dwa Soph Stragmair @stragmair@witches.live

And I love it, I love the wry insertion of these 3 guys in the book of Daniel. Daniel Literal Prophet Of The Lord is all around the book, and we've just got this story about 3 guys in the same situation who aren't divinely chosen, who don't get to go around prophesying at the king. They're mundane, not overtly religious. God saves them, but they're so regular. We usually talk about the story as God vs king, as if they're a battleground, not people.

That sort of moment of reuniting with the identity the forces around you are trying to kill, that's it. That's the through a mirror darkly moment, that weird glimpse of heaven, the flash of what reunion w/the divine might be, muted-filtered-echoed. That's our promise and our hint. That's just reuniting with ourselves, and that's intense and intoxicating and so much. It's such a human story and so about us as humans.

Giving the laity Sunday sermon tomorrow. Talking Daniel 3 and Shadrach et al with the fire, and identity under empire with God. And I just realized this additional piece to graft in because that moment where the guys decide they're Jewish for real and whether God saves them or not, they're getting thrown in that fire because they'd rather die Jewish than live as Babylonians, that's it.

So, uh, apparently I'm literally on church council now? We sort of joke the UCC means 'Unitarians Considering Christ', but it's basically true in our case.

Remember to keep separate the three use cases of a mortar+pestle: things you can eat, things you can't eat, and the drugs you give your dog.

I spent this afternoon reading about gnostics and eating pudding. Not sure if there's an irony there or not.