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February 11, 2015 – Speaking of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, seen above: I visited that venerable institution on December 26, 2014, during a Christmas visit to Cleveland. One of the exhibits was on Pink Floyd, a band inducted into the Hall in 1996. You can see the full bio at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum | RockHall.com:

The group carried rock and roll into a dimension that was more cerebral and conceptual than what preceded it.  What George Orwell and Ray Bradbury were to literature, Pink Floyd is to popular music, forging an unsettling but provocative combination of science fiction and social commentary.

And just for a heads up, some Bible prophets were – like Pink Floyd – also adept at making “unsettling and provocative” social commentaries, as discussed further below.

Pink Floyd’s variation on that theme was undoubtedly their hit, Another Brick in the Wall, “three songs set to variations of the same basic theme, on Pink Floyd‘s 1979 rock opera, The Wall.”

Part 2 of the 3-part set was “a protest song against rigid schooling in general and boarding schools in the UK in particular.” See Wikipedia, which added –  as a side note – that the single version, “as well as the album The Wall, were banned in South Africa in 1980 after the song was adopted by supporters of a nationwide school boycott protesting racial inequities in education under the apartheid regime.” See also Pink Floyd’s The Wall: A Complete Analysis:

Pink Floyd’s the Wall is one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music…  the Wall traces the life of the fictional protagonist, Pink Floyd, from his boyhood days in post-World-War-II England…   From the outset, Pink’s life revolves around an abyss of loss and isolation…  Every incident that causes Pink pain is yet another brick in his ever-growing wall[, including:]  an out-of-touch education system bent on producing compliant cogs in the societal wheel…

“Compliant cogs in the societal wheel?”  That sounds a lot like what many Christians seem bent on producing, from their take on the Bible and the Faith that comes from it.

That might be another way of saying some people need a very “codified and structured system of belief.”  And those of us who aren’t so certain sometimes envy those who can speak of their faith with such a great sense of conviction and clarity.  But as another “prophet” said:

I don’t have a problem with God.  I have a problem with religion.  I’ve chosen to live my life without the certainties of religious faith.

See Contents, above.  I responded in On “guilty until proven innocent”, which said:  “Here’s a news flash:  If your religion makes you certain, you’re missing the point!”

There’s nothing wrong with having a strong “codified and structured system of Christian belief.”  The problem comes when you think “that’s all there is to it.”  That is, some Christians seem to think that’s all there is to the Christian faith.  But to a true Christian Pilgrim, such a “codified system” is never an end in itself.   It’s just a jumping-off point, a place to start learning how to “soar on the wings of an eagle,” to paraphrase Isaiah 40:31.  (See The Blog.)  It’s also a starting point for implementing that Third Great Promise of Jesus, noted in Mr. Chan.

Which brings us back to Bible Prophets like Isaiah.  Such prophets back then were – as much as Pink Floyd in our time – “spokesmen of protest,” the “radicals of their day.”  The Bible prophets frequently stood opposed to the “formal priesthood” of their day, as well as the monarchy.

The priesthood then, as always, was primarily interested in the minutiae of ritual.  This was something that could easily be followed by anyone and generally presented no difficulties.  It might be a tedious way of gaining God’s favor, but it was not really painful…  The prophets, however, were likely to disdain ritual and to insist, instead, on a high ethical code of behavior, something that could present serious difficulties.

See Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (Two Volumes in One),  Avenel Books (1981), at page 527.  Asimov added that it was both difficult to perform that higher ethical good that Isaiah spoke of, and also difficult “to determine what [that] ethical good might be.”

On that note see On “expressio unius”, which noted the vast difference between the letter and the spirit of the law of the Bible.  Citing 2d Corinthians 3:6 and John 4:24, that post-column said such passages show “God does not want Good Christians to limit their reading, interpreting and living according to the Bible to a spirit-killing literalism…”

That’s what this blog is about.  Finding that life-giving “Spirit of the Bible.”

So if you’re interested in the “minutiae of ritual” – being just another “carbon copy Christian”  –  this blog isn’t for you.  On the other hand, if you’re interested in creating “new paths and patterns,” in and for your own personal spiritual journey, stick around…

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The upper image is courtesy of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum | RockHall.com, under the “Visit the Musuem” icon.  The lower image is borrowed from The Blog, and in turn is courtesy of “http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/haveamagnificentday/files/2014/03/soaring-eagle.jpg.”

