20 March 2007

Sarah Silverman Sleeps with God.

So here is the video that has pissed off a few Christian folks.

I guess I just don't understand why. It seems that when people tell stories out of the Bible (i.e. Darling Nikki and Proverbs 23:26-28) and make them as vivid and alive as they were in their orignal times, we get upset. Many of us like our Bible stories to be far removed, and fully separated from out of our lives today. Here is the video of Sarah waking up after a one night stand with God.



This is a Biblical story, and a Biblical analogy. God is our husband, our lover. This is the same analogy that is used when Hosea is told to marry a prostitute, Hosea 1. We are indifferent to God, we sleep with God one night, and then with another the next. Look at Jeremiah 3:
13 Only acknowledge your guilt—
you have rebelled against the LORD your God,
you have scattered your favors to foreign gods
under every spreading tree,
and have not obeyed me,' "
declares the LORD.
14 "Return, faithless people," declares the LORD, "for I am your husband. I will choose you—one from a town and two from a clan—and bring you to Zion

This is the story that God has already told - it gets even better because Sarah is a Jew. Whether Sarah's intention was to tell the story that God has already told or not, she did. I for one have nothing against a non-believer who tells God's story. The people who tell these stories may or may not get the truth of them, but it is there-whether we see it or not.

This depiction is wonderfully true: our unfaithfulness hurts God, our lies and our unwillingness to accept God's love pains God. God is a jealous God, a scorned lover.

02 March 2007

Kahlil Gibran

So a friend recommended Kahlil Gibran's poetry as a key to understanding struggle.

I wanted to share one that struck me from the Prophet:

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that enlcoses you understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And coud you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity thorugh the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen.
And the cup he brings, through it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.