wait, you read LUNA/NEW MOON too? i've never met another person who read it growing up! i honestly can't thank my bubbe enough for making sure we had a subscription. like, "how aggravating" was so good for my small feminist rage! and "herstory"! and "dear luna" and all the articles! this is the best kind of throwback !
omg the HOW AGGRAVATING column was so good, i remember working up so much righteous indignation as a 9 year old, luna girls forever
@sweetsunsister here is the answer i wrote for your ask about the sparrow that you sent me literally 5000 years ago
Okay so after I read the sparrow for the first time I had somany feelings and I just made a really long bulleted list so they’re all gonnabe vague, but I’m going to include some non-spoilery things
JOHN CANDOTTI
Anne and DW
Sofia standing up without fear
George’s quiet belief
Jimmy’s unshakable goodness
Alan’s music
Marc’s unwavering conviction
Anne’s dinners
Anne and George
Anne
Jimmy and Sofia
Sofia and Emilio
DW
Askama
Hands and symbolism and a distortion of stigmata
Every. Single . Thing. About Emilio Sandoz.
His joy and triumph and belief and despair andanger and rage and atheism and the alternative
The Sparrow is a lot of things, sothere are a lot of ways to love it. Here are a few.
Firstly it’s sci-fi, but in like a really cool, seldom doneway. Mostly you get a sci-fi that 1) rejects religion, 2) imagines a world inwhich religion has finally been recognized as a pointless thing, or 3) a worldwhere religion is like sort of co-opted, (there are more qualified people whocan talk about how stars wars, for example, borrows heavily from numerous theologiesin order to create the force and jedi order, but I am not one of those people). Even Star Trek, which I love, imagined a future where we had “evolved” pastreligion. My relationship with religion is long and complicated, but suffice itto say, I am tired of the rhetoric that claims that the more intelligent/educatedyou are, the less likely you are to be religious/believe in God.
So with all those opinions, along comes the sparrow. Whichis very sci-fi. The earth of the sparrow is definitely not our earth, it’ssubtle, but there are mentions of politics and technological advancement thatare definitively futuristic. It isn’t necessarily a better world but it also isn’t significantly worse. So you have allthe set-up of normal sci-fi. EXCEPT religion, our religions, still exist. (althoughI should note The Sparrow really only talks about Christianity and Judaism, asthose are the religions of characters). As someone who has had alifelong/tempestuous/intense relationship with religion, it was reallyrefreshing to see it handled complexly. Religious and non-religious people gotalong fine; science and religion, education and religion, doubt and religion,etc. were not mutually exclusive.
Which brings me to The reason The Sparrowtore me open and left me not quite the same; the main theme of the book. Likereligious and agnostic and atheist and women and men and straight andnot-straight and white and people of color and on and on. This is a book of people,and they’re different and similar and multifaceted and beautiful. The religiouscharacters are intelligent and embrace knowledge and science and it doesn’tpreclude their religious beliefs, and the agnostics are respectful and moraland good (I’m refraining from including textual citation but there are somereally good passages that deal with the agnosticism that exists in all of usit’s sooooo good).
So you know basically from the start that something reallyterrible happened on some mission and there is only one survivor. And he ishorribly traumatized; physically emotionally mentally spiritually (also now isa good time to note, there are a lot of trigger warnings for this book, so ifanyone wants a list of them just let me know). but you don’treally know what happened? You know that the church seems to think Emilio hasdone something wrong. And you know the church sent some sort of mission to aplanet (ugh I know what you’re thinking is this the three g’s all over again,when will colonialism end) AND HERE’S THE THING, yes this book sort ofaddresses colonialism, but the church actually isn’t setting out tocolonize???? It’s done well, you’re not going to have to sit through anotherbook about our Moral Imperative to Spread the Gospel of Christ. (the author was Catholic then left religion than converted to Judaism which is.....scarily close to what i sometimes think my trajectory is going to be). but okay I gotderailed, this books is about a mission gone horribly wrong. But even more it’sabout the aftermath, what happens after the unspeakable, the unthinkable. It’sabout how we can believe in god, or good or any sense of justice or right andwrong, in the face of truly horrific and tragic things. If God is good, whywould he allow such terrible things to happen? Deus vult, for the glory of god,is an oft-repeated phrase. But, the book asks, are there not limits to what canbe raised in glory to god? I don’t want to give too much away, but honestlythis book takes on like one of the most challenging unanswerable questions andhandles it with grace and sincerity and /no/ preachiness. (and the sequel goes onto sort of make things more concrete, which I know not everyone was super happyabout it, but I actually really liked the sequel (not as much as the first ofcourse) and have a lot of feelings about the ending)
but yeah this was so long cause i could talk about this book forever. also @therenegadegabbai is a Wealth of knowledge and meta about the book, she’s the reason i read it. also check out @villageofkashan.
therenegadegabbai replied to your post: right now (and this entire summer tbh?) i’m trying...
let me know if you need recordings or any other resources etc! also, shkoyekh :)
tbh do you have a recording for shacharit? i’m having trouble finding the tunes that i’m used to hearing (conservative/trad-egal setting) idk we use the same tunes in my home shul and at school but none of the recordings use those tunes? and thanks :)
