Ancient Archive-for topics 5-6 mos old

[tannhaus]

Basically I think that the majority of religions have similar ideas and principles. I think I can learn something from them all that will help me grow and become a better person.

Right now I am interested in Buddhism, I am not a Buddhist..

Not sure....but you'd probably enjoy this....and I feel like giving someone something this morning

http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/aba/aba1.html

[Keevy06]

Not sure....but you'd probably enjoy this....and I feel like giving someone something this morning

http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/aba/aba1.html

Cool, thanks.. I'm reading it right now. Sure gives me something to do at work lol.. sooooo bored here

[rachelalexis]

I was raised going to a Congregational Christian church.

Stupid question..but what's that? Is it pentecostal?

I'm a big believer that we're all trying to put a different name to the same thing, and that every belief has a grain of truth in it.

Agreed! Some of Crowley's best work was trying to show the similarities among religions.

Congregational is kinda confusing. Basically, how I understand it, it's the belief that the congregation, not one main church, decides what the faith is. Pretty vague, huh?
At least the one I went to was fairly "normal." We didn't speak in tongues, or any of the other outrageous things you hear about (my mom grew up in that environment, my father was Southern Baptist, so if I had to say it was more like one or the other it leaned more towards Baptist.) They did the adult baptisms as well.

Here is the #1 thing I remember from church.
When I was about five, we went to church on Easter Sunday. They did an easter egg hunt for the kids, with real eggs and then some large plastic ones that we couldn't open until we met up with the pastor so he could open them for us. I didn't know at first why we couldn't open them, but I learned later.
Being five, I was very timid, and all the other kids kicked my @$$ when it came to finding eggs. But after much searching I finally found one of the big ones. It was up in a window and I had to get an adult to help me reach it, and then I ran off, happy as can be, with my little prize in tow.
So we sit in a circle around the pastor, and he tells the story of Easter. This entire time I can't focus, I keep wondering what's in my egg. Is it money like kids found in an egg last year (remember when a dollar or two was like buried treasure?!) Was it candy? What oh what could it be!?
The pastor went around opening each plastic egg. Some had scripture passages inside. I was pretty sure that mine wasn't like that, since it was pretty heavy. My sister's had a few dollar bills inside, and then she had two more (!!! greedy girl didn't even share !!!) that were filled with little chocolate easter egg candies. I was so excited I could hardly sit still when he grabbed the top of my egg and pulled it off.

"EEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!" What the hell was that? I dropped the egg and ran over to my parents as the nastiest smell I had ever encountered wafted out of the opened container. I was literally fighting back tears as the pastor explained what I had so proudly paraded into the room, only to turn away from just moments before.

A vinegar soaked sponge. (I have never been able to smell vinegar without feeling sick to my stomache since.)

Apparently they decided the best way to make Easter fun was to put a vinegar sponge in an egg, that way he could talk about how that was what people did to taunt Jesus, was to offer him vinegar to drink.

As you can tell, even at 23, I am still traumatized by that damned Easter Egg.



By the way, for any of you who are interested in the idea of all faiths being connected, try the book One River, Many Wells by Matthew Fox.

[cimaruta]

As you can tell, even at 23, I am still traumatized by that damned Easter Egg.

oh dear. :: laughs :: I feel your pain. I really do.

[Nora Volkova]

Sad thing is, too, that the "vinegar soaked sponge" would originally have been a reference to posca, and that little vignette in the crucifixion was probably intended to demonstrate that even one of the Roman soldiers on the scene was so moved by Jesus' holiness that we wanted to offer him what little succor he could during Jesus' brutally torturous execution by giving Him a drink from the soldier's own canteen.

From http://www.kitchenmedicinebook.com/016806.html

In ancient Greece, Hippocrates strongly advocated drinking vinegar for his patients as an energizing tonic and a healing elixir. Oxymel, a medicine he often prescribed, was a combination of honey and vinegar; he instructed his students that they would find the drink very useful for expelling phlegm and promoting freedom of breathing. Hippocrates also used vinegar externally, for cleaning ulcerations and treating swellings, inflammations and burns. Meanwhile, the Romans made vinegar from grapes, dates, figs and rye. (The word vinegar comes from the French vin aigre; it was actually called aceto, meaning "acid," by the Romans.) Caesar's armies used sweetened, diluted vinegar called posca (poor man's wine) as a preventative medicine (much as we take vitamins today), to cook with, for its antiseptic properties against insect and snakebites and to clean their wounds after battle (a life-saving practice emulated as recently as World War I). In the second century A.D., the great physician Galen prescribed the combination of honey and vinegar for coughs. It's also recorded that Hannibal used vinegar to remove boulders in his path across the Alps by heating the boulders, then dousing them with cold vinegar, which cracked them into smaller moveable stones; and when faced with slippery snow, he used vinegar to dissolve it.

So not only did they spoil vinegar for you by putting it in the egg, they were missing the point to begin with.

[rachelalexis]

So not only did they spoil vinegar for you by putting it in the egg, they were missing the point to begin with.

That doesn't shock me in the least.

[romanceismusic]

What does your user name mean?

[Charlotte Eve]

It's my name
I'm getting old (lol) and keep forgetting silly forum usernames that I use) so I keep to my 1st and middle name now

[rachelalexis]

It's my name
I'm getting old (lol) and keep forgetting silly forum usernames that I use) so I keep to my 1st and middle name now

Nothing wrong with that! I'm not getting old (well, I am, in the sense that we all are, but I'm still fairly young,) but I still like to make life as easy as possible by using one or two usernames for everything. And having it be my name usually lets people I know know that it's me, since I'm "boring" and use it for everything.

[laurenesque]

It's my name (minus the 'esque') and email.

To be Laurenesque is to be Lauren-like.

[laurenesque]

I consider myself agnostic, though I take pride in the traditions of the Moravian church, which is what my mother is. It's a little-known Protestant sect with a lot of history behind it. Most Moravians are based in the south (North Carolina, specifically) and Pennsylvania, where the Moravian College is.

[Flautapantera]

So I kind of explained mine in my first post, but wouldn't mind posting again!

Okay, so "Flauta" means 'flute' in Spanish (thank you high school and college Spanish classes). Yes, I was a band geek and proud of it. And "Pantera" is not actually the band, but 'panther' in Spanish (again with the Spanish!) and was my high school mascot.

[Faylestar]

Faylestar actually has some history for me.

Everyone always asks how to pronounce it, and just to clear up any confusion it's pronounced fay-lee-star. I get fay-lester or fail-star a lot.

Back in the days of mIRC, when I first started chatting online, my nickname was ^LittleStar^. A year or so later I dropped the "bat wings". I started using it as my ICQ tag, and a few years later I made a Xanga site under that name.

In college I decided to drop the nic I had been using since I was 16, and came up with Fayerie. I used it because I have a little obsession with fairies, and I saw the word "fayerie" in a book used to define the trickery caused by fairies. I picked it up and started using it as my new handle.

My life changed a LOT in college, and after a major change in my group of friends I decided my nic should reflect that. I closed all my accounts under "Fayerie" and was looking for a fresh start. Something that reflected the more innocent me from my "Littlestar" days, and something that said I don't forget my "Fayerie" days. I also wanted the nic to be unique. Ta-da!! A simple combination created Faylestar, and here I am today!

[asenath]

Asenath Waite Derby is a character in the H.P. Lovecraft story, "The Thing on the Doorstep".

[sovietkitsch]

Soviet Kitsch is the title of one of my favourite CDs, by Regina Spektor.