Interpretation

I really enjoyed the story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  It is complex and contains many elements that symbolize something of a greater message and therefore needs to be interpreted.  There are so many different aspects in this story that I will try to cover, but I am sure there will be things left in the dark, because even so I still do not understand it in its entirety.  Whether it was intended to be or not, I took the story to be a very important message for Christians.  Mainly, I think this story touches on two main issues: not responding to personal miracles in the correct way and how we respond to the supernatural. 

In this story, the author used a simple universal symbol of an angel to represent the fullness of the supernatural.  This angel had come to Pelayo and his family to bring a healing.  It had been rainy and dreadful for three days and on top of that Pelayo and his wife Elisenda’s baby was sick.  When the angle, which appeared to them as no one had expected, came to them the land and the child was healed.  It has stopped raining and “a short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat.”  How did they respond to this?  Instead of being grateful of the miracle, they threw the angel in a chicken coop and were none the less afraid of him.  I interpret this is how sometimes the church responds to miracles and the supernatural.  No, we don’t watch our backs and keep it in mind to club God to death, but sometimes we are afraid of the Spirit of God to move.  When He comes to us try and cover him up and shove him away.  This happens especially when he doesn’t show up the way we want him to, just like the angel in this story.

            The family and people who eventually came to see the angel were disappointed by his appearance.  To them, he looked only like an old man with wings.  There was nothing divine or lovely about him.  Who says angles have to be young and admirable?  Wasn’t Jesus said to be a not so handsome man himself?  Not only in physical attributes, but as a society in this day and age our expectations of God are too high.  Not that God isn’t as good as what we expect, but he doesn’t exist to meet our expectations.  People had come from all over to see the angle, to experience the angel, but he did not act in the way he wanted to.  Much the same God sometimes moves and answers prayers not always in the way we want him to.  Because of that, we may respond in negative ways.

            According to this story, another danger in response to the supernatural is making a show of it.  In this case the angel’s presence had literally become a circus.  They had a traveling carnival come in to add to the madness and because of the large amount of people showing up they charged to entry.  They were making profit for themselves rather than giving glory where it is due.  Also, there was a spider girl who was there to entice some kind of competition.  This is like when people look to the world to satisfy their desires or the demonic to show them “real” wonders.  As this story is filled with great examples of how ridiculous we act, one in particular caught my eye.  I had previously talked about it in my blog but I want to mention it again.  The line that says “the most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers, a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him, a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while he was awake.”  This just points out how absurd our requests can be from God and the fact that these people weren’t healed by the angel show failure on their account, not him.  It made me think of how people claim that Paul “lost his power to heal people,” when what he did was tell them the obvious, not to drink the water because it was making them sick instead of performing some miracle.  The hype ended when no true miraculous signs were performed and the family was left very wealthy…sound like the American church today?

            The story ends with the angel flying away.  The family learned nothing from their experience with the angel.  Before the leaves though, it the child comes to visit him in the coop, and he doesn’t even respond to the child.  This paints an amazing picture of how God doesn’t leave us, he is still there, but when you resist him for too long he won’t move in your life.  When the angel started growing his wings back he didn’t even want to family to see.  Their expectations of a glorious angel would come true and since they didn’t receive him before he wasn’t going to reveal his beauty to meet their wants.  At the very end Elisenda was relieved for the angel to leave, but the last line says that she watched him go away and not he was “an imaginary dot in the horizon.”  At the end of it all, some people want to just adore God from far away rather than having him dwell in our lives personally, even after fully experiencing him.  This could be because its too much for us to handle, or it come to the point or being so redundant that the supernatural isn’t that “super” or filled with awe anymore.  At the beginning it said that the family observed the angel for too long they found him familiar.  Don’t let your relationship with God and his supernatural power become too familiar!  He should become new to us each day so that we can give him even more glory

Man with Enormous wings

I just love how Professor Corrigan makes us read all of these stories that make you end with saying “what???!” or feeling like you missed something BIG...not!

First off, the story is subtitles A Tale for Children; this implied to me that there was some kind of moral to the story.  I couldn’t find one, but maybe a child’s mind is simpler than ours and can figure it out.

The whole time I was reading this story I was trying to piece together information to try to figure out what was going on.  I thought that at the end there would be one great line that would make me understand the whole point to this story.  I don’t really know if my interpretation is correct, but this story made me think of how we view God and his works in our lives. 

We expect all of these things out of God and expect him to appear the way we want him to, and when he doesn’t we are disappointed.  The line that stuck out to me the most was when the author was talking about people who came in search of a cure.  “a poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers, a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him, a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while he was awake…”  All of these things they came for were ridiculous.  People are looking for God, or in this case the angel, to heal problems that would be fixed on their own or that aren’t even ailments to begin with.  This made me think of how people claim that Paul “lost his power to heal people,” when what he did was tell them the obvious, not to drink the water because it was making them sick instead of performing some miracle.  Sometimes people equivalate the workings of God to that of a carnival, and when that happens he WONT move.

This story has so many truths about what some do with God.  Use him as a show, make money, put him down when he doesn’t do what we want him to or meet OUR expectations of him. 

