Delight Springs

Friday, October 4, 2013

Salad in the melting pot (& Sunday School)

Philosophy Club/Happy Hour ran happily into the dusky evening last night, but I thought I was tearing myself away from the engaging patio discussion at Boulevard just in time to make it home by the 3d inning or so of the first Cards-Bucs NLDS series game.

But no, the TV schedulers who really run the show had decreed an early start. 9-1 StL in the 9th already. I'd missed most of it. Oh well. It's still early, there's lots of October to come. It's good I didn't know the game was already on, I'd have been tempted to skip out after class, for the game.

An elementary HAP 101 rule: never trade convivial conversation for a mere game. Glad I didn't.  But say, Boulevard: why aren't there any monitors out on the patio?

The Balance report gave us a new metaphor: better than the great American melting pot is the image of a crazy salad, full of various complementary ingredients that retain their separate distinctiveness while contributing to something greater than themselves. Someone else suggested "stew," whose ingredients don't just complement but actually interpenetrate.


Earlier in CoPhi we had a lively panel discussion. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Epicurus, Seneca, and Pyrrho took our questions. One of us (not me) went to the board to instruct the distinguished sages with a Sunday School lesson. I had to wonder aloud why the cosmic creator is so often depicted (especially in Sunday School) as a big Daddy? Where's Mom? Not teaching that class, I guess.

Why is gender introduced into theological discussions at all? Isn't this one of the "ludicrious propositions" Alan Watts said western religions saddle themselves with?

Pyrrho's predictable skepticism finally found a worthy mark.

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