All Saints Day in good ole' Britannia. It's sunny, the church bells are peeling and the streets are filled with well dressed worshippers heading from service to dinner...contemplating the glorious deeds and martyrdoms of their righteous forebears. Maybe in 19...er 1804...
Perhaps I should try to absorb a bit more of the religious culture here. Between the main campus building and the library, I walk by two exquisite Georgian churches, neither of which have I ever entered. The campus itself is home to a very fine Byzantine style chapel (which is probably a century old) which I have also never entered. There is a service tonight for All Saints Day, but I won't go because I'm not dressed for it and want to go to the gym with enough time to read 10 hagiographies (the irony), translate a page of Plato, and take a practice LSAT, before class tomorrow.
With so much distraction in a big city, it is easy to fixate on the Valley of Despond without so much as glancing at the House Beautiful. I really should find some time for a bit less self-indulgent introspection.
And yes, I've been reading "The Pilgrim's Progress". Not quite as good as"The Way of a Pilgrim, thus far. I was hoping it would give me some sort of insight into English people, but I think that Bunyan's Calvinism is long dead here. It can only bee seen in the Korean and African immigrants who come back here to teach their former teachers.
Still, it is a compelling (if in my opinion somewhat flawed) ideology and has certain profitable points.
I have never read it before because as a child, I was forced to watch a movie version of it at the Baptist school I attended. The movie scared the piss out of me... all the people Christian meets along the way at first appear kindly and comforting and suddenly morph into low budget horror. Ahhhh.. Mr. Worldly-wise isn't a nice old grandpa, he's a red eyed demon trying to steal my soul!
This is a similar effect.
I don't know how I fall for that shit again and again. Its like the "there's something on your shirt" trick... if it's been long enough since someone's done it I nearly always fall for it.
Perhaps I should try to absorb a bit more of the religious culture here. Between the main campus building and the library, I walk by two exquisite Georgian churches, neither of which have I ever entered. The campus itself is home to a very fine Byzantine style chapel (which is probably a century old) which I have also never entered. There is a service tonight for All Saints Day, but I won't go because I'm not dressed for it and want to go to the gym with enough time to read 10 hagiographies (the irony), translate a page of Plato, and take a practice LSAT, before class tomorrow.
With so much distraction in a big city, it is easy to fixate on the Valley of Despond without so much as glancing at the House Beautiful. I really should find some time for a bit less self-indulgent introspection.
And yes, I've been reading "The Pilgrim's Progress". Not quite as good as"The Way of a Pilgrim, thus far. I was hoping it would give me some sort of insight into English people, but I think that Bunyan's Calvinism is long dead here. It can only bee seen in the Korean and African immigrants who come back here to teach their former teachers.
Still, it is a compelling (if in my opinion somewhat flawed) ideology and has certain profitable points.
I have never read it before because as a child, I was forced to watch a movie version of it at the Baptist school I attended. The movie scared the piss out of me... all the people Christian meets along the way at first appear kindly and comforting and suddenly morph into low budget horror. Ahhhh.. Mr. Worldly-wise isn't a nice old grandpa, he's a red eyed demon trying to steal my soul!
This is a similar effect.
I don't know how I fall for that shit again and again. Its like the "there's something on your shirt" trick... if it's been long enough since someone's done it I nearly always fall for it.
posted by akrites @ 11:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home