Kali Mama came to visit. I had the opportunity to have lunch with her, her amiable sister, and her three charming sons. We spoke about regional differences, our life stories, ghosts, blogging, and in fact about almost everything but knitting. Here we are in an unrecognizable picture.
Kali Mama’s blog tends toward the salty and spicy, but in person, she is also sweet. I hope this is not a secret that I am giving away, here.
Work was calm, apart from my making a serious mistake with the charge machine, and then I had my class in the evening. My friend Partygirl and I, as you will know if you always read my blog and have total recall, go together to a class largely populated by fundamentalist Christians. We are then split up into small groups, and she and I are not together. In my group, I am the only one who accepts the theory of evolution, so I already know that some of them disapprove of me. As one of the ladies from my church put it, “They all think you’re going to Hell.”
So last night there was a bit of discussion of worldliness. Now, I am fairly sure that those of you who read this have never found yourselves in a discussion of worldliness. If you did find yourself in such a discussion, you would probably be for it, rather than agin it.
But the ladies in the class were pretty down on worldliness. They were discussing Acts 19:19, which is a little vignette of people burning scrolls about sorcery.
I had to admit that I hadn’t seen much application to my own life, though I had come up with superstition and materialism as things to avoid. I often draw a blank in this class. We are supposed to be able to extrapolate from a five-word sentence to a whole raft of conclusions about the motivations of the characters and how it resembles our own lives. I am constantly having to write down “insufficient data.”
The other ladies are more creative than I, however.
“I don’t have any scrolls of sorcery,” one admitted, “but I have books. And Sudoku puzzles.”
There was widespread murmuring. Apparently many of these ladies are tempted to do Sudoku puzzles in the newspaper. And what they suffer from the temptation to read worldly books instead of the Bible is something awful!
They are also troubled by gluttony.
The group that Partygirl is in were confessing to reading horoscopes and watching unseemly TV programs.
Actually, there are some pretty unseemly TV programs out there. She may just be in a wilder bunch than I am. But — even if we accept the burning of occult scrolls as a good thing — it seems like a big jump from occult scrolls to novels.
Of course, I don’t know what kinds of books these women are reading. And I don’t know about their personal experiences with gluttony. It just seems to me that Mother Teresa could have read novels and done Sudoku puzzles without causing any raised eyebrows.
I caught the woman in the hallway as we were leaving. “I think you should do your Sudoku puzzles,” I said. “Just get up a little earlier and then you’ll have time to do your Bible study, too.” She is a nurse, so we chatted a bit about the importance of keeping the brain elastic.
Partygirl looked askance at me, so I told her about the discussion we’d had, as we walked out to the car. St. Francis, I pointed out, had been in favor of enjoying God’s creation, and no one could call him worldly.
“Are Sudoku puzzles part of God’s creation?” she asked. And, indeed, one of the more extreme ladies had suggested that Satan was planting all these worldly distractions.
We are just out of our element in that group, that’s all. This probably helps us to keep our brains elastic.
But I do think that outsiders fail to realize the level of creativity fundamentalists bring to their reading of the Bible. We think they are literal about the Bible. We don’t realize that they can look at “Dinah went to visit the women of the land” and conclude that Dinah was seeking sensationalism, that she dressed like a tart, and that she was — in short — being worldly. No wonder she was raped. There was widespread agreement in the group — and these are intelligent, sincere women, too — that this little phrase about Dinah was enough to demonstrate her worldliness.
I look at these passages and think “Where are they getting this?” And I have taken lit classes from Freudians, too. You’d think I would be beyond amazement.
Today is Book Club, a good antidote to the fundamentalist group. We are discussing Henry James’s Daisy Miller, a novel about respectability. The heroine behaves very scandalously, by the standards of her time, and dies in the end, perhaps as a punishment, but at least she doesn’t do Sudoku puzzles.
Very interesting, entertaining… great post.
I know a fundamentalist and had to spend a week cooped up on a bus with him. He’s crazy.
He says things about the woman’s place being in the home and that it’s Biblical. He also says that the idea manly men (the macho kind) is biblical. And that Jews and Catholics are going to hell. He is, of course, not well read nor is he terribly bright IMHO.
But maybe that’s because he assumes he’s really good at everything and always ends up making himself look stupid b/c he doesn’t know when he’s out of his element.
Or maybe I hate him because he’s made me everytime I’ve seen him in the last semester.
Or maybe because they allowed him to enter a group I am in. And I hate to hear his stupid yapping.
i think god created sudoku as an alternative worst sin to suicide
This post brought back fond memories of when I used to go to bible study and Wendesday church with a fundamentalist boyfriend (I’m not fundamentalist: I’m pretty much basically entirely wholly Roman Catholic. I just went out of politeness and because I figured it wouldn’t hurt). The bible study was actually the best part because the man who led it seemed to know what he was talking about – but the sermons were usually exercises in creativity, making the wildest extrapolations from the littlest Biblical evidence – and then usually ending up in a comment about how all Catholics are going to hell (which made me feel pretty awesome). I broke up with that boyfriend (not because of his religion, but he turned out to have quite a few mental and emotional problems), and then later he admitted that he felt I was going to hell too for being Catholic. Then I was glad that I broke up with him. (Then later on down the line I married a laid-back Methodist. He goes to Mass with me and will even discuss the homilies intelligently… There’s a lesson in this somewhere).
Graciously, I inquire as to wheather or not desiring to spin luscious fibers would make one worldly? Perhaps that would go under gluttony. Hmmmm, but if I’m really productive then that would that cancel out the gluttony and wordlyness. : )
Oh, man. They’d hate me. I have books on comparative religion, Druidry, folk medicine, and homemade spa treatments. No Sudoku, but I do have a book of Latin obscenities…
I went to bible class once, many years ago with a strongly baptist friend. I think I asked one question (probably about the counterpoint of the existence of God and the existence of the Devil – for some reason that was of great concern to me as a pre-teen), received terribly shocked looks from the leader of the class and was basically told to remain quiet during the rest of the class. I decided then that bible classes were not for me. (Previously, at about 6, I had decided that Sunday morning church services weren’t for me either when I had stood up at the wrong time during a sermon and got told off. Nobody had told me that there were rules on when to sit and stand while in a church service!)
Re Happy Animal Families. Actually I think the looks of dawning horror will be on the teachers’ faces more than on the kids’ faces. Pre-teen kids are more down-to-earth (worldly?) about somethings than are many adults. A kids world contains more horrors than an adult’s because adults are better at turning a blind eye to some things than children are.
I’m glad I made this decision, too, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not harboring doubts and uncertainty about… well, everything. It’s a fun time in me life, lemme tell you. Thanks for all the information you gave me, though.
It sounds like an interesting group. I love how you talk about “keeping the brain elastic”! I need to remember that idea. Glad you had fun with Kali Mama. Hi, Kali Mama! Miss ya sweetie!
Aw, you think I’m sweet. That’s nice. You’re sweet, too. 🙂 I enjoyed our visit.
And we did too talk about knitting. I commented on your bag, and you showed it to me. So there.
I have some serious catch up to do on your blog. Tomorrow…