Kinda.
I was looking something up for a woman at the counter when a customer elsewhere in the store sneezed. I offered up an automatic, "Gesundheit," at the exact same time the lady at the counter said, "Bless you." She then glared at me and said, "It doesn't matter which God you believe in, you can still accept and offer blessings." DANG! Everyone feels so so persecuted...
8 comments:
You should have been like "Oh, sorry. Cthulu fhtagn!"
What does "Gesundheit" mean? And anyway, isn't the sentiment the same? So...what's the big deal?
It means "health" as far as I know. And yeah, it's just what Germans say when you sneeze. The big deal is that every single thing has to be about Jesus. And if it's not, it's because you hate Jesus and want all Christians to die. Obviously.
All right. This one gets my goat. Erica’s right.
The problem is the Christian imperative. One they’d deny ‘til they’re blue in the face, but that’s real, despite their protestations: the spiritual conquest of every person living here on Spaceship Earth. Sorry. To the salvation, of every living soul, here on God’s green Earth. Shit on me. How could I have fucked that up? Three hail-marys for my impertinence...
Nothing less will satisfy, so vast is their theocratic greed. The more recent shifts in the last few decades, toward other faiths or none at all, especially in the 70’s, have set them on the jihad path. So accustomed were they to the lockdown they had, on almost everyone in America, that these other modes of faith and thought were a thing they could not have anticipated. Nevermind Constitutional rights, self-discovery, or what folks brought across the sea. Besides this spiritual monopoly, was the engrained belief that other faiths are just plain sinful. An affront to the very face of their god, who just won’t seem to let them chill.
Intolerance is the only thing really, that’s worth being intolerant of, outside human rights violations. That’s the problem with them, Signy. They wrote the book on intolerance, and it has a name you’re familiar with. Yup, that’s it. You’re right, The Bible. Intolerance is their stock and trade. It’s the Atlas holding up their world, and let the pagan reference offend their intolerance for pagan reference. Theirs is the problem with universal religion, that fails to derive from – and more identify – with a single place and its native people. That’s where indigenous belief gets it right. Shinto. Asatru. Hinduism. All three allow for the existence of faith, outside their own, for other people.
Christianity will patently not. Ever. In any lifetime lived, to live yet, while it holds sway in wider culture. It will never be so accepting, or enlightened, for it seeks to usurp all of these faiths to set up shop where they once lived, Wall Street-style, hostile takeover. A bigger bunch of fucking pricks, I cannot imagine, anywhere.
Asatru – Germans, Saxons, and the Norse, your brave, bold people, Sig – were content to simply let things be. Roman missionaries never were. They went to all these people saying Christ could unify their lands. Unify by fear of fire, bigger taxes, written infrastructure. It naturally appealed to kings, but not so many others there, because Christianity was never theirs. Never something they produced.
They worshipped gods by different names that came from their developed language. Wotan, Wodan, Odin, all the same, with different names by region, born through common point of origin, somewhere in the German heartland. But none of them spoke Aramaic, so Christ had nothing to do with them, or their lineal descendents either. In other words, he has nothing to do with us. A contradiction Gibson should have seen, Aramaic in his Christ flick, but that he couldn’t, for indoctrination.
The one thing agreed upon – in most places – is that wiping something out is wrong. When it’s people, we call it genocide. There should be a word for the religious equivalent. Theocide? Nah, that really sounds like shit. Got to be something better though, and someone should get to work on that, if it doesn’t already exist in the lexicon. If it doesn’t, it’s because of them, not wanting people realizing.
As far as the obnoxious bitch in the bookstore, hers is a disingenuous try into your back-door habits and practices, dependent upon the power of suggestion, and any guilt you might feel at impugning their wishes for better health, soon, with a little help from the lord, their god (yeah, I’m leaving them lowercase). And they are disingenuous, since no other blessing, other than theirs, would ever be right by their tunnel vision. The sneeze to them is an opportunity, to invoke the name of their god and spread it. They won’t ever be satisfied, ever again, 'til they’re the only show in town.
Few can really see this though, for most were raised to regard their bullshit with at least a dose of passing reverence. That’s why I respect the ones, particularly those who were brought up Catholic, the worst of all those thinking prisons, outside radical Islam, really, or Branch-Davidians down in Waco – for ripping the blinders off like band-aids, and simply having done with all of it (hats off, Lauren).
Exploring history helps you see what they’re really all about in the end. Their systematic political co-opting, and aggressive persecution of pagans through the Middle Ages, and beyond. If not for history, real history, I wouldn’t have made it out of Candyland.
As far as Christians go today, it’s easy to play at nice again, hundreds of years later when you have wiped out wrongly perceived competition with witch trials, Inquisitions, etc.. They're about as nice as land mines. You're fine if you never step on one.
No, I didn't mean, "Why is it a big deal that Jamie got bitch-slapped for being nice"? I mean, why is it a big deal to say "Gesundheit"?
Seems to me that the sentiment is the same -- you are acknowledging the sneeze and expressing concern and hope that health will improve (or not deteriorate). So, since the impetus is the same, it's ridiculous for anyone to get all bent out of shape about something so lame.
Indeed it is. But that’s what they are. Ridiculous. And more importantly, dangerous.
Your post language was vague enough to interpret your meaning either way. Specificity would have made your intent more discernible to the casual reader. Sorry for thinking you meant the one, and not the other, despite the natural misunderstanding.
Actually though, my response had more to do with your comment to Jamie about religious intolerance, as an inexcusable point of view. I found this an incredible statement, since you also said you’d marry in church, the most religiously intolerant venue imaginable, outside of a gun-point, Taliban stronghold. My previous intent, just so it’s clear, was exposing the Christian hypocrisy, of espousing peace while slaughtering pagans, who had been their neighbors for untold years. But that’s exactly what happened anyway, in Saxon England, Merovingian France, and other places too numerous to list. And make no mistake, many still would, if the law yet permitted the Salem torch-fests they had right here in the land of the brave.
Religious freedom, as they understand it, means license for them to build that church, or rent a billboard which forces their dogma into some corner of your consciousness. They don’t mean freedom for other faiths, which they find wholly abominable. So yes, they bear the torch of intolerance. It’s their proud, unwavering Olympic flame. The sooner they’re made to waver by law, the better for everyone else in America.
In light of this unfortunate truth, you may want to reconsider your wedding plans. Because the same person who said that to Jamie likely spends loads of her time in a church.
Just a bit of friendly advice, and friendly ribbing to go along with it. Check out the Volsung Saga, if you're truly interested in your Norse heritage. It has some very feminist characters, which is always refreshing in western literature.
You're lucky it exists in such pure form. The Anglo-Saxon poetry I read has a share of Christian contamination, unavoidable for its time. A professor and I debated whether the Beowulf poet was a pagan writer. He sighed at the end, saying, “Don’t put that forth, despite any evidence. It will only work against you professionally.” So the bias extends to academia even.
Those sagas are hilarious. They read like village gossip. "And so and so put the make on so and so and then she left town."
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