Letters to the Editor
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wooo wooo wooo wooo wooo
It's sad that people have to take that feeling of wonder and awe at the universe and slap GOD on top of it, as if it's not enough by itself.
"The entire process of human reproduction was, if I considered it for a minute, about as "intolerable" as the apostles said communion was. It sounded just as weird as the claim that God was in a piece of bread you could eat. And yet it was true"
So two claims "sound" weird. But, one we know is true (because we can directly observe it), ergo the other is just as valid? Please, stop with all this wooo wooo hand wavey spiritual bullcrap.
There are some good reasons that people hate san francisco the way they do.
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Each to their own
" ..., as elemental and violent as the moment when I'd been pushed out from between her legs in a great rush of blood. And it was the same with my father: He had helped make me, in ways that were wildly mysterious and absolutely powerful. Like Jesus, he had gone inside somebody else's body and then become a part of me." Unh, unh, unh, unh, aaaahh ... (Just a step away from Phallos adoration there, not that it would be anything new in the history of religion.)
I find all this entertaining. People get off on so many different things and religion is just one of them. But it becomes a problem when the religious claim that their truth is truer than anybody else's truths - just look at the Sunnis and the Shi'ites.
But let Sara Miles enjoy her fantasies of the divine. If that makes her feel good, so much the better for all concerned.
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"Look at me, I'm religious!" ICK.
Oh brother. Nobody cares if you were converted. What offends people is that the moment it happened, you felt it necessary to start whining about your persecution from a self-righteous perch. Yes, "I didn't tell my friends" is in its own way a self-rightous perch because what you're trying to say is "I'm moral now but I didn't tell my (intolerant liberal) friends who aren't."
What was this piece supposed to tell us? That we liberals should stop persecuting the poor Christians? Jesus, don't we get enough of that from the right?
By the way I am a Christian but can't stand anyone who thinks the fact that they are one is some article-worthy event. Bleh.
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It was really you all along
Her whole philosophy is confusing wonder and sublimity with an outmoded belief system. She is jettisoning the meat of Christian scripture and cherry picking the spirituality, the touchy-feely good stuff. Ultimately, you don’t need to buy into the mythology of religion in order to feel the things she’s feeling: self-esteem, calm, purposefulness and love. These are all qualities that can be attained through living the self-examined life.
When she describes prayer, she says she doesn’t actually talk to god, but just tries to feel good about her life through contemplation, to “stay open” and “summon up thankfulness”. This is meditation. Whatever answers or fulfillment she is getting out of this activity is coming from within her. She has, all along, really only been reaching into her own psyche and drawing on her own strengths.
Ultimately, what she seems to be searching for is meaning in her life, a way to feel good and be in touch with something mystical, a higher sense of purpose. That she is so ambivalent towards the doctrine and teachings of the church is a testament to her quest to find personal answers and peace, not swallow a fairy tale of a book. Julia Sweeney, in Letting Go of God, described god as (I’m doing this from memory) “a nice man who lived in my head and told me everything was going to be alright”. This is what Miles is constructing in her own head.
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It's Not About Christianity...
In her book Sara says about Christianity: " (it) wasn't an argument I could win, or even resolve. It wasn't a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally willing to swallow."
And it sounds like she swallowed it hook, line— but perhaps not sinker!
I laud your newfound altruism; food pantries are a desperately needed thing in the city. But don’t confuse altruism with Christianity because there is no direct correlation; one can exist with or without the other.
To me this excerpt says little about Christianity and a lot about the emptiness—or a vacuum—in Sara Miles life that she chose to fill with Christianity despite a myriad of other choices that were infinitely more rational. Yes, I know the god squad out there is going to try to spank me for that one but when someone says that they are willing to swallow a mystery it tells you a lot about their mindset and their inability—or unwillingness—to think critically.
But it’s clear from this excerpt that rationality and critical thought are not what Sara was looking for— and certainly not what she got!
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oh and also
the way your father "helped make" you is not "wildly mysterious." Maybe for your next quest, you could try Bio 101.
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To Kimberly
Kimberly said: "Most Democrats are good Christians."
This is pure and utter nonsense. After you define what it means to be a 'Democrat' and then a 'good Christian' then you can back up what you say with numbers!
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She'll grow out of it
I wasted 3 years of my life trying to convert to Orthodox Judaism (my father is Jewish but my mother isn't, so according to Jewish law I'm not technically Jewish) and eventually realized that although pretending to believe in God was a good temporary fix for my deeper psychological problems, eventually the ridiculous nature of what you're doing overwhelms you and you reach a point of total embarrassment. At this point, you admit the inevitable truth--God is an overgrown fairytale, and we are alone on a ball spinning through space without rhyme or meaning. I hope that when the author reaches this point, it isn't as painful and embarrassing as it was for me.
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With friends like these...
Comments like this are part of why believing in something beyond cynicism is wildly more appealing than acting like a jackass skeptic with their head up their ass all the time. It may be fun when you do it, but when you watch it, it just looks sort of sad.
Though if there was no one who believed anything, who would the empty-headed cynics get to sneer at? It's a good thing there are people like us around, or your whole existence of making fun of people who aren't as dull as you are would come to a grinding halt.
Cheers.