Fight Club

I've been wanting to quit online commenting. For reasons unknown to me, the gods have cursed me with a way of putting words together that attracts people's attention. Not always, but much of the time. However, a verbal gladiator is not how I imagine myself to be. I imagine myself as a devotee, a devotee steeped in the knowledge, lore, rituals, and theology of my particular deity, and in that sense, purehearted; maybe someday a priestess. 

There are issues and people for which there are few good advocates. Would-be advocates that I've seen online often fall short in their ability to articulate an argument. Or, alternatively, they are intimidated by the moral climate created by their adversaries. I don't think I generally have these problems. 

Some nationally-known writers were gracious enough to take notice of my writing. I guess they also cursed me and mocked me among each other as well when I argued hard. Yet, they still took notice of what I said. Nonetheless, this isn't necessarily good. To be noticed is, in a very small way, to take your place in this world. Someone whose opinion matters! And what could be more obstructive to a spiritual life than that?

Abstinence & the Zika Virus

The CDC is advising abstinence and safe sex to avoid the spread of the Zika virus, which can be sexually transmitted. 

China

It is the Chinese New Year. We have some time off from work. I went with a friend yesterday to a 'Temple Fair'. There was loads of people, all kinds of food, pavilions, a large lake, and many things to see. Afterwards, we went to Sanlitun, the foreigners' district. We talked and talked and talked. It was so much fun.

I'm getting more used to China. Slowly, I'm learning how to do things and how to say things. 

Happy lunar new year! 

Black Cherry Incense

Tomorrow I'm off to the other side of the world. It looks like they're putting me in the heart of downtown. I do like downtowns so much. Still, I'm not sure I'm worth all that; there's a feeling of trepidation. 

Tonight, I sat outside by the picnic table and offered black cherry incense to Fors Fortuna, for good luck on my trip, and for my parents, for good luck while I'm away. Cygnus the Swan was overhead, silently abiding; as 30 years ago; as ever. 

My parents are getting old. I wonder if I'll ever see them again. 

I also wonder if I'll ever learn to live according to nature. There's a goddess named Concordia, who is the origin and original source of all things harmonious. To argue or bicker with another is a sin against this goddess. 

Just a small-town girl, livin' in a lonely world. 

Sinning Against Concordia

There's a passage in Meditations about not sinning against the goddess Truth, the origin and original cause of all things truthful. 

I sin against Concordia in my dealings with anti-gay Christians.

It's time to stop, or, if too humanly difficult, then just for today, or just for the week; at least one day or one week of harmony. 

Truth

Haven't you ever had an aching desire to tell the truth, all else (except compassion) be damned? Not to buy into other people's self-serving narratives; not to charm or bedazzle yourself or other people with self-serving expedient fictions? Religious, political, personal, or otherwise? To see through the many illusions that obscure life as it really is; to present yourself to the world as you really are, not the composite fiction your ego believes in? And through truth--this place where only the rarest and most dauntless people venture to go--to be nothing less than a space explorer or astronaut in life, right here on earth?

Not True

There is an article up on the American Conservative that contains this sentence: "The standard story that the Roman Republic ended with Caesar Augustus becoming emperor is therefore simply wrong..."

The article is a book review, and the sentence is part of a thread of an argument in the book that Byzantine theocracy was considerably like a republic; to be more specific, the third phase of the Roman Republic. 

I like Stoicism, a lot, but the Stoics did not free the slaves; Christians did. 

Likewise, some people may like Orthodox culture and the Byzantine Empire, but that does not entitle one to make false assertions about history.

In the authors' defense, I suppose we're being asked to think more abstractly and to assign less weight to concrete historical events. This view has some merit. That being said, there's more explanatory power and greater likelihood in the idea that civic culture simply carried over from age to age than to say that, based on the presence of similar values, one form of government was actually a different form of government; a dictatorship was really a republic.