Response to Elizabeth's blog

This is the part of blogging where I have been the most remiss - looking at other blogs and commenting. Elizabeth's Power of a Story took me back to the Oral Traditions course I took a couple semesters ago. It was great - each student told stories during the course - ranging from comedy to tragedy (it was amazing how closely these two were intertwined) - and part of our tests were recalling the stories. The funny and more gruesome or graphic stories were the ones that stayed in my mind - also the ones about children. I believe that English majors especially view history as stories, there is so much to be learned about life at the time of the story - who is telling it and what they are saying even indirectly about their society.

Ben's blog had great visuals - and an interesting comment about Jake's blog, and the parellel of the myths and Christianity's stories. I wrote about this a little at the beginning of the course - the story of the flood being part of other religions and mythologies. Reading the Metamorphoses, and looking at how goddesses got pregnant ( example of a female going into the water, a male jumping in water and she gets pregnant) makes one wonder if the Bible's claim of the virgin birth somehow evolved from such stories. After all, we already know that some of our religious holidays have much to do with pagan beliefs and rituals as far as their timing, etc. This is probably disconcerting if the Bible is viewed as the literal truth, but in fact, if Jesus is seen as a historical social activist who was crucified for going against the political leaders of the day, it is possible to embrace what he taught, which is not so different from what we face today, the greed of those who have power, the reluctance to help those less fortunate (coincidentially women and children are those most affected in bad times - look how long it has taken to get an effective insurance program for children). I didn't mean to get religious or political with this, but I think in a roundabout way it comes back to what is past possesses the present. Does this make our situation more or less hopeful at this point in history?