Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote about his conversion to Islam in Al-Jazeera yesterday, and it’s well worth checking out (especially if, like me, you cannot get enough of conversion narratives).
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar And Other Conversion Stories
Religion
Mar 30, 2015
Freaks and Geeks: Christians on TV and Me
Religion
Mar 18, 2015
Take a moment and try to conjure up a TV Christian in your mind. Is it a member of the Camden Family? Ned Flanders? Kenneth “Science is my most favorite subject, especially the Old Testament” Parcell? Whoever it is, I’m willing to bet their confidence in Christianity is near absolute — usually played to comic, if cringeworthy, results. These characters, coupled with the poised Midwestern Christians I grew up with, tricked me into believing that faith should come free of doubt. That is, until I found Freaks and Geeks.
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Please Be Reminded That One Of The Twelve Conclusions Of The Lollards Was “Arts And Crafts”
Religion
Mar 17, 2015
As you go about your daily business, kindly be reminded that John Wycliffe’s splinter sect the Lollards wrote their Twelve Conclusions in 1395, and that one of them was ARTS AND CRAFTS.
These conclusions discuss transubstantiation, exorcisms and hallowings, the priesthood, the state of the church, clerical celibacy, abortion, the distinction between secular and spiritual authority, confession, pilgrimages, the Crusades, prayers for the dead, and also arts and crafts.
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Swinging with Absalom
The Butter
Feb 23, 2015
Lyz Lenz’s previous work for The Toast can be found here. This is her first essay for The Butter.
Walking the road to Jerusalem, I stumbled over rocks in front of Absalom’s tomb. It was the penultimate day of my trip to Israel with my husband. A trip we had been planning for almost two years. Growing up immersed in Bible stories, my husband and I wanted to put our feet on the land where faith and fiction fight over piles of rocks and sacred rubble. Tomorrow we would spend all day traveling to the airport, so today was designed to be the pinnacle of our trip: We would walk the Via Dolorosa and end our day near Golgotha, or what was supposed to be Golgotha. Like so many things with faith, no one is really sure.
So, we began our day in Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus sweated blood and cried out to God before Judas betrayed him. The holy experience cost $20 a person. A fact that didn’t seem to bother anyone else, who sat on benches, hands uplifted. I heard “Hallelujahs” echo throughout the garden.
I sat in a dirty plastic chair awkwardly watching Christians sob into olive trees.
I turned to my husband. “No one cries into a tree just because of Jesus. There is something else they are crying about, but it’s easier to pin it on Jesus.”
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Fictional War Goddesses I Think Should Make Out With Each Other, In No Particular Order
Religion
Feb 09, 2015
It seems to me that not nearly enough of our collective time is spent dedicated to imagining which goddesses of war and death ought to have made out with one another. Imagine the luxurious plaited tresses, the simple linen tunics, the highly-developed back muscles from wielding all those broadswords. Who couldn’t want this?
If I could draw, I would spend up to and including 92% of my time drawing war goddesses from various mythologies making out with each other. I, however, cannot draw – but Nico Deyo can.
Here is what it would look like if Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom and just warfare, made out with a Valkyrie, one of the shieldmaidens of the valiantly slain in Norse mythology.
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Some Guy Named Tim Edits The Bible To Replace All Instances Of “Time” With His Own Name
Religion
Feb 03, 2015
Previously: Some Guy Named Tim Edits The Book Of Corinthians To Replace All Instances Of “Love” With “Tim”.
“To everything there is a season, and a Tim for every purpose under the heavens. A Tim to be born, and a Tim to die; a Tim to plant, and a Tim to pluck up what is planted; a Tim to kill, and a Tim to heal; a Tim to break down, and a Tim to build up; a Tim to weep, and a Tim to laugh; a Tim to mourn, and a Tim to dance; a Tim to cast away stones, and a Tim to gather stones together; a Tim to embrace, and a Tim to refrain from embracing.”
– Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Some Guy Named Tim Edits The Book Of Corinthians To Replace All Instances Of “Love” With “Tim”
Religion
Jan 16, 2015
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not Tim, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not Tim, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not Tim, I gain nothing.”
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The Abductions Of Helen Of Troy, In Order Of Abduction-y-ness
Religion
Jan 13, 2015
Pretty much the only poem I care about (SORRY POEMS) is Hilda Doolittle (H.D. to you)’s “Helen” on the “Of Troy” lady of the same name.
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees unmoved,
God’s daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
AAAGHGHHH, right? That pretty much sums up Western society’s attitude towards women and beauty for the last 2500 years or so. Anyhow. Helen of Troy is the absolute best. She was the daughter of Zeus and Leda (yes, the swan lady), the most beautiful mortal woman in existence, and was kidnapped roughly 400 times before the age of 20. Kidnapping, in ancient Greece, was really just a friendly way of saying hello, how’ve you been, I’m running away into the hills above Lacedaemonia with all of the women in your family but you can have at least half of them back if you’re willing to challenge me in a footrace. Ladies who hadn’t been kidnapped by a certain age had a wan, forlorn look to them, as if to say Where are the simple joys of maidenhood, like the poet says.
So! Helen spent a great deal of her childhood being flung about from heroic figure to heroic figure, being briefly kidnapped by Theseus of all people before finally settling down with Menelaus, the king of Sparta. SMASH CUT TO ten years later when Paris, after having judged Aphrodite to be the most beautiful of all the goddesses and earning her favor, sails into town and takes Helen home with him to Troy.
This is the fun part! Because, you know, this was a beloved subject for European painters for centuries, and European painters had a lot of conflicting and varied opinions about female agency and morality. So there are roughly 4000 paintings titled “The Abduction of Helen,” all with varying degrees of actual abduction. (Helen ended up being fine, or as fine as a woman can be who has been kidnapped as often as one of Liam Neeson’s daughters; she either tired of Paris or never truly loved him and rejoined her husband and children in Sparta after the Trojan War, which is more than you can say for the Trojans.)
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