Klaus being Amish makes a crazy amount of sense not in the sense that they’d magically accept him and he’d have an amazing wonderful time with his Amish family who’d teach him to control his powers (because the Amish are a deeply controlling religious cult and there’s no way in hell they’d ever accept him as he is, even without powers. Are you kidding me.) but in the sense that once klaus gets to have his Rumspringa that kid is outta there he’s indulging in all his best and worst habits the entire world is his oyster, and he’s nEver going back

Review: The Concubine by Christopher Bae Rae

TLDR: The first 3 chapters are great, the last third is great, the middle bit is kinda meh. I want to proofread and tweak this book, but overall I could recommend it to someone really into Anne Boleyn.

Overall this is a good depiction of how events evolve, with the delineation of responsibility between King and Cromwell fuzzy. A lot of factors combine to make this storm of disaster.

For @fideidefenswhore xxx many thanks for buying this and The King's Mind for me, I hope the review entertains.

We begin with Anne waiting impatiently for news of the death of 'Aragon' (Chris, please just call her the Princess Dowager. Aragon is not a surname!)

She has chosen Edward for her unborn son's name. A fitting choice, and chock full of dramatic irony, especially as Anne isn't wrong that a king called Edward will 'cleanse England of popery'. Anne's ambition for her son is sad because we know what will happen, but there is an unpleasant streak to Anne who imagines how "sweet" Princess Mary's death would be.

"All is well and all manner of things will be well." It's nice to see Rae has at least a passing knowledge of the Bible- better than most Tudor novelists.

"Her heart was black!"

Anne:

I'm narrowing my eyes at the characterisation of Janes Seymour and Rochford but it's not TOO bad. Could be worse.

Henry examining the heart was a great touch. The tension, the duality of his response: amazement at the human body but also a Christian revulsion/fear/disappointment at its animalness. The tension felt very Tudor, Christian, and (renaissance) humanist all at once.

Also his suspicion at Katherine's death feeds nicely into his paranoia. Will whoever did it stop at Katherine? It's a good moment for his character arc. Anne's laughing at the heart is also in character in a dark-sense-of-humour kind of way.

"Henry does not care to admit it, even to himself, but he sometimes feels a sensation of being overwhelmed by her energy and confidence, an uncomfortable intimation that she does not always quite remember her place. A feeling that she may in some ways be quicker and cleverer than he is."

It would be nice to have some more dialogue. Anne and Henry spend a happy evening together and the narration tells us about it but it would be nice to hear them banter and bounce off each other, especially given what's going to happen.

Henry doesn't seem that enthusiastic about Katherine in his dream but it IS a dream so I wouldn't be surprised if he's got a case of self-serving memory and his brain has retconned any memories of happiness with Katherine.

"The continuance of your house must be seen to be assured, for without that the continuance of their own is in peril." A good point.

Rae handled the yellow-wearing incident well: Anne doesn't want to, but she didn't persuade Henry in time.

"She waves her hand, as if this might be sufficient to consign Mary to some kind of perpetual limbo."

I am very pleased to see an acknowledgement that Anabaptists exist and are persecuted by Protestants, as they're ignored in 99.9% of Tudor novels especially Protestant-leaning novels: "These are madmen, their views are too extreme for any God-fearing Lutheran and they must be suppressed. But such people are a sign of these times." BUT Protestantism is not about going forward, but BACK- back to an ideal golden age late antiquity Christianity of simple purity. Protestantism in this novel comes across like innovation which is certainly not how Protestants like Anne would have seen it. (yes I know the word Protestant itself is anachronistic because it's a 1550s word but bear with me).

Elizabeth Boleyn is well written: blunt, shrewd, loving but not emotive, but also not judged for having a stiff upper lip. "her mother comes and bustles, exuding a strained air of optimism." I like this portrayal of Elizabeth as being strong for other people, it's a nice bit of characterisation for a minor character. There's a good back and forth between Norfolk, Anne and the Boleyn parents.

Fat Wolsey stereotype...did Anne really hate him? Some historians have questioned that. It would have been interesting to see a fresher interpretation of their interactions.

We're leaning hard into the "Thomas More is a sadist torturing people in his house and he loves burning people" myth BUT I will give it half a pass because it's Anne's perspective and it makes sense she'd unquestioningly absorb Protestant gossip. It also leans hard into Fisher and More being personal enemies of Anne, saying they refused the oath to the succession when it was the supremacy More refused to swear to. More was willing to swear to the succession, and it was Anne's own ally Cranmer who suggested a compromise: More swearing to the succession alone.

