"Are You Saved?"

Okay, everybody not going to Hell because you've been "saved," now is the moment for us to help all these poor, damned heathens to better understand Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. At the last meeting, there was some confusion about the Biblical chapter headings. Rather than just blabbing away about this myself -- as if I knew any better than the rest of you -- why not bring a Bible, if you've got one, and I know some of us do, if only as souvenirs, and see if anyone can spot check some of the references in the text for us?

Another suggestion to think about: instead of looking for literal correlations between each chapter in the book and The Chapter in The Book that give the novel it's chapter titles, why not think about and try to talk about what if anything those words, Leviticus, Numbers, etc., might have meant to us when we were good little Christian children ourselves? Anybody remember Judges as a child? Anybody mistake The Seventh Seal the way Jeanette does in the novel? Remember any similar confusions about that very confusing object called The Holy Bible?

Also, try to remember what Church felt like before you even began to understand what any of it meant. Did you enjoy it? Did you like the singing? The preaching? What?

And when, like Jeanette in the book, you began to feel stirrings of "unnatural passions," was religion one of the ways you sought to explain those feelings? Did religion give you any answers? Are those answers still applicable to your adult life?

Do you still believe as you did when you were a child?

One last question, did any other stories, faerie stories, The Brothers Grimm, have particular reality for you when you were a child? Was, say, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, any less real to you than Moses or Jesus or God The Father? Did you ever get any of that mixed up? I mean, don't the Wizard of Oz and God the Father look a little alike in your memory, or is that just me?

Post your answers in Comments here, or ponder them for the next meeting.