atoms into suns

You know, I listen to NPR for a number of reasons, the biggest ones being that I'm disgusted with most radio, and I like being informed, by the most comprehensive and balanced source I can find. (Not that they're perfect, but they're the best I've found.) The commentators and even people who call in are generally open-minded and informed, too, I think.

So it was pretty shocking to listen the other day and hear numerous people call in wondering why Muslims don't denounce terror attacks like the one in London, why Islam seems to breed hate, and the like.

Umm Yasmin had a good roundup of denunciations of the terror attacks by Muslim sources. Go check it out, if for no other reason than that hopefully you can inform others. Also, veiled4allah always does a good job of rounding up the latest news as it relates to Muslims and Islam.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Bibles-Oil.html

Seems someone has decided that

a passage from Genesis that quotes Jacob telling Joseph that God will give him "blessings of the deep that couches beneath"

refers to oil.

Call me crazy -- or heretical, or lacking in faith -- but I suspect God doesn't care much about oil.

My question is, if they don't find oil in Israel, will these people finally give up their overreaching literal interpretation of the Bible?

The link is to an NY Times article, which requires registration or a trip to bugmenot.

I just saw something tonight that got me thinking, again, about the Second Commandment, which I learned as, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." I was taught that that meant that using the names of God or Jesus as exclamations or expletives was a sin. Sure, I may have been taught a little more, but that's what I remember.

Once I got older and started thinking about these things again I suspected that what I'd been taught may not cover it all. I eventually decided that I thought it really meant that God really doesn't want us attaching His Name to our doings in order to give them a sense of legitimacy -- especially when we fallible humans can never quite be sure that what we're doing is really what God wants.

I liked this interpretation and stuck with it for a long time.

Tonight, as I said, I saw something that made me start wondering about it again, so I decided to do a little research, never suspecting the can of worms I'd open up.

First off, I'd forgotten that the Ten Commandments are given two or three times in the Bible. In any case, the relevant passages in my NIV Bible are:

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

--Exodus 20:7, same as Deuteronomy 5:11

The footnote (okay, it's my NIV Study Bible) says:

20:7 misuse the name of the Lord. By profaning God's name -- e.g., by swearing falsely by it (see Lev 19:12; see also Jer 7:9 and NIV text note), as on the witness stand in court. Jesus elaborates on oath-taking in Mt 5:33-37.

And here in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (I was raised Catholic), it seems to say that we're not supposed to lie under oath nor "use it for trivial matters". (But hey, it's 2:30am, so my interpretation/paraphrase could be wrong.)

Religious Tolerance has a section on possible interpretations (scroll down), including:

• This verse originally meant that one is not to use the name of God for "any frivolous or malicious purpose or in magic."
• Until recently, the phrase "taking God's name in vain" related to contracts. They were sworn "in the name of the Lord". If the terms of a contract were broken, the offending party was said to have taken "the Lord's name in vain."
• Again, the Westminster Larger Catechism interprets this Commandment broadly to include believing in false doctrines or opposing God's truth.
• Today, it is often mistakenly interpreted as prohibiting swearing. This has nothing to do with its original meaning.

And heck, just to add more to the mix, the Religious Tolerance site offers several verses of the Qur'an for comparison:

2:224: Do not use God's name in your oaths as an excuse to prevent you from dealing justly.
73:8: Remember the name of your Lord and devote yourself to Him exclusively.

76:25 Glorify the name of your Lord morning and evening.

So now we seem to be up to several possible interpretations and variations of interpretations:

• Don't lie under oath
• Don't take an oath just to make yourself sound more honest than you are
• Don't break contracts
• Don't use the Lord's name for trivial matters
• Don't use the Lord's name to make it sound like what you're doing is His command
• Don't believe in false doctrines
• Devote yourself to God
• Don't swear

There may be more, but, like I said, it's the middle of the night and this is all my brain can handle right now.

So basically, my question to all of you is this: What's your interpretation of this Commandment?

The plane ride back was miraculously uneventful and the kids made friends with people all around us on the plane (really!), but it was nice to finally land in Denver. We were the last ones off the plane, of course -- us and the lady sitting in our row. I asked her if she wanted to get past us and out, but she said no, she could wait.

She followed us down the aisle of the now-empty plane, and once inside she asked if she could walk with us to the terminal. Sure, of course. I wondered why. She was friendly, grandmotherly, but after herding Small Children through three airports (while carrying two backpacks and a car seat), the paranoia was still flowing.

Before long it became apparent that she didn't really know where she was going, so I figured that was why she was walking with us. I made small talk, asking if she lived here or if she was here visiting family.

Sad news, she said. Her granddaughter had been in a bad car accident and was in the hospital. I got the impression that they weren't sure if she'd live or die.

We came up the escalator to the place where we were going to meet Bill. She asked how to get to baggage claim, and as I told her, her family walked up to her with tears in their eyes. The kids and I kept walking, toward a happy reunion with Bill.

Prayers (energy, mojo, good thoughts, etc.) for the woman's granddaughter are welcome. Her name is Alicia, and she's in a hospital in Aurora (southeast Denver, Colorado).