Opening a chapter with Henry coming to from the jousting accident was very effective because we are like Henry, we don't have the immediate knowledge of what just happened (in theory anyway lol we know the history.)

'Something very bad must have happened to him.' You don't say.

I think Rae's portrayal of Norfolk is a little OTT. Don't get me wrong, I hate Norfolk, I don't give him a nuanced sympathetic portrayal in my own writing- he's ruthless, condescending, materialistic, greedy, and obsessed with hierarchy to the point of comedy- but I think it's OTT to make him literally stinky. Norfolk was a git but he was an aristocratic git, so there's no reason for him not to cover himself in rosewater or musk or civet or rose oil and chew cloves and mint for fresh breath.

"It's not for the first time that she imagines that the duke's death would not cause her any great or lasting sorrow." Spitting facts.

"These men, with their constant needing, wanting, thrusting- can they not ever leave off?" I can see the real Anne thinking this.

Cromwell is called the chancellor, but that was Audley- as Rae says later in the book. What gives? Is this a different chancellorship? Rae really really really wants to keep reminding us that Cromwell is an efficient fixer who knows 'where everything is and who it belongs to.' He is described as having a 'prodigious capacity for work' and I'm pretty sure I've seen that exact phrase in a history book.

Anne's panic and shock written very well: "She stares at the cloth and the stain, as if it is a trick of the light and gazing at it intently enough might cause it to disappear."

Christopher loves adding in definite articles. "The relief floods through her" "the tears staining her pretty cheeks" "a part of" rather than "part of". "Skill at the jousting" "threatened with the torture".

But he also misses out words and letters. I had to silence my inner editor reading this, I was itching to get my red pen, particularly in the middle third of the book. 'You' where it should be 'your', 'away' when it should be 'way' 'when sings' instead of 'when he sings' 'is wife' instead of 'his wife'. 'He is mind is elsewhere'. Sometimes Rae will say the same thing twice but in different words. I'm itching to tidy up some of these sentences.

"Soon enough they are ensconced together in the study very privately and Cromwell can speak his mind having first taken the precaution of having his guest sign a solemn of secrecy."

"Cromwell asks his guest if he would care to view the current progress of the works he is undertaking on the new accommodation and the splendid garden."

"the style favoured by old Granny Beaufort." I'm wincing.

Hire me as a proofreader, Chris!! Let me tidy your sentences!! My rates are super duper reasonable!! ;) xx

"She must be bright and gay" I was surprised to see such an antiquated use of 'gay' in a book published AFTER 2010.

"she must amuse and entertain him as only she can do, she must have faith in their future and give him confidence in it."

The image of their relationship as a sinking ship works particularly well given that ship-jewel she gave him with the self-insert maiden onboard.

If an old woman is talking shit about you why do you eat her gift of pastries?! She's probably spat in them AT LEAST.

Sir 'Nick''s suggestions to Henry are so heavy-handed that the manipulation is almost darkly comedic.

I am narrowing my eyes at Chapuys contemplating 'the austere beauty' of the chapel at Austin Friars. It's just a little early for Protestant whitewash aesthetics to come in. I'll give it a pass.

"The king's amours are not my affair, my dear Eustace."

"I can see that you are unhappy about these arrangements, and of course I sympathise. I do not much like them myself...Seymour having the king's ear, or to dwell on what nonsense he may be pouring into it. But I do not think we should be unduly alarmed about any of this." Cromwell is very clever here, using 'we' and joining their interests together to convincingly sound like he's Anne's ally.

"The ambassador is more than capable of building towering insubstantial castles of speculation in the air; he is also a master of the direct question." Good! But Chapuys would talk of Christendom, not a brotherhood of Catholic nations.

I do think Chris should have read Macculloch on Cromwell, because this Cromwell is too secular. "Survival is in the end his only goal." As Macculloch showed, Cromwell took risks for the sake of the reformation and he also made political errors because he wanted to found a political dynasty through his son Gregory. So Cromwell has multiple motives: yes he wants money, power, prestige, etc., but he is devout too. "not a wit, a raconteur, a teller of tales." It's unfair on Cromwell to portray him as someone who can't amuse highborn ladies: the real Cromwell was an outgoing, hail fellow well met kind of guy.

The Tudor court does feel rather depopulated, Anne is alone with Nan a lot. Where are her other ladies? they tend to vanish.

The king eating partridge with a cherry sauce, a nice detail as IIRC cherries were a favourite of Henry's. "His smile congeals upon his face into a cold mask of reserve."

