okieinexile
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Peaches, The Da Vinci Code, and The Sacred Feminine
By Bobby Neal Winters
The peaches on the tree in our front yard are getting ripe at last. They are native peaches with a thick peal that lend a redness to the fruit that gradually gives way white. They are smaller than the peaches from California we buy at the store, but the flavor is deeper. It's sweet and earthy, but there are subtle tones to it. There is also the occasional worm that must taste just like the peach. Don't ask me how I know.
The California peaches are ok for early in the year, before anything closer to home is ripe, but as the season wears on the peaches from closer to home start arriving, and they have more flavor since they don't have to travel as far. When August finally arrives, there is nothing better than the peaches in our own front yard. If we were forced to eat any of those early California peaches now, we'd think we were eating cardboard. They just aren't the same.
Contrasts like this exists other places as well. For instance, the first time I tried to read The Da Vinci Code was right after I'd read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Those of you who've read Sebold's novel about the murder of a 14-year-old girl know that Sebold writes in beautiful prose that verges on the poetic. Her phrases slide into the eye and whirl around in the mind with the ease of a cool breeze. I did not find that to be the case with The Da Vinci Code on my first attempt. Indeed, I was forced to stop after just a few chapters.
However, August is now here, and I've been reading nothing but contracts and mathematics textbooks for a couple of months. Consequently, I find Dan Brown's novel transformed. It is not only readable, but the pages turn themselves. Dan Brown constructed this book like a Russian doll maker constructs a Matrioshka. One mystery contains another, and that mystery contains yet another. I can understand why it became a bestseller.
That having been said, I will now say some things that aren't quite so complementary. While reading this book, I kept thinking of Isaac Asimov's juvenile series Lucky Starr that contained such classics as Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus and Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury. Asimov did a lot of teaching in those books, and there were sentences like, "Lucky came into the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun." A lot of the old science fiction books were like that, teaching and entertaining at the same time. Reading a book like that and separating the science from the fiction was a useful art form and got me through most of my high school science classes without cracking a textbook.
Dan Brown does a lot of teaching, but sometimes it difficult to separate the fiction from the fact. However, it is not my purpose to go through the book and show where some items he presents as facts are debatable. There are whole books that have been written on that. In any case, my attention was caught by something else.
In the world of The Da Vinci Code, there are repeated references to the Church (meaning the early church or the Roman Catholic Church, depending upon the context) having conspired to eliminate the "sacred feminine," and this confused me. I grew up as a Southern Baptist and remember having heard more than one sermon in which I was told the Catholics worshipped the Virgin Mary. Now I am being told they have conspired to eliminate the sacred feminine.
Even as a life-long protestant, when I put these together, the question I have to ask is, "Ok, which is it?"
Actually, I am being more than a bit disingenuous here. Having read the book, I do have some idea of what the author means when he says, "The Sacred Feminine," and it has nothing to do with the qualities exemplified by the Virgin Mary. He is talking about goddess worship. In particular, in the novel he refers to worship in which the rites include ritualized sexual intercourse. (That puts a whole new spin on the choir doing a special, doesn't it?)
There might be other views of the sacred feminine, and one might even debate whether there is any real difference between the masculine and the feminine, anyway, but these two certainly offer a broad contrast. On one hand, there is the Virgin Mary who watched while her son was crucified and exemplifies obedience, and on the other hand, there is the Goddess as represented by a temple prostitute and is supposed to represent empowered femininity. One might argue that this dichotomy is too much like that of the Madonna and the Whore, and one would be right.
However, while admitting that the flower of the feminine admits more sacredness than can be seen at glance, I defend the first over the second, but perhaps it's just because my brain has been washed by the conspiracy. Is that anything like being washed in the blood of the lamb?
I find myself overwhelmed by this subject. The only point of view I have is that of a mortal man, and the only experience my own. In the spring of life we are attracted the California peach. They have a thin, unblemished skin and seem sweet enough, but as we enter the summer of life, we discover the joy of the native peaches as they ripen. While they bear the marks of the occasional worm and their skins are thick, they are pure white inside, and their flavor is unbelievable.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, a writer, and a speaker. He can be contacted at bobby@okieinexile.com.)
