Participating in organized religious practice has both potentially sublime and problematic elements. In this case, the question is basically "if we want to encourage the flourishing of the more life giving bits, how do we work with the deeply imbedded patterns of oppression that do not fall into the "spiritually useful goads" category.

As "people of the book" a certain amount of faithful response must take the form of rewrites.

On January 11, 2006 I posted here a draft rewrite for Aidan's anticipated christening scheduled for January 29th, 2006. This is the Christian sacrament of baptizing and naming an infant as it is practiced in the Methodist church. The United Methodist Hymnal provides a "Baptimal Covenant II" service for use "only when children or others unable to take the vows themselves are being baptized." After everyone involved got a chance to read it and offer suggestions, my mother sent two pages of notes, Pastor Odette of Epworth UMC made cuts and changes, and I made a final draft which follows and will be put in the bulletin this Sunday for use in worship. I feel proud of the cocreative gift we have prepared for Aidan and upstanding in response to the call to use wisely gifts that are given. I hope you will leave comments.

(Invitation to parents and godparents to come forward)

Beloved, Baptism invites us into community as a sign of God's love. We welcome new life through water, spirit, and daily means of grace. The movements of grace are free from our conditions and control. Grace frees us to be the people God created us to be.

We welcome all in this assembly, both Christian and not, who celebrate with this family. Your presence is a gift.

Who presents this child for baptism?

[Parents:] "We present Aidan Paul for baptism."

On behalf of the whole Church I ask you, as Aidan’s parents:

Do you acknowledge the personal and systemic presence of evil, injustice, and oppression, accept the freedom and power God gives to resist them in whatever form they present themselves, and repent of the unethical choices in your own lives?

(Parents) I do.

Having heard the stories of God's love living within and among us in Jesus, do you, as part of his Mysterious Body, reaffirm your commitment to follow the example of Christ, trusting in grace, and in union with Christ calling the whole Church to be opened to people of all ages, nations, genders and races?

(Parents) I do.

(To Parents and Godparents)

Will you nurture one another and Aidan in loving community, so that by your teaching and example he may be guided to accept the best of the Christian tradition for himself, and help others build a life of grace, love, and faith?

(those so moved respond aloud) I do.

Let the people say: Amen.

CELEBRATION OF BAPTISM

Loving God, soul’s Mother, spirit’s Father,

Generations of witnesses sing of your liberating love. Through chaos and nothingness you sweep across dark waters bringing forth light. In the days of Noah, through the water you saved those on the ark. After the flood you set in the sky the promise of the rainbow. When you heard the cry of Israel enslaved in Egypt you led them through the River to freedom.

O, sing, all the earth! Speak and tell of God's mercy.

In the fullness of time you sent Jesus, nurtured in the water of the Womb. He was baptized by John and anointed by your Spirit. Jesus called and calls women and men as his disciples to share in baptism, death, and resurrection, to live as his body, and to carry holy gifts of love and mercy to the world.

Declare to the nations the glory among all the people.

Pour out your Holy Spirit to bless this gift of water. Bless he who receives it and clothe him in all that is good, so that all his dyings and risings may reflect the image of Christ.

All praise to you, beloved Creator, through your Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Your steadfast love endures forever. Amen.

Aidan Paul, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The Holy Spirit work within you, that being born through womb, water, and Spirit you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Now it is our joy to welcome Aidan Paul, our new little brother in Christ.

Through baptism you are embraced by the Holy Spirit, welcomed into God's new creation, and called to share in Christ's great celebration of life. We are many and we are one in Christ Jesus. With shouts of joy and songs of thanksgiving we welcome you as a member of the family of Christ. AMEN.

Paula Craig and Brandon WilliamsCraig in conversation about Baptism

Paula Craig (my mother and a formidable writer and poet) offered the following responses to my first draft rewrite of a Methodist Baptismal Service. My replies to her are in itallics.

I’m challenged by your re-write to articulate what I understand Christian baptism to be.

I had hoped you might be.

Baptism is an essential in-house function. It is initiation into a mystical body calling on a spiritual presence beyond our ideas of community or inclusiveness. This is a truth to be respected, revered (if not understood) and not accommodated to our social needs. Stripping and accommodating is how we have become a woefully uninitiated people…unprepared when fear, evil or grief rises among us.

In-house - agreed, but into the aforementioned body that is both mystical and incarnate, thereby demanding acceptance of the layered reality of both reverence of the transcendent and the obligation to respond to human need. The question is not which to respect but how much of each makes for solid ritual practice by serving both. Human ideas of community and inclusiveness are the only ones we have finally, to project on the divine in hopes of drawing near enough to hear the rueful (and hopefully sometimes fond) shaking of eternal heads at our fantasies. Rewrites become "stripping" or overly "accomodating" when the object becomes averting provocative discomfort rather than refining our suffering with our own malfeasance and ignorance so that it is legitimate.

Do you conceive Aidan’s baptism as being only a commitment of the Christian congregation rather than of parents and sponsors to rear the child in Christ’s holy church (meaning ‘mystical body’)? --a kind of half baptism? Have I missed your point? Or am I clear in honest disagreement?

I'm not certain if we are in disagreement yet, as postions haven't been made clear. This seems like sorting and certanly feels honest and thoroughly agreeable. Part of the question I hear you asking may be a matter of emphasis. As in a funeral, the ceremony is not for the deceased but for the living who remain. While an infant is not the equivalent at the level of consciousness with a corpse and will live with the resonance of the ritual, Baptizing has always struck me as being about the community. I suspect the divine does not require it, if the divine requires anything from us at all. With that said, I intend the rewrites to shift several dynamics, one of which is an emphasis on the immediate community present to the life of the child. This may even help slightly in bringing ideas of God a bit nearer to incarnation from the Way Out There model that makes such a fertile ground for intermediary clergy and lay persons to interpret divine will so poorly. I hope to make clear that it is ALL about the obligation of parents and sponsors to rear the child in the sacred image of Christ’s holy church, which often departs significantly from the more warty corpo-reality.

A LIST OF MY OPINIONS

I absolutely love The Summons for theological and dramatic reasons. I will sing it roughly when you all are singing it to be in solidarity with you ---I can hear all of our Scottish ancestors humming and nodding their heads.

Amen. Sing roughly if you like but certainly with gusto (see Wesley's instructions).

You can’t beat the succinct Traditional Beginning---it says exactly what you’re doing in few words without embroidery. It is timeless, states major symbols and lets everyone define “gift” for themselves. Commentary is nice but unnecessary. The Celebrant addresses the people who are initiating. Your ‘Presentation of the Hopeful’ sounds gracious, recognizing guests and visitors, but it needs a “that” before “aspires”.

Pastor Odette mercifully cut most of my commentary, beyond that the beginning is mostly influenced by her style which is less muscular than "God's mighty acts" and tends to challenge the people within her reach to take responsibility for being the hands of the body which must struggle with all that "salvation" suggests.

I believe this ceremony is the challenging of the parents and sponsors by the church (“On behalf of the whole church I ask you…”) to examine and commit to rearing the child on a definite spiritual path (that doesn’t mean the adults don’t doubt, gritch, and protest), and the parents are challenging the church to examine and commit to being responsible for what they say, do and mean around this child by their bringing him to the altar.

Agreed. Well said.

To repent means to acknowledge one’s own “missing the mark” without reserving any excuse for oneself and deciding to change! (not a feeling). One can sincerely regret one’s losses without repenting of sin. Confession has the drama of renunciation! (not ‘resolve’) which cleanses, the washing that parallels the command “to consecrate yourselves”. Wickedness is way more than cruelty.

Have restored "repent" and more but the drama of confession and wickedness begins the downhill march toward Sin as a literal original state or transgressing against religious law which estranges one from God. I don't think estrangement is possible in the way it is usually understood.
Getting at this will require considerably more space and time. Developmentally speaking, for this particular rite of passage, I'd rather get local and specific with the working of inner and outer conflict that Sin suggests, accessing human judgments like "shameful, deplorable, or utterly wrong." The solution I've chosen is not a winner but it is the best I can do at this time, given my limited understanding both of language and of sin. The best words for this might need to be a three act tragedy to get at it thoroughly.

“Do you accept the freedom…..” is a brilliant sentence that you could spend weeks analyzing. I don’t see how you can be without it. “Acceptance” is key.

Restored - how right you are!

{I get more zealous the more I go on.}

Go, Mom!

How about: “Do you, as part of the Mysterious Body, reaffirm your commitment to follow the example of Christ, trusting in grace, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, genders and races?” (You, of all people, would leave this out?)

Restored (and improved)?

“Will you nurture Aidan (this ritual is focused on him) in the community of the Church that by your teaching and example he may be guided to accept divine grace for himself, speak openly of faith, and lead a Christian life.” (not a “nice” life, or a loving life, but a Christian life)

Got it. See my version : Will you nurture one another and Aidan in loving community, so that by your teaching and example he may be guided to accept the best of the Christian tradition for himself, and help others build a life of grace, love, and faith?

(This is a commitment to teach him the mythology that his ancestors have wrestled with and been comforted by—Jesus Loves Me, the Nativity pageant, singing in the choir.)

This is also a committment to guide him toward cocreating Christian culture at the mythological level, taking responsibility for the ways the stories always include interpretation and relational consequences.

I was just wondering: Are Leon and Iris comfortable being godparents/sponsors? Didn’t you tell me they aren’t Christians? Is this accommodating? Are you planning for just parents to be responders? How can non-Christians sponsor initiates into Christ? Knowing you, I bet you and Odette have thrashed this out.

Here is an essential part. Odette made changes (re-orienting questions to parents) and I incorporated your concern. The crux is this. One of the lessons being learned by those who are defining and developing the Process Arts, by whatever name, involves what Jung refered to in terms of the "return of the repressed." The voices consigned to "not part of Us" are the ones ideally qualified to help us mature into an interdependent and flexible (read likely to survive) Us. In a room/community of Christians the god and goddessparents will be non-Christian because they are the ones who can ask him if he is perpetuating the best of what is traditional. Only the most perspicacious of an In-group can approach this. I feel strongly that godparents should be those who actually feel moved/called to be in the life of the child, rather than appearing to share a poorly understood mythological system. These are the people who love and know him, who happen to be able to inquire with him deeply, when the time comes, whether he really is living the life he believes Christ requires of him. It is precisely their position on the outside but living in a culturally Christian context which allows them the necessary perspective to sharpen his ongoing internal critique of his own behavior. This is what two centuries of rising dominance has made so difficult for Christianity as a whole.

Peace be with you, my son----, a ritual is not in “whatever way” but a specific, repeated, handed-down way. The Peace that is to be passed is not just regular peace but The Peace of Christ, the Peace that Passeth Understanding (a genuine wishing that ‘the other’ will experience the mystical union)

Amen, and also with you. And it is our obligation to participate in the specific, handed down, repetitions in a way that is both as conscious as possible and open to the movements of the Spirit in our time, thus the shifts of text. The Peace that Passeth needs grabbing with experiential hooks of regular peace lest we wander bruised in the station pretending that we are on the Spirit's movement that just left without us. You taught me to breathe in and share the genuine wish for the mystical union, but it was by singing over and over the very regular ritual songs that were handed down to you. Not by doing as I was told when it became clear that everybody involved had been passed by understanding.

Loving God, soul’s Mother, spirit’s Father (oh, yes, yes, yes)

Odette doesn't pray this way but I asked if we might reinstate it after her cuts - so it is back. This was right out of your mouth to my tender ears and only later reinforced by latter day post-Jungians.

“……..When you heard the cry of……through the River Jordan” both are major images to recall, necessary to the story. Typo on ‘ark.’ “Sing, all the earth. Speak and tell of God’s mercy.” (because it is not about personal activity). My preference: “He called and calls people as his disciples to share in baptism, death, and resurrection and to live as his body to carry to the world holy gifts of love and mercy.” I love and am inspired by everything from “Declare these works…… to shouts and songs.

Restored "cry" and "River," "Speak and tell," and part of your preference. I'm glad the rest caught you. I'm hoping for both shouts and songs. If nobody jumps up I may have to lead.

Rituals are a gift of the Ancestors to protect us from being trendy at big moments of our lives. I’m sure the whole thing will be a lovely sacrament. I love you all, Mom

I share your wariness of trends. If you meet anybody else carefully and cocreatively rewriting bits of ancestral ritual, trying to honor and preserve the most life giving and mysterious parts of being mortal in the presence of eternity let me know. I'd love to feel like that is a trend.

I love you too. I can't sufficiently express how fantastic it is to have this exchange. You're the most.

Making dendrites?

I inquired of Aidan, our 3.5mo old, if he is "high-functioning today? "Soaking up everything like a sponge? Making dendrites?"

What are dedrites?

den·drite (dĕn'drīt') n.
A mineral crystallizing in another mineral in the form of a branching or treelike mark. A rock or mineral bearing such a mark or marks. A branched protoplasmic extension of a nerve cell that conducts impulses from adjacent cells inward toward the cell body. A single nerve may possess many dendrites. Also called dendron.

One of many branching, treelike mineral and inwardly conductive nerve cells. Also an image, a projection of something imagined scientifically, from a world that is too small to see without mechanical aid.

This is not an arguement about being scientific or trusting what other people belive or tell you; certainly not in the sense one might listen to someone argue the moon's existence is dubious because no one in the room has actually touched it. Rather, it suggests a collecting of the various ways something exists, an inquiry into the ways it is associated to other known images in a zone where generalities are helpful to understanding a field of experience rather than unhelpful, impeding the progress of rational analysis, for example.

So, I can't touch a dendrite in the same way I can touch my child. Nonetheless I inquire, more than a little humorously, after his dendrite production process, perhaps as a shorthand to remind myself what he may be up to right now, aside from napping, consuming milk, and excreting every known bodily fluid imaginable. This is certainly a process to which I can and do connect with the naked eye or hand.

Naked eye, hand, body, baby, parent - all within a more familiar frame than "dendrite," which is why, I guess, the question is funny, in so far as it is. Touching conveys a kind of reality linked to the way in which sensorial learning is received differently from faith in an abstraction, like "dendrite." In which most folks believes without direct experience, or accept the authority of an expert pronouncement of fact or definition.

Perhaps Nakedness is the basic unit of human measure since, regardless of the collectivity of an imagining unconscious, our conscious experience mostly extends as far as our sensorial range before needing additional encouragement.

How far can a foot travel and an arm reach? What of seeing stars with "the naked eye" and feeling the shape of this world as related by my personal and individual hands?

Both literal and obviously metaphorical nakedness are a part of being human.

"Some of them told us that they were standing naked before the gas chambers when they were suddenly ordered to get dressed and were sent to our camp."

"When it comes to sin, I think God wants us to come to him in much the same way that my wife came to me that night. He wants us to take it all off and stand there before him naked."

"Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law at Champaign, who opposed the 1991 Gulf War, said that "at least President Bush went through the motions" and got a Security Council resolution and authority from Congress under the War Powers Act to support that war. Clinton had neither, he said. "Clinton is standing naked before the world in this aggression, except for a British fig leaf," Boyle said."

"Before Lenny, comedy consisted of hacks who were doing "My girlfriend is so fat.." and "A Rabbi, a Polac, and a Greek walk into a bar..." type jokes. Lenny revolutionized the comedy scene by striping away the superficial banality and willingly standing naked before audiences exposing his thoughts and ideas. He paved the way for the Richard Pryor's, George Carlin's and Bill Hicks' of the world."

Hmm. I guess I'm getting in contact, through extensions from a central idea, with potentially related adjacent ideas that are conductive inward, as associative impulses, toward the imagined body. A dendritic process?

Word work

Participating in organized religious practice has both potentially sublime and problematic elements. In this case, the question is basically "if we want to encourage the flourishing of the more life giving bits, how do we work with the deeply imbedded patterns of oppression that do not fall into the "spiritually useful goads" category.

As "people of the book" a certain amount of faithful response must take the form of rewrites.

Here is a work in progess.

Aidan will be christened January 29th, 2006. This is the Christian sacrament of baptizing and naming an infant as it is practiced in the Methodist church. The United Methodist Hymnal provides a "Baptimal Covenant II" service for use "only when children or others unable to take the vows themselves are being baptized" It goes something like this (my version in italics below may be compared to the original on pages 39-43 in the UMHymnal):

Intro: persons come forward during an appropriate hymn (maybe "Silence, Frenzied, Unclean Spirits?" UMH 264 or possibly "He's Trampling the Unrighteous with Hooves of Iron?") (better go with "This is a world of love"-with word changes from This Is My Father's World UMH 144, or Be Thou My Vision UMH 451, or best "The Summons" in The Faith We Sing 2130

Traditional beginning...
Pastor: Brothers and sisters in Christ: Through the Sacrament of Baptism we are initiated into Christ's holy church. We are incorporated into God's mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit. All this is God's gift, offered to us without price.

a shift might look like

Celebrant: Beloved Church, Baptism invites us to enter community, bathed and initiated in signs of God's love that gift our wild and precious lives. We are many and also one body, moving in the world we know in new ways, tending soul, welcoming new life in ourselves and others through water, spirit, and daily signs of all kinds. These mysterious movements of grace are free from conditions, like a newborn given without price, but also in the sense of insisting on liberation from the mercenary obsessions that drive so much of our world.

Presentation of the Hopeful:

Celebrant: We invite those adults to come forward who bring a child for baptism. All others in this assembly, both Christian and not, please participate with words, song, and silence as you feel moved and hear that this is a reconciling congregation, aspires to love unconditionally, and would not have you be other than you are before loving you.

[Parents:] "We present Aidan Paul for baptism."


Church, I ask you:

Taking stock of your own choices, do you acknowledge the personal and systemic presence of evil, injustice, and oppression and feel sincere regret for the destructive choices in which you have participated?

(those so moved respond aloud) I do.

Do you commit to make and call for whatever changes are necessary to circumvent cruelty taking root and flourishing, and resolve to deepen your understanding and trust in order to behave more compassionately as you live?

(those so moved respond aloud) I do.

Have you heard the stories about God's love living within and among us in Jesus' unconditional love for every creature, and do you feel the deep pull to follow this example yourself, calling for the whole church to do the same?

(those so moved respond aloud) I do.

Do you, as one mysterious body with many beautiful and living parts, reaffirm your commitment to follow the examples of Christ, therby understanding deeply the ways in which we cause each other harm, so that you will not fall into these habits in the future?

(those so moved respond aloud) I do.

Will you nurture one another and Aidan by making "Church" synonymous with loving and responsive Community, so that by your teaching and example he and all children may be guided to accept and speak openly of grace, faith, and the leading of a loving life?

(those so moved respond aloud) I do.

Let the people say: Amen.

Peace be with you. And also with you.

Please turn to those around you and offer them, in whatever way moves you, an invitation to share in this Peace...

Let us pray.

Loving God, soul's Mother, spirit's Father,

These are the stories of our people for generations. Through chaos and nothingness you sweep across dark waters bringing forth light. In the days of Noah, through the water you saved those on the arc. After the flood you set in the clouds the rainbow. When you saw Israel enslaved in Egypt you led them through the sea. Their children you brought through water to land you had promised.

Sing, all the earth. Speak and spread mercy each day.

In the fullness of time you sent Jesus, nurtured in the water of the Womb. He went down into the water, was baptized by John, and anointed by your Spirit. He called and calls women and men as his disciples to share in baptism, death, and resurrection, and as his hands to carry to the world holy gifts of love and mercy.

Declare these works to the nations, and glory among all the people.

Pour out your Holy Spirit to bless this gift of water and he who receives it, to wash away any reasons for guilt as he lives and clothe him in all that is good, so that throughout his life his dyings and risings may reflect the image of Christ.

All praise to you, Beloved Creator, through your Son Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and loves for ever. Amen.

I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The Holy Spirit work within you, that being born through womb, water, and Spirit you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Now it is our joy to welcome our new little brother in Christ.

Through baptism you are embraced by the Holy Spirit, welcomed into God's new creation, and called to share in Christ's great celebration of life. We are many and we are one in Christ Jesus. With shouts of joy and songs of thanksgiving we welcome you as a member of the family of Christ.

Natch. Followed by shouts and songs...

Comments?

Be afeared, be way afeared.

Chris Wicke: here's something slightly disturbing...

bdwilliamscraig: Damned Scary "Outsource It," but in a culture where the civic religion is The Market, the gods are everywhere.

Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: December 9, 2005

FUZHOU, China - One of China's newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. Posters of World of Warcraft and Magic Land hang above a corps of young people glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards in the latest hustle for money.

Natalie Behring for The New York Times

Young Chinese men playing video games in an online-gaming center, one of hundreds that take fees to help players reach higher levels.

Farming for Virtual Gold

Enlarge This Image

Natalie Behring for The New York Times

Workers have strict quotas and are supervised by bosses who equip them with computers, software and Internet connections to thrash online trolls, gnomes and ogres.

The people working at this clandestine locale are "gold farmers." Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they "play" computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash.

That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them.

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day."

He and his comrades have created yet another new business out of cheap Chinese labor. They are tapping into the fast-growing world of "massively multiplayer online games," which involve role playing and often revolve around fantasy or warfare in medieval kingdoms or distant galaxies.

With more than 100 million people worldwide logging on every month to play interactive computer games, game companies are already generating revenues of $3.6 billion a year from subscriptions, according to DFC Intelligence, which tracks the computer gaming market.

For the Chinese in game-playing factories like these, though, it is not all fun and games. These workers have strict quotas and are supervised by bosses who equip them with computers, software and Internet connections to thrash online trolls, gnomes and ogres.

As they grind through the games, they accumulate virtual currency that is valuable to game players around the world. The games allow players to trade currency to other players, who can then use it to buy better armor, amulets, magic spells and other accoutrements to climb to higher levels or create more powerful characters.

The Internet is now filled with classified advertisements from small companies - many of them here in China - auctioning for real money their powerful figures, called avatars. These ventures join individual gamers who started marketing such virtual weapons and wares a few years ago to help support their hobby.

"I'm selling an account with a level-60 Shaman," says one ad from a player code-named Silver Fire, who uses QQ, the popular Chinese instant messaging service here in China. "If you want to know more details, let's chat on QQ."

This virtual economy is blurring the line between fantasy and reality. A few years ago, online subscribers started competing with other players from around the world. And before long, many casual gamers started asking other people to baby-sit for their accounts, or play while they were away.

That has spawned the creation of hundreds - perhaps thousands - of online gaming factories here in China. By some estimates, there are well over 100,000 young people working in China as full-time gamers, toiling away in dark Internet cafes, abandoned warehouses, small offices and private homes.

Most of the players here actually make less than a quarter an hour, but they often get room, board and free computer game play in these "virtual sweatshops."

"It's unimaginable how big this is," says Chen Yu, 27, who employs 20 full-time gamers here in Fuzhou. "They say that in some of these popular games, 40 or 50 percent of the players are actually Chinese farmers."

For many online gamers, the point is no longer simply to play. Instead they hunt for the fanciest sword or the most potent charm, or seek a shortcut to the thrill of sparring at the highest level. And all of that is available - for a price.

"What we're seeing here is the emergence of virtual currencies and virtual economies," says Peter Ludlow, a longtime gamer and a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "People are making real money here, so these games are becoming like real economies."

The Chinese government estimates that there are 24 million online gamers in China, meaning that nearly one in four Internet users here play online games.

And many online gaming factories have come to resemble the thousands of textile mills and toy factories that have moved here from Taiwan, Hong Kong and other parts of the world to take advantage of China's vast pool of cheap labor.

"They're exploiting the wage difference between the U.S. and China for unskilled labor," says Edward Castronova, a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University and the author of "Synthetic Worlds," a study of the economy of online games. "The cost of someone's time is much bigger in America than in China."

But gold farming is controversial. Many hard-core gamers say the factories are distorting the games. What is more, the big gaming companies say the factories are violating the terms of use of the games, which forbid players to sell their virtual goods for real money. They have vowed to crack down on those suspected of being small businesses rather than individual gamers.

"We know that such business exists, and we are against it," says Guolong Jin, a spokesman for N-Sina, a Chinese joint venture with NC Soft, the Korean creator of Lineage, one of the most popular online games. "Playing games should be fun and entertaining. It's not a way to trade and make money."

Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Universal and the creator of World of Warcraft, one of the world's most popular games with more than 4.5 million online subscribers, has also called the trading illegal.

But little has been done to halt the mushrooming black market in virtual goods, many available for sale on eBay, Yahoo and other online sites.

On eBay, for example, 100 grams of World of Warcraft gold is available for $9.99 or two über characters from EverQuest for $35.50. It costs $269 to be transported to Level 60 in Warcraft, and it typically takes 15 days to get the account back at the higher level.

In fact, the trading of virtual property is so lucrative that some big online gaming companies have jumped into the business, creating their own online marketplaces.

Sony Online Entertainment, the creator of EverQuest, a popular medieval war and fantasy game, recently created Station Exchange. Sony calls the site an alternative to "crooked sellers in unsanctioned auctions."

Other start-up companies are also rushing in, acting as international brokers to match buyers and sellers in different countries, and contracting out business to Chinese gold-farming factories.

"We're like a stock exchange. You can buy and sell with us," says Alan Qiu, a founder of the Shanghai-based Ucdao.com. "We farm out the different jobs. Some people say, 'I want to get from Level 1 to 60,' so we find someone to do that."

Now there are factories all over China. In central Henan Province, one factory has 300 computers. At another factory in western Gansu Province, the workers log up to 18 hours a day.

The operators are mostly young men like Luo Gang, a 28-year-old college graduate who borrowed $25,000 from his father to start an Internet cafe that morphed into a gold farm on the outskirts of Chongqing in central China.

Mr. Luo has 23 workers, who each earn about $75 a month.

"If they didn't work here they'd probably be working as waiters in hot pot restaurants," he said, "or go back to help their parents farm the land - or more likely, hang out on the streets with no job at all."

Here in coastal Fujian Province, several gold farm operators offered access to their underground facilities recently, on the condition that their names not be disclosed because the legal and tax status of some of the operations is in question.

One huge site here in Fuzhou has over 100 computers in a series of large, dark rooms. About 70 players could be seen playing quietly one weekday afternoon, while some players slept by the keyboard.

"We recruit through newspaper ads," said the 30-something owner, whose workers range from 18 to 25 years old. "They all know how to play online games, but they're not willing to do hard labor."

Another operation here has about 40 computers lined up in the basement of an old dilapidated building, all playing the same game. Upstairs were unkempt, closet-size dormitory rooms where several gamers slept on bunk beds; the floors were strewn with hot pots.

The owners concede that the risks are enormous. The global gaming companies regularly shut accounts they suspect are engaged in farming. And the government here is cracking down on Internet addiction now, monitoring more closely how much time each player spends online.

To survive, the factories employ sophisticated gaming strategies. They hide their identities online, hire hackers to seek out new strategies, and create automatic keys to bolster winnings.

But at some point, says Mr. Yu, the Fuzhou factory operator who started out selling computer supplies and now has an army of gamers outside his office here, he knows he will have to move on.

"My ultimate goal is to do Internet-based foreign trade," he says, sitting in a bare office with a solid steel safe under his desk. "Online games are just my first step into the business."

Virtual Achievement for Hire: It's Only Wrong if You Get Caught (December 9, 2005)

Video Gaming: Alternative Rx for Xbox Fever (December 7, 2005)

South Koreans React to Video Games' Depictions of North Koreans (December 7, 2005)

Virtual Stars Compete for Real Money (December 6, 2005)

The Gamer: What Good Is Sitting Alone Killing Fiends? (December 3, 2005)

Towards the end of one of his recent public talks, I asked Huston Smith for thoughts on what many are calling "neoshamanism," (Dan Noel's The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities), with which I connect "new monasticism" (Thomas Moore's Meditations: On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life), and imagine to be "a form of psychic community service" (Pat Monaghan writing about Arnold Mindell's The Shaman's Body : A New Shamanism for Transforming Health, Relationships, and the Community). In summary, he was very excited by the idea as a direction in which western religious experience might develop, is not impressed with most popular uses of the word (shaman), and recomends a return to more ancient roots which would make the prefix (neo) problematic. I'll ask him if I may post some or all of a recording of his talk in our member area.

At any rate, I'll need to get considerably clearer about my own use of the terms suggested above and this seems to be a fine place to do so, at least in part, by outlining howI see and hear others using these ideas as well as what I believe is implied and unsaid throughout. If I lapse into excessivley "baroque prose" (thanks to my Diss Advisor, Dennis Slattery, for the phrase) please say so in the comments area. What will be developed here briefly will be folded out in full (and with help) within the member area.

Green Men? Research off? Copenhagen area 1st c B.C. and Inca with identical deities?

Many, many thanks to Iris Mcginnis for pointing this out.


"The Green Man in Antiquity" from p41 of Green Man: The Archetypes of our Oneness with the Earth by William Anderson with Photogrpahs by Clive Hicks. ISBN 0-00-599255-9
The text reads 27 Cernunnos as a horned deity surrounded by animals on an inner plaque of the Gundestrup Cauldron, First century B.C. Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen.







"Pachacamac: God of Earthquakes" from p89 of The Book of Gods and Goddesses: A Visual Directory of Ancient and Modern Deities by Eric Chaline. The image is a line drawing with no citation of source. ISBN 0-06-073256-3


Many many thanks to Iris McGinnis for pointing these out and providing the texts to scan.

Questions at issue:
If God (of Sunday) is dead but gods still abound, is The Market the replacement monotheism seeping the globe? One among many? Better refered to as Secular Marketism?
Where may this be tracked, and how is best? What qualities are consequences of this worship? What counter examples present themselves?

Memorable Quotes from A Christmas Story (1983)

from memorable quotes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/quotes
Narrator: Some men are Baptists, others Catholics, my father was an Oldsmobile man.
Mr. Parker: That son of a bitch would freeze up in the middle of summer on the equator!
Mother: Little pitchers!
Mr. Parker: Thanks... hold it!
[the furnace conks out]
Mr. Parker: It's a clinker! That blasted stupid furnace dadgummit!
[he walks down a few stairs and falls the rest of the way down]
Mr. Parker: Damn skates!
[coughing]
Mr. Parker: Oh for cripes sake open up the damper will ya? Who the hell turned it all the way down? AGAIN! Oh blasted!
Narrator: In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.

December 13, 2004 Blacktop Jungle: Auto Intoxication

from http://mckeesport.dementia.org/blog/000156.html

Garrison Keillor has written about how car-buying in fictional Lake Wobegon, Minn., was "a matter of faith." According to Keillor, Catholics bought Chevrolets from Krebsbach Chevrolet; Protestants bought Fords from Bunsen Motors. One Lutheran who was "tempted by Chevyship," he writes, was coaxed into buying a Ford by his pastor, and it turned out to be a lemon.

Keillor was exaggerating, of course, but it wasn't that long ago when car ownership was a matter of some faith. Some families swore by General Motors, or Fords, or Chryslers. Another humorist, Jean Shepherd, wrote about how his father ("the Old Man") was a solid Oldsmobile man.

Macy's Parade

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051124/ap_on_re_us/thanksgiving_parade_16

NEW YORK - A giant balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade snagged a street light and caused part of it to fall, injuring a woman and a child.

The accident happened in Times Square near the end of the nationally televised parade when the tethers on the "M&M's Chocolate Candies" balloon became entangled on the head of the street lamp and knocked it off.

"It happened so fast," said parade spectator Karim Simmons. "It dropped like a rock."

The accident marred the holiday celebration but the injuries were less serious than in the parade eight years ago when another balloon knocked over a lightpost, critically injuring a woman and prompting changes in parade rules.

The Macy's parade started in 1924 and has been an annual tradition, canceled only in the World War II years of 1942 to 1944.

The balloons, including Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer, the parade's first Latina balloon character, shared top billing with 10 marching bands, 27 floats and performers such as LeAnn Rimes, Aaron Neville and Kristin Chenoweth.