The memory of being 6 years old and sheltering in the Tower was a good character moment for Henry, especially him recreating the rebellion with his toys. There's a cold pride to Elizabeth of York as well as the typical motherly tenderness, which I like. She was born a Princess after all.

"Do you follow?" He follows. Cromwell has no trouble following." Double meanings! We love double meanings!

Nan Gainsford trying to help Anne by mentioning Mark Smeaton's crush...oh, Nan. A great moment of tragedy. "Cromwell looks at her, quietly recording every word for a remembrance." Later on "Anne nods, as always Nan's good counsel can be relied upon."

I do think this story is missing some key parts, like the scene where Chapuys around Easter 1536 was forced to publicly acknowledge Anne as queen, suggesting the plot to destroy her was rather last minute. Henry orchestrated that little diplomatic trap, and it doesn't really fit Rae's framing of events. Also the countess of Worcester should have been involved in Anne's downfall, but instead it's Jane Rochford.

The meeting with Lady Rochford is enjoyable as fiction but it seems unclear whether she is on Anne's side or not. The real Jane wouldn't want Anne to fall- her fortunes are tied to Anne as history showed: when the Boleyns fell Jane would never be as rich again.

"[Anne] has thought of Cromwell for so long as an ally." Has she??? At the beginning of the book she didn't trust him in the slightest so why is she so taken aback?

"In these times of division and dissent it is so easy to assume that those who share our opinions on matters of faith and religion are somehow bound to be our friends." But she didn't assume!

I like the description of Cromwell being like a bat, it makes a change from comparing him to a pig, which is lazy and boring and unoriginal and uncreative and unfunny.

"Once a single brick is loose, the wall will be brought down quite easily." "this notion, and the twisting, spiralling curlicues of imagined consequence which may issue from it." "the tower of fantasy spirals upwards, out of control."

Henry goes from 'Smeaton won't confess to something that isn't true' to 'I think I've been deceived' back to awareness alarmingly quickly.

"he has endured this kind of assault before, but it was a long time ago, in a blacksmith's yard in Putney, with another man who had absolute power over him". Someone's read Wolf Hall.

Jane Rochford is more malicious here than the evidence suggests.

"She studies Jane's insolent look, and begins to think she might do well to ask George to keep his wife at home in future. If she is allowed to remain at court she will cause trouble somehow. But what ails her? What does she hope to gain from it?"

"he is still a little puzzled by her motivation, because the naïve and trusting might think that her interest lay with the Boleyns since she is married to George, whereas in fact she seems to be determined to do everything in her power to destroy him."

CHRIS. YOU ARE SO CLOSE TO GETTING IT. It's frustrating because Rae is good enough as a fiction writer to spot the obvious holes, but not knowledgeable enough in this history to fix them. Like yes, Anne and George could have sent Jane away if they didn't like her! That suggests they probably DID LIKE HER!

He tries to fix it by having Jane want Anne "disgraced, brought down a peg two, and abandoned by the King...she has done whatever she could think of to help to bring such a conclusion about" that Jane is "nothing more than Anne's lady in waiting." But it doesn't make sense! If Anne were abandoned by the king, this proud and covetous Jane would see her own position decline. She isn't just Anne's lady in waiting- she's her sister in law! She has a fancy bed with Rochford knots and a fancy counterpane! Under Anne's replacement she would just be...another lady in waiting! Also we have Jane's signature and Jane "scratching out her mark" implies she can't write, which is inaccurate.

Smeaton saying "I have risen by my own talents and found favour" is a nice subtle parallel to Cromwell's own rise, which makes Smeaton's fall all the more tragic, as a foil to Cromwell.

Cromwell using the classic 'sign here without seeing the full document because it's hidden by the document above' from I, Claudius.

At Chateau Vert Jane was Constancy IIRC.

"a galliard she knows very well, so beautiful, sad and stately." I think Rae is thinking of a pavane here, a galliard is an upbeat dance.

"although she must suffer patiently the king's delight in revels and pageants, Katherine of Aragon does not care much for this kind of lewd and brazen display, and thinks privately that dancing is a business best left to whores and drunkards." I think this is an unfair portrayal of Katherine. She was pious, but she wasn't a killjoy.

The juxtaposition between Anne falling down into despair next to Henry's mood 'rising' is very effective, like he's draining her like a vampire. Henry believing his own lies and turning his thoughts to "pleasure and pastime with good company". I saw what you did there, Chris.

There are some excellent moments of extreme black comedy in this. "They must believe that there was a conspiracy against myself, not one that has been crudely fashioned against the Queen.' Cromwell winces. Crudely fashioned?"

