Talking to ourselves about Death and Pornography
Shayne,
It's funny that you brought up death and pornography in the last post. I've been meaning to comment on a recent book-reading sort of event that I attended here in Seattle with Nadia Bolz-Weber, who is "a new Annie Lamott" - a Lutheran minister who wrote a book called Salvation on the Small Screen? about her experience of sitting and watching Christian television for 24 hours straight. During the reading (online here), she told a story similar to your fears - commenting on having lost a friend several years back who had an extensive and very visible pornography collection, and whose conservative Catholic parents would have been deeply disappointed by that fact. She talked about her group of friends going into his apartment after his death and clearing out the massive pile of porno as a "mission of compassion" - "the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God on Earth. That we might clear out the pornography from our dead friends' homes before their nice small town parents come to settle their son's affairs". I was going to offer to play that role in case you ever die suddenly, but I guess now that it's out in the open, why bother? Sorry nice small town parents. I'd love to hear some of the Elizabethan poetry though.
Along similar lines, and in reference to your post before the last one, my feeling now is that religion is generally better taken seriously than literally - religious types, even the ones with completely unbelievable beliefs, are quite often tapping into some significant truth - or at least some psychologically grounding principles. Ironic faith. The old man in the sky images aren't 'TRUE', but they are true.
Good luck sorting your situation out - at least for now you've still got a job, which is more than about 10% of people can say.
xoxo,
Tim
It's funny that you brought up death and pornography in the last post. I've been meaning to comment on a recent book-reading sort of event that I attended here in Seattle with Nadia Bolz-Weber, who is "a new Annie Lamott" - a Lutheran minister who wrote a book called Salvation on the Small Screen? about her experience of sitting and watching Christian television for 24 hours straight. During the reading (online here), she told a story similar to your fears - commenting on having lost a friend several years back who had an extensive and very visible pornography collection, and whose conservative Catholic parents would have been deeply disappointed by that fact. She talked about her group of friends going into his apartment after his death and clearing out the massive pile of porno as a "mission of compassion" - "the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God on Earth. That we might clear out the pornography from our dead friends' homes before their nice small town parents come to settle their son's affairs". I was going to offer to play that role in case you ever die suddenly, but I guess now that it's out in the open, why bother? Sorry nice small town parents. I'd love to hear some of the Elizabethan poetry though.
Along similar lines, and in reference to your post before the last one, my feeling now is that religion is generally better taken seriously than literally - religious types, even the ones with completely unbelievable beliefs, are quite often tapping into some significant truth - or at least some psychologically grounding principles. Ironic faith. The old man in the sky images aren't 'TRUE', but they are true.
Good luck sorting your situation out - at least for now you've still got a job, which is more than about 10% of people can say.
xoxo,
Tim
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