Re:  “new paths and patterns.”  See the notes to On Jonah and the bra-burners.

Also re: new paths and patterns.  See On Jesus: Liberal or Fundamentalist?  That post said Jesus made two main promises:  “First, He would never turn away anyone who came to Him.  Second, He came here so His followers could have life ‘in all its abundance.'”  (See John 6:37 and John 10:10.)  This was before I fully appreciated the Third Promise, but did lead to my question:  “Why would anyone want to interpret those promises literally or narrowly?“

The original post had a lower image captioned with Isaiah 40:31, that “those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary…”

The “Mystic marriage of Christ and the Church…”

As noted in The Christian repertoire, “The terms ‘mystic‘ or ‘mysticism‘ seem to throw Southern Baptists and other conservative Christians into apoplexy.  (‘Try it sometime!!!‘)”

One example?  “The term ‘Christian mystic’ is an oxymoron.  Mysticism is not the experience of a Christian.” See What is Christian mysticism? – GotQuestions.org.  Or consider this:

Mysticism is when you get into a mystical state and it’s something you cannot understand, you’re out there in “la-la” land, it’s an “oooh” experience and you’re really not thinking.

Is There A Biblical Mysticism? | thebereancall.org.  (About one “click” down).

On the other hand – and as also noted in Christian repertoire – a generalized internet search leads to the definition of a mystic as “a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute…”

That seems to be what Christianity is all about: obtaining unity with God, through Christ.

See also Mysticism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which said the term mysticism originally “referred to the biblical, the liturgical and the spiritual or contemplative dimensions in early and medieval Christianity.”   The article Teresa of Ávila – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, noted in pertinent part, “Teresa’s writings, produced for didactic purposes, stand among the most remarkable in the mystical literature of the Catholic Church.”

And finally, there’s the note in “Mr. Chan?”   That note points out page 339 of the Book of Common Prayer, “which says that by sharing Holy Communion we are assured ‘that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son…'”  Emphasis added.

Of course there might be a dark side of the force, a “moral, philosophical, metaphorical and psychic concept.”  See for another example, The Bible and Mysticism – Patheos:

Not all mystical experiences lead to good.  It seems clear that many Germans at the Nurnberg rallies in the late 1930s entered a state of mystical ecstasy as they listened to Hitler in the midst of flags and goose-steeping troops and stirring music…    The test, the criterion of discernment, as William James wrote more than a century ago, quoting a saying of Jesus from Matthew, is, “By their fruits, you shall know them.”  If the result, the consequence of mystical experience, is compassion and growth in compassion, then it is of God, from the sacred.

Which sounds like a pretty good test.

For those conservatives and/or literalists who still want to go old school, there’s a book, Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide, available at Amazon.com, by Aryeh Kaplan:

This practical guide covers such topics as mantra meditation, contemplation, and visualization within a Jewish context.  It shows us how to use meditative techniques to enhance prayer…  Through simple exercises and clear explanations of theory, Rabbi Kaplan gives us the tools to develop our spiritual potential… (E.A.)

See also Judaism 101: Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism.   (You might want to check Kabbalah: An Overview | Jewish Virtual Library:  “Kabbalah is the name applied to the whole range of Jewish mystical activity.  While codes of Jewish law focus on what it is God wants from man, kabbalah tries to penetrate deeper, to God’s essence itself.”)

Judaism 101 did note this “trendy doctrine” had been popularized “by various Jewish and non-Jewish celebrities.”  (See Madonna Kabbalah.)  Then too, “several messages from non-Jews describ[e] Kabbalah as ‘the dark side of Judaism,’ describing it as evil or black magic.”

Heck, you might even say that beginning a spiritual and/or Mystic Quest in an effort to help your favorite college football team win national championships could be seen as part of that “dark side.”  But then there’s that darn passage about Moses, at the Battle or Rephidim, having his buddies hold his arms up, to help his team win.   (It seems that if he got tired and let his arms down, the other team started winning.  See Intro, and also “God’s Favorite Team”.)

