A Puzzle for the Christmas Season
Here are some recent news items to which I have added a few facts that seem related. Have fun putting it all together, creating your own narrative about what it all might mean, if anything.
This is what the Book of Revelation is really about. It's not about the end of the world, as such. It's about the destruction of the feudalistic, repressive, economic monolith which it calls “Babylon the Great”.
Part 2 of Sacred Energy (Mass of the Universe) contains the complete text of the mass
The mass in a form that you can interact with. Each individual musical segment has both an audio file (mp3) and a musical score (pdf).
Eschatology is the study of last things, the final events in history, the ultimate destiny of humanity, the end of the world. Major issues in eschatology include the rapture, the second coming of Jesus, the tribulation, Millennialism, and the last judgment. Most of the Christian books I have read do not seriously concern themselves with eschatology, but the Left Behind series of books made it a popular topic. All twelve novels in the series made the New York Times bestselling fiction list – note: the fiction list. Prior to the Left Behind novels of the 1990s, Hal Lindsey’s 1970s bestselling books, including The Late Great Planet Earth, were also bestsellers.
Westar
In this one-on-one interview, bestselling author and MacArthur Prize recipient Elaine Pagels tells a wide-ranging story. She explains how Billy Graham’s preaching sparked her interest in religion, and talks of her early encounters with Gnostic texts and with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Through the interconnections between the personal and professional, Pagels addresses the problem of how we are to define Christianity meaningfully in ancient and modern times.
The message is that God’s intention – the order of the universe – is distributive justice-compassion. To live in the light is to transform water to wine: to bring healing to everyone, whether they are the children of collaborators with oppression, or ingrates that game the system.
The process the early followers of Jesus went through that resulted in the Church of Jesus Christ is fairly long, fairly obscure, and full of pitfalls for those who seek to recreate it.
Sea Raven details how the Gosepl of Jesus relates to the current debate over worker's rights.
Sea Raven's inspired historical-critical reading of Jesus' thought welcomes us into the past and present struggle to bring about a divine commonwealth.