"It is simple enough, she is to be burned alive, according to the law. This provokes a murmuring from the Lords, and Norfolk looks puzzled until he remembers to add that the king in his great mercy is expected to commute this to beheading."

https://www.tumblr.com/unsolids-your-snake/731620210662047744

I just saw this post yesterday, are the Amish actually considered a cult?? From what I’ve seen and read about, they’re a pretty chill group, do they actually punish people who seek to leave?

I'll be real, I am deeply unqualified to talk about this; I encourage you to do your own research. I only commented on that post because it seemed like people didn't realize that "shunning" has a particular meaning in those spaces - like, yes at the surface I can see why people thought it was funny, but in context "shunning" isn't just your friends being a bit mad at you. It's an institutional punishment.

Questions like "what is a cult" are probably above my paygrade, but I feel comfortable answering "are they chill" with "no."

Many public-facing aspects would love for you to think that they're chill, and the chillness definitively also depends on the specific group you're talking about.

(Many people just say "Amish" and call it done, but the Amish are only one of a number of "avoid modern tech" groups, and they all have splinter subgroups with various differences; Mennonites are the other major branch of Anabaptists that do this.)

Ok I really. Don't want to try to get into this whole thing. there's probably a book you can read or something. But I don't want to leave you with absolutely nothing, so here's an Amish-authored explanation of shunning that I found:

link here

This is from a website used to sell Amish-made goods, so I think we can be pretty confident that this is attempting to present Amish culture in the best light possible. Here's some quotes:

"Because of this, being shunned can take a massive toll on a person. It’s difficult for someone to survive without the support they’ve grown accustomed to, and shunning can also make it nearly impossible for a person to earn a living." "This is what makes shunning so effective in keeping the community together and ensuring everyone sticks to the agreed-upon community rules." "The Amish practice shunning out of concern for a person. By shunning someone, they hope to get someone to see errors in their behavior, change it and return to the community." "Sins like fornication, adultery, stealing, and lying are all offenses worthy of shunning. This is to discourage other members of the community from committing the same sin."

So, even when presented in an article specifically designed to make this sound like a nice and reasonable thing, "shunning" is explicitly endangering a person by isolating them and cutting off their income, in order to (1) force them to admit fault and return to following the rules (2) make an example of them to scare other people into sticking to the rules.

This is high-control behavior, to put it mildly.

And that's even without getting into the actual specifics of what the rules are. Remember that these are, fundamentally, traditional Christian organizations. Most of them didn't suddenly become cool about women's rights and gay people. Divorce is one of the reasons that article lists for shunning.

Ok I'm sure I already put my foot in it somewhere and I'm really not an expert here. If you have specific research questions that you stumble on you can come back and ask and I'll see if I can help.

LDS doctrine question - what of the following views of Communion is the closest to what you think?

Memorialism: it's just a symbol, it has no innate spiritual power and is not the Body and Blood of Christ. (Held by Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Holiness, Anabaptists, Evangelicals and Seventh-Day Adventists)

Spiritual Presence: it's not the Body and Blood of Christ, but we do receive Christ and His grace spiritually through it. (Held by Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, Continental Reformed and some Anglicans).

Real Presence: it really is the Body and Blood of Christ with objective spiritual power, both to sanctify those who faithfully receive it and to condemn those who unfaithfully take it. (Held by most Anglicans, Lutherans, Catholic, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East).

Also, are there any requirements for who can hold Communion, who can receive it and how it has to be done? If so, what are they?

Good question! Might need some help from others on this because I’m not exactly sure if it is memorialism or spiritual presence.

The sacrament prayers say “this bread in rememberance of the body of thy son” (or this water in rememberance of the blood of thy son. why we usually use water instead of wine may be related to this)

So that wording makes me think memorialism. But then we have the understanding too that the sacrament (what we call communion) is a covenant in which we receive Christ and bind ourselves to him. More specifically it is the renewal of our previous covenants. So baptism is a covenant with Christ in which we take Christs name upon us and join his church. Every week when we take the sacrament we are renewing that. To the same effect of being effectively baptized every week (sins washed away, take Christs name upon us, etc). Then as we make more covenants like the endowment and our marriage covenants, those would also be renewed every week as well through the partaking of the emblems of the flesh and blood.

It’s a time to remember Christ and his sacrifice for us. It’s a time to reflect. I would say the general population would probably lean towards a memorialism understanding. But I don’t believe there’s anything that says it can’t be a spiritual presence….. there might even be evidence for it I just have never looked. but I have heard/read some quotes that go against the real presence understanding. To me it’s not as important as the fact that we are using the symbolic act of eating and drinking to take Christ upon us/inside us. I think there’s lots of spiritual insight to be gained from a real presence understanding but whether or not that’s true does not seem the vital point here (which I know for you is probably opposite as Catholics/orthodox often LOVE real presence theology and I can see why)

As for who is restricted from taking it, it’s fairly liberal with some restrictions. Everyone in the congregation partakes, even unbaptized children. I also see unbaptized visitors take it, though they often pass. The way I see it (and again have never read for or against this) since partaking is a renewal of a previously made covenant, to partake while unworthy (or innocent in the case of children) is not a sin if you haven’t made a covenant yet. Without making the covenant of baptism, you can’t break said covenant. So taking or not partaking will do you no harm or good. It just is. It’s just bread and water. (Maybe this supports memorialism?)

On the other side though, if you’ve made a covenant and break it and then take the sacrament knowingly, you are partaking unworthily which is condemned in the bible in the Book of Mormon and in the doctrine and covenants. So you DONT want to do that. But we don’t restrict for just “basic” sins if that makes sense. Because the sacrament is supposed to be you coming back to god and saying “hey I messed up this week, again, please let me partake and be with you and renew all my covenants. I will follow you still, even when I stumble. I want to be with you”. Taking the sacrament is the symbolic act of repentance and washing away sins. So you don’t want to not take it just because you’re not perfect as that defeats the whole purpose. But if you are really struggling with something, or really harmed someone, you may choose to abstain for a time, or your bishop may ask you to abstain. (Ex porn addiction that’s taking over your life, you cheated on your wife, you broke the law, you left the church, idk… it’s up to you and your bishop, it’s not cut and dry)

Some other quick things to cover the rest. Only priests or elders can bless the sacrament. Deacons, teachers and priests and elders can pass it (those are different orders of the priesthood). Anyone can touch it after it’s been blessed. It’s supposed to be treated sacredly but if it falls on the ground it’s not the end of the world we just pick it back up. After it’s blessed if there’s leftovers I don’t think you can just eat it for fun??? I am actually not sure since I never do clean up. We usually use water and bread as the symbols but anything can be used if it’s treated respectfully. Water was used for safety reasons instead of wine because of the church’s enemies trying to tamper with their communion wine, and I guess it just stuck because it’s cheap and easy to find. Gluten free crackers are often blessed and passed around in a separate cup. I’ve seen popcorn lol for the gluten free.

This ask really got me thinking and I’m happy to hear anyone else’s thoughts.

(Also ps I did read your message from month’s ago on my fave BoM book and I promise I will get back to you, I was just finishing the New Testament and this year I’m doing BoM so I’m thinking about it. It’s hard to pick!)

Le prophète (Karlsruhe, 2015): Reactions, Part I

new (ish) filmed production of le prophète just dropped??? there go any other plans i may have had for this friday night

no loitering allowed

this chorus is essentially just “thank fuck that it’s sunny and not storming” which…i get it bc i live in tornado alley, but also as we come out of a VERY hot summer…storms are nice every once in a while

also: no room for sun in a neon capitalist/oligarchist hellscape

berthe’s got rocker girl vibes!

the waitress: “eh might as well listen to your story not like i have anything better to do on company time”

this does not feel very heterosexual on berthe’s part

edit: scratch that apparently that was fidès, in which case…why have her come in before she’s supposed to be there, director

also though: as a friend said, (paraphrased) “if y’all ship filippo and rodrigo i should be able to ship fidès and berthe bc it’s basically the same thing”

“tomorrow this place is ALL YOURS!!!”

(we love women business (co) owners)

she got all her papers in order, she’s done everything RIGHT, and yet…

THE ANABAPTISTS ARE HERE

also: i’m sorry but i find it so fucking funny that they’re dressed up like mormons. idk why that’s so funny to me but i saw a production of the barber of seville once where one of almaviva’s disguises was as a mormon missionary and i lost my shit laughing. anyway back to the opera

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA THEY WENT TO FIDÈS’ PLACE THAT MAKES THIS EVEN FUNNIER

(on the other hand, though: why is everything such a huge problem if fidès and jean live in the same town as berthe??? a big part of it is that berthe is asking to LEAVE oberthal’s domains. i wonder what the modern equivalent is)

“nah not interested” *slams door in their faces* yes you go fidès 

weird cuts but THIS CHORUS NEVER FAILS TO BLOW ME AWAY

the power of community organizing! (unfortunately done by people with…less than great intentions)

fun activities with friends: doing acrobatics and breakdancing on police cars

everyone reading each other for filth. it’s fun but they all suck

also, no picture but: LUCIA LUCAS IS IN THIS??? (she plays Mathisen) NICE!!!!!!!!

two brave women supporting one another we love to see it (also: one of the prettiest duets you ever did hear)

oberthal you little bitch

you’re just gonna leave her chained to that? 