Be that as it may,  Judaism 101: Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism also said:  “Mysticism and mystical experiences have been a part of Judaism since the earliest days.”

Talk about  “originalism…”

The upper image is courtesy of Christian mysticism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The full caption:  “Mystic marriage of Christ and the Church.”

The lower image is courtesy of the same site, with the caption:  “Transfiguration of Jesus depicting him with Elijah, Moses and 3 apostles by Carracci, 1594.”  The site noted:  “[P]ractices such as the Eucharist, baptism and the Lord’s Prayer all become activities that take on importance for both their ritual and symbolic values.”  Further, “Jesus’ conception, in which the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, and his Transfiguration, in which he is briefly revealed in his heavenly glory, also become important images for meditation.”

Re: “The dark side of the force.”  The full reference is Dark side (Star Wars) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:  “The dark side of the Force is a fictional moral, philosophical, metaphorical and psychic concept in the Star Wars universe created by George Lucas.  The Force is a mystical energy which permeates the Star Wars galaxy;  its dark side represents an aspect of it that is not practiced by the Jedi who view it as evil.”

Re: old school.  See for example Urban Dictionary: old school,  and Define Old school at Dictionary.com:  “advocates or supporters of established custom or of conservatism.”

Re: Madonna Kabbalah – Huffington Post.  That site included a number of related stories from the “Post,” including Decade Roundup: 7 Signs We Are Becoming More Spiritually Focused, which added:  “Celebrities such as Madonna, (now known by her Kaballistic name, Esther), David Beckham, Elizabeth Taylor, Demi Moore and Britney Spears have all embraced the Kabbalah.” 

The column On “originalism” noted the term reflects “the view that interpretation of a written constitution or law [ – or Bible – ] should be based on what reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have declared the ordinary meaning of the text to be.”

Oscar Wilde in 1882, before he was sentenced to prison for “gross indecency…”

January 30, 2015 – I just saw The Imitation Game, a “2014 historical thriller film about British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing who was a key figure in cracking Nazi Germany‘s naval Enigma code which helped the Allies win the Second World War, only to later be criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality.”

This was after I’d gotten a lead connecting Psalm 130 to Oscar Wilde, who also got “sent to prison for ‘gross indecency,'” away back in 1895.

Note that all this occurred in another country – England – and before the year 2003.  That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court issued Lawrence v. Texas, thus ending such sentences:

[T]he Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory.  The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick…   The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the 14th Amendment. (E.A.)

Thus as a general rule it pays to remember our past history.  That’s good advice even when – and perhaps especially when – that history isn’t all that glorious.  As Harry Truman once said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”  (See Harry Truman and his History Lessons, and also my fairly-recent post On Harry Truman and the next election.)

Which brings us back to Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde.

Wikipedia said this:  “The film’s closing titles tell of Turing’s suicide in 1954, the royal pardon granted to him in 2013, and how his [code-breaking] machine inspired the invention and design of modern computers.”  Turing’s suicide followed – and may have been caused by – his court-ordered Chemical castration.  (Turing had been given the “choice” of spending some two years in prison or taking the court-ordered drug treatment…)

Wilde on the other hand got two years of hard labor, without a choice of “castration.”  And when he tried to speak, his voice was drowned out by cries of “‘Shame’ in the courtroom.”

Wilde was imprisoned first in Pentonville Prison and then Wandsworth Prison in London.  Inmates followed a regimen of “hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed,” which wore very harshly on Wilde…   His health declined sharply, and in November he collapsed during chapel from illness and hunger…    He spent two months in the infirmary…   Richard B. Haldane, the Liberal MP and reformer, visited him and had him transferred in November to Reading Prison…  The transfer itself was the lowest point of his incarceration, as a crowd jeered and spat at him on the railway platform.

See Oscar Wilde – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  Which brings up Psalm 130.

Between January and March 1897, near the end of his prison term, Wilde wrote a letter.

