No wonder they burned us.

It's out.  It's launched, and legions of Potterphiles are signing up for the new Pottermore website, buying wands, being sorted, and investing a small portion of their lives in becoming imaginary wizards.  As of 12:30 this afternoon, I'm one of them.  I'm not super enthusiastic, but I do find it fun.  Apart from some beautiful illustrations, Pottermore also has backstories and tidbits that previously only the author was aware of. 

I love backstories in fantasy novels.  Frequently, if the author doesn't put them in, I'll make some up myself.  I love throwing Christians into fantasy worlds to see what happens.  Sometimes we get eaten, sometimes we become heroes, but more often than not, we end up stepping on someone's toes.  One would think that a Christian and a Jedi would get along pretty well, but when push comes to shove, I find they end up going their separate ways. 

I was dwelling on this fact again recently because I was reading a new Rick Riordan book.  I know.  I know.  I have an MA in literature.  I should be reading more sophisticated material.  But I had had a rough day of tutoring, and I really needed something a couple steps below my reading level to wind my mind down.  Plus, Riordan is entertaining, and he knows a lot more about Greek and Roman myth than I do, so I actually learn something when I read his books. 

So I called up his penultimate book, The Lost Hero, on my Kindle, and I'm flying through it, as always.  I pause to think about the attributes of the gods and the relationship  they have with the characters of the books, and I think, "No wonder they burned  us in Ancient Rome."  God really turns their world on its head.  Can you imagine the audacity of walking up of a person and saying, "Yeah, your father's pretty cool, but my God and adopted Brother walks on your father's water and doesn't ask permission. Oh, he also raises the dead, and calls up and calms storms . . . without asking permission.  Cause it's really all his."  That would be a mild bit upsetting. 

In fact, there isn't a god in the spectrum whose territory doesn't get invaded by Christianity.  (I should really have text references beside these, but it's late, and there are a lot of attributes.) 

Father of all men.

Rides on the storm and harnesses lightning (and yet isn't in the thunder). 

Prophecies.

Bestows wisdom and manages battle strategy.

Makes stuff (out of nothing) and makes mountains smoke.

Gives life.

Gives rules for home life.

Brings people to the loves of their lives.

Strikes people with madness and makes them sane again. 

Calls the sun over the horizon.

Establishes the boundaries of the tides.

Hangs the moon in the sky. 

Swallows prophets with great big fish and then has them spit out again to go do their jobs.  Somehow I can't see God going to Poseidon and saying, "Could you lend me a big fish?  One of my prophets is getting out of line."  It's just inconceivable.  God is God, or God is not God.  He either covers all the bases and calls all the shots, or he doesn't call any. 

Right about the time I flipped out and grabbed myself some Greek mythology, I got to the first chapters of Deuteronomy in  my serious reading.    Moses approaches the same thought from the exactly opposite direction.   God doesn't spare any room for idols or other gods.  He really is very jealous of his people.  No one else gets an in with the people he has chosen. "Burn it, kill it, destroy it, regard it as vile lest it ensnare you" is the line that Moses takes in Deuteronomy.  Don't mess with what you know isn't God  because sooner or later, you're going to have to choose.  Choose now.  God or gods.  They don't coexist. . . at all.   

So I thought about throwing a modern day teenage David or Joshua into a quest with a bunch of Riordan's demigods.  He'd have a prophet with him too and a strong woman like Abigail or Deborah.  The paths of both parties would coincide.  Their aims would likely be the same -- save the world.  They would both have the same helter-skelter ride that takes a lot of faith.  But ultimately the Biblical heroes would the calm certainty that comes from believing in God, who cannot be circumvented, defeated, surprised, or manipulated against his all-knowing will, while the demigods would have to trust more and more in themselves.

(But would idolatry be tempting today? I read a blog on that question this very morning.)   

If you give a kid a camera. . .

even if it's only for an afternoon, she'll take pictures of everything.  It's a good thing Mommy was right there with her.   

Learning to live with it.

I ran into a neighbor walking home from the playground the other day.  He introduced his two-year-old and acknowledged upon my inquiry that he was indeed from Wales.  I introduced the Boo and asked how he liked Portland. 

"Oh, it's a very nice city," he said.  "When can we expect it to dry out?"

Gwynedd, Wales (citypictures.org)

"Oh, about July," I told him. 

"So it's something we have to look forward to," he rejoined with a laugh. 

I laughed too.  "Exactly."

I didn't think about it then, but now the question kind of confuses me.  Isn't Wales one of those preternaturally green places, fairyland green?  And how can a place be green without lots and lots of rain?  Surely a Welshman, of all people, should be used to constant cloud cover and soggy ground. 

It's easy to get tired of the clouds and the rain, I confess, but we're trying to make a point of adapting to them.  Being angry at the clouds isn't going to make them go away.  If it's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness, then it's better to splash in puddles than to curse the clouds.  So that's what we did yesterday.  We splashed in puddles and held our faces up to the rain.  There was a lot of it. 

