March 31
The alarm on Meghan's telephone woke me up and it woke her up too. And if Peggy had been in the room, I bet it would have woken her up, as well.
I knew her telephone was still in her pants pocket, so I hopped out of bed and grabbed her pants so she wouldn’t have to crawl over me to get at it. I just handed them to her and she got her telephone out and pushed on the screen which made it stop, then she flopped back onto the pillow with her telephone still in her hand.
Since she wasn't showing any signs of wanting to get up right away, I got back in bed and put my head down on her chest. She reached out with the hand that wasn't holding the telephone and scratched behind my ear and I responded by nuzzling her breast, which made her giggle.
We lay like that until her alarm went off again and this time she said that she had probably ought to get going because she had to get ready for class. So I lifted up my head and before she could move I leaned down and kissed her on the lips, and she sort of stiffened in surprise but then kissed me back. Then I got out of bed so that she could get dressed and get to class on time.
Meghan sat up on the edge of the bed and pulled her pants on, got up and gathered the rest of her clothes. She sat on the bed to put on her socks and shoes, then pulled on her shirt and didn't bother wearing her bra.
I thanked her for taking me to see the movie, and she said it was a lot of fun, and when would I be coming over to watch the rest of the Harry Potter movies. I told her that I could come over tonight, if she didn't think that was watching too many movies all at once, and she said she didn't think it was.
I stood up on my hind legs and hugged her and then when she'd gone I got together my flight gear and zoomed around the sky for a while until my wings were sore, then I landed and trotted around the neighborhood until my legs were, too. It felt good to get that exercise in.
When I got back to the dorm, I pampered myself with a long shower again, then had a quick late breakfast and then I sat in my room and read Joshua until it was lunchtime. It said how the Gibeonites were afraid of the Isrealites (and for good reason) so they pretended that they lived far away and made a peace treaty, and when Joshua found out he was mad, but he kept his word and kept them safe.
Then they went to battle and defeated all the other towns and left none alive, because God told them to, and then they divided up the land among their clans. And in one battle God made the sun stand still so that they could see to keep fighting.
I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I guess all the other tribes shouldn't have lived in land that God had promised to the Isrealites, but I didn't understand why He couldn't have just asked them to move. Or maybe He had, and they hadn't listened, and that was their punishment.
I just ducked into the dining hall long enough to grab a quick salad, 'cause I'd eaten breakfast late. Hopefully Peggy would want to go to Meijer this weekend so that I could get some more snacks and beer and shampoo. She'd probably be home tonight, and I could ask her then.
I was really eager to hear the rest of the poems in the debate, and I wasn't disappointed. Conrad started us off with Clancy of the Overflow, which was about a man named Clancy who herded sheep and nobody knew where he was. It was sort of like the sailors that come in and out of our harbor: the harbormaster keeps their mail, and when they're in port she gives it to them, and when they're out at sea nopony really knows where they are.
Then we read Banjo, of the Overflow, which made fun of the first poem and again said how miserable it was in the bush. I guess people aren't smart enough to sit under pine trees or bring tents for when it rains, or they make camps in low spots. I never once heard a sailorpony complain about getting wet.
I guess to people who are always accustomed to being inside, it must be bothersome. I've even seen cityponies run from the rain, as if it's going to melt them.
Mister Banjo didn't like all of that, so he wrote back that people who have settled into city life have gone soft, and gotten too accustomed to having all their comforts, and not having to do any work more difficult than move papers around and that sort of gave me pause because maybe one day that would be me, in charge of a weather sector and spending more time doing paperwork than actually flying. Maybe I would wind up like the old drover he wrote about.
But that wasn't so; I was just getting ideas from what he'd written. Lots of weathermares who were in charge got plenty of flight time in, and I could, too. I just had to be an active team leader.
Mister Lawson thought so, too. He wrote a poem called The Poets of the Tomb, and I could kind of tell by the tone of the poem that Mister Banjo's prodding had gotten to him just a little bit. Conrad had started reading it to set the tone, and then he gave it to Trevor next, and I got to read the last stanza.
