Sunday, March 4, 2018

My Lent Book

This year I don't yet have a Lent book. Regular readers will be aware that this is a practice I have borrowed from the Christians and then subverted. As a witch, of course, Lent isn't an event for me, and of course I make sure the books I select are diametrically opposed to the sort of books the Christians select for this time of year. In fact the practice has to be changed to be valid for the witch world view: of course that is because it comes from a world view where the reader is challenged and inspired by a divinely inspired text and the first occurence of the practice I know f is in the Rule of St Benedict where the monk is allocated a book for Lent by the abbot.
I have had some possible books in mind but I haven't been inclined to obtain any of them. Perhaps the most 'suitable' is Bede Griffiths's autobiography which I have considered rereading for many years. I am nervous, however, since I usually find it impossible to return to a book read a long time ago. I did see a manual on masturbation which I thought would be a wonderfully inappropriate choice but prefer my favourite hobby to be dictated by my own whim.
Then today I saw a book in a charity shop which I thought would be perfect: it had some such title as Mood Mapping, but I was put off by a small selection I read in the shop. It was talking about the impact bullying has on relationships. The author may not have thought his generalisation through but he said that bullying is most often inflicted by those of higher intelligence on those of lower intelligence.
There are two things wrong with that statement. Having worked in some complete shit holes i know the anatomy of workplace bullying from the inside and know the evidence is strongy that it mostly occurs when somebody cisn't competent to deal with their situation so consciously of otherwise it gets taken out on everyone else. When I saw this I had just come out of work where the incompetent supervisor I wrote about recently publicly humiliated someone for a mistake (don't wory, her appraisal is tomorrow and I will be forcing the new manager to add that to the list of other issues with her performance).
My real point here is that I found myself in a position where I was faced with an authoritative text which I had the temerity to disagree with and reject as a teacher because I knew better. This may simply be because I am an arrogant bastard but i would like to think that what has actually happened is that I have moved into a place where the authority is within rather than without.

3 comments:

  1. "As a witch, of course, Lent isn't an event for me" - quite right! In fact, when does Lent start? Or has it already? Was it Pancake Day? Speaking of pancakes (and food in general), why not read (or at least flip through) a Nigella cook book for Lent? Very inappropriate!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Far too authoritative I feel...
      Come ON, blogger, spammimg my comments on my own blog is too much!

      Delete
    2. Spammed on your own blog?!? Well, it had to happen somewhere, as you haven't been spammed at mine for some time, now.

      Delete

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