Reed Fagan > Recent Status Updates

Another great ch., right up w/ the previous one. So much of this book has been so good that I hate to have to call out 1 major detail, which I imagine/hope gets called out in reviews: in an anecdote here, Ekblad insists on some struggling addicts accepting Communion wine as Christ's blood. Terrible. As a recovering addict, I hate this. E. seems to respect tradition & many churches say 1 element, e.g. bread, suffices.

"Even pastor Feliciano is living under the shadow of the dominant theology, which views God as cosmic Border Patrol chief and church as his deputies. I lament his correct perception that the mainstream church, much like the scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus' time, takes the side of state and the law, rather than that of the people and God's kingdom"–p.182

"Reading Jesus as a coyote who brings us into God's reign against the law at no charge, or presenting baptism as making us all equally "wetback" strangers and aliens, are understandings coming directly out of years of working with undocumented immigrants struggling with the constant reality of possible deportation." — p. 180

It's fun reading & learning Sagan was obsessed w/ "noise", the idea that in any smattering of data, often acoustical, if you listen close enough you hear some story being told. When I learned about dendritic patterns, I got similarly obsessed w/ them & their ubiquity.
A good philosophical problem posed in this ch.: that the "Message" is plans for a Trojan Horse/Doomsday Machine. Plot hasn't resolved this yet.

"After 1945...leaders changed, weapons systems changed, strategy changed, but the # of [nuclear] weapons only increased. The time came when there were more than 25,000...10 for every city... Only so monumental a danger could undo so monumental a foolishness, endorsed by so many leaders in so many nations for so long... But a sentence of death, as Samuel Johnson had noted, concentrates the mind wonderfully." – p. 157

So far much of Sagan's symbolism has been very blatant/on the nose. I know many find such writing sophomoric but I appreciate it; my own art attempts have had similar overt symbols.
Coming to see more of his thoughts about religion & its role in history/society. It interests, maybe even appeals to, him. He deals with some of the inherent problems of Christian faith facilely, but may deal w/ more sophistication ahead.

""[Rudolph Otto] thought of the numinous as a thing 'wholly other,' and the human response to it as 'absolute astonishment'. Now, if that's what religious people talk about when they use words like sacred or holy, I'm with them. I felt something like that just in listening for a signal, never mind in actually receiving it. I think all of science elicits that sense of awe." - pp. 131-132

"She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another... If the 1-year-old, the 5yo, the 12yo, and the 20yo all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship."- p. 131

Sect. "Why Did Jesus Have to Die? Suffering, Election & the Atonement". Ekblad's reading of the ending of Matt, starting w/ J announcing his eventual death & the sons of Zebedee asking to sit at his right hand in his kingdom, ties the text together well. I hadn't thought that Jesus instilling the Lord's Supper was "the cup" they had to drink. D Blue also handles this text well in ch "The Cock", "Consider the Birds".

Best ch yet?

A provocative question Ekblad poses to his drug-using fellow bible students:

"Is it possible that Jesus' answer might sound something like this," I ask: "'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, "Give me some cocaine," you would have asked him, and he would have given you living cocaine'?"
–p. 167

It is really wild, as Sagan wryly points out, that our first transmission that could be picked up by extraterrestrial intelligence was actually a TV broadcast of Hitler opening the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. And then our successive messages have been the crap we've put on TV and strong radio waves since then. Just wow. (So much for the "Dark Forest" doctrine!)

"New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration." - p.14

"In more ways than one, π was tied to infinity.

She had caught a glimpse of something majestic. Hiding between all the ordinary numbers was an infinity of transcendental numbers whose presence you would never have guessed unless you looked deeply into mathematics. Every now and then one of them, like π, would pop up unexpectedly in everyday life. But most of them ... were hiding, minding their own business..." p.11

Already in love! Became a huge Sagan fan from watching this film adaptation & then his series "Cosmos" — later copied by Neil d.T.

A beautiful simple wish opens this book: "May we leave your generation a world better than the one we were given."

And then his young heroine, Ellie, has a, let's say, mystical moment beholding the night sky in the U.P. I, too, have had that unforgettable experience in the Northwoods.

The Hen chapter. Another good one.

"The Cock" ch. Blue explains how the cock & cockfighting, w/ the victor often standing & crowing on its foe, are symbols of power & domination. She speculates Jesus tells his disciples he was going to reject all that & when Peter objects Jesus calls him Satan. Then, when Jesus is arrested, Peter denies Jesus, culminating in a crowing cock, echoing the type of winning Peter wanted. Yet, Jesus builds his church thru P.

The Sparrow ch. I didn't know Mao tried to eradicate sparrows leading to an abundance of pests leading to a famine killing 30M; nor, that House Sparrows ("HOSP"s) kill bluebirds & nest on top of their corpses. Blue sees God's "eye on the sparrow" as love for the insignificant. While I wish she sided more clearly w/ trying to eliminate the invasive HOSP, I appreciate her compassion for all beings, even "out of place".