Jots and Tittles

I hate seeing myself slipping into old familiar habits, but I'm finding it harder and harder to pay attention in Goddess Religions.  Last time, she spent the entire class period lecturing us about why the assertions made in the readings were just tentative, possibilities, etc. Apparently I wasn't the only one whose journal consisted of "you know, none of these claims have anything substantiating them..."  She had no problems admitting that some of the images depicted in the book weren't necessarily clear in their femininity. 

That's great.  We don't exactly have a lot of evidence to make any claims - be they regarding goddesses or anything else - from the paleolithic and neolithic ages.  But the problem I have with these readings is the lengths to which the authors will go to prove that every single pot ever dug up points to a goddess-based religion.  They'll take abstract images like swirls, swastikas (which were actually a symbol of GOOD LUCK until Hitler appropriated them, just so you know), zigzags, etc. and claim that those are somehow evidence for this pervasive goddess religion.  Like, every single spiral image ever is supposed to be a snake.  NOTHING is just a pretty design anymore.  Nothing is made which does not point toward the goddess.  And some of those images just don't look like what they want them to look like.  It's not a matter of ambiguity, it's a matter of pulling stuff out of their collective @$$ and assuming everyone else will see it, too.  And of course, we all know what assuming does to people.

Really, it's quite laughable, in a very sad sort of way.  These people, Baring and Cashford, the authors of this book, are trying so hard to create an argument in favor of this universal, pervasive mother-goddess religion of the early people that they're pulling things out which are ambiguous at best and often simply ludicrous.  Who in the world took this seriously enough to let it be published?  I feel like an adult looking at a child's firm belief in Santa Clause, a child who should probably have grown out of that belief several years ago.  It's kind of amusing, in a way, but mostly it's just pathetic.

In other news, I'm not dropping the honors program, much as I long to.  I have to find a committee member, though, and get Mitchell to agree to do GR as an Honors Option - we'll see if she lets me.  If not, well, there's no reason to do the thesis cause I still won't graduate with honors.  But we'll see where it goes.  I don't actually care that much, which is kind of nice - doing something against your will means that you do what you have to, but if something goes wrong, you don't really care.  Probably not the best way to feel about it, but I'm so done with CSU, I just don't care.  Just give me my diploma and let me go, thanks. 

I'm going to the health center this afternoon to hopefully get an appointment and get my ear checked out.  I'm getting sick of not being able to sleep normally because I can't put pressure on my ear.  So we'll look into that. 

Tonight is the lenten path thing at church, in which I am very interested since I remember when Brighton did the labyrinth thing, and I want to compare the two.  Luckily, my core group has decided to go to that and the Ash Wednesday service tonight instead of doing regular Bible study, so I can do it without having to miss out on anything.  Core group last week was amazing - we have a tiny, tiny group - last week it was just me, Peg, Steph and Joanna but we had a great conversation and it lasted forever.

And that's all the news for today.  People are starting to come in and talk (why do they have to talk at the top of their lungs?) so I'm having trouble concentrating, anyway.  I'm out.

-Jaya-