Song for this post: "Requiem in D minor K626: I Requiem" ~ WA Mozart
"The truth is one, but different sages call it by different names."
I never did finish my Lump sequence yesterday. I bailed before I got to Lump 3 in the daily news (which was Seattle's ban on plastic grocery bags). I tend to do that, start something, get distracted, and forget.
So...moving on!
I'm trying to finish writing a novel so I can move on to it's sequel. Problem is, there's a TON of research that has yet to be done for book 2 and, anyone who knows me knows, I LOVE research. So I started studying Hinduism and am having a REALLY hard time putting it down. It's just such a beautiful point of view. If there's one thing I despise most about the Western World, it's our limited understanding of any culture that doesn't mirror our own. We measure all other faiths against our Western Christianity (a system steeped with dry, boring, lifeless traditions and violence) and don't readily have available any kind of means to really explore others without bias.
I made a decision a long time ago that, when the book publishes (as well as the following 6) I will take a tour of the locations of each book. I'm really looking forward to book 2 (Eastern and Southern Europe and the Middle East).
It just kind of shocks me that, after all of the war in the Middle East we've had and my own Christian upbringing that I should identify more with their faiths than those of my homeland. It's not just Hinduism I find fascinating, Islam is really incredible as well. It's a faith focused heavily on loyalty and brotherhood and devotion. It's difficult for me to dislike anyone for being true to their beliefs and their own, personal sense of what's true, right, and just. After all, truth is merely a point of view. Thank you Nietzsche.
I have so many problems with the war(s) we are fighting. Primarily, I feel so guilty that our country assumed superiority over an ENTIRE belief system thousands of years older than our own and stormed in to destroy it. The Iraqi people base their governmental system on Islam, a faith much much older, rich in tradition and established than even our own Christianity. To challenge that and deem their system of ethics as morally wrong seems really arrogant to me. Do aspects of their system feel wrong to us? Absolutely. But morality is ambiguous at best and based entirely on the given system it resides in. "Liberating" Iraq from its Sodom is exactly that: destroying a system based on the comparison to our own because our limited viewpoint can see nothing else.
Not sure if you knew, but Allah IS God. Allah are the letters for the name for God:
Alif, Lam, Lam, Haa.
Oh hey...that sounds familiar. Maybe that's because it's close to Hebrew:
Alef, Lamed, Lamed, Hei.
You know what that means? God.
It's even argued that, during the crucifixtion, when Jesus cried, "Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachtani" that the translation was incorrect. It should have been "Elah (same as Allah in Aramaic) Elah Lama Sabachtani).
You see? It all comes down to the same monotheistic deity. Perhaps we should be arguing our henotheistic differences instead? Except, we can't do that either. Our own Christian God said, "Thou shalt not worship other gods." God never said other gods didn't exist. So that makes Christianity henotheistic as well...it also means that the vast majority of Christians have a very limited awareness of their own faith and the history and tradition behind it. Valentinian Christianity was packed FULL of other gods. Coptic Christianity had gods killing and screwing each other and doin' it with angels left and right. I bet your Pastor never told you that. I bet you never thought to read about it. Typical.
When you break it down further, no matter how you spin it, we shouldn't have gotten involved. Religious war has existed in that area of the world for more than 3 millenia. Think about how long that is. It's one of the very few constant factors of the civilizing of this planet throughout history. Whole continents have shifted during that time. Entire species have come and gone. Religious war has existed there since the beginning of the god religions dating all the way back to 3,000 BC. Incredible. And what are the opposing forces in this war? Islam and Christianity (their view of us)...the 2 LARGEST god religions on the planet. And here we are again, us Christians with our violence and our petulant, dead god, storming in and wiping out their culture. From their point of view, we (Christians by way of the Western World) have been doing it for as long as their have been written and oral traditions.
Sad.
The world's lack of tolerance hurts my heart.
Is it our fault? No.
Is it theirs? No.
Have thousands died? Sadly, yes.
And when it comes down to it, we are all following the exact same pattern that's been done time and time again in that region with no awareness that it's completely unoriginal. What happened to making sure history doesn't repeat itself? Or learning from our fathers?
It all seems so senseless when you step back and look at the war through the eyes of 3 millenia.
How exhausting we are in our arrogant, self-entitled, infancy.
If you have some confusion about the many, many names for whatever it is we deem as God or the godhead and the beauty we feel in it throughout many many, diverse religions, let this Islamic sound be educational to you. It's the 99 known names for God...chanted in the Islamic faith. And I cry when I hear it.
Long post. I'll only do one more today and I promise I'll make it a short, funny one.
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