The letter was sent from “Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas.”  The title of the letter was De Profundus.  Psalm 130 is one of the “Penitential psalms.”  In English it begins:  “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!”  The Latin for “out of the depths” is De Profundus, and that’s where the title comes from.  See De Profundis (letter) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Which brings up the popular opinion that some of the world’s best writing has been done in prison.  See for example 12 Famous Writers Who Did Time | Robert Rotstein – Huffington Post, and 10 Great Works of Literature Written in Prison – Flavorwire:

When we imagine the places where our favorite authors penned their greatest masterpieces, a jail cell usually doesn’t come to mind.  But, whether their writers were prisoners of war or victims of bigotry, the solitude and lack of distractions have produced many a great book.  From Oscar Wilde’s apologia on spiritual awakening to Thoreau’s thoughts on civil disobedience, we survey authors whose great mental escapes from incarceration resulted in some of their most insightful and profound works…

Whether that solitude and “lack of distraction” still applies in today’s prisons is a matter of debate.  But a fairly recent example does come to mind, Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  Written on April 16, 1963, the open letter “defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism, arguing that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws…  The letter was widely published and became an important text for the American civil rights movement of the early 1960s.”

In Wilde’s case both the prologue and epilogue of his letter were a bit different.

Throughout the 1880’s Wilde had been a popular London playwright.  He was noted for his epigrams – his “witty, ingenious or pointed sayings” – and a novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Then there were the plays, including a “masterpiece,” The Importance of Being Earnest.  Also:

He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the absolute prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage.  Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London…

But Wilde’s world came crashing down when he filed the ill-advised lawsuit that led to his own arrest, trial and conviction for gross indecency.  In brief, he went from the heights of fame and pleasure, literally to “the depths.”  And there, for whatever reason, he found “serenity:”

In 1897, in prison, he wrote De Profundis, which was published in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.  Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain.  There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.  He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.

In other words, he “lost everything dear to him,” but didn’t blame external forces.  The letter quoted Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, and came to see “Christ as a Romantic artist.”  In a word, instead of blaming other people, Wilde “rather absorb[ed] his hardships through the artistic process into a spiritual experience.”  See Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, and also Voices from Solitary: Oscar Wilde’s Cry from the Depths.

Incidentally, Wilde had to publish his last work, “Reading Gaol,” under an assumed name:

The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers in 1898 under the name C.3.3., which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3.  This ensured that Wilde’s name – by then notorious – did not appear on the poem’s front cover…   It was a commercial success, going through seven editions in less than two years…

So, in a few short years Oscar Wilde went from the highest acclaim to cries of “shame” in the courtroom.  When he was transferred to Reading Prison, a crowd gathered to jeer and spit at him.  During his exile in France he had to publish his last work under an assumed name.

And now he brings tourists to Dublin, the city of his birth…

Aside from his statue in Dublin’s Merrion Square, there’s also an Oscar Wilde Centre, at Trinity College in Dublin.  Which brings to mind what John Steinbeck wrote about another writer…

In his book Travels with Charley, Steinbeck wrote of wanting to see Sauk Centre, where Sinclair Lewis was born.  It was also the metaphoric setting of Lewis’ satirical novel, Main Street.

As Wikipedia noted, the novel was set in Gopher Prairie, “a town modeled on Sauk Centre.”  The heroine, Carol Milford, is a free-spirited liberal who disdains “the town’s physical ugliness and smug conservatism.”  The novel itself portrayed “petty back-stabbers and hypocrites in a small town.”  It mocked the prevalent desire to live in such “‘wholesome’ small towns,” with its “vicious realism and biting humor.”  Small wonder then that some “small-town residents resented their portrayal and the book was banned in Alexandria, Minnesota.”

Small wonder too that when Steinbeck met him in his later years, Lewis was shrunken, shriveled and constantly cold.  So he too took a voluntary exile – he died in Rome, of advanced alcoholism – prompted in part by the violent hatred his novel “aroused in the country of his nativity.” But now, as Steinbeck noted, “There’s a sign in Sauk Centre all right:  ‘Birthplace of Sinclair Lewis:'”

The only good writer was a dead writer.   Then he couldn’t surprise anyone any more, couldn’t hurt anyone any more….   I’ve heard he died alone.  And now he’s good for the town.  Brings in some tourists.  He’s a good writer now.