WAIT OBERTHAL WAS IN THE BACK SEAT WITH BERTHE THE WHOLE TIME OH FUCK

talk about mood whiplash! (also: this chorus BOPS)

uh oh (also especially with the mormon missionary-esque costumes, their being at more or less a sports bar is hilarious)

jean is a tenor with no brain cells and he’s able to admit it, unlike most tenors with no brain cells

his dreams could be prophetic for real, or a fluke…but either way they are GOING to be manipulated 

“no sports. only our warped version of Jesus”

“guys. stop kneeling before me. i’m not Jesus or any warped version thereof”

(also i REALLY want them to start singing “hello”)

THE WAY HE LAUGHED AT THEM YES JEAN GET ‘EM

“DUDE, we’re not supposed to have beer”

“oh sorry”

he’s just a guy who really loves his mom and his rocker girl fiancée! 

so jean. about that marriage tomorrow.

oh HONEY

HOW DO YOU NOT SEE HER OH MY GOD

i’ll try to put the rest in a reblog bc apparently you can now only put in 30 images per post, which is STUPID and DUMB and i HATE it

They condemn the Anabaptists and others who think that the Holy Spirit comes to human beings without the external Word through their own preparations and works. ~Augsburg Confession 5:4 (Latin Text)

The spiritual discipline of curiosity -- Joshua 2:1-21 -- September 25, 2022

Several weeks ago when we met for Back to Sunday School, I shared the song Trouble and Woe by Ruth Moody. We had a good conversation about the lyrics which are both simple and profound, beginning with the “trouble and woe” of this world,

This world is full of trouble and woe / This world is full of trouble and woe / All I see is trouble, everywhere I go / I'm gonna sing the trouble that I know.

But the song doesn’t leave us there; instead, it moves toward a world full of promise and love.

This world is full of promise and love / This world is full of promise and love / Promise of a new day with no dark clouds above / And I'm gonna sing that world I'm dreamin' of.

The lyrics proclaim that the singer will sing this world into being, even as we know that the trouble and woe remain. It’s a song that, in my mind, inspires us to see the world as it is but imagine what might be.

That’s a relevant segue to today’s theme on the spiritual discipline of curiosity. To my knowledge, you won’t find “curiosity” in any list of the historic spiritual disciplines like prayer, worship, service, Bible study, etc. But I believe that in times like ours, “curiosity” is a necessary spiritual discipline.

Today’s text from Joshua 2 gives us an illustration of curiosity in the person of Rahab, but the text itself serves as a case study on curiosity. Joshua 2 isa text that we might prefer to avoid. The book of Joshua comes from a part of the Old Testament that is not a favorite for many Brethren. As a peace church, we tend to get uncomfortable with parts of the Bible where holy war is a significant part of the story, and it’s easy for us to say, “can we just skip this and get back to Jesus?”.

I get that, I really do. And I’ll even reframe our objection to texts like these in a more theologically accurate way: one of the significant gifts of Anabaptist theology to Christian thinking is that when we see a conflict between parts of the Bible that seem to be saying different things (like Joshua’s emphasis on holy war and Jesus’ emphasis on peacemaking) we let Jesus be the arbiter. I’ve had conversations with sincere people (and let me emphasize sincere!) who wrestled with issues just like these and resolved their conflict by appealing to Old Testament passages like these over the teaching of Jesus. Yes, these stories are in the Old Testament. But Anabaptist theology teaches us to view them through the lens of Jesus. We submit our attitudes and opinions about the Bible and Biblical interpretation to Jesus.

But lest you think that bit of theology means we can skip over this story, I say, “Hold on there!  Not so fast!” We dare not forget that Rahab is a direct ancestor of Jesus, one of the five women listed in Jesus’ genealogy. So, let’s not be too quick to judge!  Maybe there’s something here worth looking at after all. How did someone like Rahab—a foreign woman who was a prostitute—end up in Jesus’ genealogy? She must be a remarkable person!

An uncomfortable text

We meet Rahab through a very well-told story. If this were Bible Study, we could have a lot of fun with the double entendres concerning Rahab’s occupation and what the men might have gone in her house to do. There is more than a wink and a nod that the men might have gone into the house to hide, but that might not have been all they did there. There is a bawdy, NSFW character to the language that we normally think is also not appropriate for church. The Bible isn’t as prudish as we think; but it’s also not being intentionally crude, either. This is one place where a bit of curiosity helps us unpack the story because of a few things that are true about the Bible:

The Bible is concerned about appropriate boundaries and expressions of sex. Rahab’s job as a prostitute is a concern for some interpreters. Some would say, “isn’t it great that Rahab chose to be faithful to God and leave being a prostitute behind.”

The Bible is concerned about appropriate boundaries and expressions of religion. This is one of God’s biggest concerns for the people—that when they arrive in the Promised Land that they not worship the gods of the people who live there.

Sometimes sexual promiscuity is a metaphor for spiritual promiscuity. It is not uncommon for God to complain that the people have “prostituted themselves” with other gods.

Rahab’s faithfulness

In the case of this story, I suggest that all of this is true. God is concerned that the people will move into the Promised Land, marry their sons to the local daughters, and adopt the local religions. Rahab is both a model of what the people are not to become and an example who the people might become. This gets communicated through the suspense and tension built into the narrative. The spies hiding out in a brothel; word getting back to the king; the king confronting Rahab; Rahab hiding the spies on the roof; this is a story that is just begging to be made into a movie. Will this be a story of faithfulness or of spiritual disaster? Will God’s plans for these people move forward in a positive way, or will things begin to spiral into unfaithfulness right out of the gate?

What no one would have expected from this story is that the most stunning example of faith is Rahab herself, the prostitute of Jericho who decides that trusting God is her best option. Rahab’s confession of faith is one of the most stunning and unexpected confessions of the faith in the entire OT; a virtual “Apostle’s creed” of Hebrew Bible faith:

I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that dread of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. As soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no courage left in any of us because of you. The LORD your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below (Joshua 2:9-11).

With these fantastic words, Rahab, the one who embodies all the things the people are not to become, becomes the “model Israelite” illustrating what the people might become if they are curious enough about the things they see God doing to put their trust in God.

People like to talk about “blind faith” all the time, but true Biblical faith is not blind at all. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Faith involves understanding what God has done in the past and is doing in the present, and then believing that God will continue to do those things in the future. This is what Rahab has done—she’s heard the stories about God and her curiosity about those things leads her to put her trust in God.

Putting her faith in God came at a significant cost. Saying “yes” to God always comes at a price, and for Rahab, saving her life meant abandoning her people. Jesus tells us that faith will sometimes be this way:

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law (Luke 12:51-53).

But we are also reminded that faith in Jesus comes with a great benefit both in this life and in the life to come.

Reawakening our curiosity

If there was ever a time for curiosity like Rahab’s, it is now. One of the many helpful ways that Paul Mundey challenged us this week at Awakening was in how so many people feel that they can only define their faith by what they are against, as if faith is somehow invalid if it doesn’t lead us to actively call out our opponents, or in just giving up on those parts of our faith or our church that we’re not happy about anymore, or aren’t done just the way we think they should be done.

I get that there are those persons out there with ideas and agendas that are contrary to the Christian faith. I understand that there are boundaries to what is faithful. Jesus dealt with things like this, and so should we. But when we look at Jesus’ model of leadership and of engaging with people, we see him taking a different approach.

We might look at John 3:17: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. God’s strategy was not to condemn us in our sin, but to reach out to us and invite us into the family.

We might look no further than who Jesus chose as his disciples: one was a tax collector working on behalf of the Roman government, and one who was a Zealot—a political revolutionary. Jesus could not have found two persons whose beliefs about faith and about politics were more different than this.

Or, consider Romans 8:31 “If God is for us, who is against us?

If there ever was a case of someone who should look at a group of people with mind made up, it was God looking at us. But where others think there are no options, God sees possibility, and finds a way.

Our annual discipleship emphasis is a fantastic time to consider the spiritual discipline of curiosity. We’ve heard these stories of faith for years. We’ve known people who have looked with curiosity at situations that seemed either impossible or hopeless and found a way forward. Where are those places and who are those persons where we need to adopt an attitude of curiosity toward?

There is a real temptation to get into a debate with another person and oppose everything they say. But what if our first response in those situations wasn’t “I disagree” but “Tell me more?”  How might that change our relationships?

What are those areas of congregational life where we need to lean into with curiosity to find new possibilities for faith and service?

