(no subject)

Yesterday I was finally glad that I'm not salaried anymore. This week will be a very good week for overtime pay. The hectic pace at work of course means I have had little time to devote to deeper thought. Well, there will be time for that. For today the deeper task for me is to maintain mindfulness and avoid feeling stress.

Dee has been unwell, largely because of the stress she has been under with CUUPS, but for other reasons as well. The last two or three months her emotional stability has been wavering more and more, and yesterday the doctor doubled her prozac. It could be that she is reaching the limits of usefulness for this drug. I don't want to see a repeat of the past, when I lived in fear of her and thought daily of ways I might escape from what had become hell. But I'm very heartened that she came to me to ask for help and support when she started to recognize the relapse coming on.

I was interested by the results of last week's poll and the comments added thereto. It turns out that many of you are more offended by the way in which thoughts are expressed rather than the thoughts themselves. Generally I have to agree as well, the only times I have unfriended people is either because (a) they had friended me first and later decided to unfriend me (no harm no foul as they say) or (b) they became offensive or hateful. (B) only happened once, but it was enough for me to add restrictions on who could post on my journal and who gets to read about certain aspects of my life.

Well, back to the salt mines.

(no subject)

Just posed this question in challenging_god and wanted to record it here, too. (Some of you will see a crossposting.)

Does the strength of Christianity reside in the essential uniqueness of its message?

Or, conversely, is Christianity strengthened if it can be reconciled with other religions spiritually and/or mystically?

I fall into the latter camp. It seems to me that spiritual experiences are the same for people of every culture, and that religions and philosophies have largely derived from attempts to describe these experiences in concrete terms. These "traps for the divine" ultimately fall short because it is not possible to describe the infinite in finite terms.

Nonetheless I feel that my studies of scripture have led me to understand the Christian message as an outgrowth of this same mystical life with many parallels to the teachings of other religions.