It was interesting that he wasn't really talking about the bush specifically, but instead talking about people as a whole. And when Mister Banjo replied, it was almost an apology for having such strong feelings.
I got the sense that he was regretful that he had wasted his youth and was now an old man out of place, but I thought he was being too hard on himself. And I kind of wondered if Conrad ever thought that way, 'cause he was really old. Were there things that he wished he'd done when he was younger that he never had?
I suppose everybody winds up having those regrets.
At the end of class, Conrad told us that we'd be moving to a different continent next week, but he wouldn't say who we were studying.
I had the afternoon free, until I had my meeting with Liz, so I went to my dorm room and got my copy of Coming of Age in Samoa and sat down on the bed and started to read it, then I thought about what Mister Lawson and Mister Banjo had said about settling in, so I took my book outside and sat on a thick tree branch and read it there. It was a little bit chilly, especially since I'd gotten trimmed, but not too uncomfortable. The sun kept me warm, and of course keeping my wings out just a little bit helped hold in a lot of body heat.
After dinner, I went to meet with Liz, and first she asked me if I had enjoyed the Easter service, and I told her that I had. And then I apologized for being so slow at reading the Bible but there was always so much going on that it was easy to forget, and she said that it was okay, most Christians hadn't read it either. But she said that most people in America were raised with at least a basic understanding of some of the stories, and I didn't have any of that, and that she thought that perhaps it would be better to have me take my time reading it from the beginning and coming to my own conclusions, rather than have somebody telling me what I ought to think.
So I told her what I thought about how people were really bad at following God's rules, and that He was mean to them because of that. And I said that I'd been thinking about it a bit and how she'd told me that it was better to make free choices, even if they were bad choices, than to be slaves.
I said that it bothered me how angry He got sometimes, and how He had flooded the whole world and told the Isrealites that they could have land that somebody else already had, and that they should kill everyone. Especially since He wasn't mad that the Gibeonites made a peace treaty, even though they'd lied in order to get it.
Liz told me that she could understand why that bothered me, and she said that it bothered a lot of people. She said that after the Old Testament, God had sent Jesus down to make a new covenant with the people, and that some of the laws of the Old Testament had been changed as a result, and that Christianity ought to be about love.
She also told me that different people had different beliefs in the Bible. Some people thought that some of it was symbolism, like the creation story or the great flood, and other people thought that there was one specific version of the Bible that was absolutely God's word and that everything the Bible said had happened was true.
She said that one part that was currently being argued about was gay marriage and gay rights. In the Old Testament, it very specifically said that was against the rules, but Jesus struck down many of the old rules with His new covenant, so some churches felt it was okay for gay people to marry and others didn't think it was.
I asked her what she thought about it, and she said, “For there are these three things that endure: Faith, Hope, and Love, but the greatest of these is Love.” Then she hugged me and I promised to read more of the Bible before next week.
I thought about that as I was walking over to DeWaters. I guess our history hasn’t always been pleasant, either, because we didn’t always have a wise pony like Princess Celestia to tell us what to do. And there was a lot of time before she came where it was pretty bad and all the tribes were constantly fighting with each other, and among ourselves, too. So I ought to keep an open mind, because I thought what Liz was saying was that God learned that people couldn’t follow hard rules.
Meghan and I made popcorn and watched the third Harry Potter movie together. It felt darker than the first two I’d seen, but I was glad that they figured out how to save Buckbeak, even if they had to time travel, which is very dangerous I’ve heard. Harry is kind of dumb sometimes, but I think that’s just because he’s a boy. He’s lucky that Hermione is smart enough to help him figure things out.
I told Meghan that I had to be up early for class, so I should go back to my room, but she said that she’d set her phone alarm and asked what time I wanted to get up. I said that I shouldn’t need it; I woke up pretty reliably at dawn without an alarm, but I didn’t want to disturb her when I got up and she said that I wouldn’t, so she went into the bathroom to get dressed which was kind of disappointing but I guess it’s not nice to be naked around your roommate.
I let Meghan take the wall-side of the bed so that I wouldn’t disturb her when I got up, and then I settled into bed and snuggled up against her.
Kisss the girrrrl
I can't wait for her to get to the Benjamites in Judges. Or just all of Judges.
