Day 628 – Me and Mike

Friday, October 7, 2022 

We went to the Michelangelo show that was in town. Big reproductions of his work from the Sistine Chapel. Up close some of the works didn’t look so good. When you consider however that the ceiling is sixty feet away you realize that the scale demands a different kind of painting. I had seen his show in New York a few years ago and picked up silk reproductions of two of his drawings. The originals were a foot square at most. The silk were three feet by five at least and the detail, even blown up, they were incredible.

Each panel was reproduced with a description next to it and a highlighted section to show you where the panel was on the ceiling. It’s a lot easier looking at those reproductions than at the actual ceiling! 

Five panels were of the Sibyls. I could not say exactly what a sibyl was. But it seemed she was a female oracle. Turns out I was right. What I found interesting was that in the history of the church, it was alleged (common knowledge?) that these women prophetesses foretold the coming of Christ. It got me to thinking about the idea of god. One idea I had not heard until recently was the line of thinking that asked how old the universe is thought to be, and how long man has been on Earth, and when did the idea of god come about? If you take the universe at 13 billion years; Earth at 6.5 billion, and man at 200,000 then the idea of god hasn’t been around for that long. It always fascinates me how people can believe their god is the only god and everyone else is wrong. Really? How many religions have there been? And, how many gods?

It seems that the idea of god is a person’s quest to try and have answers to questions that the answers are not truly known. Maybe, they can’t be known. Maybe, they haven’t been learned yet because the information is not available. I think about the discovery and cure of various diseases and afflictions. Before we knew what caused a disease it was left to god: god’s will. Or, there was the idea of another world, a spirit world. A place where your alter ego or spirit animal dwelt. If you were sick, it was because of your spirit animal. Something was wrong with them and you had to take the necessary steps as prescribed by your moral authority person to remedy the situation. If you were cynical you could see this as a big con game to exert control over people. Maybe the con is a type of confidence game? 

I have often wondered about the Egyptians who for thousands of years did exotic burials so that the dead person could move on to the afterlife. I asked one time if they ever questioned what they were doing/ “No, never,” was the reply. 

Yet, tomb robbers came in and desecrated the body looking for treasure. Someone knew something.

I remember when I was church shopping – ie looking for a church to join for my children. We went to a Catholic church and here was a priest with a lovely Irish brogue telling some parents the story of one of the young boys who must have fallen asleep during the lesson about Jesus and Easter. Because when he awoke and heard that a dead man rose after three days he said, “Uh huh, nope. When you dead. You dead.”

The priest and those around laughed. But the laughter was a nervous laughter. “What if the kid was right?”