PAT P
I’m semi-retired but still teach religious studies to university students online. I enjoy making art with a small ‘a’ and want to write fiction . . . I think. http://papower.wordpress.com
Location Pacific Northwest, USA
Activity
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PAT P made a comment
I’d want to know what he and his father argued about. When was the last time he saw his father and why did he lie about the patio doors being locked.
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PAT P made a comment
It would be helpful to add a rabbinic scholar who could give knowledgeable input on drawing parallels between the Qur'an and Jewish sacred literature. One rabbi in one short verse in a commentary on some verses in the Book of Genesis (Genesis Rabbah) does not provide a platform for an adequate comparison. The Jewish scriptures are what give both daughter...
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PAT P made a comment
I must be missing something because the only "turn of phrase" I see in the transcript has to do with the obscure camel going through the eye of a needle. When you ask about "biblical knowledge" what bible exactly are we being asked to consider? The Christian's New Testament scriptures? The Jews' Hebrew/Aramaic scriptures? The Greek Septuagint? Hebrew and Greek...
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I think that’s a fair analogy or comparison. The rabbis argued (they thrive on arguing, lol) that there must be a reason why Adam was created as a single human being; why not create a surplus as a hedge …. But they drew a similar conclusion from the grammatical construct in Hebrew, a plural noun attached to a single noun, this must be referring to the blood of...
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Thank you for the explanation. That makes sense.
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Yes and no. The Shema forms the core of Jewish liturgy, it is the most sacred recitation in communal prayer. It isn’t exactly a call to prayer because Jews would already be in a prayer minyan (a minimum of 10 Jews) when they recite it, but it is as important and it echoes the same theme of God’s oneness.
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@MubashirKhan Thanks for the information. I'm slightly familiar with Safi and Progressive Islam, but not so well informed about the less radical reformists.
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I'd add a (c) - sacred texts like the Qur'an and other oracular literature, necessarily pass through a human filter. They are communicated in a certain language, at a certain period in time/history, in the context of certain cultural, historical, and social circumstances. Even when they claim to be (or are later understood to be) divine in origin and...
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Just FYI the rabbis were not priests…
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I agree Nasser, see what I’ve written above.
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PAT P made a comment
It is misleading to compare the Qur’an (which claims it’s divine revelation) with rabbinic texts, which are an extensive and disparate collection of sayings from umpteen rabbis/exegetes/teachers that spans centuries, languages, and continents. It’s comparing apples and oranges. The most the Qur’an and rabbinic exegesis have in common is … well I can’t think...
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Scholars trying to account for the many similarities between two of the gospels in the Bible have come up with this hypothetical (and so far undiscovered) source they called Q. They think the authors of the two gospels must have had access to a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus that they each used independently to write their own stories of Jesus’s...
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@RobertBarnsley For Jews circumcision is a ritual that makes a boy a member of the Jewish people, obligated to keep the laws of the covenant between God and Israel. The Christian apostle Paul claimed to have his own revelation from Heaven—his own gospel. Part of this new revelation was the claim that non-Jews (gentiles) shouldn’t be circumcised and become part...
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@PaulC More intriguing rabbit trails to research!
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Yup. Hebrew and Arabic are cognate languages. There are also similar words for night and heavens and the root ‘to build’ in the passage. Probably more . . . :)
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If Muslims practice circumcision then isn’t it an Islamic practice? Jewish circumcision is a Jewish ritual practice with theological and social meaning. I don’t take these terms to mean that either religion can lay exclusive claim to what was clearly an ancient, widespread practice in some geographical regions. I guess I don’t understand the point of these...
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Good question. I researched and what I understand is that male circumcision is part of Islamic purity law so you can extrapolate the meaning from there and you can read what I found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801794/
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PAT P made a comment
I wonder what Dr. Naguib means by late 19th and early 20th century attempts to reform Islamic tradition, to purify it of Christian and Jewish source material (the Isra’illiyyat). Who attempted this? How successful has it been? What other objectives did this reformation movement have in mind? I’m somewhat familiar with the Isra’illiyyat, but don’t have a good...
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Maybe. Interesting to think about. I know the heaven/earth couplet stems from an ancient cosmology that at is reflected in the first chapter of Genesis. The verse that is a near parallel to this idea of spreading out the earth describes how God separated the heavens and the earth by creating the firmament. In Hebrew the word for firmament is raq’ia and it’s...
