March 27
Meghan had me cuddled up in her arms again, with my head tucked just under her chin. She was drooling into my mane just a little bit, too: I could feel a damp spot just by my right ear. I didn't mind all that much. It was nice just to be with her.
I just sort of dozed off until she woke up and reached across me to get to her telephone. She kind of reached over me and brushed her breasts across my head which felt really weird. Then she set her phone back down and rolled onto her back and said that she didn't want to get up.
Well, I didn't mind staying in bed for just a little bit longer, so I rolled over to where I could put a foreleg on her chest and rested my head on her arm, and she reached across with her other hand and started petting my mane.
She said that we ought to get up and get ready for church. She said that she had to take a shower and do her hair and I said that I should do the same.
Meghan told me that it would be most efficient if she took a shower first and then I took a shower, and she could help me dry off and with my mane and tail too. I'd planned to just go back to my dorm, but I didn't want to turn down the opportunity for her to brush me, so I said that was a good idea as long as she let me pee before she went into the bathroom.
When I was done, she was still in bed, and she'd pulled the covers up over herself. I sat down on the foot of the bed and told her that it was her turn, and she nodded then looked down at the covers and I thought she would wrap herself up in them like Peggy had, but she decided not to and pushed them down and got out of bed.
Since her bathroom was attached to her room, she didn't have to have a little basket full of shower supplies: she just went into the room and closed the door, and I set my head down on the bed to wait for her to be done.
I must have dozed off again, because the next thing I knew she was shaking me gently and telling me that it was my turn.
After I’d finished my shower, she had me stand on a towel on her bed and dried me off, then got up on the bed with me and had me stretch out to where she could brush my mane. I told her that she ought to get dressed first—she only had a robe on—but she said that this way if she wouldn't have to worry about getting hair on her Sunday clothes.
That was smart of her; I wound up leaving a lot of hair on her robe, which made me feel bad, but she said that it was okay, that was why she was wearing it.
When she was satisfied with how I looked, she got dressed in a black skirt and a white bra, then she went into the bathroom to do her makeup before she put her blouse on.
The two of us went to the dining hall for a quick breakfast, and then back to my dorm room so that I could get dressed. It was kind of funny how I had to tell her what to do, although I suppose if I'd had to help her dress she would have been doing the same.
We went into the chapel ten minutes before the service started. Meghan picked a seat that was near the center, and we both waved at people we knew as we went by. I was expecting it to only be students, but there were some older people that I didn't know here and there. They might have been professors, or they could have been people from the community.
There was a black-haired girl who I'd never seen before sitting on a bench in the back playing the organ, and the whole front of the church was filled with lilies, from one side to the other.
Meghan held out a program for me, and once I'd gotten comfortable in my seat I started to read through it. The back of the pew in front of us had little pocket-shelves on it that held a Bible and two red books Meghan said were called hymnals, which was where the words we'd be singing were.
I guess I was paying too much attention to the church without even noticing what was going on, because all of a sudden there was a pause before the organist started a new song, and as soon as she'd begun everybody was standing up.
That was a lot easier for them than it was for me. The pews weren't made with ponies in mind, and I had to kind of stretch forward and prop my hooves on the pew in front of me.
Meghan held the hymnal down so that I could see it, and pointed to a page that not only had words but also the music.
Even before I'd figured out where we were, a choir started singing behind us, and then everybody in the audience joined in with them.
The choir filed by us and went all the way up front, where there were pews for them to sit, and when the song was over, they all sat down, and we did too.
Meghan leaned over and said that if it was too difficult for me to stand up I could stay sitting, but I didn't want to be the only one sitting down.
Once it had quieted down a little bit, Liz came out from a door in back and stepped up to the podium. She had on a robe like the choir did, but it was white, and had a white scarf that had symbols all over it and draped across the front. She greeted everyone, and then started reading our first lesson from the Bible, which was from Acts, and I tried to follow along but hadn't even found the page yet before she was done.
Then she said a prayer and we sang another song. I was hoping that there wouldn't be a sacrifice; there had been a lot in the Bible so far about animal sacrifices and I could really do without seeing that. But nothing in the program said there was going to be.
