Mythical Class

Paul I read Paul's Letter to the Romans today, exploring what sort of message he was trying to convey to the city's people. This is one of those times when understanding the context was crucial to get the most out of reading. Paul was in the midst of experiencing a faction in the early days of the church. This all surrounded the "Gentile question," which asked how closely a gentile Christian needed to follow Jewish law. Letter to the Romans is set up in a brilliant argument where Paul makes the case that you can be a Christian without being Jewish. What impressed me most was his appeal to Abraham. The ancestor of the Jewish people, Abraham is definitely considered a righteous man. However, everything that he did was outside of the law. That is, his righteousness was granted to him by God for reasons other than whether or not he kept Kosher or was circumcised. The way he writes this direct letter and approaches just astounded me because I think it would be pretty d...

Lighting. Link .  A long time ago there was a charitable leader who wished for his great people to experience an abundance of health and safety. He and his family worked tirelessly to help their community and would go to great lengths to see it succeed. Often, this work was thankless and after a while, some of his family grew weary of it. When two of his sons left the community, the leader was left with his daughters, wives, and youngest son. In the time that followed, this group of dedicated public servants would work harder and longer than ever before. The slack was picked up and the community went on, though the leader's family found themselves even more tired than before. During this period, a great drought began in a neighboring village. The townspeople worried that this would spread and lead to famine, so they began to wonder what could be done to bring back the rain. They prayed and prayed, but no solutions could be agreed upon. Soon the leader gave the idea of digg...

The earlier themes continued in this second half of the Laos reading. There is still an abbreviated sense of details, and the text flows as if it was "poorly" translated. This is pretty evident in the story The Legend of the Rice. Even as it starts, the setting is limited to vague descriptions that don't speak very much to the mental images the reader gets. The text is very choppy, but with a theme that is still evident, the story shows that you can reduce a story down to the bare bones and still be effective. Buffalo! Link .  Story: From Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson (1899). Link . 

Stone in Laos. Link .  I was really interested to read this week's selections from Laos. The translations of these first selections were a little rough, and the hardest to follow this semester. It was all still manageable, but just took a little more concentration and rereading. The Story that stuck out to me most was The Mountain Spirits and the Stone Mortars. The story continued the unit's theme of a seemingly vague story-telling style, but still what I would call "effective storytelling." It had a point to the plot that told a generic, though utilitarian, narrative. But the lesson I took away is to not get stuck up in the details when a vague storytelling method can work. I think finding the sweet spot between the two is key, but writing in this style is a good way to practice focusing on the story's theme. Bibliography: Source: Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson. Link to the UN-Textbook.