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I’m pretty sure you remind me somewhat of Dr. Faustus
That hit home in a pretty powerful way, and you may be right where it concerns the feeling that the two of them have fought on my shoulders. ARM pointed something similar out in his own characteristic way today, when he said that I'm both a terrible Christian and a terrible atheist. Faustus may be the right label for me, because it is true: I am full of contradictions, and I have many left to resolve. For what it is worth, I am a strong skeptic (though it may not come across that way always), and for the better part of my life, I've wavered between what feels like two persons inside of me. I've mentioned a good friend of mine (a Christian) briefly in our talks, and she has fought with this wavering part of me for years. It's pushed us apart several times. Being a woman, she also told me it was because I am a Gemini :).
Interestingly, I once had an astrologist read my chart. I'd known this woman for several years, but for some reason she insisted on doing this reading, and later wrote me a letter. She said that I had the strongest Gemini character of any chart she'd ever seen, so take that for as much mileage as it will get you. As a side note, her letter also told me some interesting but fairly tragic things about what I could expect from life. I still remember the feeling I had reading her letter.
you were able to make a better, more informed decision in light of the long line of prior Drs. Faust
I hope you're right.
to draw attention to a dawning realization about the significance of everyone here. Like we’re Icons.
Although I am a bit too humble to accept that label, I'd agree that, overall, our conversations have had some vague sense of importance about them. With and ARM especially (I'm not pinging him because I get the sense he'd just call us 'fags'), there is a powerful tension happening there, but a good one. I've said to Peace in the recent past, that even if nothing was resolved in these conversations, I believe the depth and the challenge have changed my views irrevocably and for the better. It seems like you'd agree, King.
That comment of yours was a very interesting interpretation.
Fags.
Hahahaha. I'm dyin.
Interestingly, I once had an astrologist read my chart. I'd known this woman for several years, but for some reason she insisted on doing this reading, and later wrote me a letter. She said that I had the strongest Gemini character of any chart she'd ever seen, so take that for as much mileage as it will get you. As a side note, her letter also told me some interesting but fairly tragic things about what I could expect from life. I still remember the feeling I had reading her letter.
Smith takes astrology seriously. Not the horoscopes that pundits print in magazines every month, but the idea that the Zodiac does influence something about us in an almost primordial way - I don't dismiss it. There was art produced during the Crusades that depicted Christ with the twelve signs of the Zodiac behind him, and it's no coincidence that there were 12 tribes of Israel, and Christ chose twelve disciples. It comes back to the anthropic realism - this universe exists for us, and from Earth there are these twelve signs in the sky, and they are meaningful to us.
Anecdotally, I grew up in a house with three Tauruses, myself being a Capricorn. Taurus (depicted by a bull) is known to be aggressive, angry, hot-tempered - and this very much matched the way my three family members behaved, at least with each other, while I was always "peaceful".
I don't know where the overlap is with demonic spirits and genuine primordial knowledge with respect to the Zodiac / astrology. I'm sure there are palm readers who, just by visiting them, end up opening their clients up to demonic possession.
On your points about the seeming significance of our conversations, I've already said before I am sure our meeting was Providential. What God has in mind as a fruit to be born of all this, remains to be seen.
I take it more seriously than I let on, but I fully agree that there is a great danger in it as well, particularly the wayward roads it can lead a person down. I only know because I've been down them, and it's nothing but sadness. It seems so, so simple, but without any bias in this statement at all, Christianity (as in the whole ethos, the Church, the people) has been the only metaphysically relevant thing that I've ever been around that made me genuinely happy - around which I could feel authentic positivity.
Capricorn
Was there some influence from this on your username, by chance?
What God has in mind as a fruit to be born of all this, remains to be seen.
(chills)
You two could write the captions for the DVD of our conversations. They will be adapted into a live action film, by, um, Kirk Cameron starting late this year.
around which I could feel authentic positivity.
If the Good News that Christ rose from the dead (and all it implies) is not true, then I doubt there is anything that could be viewed as authentically positive, in the final analysis.
Was there some influence from this on your username, by chance?
I don't know if Capricorns are known for peace seeking. Are they? I just know Taurus is very war-like, and that was definitely the environment I grew up in, and so it was a reaction to that that led me to development a conciliatory personality.
A question for you and : you both seem to take Christianity very seriously, in varying respects. I don't know KOWA's background exactly. My question concerns the sacraments. The only sacrament that Protestant Christians have retained is baptism. The Church teaches that there is no salvation outside of the Church, and it is baptism alone that brings one into the Church (Protestant baptisms, if performed validly, also lead one into partial communion with the Catholic Church).
But baptism is also the door to all the other sacraments. Confession to restore the bond of charity if broken by mortal sin after baptism. The Eucharist, source and summit of the faith and wellspring of grace - devotion to and reception of which will become more critical as time goes on, I think.
But what I wanted to ask specifically, and the reason I raise this now, is about the sacrament of Confirmation, an anointing with oil. Like all the other sacraments, it can only be received after baptism. But the reason this is relevant to the current thread is that there are some Catholic commentators who have suggested that only those who have been Confirmed will be able to resist the Mark of the Beast. I'll try to find sources for that another time for reference.
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