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Post by Andrew on May 13, 2019 3:34:36 GMT -5
Reading today's sermon (ok, chapter), I got the impression that Wes missed a central point about that particular biblical tale.
The three (?) areas of ancient Palestine were Galilee, Samaria and Judaea, going from north to south. Samaritans were - obviously enough - people from Samaria and they were very much looked down on in Judaea, which is where Jerusalem and Jericho are. The central point missed was that it was a despised Samaritan who came to this man's aid, whilst a priest and a Levite (I've forgotten what they were) ignored him.
A second misconception flows from the first, describing Nanci's family and friends as "Samaritans" - in the context of a sermon - is at best a reach.
The benefits of my local grade-school being a church-run one, all those years ago.
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Post by Not Wes on May 13, 2019 9:46:53 GMT -5
The benefits of my local grade-school being a church-run one, all those years ago. Andrew, I agree with you. Had Wes been still alive, I would have pointed out similar things. In fact, I had comments in the file that he never saw. To the Jews, Samaritans were (please excuse the language everyone) "niggers," though it's non PC to say that now, and Nanci's family and friends are not considered equivalent to that status. I didn't feel comfortable changing it myself (or what fixes could be easily done), so it got left as it was, ignoring very minor changes for typos and grammar equivalent things. Thanks, Not Wes |
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Post by Boyd Percy on May 13, 2019 18:22:01 GMT -5
Interesting! I always thought that Nanci, all the way back to Canyon Fires, was a "prodigal daughter"story. She hit rock bottom in Chicago and headed back to her family in hopes that they would take her in. I mentioned this to Wes but he never bit on it. This is sometimes called proof texting.
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Post by Andrew on May 14, 2019 4:24:00 GMT -5
I'm not quite sure the N-word is appropriate here because Samaritans will have looked pretty much the same as the people from Judea, although it is often surprisingly easy to identify people from various European countries just on minor physical differences.
Start off with US Methodists / Baptists / whatever and think of attitudes towards Catholics and/or Jews. They look the same but . . .. Mexicans usually do look a bit different. I can't imagine things went as far as in the 3rd Reich where Jews had to wear the Star-of-david so the glorious Aryans could tell them apart.
(as an aside there, I read an autobiography by a German who lived through WW2 and he wrote how shocked he was when one of his uncles turned out to have joined the NSDAP. The uncle explained it to him: He looked just like the caricature Jew so wearing the "badge of the party" was a matter of personal safety).
Prodigal daughter? Yup, although neither her brother nor her sister were unhappy about her welcome when she returned.
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Post by Andrew on May 14, 2019 4:59:52 GMT -5
oh, and a thought which has been running through my mind for some time: Allie died for Nanci's sins, her death redeemed Nanci. That parallel only goes so far, but far enough be deliberate by the author.
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Post by Boyd Percy on May 14, 2019 20:12:35 GMT -5
Andrew, that why you call it proof texting (eisegesis) when you read something into a text instead of letting the text speak for itself (exegesis). Actually, Preach calls Nanci a prodigal daughter in Chapter 33 of Down by the Riverside. I just happened to notice that when I was reading DBTR. It jumped out at me unexpectedly. That's a case of taking something out of context.
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Post by Andrew on May 15, 2019 9:57:07 GMT -5
That theme came up a few times in various books:
- Rocinante is split up into three parts and the third is entitled "The Prodigal Children".
- Linda (Randy's mother) refers to Crystal as "our prodigal quasi-daughter" in Dawnwalker 61. She has just returned from the Grand Canyon the first time.
- Square One 4, applied to Danny Evachevski to tell him he will be welcome in Spearfish Lake.
- That DBR 33 reference is not as one might think, it was applied to Nanci on her return from a motor-rig trip with GCR. She is a 3-year veteran as a Canyon Tours boatman at the time.
- Hickory Run 22 - applied to Sarah's parents, although there was no prospect of them returning at the time.
Linux has some good text-search utilities.
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Post by Jon on May 15, 2019 22:57:35 GMT -5
Circuit Rider is the third book for what Wes admitted was a throwaway character in Nanci. He was somewhat amazed Nanci showing up in Canyon Fires would develop into the now three volume set of the Rev. Nanci sub-series. With CR the third installment of the Rev. Nanci series, one wonders how many more books involving or featuring Nanci were percolating between Wes's ears!
And I'm amazed as to the lack of discussion of the warning made for this rather "religious" book has not been discussed in the Forum. Until my post of tonight, there has been no mention of the religious overtones in the Rev. Nancy series. If one were to have objections to religion in any SLT books, Canyon Fires most likely "require" a religious warning. In CF, there was Noah/Preach's stuggle to stay in the ministry, Crystal's unstated religious leanings and Tanisha's reawakening to her background. All-in-all, the handling of religion in SLT is handled with Wes's gentle nudging. I truely think Wes was a fan of the Dulcie books elsewhere on SOL.
