Amorella here looking up onto the top row of windows. On the left is a portrait of Alice and on the far right upper window is a portrait of Charles. The rest appears to be history. This is windowed wall in the Great Hall at Christ’s College which in recent years has been made popularly famous as a film set based on a book series by J. K. Rowling.
In some ways because of orndorff’s bent on the world, the atmosphere of Elysium is both scholarly and spiritual, much like Christ’s College, Oxford. You have a question?
I have a statement clarification. I am neither that scholarly or spiritual, Amorella. I enjoy non-fiction over fiction but Harpers and Discover magazines are about as far as I presently go. Beyond that I have to insist on my agnostic status. I do not have enough faith to fully accept any belief system I have come across other than the one I made up for myself, ‘transcendental existentialism’ and this is more readily an overlapping of concepts than ideologies. I am also a fan of the late Joseph Campbell because of his wide-encompassing views on cultural stories people have told and still tell in one form or another, but none of these are belief systems in themselves.
Since 2001 I have periodically taken the ‘Belief-o-Matic’ twenty question quiz on beliefnet.com. I decided to take this, now, tonight (before going further with tomorrow’s posting) to see the results. The last time I took this quiz was three to four years ago and the time before was seven or eight years ago. Here are my latest results:
“1. Reform Judaism (100%); 2. Liberal Quakers (90%); 3. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (88%); 4. Unitarian Universalism (85%); 5. Sikhism (78%); 6. Baha’I Faith (76%); 7. Neo-Pagan (65%); 8. Orthodox Judaism (65%); 9. Secular Humanism (63%); and 10. Islam (62%).”
The first time I took this quiz I was quite taken back and surprised to find Reform Judaism number one and at one hundred percent to boot. It has never varied from number one, one hundred percent in every ‘Belief-o-Matic’ test I have taken. I was raised as Presbyterian in the forties and through the fifties. I like to think of myself as an open-minded agnostic, but when push comes to shove, I guess I lean Reform Judaism first and a Liberal Quaker second. The Liberal Christian Protestant would be closest to my upbringing, that is pretty much the way I am settled into my religious nature with Unitarian Universalism being a close fourth, then it drops off. It is a good quiz from my way of thinking. Give it a try, answer honestly, and don’t forget to check the worth section under some questions. See what happens.
So, back to the “scholarly and spiritual” – it would be dishonest to say I was not scholarly because I am but perhaps in an unorthodox way. As for spiritual, I admit, deep down, that I have a few strong religious beliefs but I try to not let them interfere with my preferred open-minded agnostic tendencies.
You are setting your own private personal self in a particularly ordered mindset as you begin book four. You want to maintain a higher level thinking mode as if you were writing the work in Canterbury Cathedral, let’s say, or Washington Cathedral, as both rest comfortably in your mind. Let both symbolize your need for a classy Muse. You are ready to begin chapter one in book four once again.
Above my desk in the basement I have an eight inch rounded piece of green-stained leaded glass about one inch thick with a centered Celtic cross. I bought the glass about thirty years ago at Washington Cathedral. In a sense, a part of the cathedral is here in at the foundation of our house. Call it superstition but I need to know these things and have them in mind so that I might better rise to the occasion of putting my name on a book that is dedicated:
“To the species Homo Sapiens. To the Dead as well as the Living”
Enough theatre orndorff. Let’s get on with it. Tomorrow begins Chapter One, Book Four. – Amorella.
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