A clever little game for a bright and shiny Wednesday:

[featherynscale]

Or, a silly little meme I found over at zianuray's place.

Ask me seven questions. Not just any seven questions though. No, to keep it interesting, use the seven questions as per below - just copy and paste the following, replace the blanks with something you want to know/ask (e.g. 3. Donkeys or sandcastles and why?), anything you want, personal, silly, surreal or deep, comment away and I'll answer honestly.

1. What do you think of _____________ ?

2. When did you last ____________?

3. __________ or ___________ and why?

4. What did you ______________?

5. What's your favorite ______________?

6. How would you ______________?

7. Who would you most like to ________ ?

Comments

[celtic-elk.livejournal.com]

1. You know what, Stuart? I like you. =)

2. I can't remember if I've read that particular Pagels or not - it seems likely, though. What about the scenario seemed applicable to modern neopaganism?

4. Research help? Wrangling alligators help?

6. And Superman III, actually. Gods, what a horrid movie. I liked the Sneakers approach, myself: break in and assign yourself an account with several hundred thousand dollars that you can calmly withdraw the next morning.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

2. The angle that got me hooked was her description of the transition of Christianity from persecuted minority faith to darling-of-the-emperor, profess-this-faith-for-court-appointment status, and how the idea of Original Sin might have come out of the observation that, guess what, the world didn't suddenly get better as soon as the Christians were in power, people were still people. I'm interested in the fact that neopaganism is allegedly one of the fastest-growing faiths in the world right now, particularly in the US. There's a certain amount of, if not power, at least glamour or trendiness, in professing that faith right now. And the tenets of the faiths are already changing in response. My particular study is Wicca, since that's the faith I have the most background in - the current practice of Wicca is already almost 180 degrees around from the Brit Trad practice on a lot of points. I have to think that some of that change is due to the spread of the religion, and its transition from initiatory, secretive, and kind of bonkers to open, proletarian, and kind of cool. So I'm interested to see what else the pagans will be willing to give up in return for popularity. The Christians gave up the idea that they were morally powerful and basically good people - that was a sort of core idea, you know? What will we give up to avoid cognitive dissonance?

4. I'm thinking mostly of musical library help.

[celtic-elk.livejournal.com]

2. Hmm. On the other hand, Christianity is an inherently eschatalogical faith, and Wicca and most other forms of modern paganism aren't. I need to chew on that for a while, I think.

4. Happy to help out, as always!

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Right. We are perhaps going to be insulated against some of the uglier effects of the transition to prominence by the fact that our religion doesn't rest on the idea that once you have our faiths, you're perfect, or that once everybody in the world has a faith like ours, the world will be perfect. That should help. But there's bound to be some effect - I'm just interested to see how it works out. Of course, we're also dealing with a larger society, and we're a lot further from the top ranks of it - I mean, it's gonna be *a while* before we ever see a pagan president of any stripe, you know? Maybe over a longer timeline it will be a different story.