Notes for 12/8/09

• Rian talked about her personal experience with the Bible. She grew up in a small town, and has three big encounters where others tried to tell her about the Bible. She is more open to the book now.
• Amanda Leichtnam spoke about sexual content in the Bible. She didn't finish the whole thing, but became very interested and surprised at how prevalent sexuality is in the book as metaphor, and for the sake of a good story.
• Lisette's favorite Psalm, 23, caused her to write a paper about how Dr. Sexson is the shepard, and we are the sheep. She also mentioned the camp she worked at over the summer.
• Fletcher discussed the parallels between the Biblical Jacob and the Jacob of The Slave.
• Chris revised the idea of the U-shaped curve, and made it more of a tangent function, and related the character of Jacob in The Slave to this.
• Rachel talked about how The Slave is a retelling of Joseph Campbell's monomyth. The call to adventure, etc. Dr. Sexson once again told us to read The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
• Tai addressed the question of where mythology lurks in our everyday lives. He spoke about In Cold Blood, and mentioned New Journalism.
• Amanda Jones talked about suffering in the Bible, suffering in The Slave, and suffering in the blogs, particularly Natalie's and Lisette's. Suffering is unavoidable, but there can be no doubt in our faith, no giving up, or we are lost.
• Eric Hjelvik had some questions about what he could ask God. Is Jacob a slave? Yes. Am I a slave? Yes, but he is willingly a slave, by his own choosing. How is Jacob able to handle this? Through faith.
• Dr. Sexson mentioned Soren Kierkegaard and his book Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.
• Tristan talked about how originally he was going to talk about the Rastafarian religion, but changed his mind, and chose to talk about how the Bible relates to us through song and story.
• Derek found himself similar to William Blake in that he was fascinated with Job. The book is the first time the reader see "Satan", and Job is one of the first characters to have done nothing wrong.
• Rio wrote a novella, because he hates lists, about his journey and need to go out and explore the Bible.
• Jaime talked about The Slave and the Bible, and introduced the concept of soul recycling, how we go from blind faith, to questioning faith, to teaching faith.
• Alicia talked about the story of Esther, and compared the character to Atticus Finch (in To Kill a Mockingbird), Randle McMurphy (in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Esmerelda (in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), and Sarah (in The Slave).
• Jessi spoke about Biblical "heroes" and "villains". Her preacher talked about selective salvation, God chooses those he likes, and the other is automatically the villain.