9.21.2007

14 comments:

Bird said...

a bored gargoyle sitting watch - or a perplexed one?

Aunty Belle said...

Hey Bird Beauty! This heah gargoyle is thinkin'....tryin' ter come up wif another poem like the one jes' bellwo in the HABITS post.

Anonymous said...

That gargoyle, is it he or she?

Still in the post before this one. Fighting fires are you AB?

UNOHOO

sparringK9 said...

why? grrerhaha

Aunty Belle said...

UNOHOO, whoisu?

She-Pup, glutton fer punishment, I reckon.

Anonymous said...

Hey AB,

this from IAMNOT's blog:

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free Press
Copyright © 2007 Ayaan Hirsi Ali
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780743289689
----------------------------
Introduction
One November morning in 2004, Theo van Gogh got up to go to work at his film production company in Amsterdam. He took out his old black bicycle and headed down a main road. Waiting in a doorway was a Moroccan man with a handgun and two butcher knives.
As Theo cycled down the Linnaeusstraat, Muhammad Bouyeri approached. He pulled out his gun and shot Theo several times. Theo fell off his bike and lurched across the road, then collapsed. Bouyeri followed. Theo begged, "Can't we talk about this?" but Bouyeri shot him four more times. Then he took out one of his butcher knives and sawed into Theo's throat. With the other knife, he stabbed a five-page letter onto Theo's chest.
The letter was addressed to me.
Two months before, Theo and I had made a short film together. We called it Submission, Part 1. I intended one day to make Part 2. (Theo warned me that he would work on Part 2 only if I accepted some humor in it!) Part 1 was about defiance - about Muslim women who shift from total submission to God to a dialogue with their deity. They pray, but instead of casting down their eyes, these women look up, at Allah, with the words of the Quran tattooed on their skin. They tell Him honestly that if submission to Him brings them so much misery, and He remains silent, they may stop submitting.
There is the woman who is flogged for committing adultery; another who is given in marriage to a man she loathes; another who is beaten by her husband on a regular basis; and another who is shunned by her father when he learns that his brother raped her. Each abuse is justified by the perpetrators in the name of God, citing the Quran verses now written on the bodies of the women. These women stand for hundreds of thousands of Muslim women around the world.

Anonymous said...

And more from Ayaan Hirsi,


Theo and I knew it was a dangerous film to make. But Theo was a valiant man - he was a warrior, however unlikely that might seem. He was also very Dutch, and no nation in the world is more deeply attached to freedom of expression than the Dutch. The suggestion that he remove his name from the film's credits for security reasons made Theo angry. He told me once, "If I can't put my name on my own film, in Holland, then Holland isn't Holland any more, and I am not me."
People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
This is the story of my life. It is a subjective record of my own personal memories, as close to accurate as I can make them; my relationship with the rest of my family has been so fractured that I cannot now refresh these recollections by asking them for help. It is the story of what I have experienced, what I've seen, and why I think the way I do. I've come to see that it is useful, and maybe even important, to tell this story. I want to make a few things clear, set a certain number of records straight, and also tell people about another kind of world and what it's really like. I was born in Somalia. I grew up in Somalia, in Saudi Arabia, in Ethiopia, and in Kenya. I came to Europe in 1992, when I was twenty-two, and became a member of Parliament in Holland. I made a movie with Theo, and now I live with bodyguards and armored cars. In April 2006 a Dutch court ordered that I leave my safe-home that I was renting from the State. The judge concluded that my neighbors had a right to argue that they felt unsafe because of my presence in the building. I had already decided to move to the United States before the debate surrounding my Dutch citizenship erupted.
This book is dedicated to my family, and also to the millions and millions of Muslim women who have had to submit.

Anonymous said...
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Unknown said...

maybe the gargoyle's a hermaphrodite. but, yeah, why does it matter, i wonder?

Aunty Belle said...

Anon...Thanky fer the citations from IAMNOT's blog...

Red Lady, does the sex of the gargoyle matter? Not ter me--doan know why that anon say that? I doan git it.

C'mon over ter the FRONT POrch and lave me a suggestion iffin' ya got a minute.

darkfoam said...

that gargoyle looks exactly like how i feel recently

boneman said...

OK, if you want to get into what is wrong with other's religions...I don't get it.

The bible calls fer draggin' out the guy masterbatin' into the streets and stoning him to death.

Am I upset that it's "man" based?
No. Not when y'consider that women can be stoned to death for adultery while the man can buy his way out of the charge if'n he is a member of the church of the region.

Even worse, how can you stand there so high and mighty and belittle the folks who follow islam when you know full well that Saul used to go about the countryside hunting down these confounded christians and REALLY sticking it to them?
When his time came to change, of course, he did. But, too bad for us, he thought more of himself than those who would be coming up behind him in history.

Lastly, there are certain things folks tend to put into the category of metaphorical that maybe not but the truth.
Timothy 1...4:3. how in the last days a bad government will forbid marraiges (even though they lust for each other, as some womene and some men...homosexually speaking) and that some foods will be forbidden (say marijuanna cookies, even though they helped my ol' Ma get her appetite back after her chemo therapy)
But, I suspect that, since some of the church folks from m'church say this is a metaphor, y'all do, too.

I don't give the bible full due because I know in my heart that it was changed and plenty, at that.
But, some of it is as real today as it was so many years ago.
Say, Luke 9: 50.

It's hard t'get around things like men being so danged selfish and stubborn. The first christians were afraid t'make a move most times...folks were after them with big ol' sticks.
They thought they HAD to lie just to get us to see the truth. Never realizing that they wre then turning it all into lies.

Aunty Belle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Aunty Belle said...

HI Red--thanks fer the Front Porch suggestions.


Foam, Sugar...ain't no wonder ya feels that way--gracious, all ya been through?? Whew!

Boney Dear love, I hafta admit, I'se gettin' lost in some of yore ruminations.

You say you know in your "heart" that the bible was changed, and plenty. I think I knows what ya's sayin', yet, thas' jes' a huge charge... and doan we wanna have some hard evidence (not heart evidence) fer such?


I mean, iffin' ya think on it, ya can see why some folks for whom the gospel is "hard to hear" (As John says) would buy into the idea that it was "changed". But there is so much overwhelmin' evidence that this is NOT so, that it is worth our really investigatin' it.

I notice somethin'...the gospel says "Seek and ye shall find". Well now, fer Aunty, somethings can be real literal--so iffin' ya look up the verb "seek", it doan mean to casually glance around. It means to turn everthang upside down to find it..."seek" is more than "look".

Fer this reason, to seek truth, to me, means to investigate wif' a good dollop of seriousness. They is jes' too much verifiable data out there on the historicity of the scripture, and the early Father's commentaries are such that it is clear that they are referring to an unchanged gospel.

Now as fer metaphor in scripture--I doan think it is a way to change or to fudge the truth.

It is exactly a metaphor. A teachin' tool. Meaning that when Jesus compares (Mark 4 30-32)the Kingdom to a Mustard seed that grows into a large trees whar' birds make they nests...ev'r body knows he ain't meaning a literal tree. He is meanin' to give folks an image of how somethin' as small as a mustard seed can grow into somethin' mighty, givin' sustenance to many. As' so it will be wif' Christianity --it will begin very tiny, and grow into a large tree that welcomes all kids of birds...

But Boney, I doan know what ya mean when ya wrote of St. Paul:

"When his time came to change, of course, he did. But, too bad for us, he thought more of himself than those who would be coming up behind him in history."

What does ya' mean?