Liz went back up to the podium and then read several verses from the end of Mark, and then went right into her sermon, about how Jesus had been crucified, died, and been buried, and then on the third day He had risen again but that we shouldn't be afraid like Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome had been afraid, that we should go out and spread the good word.
When she was done, she said that we would have communion to remind us of Jesus' sacrifice for us, and she explained the Last Supper to us, and there were words in the hymnal that we had to say at the right time, then we all went to the front where a woman from the choir tore off a small piece of bread for us and then Liz held a chalice full of wine which we dipped the bread into.
After everyone had had communion, we sang another song, and the choir walked down the aisle and out of the church, followed by Liz. She stopped in front of the doors and gave a benediction and then the organist started playing happy music.
She stayed by the door and shook everybody's hand or gave them a hug as they were leaving. I hugged her and she asked how my reading was going, and I said that I'd gotten to Joshua and promised that I would do better. I said that it was hard reading about how the people kept messing up and making God mad, and Liz told me that was human nature, and people were still like that.
I asked her why He couldn't have made people who would follow His rules, and she asked me if I'd rather be born a slave, or choose my path of my own free will.
She had a bunch of other stuff to do, so she couldn't meet with me today, but she said that maybe we could meet on Thursdays for coffee or tea, and I said that was a good idea, and promised her that I'd have finished Joshua by then.
Meghan helped me get out of my dress, and then I went back to her room and hung out with her until it was lunchtime, then we both went our separate ways after lunch.
I spent the afternoon with the door open, greeting neighbors as they came back. Ruth and Kat and Monica and Barbara and Rebekka and then after dinner Peggy finally returned and she just dropped her bag on the floor and wrapped her arms around me in a great big hug. I thanked her for taking the time to come out and see us on the train, and she said that her parents really liked me and that she thought my friends were pretty cool.
We probably could have stayed up all night talking, but tomorrow was the first day of new classes, and it would be good to be well-rested for that.
Heh Heh.
As the only quadruped there should have checked that were to be no sacrifices.
7242650
Ah, but she is not of cloven hoof, a proper sacrifice would be a goat, sheep, or cow, if a mammal, or any kind of bird really, but pegasi are neither.
Based purely on the attitudes of people I've had to live with, quite a few folks would rather have been born slaves. They certainly act like it.
Again, entirely based on personal experience. I feel I have to say that twice, just in case things get... dicey in today's comments section.
I was under the vague impression people (and presumably ponies count as people for this purpose) weren't supposed to take communion unless they were Christians in good standing? Though I guess it varies by denomination? (Have been in a church about 10 times since going off to college, and aside from the brief relationship with the Very Very Catholic woman those were funerals or weddings, so little data).
7242716 Yea it depends on the denomination, but it also depends on the Priest/Pastor aswell.
On the whole, in denominations that maintain Communion/Mass, it generally encouraged that only those whom have been through Confirmation should partake; but non-worshipers and those who haven't been through Confirmation are not barred either normaly. Though they are encouraged to receive a blessing than partake in the Communion Bread & Wine.
Nothing to do whether they are Christians in Good or bad standing
7242738
Growing up Roman Catholic, I can attest that the Catholic Church didn't approve of non-Catholics participating. The missal even had something like "members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united" cannot participate, which always struck me as a little arrogant/optimistic.
7242779 In our Anglican Church it's simply "those who normally take communion at their local church may partake".
Most likely because we're in Full or particial communion with most of the larger denominations.
Being raised Lutheran, I'm not especially devout, but it did foster a love of music in me early on. Lovely hymns, thundering organ, lilting handbells, bits of lovely chanting in more traditional services (albiet in English. I did get an appreciation of Latin from my Catholic mother).
Music is quite important in Lutheranism. Martin himself was a composer and wrote a number of hymns and promoted the congregation participating instead of just the choir, an idea which was frowned on by the Catholics before that time. The torch was then picked up by the Bach family.