Also see http://www.macysparade.com

One of the largest (resources expended and people paying attention) events of its kind in the world, in contrast with an earlier way that what was most valuable was celebrated publicly.

http://www.elsalvador.org/home.nsf/0/be94ced49a416a4685256b09005abbd8?OpenDocument

Holy Week Is very much celebrated throughout the country since Catholic Romans are predominant. Salvadorans celebrate Holy Week before Resurrection Sunday or Easter Sunday. Processions are held everywhere in the country with images of Jesus carrying the cross. Daily religious services are carried out. A place of interest is Sonsonate, El Salvador's fourth most important city, well known for its street carpets made of colorful flowers and colored sawdust that are created on the street of the procession. This Holy Week tradition attracts visitors from all over the country.

or

Moriones Festival

http://www.stuartxchange.org/Festivals.html

Boac, Mogpog & Gasal, Marinduque
Holy Week
The towns of Boac, Mogpog and Gasan in the island province of Marinduque become the stages for this 200 year old religious folk festival celebrated during the Lenten season. Morion (mask or visor) is that part of the medieval Roman armor that covers the face. Moriones refers to the masked and costumed penitents who march around the town as barbaric Romans. The festival climaxes with the reenactment of the beheading of Longinus, the centurion who pierced the side of Jesus. As legend tells it, blind in one eye, his sight was restored when Christ's blood splattered on his eye. A unique Holy Week experience, the Moriones festival is much more than the colorful Roman mask and costumes. It is a window into the religiosity of a culture exhibiting itself through a variety of traditional lenten rituals and presentations: the senaculo, passion readings, the reenactment of the Christ's cross-carrying walk to Calvary, penitents and flaggelants, the late afternoon candlelit processions of religious floats and the town faithful.

From my site, in development, and open to constructive input.

Brandon WilliamsCraig asserts the copy right to be involved in decision making regarding use of all original articulations on this site, it's HTML content and files, and on the following original ideas and terms articulated here, as well as at abcglobal.net, beamish.org, guardiansofpeace.org, and processarts.org. Though by contemporary law I "own" these framing ideas, this approach seems profoundly restrictive and contrary to their development. They do represent my considerable creative effort as well as that of the persons who have had influential collaborative input. I/we use this cultural fantasy of Ownership to request the building of relationship around creative collaboration. Put more simply, if you want to use these terms and ideas contact me and include me in the process by name and by making collaborative choices.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

"This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use." For instance, the original idea "Process Arts" suggests the following interrelated ideas:

1) Human cultures are shifting toward tending the way of interaction at least as attentively as the products that result. How is becoming consciously as important as What we make. Examples of this trend, the language for which originated in the new "Psychology" of the 20th Century, include coaching, the wide use of outside-system consultants and facilitators, mediation, therapy, etc.

2) Conscious and unarticulated methods are becoming more and more prevalent which assist in this shift and contribute to building Communities Of Understanding which are capable of dealing with the complexity of contemporary abstract systems only because many people are working together on how they work together. Examples include Processwork (Mindell), Quaker Meeting, Focusing (Gendlin), Organizational Development, Council Circles (indigenous), Non-violent Communication (Rosenberg), mythography (Doty), Group Therapy, Community Building (Peck), many forms of martial and performing arts, etc. A fine place to begin expanding this list for yourself might be here.

3) Naming and thereby qualifying these "Process Arts" by how they are practiced, rather than who founded/owns them or what they tangibly produce, is a participation in an educational intervention in culture that values this shift at least as deeply as the training in the Liberal Arts modern nations almost universally speak of promoting. Thus process-level education is expected as widely as reading, writing, arithmetic, and their various scientific products, and leaders may be expected to have at least a working familiarity with process-level skills.

When you refer to some method, approach, or application as a "Process Art," please credit me (Brandon Williamscraig) with origination of the term and provide your own clarifications as necessary. Here is one example where this has been done well.

Associative Inquiry TM; Analogical System Knowledgebase and the ASK acronym and logo TM; Associative Inclusion Dynamics and the AID acronym and logoTM			Process Arts TM, and The Process Arts TM Association for Cultural Movement and Education SM
Systemic Whole Awareness Training TM			Guardians of Peace TM, and The Guardians of Peace TM, including the gpx designation and logos
Association for Building Community SM, ABCGlobal TM, and ABCglobal.net TM			Community of Understanding SM
			Aimail TM, Wholefroods TM ,
Culturopoesis TM
Mythopathic TM
Imagenerative TM
Click here for glossary of terms

Recommend Doniger

"These stories, for all their Machiavellian labyrinths, have much to tell us about our basic ideas about authenticity, identity, and the relationship between public and private selves. They are myths as I define them in the broadest sense: stories that are not necessarily connected with a particular religion but that have the force of religious beliefs, that endure in the cultural imagination as religious texts do, and that deal with deeply held beliefs that religions, too, often traffic in. Such myths are often invoked by people in real-life situations that duplicate the situations they have heard about in myths. There are myths associated both with self-imitation in general and with the more particular form of passing as what you are. In this article I would like to explore some of the implications of self-imitation in racial passing, gender passing, and political passing."

Introduction

My dream this morning, hard upon waking, is that today is my wedding day. At the top of the stairs that rise from the entry way inside the front door, I see my resplendent bride standing in the difuse sunlight, beside her a hastily selected maid of honor - a friend from work.
I know that I have succeeded. My deception has been complete and she has come all the way to this day not knowing that it is a sham. There will be no guests. Not even what is left of her far flung family will find their way to a chapel door (behind which no sacred space has been reserved) because the ones who might have managed the journey have not heard the call to begine it. The intricate invitations over which we spent so much time in agony and reversals, I had placed by an unsuspecting assistant in the socially responsible recycling bin far away from where they might be seen. There is no aesthetic florist or tasty nourishment scheduled for delivery as promised. No witness will arrive in a flowing robe to sanctify our future.

She trusts me to summon in-the-flesh all the necessary guests and merchants to make this ritual day real and binding to support tomorrow's mystery of our life together and make yesterday's suffering somehow worth the trouble. I show her reassuring evidence of our strangely tollerable growing debt, our first shared reality and initation, marked by reams of receipts and printed acknowledgments generated in the virtual world of my expertise and then cancelled beneath her radar, if not false from the first.