Today, the sun is shining.  At least is was just a second ago.  It's amazing how quickly white patchy clouds can turn into a completely overcast sky.  The wind is picking up outside.  The weatherman predicts a real thunderstorm.  It's been so long since I've seen a real thunderstorm that I hope he's right.  So do my husband, my chiropractor, and all the radio djs I've listened these last two days.  Thunderstorms are a sign that warmer weather is coming.  They're also a break from the constant grey.  If you can't have blue, why not go for black?

But the real concern my mind right now is a big change that's working its way into our family.  No, I'm not pregnant.  I'm employed.  I am now a work-at-home online tutor in English Language Arts.  Granted, it's not a nine to five, have-to-leave-the-house-and-put-the-kiddo-in-daycare sort of job, but it is going to take a few hours here and a few hours there, hours when I'm accustomed to jumping up to tend to Boogaloo, to dozing a little between chores, to scooting frenetically between this and that.  Now I have a single purpose for those hours, and the Boo and the dog may not interfere.  So we begin the great transition. 

Seth is very excited for me.  He's already looking for new ways for us to balance the household responsibilities so that I don't get overwhelmed.  I know.  I'm exceedingly blessed to have a husband who thinks that way.  Many don't.  Just read the comments on any momma blogrole.  Still, part of me is reluctant to relinquish the territory, and part of me is worried that if I get too used to letting him do stuff, I'll lose the initiative and expect him to do everything.  (Wait.  I hear snickers from the peanut gallery, a sigh from my mother, eyes rolling from my siblings.  Ok, you're right.  Maybe that is a pointless worry.) 

The point is, this is a new dance, a new pattern of life that we're going to have to get used to, something else to learn to live with.  I don't like change, even though we've weathered it many times before, and it almost always turns out well.  In a month, I'll wonder what the fuss was all about, but right now, I'm a little nervous. 

Wow, now that's something new.

The Boo was up last night with an awful cold, so naturally, I was up half the night with her. My thoroughly fantastic husband took the second half, but I'm not used to going back to sleep when my daughter is ill, so I was up much longer than I should have been. I thought I was doing pretty well this morning, but after lunch, as the Boo and I laid down on the couch to watch a movie, I noticed that the computer monitor (on which we watch movies) was slowly and continually falling through the glass surface of our computer desk. Then it realigned itself and kept falling, all without actually moving in proximity to the window behind it.
I don't know that I've ever been that tired before. It was the strangest feeling, made all the more strange because while it was happening, I kept having this nagging feeling that it reminded me of a Greek myth. Naturally, I can't remember which myth, but how like me to make literary allusions while my brain disconnects. I wonder if that is what the poets from the 70s felt like.

All that goes to say that whatever I write today should be taken with a grain of salt. I have finished the next four chapters of Fasting by Scot McKnight, and I'd like to do a little reflecting on them, but my audience should be prepared for a slightly streaky mirror.

In chapters 4-7 of Fasting, McKnight enumerates several different kinds or circumstances of fasting, referring each back to his sacred moment > fasting >possible results pattern. The first kind of fasting is repentant fasting or fasting in grief over sin, which he calls body turning. This type of fasting, he notes, happens frequently in the Bible, whether on one of God's appointed ceremonies like the Day of Atonement, or when the individual or community needed to acknowledge that they had done something wrong and cut themselves off from the Lord.

The second type of fasting is what he calls body discipline. This is the fasting that was practiced by Christians in the Early Church and Middle Ages. This type of fasting is not specifically mentioned in Scripture, but we do have reason to believe that this is the kind of fasting that the Pharisees and John's disciples practiced when they asked Jesus why his disciples didn't fast. The Jewish authorities fasted on Mondays and Thursdays, and the early church fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays, in addition to special days dictated by their respective holy calendars.

This later developed into Lenten fasting and certain monastic practices that were used to heighten one's awareness of God and subdue the lusts of the flesh, which McKnight calls body battle.  Body battle is not a good thing.  It can very rapidly descend into dualism and despising the body as evil or irrelevant. It also developed into extreme and dangerous forms of asceticism in which people began to despise the legitimate needs of the body and means of enjoyment that God has given us.

The further I get into this book, the more disconnected I feel from the true practice of fasting as McKnight describes it. I have a hard time feeling a sacred moment long enough and consistently enough to make a fast sincere through the whole day. Call me insensitive, but I've never been brought to my knees for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time before something else intrudes. When I related this concern to my husband, he laughed and said, "Poor Jennifer. She's actually human."

On the other hand, I did find myself indentifying with the ascetics that he disparages in chapters 6 and 7. McKnight is adamant that as soon as we come to the point that we fail to appreciate the good gifts that we have in food, sex, and pleasure, we have taken fasting and discipline in the wrong direction.  Asceticism is a dangerous state of mind that is never certain of the good that it has.  It, like every other impulse of the soul, has to be restrained.  And that's another reason the church traditionally has had fasting days and feasting days.

So far, my only complaint about this book is that the author leads me to water, but then doesn't tell me if it's safe to drink.  There have been several times when I felt like he was hovering over a serious and necessary conclusion, only to jump to another topic.  Perhaps he thought the conclusion was firmly drawn.  Perhaps he learned his writing style from St. Augustine.  Perhaps the conclusions I'm looking for come later.  Anyway, back to the book.