Doug: I agree with Nard. You seem to want to have it both ways. Reject the tenets of the faith, and adhere to the tenets of the faith.
No one is asking you to follow the herd. Do you feel being a sheep is beneath you? Sheep need a shepherd. They have wool that contains a ton of lanolin so they get really dirty very quickly. They need a lot of maintenance. Christ said, My Sheep hear my voice and follow me. Gee, herd mentality, huh?

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Knox:
Reject the tenets of the faith, and adhere to the tenets of the faith.

Reject the parts that don't make sense to my conscience, and adhere to the parts that do.

quote:

Christ said, My Sheep hear my voice and follow me. Gee, herd mentality, huh?

Jesus did love his parables!

STOP!!! I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!
I'm beginning to feel like I'm on a merry-go-'round!!

SO, I invite those who feel the need to get some refreshments, to step inside this link...
when there, click on search,
...and there are lots of things to see!

http://www.video.google.com/videoplay?.docid=-987373724...q=Ray+Bradbury

Good one, Phil. Good point. But in my case I must say that I do recognize Him. And every time I see Him I smile. You know, right there, across the table from you on Sunday afternoons (would it not that it were daily), the hungry homeless person and their friend. He’s in their faces as they close their eyes and chew. You can recognize Him in a lot of other places too, but…

“Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night.”

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
STOP!!! I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!
I'm beginning to feel like I'm on a merry-go-'round!!

SO, I invite those who feel the need to get some refreshments, to step inside this link...
when there, click on search,
...and there are lots of things to see!

http://www.video.google.com/videoplay?.docid=-987373724...q=Ray+Bradbury

I agree with Nard (but for different reasons!)

In amongst those Google videos is the Russian-language version of There Will Come Soft Rains. An END OF THE WORLD film, which neatly brings us back on topic. Look out for the religious (well, Christian) iconography.

Bradbury's view on God is pretty difficult to try to get one's arms around. In his poem, "If Man is Dead, Then God is Slain," he seems to portray man and God as mutually dependent in some way. First, God made us:

"I birthed you as a whim.
I laughed you from the darkness,
I dropped you as a joke,
But strange, small, fragile, creature,
You fell, but never broke!"

But then, later in the poem, he states:

"Perhaps we made each other
In some wild common cause
So let us share a hubris,
Take common flesh as bread,
And drink each other's laughter..."

"God laughs, and man gives answer,
Man laughs and God responds . . ."

The actuality of the interdependence is never really defined. It is clear, however, that Bradbury does not adhere to a traditional view of God. It is doubtful Ray will be a Sunday School teacher in a Southern Baptist classroom any time soon.

Toward the end of the poem, Bradbury states:

"If Man should die I'd blindly
Rebirth that Beast again;
I cannot live without him.
Man dead? Then God is slain!
My universe needs seeing,
That's Man's eternal task,
What is the use of being,
If God is but a mask?
So, Man and God, conjoining,
Are One, uncelibate,
And spawn the Cosmic rivers,
In billions celebrate
No Ending or beginning,...
...Behold! The mystery stirring...
Here comes the human moles!
To rise behind God's masking
And peek out from the holes."

Chew on that for awhile . . .

From:
"I Live the Invisible:
Ray Bradbury. Salmonpoetry, Ireland. 2002.
p. 73-75

He has a lot of other poems that deal with his view of God and the relationship between man and God. It may be that he speaks most directly to the question of God in his poetry than in his novels and stories.

I may have made past references to what I am going to now write. Here, however, may it be a little more understandable.

NOTE:
I hope to explain the reason why I am so gung-ho on this religious bit and how it ties into Bradbury. This is as short cut a version as I can make it while getting the story across. Maybe this will give a better picture as to where I am coming from:

__________

To begin, I need to turn back the clock and calendar to my 6th grade, elementary school, southwest side of Chicago. It's an after school stop at Guttman's Pharmacy, on West 63rd Street. A revolving rack of magazines is located near the center of the store. I take a brief look at what's on the narrow, circular rack ...and all the following happens somewheres within 2 seconds: Looking at the top of some magazine, I see a color quality I had never seen before, and there is a silence, a stillness, of such I had never heard before. My eyes drop a bit on the magazine cover and I read a name: Ray Bradbury. In my elementary mind I said to myself... if I get to know that person with the name on the cover, I will understand what I just experienced.

And so I walked away from that drugstore, completely smitten by this unknown. All this within the context of a very disfunctional life: yes, loving parents, loving home, but burdened with a terribly personal, emotionally disfiguring problem. And thus, this event at Guttman's Pharmacy was a beacon in my life, a beacon I not exactly ignored, but did not respond to because of my personal war within that began when I was somewheres in the neighborhood of about 6 yrs old. Later, while in high school, I walked into Cameos Restaurant on South Western Avenue in Chicago, and they had this extensive periodical racks that extended from the restaurant entrance probably 30 or more feet towards the dining area. Huntington Hartford published a magazine at the time, called SHOW. And in a particular issue was a lengthy interview with Ray Bradbury. As I crouched down there by the display of that particular issue and turned the pages of the interview, catching a phrase here, or a few words there, I realized with no uncertain understanding, that if I did not get to know this man, I would die and go to hell. There were no maybes. It was as clearly the situation for me at the time.