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I see that in Islam there is a reworking and retelling of earlier Hebrew stories, and that that both Islam and Judaism are strictly monotheistic. These commonalities should make it easier to understand each other, but in practice it has more often led to conflict over whose stories are “true” and whether The Qur’an is or is not a divine revelation that...
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Thank you for bringing this up. I was disappointed as well. It’s fine to make comparisons between traditions, but it’s not acceptable to lift pieces of scholarship and tradition out of their full context. Evidently they reconsidered and found it unnecessary to present the complete paradigm you outlined, which gives a skewed perspective of Israel’s relationship...
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PAT P made a comment
To me, one man’s soothsayer or diviner is another man’s prophet. It’s a matter of perspective, where you stand relative to the messenger. Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition each claim that their diviners/prophets are inspired by the one god, so I guess you could say they all share in that monotheistic discourse that is represented first in the Hebrew...
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Not to push to the point but Arabic is a gendered language as is Hebrew as is English. None of them have a neuter gender like Greek. So the problem of god being read as male in the Qur’an is in the original language not in the translations; that was my point—sorry if I didn’t make that clear. The idea that god transcends gender is expressed in other passages....
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@ThereseGrace I don’t think translation from Arabic to English here changes the meaning. Jews, Christian’s and Muslims would have been referring to the same deity … the god of the Jews was the god of the Christians and the prophet’s message was intended to represent the message of this same god. You can extend that meaning all the way through history to...
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So it’s interesting, if that was the intended audience, that the message was unsuccessful. It seems the vast majority who embraced the prophet’s message in the beginning were neither Jews nor Christian’s but Arabs. @MikWisniewski
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@MikWisniewski The short answer to your question is that the academic (non-religious) study of religion is a Western invention.
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In the modern academic sense, yes, but I believe in antiquity to be labeled pagan also meant you weren’t a baptized Christian.
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PAT P made a comment
In Biblical Studies, this pattern is a chiasm (Greek for 'crossing'). You could say "x" marks the spot so where the reversals cross is thought to be the crux of the passage. Genesis 1 has a similar but slightly different pattern. Beginning in the beginning (1:1-2) then going forward the world is created (1:3-10), going backward (3:14-30) it is filled and then...
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@MikWisniewski The argument that ancient scriptures can't be translated adequately into modern idioms is weak, as is the even odder idea that orally transmitted texts are more open to corruption than written ones (just the opposite seems to be true). What you can lose is the nuance of course, but except for a few theologically charged instances in the Hebrew...
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@MikWisniewski I agree. By the 7th century CE, monotheism in the Jewish tradition was well-established, not so when the so-called ten commandment language was first transmitted (as you say earlier I think, it developed out of the surrounding Canaanite culture). There are beautiful echos of monotheism in the classical prophets, but perhaps the doctrine itself...
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PAT P made a comment
What strikes me as the telling difference is the underlying premise on which both types of scholarship are built. Traditionalists (insiders?) who believe the Qur'an to be a unique, divinely authored text, and the Qur'an's language is therefore equally unique and even inimitable. Western scholars (the outsiders) do not believe that religious scriptures of any...
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PAT P made a comment
I suppose they could, but if Jewish scholarship is a template, I'd say that the adjustments, when there are any to the existing narratives, tend to shore up the weak points of the respective arguments rather than achieving any kind of synthesis of the two views.
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PAT P made a comment
Comparative work has always been fundamental to studying religions in the academic world, so yes, I think it can help with understanding the near others in the so-called Abrahamic religions. But comparative study has also always been skewed toward a norm, which of course was Protestant Christianity, so I'll be interested to see what shifting the center to...
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PAT P made a comment
I'm Pat and I live in the state of Washington, recently semi-retired though still teaching intro to Christianity for a community college in Arizona remotely.
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I had just the opposite experience. I read The Midnight Library, but didn’t care for it. I would just as soon Haig had written an essay on the meaning of life from his point of view and skipped the novelization. I know mine is a minority opinion, but there you have it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Thursday Murder Club, though I did listen to it on Audible. Maybe...
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PAT P made a comment
I make most of mine up; it often starts with a name that comes to mind. I’ve ended up with dozens of characters and story beginnings. I should go back and finish some of them but making up new ones is more fun. Sigh.
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PAT P made a comment
What really matters is Hilary is in a rush hour crowd with a loaded gun hidden in her coat. The impending storm adds a menacing note. I’d keep it.
The winter sky groaned above the rush hour crowd. Hilary looked up, a loaded gun concealed in her coat.
Not elegant but cleaner.