Also, Lutherans are quite easygoing when it comes to alcohol. The Lutheran Church refused to get onboard with the Temperance
hysteriamovement when most other Protestant groups supported it wholeheartedly.http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/martin-luther-was-craft-brewer
farm3.staticflickr.com/2611/3663513443_9b3357ca44_o.jpg
Would a Pegasus count as a dove in the old sacrificial systems do you think?
And Silver scandalously touching human boobs how scandalous
This story shall remain in the featured list, now and forevermore.
I see there are the appropriate number of likes for this chapter...
There were 666 comments when I posted this.
Is it me or is Liz not explaining things properly?
Meghan forgot panties. How indecent of her.
All in all twelve thumbs up.
7242976
Silver's not wearing panties...
Meghan is, she put them on before she came out of the bathroom.
I feel fairly strongly that you should never take communion in a church you aren't... well, in communion with. Not so much baptism or confirmation, but in the real sense that communion is the ritual expression of your union with the body of the Church. People can sit and listen, even sing along with the service, but a sacrament is a sacrament, and participating in form without the substance is an insult to the beliefs of the congregation.
7242967 Eh, that was a middling appropriate expression of free will theology, it a bit brief and sketchy on the details.
7242997 I imagine that's up to the congregation in question. :P
7243010 I've been reading Jeremiah this month. He couches issues of faith and the covenant in a very sexualized rhetoric. If a married person have no respect for their own vows, should I likewise have no respect for them, and participate in their adultery, though I had no part in the making of vows? I would certainly have joined in the breaking of them.
7242670 Not any kind of bird, birds of prey and scavengers are out as well.
Don't worry Silver, even the Jews don't do animal sacrifice without a sanctified temple, and there hasn't been one for several thousand years.
7242716
7242738
I can confirm that it varies by denomination. Generally, the more liberal-minded the denomination's theology, the looser the rules on who can and can't take communion. I (mostly) grew up in a Disciples of Christ church, and we pretty much allowed anyone who wanted to partake in communion to do so.
7242967
Liz hasn't had much chance to explain things properly. There's been, what, one meeting and a few times they've chatted briefly? Besides, to really understand Christianity (and, by extension, Easter), Silver would have to read the New Testament, and to really understand THAT, she needs to finish the Old Testament. (And, ideally, reading some of the non-canonical Jewish works about the interstitial time between the OT and NT...cause there's a LOT)
7243024 You're making a comparison between participating in a ritual that you don't necessarily believe in and breaking an oath? Unironically?
You don't see the false equivalency?
7243298 Yeah, I am. They're both sacraments I am not a party to, and my entire approach to religion is a sort of somber irony, in which I tend to take believers' beliefs more seriously than they seem to take themselves. Is a covenant a binding, real affair, or is it a mummery, a pageant?
7243328 Ignoring for a moment that paying lip service to a sacrament isn't equivalent to breaking one, we must also keep in mind that I don't even think it's been specified what denomination this church is. Catholics observe the sacraments. Baptists, by contrast, observe ordinances.
7243347 Even the Baptists take the idea that only believers in good standing should take communion, whether they're open or closed communion congregations. Hell, I was raised in a liberal church that served grape juice instead of wine, I can't fuss about the whole memorial vs. transubstantiation distinction, except to opine that the doctrinaire distinctions are more about history than substance. The important element is the concept of community and covenant. You can't hand-wave away Corinthians I 11:23-31 without gutting the concept entirely.
7242967
I'm not really sure Liz can explain it in such a way that'll be truly satisfactory. There's a reason these things, along with the problem of evil, are such strong arguments again religion, largely because religion has been unable to properly address them.
It's possible to have free will, and still be restricted from doing certain things. For example, if you're traveling down a hallway and come to a T intersection, you can either go left, or you can go right (or go no where or turn around) but you can't go 'straight forward' because there's no path there. Similarly, humans can't flap their arms and fly around, or hold their breath underwater for a really long time (at least, not without technology).
You also can't travel faster than the speed of light, as far as we know.