Just before I wake to a tick-tock morning in which there are keyboards with which to transmit this story, I am standing inside the entry door in my heavy creditcard tuxedo with one dewy, perfect question coolly pinned to my mind like a refrigerated boutonierre: will my deception matter? What will she do?

~~~~~~~~~

When the groggy world wakes and goes about its business, the sun brings various kinds of mornings in circles to those already at work in the dark. In that early dark that cannot divorce itself from the day before but can spin a claim on the day to come, in what dream does humanity find itself? What dilemmas present themselves? What questions linger through bathing and eating, for those who can, to accompany hands and feet as they reach step-by-step to create today from yesterday's preparations?

It seems to me that an honerable response to these cultural questions might cover quite a bit of ground, whether concrete or imaginal or "natural" or psychologized or gardened or asphalted or political or mythological or undecided. This journey of exploration seems required because even the simplest bits of life are irreducibly composite: possessed of multilayered interactions, a local gravity generated by the consequences of creative traumas, and morphed by and impacting the world around.

If there are impacts and consequences both dreamed and carried into the waking culture, then dreaming seems to promise coming shocks at several levels, but of what kind and is that certain? It would seem like the bride is being groomed for something. My questions at this end seem to deal with what "matters" and "what will be done?"

My fear upon waking is that there will be no more reaction than a shrug and nothing to do but drift...apart, together, whichever. There were receipts and invitations in evidence weren't there? She loves me, doesn't she, and therefore must forgive and trust that even my ellaborate dramas of misdirection will turn out for the best on some end day? It's no big deal.

The difficulty lies in how much that sucks. Like a vacuumming of flesh from bone today, with a machine plugged in to the end of a story imagined as ending with Disney spells. Like heaving polluted air into lungs working three times as hard because what is poisonous has been industriously welded to and almost cannot be pried away from what is required for life. Like being abandoned to swim in the consequences of broken promises native to a world that measures success by evaded prosecutions and the size of off-shore bank accounts and accumulated influence hidden beneath complexity whitewashed smooth with terrified certitude. Like a list of links, associations, and comparisons which suggest a quantity of supporting information but which may fail over time to congeal as deeper understanding. Like the co-existence of radiant sunlight on bridal gowns just upstairs from syntheticaly shiny, well and professionally dressed, practiced deception.

And this dream and this deception and this world are mine. And yours. Now what?

1248pst20050331

William Sansom writes on page twenty six of A Book of Christmas:

"one of the objects of these pages will be to investigate the past, search out the teetotums, the gilded apples, the Noah's Ark peg-tops of the old-fashioned Christmas tree; to investigate wassail and lambswool, piñatas and posadas; to look everywhere in Europe for survivals of the old horned god, like the Welsh Mari Lwyd; to note how very pagan a Christian festival can be—always remembering that such disinterrments are only part of the luxury of knowledge, and that the proper Christian gifts to the world of love and gentleness outweigh any coincidental heritage of idolatry.”

Brandon here, with an invitation.

Tis the season to consider the reasons. I wonder if there aren’t several observations out there in web-land sprung anew from the most recent, rapidly passing transition through the dark.

Positions occur to me, as an admittedly over-used starting point, through which I would like to suggest we might find a way together into the sophisticating depths the dark suggests. For instance, I feel disinclined to minimize “such disinterrments” as “only part of the luxury of knowledge” and feel obligated to speak for this shovel work as yielding some of the finest fruits of the knowledge accretion process. It seems by turns an essential observance in a secular Christianizing culture that “the proper Christian gifts to the world [are] love and gentleness” and a colossally farcical disservice to frame this in terms of “outweigh[ing a] heritage” reduced to “idolatry” and dismissed as “coincidental”.

I don’t mean to suggest this is a new objection to an argument that carries great weight in and of itself, or that the author is particularly worthy of attention, only that digging around in Christmas and thoughts thereabout seems more fruitful for a far-flung familiars in the time of fruitcake than it may prove after.

Anyone interested in sharing some thoughts in lieu of nog?

A reading list from a 2003 Yale Alumni Mag

Honey Bear by Dixie Willson
Les Rougon-Macquart
Comedie Humaine
Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
The Right Stuff
Evgeny Zamyatin's "We"
John O'Hara
James M. Cain
Evelyn Waugh
Mencken
Thomas Wolfe
Carl Van Vechten
Jimmy Breslin
Gay Talese
Celine
Henry Miller
The Bonfire of the Vanities
A Man in Full.
When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss
Alexandra Robbins' Secrets of The Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Julia Glass' Three Junes.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Alan M. Dershowitz's Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age.
Charles Darwin: Voyaging and The Power of Place by Janet Browne
Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Glenn Fleishman's The Wireless Networking Startup Kit
The Koran
Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth
The Growth of Biological Thought by Ernst Mayr
Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy
David Quammen: Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind
The King James Bible
Sherwin B. Nuland's How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Tom Perrotta's Joe College
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 1908
Stephen Sandy's Surface Impressions: A Poem.
The Republic - Plato
Anthony Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession.
Confessiones by Augustine
Garry Wills Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm
Ann Packer's The Dive from Clausen's Pier and Mendocino and Other Stories.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Steve Olson: Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins
The Complete Essays of Montaigne translated by Donald M. Frame
Jennifer Ackerman: Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity

Ad for Tucker Carlson Unfiltered on PBS TV:

"You can always tell when someone's not telling the truth because he doesn't speak clearly.
Euphemism is always a cover either for ignorance or dishonesty. In other words, if you can't state it in a clear, simple, declarative sentence either you don't know what you're talking about or you're trying to prevent me from understanding you. Both bug me."

I wonder.

Brandon's response so far:

Didache (which is very cool in many ways) resource: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html
Though fascinating and applicable, it "has continued to be one of the most disputed of early Christian texts." My fantasy find not only involves a suprising and more obviously authoritative text, but one that fails to recommend "you bondmen shall be subject to your masters as to a type of God, in modesty and fear."

An "anonymous" voice here suggested that the Bible had been outlawed everywere to allow for complete Papal control, and also pointed out the difference between slavery in the First Century and more recent history in the Southern United States.
While these points are important, an anonymous voice is difficult to engage in this context.
If "Anonymous" would like to be a full part of this, he or she may feel free to appear under a recognizable name.




Question(s) that come up:

"It stresses compassion and personal ethics over our modern "outward" ethics, and shows the "abominations" of the First Century Christians were things like "turning away the needy, weighing down with toil the oppressed, [being] advocates of the rich." "

What happened? Goof Troop Ag

Rufel has offered:

Except that the Bible as Bible has all of those "problems with Judeo-Christianity" in it -- let's not even talk about the OT God who would test the "righteous" believers by ordering them to sacrifice their son and then staying their hand just before the knife drops upon the poor innocents' neck.