Man the sexual tension is killing me
Those are excellent poems.
mad
and spaces after commas.
Boy ~= young male
Is she thinking more of his youngness or his maleness, when she excuses him being dumb?
Since she's reading Australian poems, I humbly recommend -
My Country
The Man from Snowy River
The first is unarguably the most beautiful of all poems ever to describe my home; the second is a story in a poem that features horses and heroes. If you aren't already familiar with these, please enjoy.
We Australians get to be so hipster here. A rap-battle from 1893, held in a newspaper. Ha!
7256287
What tension? Silver Glow is a very affectionate pony who doesn't draw hard lines between sexual and non-sexual affection. Now, if the humans started fighting over her, there'd be tension, but that hasn't happened yet.
I have a feeling someone's going to have to explain monogamy to Silver Glow fairly soon
Yeah, the love of academia for Coming of Age in Samoa is directly related to how well the 90-year-old book corresponds to their preconceived notions on how a society should run (i.e. sexual promiscuity) and the stretch of using one person's observations of six hundred island people to extrapolate the behaviour of a few hundred million Americans is... nuts. Admittedly, it's an entertaining book, it's just biased heavily in specific directions while claiming otherwise much like most sociology books I suppose. The dichotomy of using COAIS and the Bible to teach an alien about humanity is striking (nice work, author). Thankfully, she is experiencing life on Earth in person instead of trying to figure out humanity from mere books. Or worse, TV. (Those poor, poor aliens watching our television must be so confused....)
7256417 The vikings beat you to it. ~6th century AD and onward.
Must be nice to have your own life planned out like that, especially when your expectations are ambitious and realistic at the same time. Good on her, and good on her for reflecting on it. That poetry class is definitively the most valuable for her.
And rap battle. *nods*
Even though I expected it, It was still somewhat disappointing to see Liz give a politician's non-answer, using a quote. Guess it's too ingrained in people not to risk doing or saying anything that might cause offence when being face to face with someone. On the other hoof, giving SG the freedom to make up her mind on her own was nice... and SG's first thought about it being how Celestia could be relied upon to tell ponies what to think was fitting. Liked that one.
And Meghan and SG... that's almost unbearably adorable. Forget about that whole monogamy talk. SG will have to educate her humans about how monogamy is unnatural.
7255453
you know this one spell right ? that princess twilight found/used ...
7256683
Who did you think the politicians learned it from? Though in fairness it's not Liz's job to discourage people from believing.
For us yes, but I'm not sure how ingrained it would be for Silver. I'm pretty sure an avoidance of confrontation rather than an avoidance of offence is what motives Silver's actions and thoughts.On a personal level sure she avoids offence (I really like your mane!) but we haven't seen a whole lot of evidence for culture wars in Equestria, so Silver may not have or even understand that kind of social imperative.
Consider Human Weather Prediction vs Pony Weather Management as a minor 'culture war'. Silver can see the differences, and the motivations and lack of knowledge/ability that shaped those differences. And if you listen to her, she seems to anticipate (probably correctly) that both groups will hybridise towards a common perspective. Human will hire ponies and/or learn to duplicate pegasus magic, and ponies will use human weather satellites and climate modelling computers to target their best efforts. (Or something like that.)
Real culture wars though don't work like that, because they're defined by one side (or sometimes both sides) rejecting knowledge. If Silver lacks that understanding, then not only might she not understand some things about humans until she does, but she might also find herself wondering through a social minefield without knowledge what a landmine is.
<cough> By which I mean one unrelated to human relationships and sex. </cough>
I expect much drama when Aric and Meghan become aware of each other...
As a side note: I wonder how the scientific community of Earth took it when they found out after contact with Equestria that "oh yeah time travel is possible."
7256352 With Silver? Probably maleness...
Well, this time I think I liked Liz's explanations better. Insisting on letting Silver make her own opinion is a big plus, mentioning that the Bible may be interpreted as symbols rather then be taken literally.
I just have an unease when she conveniently forget to mention that there is other gods around, if Silver really is to make her own opinion, telling her about the fact that there is very wide range of belief and naming a few of those would be a good idea.
