events was well established. How Church Fathers acknowledged in their own correspondence that they were playing fast and loose with the actual account, “What profit hath not this fable brought us?” How the archeological record simply does not support the story.

Harpur’s stated intent is not to destroy Christianity, but to take the path not travelled. He proposes that the literal historical view that holds sway today, be replaced by what he describes as the allegorical spiritual Christianity of the earlier Church as represented in the writings of St. Paul and others. He proposes that the discovery of the Christ in ourselves is the basis of a Christain renewal and hopes for the future.

Harpur’s book gives one a lot to think about, and the information he brings forward and the questions he raises certainly will poses some difficulties, but as the Pagan Socrates says, “the unexamined life is not worth living”, so too as the Christain Elton Trueblood tells us “the unexamined faith is not worth having.”

Every revolution has a manifesto. A document which outlines the principles under which the fight was joined in the first place. The Americans had Paine and Jefferson, the French had Rousseau, the Russians had Marx. All elegant wordsmiths to be sure. My revolution is based on this book.

Honore, Carl. 2004. In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed. Vintage Canada. ISBN 0676975739.

Our society is moving way too fast these days, so fast that we often wonder blankly how we ended up where we are. The reason is that we are too caught up in living for the future moment that we can’t even really see any more. We believe that if we stop and enjoy the moment that we will run out of precious nonrenewable time, and as we all know, time is money.

This book is a liberation. This book is hope, this book is the promise of actually living in and enjoying the moment now. It is a compelling argument for self regulation of time and priorities in order to achieve a better balance of life, a better quality of life.

Two chapters into this book and I quit my job at Gigantic Concrete with no where to go. Your mileage may differ, but for me it was the only thing that finally made sense. Long live the revolution.

Well it’s been a while since I posted some internet frivolity so here goes. This is courtesy of too much curiosity and happening by Laugh it Up Fuzzball during a blog surfing session. It’s a time waster for certain, and of course I had to go with the “Charlie Brown Trapped in the Office” motif. [nothing else quite fit]. So if you are inclined to a little silliness, why not try it out for yourself?

It was on this day in 1954 that the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was published-The Fellowship of the Ring. Seventeen years had passed since the publication of The Hobbit (1937), to which The Fellowship of the Ring was a sequel. The Hobbit had gotten a great review in The Times Literary Supplement, and it went on to become a best-seller. So J.R.R. Tolkien began working on a sequel, about the nephew of the hobbit Bilbo, the nephew being named Frodo. He decided that the story would center on the magical ring, which hadn’t been an important part of The Hobbit.

Tolkien spent the next seventeen years working on The Lord of the Rings. He was well into his first draft by the time World War II broke out in 1939. The book became more complicated as Tolkien went along, and it was taking much longer to finish than he had planned. He went through long stretches where he didn’t write anything and considered giving the project up altogether. He wanted to make sure all of the details about the geography, language, and mythology of Middle Earth were consistent. He made elaborate charts to keep track of the events of his story, showing dates, days of the week, the direction of the wind, and the phases of the moon.

Finally, in the fall of 1949, Tolkien finished writing The Lord of the Rings. He typed the final copy out himself, sitting on a bed in his attic, balancing the typewriter on his lap, and tapping it out with two fingers.

The Lord of the Rings turned out to be more than half a million words long. Tolkien wanted to publish it in one volume, his publisher wanted to divide it into three volumes and so the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, came out on this day in 1954.

Only about three and a half thousand copies were printed, but it turned out to be incredibly popular, and it went through a second printing in just six weeks.

Shakespeare tells us that “every cloud engenders not a storm”. This may be true, but last night the clouds were engendering in overdrive, and as a result I am left with the merry task of a soffit retrofit.

…Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows…

I saw the night “puff’d up with winds, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat.” A virtual wall of water and wind was dropped on York Region resulting in downed tree branches, loss of power, and the inevitable job of tidying up afterwards. My tidying consists of a few leaves and branches and fun with aluminium siding.

It is day two of my vacation and I am in full handyman mode about the house. A reassignment of sorts from office work to manual labour. Two positive things though, the rain filled the pool, and I’m actually enjoying myself. So another bardic proverb is shown to be true, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”. In this case it’s enjoyment.