And as for Christianity, well, what flavour? For the the early church of Augustine's time certainly didn't survive the Great Schism that split the Christian world between East and West (Orthodox and Catholicism, respectively) in the 11th century (1054, as I recall).

And as for Dark Ages... that term is a huge misnomer, for the Medieval World was a diverse place in which some places where certainly "dark" but other places where shining beacons of culture, like Byzantium. (Believe me, after living with two medievalists, one of whom has a doctorate in Medieval Studies, I've become convinced of this.)

And as for the Bible being outlawed, the majority of Biblical teaching was oral -- literacy rates among ordinary folk certainly didn't include being able to read ecclesiastical Latin, which was the universal language of the Western Christian Church at that time. In my own doctoral research in medieval drama, I've found out that for the ordinary folk mystery cycles, that dramatized the Bible from Creation to Judgement Day, was a more effective means of spreading the faith than *reading* it, because, except for a dedicated few, who had time to learn to read and then to read the Bible?

And, no, my research has shown that it wasn't the clergy who wrote the plays -- it was the laity. That's why the plays were so popular -- they were the film festivals of their day.

This sacred/secular dichotomy isn't a medieval thing... in fact, the medieval world saw the sacred and secular as mixed... Manicheanism (this dual-split) was a heretical notion, unfortunately passed down from the residue of Augustine's own dabbling with Manicheanism before he became a Christian, and it was passed down, whole-hog, into fundamentalist strains of Christianity.

So, Eric, I agree with you on Augustine -- although I still think he, like Nietzsche, was a guy whose followers became more extreme than he ever was. The other points I kind of go, "Ummm..."

Sometimes tangential comments on other blogs can get a bit out of hand.

I've brought just such an attached thread here because I dig it.

This is the thread begun by my response to Lisa's questions which I hope may develop here more deeply than is characteristic of most blogs. if things get lost in the daily shuffle, please search for terms you rememeber.

Eric's collected responses/suggestions/positions (admittedly taken out of the conversational order):

In the last post [Brandon] said he would like to find a discovery that shows Jesus didn't really espouse most of the modern theological views projected on Him. Well, I have to admit, that is an even better answer than the Ark of the Covenant, and while there may or may not be something out there that would fit the bill, there is something that would start.

It's called the Didache. I probably told you about it too. It's an awesome manuscript found a little over a hundred years ago and now universally accepted as a genuine document written no later than AD 70. While it perpetuates many of our ideas, it also opens the door to a MUCH broader interpretation, and it also shows us that the main focus of the early church was altruism - helping the poor, etc. One could not walk "in the light" unless he or she put others first.
It is also astoundingly inclusive in its wording. Instead of using all the male-centric vocabulary of the traditional books of the Bible, it uses non-gender-specific words nearly all the time. It's just an awesome book, and you can get a paperback copy for almost nothing.

The Didache was hotly debated for a long time, but its *veracity* is pretty much universally accepted. Many other first and early second century documents have been found that quote part of it. Nearly everyone agrees that the absolute latest it was written would have been the very beginning of the second century, but most scholars accept that it is an authentic first century Christian manuscript.

Its *content* is an entirely different matter. It seems that almost everyone has a different view about it. That's understandable, though. I personally like Aaron Milavech's writing about it.

Of course, your fantasy would be the most amazing discovery. I think it would change the world more than any other, because whether or not we like it, Western Christianity has probably shaped the world more than any other thing, including science. Our ethics, which stem from the Judeo-Christian culture (whether genuine or not), color everything. Imagine what it would be like for the new "religious right" who have turned God into a commodity, if they found irrefutable evidence of Jesus' outright compassion. That is one thing I loved about the Didache. It stresses compassion and personal ethics over our modern "outward" ethics, and shows the "abominations" of the First Century Christians were things like "turning away the needy, weighing down with toil the oppressed, [being] advocates of the rich." That puts a major dent in the whole "Moral Majority" right-wing theology so pervasive today.

We owe our modern (and largely false) religious doctrines on three things:
1) Constantine - made Christianity the state religion, but mixed in pagan ideologies thoroughly.
2) Augustine - decided sex, pleasure, and prosperity were evil, and single-handedly shifted Christianity from a religion of peacemaking, generosity, and social altruism into a religion of self-condemnation and judgment.
3) The Dark Ages - we lost so, so, so much in the Dark Ages. Basically, Bibles were completely outlawed, and this is when Christianity turned from a personal belief into a clergy/laity paradigm where the church has absolute power and spiritual authority over "the common man." Before this, all were considered brothers and equals in the church. After, we got the sacred/secular dichotomy we have today.

That's a very condensed version, of course...

Actually, a couple hundred years before Manicheanism, Gnosticism started the sacred/secular paradigm in the church as early as AD 60. By the time Constantine came around, Gnosticism had already infiltrated much of the church, and was a major point in the Nicene and Arian Controversies.

As for Abraham with Isaac, it was a prophetic enactment of what God would do later with Jesus. And Jewish tradition and the book of Hebrews say that Abraham wasn't afraid to do it because he had faith that even if God did make him go through with it, He would raise Isaac from the dead according to His promise. There is a lot of violence in the Old Testament, but it can certainly be argued that most of it is culturally relevant: God speaking to the people on their terms rather than His.

It's not [a question] of true theology, but is really about history when it all boils down to it.
By the way, I know vocal intonation can't really come across in this. I hope it doesn't come across as a lecture. Just trying to explain some history.

Unlearning the Preventitive Trauma of Proactivity
I love it when the history of something reveals why it is problematic.
pro•ac•tive or pro-ac•tive (pr½-²k“t¹v) adj. Acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty; anticipatory: not reactive, but proactive steps to combat terrorism. --pro•ac“tion n. --pro•ac“tive•ly adv.
BUT
http://www.word-detective.com/020501.html suggests that "Proactive" has actually been around since the 1930s as a technical term in psychology, denoting a trauma or complex stemming from an earlier occurrence ("pro" being a Latin prefix meaning, in this case, "before") that makes learning difficult. Our modern "proactive," however, is a completely different word, formed from "pro" in the sense of "forward" attached to the "active" from "reactive." This management-ese "proactive" thus carries the sense of "pushing forward" and first appeared around 1971.

What trauma or complex stemming from an earlier occurrence makes learning difficult such that the meaning of the word itself must be shifted into being the cure for its own dilemma?
It is not a completely different word. Psychologically it contains and illustrates its own origin and consequence - original trauma entirely redefined through use to support the fantasy (and not one without usefulness) that preemption can avoid future trauma. What is not useful is the complete loss in current usage of the traumatic context of the original meaning. Now it is simply management-ese for pushing forward, still carrying the hidden reality of trauma unconsciously.

This needs images, additional examples of applications, and a longer paper. Hmmm....