I don't know what to make of Liz and her answers; on one hand, I get that it's a delicate balance (writing this sort of thing), but on the other hand Liz comes off worse than useless in this whole thing. The whole "Jesus changes a lot of the laws" is all very good on paper up until you realize it isn't the church--any of them--that are driving things like the acceptance of homosexuality. They're more than willing to jump on the bandwagon and do mental gymnastics to justify this new position, but they're like politicians who change their views because the political landscape is turning against those views.
7257598
This. This is my new headcanon.
Silver needs to meet some nihilist, misanthropic atheist at some point. She would be so confused
Hey, spoilers! She hasn't read it yet!
I'm glad Liz pointed this out. I hope Silver also realizes most people aren't Christians and don't believe in it at all. She might want to study several religions to get a bigger picture. I was getting a little worried she'd assumed the bible to be a history book. That'd have gotten awkward in a hurry.
7258029 the idea of taking part in the lord's supper without baptism or already established faith is absolutely foreign to me. I didn't know anyone did that.
7257500
7258234
My understanding of the Bible's justification for the slaughter of the Caananites is that God was using the Israelites to punish them for a litany of horrible sins, including but not limited to sacrificing their children to Baal and Molech by flame. See Deuteronomy 12:31, 2 Kings 16:3, Jeremiah 19:3-5.
7258284
I was wondering how long it would take somebody to notice.
7258011
Could she meet a normal atheist instead?
Admiral, I would absolutely love to read a human-turned-pony story by you.
7258538
Here you go:
The Stallion with Bows in his Mane, part 2
7258349
I'm pretty sure it's actually just "Conamara" in Irish. The Irish language uses initial consonant mutation in a wide range of contexts though, which would be pretty unintuitive to someone who doesn't know the language. If you saw the translation in, for example, the translation of "Connemara pony", "Conamara" would be in the genitive case there, and so would take a séimhiú (written in modern Irish as a 'h' after the first letter, and in older text as a dot above the first letter), but the base word is still "Conamara".
More than you really needed to know about it, but you seem to like learning weird stuff like this...
The thing you have to remember about Silver vs the Bible is: by EQ standards the Bible isn't that unlikely. Offhand, except for Noah's ark I can't think of any miracle Silver would not have heard about (more or less) Lot's wife got turned to salt? How is that different from Discord being turned to stone? Etc.
The only real problem is the number of holy people who am jerks & big dumb meany heads.
7258520 No, that's when they start swooping down and trying to rip your eyes out.
7254853 Beet sugar would be fine I think, but sugar cane is grown locally where I live, so it's the first alternative I think of.
7258302 Thanks. I knew that was the answer, but it's nice to have the scripture references pointed out by someone. I think Silver would understand that you don't just nicely ask people who burn their children to politely leave. In fact, she'd probably wonder why He didn't stop them sooner.
7258377
When you hinted that Mr. Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn were references it took me only a moment to find out who they were. I probably should have checked out the rest of the handlers as they were mentioned. I'm not familiar with the source material for Blaise and Garvin, but it's still nice to know who you meant.
7258880 who knows how much of that is true vs how much was standard wartime propaganda being repeated as true after the fact.
Everyone rapes babies and kills pregnant women when you're at war with them.
I know this is what a lot of Christian's believe, but as a Messianic Jew this bugs me more than it should. It's less that the Law was changed and more that Jesus's sacrifice means not following it perfectly will not lead to eternal damnation. The Law is still the best way to live.
all the double meanings !!
7260093 thats not how hearts and minds works ...
7256277
7256297
They are indeed. I'm sad that I went this far in my life without knowing of them.
7256351
oops.
Corrections made; thank you!
7256352
More of his maleness.
7256378
Both beautiful poems, thank you!
Out of curiousity, is Clancy of the Overflow a recurring character in his poems?
7256417
I know--that's just so epic.
7256287
7256422
She's blissfully unaware of the drama she's potentially going to cause.
7256426
Although in a way, isn't that true of most books? I mean you're probably going to see a different choice of reading material at a very conservative college vs. a very liberal one.
7256616
Seems like the vikings beat everyone to pretty much everything. Columbus was an also-ran when it came to discovering America.
