Livre d'Or

Shavuot was lovely, apart from one annoying thing I posted about in a locked entry.

( long weekend with religion )

I had a very nice Purim, on the whole. But I'm not really coping with politics and the uncertainty over whether we'll still have a functioning country by the end of the week.

( religion and politics )

Anyway, I enjoyed spending Purim with my community and my friends who are silly in geeky ways, but I was also glad not to have to pretend to be happier than I am, given the timing.

siderea wrote a really interesting and thinky post about the unpopularity of New Atheism. There's a lot of insight her post, particularly on the necessity of religious tolerance for civic peace even while it has some unresolved issues. It seems it is having unintended side effects (e.g. on intellectual freedom) and may yet be proven to not actually work to maintain civic peace. The main point of the post is the very sensible observation that people aren't annoyed with New Atheists for being loud and in-your-face about something that everybody basically agrees with; they're annoyed with New Atheists because the New Atheist view of religion is in fact threatening.

My response here is more some thoughts that were activated by the post, than a direct rebuttal. Siderea personally, you're very welcome to skip this post if it seems likely to be annoying to you, and also very welcome to challenge me in comments if you'd like to. Where I'm coming from is that I think the OP is making some common, but not entirely accurate, assumptions about liberalism, and it's those I want to talk about.

( just my opinion )

So Little Saint Mary's is a bit of a Cambridge institution. I think of it, slightly irreverantly, as the goth church, which my friend expressed more appropriately as "liturgically conservative, socially progressive". What it actually is is Anglo-Catholic, and even within that tradition rather prides itself on how "high" its rituals are. My friend invited me to join her at an Evensong service yesterday, and it was a really interesting experience.

( touristing in other people's religion )

So anyway, that was really interesting and educational, and I'm grateful to my friend for bringing me to that.

So my university had a big flagship event where they invited former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to give a talk and meet some university people. It was connected in some way I don't entirely understand to the BBC docudrama Marvellous; the subject, Neil Baldwin, knows the former Archbishop somehow. (I haven't dared watch the film, because I am scared it's going to be horrible cringey inspiration porn, but perhaps I'm too cynical, lots of people have said good things about it.) Anyway, the university decided to issue me a personal invitation to the talk and the dinner afterwards. I think the reason is because they seem to have got it into their heads that I'm the only Jewish faculty member in the whole university, which is patently untrue but anyway, they wanted to showcase their interfaith diversity, so they rolled me out.

The talk was stunning and I'm really glad I went. Although it was flattering to be seen as worthy to meet VIPs, I kind of regret bothering with dinner (bad food and octogenarian retired vicar companions who come from the era when it was considered good manners to make lots of sexist jokes if you found yourself sat next to a woman less than half your age), but anyway. Williams is not the first Archbishop I've shaken hands with; I met the antepenultimate Archbishop of Canterbury briefly at an interfaith event at Lambeth Palace when I was a teenager. I'm sure there are people who would be more excited to hobnob with Archbishops than me. But Williams as a speaker is really worth listening to; he gave a very thought-provoking talk, flat out one of the best lectures I've heard in several decades of hanging around universities.

( fangirling the fluffy Archbishop )

I'm going to do something that's rare for me and talk about actual religion, rather than just community stuff. If you hate reading about that kind of thing you're very welcome to skip.

( developing a theory on the fly )

Author: Herman Hesse

Details: (c) Herman Hesse 1922; translated Hilda Rosner 1954; Pub 1998 Picador; ISBN 0-330-35485

Verdict: Siddhartha is a very polished account of spirituality.

Reasons for reading it: Although I have read Siddhartha before, it was at a time in my life when I was running away from serious thinking, so I read it very superficially. I wanted to read it properly and actually think about the theological stuff.

How it came into my hands: MK gave it to me for my birthday more years ago than I care to count. (It was also MK who got me out of that state where I was failing to cope. He helped me find the courage to face reality properly, and the strength not to be broken by it. He is a really wonderful friend.)

( detailed review )

Author: Walter M Miller Jr

Details: (c) 1959 Walter M Miller Jr; Pub Orbit 1997; ISBN 1-85723-014-0

Verdict: A brilliant book, moving, complex and intelligent. Wow.

Reasons for reading it: It's vaguely famous, and M's talking about it jumped up the priority of a vague intention to read it at some point.

How it came into my hands: lethargic_man lent it to me.

( detailed review )

I was just remarking to neonchameleon that one of the good things about lj is that people respect threading a lot more than in many other web forums. So in keeping with this, I feel I should repost this discussion of a vaguely theological bent as a new entry. It's too interesting to be left languishing in a thread that's supposed to be about a book about town planning.

( theological rumblings )

I think this is interesting enough to be worthy of its own thread.