A while back*, I volunteered to have Umm Yasmin give me five interview questions to answer here. Now, the next five people to tell me in the comments that they'd like to be interviewed (are there even five people who read this thing?) will, in turn, become my victims, answer the questions on their blogs and offer to interview five of their readers, and so on. Here goes:

* Have you done any Ruhi Institutes? If so, what did you think of them?

I did Book 1 (Reflections on the Life of the Spirit) last summer and am in the middle of Book 2 (Arising to Serve) right now. My first experience with Ruhi was a very brief introduction several years ago when Ruhi was new in the US. Frankly, I wasn't impressed. It seemed really simplistic -- read this quote, rephrase it, ask a question by rephrasing it again, talk very briefly about what it means, move on to the next quote and do the same thing. For that reason, I resisted doing more with it for quite a while, even though several people reassured me that I'd just had a bad experience and it really was great fun.

Finally, I gave in and did a study circle for Book 1, and had to grudgingly admit that I liked it. There was still a little bit of the simplistic feel, but we moved beyond that and into some really great conversations about meanings, implications, and real-life applications. We also got to know each other a lot better. Now that I'm doing Book 2, we don't spend any time at all on the simplistic stuff. The focus is on getting in-depth into the meanings and themes of the Writings and how to apply them to our lives.

Perhaps the part I like best, though, is that it isn't just about study. Each study circle has a service and a social component. Each group chooses a service project to perform together, and also spends time just socializing. For me, that's important, because I believe faith is supposed to be lived, not just talked about. The social aspect is great for building community, which is such an important theme in the Baha'i Faith.

[Edit later, since I forgot to mention this part:]

It's also nice to finally have a set of courses for people to go through to get a systematic, solid basis in what the Baha'i Faith is all about. When I became a Baha'i I didn't really know where to look to learn more. People helped, but there was no system to it, so I felt like I was always missing important parts. Plus, Ruhi works no matter what level of understanding the person is at, from those just starting to learn about the Faith to those who've been knowledgeable Baha'is their whole lives. In fact, it seems to work better that way.

* Is your hubby a Baha'i? If so, was he born into a Baha'i family or was he a convert? If not, how do you find having a non-Baha'i partner?

Bill became a Baha'i about a month after I did. On the night I declared, he congratulated me and then mused that he should really learn something about the Faith. I gave him a book or two, which he devoured. Before long, he came to the conclusion that he already believed in everything the Faith taught, so he declared.

* How big is your local Baha'i community and what do you do together on a regular basis?

The community I live in has about 20 people -- 15 or so adults, and five youth and children. Beyond that, our cluster contains something like seven or eight communities for, oh, 150 people or so.

We have all the standard activities -- Feast every 19 days, Assembly meetings, and such. We've also committed to a couple of service projects working with nonprofit groups and maintaining a small meditation garden in a city park. The community is fairly close-knit, so dinners, hanging out, and other non-official social events are pretty common, too.

Within the cluster, we have weekly devotionals and children's classes, study circles, and periodic cluster meetings to learn what everyone else is working on and how to work together better. We also usually celebrate holy days as a cluster rather than in our individual communities.

* What does equality of the sexes mean to you?

It's evolved over time. When I was little I couldn't quite understand all the fuss -- if women wanted to be equal, then why didn't they just go to school and get the jobs that men had now, and then it'd all be equal, right? Sometime during college I realized that it wasn't that easy.

Since becoming a mother, I've come to the conclusion that men and women sometimes have different roles that one naturally does better than the other. For example, taking care of a baby involves nursing, and babies seem to naturally prefer their mothers for a while. On the other hand, if I remember right, the Baha'i Writings say that the father is responsible for providing for the education of the children. Both parents have specific, equally important roles in the lives of their children. I think this carries through to the rest of society. The roles of men and women may not be exactly the same, but they are equally important. I think true equality of the sexes is when both men and women acknowledge this and respect each others' roles. On a higher level, I think it also involves the understanding that we're all created by God and deserve equal levels of love and respect.

This is not to say that women aren't supposed to be engineers or that there shouldn't be stay-at-home dads. I think every person and every family has to figure out what works best for them, and that each situation is different.

* Have you been to Haifa for a pilgrimage? If so, what is your most outstanding memory of your pilgrimage?

We're scheduled to go next February, so instead of outstanding memories I'll tell you what I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to finally seeing this place that I've heard so much about and turn to every day in prayer. To looking up the slope of Mount Carmel at the Terraces and the Shrine of the Bab, shining in the sunlight. To looking out over the bay to Akka. To walking through the gardens at Bahji. To feeling that radiance from deep inside that comes from seeing, feeling, touching places imbued with such spirit. ("Blessed is the spot...")

On a more worldly level, we're planning to meet up, maybe in London, with a close friend who moved to New Zealand a few years ago and who is scheduled for the pilgrimage after ours. Also, this will be my first trip outside North America -- and I've been dreaming of travel since I was young -- so I'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the world and being surrounded by a culture not my own.

*That was a while ago, and in the meantime I thought I'd do this quick little upgrade to the site and then post my answers. Instead, I got swept up in that little upgrade that took a couple weeks to complete, and, well, here I am posting my answers rather tardily. My apologies.