Inklings, tropical fish, mythology, archetypes, breast-feeding and all that good stuff.....

Subject:

Comments:
: : I sure love you Bill and all of your wonderful interests. I'd really like to talk with you about the Inklings and Tropical Fish. I know a lot about fish, but not much about the Inklings. I have been fascinated with them for some time. It's almost hard for me to fathom that such mystical, intelligent men found one another and hung out. Mike Valverde, John's friend, has discussed making a documentary film about them one day. Let's have a Paula-Bill talk about them so you can teach me what you know. : : What a wonderful thing, to ask others to share their interests. I've been so busy being a new mom that I can't often think along this vein so this is a really good exercise for me. Here goes.... : : Roan and John : : attachment parenting : : world myth : : Joseph Campbell : : Jungian psychology : : cultural anthropology : : evolution : : archeology : : religion : : cryptozoology (i.e. Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot) : : X-Files : : Jesus : : contemporary fiction written by women : : Native Americans : : collective unconscious : : Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way) : : my lovely new friends : : women's issues in culture and psychology : : breastfeeding : : my mind : : rainy days : : death and what's beyond : : the baby is crying- i'll think more and share later. : **************************** : once again, Paula, you slay me. I think attatchment parenting and breasfeeding are very important, not just as the world sees them as methods or forms, but as spiritually potent events, as gifts, as a sacramental part of reality--a real connection for humanity. i'm really excited about this. i might seem so silly discussing it with such bravado, but i think many among us are discovering the created order again. we have lived so long out of pre=packaged, refrigerated sources. it is time for us to return to the family, and nature and god. yeah! i love certain pictures of our blessed spiritual mother Mary--she is holding our older brother Jesus and feeding him the milk from her breast. i absolutely love that these icons are hung in churches all over Europe and Asia and Africa, which sort of shows the universality and sacredness of motherhood and the importance of God participating in human flesh, therefore not being divided from creation, but actually uniting with his creation in the most intimate ways, the ways of mother and son. i love this since many claim that Christians like to divide god from nature, when in actuality we believe that god is the great Creator and loves nature very much. anyway, i think that breastfeeding is very sacred and holy and good and i think that many have shyed away from this since many have shyed away from an integrated view of God. they see god as other to the point that they can't see him at all. suddenly, everything in the created order seems to strike them with a note of hidden but always present fear. i think that once we see god as other but connected--Emmanuel--God With Us--we will suddenly not fear our surroundings, our neighbor, even our very bodies. The breast has been made into an abstract mystery, when in fact it is the source of life and comfort. We have turned God's creation into a stranger since we cannot know god or ourselves. once we return home to the Creator we will find that fear is banished. Our bodies terrify us because of their presence--they are stamped all over with the name of their author--and this is a bit chilling for those who don't want to be reminded of a wisdom that is beyond them. hmmmm...........o.k. moving right along..... : now for the Inklings: I think we should definitely get together for this one. I will try to find a nice website for you. There were three main ones here and also some radiating satellites: Dorothy Sayers is of note here. The main three were C.S. Lewis (former agnostic, then desit, then Christian, fantasy writer, student of myth and lover of mankind), Tolkien (wrote the Lord of the Rings, studied languages and is known for his articulate co-created worlds and his sense of Eucatastrophe, a wonderfully climactic goodness pervading his work....another book of note by him would be Smith of Wooton Major, a very dark and brooding fairy tale, with a sort of Christmas or St. Lucy's Day magical brightness in the darkness thing going on....) and finally Charles Williams (who used occult mechanics to go into mystical Christian themes in his series of 7 metaphysical thrillers)........ The Inklings never officially called themselves anything. They are most accesibly famous for their bouts of pub chatting at the Bird and Baby pubs near the places they taught. They taught at Oxford and Cambridge. C.S. Lewis is the one out of the three that is most loved by Christians, since he really ties alot of historical and literary threads together and since he was a great apologist. I think his fantastic tales of Narnia are his most recognized works, but his more subtle readers enjoy his other excellent books: : Abolition of Man : Problem of Pain : A Grief Observed : Surprised By Joy : Till We Have Faces : Out of the Silent Planet : Perelandra : That Hideous Strength : The Four Loves : and his essays.... : one more Tolkien book I should mention is THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS.... : as far as tropical fish go, my interest in them is varied. I'm not sure what angle you are interested in. I like them so much since it was through raising fish that I began to integrate different fields of knowledge consciously. It was through them that I saw my own beliefs about the order of creation, and it's wonderful diversity, which to me implied a creator. Also, it was through them that i first really connected to language, through their taxons or latin names. It wasn't long after being introduced to Lebistes reticulata (the guppy) or Betta splendens (the Siamese Fighting Fish) that I would begin to know more about Agnus Dei, qui tollit pecatta mundi (Jesus), since I found them being discussed in the same language. By studying fish, I found that I was actually studying history, linguistics, religion and reality in general. Of course I can talk on a fishy level as well, but the real science of keeping tropical fish is mysticism. : Mitakuye oyasin! We are all related! : Bill

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL: