ART: I am the child of an artist, but I am not one myself, much to my chagrin. There is no connection between my head and my hands in that respect. But I do love art, and taught a school program called Famous Art Friends for a number of years when my kids were in school. It was essentially an art history course with lots of visuals and information about artists and themes and social context and so forth. I have several artist friends; one does the illustrations for my website, and another participated in a fascinating discussion via e-mail with me in regard to the sorts of things my Estella might have used to make her paintings. I like all kinds of art--from cave paintings to Renaissance to Jamie Wyeth--though I don't much care for abstracts. I find them a little presumptuous and manipulating, much the same way I find certain authors--*ahem* Stephen Donaldson, for one--very manipulative with their readers. I will give the artists the edge, though. An abstract painting can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and so be misjudged. A manipulative book is just that, and will never be anything else!
ETHICS: that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. This is just an interesting subject for me. I think ethics are of critical importance in all facets of life, and I think we have somehow lost the idea of personal ethics in all our screaming about "moral values", which in this day and age is not necessarily the same thing. I think people should know what their personal ethics are and why--which means thinking about it, not accepting somebody else's edicts--and should be able to recognize egregious breaches of ethics without media prompting. When we can't take ourselves all the way through a problem in thought, we can't really understand it. I think medical ethics is something we haven't really thought about, particularly in the context of soaring technology that can essentially prevent death while ignoring quality of life, and I wonder why we some of us don't address this in honest relation to our religious beliefs. There's a disconnect there that I find very strange: we are, after all, according to the laws of creation, meant to die in the course of time....Anyway, I think when ethics come down to means justifies the ends we have lost some of our humanity. We need to reclaim it!
THEOLOGY: I'm a profoundly religious person, though reluctant to claim or espouse doctrinal viewpoint. These days I describe myself as a Catholic Druid (which I know is perceived as a contradiction in terms, but that's why I like it!) I have always been sorry I didn't go back and get a Masters in Theology. The problem was, they were all attached to work in Ministry, which wasn't my interest. My interest was the Nature of God and his Creation, and I wanted to study it in the context of historical observation and open enquiry rather than sectarian doctrine. I'm always interested in a theological discussion, as long as it's not a One True Church discussion, which I find narrow and defeating. I practice religious tolerance so long as I cannot see harm being done, and I try to remember that at the core, every religion had its conception in a cultural awareness of something Other.
ICONS: I do have two, but only use the one that depicts Merry and Pippin in the colours of sunrise. I don't know the origin of this picture, though I have tried a number of times to find it and its artist online. It was a gift from the person who first coached me in LOTR fanfic. I think it is quite beautiful, and it certainly represents both my feelings for Merry and Pippin and the "light" in which I write them!
ETHICS: that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. This is just an interesting subject for me. I think ethics are of critical importance in all facets of life, and I think we have somehow lost the idea of personal ethics in all our screaming about "moral values", which in this day and age is not necessarily the same thing. I think people should know what their personal ethics are and why--which means thinking about it, not accepting somebody else's edicts--and should be able to recognize egregious breaches of ethics without media prompting. When we can't take ourselves all the way through a problem in thought, we can't really understand it. I think medical ethics is something we haven't really thought about, particularly in the context of soaring technology that can essentially prevent death while ignoring quality of life, and I wonder why we some of us don't address this in honest relation to our religious beliefs. There's a disconnect there that I find very strange: we are, after all, according to the laws of creation, meant to die in the course of time....Anyway, I think when ethics come down to means justifies the ends we have lost some of our humanity. We need to reclaim it!
THEOLOGY: I'm a profoundly religious person, though reluctant to claim or espouse doctrinal viewpoint. These days I describe myself as a Catholic Druid (which I know is perceived as a contradiction in terms, but that's why I like it!) I have always been sorry I didn't go back and get a Masters in Theology. The problem was, they were all attached to work in Ministry, which wasn't my interest. My interest was the Nature of God and his Creation, and I wanted to study it in the context of historical observation and open enquiry rather than sectarian doctrine. I'm always interested in a theological discussion, as long as it's not a One True Church discussion, which I find narrow and defeating. I practice religious tolerance so long as I cannot see harm being done, and I try to remember that at the core, every religion had its conception in a cultural awareness of something Other.
ICONS: I do have two, but only use the one that depicts Merry and Pippin in the colours of sunrise. I don't know the origin of this picture, though I have tried a number of times to find it and its artist online. It was a gift from the person who first coached me in LOTR fanfic. I think it is quite beautiful, and it certainly represents both my feelings for Merry and Pippin and the "light" in which I write them!
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