I still don’t fully understand the story, but it left me thinking “what do you do with God when he comes to you?”

Pass

I am using my second blog pass for Thursday's post on Omelas.

Philippians

So I was looking around at other’s blogs to help me along on this post, but I found pretty much the same as what I am thinking.  In reading the book of Philippians I could not find a lot of figurative language.  The whole time I was reading and would come across something as a possibility, I would think to myself, is that REALLY figurative?  It made me think that if I did not know the bible and know God as I do I would think more of it to be figurative.  But, a lot of what may seem figurative in this letter is not. 

            (Like the line “to live is Christ and to die is gain” I really don’t think that is a figure of speech)

I’m not sure if this is an example of figurative language, but Paul uses repetition of the words “joy” and “rejoice” throughout this letter.  Some metaphors I think are “in one spirit, which one mind, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, “but even if I am being poured out as a drink offering”, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings,” “whose god is their appetite.”  Although these are metaphors some of them are meant to be taken literally.  I think being a Christian we understand them to not be taken in a metaphorical sense. 

The biggest metaphor of this, as well as many others or Paul’s letters, is the relation of our walk with Christ to that of a race.  I think that we need terms like this to help put into perspective how we ought to really live this think out.  If it was not put in the bible to strive for the prize laid out before us and to keep pressing forward, I think this whole Christianity thing would become a lazy religious ritual.  Paul urges us to work together as the family he created us as, with our own unique personalities…of course we don’t literally have the same minds but we do essentially have the same spirit- the spirit of God.

Temple of the Holy Spirit

So, I read the story by Flannery O’Conner and I am a little, well of lot, confused and don’t really see the symbolism, but I will try to answer this I most.  I think may have to do way more thinking and searching for a deeper symbolism than I have time for, and isn’t that what we are not to do anyways when looking for symbolism?

Reading (what do you see): The basic plot (because I would be re-writing the story if I pointed out every detail) was that there is a little girl who is somewhat rude, two girls come to visit who go to school in a convent they are very looks-oriented and call themselves Temple 1 and Temple 2, these girls go out with two farmer boys to a fair who the little girl doesn’t like because they are from the Church of God, the girls tell the little girl(unnamed) about a man-woman person, she them falls asleep thinking of the temple of the Holy Spirit, she prays in the convent and seems to feel the spirit for the first time.

Interpreting (what does this say?): I think that maybe all of the other people are really the little girl’s mind trying to find who she really it.  I think that the woman-man revealed something to her by saying “God made me thisaway” and guided her to seeing that SHE is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Criticizing (what does it matter): I think that this story is telling us that we are all the temple of the Holy Spirit.  We all have different personalities and different walks with God, but each of us hold something similar- the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. 

Or

This story could be pointing out the fact that we don’t know who we are, or who we want to be (if the little girl was actually all of these characters), but the Holy Spirit will guide us into that insight as we make ourselves his home.

Play and Symbolism

 I went to see The Man Who Came to Dinner on Thursday night with Jessica and two of our friends.  I had no idea what this play was about since I have never read it even heard of it before.  I think it is better that way because then I have nothing to compare it to or nothing to criticize.  To me, if I already know what happens, the plot can’t build up and that takes away the suspense, which is why, at least I, people go see plays.  Instead, I got to sit back and enjoy it, which I did! 

What I liked most about this play was it had every aspect of stories; a good plot, humor, suspense, romance, and a little bit of action.  I also really like things set “back in the day.”  It is funny to see how the same problems existed back then, but how they are played out differently as well.  I thought that all of the characters things their parts amazingly, you really got to tap into their character.  You felt sorry for the kids, you loved Sherry’s friends, you hated Sherry’s lady friend, and you could really get along with his assistant.  I think if you can find that relation and really get in tune with the play to the point where you are affected by it, then you can call it nothing less than a job well done. 

I decided to do a painting that would symbolize me.

Post

Discussing this play and the field trip in class made me think…a lot.  One thing that really hit me on the field trip was that these were not kids- they are full grown adults.  Some even looked about 60 years old.  Also, before reading the play I expected them to be young people.  I don’t really think of older people having mental disabilities.  This made me realize though- this isn’t something that goes away.  Over time, people fortunate to not have disabilities grow in mental maturity, but these people don’t really have the opportunity to.  Having a disability is not something that will get better by learning over time and maybe eventually go away, these things last forever.  Like my friend I talked about in my last blog post, he does mentally mature, but just at a slower rate.  Will he get to a point where he stops maturing as a grown adult? I hope not.  It is just sad to see older people with disabilities because, at least it seems like, they don’t have the potential to live the full life…but then maybe they are, maybe they live the full life God intended them to have.

I like in Dr. Fettke’s essay he wrote “if no one can help how he/she is embodied in creation, including the disabled, then it seems very unjust to single out the disabled for their inability to adjust their embodiment.”  I enjoyed this essay as it brought out a lot of things I was unaware of, like how the church doesn’t respond correctly to brothers and sisters with mental disabilities.  God has created them with purposes just like you and me.  They are still created in God’s image and they should be treated as such.  It is looked at to be a mistake or imperfection when somebody is born with a handicap, but only God knows and sees what is truly perfect and he makes no mistakes.