All these are examples of real 'restrictions' on free will that don't really enslave us in any real fashion. Rather than creating laws and punishing those who break them, why not simply structure the world so that those things that anger Him are impossible to do in the first place?
7242670
And Christians don't do the whole animal sacrifice thing because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, sayeth Hebrews (and a bit of Googling).
I'm surprised Silver Glow didn't get more attention. And intrigued by the possibility of Christian (or Muslim, Hindu, etc.) ponies. For that matter, is Celestianism a thing in this universe? I haven't read a fic where she encourages worship, but I've read a few where she permits it.
7242957 Oh yeah I've been in the Sears Tower. I agree, it is an awesome view.
7243528
I knew that, I'm Presbyterian myself! I was just trying to alleviate Silver Glow's fears, is all.
Glad to see Peggy got back soon. Wouldn't want Silver to get too lonely.
7244000 Well, the circle means it's an airstrip, but the objectionable label means that it doesn't meet the FAA requirements. If you right click on the circle (or anywhere on the map) if will give you a list of what's nearby that point and you can select it to get more info. In this case the airport is Prairie Ronde and the description of the place makes it sounds a bit sketchy for a number of reasons.
7244052
Gotcha! Yeah, that runway looks a bit sketchy. Probably couldn't land a jumbo there.
7244064 I wouldn't want to land a Cessna there, but then again I'm not a fan of short grass fields. :)
Though you might be surprised where you can land a passenger jet and be able to take off again.
Sorry if it's been brought up before, but just how long has the connection between Equestria and the human world existed?
7244073
I knew about that one (IMHO, one of the best airliner landings before Sullenberger ditched on the Hudson), and I'd always wondered how they got the plane back off again . . . then I was watching an episode of Mayday about it and found out that they flew the damn thing back off the levee.
7244135
Not specified in the story. In my head, more than two years, less than ten. And the first bits of it would obviously be very cautious contact back and forth.
7243484
I think the idea is that God wanted to create beings capable of choosing to love him, or not. He wanted us to have a choice--a real choice. The examples you cite are morally neutral; for people to be able to do good things with real value, they have to be able to do bad things of equal value.
That said, one of my favorite novels takes place in an alternate universe (modern-day) where you can only go so far before the forces that run the universe will reach over and stop you. The protagonist is a prosecuting attorney, and part of her job is to summon the deific manifestation of Justice into an L.A. courtroom and make sure it doesn't get out of hand while it does its work on the defendant.
7244588
How can you tell whether or not these are morally neutral choices, though? If it were the case that it was impossible to murder someone, wouldn't this, too, also be morally neutral? I agree they're moral, but one could easily imagine a universe where, for example, it wasn't possible to commit adultery, or murder someone, with these moral choices built into the universe.
Yeah, and if you chose not to love Him, He punishes you, by nuking your city or sending you to hell or whatever else. So ultimately He hasn't really given you a choice, because if you chose something He doesn't want, you suffer for it.
7242938
At least it's not peaches.
7242983 Of course, but it's not written, so it makes a funny joke. All it says is that she wore a bra, black shirt, and blouse.
7244764
That could be an interesting premise for a speculative fiction novel! And for all I know, universes like that might exist. Our universe seems to be built around conflict and entropy; I'd like to believe there are places built on different rules.
I'm not saying I like everything about the system. But there's a difference between having a choice with harsh consequences attached to it, and having no choice. This is pretty much the theme of the Old Testament: God sets the choice between obedient happiness and disobedient misery in front of Israel time after time, and over and over they choose misery.
7244139 The Gimli Glider is right up there as well. And I love that series myself.
7244876
I actually had this idea for such a thing where the universe eventually develops a universal civilization which, as the universe dies, creates a new universe with certain moral laws written into the fabric of it. So for our universe, the prior one thought FTL travel was morally wrong, therefore we can't travel FTL--the next universe after ours will probably make it so you can't murder someone.
Seems psychopathic to me, really. I'm not really sure why anyone would think He's worthy of being worshiped.
I'd really like to ask Liz two questions
1) If the old testament is (mostly) about people getting god's laws wrong and being wicked - then why are there only examples from very long ago?
