Sacred

I had never looked at the bible that closely, I guess. I don't know. It's funny, because this reading started off with an excerpt that stressed how there is an "emphasis in Judiasm and Christianity on the transcendence of God above nature and the domion of humans over nature" (anthology, 28). I had never seen nature like that. And I never thought that Christianity saw nature like that, either. I always thought that God created nature, and that everything that God had created was sacred. That's why you pray before you eat; you're eating something sacred, and your thankful for its existence and the sacrifice of something so sacred to help keep you alive.

But I can see, after reading the excerpt from Genesis, how it can the bible can be interpreted that way, with humans being the center of everything. It does explicitly say that "ecery moving thing that liveth shall be meat [for humans]," that everything is "handed over to [us]" (117B). However, the whole bible sort of reinforces the little-ness of humans; the way that we have so little control over what happens to us, the way that we have so little understanding of God and everything he created. So I really think that the bible talks a lot more about how humans are subordinate then the way everything on this Earth exists to serve them.

I don't really know what to say about this reading because I feel like what a lot of the reading was implying was this notion that many religions view nature as something just there to serve, which is SO FAR from the way I've always seen it. I feel like there is a way that we can use nature without being callous about it, without viewing it as something that is there just for us. Stupid Avatar reference: When Jakesully is stuck out alone on Pandora at night in his Avatar body, and Zoe Saldana's character has to protect him from those weird hunting dogs, she get mad at him for thanking her. She says that their death was sad; She appreciates the sanctity of that life. And when native americans used to kill animals. They would use EVERY INCH of what they killed. Nothing was wasted:it's value, both in death and in life, was appreciated.

I don't want the Earth to live in "never ceasing fear" (anthology, 123). I feel like people forget, sometimes, how much we need nature, how much we depend on it. We're always stuck in boxes. Like right now, i'm sitting in a white-walled box (my dorm). The temperature outside is frigid, but in here I'm toasty warm, thanks to the heater. I'm drinking water out of a plastic bottle, and unless I really think about it, I forget that it wasn't always in that bottle, that once upon a time it was in a lake, or a stream, that once upon a time it was the home of a fish. I'm flipping the pages of my anthology, and I forget how a tree sacrificed it's life to give me that paper. I much on pinneapple and forget how, just like me, it was nurtured and grown.

Where my water comes from..

http://www.tiskita-lodge.co.cr/activities/images/stream_pools.jpg

Where my paper comes from.

http://7art-screensavers.com/screens/glorious-trees/glorious-tree-01.jpg

In the Big Friendly Giant, by Roald Dahl, the giant talks about how because of his large ears, "if [he twists] the stem of a flower till it breaks, then [he can hear the plant] screaming" (Dahl, 45). I think it's very important to view all of nature like that, as LIFE, as something sacred, as something to be thankful for.

Picked flower (probably screamed).

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/6156282/2/istockphoto_6156282-picked-flower.jpg

The BFG.

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/BFG.jpg