Jesus and Baldur
Dec. 23rd, 2013 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lonesparkThey're not the same guy.
But they have a quality about them feels...symmetrical(?) Love and hope and forgiveness, ineffable and undying. Light in any darkness. And joy that requires no pain...for all that it is always born and reborn from pain and death.
To me it doesn't fit the world I know, or the soul I own. And with Baldur, I think that's the point. He's too good for this world. (Is he the opposite of entropy?) We can treasure his memory and the hope of his return, as a guiding light and a call to labors.
(His, and not his only, I think. What of Sigyn? If love is patient and kind, if it endures all things... Then she too is too good for this world, for all that her love saves (or will save) us every day... Nanna's there, too, but it's a more destructive, negating version of patient love. Absolutely a valid choice in Heathen ethics, but less of an unusual one...Probably that's another article...)
I don't know if I need Baldur. What does he offer, now, that no other god can? When hope and love and life are reborn, we can turn to Frey and his kin. What about the kindness, the acceptance, the light without darkness? Do we need that? I don't feel like I do, but maybe I just don't understand...
(It's part of the reason that I turned more to the old gods when I was depressed. If God is Love, but you can't feel that, ever, then what good is god? And I know, and I knew, that Jesus is More Complicated Than That, and Hashem...waaaay more complicated...but still. The Regin and wights offer and demand connection and meaning and ritual and sacrifice in every. single. moment. of a human life.)
I believe there will be a new world, some day, because we know that this old one will die. But I don't know what that really means. Who will be "we" and where will be "home" on that day? Are we talking mass extinctions? Death of Sunna herself? Or is it subtler but no less final? We will leave Mother Earth behind? Will we become something not recognizable as human? In what sense will the old gods fade from prominence if that happens? How will the new gods step up? Will we notice when it happens? Is it already happening?
The Christians who recorded our lore posited that that had happened. And the Christians who built the early Church were foretelling and surviving their own Ragnarok, in a sense. What does it mean for them, and for us, that the End didn't come in a way we all agree on?
Help me, science fiction writers, you're my only hope!
But they have a quality about them feels...symmetrical(?) Love and hope and forgiveness, ineffable and undying. Light in any darkness. And joy that requires no pain...for all that it is always born and reborn from pain and death.
To me it doesn't fit the world I know, or the soul I own. And with Baldur, I think that's the point. He's too good for this world. (Is he the opposite of entropy?) We can treasure his memory and the hope of his return, as a guiding light and a call to labors.
(His, and not his only, I think. What of Sigyn? If love is patient and kind, if it endures all things... Then she too is too good for this world, for all that her love saves (or will save) us every day... Nanna's there, too, but it's a more destructive, negating version of patient love. Absolutely a valid choice in Heathen ethics, but less of an unusual one...Probably that's another article...)
I don't know if I need Baldur. What does he offer, now, that no other god can? When hope and love and life are reborn, we can turn to Frey and his kin. What about the kindness, the acceptance, the light without darkness? Do we need that? I don't feel like I do, but maybe I just don't understand...
(It's part of the reason that I turned more to the old gods when I was depressed. If God is Love, but you can't feel that, ever, then what good is god? And I know, and I knew, that Jesus is More Complicated Than That, and Hashem...waaaay more complicated...but still. The Regin and wights offer and demand connection and meaning and ritual and sacrifice in every. single. moment. of a human life.)
I believe there will be a new world, some day, because we know that this old one will die. But I don't know what that really means. Who will be "we" and where will be "home" on that day? Are we talking mass extinctions? Death of Sunna herself? Or is it subtler but no less final? We will leave Mother Earth behind? Will we become something not recognizable as human? In what sense will the old gods fade from prominence if that happens? How will the new gods step up? Will we notice when it happens? Is it already happening?
The Christians who recorded our lore posited that that had happened. And the Christians who built the early Church were foretelling and surviving their own Ragnarok, in a sense. What does it mean for them, and for us, that the End didn't come in a way we all agree on?
Help me, science fiction writers, you're my only hope!