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PAT P made a comment
‘Do you believe in ESP Mr. P.? I’m pretty sure I’m psychic.” Edwin Pepperwood froze in place mid-stride. Jody Johnson was a fresh-from-high school redhead with an all over rash of freckles so fine that Edwin had to resist the urge to pull out his handkerchief and wipe the spots off his glasses. She was looking up at him expectantly. Her wide-set eyes were...
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PAT P made a comment
The winter sky groaned with rain clouds. On the street, people scampered, oblivious. Hilary carried the loaded gun in her coat.
I left the winter sky "groaning" with rain clouds, and thought people scampering on the street, oblivious, implied a crowd. Then Hilary only needed to be carrying a loaded gun in her coat (if it's in her coat it is concealed) to...
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PAT P made a comment
The winter sky groaned with rain clouds. On the street, people scampered, oblivious. Hilary carried the loaded gun in her coat.
What matters to me in the scene is that people are going about their business, oblivious to the impending danger of the storm and the woman with the concealed weapon. I like the groaning sky because it paints an ominous picture. I...
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PAT P made a comment
Her elbow brushed against the table and caught the strap of her new Canon SLR. It slithered off the table in slow motion and snapped before she could reach out and stop it.
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PAT P made a comment
In 1957 Phoenix was still a mid-size city surrounded by desert, and Sunnyslope, a small town on its outskirts, was a respite center for TB patients. By the time I left, after a biblical forty years in the desert, the city had sprawled out of control and Sunnyslope had been swallowed up, its rustic landscape overrun with upscale condos for Amazon...
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PAT P made a comment
Andrew Wiley learned to like tight spaces. For three years he spent most of his life cramped, his 6'6" frame folded in on itself, bounded by the bars of a 3'x3' cell. When there was nothing he could do physically, he would set his mind free. Each night it wandered away from him, down below his memories, past whatever sensations of pain or cold or fatigue it...
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PAT P made a comment
I hear serious writers talk about tapping into the unconscious. It sounds scary but intriguing.
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PAT P made a comment
Angela is a city librarian in Oskala, New Mexico. She is predictably pedantic but adored by her patrons for her utility. She knows the titles on her shelves better than the names or birthdays of her nieces and nephews, and, she admits, she is fonder of the contents of her books than the members of her family. Each time she reads Portnoy's Complaint, for...
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Thanks, Jay. @JaySmyth
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PAT P made a comment
The rising sun splayed my shadow self on the whitewashed wall.
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PAT P replied to Catherine J-S
As Crystal explained, my understanding of #Calvinist theology is that “knowing” your #salvation status is directly related to your both your behavior and how your life is going: if you are one of the #elect, you will repent and accept God’s #Grace and if you are not you will resist. If you are #saved your “life will surely show it” and there will be outward...
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PAT P replied to Monique Pharand
So simple when I see the answer. @MoniquePharand
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PAT P made a comment
The coded message was easiest; I’m stumped by he 4’s but got the rest right.
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PAT P made a comment
What the cartoon illustrates to me is that we are social creatures and it is very easy (maybe unavoidable) to find yourself embedded in a group of people who are just like you no matter how much you value non-conformity.
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PAT P made a comment
Multi-grain crackers
Non-GMO
kosher D
Suitable for vegan diets0% Vitamin D
2% (30 g) calcium
1 g protein (no % given)Percentages are called “daily value”or what each ingredient contributes to a daily diet based on 2,000 cal/day
The best I can say about. This labeling is pretty much useless except where it states what isn’t present.
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PAT P made a comment
Here are two typical shopping receipts. I live in the US, Pacific Northwest where we are blessed with good, fresh, locally produced food. I live alone and am over 70.
Pint half and half
Dozen cage free organic eggs
Locally made Greek yogurt
Shredded Parmesan
Broccoli crowns
Parsley
Russet potatoes
Sugarbee apples
Yellow onions2%...
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PAT P made a comment
I just turned 73 and last year I moved into a third floor apartment with no elevator. The apartment building backs on to a one mile nature trail that ends up in a shopping area where I can buy most of what I need on a daily basis. There’s a large coffee shop with an outdoor patio, so in good weather (about 10 months out of the year) I make the two mile walk in...
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Reduced bone density that is below the threshold for a diagnosis of osteoporosis @SunitaGoradia
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I wish, but no, he cycles through creative periods but is in his early 50’s now and has never published. @NeroliWesley
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Thank you :) @MagsStork
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PAT P replied to Lilit Abelyan
Agreed. It's a shame. @LilitAbelyan
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PAT P replied to Chris Hunter
Good question! LOL. Just have fun with it. @ChrisHunter
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PAT P replied to Lilit Abelyan
Too bad. I guess it happens if some idiot has an axe to grind and happens onto your submission. I’ve taken many courses on this platform and can say this is a rarity. Usually everyone is supportive and kind.