Nothing...made any sense to me except that one event at the pharamcy. It would take a lot of filing in as to what hapened in the years following, but I'm certainly not going to do it here. But I will skim ahead to an afternoon I was standing in Ray Bradbury's office. I think this scene I have written about somewhere in the myriad of past postings. There is Ray two feet in front of feet, facing me, and we are talking about something, can't recall exactly. But what is going thru my head is memorable. I felt there was this great gulf between the two of us. I had gone as far as I could possibly go, and now this gulf. There was something profoundly missing. Would I never catch the reasoning behind what I had experienced in the pharmacy so many years ago? And so I left Bradbury's office that day, and went home, to where I was living in Fullerton, California.
How should I say the following? I'm leaving all the details out? Yep. It would lengthen the post to a demanding degree. So let me sayh it this way: I had a confrontation with the God of scripture. Let me leave it like that. And in a moment, that gulf between myself and Bradbury was crossed. It had nothing to do with me, or Bradbury, but it had to do with the character of God thru Christ letting himself be known to me. In the years that followed, the meaning of the pharmacy incident becomes clearer, and the person of Jesus Christ becomes more real.

So when I talk about the character of Christ entwined, emeshed and 'sprinkled' thru the metaphors and texts and placements of word pictures within the writings of Bradbury, I am looking at those things that spanned the gulf for me, which could only be God Himself. When I talked to Ray about this, it's shrugged off. Why? Is it because God gifted Ray with Himself, but for some reason, never revealed Himself to Ray in, shall I venture to say, a practical manner? Ray instead points to grandfather's breathe and talk on the old porch stairs, or family's magical moments of summer and conversations that ran thru his blood and extended thru his fingers onto typewriter keys.

Ray has made an ultra grand use of his gift! Wouldn't a loving God certainly embrace Ray and for the first time open Ray's eyes to Himself? Or is Ray so full of himself to see that far? A gifted man so fully gifted sees only the gifts and not the giver? Then that would be some sort of tragedy, wouldn't it? At least in the human way of thinking, that is to say in the context of this barriered life.

And so, I get myself into religious discussions a lot here. I hope I gave some of you out there at least a glimpse into why that is so...

_________________________________________

Nard:

The tie between you, Ray, and religion is fascinating. Mine is not through a direct encounter with Ray, but through an encounter with his ideas of spirit/man/religion/eternity/meaning, etc. as a pretty common theme through much of his writing.

His stories/poetry really touch on themes of God, creativity, religious/spiritual feeling, the power and importance of relationships, etc. To touch Ray's writing, is, in some sense, to connect with a spiritual sensitivity.

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
SO, I invite those who feel the need to get some refreshments, to step inside this link...
when there, click on search,
...and there are lots of things to see!

http://www.video.google.com/videoplay?.docid=-987373724...q=Ray+Bradbury

Comes up as a video error for me. Problems anyone?

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
Is it because God gifted Ray with Himself, but for some reason, never revealed Himself to Ray in, shall I venture to say, a practical manner? Ray instead points to grandfather's breathe and talk on the old porch stairs, or family's magical moments of summer and conversations that ran thru his blood and extended thru his fingers onto typewriter keys.

Maybe God revealed himself to Ray in those very things. Perhaps those things are Ray's experience of God. Everyone experiences God differently!

Yes, it comes up as an error, but ignore that. And click on the search box instead. Notice the instructions.

Doug, your thing about God and everyone's differing experience. Naw! Because then you are saying the people in India worshiping their gods, or the Buddist, or the Mayans centuries ago, are worshiping GOD! And that's not so.

Try this:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=ray+bradbury

Comicon "Rennae" with all the "Masters" there!

View the Truffault - 11 minute clip. (F451 music score in the background is a really nice touch!)
A beautiful monologue on Mr. Bradbury's part.

Enjoy the others as well!!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fjp451,

Salutations, Doug,
Re. “Charlotte’s Web” and the best Bond films.

Yes, both versions of “Charlotte’s Web” were excellent. I don’t think I could choose either over the other.

Best three James Bond films:

1. “From Russia With Love”
2. “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”
3. “Casino Royal – 2006”

Is there something (God) behind the things we think we're worshipping? We are worshipping, as Joseph Campbell called them, the masks of God, and God is behind the masks we can see. Perhaps God transcends man's ability to fully grasp him. I think that would reflect--somewhat, at least--how Bradbury may see this question.

On the Bond films, I'm no expert; but I think Casino Royale is my favorite of them. The Bond is actually muscular enough to do the things they have Bond doing. None of the other Bonds (except, perhaps, Connery) had enough muscle to make the physical stunts work for me.