I-YOUniverse

I’m making good progress in LOTR. The orcs have Frodo in custody, Aragorn and the Dunedain have taken the paths of the dead, and the Rohirrim are about to ride. Sam reveals that Frodo bears the Ring to Faramir, Boromir’s younger brother and son of the Steward of Gondor, and (in the book) Faramir has no desire to take it for himself or his father, not if he found it lying on the road.

Inconsistent, as Tolkien’s critics charged? Not to me. Faramir is a pure soul; nothing in him is snared by false promises of power and domination. Temptation arises because something within answers the external call. “One is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it” James 1:14 (NRSV).

Scapegoating

We keep tripping over the dynamic of projection, blaming others for our sins. It’s a strategy as old as Adam and as contemporary as 2008 presidential politics. It’s Eve’s fault Adam ate the apple. It’s illegal aliens who are wrecking the U.S. economy. I’ve never met a little green Martian; as far as I know there are no laws against them.

Hooray for California

Oh, speaking of projection. Imagine:

Two young MTV-watching kids go to their preacher. “We want to get married, be true to each other, forsaking all others, till death do us part,” they say.

“No way,” says the preacher.

“How come?” they ask.

“Everybody knows, gays aren’t monogamous,” the preacher replies, “and this isn’t California.”

I promise on a stack of Bibles to read

Speaking of temptation. My reading queue is getting quite long. I’m including it also as a text widget as a kind of self-discipline. Currently it includes:

• Anglo-Saxon Spirituality
• Julian of Norwich (in the Classics of Western Spirituality series)
• Selected Poems of Tagore
• Prayers of Tagore, ed. Vetter
• WordPress for Dummies
• Not yet delivered: Ordeal of Love: C. F. Andrews and India, Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods

Reading is what I do, mostly. Without it, this chair I spend my days in would be a prison. And I have few temptations stronger than amazon.com in my repertoire.

What are they?

Never mind.