7256683
That was sort of sloppy on my part, and I apologize. Liz is 100% in favor of gay marriage, and I didn't mean to imply that she was trying to weasel out of answering the question.
7256878
Gusty's not a strong enough unicorn to cast it. Cayenne, maybe.
7257242
I didn't mean for it to come off as Liz trying to dodge the question about gay marriage; she's 100% in favor of it and has no problem telling you that. She was more meaning to address the fact that not all churches think the same way about all sorts of different things.
Yes, I think that's a good summary of how she thinks.
7257261
Well, they're already aware of each other. They're both in bell choir together.
7257471
And how disappointed they were when Twilight (or a pony like her) explained the drawbacks of it, and how it didn't work like they hoped it would.
7257556
Yup, maleness. Colts are stupid and stallions think with their dicks.
I think that's an important thing, and I feel that I was really blessed in having a father who was a pastor and also a chemistry major, so he wasn't a fundamentalist who rejected scientific theories like evolution or the Big Bang theory. When I was old enough to have meaningful discussions about stuff in the Bible, we actually had a conversation about how when the Tigris and Euphrates River valley flooded, that would seem like the whole world to the ancient Israelites. (And as an aside, I often forget that he was a chemistry major first, so when I mentioned the XKCD what-if that mentioned dioxygen difluoride, he knew what that was.)
It's important to remember, though, that Silver Glow didn't seek out Liz to find out about religion, she wanted to know who God was, because He kept coming up in her philosophy class.
7257622
I dunno if I agree. I think that's a bit of a generalization. For starters, regardless of opinion, no church could legally marry a gay couple before the state that church was in made it legal. They could symbolically marry the couple, but it would have no legal standing whatsoever. And as for the mental gymnastics, as far as I know, Jesus never said a single word about homosexuality.
Going back a half century, there were a lot of places in the US where interracial marriages were illegal, and regardless of the church's opinion of them, they could not legally perform an interracial marriage. It would be interesting to see what a particular denomination's views on that were. I'm sure that there were some where all the pastors were told not to, regardless of what the local laws were, and there were others that thought that if two people loved each other that was enough because God's laws trumped the laws of man.
The United Methodist Church is going to be discussing among their members this year whether or not they should sanction gay marriage, in fact. And doing some digging on Wikipedia, it looks like the United Church of Canada was fighting to have sexual orientation added to non-discrimination laws since 1977, and since 2005 to legalize same-sex marriage, so I wouldn't say that all churches are reactionary.
It's also worth saying that some congregations are more liberal than others, too. My dad knows other UMC pastors who have presided over gay marriages, despite the risk of being defrocked if they get caught (and some of them have). Some conferences probably turn a blind eye to that, if they believe that the Church's position is wrong.
7258011
Or she'd wind up picking a fight with him when he pushed her too far.
...Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic with insomnia? He stayed awake all night wondering if there was a dog.
7258032
Well, that's an interesting point, because it many ways the Old Testament is a history book. . . . but depending on your beliefs, it's 100% accurate, or historical fiction, or a mix of the two.
7258045
I'm not sure how many people do (like, how many people who are die-hard atheists would even be at church for communion?), but some congregations don't require you to be Christian in order to receive communion.
7258302
That sounds right to me. I'm actually not all that familiar with the Old Testament, besides the well-known stories that everybody who attends Vacation Bible School knows (and I think I can still list off all the books of the New Testament in order, from the song we learned).
I guess that makes it a bit more authentic, though, 'cause I'm coming across stuff I didn't know as I read along with Silver Glow.
7258636
That is in fact how I saw it: the Wiki says Capaillín Chonamara, so I just assumed that Chonamara was the Irish spelling. Good to know!
7258750
That's a very important point when it comes to the miracles in the Bible. To a pony, even the resurrection might not be that special; after all, Celestia's pet does that. Certainly, when she reads it she isn't thinking how miraculous it is that the staff turned into a serpent or that the Red Sea parted, which definitely changes her understanding of the Bible. At the same time, she is aware the humans can't do magic, so she does understand that for them those are extraordinary events, and that they couldn't do it without God helping out.