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Post by Andrew on May 16, 2019 13:38:09 GMT -5
There was a "come to Jesus" moment a while back - I think it was around the time Al and Karin got married - which shocked a lot of readers. Various characters who had previously shown no religious leanings at all suddenly outed themselves as believers. It felt wrong to me - we had been inside their heads and there had been no previous indications - and there were a number of "complaints".
Subsequent books in the "Reverend Nanci" series have carried warnings such as:
{Quote}Notice: This story contains graphic themes of Christianity, faith, salvation, redemption, and religious experience. If you object to such material, you have been warned.{/Quote}
Well, doh! Of course they will, we *know* about Nanci now. It's in character.
I suggested to Wes a couple of times that the warnings were now unnecessary but those initial complaints - which I completely understood - meant he was not going to dispense with them.
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Post by Paul on May 19, 2019 0:40:41 GMT -5
I was among those who thought it was inconsistent when Crystal, after being a long-time major POV character with no detectable interest in religion of any sort, suddenly "reveals" that she was a Christian all along. But I mostly like the Reverend Nanci stories for some of its themes. One theme is that if someone doesn't want to be preached at, a good Christian should respect that. Another theme is that being a Christian does not guarantee that you won't make mistakes or have opinions that turn out to be wrong. I've met too many Christians who seemed like they would have big problems with such themes.
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Post by John Robert Mead on May 20, 2019 9:52:25 GMT -5
I was among those who thought it was inconsistent when Crystal, after being a long-time major POV character with no detectable interest in religion of any sort, suddenly "reveals" that she was a Christian all along. But... that's not what she revealed. She "came to Jesus" during the trans-Pacific cruise to and from Hawaii. Prior to that, nope, no religious inclinations whatsoever, other than not considering Noah's religiosity sufficient to make him someone she didn't enjoy hanging out with back when they were raft guides together while in college. And, as she said at the time, she was pretty stealth about it afterward. Which helps explain it's taking everyone by surprise, she hadn't been a believer back when they were hanging out together. Her mother being a believer was more disconcerting to me, except that I've some devout relatives who don't discuss religion in public or at family gatherings; it's a part of who they are, but they consider it a private matter not to be brought up where it might offend. Given Pete's attitude toward religion which he got from his father, her not discussing religion or being overt in her practice of said faith did make sense in retrospect. Although to the extent that her children had no clue was a little hard to swallow in some ways, but it did appear to be a hot button with Pete, so... maybe. I do wonder about the faith of Christians/Muslims/etc. who don't proselytize at some level; if you really buy into the concept that those who don't experience a true conversion experience are doomed to Hell, how can you not try to bring those you care about to said faith? Which is why I endeavor to be polite to those who come knocking on my door or attempt to talk to me on the street, so long as they are polite about it and back off when I firmly tell them I'm not interested at this time. |
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Post by Paul on May 22, 2019 17:35:36 GMT -5
I was among those who thought it was inconsistent when Crystal, after being a long-time major POV character with no detectable interest in religion of any sort, suddenly "reveals" that she was a Christian all along. But... that's not what she revealed. She "came to Jesus" during the trans-Pacific cruise to and from Hawaii. I do not remember anything like that. It's possible that I missed something, but it would not change my feeling that Crystal was replaced with a completely different character about the time she decided she might just marry Preach. I admit that there is SOME foreshadowing of that when Randy muses that there's a side of Crystal that he rarely saw and would not have liked being married to. |
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Post by John Robert Mead on May 26, 2019 18:30:34 GMT -5
But... that's not what she revealed. She "came to Jesus" during the trans-Pacific cruise to and from Hawaii. I do not remember anything like that. It's possible that I missed something, but it would not change my feeling that Crystal was replaced with a completely different character about the time she decided she might just marry Preach. I admit that there is SOME foreshadowing of that when Randy muses that there's a side of Crystal that he rarely saw and would not have liked being married to. Timewise, it occurs during Dawnwalker, but isn't discussed within that book. It's revealed in Chapter 25 of Canyon Fires, when she is talking with Noah. In regard to character changes... yeah, she isn't the same person she was back in college. How long some of the changes noticed following her going public with her faith after talking with Noah had been around, hard to say; if you are attempting to fly under the radar and suddenly that's no longer an issue... you may no longer feel subtlety is called for. But we all change over the passing years, in different ways, some highly noticeable, some not unless specific circumstances arise. And, speaking as one who has fallen in and out of belief many times over the years, depending upon how seriously you take your faith the changes can be significant; that's not always a good thing, if the faith you embrace is toxic. But conversion without some change in your life? In such an instance I'd argue that there was no true conversion in the first place, but merely the donning of a convenient label. |
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Post by Paul on Jun 6, 2019 10:38:52 GMT -5
I was thinking in terms of publishing (and reader) time, rather than in-universe fictional time. By that view, if it isn't revealed until Canyon Fires, then it didn't happen until then. Revealing much later (in publishing time) that Crystal got religion during Dawnwalker is an example of retroactive continuity ("ret-con").
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