By Bobby Neal Winters
The peaches on the tree in our front yard are getting ripe at last. They are native peaches with a thick peal that lend a redness to the fruit that gradually gives way white. They are smaller than the peaches from California we buy at the store, but the flavor is deeper. It's sweet and earthy, but there are subtle tones to it. There is also the occasional worm that must taste just like the peach. Don't ask me how I know.
The California peaches are ok for early in the year, before anything closer to home is ripe, but as the season wears on the peaches from closer to home start arriving, and they have more flavor since they don't have to travel as far. When August finally arrives, there is nothing better than the peaches in our own front yard. If we were forced to eat any of those early California peaches now, we'd think we were eating cardboard. They just aren't the same.
Contrasts like this exists other places as well. For instance, the first time I tried to read The Da Vinci Code was right after I'd read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Those of you who've read Sebold's novel about the murder of a 14-year-old girl know that Sebold writes in beautiful prose that verges on the poetic. Her phrases slide into the eye and whirl around in the mind with the ease of a cool breeze. I did not find that to be the case with The Da Vinci Code on my first attempt. Indeed, I was forced to stop after just a few chapters.
However, August is now here, and I've been reading nothing but contracts and mathematics textbooks for a couple of months. Consequently, I find Dan Brown's novel transformed. It is not only readable, but the pages turn themselves. Dan Brown constructed this book like a Russian doll maker constructs a Matrioshka. One mystery contains another, and that mystery contains yet another. I can understand why it became a bestseller.
That having been said, I will now say some things that aren't quite so complementary. While reading this book, I kept thinking of Isaac Asimov's juvenile series Lucky Starr that contained such classics as Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus and Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury. Asimov did a lot of teaching in those books, and there were sentences like, "Lucky came into the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun." A lot of the old science fiction books were like that, teaching and entertaining at the same time. Reading a book like that and separating the science from the fiction was a useful art form and got me through most of my high school science classes without cracking a textbook.
Dan Brown does a lot of teaching, but sometimes it difficult to separate the fiction from the fact. However, it is not my purpose to go through the book and show where some items he presents as facts are debatable. There are whole books that have been written on that. In any case, my attention was caught by something else.
In the world of The Da Vinci Code, there are repeated references to the Church (meaning the early church or the Roman Catholic Church, depending upon the context) having conspired to eliminate the "sacred feminine," and this confused me. I grew up as a Southern Baptist and remember having heard more than one sermon in which I was told the Catholics worshipped the Virgin Mary. Now I am being told they have conspired to eliminate the sacred feminine.
Even as a life-long protestant, when I put these together, the question I have to ask is, "Ok, which is it?"
Actually, I am being more than a bit disingenuous here. Having read the book, I do have some idea of what the author means when he says, "The Sacred Feminine," and it has nothing to do with the qualities exemplified by the Virgin Mary. He is talking about goddess worship. In particular, in the novel he refers to worship in which the rites include ritualized sexual intercourse. (That puts a whole new spin on the choir doing a special, doesn't it?)
There might be other views of the sacred feminine, and one might even debate whether there is any real difference between the masculine and the feminine, anyway, but these two certainly offer a broad contrast. On one hand, there is the Virgin Mary who watched while her son was crucified and exemplifies obedience, and on the other hand, there is the Goddess as represented by a temple prostitute and is supposed to represent empowered femininity. One might argue that this dichotomy is too much like that of the Madonna and the Whore, and one would be right.
However, while admitting that the flower of the feminine admits more sacredness than can be seen at glance, I defend the first over the second, but perhaps it's just because my brain has been washed by the conspiracy. Is that anything like being washed in the blood of the lamb?
I find myself overwhelmed by this subject. The only point of view I have is that of a mortal man, and the only experience my own. In the spring of life we are attracted the California peach. They have a thin, unblemished skin and seem sweet enough, but as we enter the summer of life, we discover the joy of the native peaches as they ripen. While they bear the marks of the occasional worm and their skins are thick, they are pure white inside, and their flavor is unbelievable.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, a writer, and a speaker. He can be contacted at bobby@okieinexile.com.)