2) Why is the story of Joshua told differently from the story of (picking a pony example) Sombra? Jerrico was genocide, and the deliberate killing of everyone and everything else. That equal or worse to anything Sombra did (in most cannons anyway) but the bible doesn't include the phrase 'and Joshua was a very bad man for his actions'. Quite the opposite in fact.
I know that Silver has had problems with parts of the Bible before, but I'm afraid I'm going to lose quite a bit of respect for her if she doesn't baulk in some way over genocide for the purpose of stealing land. You either understand that's wrong or you don't, and while the authors of the Bible clearly didn't, I hold Silver to a higher standard.
"Liz, we've had bad ponies in our history. Sombra enslaved a nation. And I have no problem calling Sombra a monster. But even he never slaughtered children and pregnant mares. I find it very troubling that you won't say the same about a human that did."
7245200 For myself, I can't wait until she gets to Job, because Silver would probably see a comparison between God and Discord in that one, except that God seems more mean-spirited than Discord.
Someone really needs to point Silver at Wikipedia, so she can get a broad overview of these topics. Reading the whole bible, from start to finish, without any idea of the history or cultural baggage involved, will only confuse poor Silver. And what will happen when a Mormon missionary or Jehovah's Witness comes to her door? The first class in her new semester has an Indian teacher, so he might be Hindu or Buddhist, and then there's Islam, Shinto...
Basically, I always liked how Delenn of the Minbari put it in Babylon 5:
Babylon 5 also humanity's "dominant belief" system on display early on, and I wish Commander Sinclair could speak to Silver:
It kind of bugs me that people are trying to sexualize Meghan's relationship with Silver Glow. She might simply be comfortable with her own nudity. Perhaps she is easing into it around the pony to get used to doing so when not alone, knowing it is safe to do with somepony who won't think her motives are sexual.
7245456
You, sir, get bonus points just for bringing my favorite sci-fi series of all time into this discussion.
Ponies having cutie marks probably makes then a lot more okay with the concept of being designed in way that would forbid particular actions or thoughts.
A cutie mark signifies your tendencies and/or preferences, and there has been no indications that a cutie mark is ever incorrect. It might be misinterpreted by a pony that lacks self-confidence or the conviction of one's self (see troubleshoes), but it's never wrong. What would be so wrong with a mind that had certain tendencies, but was still you?
Well, there were several interesting discussions about Christianity in the comments. Thankfully civil.
7242650
That ought to be in the tourism guide for ponies: check to make sure the church you plan to attend doesn't do animal sacrifices.
7242714
Sad but true. Although I guess we're all slaves to society in one way or another.
7242716
As others have said, it depends on the denomination. AFAIK, all Methodist churches offer communion to anyone who wishes to partake in it; as for the other denominations, I don't know. My dad made a point of saying every time he offered communion that anyone was welcome to take it.
7242779
Catholics always struck me as a bit medieval in their attitude. I mean, one part of me admires them for standing fast to their traditions, but at the same time sometimes I shake my head and think that they ought to get with the times.
7242797
One Christmas Eve service, I was 'backstage' when the organist launched into a particularly stirring rendition of 'O Holy Night,' and all the stuff on the cabinets started vibrating off. I mentioned that to my dad later, and he laughed and said that the trustees had always thought the plaster kept cracking back there because of passing truck traffic.
I've noticed that the hymns really stick with you, too. I haven't regularly attended church in 20 years or so, but when I do, I know most of the words to most of the hymns, and every now and then I find myself singing one randomly.
7242842
Maybe. I'm not sure how they classified birds. I'd be worried if I was a white, virgin pegasus, that's for sure.
It was more of being touched by
...this time.
7242952
I was amused that it was this chapter that pushed it to 666 likes.
7242967
I suppose it depends on what you think she ought to be explaining. The whole beginning of the dialogue was that Silver Glow wanted to know who God was, rather than Silver Glow saying she wanted to become a Christian.
7243160
That's kind of what I noticed as well, but I didn't want to generalize too much.