Gnosce Te Ipse

I am again up later than my wife; we have fallen into the cycle on the days I work from home (3 a week). I work on the computer, do laundry, clean the kitchen...maybe run errands or shop. She comes home and dinner is usually ready (often from things she has already cooked, especially lately) she has a cocktail/glass of wine or two, we watch tv for too long, she goes to be early reading. I read with her, sometimes fall asleep sometimes come out here. I am the househusband with the full time job, the primary bread winner, but working from home can be rather lonely as I used to say up here a lot (before I was in second life I guess). I took most of last semester off from sl, mostly so my back could heal (it suddenly flared up in the fall and it seemed very connected to sitting at that computer for two or three hours at a stretch). The old injury which had never healed completely, what I am sure is a soft tissue/tendon injury (not my spine, which has been mri's and xrayed and even...

Hey all. I've been working on a longish post on the Torah, and I am finding it difficult. Parts of that collection of books moves me with an ominous fear of a moral Divine...parts of that collection strike me as nothing more than very ancient, and painfully human, moral and ritual codes. I ordered two (cheapish) Intros to the OT and am reading Boadt. I like his approach so far. He notes what could only be expected: cultural similarities in the Torah what little we know of that region and time. I read much of the famous Code of Hammurabi, and do not find the regulations in the Torah any more humane; in fact, in at least one place, cursing a parent, the COH is more lenient. It also concludes expressing concern "that the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans." Sure there are things in the COH that I find morally deficient; likewise the Torah. I really am trying to consider the fundamentalist viewpoint, the position the text its...

I don't know much about politics; I know even less about the modern middle east. But one strange phenomenon I see, a result of reading the Bible, specifically the HB, as the literal words of God, is that events in modern day Palestine are interpreted through the lens of the Torah. And it is quite clear: according to the first six books anyway, Palestine was given to Israel, to Abraham, forever; when they re entered the land after the Egyptian captivity they were to butcher entire cities because of Canaanite religious practices (offering children to Molech and other much less heinous things like tattoos). In the OT story, the Israelites are the intended heroes. Obedience to the Torah their ticket to being a global witness for their God. If a few small civilizations get wiped out, including in some cases the children and animals, so be it. The Holy God has spoken. Now this is a very, very interesting perspective. And Christians have to concede, for whatever reason, the Savior...

S and I spent two weeks away, Christmas and New Year's, most of it with family in so. cal., three wonderful days in San Fran including New Year's Eve itself. The odd thing is that I got food poisoning my first day back with family (ate out twice, can't say which place) and was sick with that for two or three days. Then a cold set in just a couple of days later so I was sick the entire time in San Fran. Not real sick, a cold only, but not that has (as always) settled into my chest. I beat bronchitis this time, remarkably; I get the wicked bronch. But I took a dose of narcotic cough syrup last night and tonight to help me sleep without hacking still, and my snoring is so bad my poor wife ended up on the couch last night and I volunteered tonight. She goes back to work tomorrow; I'm off for another week or so though I have some work to do to get ready for the semester, not much for at least a week. Heck, I don't even know the exact day school starts. Nice job. ...