There’s probably some kind of lesson there, for writers and for bloggers.   In the meantime, here’s Psalm 130 – that Oscar Wilde found so comforting in his later years – in its entirety:

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.  Lord, hear my voice!  Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!  If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?  But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.  I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;  my soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.  O Israel, hope in the Lord!  For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.  It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

The upper image is courtesy of Oscar Wilde – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, with the caption:  “Photograph taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony.”  The lower image comes from the same article, with the caption: “Statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square, Dublin:”

[Merrion Square] is a Georgian garden square on the southside of Dublin [and is] considered one of the city’s finest surviving squares.  Three sides are lined with Georgian redbrick townhouses; the West side abuts the grounds of Leinster House (seat of the Oireachtas),Government Buildings, the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery. The central railed-off garden is now a public park.

The full reference to the movie-lead reference is Imitation Game – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The full reference to the Lawrence case is Lawrence v. Texas – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The full reference to Turing’s “rehabilitation” is Chemical castration – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Re: Steinbeck on Sinclair Lewis.  See Travels with Charley, Penguin Books (1980), pages 133-34.   See also Sinclair Lewis Biography – CliffsNotes:  “Although the reaction of Sauk Centre toward the book was at first unfavorable, there is no evidence that it was ever banned from the local library.”  And see Main Street (novel) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Psalm 130 was quoted in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

The title for this Page – Notes on a Blog – should not be confused with Notes on a Scandal, a movie dealing with a much more exciting topic.  (As shown above and as discussed below.)

Briefly, I created this page to shorten up the Home page.

As a side note, I generally I try to make the article-posts about “two clicks” long.  That’s about 900 words, and hopefully no more than 1,000.  That’s another way of saying that if you click your “page down” key twice, you should get to the bottom image.  That’s the ideal anyway.

The bottom image separates the main text from the notes in these blog-articles.  But when I finished creating the Home page, I saw that the notes themselves came to over 800 words.  That was much too long, so I created this separate post for the Home-Notes alone.

In the process I learned that the year 2006 saw three icky films on such “May-December” relationships, one of which was Notes on a Scandal.   The other two were Venus, starring Peter O’Toole as a “decrepit womanizer,” and The History Boys, with Richard Griffiths as a “venal and self-deluding” boy-stalker.  (Notes was the only film I saw, and for that matter I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain either, but we digress…)

I suppose there’s a lesson in all this.  One lesson could be that in writing these posts I tend to go off on tangents, which can be annoying.  But the other lesson could be that going off on tangents or “rabbit trails” can be a lot of fun, and also rewarding and instructive.  (See for example Meeting God Down A Rabbit Trail – Sermon Central.)

But enough of rabbit trails for now.  Here – without further ado – are Notes on a Home Page.

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The first note from the Home Page told of a “previous lead-in image,” which led to a Wikipedia article on Pilgrimages.  The value of such pilgrimages are an ongoing theme of this blog.

The previous lead-in image, courtesy of Pilgrimage – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is one the reader may wish to visit.  The caption of that prior lead-in was “Pilgrimage to Kedarnath.”  Kedarnath is a Hindu temple in the northern Himalayas, with “extreme weather conditions that only allow the temple to open from the end of April to the beginning of November.  The temple is not directly accessible by road and has to be reached by a 14 km uphill trek…”  See also Kedarnath – India – Sacred Destinations.  (14 kilometers is about 9 miles.)

There followed notes on the “BCP,” Charlie Chan and carbon-copy Christians.

Re: Book of Common Prayer (BCP).  The quote on corporate and mystical sides is at page 339.

Re:  “one great philosopher.”  That would be Charlie Chan, as discussed at length in Some Bible basics from Vince Lombardi and Charlie Chan, and in “What’s in it for me?”

Re: “Carbon copy Christians.”   A carbon copy is a document made “when carbon paper is placed between the original and the under-copy.”  See Carbon copy – Wikipedia, which said the use of carbon copies “declined with the advent of photocopying and electronic document creation.”  Yet the term continues in today’s e-mail abbreviation cc or bcc (blind carbon copy).  As updated the term refers to  “simultaneously sending copies of an electronic message to secondary recipients.”  The term can also be used – as here – to refer to “anything that was a near duplicate of an original.”   See also Urban Dictionary: carbon copy:  “a person that has no personality and tries to emulate yours exactly.”