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PAT P replied to Chris Hunter
I can try to find your poem, Chris. Thank you for the feedback on mine. I appreciate your comments! @ChrisHunter
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PAT P replied to Annie sturgeon
@Anniesturgeon Thank you for the extensive feedack on my Hallway poem. I agree with you that constructive criticism is extremely valuable and I appreciate the time and effort you took on my submission. It seems I didn't give enough information at the beginning, but the hallway is an interior hallway with eight apartment doors and two exterior doors with Exit...
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PAT P made a comment
I followed the link to the botpoet site. Creepy. I scored three out of ten but will be the first to admit that when I failed three out of five I gave up and hit "Bot" "Bot" "Bot". Why not? It was impossible to sort out one from the other and trying to make an informed choice was hurting my head already.
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PAT P made a comment
Personally I like the white space in the version with line breaks. It gives me room to pause and think or feel the feeling behind the narrative. The prose form seems stilted in the beginning, catches on midway through and races to the end—so many words coming at me so quickly—I can't breathe!!! Guess that is a feeling too. Either way works, doesn't it?
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No, I hadn't heard of Celia Dropkin before this. Another rabbit trail to follow! The criticism makes me chuckle and wonder how Shir haShirim made it into the rabbinical canon; allegorizing doesn't mitigate the overt sexuality of it. I had an Israeli Hebrew teacher who used to take a perverse kind of pleasure (no pun intended of course) in making us read the...
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PAT P made a comment
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@DavidKemble Thanks for amplifying the topic, David.
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PAT P made a comment
Acrostic Poem: The first or last word in each line spells out a "secret" message. This form was used extensively by early and medieval Jewish poets. Decoding the poem (piyyut) resulted in the name of the poet or a quote from the Hebrew Bible, or simply spelled out the Hebrew alphabet. This form worked well as a mnemonic device and many of these poems have been...
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PAT P replied to Lois Smith
I think it might be a shoe last? @AngelaMcIntosh
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PAT P made a comment
Bad Dates
Most bad dates
Start off smooth
Then lurch into hurt—
Like finding that needle in
a carton of yogurt -
PAT P made a comment
It’s alien to me, the sea, but shouldn’t be
I live within the waters and the trees that breathe
The clear crisp air of a mid-winter night
Here at the end of the road
I might like to take a year and
Sail away from the dreams I had
Or the lives that I could
Have lived had the world
Cracked open that way
But wouldn’t. -
PAT P made a comment
When days end here at 3:30pm and the weather is biting too hard to walk outside, I sometimes walk the hallway of my third floor apartment building. Ten rounds is 1,000 steps. It makes my Fitbit happy so it stops hounding me to move.
THE HALLWAY
It’s 7pm and dark since three
Too black out there to walk alone for meAbove my head
Seven circles light... -
PAT P made a comment
So I think the Wikipedia references (lines 1, 3, 5, 7) are interlaced with edited comments from the online forum (lines 2, 4, 6, 8) with line 9 as a clever twist on information about François Marcel Gatreau (line 7). I wonder how much editing or rearranging of the forum comments was done? Some of the phrases sound like they were probably found intact [they are...
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PAT P made a comment
My memories are like someone
Who can’t go back to Czechoslovakia
Or who is afraid to return to Chile,
But I say it’s fine, honest I do.“Things that have been Lost,” Yehuda Amichai
“A Song in the Front Yard, Gwendolyn Brooks -
PAT P made a comment
The story left unfinished
may turn into a poem and a poem
finished can make a story. That’s why poets
always break the lines of their poems.
["For Two Weeks I have been in this Palace. Nothing has Happpened"]https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/29948/Bijan-Elahi/en/tile
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PAT P made a comment
I've always believed that poets were extraordinary human beings who used the same words I did but who could string them together in such a way that I hardly recognized any one of them as a singular unit of meaning.
I wish I knew the rules
for making poemsa poet needs
to breathe rarefied air
that I can only sniffas if she drinks
from different... -
PAT P made a comment
"Tomorrow" I chose this word because I like the way it sounds, whether Annie is singing it or I just think about the promise the word contains and the unattainability it represents. It's always a day away.