Odds are that a unicorn reading the Bible would also have a different understanding; somepony like Twilight would very likely be researching spells that were similar to the Biblical miracles.
7258758
Is that because they're assholes, or are human eyes a symbol of magpie strength?
7258799
Yeah, i guess it's where you're raised. I always think of beet sugar first.
7260057
Here you go.
7260093
Yeah, you do wonder that. I was thinking about that as I read through Joshua: if the Canaanites had written down their version of events, what would it have been like?
7260331
I think some of that comes down to an individual sect's interpretation and translation, for example whether or not Jesus meant to say that the dietary laws weren't important (what comes out of a man's mouth is more important than what goes in). I've read arguments either way on that subject.
7260518
Yet homosexuality has existed since the dawn of humanity, and Jesus was born and died and saved everyone some 2000 years ago.
And it's only now, with society changing around them, that suddenly it's morally okay for homosexuals to exist (and marry). Jesus overturned those laws 2000 years ago, and surely homosexuality was just as mortally permissible in 500 AD and 1500 AD as it supposedly is now, but it's only with society adopting--in one way or another--that suddenly the churches of the world have found biblical support for this point of view.
Homosexual activities, in Canada, were decriminalized about 10/8 years before Quebec updated their Charter of human rights, which happened in 1977, and the 2005 decision, while supported by the church, was partly the result of the courts essentially legalizing it in many of the provinces anyway, and the government moving towards that direction.
When I say the church is reactionary, I mean it in the sense that you almost never see religious institutions leading this sort of charge, largely because they're the ones who have created, directly or indirectly the moral premise upon which many antihomosexual laws are based.
But this just supports my argument that the church is inherently reactionary: these priests are proceeding over liberal congregations and therefore come up with justification for those positions, rather than trying to lead. I'm not certain, but presumably this university is liberal leaning, therefore it should be unsurprising that Liz is too.
It's also worth saying that some congregations are more liberal than others, too. My dad knows other UMC pastors who have presided over gay marriages, despite the risk of being defrocked if they get caught (and some of them have). Some conferences probably turn a blind eye to that, if they believe that the Church's position is wrong.
7258750 ... and that's another thing for the theologians to argue about. And also one more argument in the toolkit of atheist proselytizers: "Your god was really just an Equestrian unicorn!"
7262062
I forget who, but I got this answer from one of the featured guests on The Larry Wilmore Show (he was a researcher and author).
For most people their morals decide their faith, no matter how vehemently many will argue its the opposite.
This is why you can get vastly different outlooks from the same source - like homosexuality becoming more acceptable in recent years; people will cherry pick the things that support how they see the world, and then use those things to justify their outlook.
(Also, wasn't homosexuality much more accepted in some parts of pre-Christian Greece and Rome?)
I wonder whether Silver will ever go so in-depth into human belief-/moral systems.
I see Silver's not a monogamist. (I have little problem with this.)
7260518
Albatross, albatross!
Miss Silver Glow starts to get that God is a genocidal arsehole. Soon, she will realize that God is not worthy of worship. At some point, she will discover that no evidence exists for artificiality of our universe; then she will come to the logical conclusion that religious texts are nothing more than fairy tales for adults.
7257471
7260518
Except...didn't Starlight Glimmer prove it did?
This is, supposed to be happening well after Season 6 isn't it, where the CMC are grown (or close to college age)?
That's... actually an interesting viewpoint to take.
If you go by how the bible describes it, and assume there wasn't anything like Earth before, then that would mean God would've never had the experience of looking over the human race before. It's like, everyp- everyone is just learning as they move along.
7743257
That, or God completely wiped out the entire planet in His rage before trying again and slipped up from time to time by being too wrathful on creatures that can't do everything He wants.
The Bible does state that He is a Jealous, Wrathful, and Vengeful God.
Mayhaps he needed to see first-hand what it was like being human before judging like he had in the past, hence Jesus.
I can see the human God being young and a bit too hardheaded on His creations if they aren't pleasing Him only to realize His mistakes afterwards.
7842081
Yahweh is the Godfather:
I recommend reading "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman. It covers these themes well.