Then there are notes on a carbon-copy Christian being like “another brick in the wall,” and on copying painting masterpieces as a metaphor for learning from Bible stories.

Re: “Bricks in the wall.”  An allusion to the song(s) by Pink Floyd.  See Another Brick in the Wall – Wikipedia.  There were actually three songs, or parts, and “Part II is a protest song against rigid schooling in general and boarding schools in the UK in particular.”

Re:  “Copying masterpieces.”  There’s a book at Amazon.com, Copying Masterpieces (Watson-Guptill Artist’s Library), by Jose Maria Parramon.  The site said:  “Every student of art has been encouraged to copy works by renowned masters to better understand the skill and spirit that inform a great artist’s vision.”  The same might be said of copying people like Moses and Jesus…

Then I expanded on the metaphor of the “vast, unexplored continent of the Bible” being like the vast American continent opened up by the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The lower image is courtesy of Discovering Lewis & Clark ®, and seems to best express a sense of both exploration and contemplation.  To see the original image click “The Expedition,” or see http://www.lewis-clark.org/sites/default/files/theexpedition.jpg, which added:

Since January of 2009 the ownership and management of Discovering Lewis & Clark^® has been in the hands of the Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundatio … to make this the most comprehensive and useful Lewis and Clark website on the Internet.

To extend the metaphor, the reader could consider me a guide or scout, not unlike those used in the great “Western Expansion” of the early and mid-1800s, after the Lewis and Clark expedition.  See for example  Westward Expansion – Facts & Summary – HISTORY.com.

On a more mundane note, see Amazon.com: Wagon Train: Season 1: Ward Bond, Robert Horton, and/or Wagon Train – TV.com, “Wagon Train followed the trials and tribulations of pioneering families as they set out from the East to carve out a new life in the West soon after the American Civil War.  For some of the travellers [sic] it was a happy ending, but not for all, which only heightened the drama along the way…”  In the same way, in trekking the “vast unexplored continent of the Bible” you could find both a “new life” and a sense of “coming home.”   (It’s like a metaphor…)

Then I brought in Hebrews 11:14-16, LeShan’s book How to Meditate, and pilgrimages in general.

On that note see also Hebrews 11:14-16, a Daily Office Reading for Saturday January 5, 2015:

[P]eople who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own.  If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back.  But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.

(New Living Translation, emphasis added.)   That reading followed the one for Friday January 4, 2015, which included Hebrews 11:6 (GNT):  “No one can please God without faith.  Whoever goes to God must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”  (Another blog-theme.)

On the subject of seeking a “better country,” see also Lawrence LeShan’s How to Meditate[:]  A Guide to Self-Discovery (Bantam Books 1974), at page 1.  He was at a conference of scientists – “all of whom practiced meditation on a daily basis” – and asked why they meditated.   Various unsatisfactory answers were given until:  “Finally one man said, ‘It’s like coming home.”

On the subject of pilgrimages in general, see also www.spiritual-wellness.org/pilgrimage.html and/or dancingspirittours.com/why-choose-us/spiritual-tours.

The upper image is courtesy of the New York Times review of the “2006 British drama/psychological thriller film” Notes on a Scandal, at nytimes.com/2007/01/15/movies/15age.  See also Notes on a Scandal (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The Times review was titled “December and May: Desire vs. Ick Factor.” (Emphasis added.)  The caption for the lead image included above spoke of “Cate Blanchett as a teacher who has an affair with a 15-year-old student,” and contrasted that film with the “icky” Venus and equally-icky History Boys.  (See also Venus (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and The History Boys (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 

Apparently 2006 was the year for such films, “whose target audience seems to be aging, upscale baby boomers,” as the Times noted.  As also noted, I suppose there’s some kind of lesson in all this…

The lower image is courtesy of the Grand Tour link in the dancingspirittours.com/why-choose-us/spiritual-tours website.  The “linked” Wikipedia article began:  “The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means … as an educational rite of passage.”  The Wikipedia caption reads:  “Northerners found the contrast between Roman ruins and modern peasants of the Roman Campagna an educational lesson in vanities.”