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PAT P made a comment
I have so many favorites; but, because my son says he dashed this one off between recess and class when he was in 8th grade, I have to say it defines the difference for me between a Poet and a person who can write a good poem:
Dried and drilled
my bones could be a hundred flutes
I wouldn't mind
a native piping tunes through me
on a manful night
my... -
PAT P made a comment
The link to Helen's favorite poem takes me to the Herald but I can't get past the pop up window about the site collecting cookies. But there is another site with the poem if anyone else is having trouble: http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2012/01/snow.html
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Being enlightened you realize you are already in Nirvana, but being enlightened you are now aware that because you are incarnated, you must have chosen your path as a bodhisattva to remain outside the benefits of Nirvana (escaping reincarnation). That I think is the paradox, though I doubt I am explaining it very well.
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Enlightenment here meaning an awareness that one is already a Buddha who has chosen to stay in the wheel of reincarnation (bodhisattva) rather than enlightenment meaning achieving Nirvana and leaving reincarnation behind? I think that is the Mahayana distinction, isn't it?
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From what I know and how this is explained in the transcript, 'nirvana with residue' refers to the Mahayana Buddhist teaching that it is better to be a bodhisattva who has delayed the "benefits" of Buddhahood (which would mean escaping the wheel of samsara and its corollary, reincarnation, i.e., the extinction of reincarnation) in favor of incarnating and...
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PAT P made a comment
An example on the lowest level perhaps? I am home. It’s late but I suddenly want something sweet before I sleep. I don’t have anything at home but an image of a cake I like forms. Now I want THAT piece of cake. I can say no, that is not wise and go to sleep. A minor victory over craving. But I could go to the store, pick up that piece of cake, pay for it, walk...
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@has
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PAT P made a comment
In the email announcing the results of the poll, there is mention of "this week's introductory email" that provided "some information about the real case in this week’s introductory email, covering how Mrs Ward looked, the amount of blood in the car and on the clothing, the absence of an exit wound, and “How did the cartridge cases come to be on the passenger...
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PAT P made a comment
This was an excellent course; stimulating, informative, challenging, and worth the time invested. The way the material was presented evoked thoughtful and at times passionate discussions between us fellow students. Thank you to all who made this possible. I hope there will be a follow up course at some time in the near future.
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PAT P replied to John Davies
Thank you. @JonathanCasey
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What might have worked better is to have the charts in the beginning as you suggest, just filling in the evidence as it was presented, real and testimonial in separate columns and add a comments column. When they introduce the 6Ws, add a column for our thoughts on what each piece of evidence contributes. I would put the initial hypothesis on a separate page...
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I wish they had given us a link to the real murder trial on which this case was based. It would be interesting to see what the jury decided in the end.
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PAT P made a comment
I was able to vote just now
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PAT P made a comment
The poll needs to be rest with the proper closing and opening dates I think. I'm sure the moderators will figure this out when they see the posts in this section :D . I wonder when Mr Ward changed his statement that final time? Not before the charges were filed for murder with intent it looks like. Too bad for Mr Ward unless he changed his statement in order...
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PAT P replied to John Davies
@JohnDavies I was recently seated on a jury in a criminal case and would have been thrilled (as would the other 11 jurors) to have a "not proven" option. The district attorney was just not up to the task and could not present a solid case that went beyond reasonable doubt. We all felt that the defendant was probably guilty as charged on one of the two...
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PAT P made a comment
I realized that so many pieces of evidence were inconclusive so I focused on the only irrefutable real evidence: Both victims were shot FROM INSIDE the car. (BPA and DNA). Mr Ward sticks to his story about a gunman shooting them from outside the car, but this is at odds with the real evidence. Since only the Wards (per Mr Ward) were inside the car, only they...
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PAT P made a comment
It is science with a margin for error. Today's processes or equipment may be refined tomorrow to provide more accurate results and less need for personal interpretation or perhaps the ability to extract more precise information from even smaller samples than now. As it stands I think some of the testing that is done in the laboratories provides absolute...
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PAT P made a comment
Thank you for reviewing my story, @ CECILIACUSWORTH and for the positive feedback too. I appreciate your kindness and your time :D
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That’s encouraging!! Thanks. @TraceyCosshall
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@EricMansfield @JonathanCasey Thankfully, it’s almost week six. I’m guessing the truth may never come out and the case that goes to the jury will be determined on the basis of reasonable doubt. The forensic evidence is just not there to be conclusive.
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I have them somewhere. If we aren't given them in the next week's lessons and you want them just let me know and I'll post them. They are, of course, short :)
