welcome to the fest

Since my other blogs are off the map at the moment I'll add a little something in here. A response to everybody's last word as it stands. Now, mind you Blue Unicorn, in Shinto the soul in every object from the not the smallest particle all the way to the largest cluster and beyond exists and so even the plant's soul guides us in a way, as we consume it. After one layman fasted with only a multivitamin once a day for over a month, my pastor expressed gratitude that he was "back among us eaters."

If not Criminey, maybe I'm Seymour in drag from the recent strip, though I did use the line "to consider me unfamiliar with what that refers to is improbable," Celina. Not that I didn't have a Facebook profile as Satan Claus going "where's my fandom?" Just that the one of Criminey going "you weren't always a devil girl" was my Facebook longer.

And as for Tavi, Mama, and them, I went to said last post of "So, What Should I Expect?" This has me thinking of my fiance's father who is straight out republican and who we just let think through whatever issues for himself-- the conclusions, usually wildly hilarious, are occasionally insightful, and at the least the person feels heard. He understands we disagree with him overall-- if there are ten people at a dinner table and one Nazi with them, there are eleven Nazis at the dinner table. (Not that I'm above quotebusting that Bonhoeffer sentiment with some Frankl and phonetics.) Clearly there was the central post and line that has been honed in on. I'm only doing bird's eye at the moment but this is my current viewpoint.

Keep in mind sizeism is the immediate example that comes to mind here. When morbidly obese women use pride as a way to enable their eating behavior into their death or, say, that one woman went to being trans man to avoid being shamed as a fat woman. There is trans for the right reasons and there is trans for the wrong reasons. Which are which? If you do aim for the answer to that question, good luck and happy trails!

-Russly

I'm not Shinto by any stretch of the imagination, but I do believe that all things have a soul.

Something I read several years ago stated that before the "Fall of Mankind" every living thing on Earth gained its full nutrition from sunlight. That is why the lion got along with the lamb, and nobody considered it necessary to harm another living thing for any reason (eating, clothing, etc.).

I can only assume, based on having read the above, that when a religion promises that the "lion shall lie down with the lamb", it's referring to a return to the time before the "Fall of Mankind" (which, properly, is the Fall of Living Things because even the animals need to eat and cannot exist on sunlight alone).

I've heard stories of people going without eating/drinking for long stretches of time. Most of them, if they don't stop fasting within a certain time, end up dead or in the hospital in critical condition. But there are the ultra rare handful who claim to have done it for much longer than is generally believed possible. Truth? I don't know. All we have are stories, and they cannot always be verified. (Even stuff that's considered verifiable isn't necessarily true when verified - anyone who's done genealogical research has run into documents with misspellings and wrong names and all manner of errors.)

Yes one of my favorites is those guys who did that death meditation so their bodies stay mummified through sheer willpower. Two known examples still exist. As I write this I'm in the middle of a month where I sleep outside in thirty degree weather doing Wim Hof type stuff. I find the fact that we're discussing such religious overtones on Sinfest's forum oddly apt.

-Russly