Thinking again about our week with Paul Mundey, he and I had lunch together on Wednesday, and we talked about how churches are struggling. It’s just the time we’re in. What possibilities might be opened by a healthy dose of curiosity? How might we adopt an attitude of curiosity about the people who aren’t here, or with people or topics on which we struggle to find agreement? This ought to be second nature for Brethren, because we follow the New Testament example of Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Conference, which shows us how the church can come together in a time of disagreement and uncertainty to discern God’s way forward together. We have the example of Joshua 2 showing us how curiosity saved Rahab’s life and brought her into the family tree of Jesus! How might we learn better to make our following Jesus to be a way to come together, not an excuse to stay apart?

How do we function in a world of trouble and woe? Ruth Moody’s song ends with one possibility:

This world is full of trouble and woe / This world is full of trouble and woe / All I see is trouble, everywhere I go / I'm gonna sing, sing my way back home / I'm gonna sing my way back home.

 What are the lyrics to curiosity’s song?

The Tribulation is the wrath of God! God Rapture us from the wrath! telegram @ nubuat Romans 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. 1 Thessalonians 1:10 And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Revelation 6:17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? Revelation 22:20-21 (KJV) He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. O, come Lord Jesus! join @alkitabsaja #alkitabiah.org #matikemana.com #alkitabsaja #anabaptists #fundamental #biblical #rapture #rapturo #rapiemur #harpazo #caughtup #pengangkatan https://www.instagram.com/p/CiAjL0JrAfg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

When I was at Taylor’s Elementary School, in the same worn building where my mom, dad and grandpa went to high school, in the same library where they browsed for books and checked them out to take home and find respite from the long days of mill work and farm work, I found a book that would make a difference in my life.

That book was a thin fiction book about boxing titled The Contender by a sportswriter turned author named Robert Lipsyte.

I chose that book because of its cover.

There was an illustration of a young black man on the cover with a towel around his shoulders and white tape around his hands, showing the world that he was a boxer.

You might be surprised to learn that I’m a boxing fan.

I’ve been deeply influenced by the pacifism of my Anabaptist forbears and the non-violence teaching of my Civil Rights Movement forbears.

I don’t even like to squash a bug if I can help it.

That’s the kind of person I am.

I don’t like professional boxing because it has a lot of pizzazz within it and I’m not a pizzazz kind of person.

I do like amateur boxing, though.

In it I find some of the essentials of life - self discipline, courage, persistence, ingenuity, respect, confidence and humility.

The Contender tells the story of Alfred Brooks, an inner-city kid who drops out of school and works as a sweeper and stocker in a Jewish family owned grocery store.

His best friend, James, is falling into gang life.

Alfred is trying to save him before he is lost to the streets.

James gets arrested for breaking into and stealing from the grocery store where Alfred works.

One night, after James’ arrest, Alfred walks up the rickety, dimly lit stairs of Donatelli’s Gym, where he meets Mr. Donatelli, a grizzled, old boxing trainer who reminds me of the beloved Micky in the Rocky movies.

Alfred becomes a boxer.and learns that he must become a contender before he can become a champion.

He learns from Mr. Donatelli that he must become a contender before he can become a champion.

“You have to start by wanting to be a contender,” Mr. Donatelli tells Alfred, “The person coming up, the person who knows there's a good chance you’ll never get to the top, the person who's willing to sweat and bleed to get up as high as your legs and your brain and your heart will take you.”

I love that quote and keep it close to me every day as I open my classroom door at BES or my blank notebook at my writing desk.

They inspire me to be a contender like Alfred is a contender.

In that very first reading of the book those many years ago, I realized that I’m the black, inner-city kid on the cover.

I realized that he is me.

That’s an important thing for a ten year old to figure out.

The intended is a story about friendship, too.

One of the most moving scenes I’ve ever read in literature happens at the end of the story.

Alfred climbs into an old hiding spot where he and James went when times got hard, like when James’ alcoholic, abusive father lashed out at him, or when Alfred’s mom died from cancer.

James is there.

He is running from the police because he has broken into the grocery store again, this time through the front window, where he has cut himself really badly on the shattered glass.

“Alfred felt James’ outstretched arms around his neck,” writes Lipsyte.

“Slowly he pulled James out of the cave into the biting wind.

‘Easy, man, you be all right.’ He lifted James to his feet and half-carried him through the stunted trees. James moaned.

‘Hang in there, James. Can you walk?’

‘Try.’ He leaned heavily on Alfred. ‘Weak as a baby. Lost all that blood.’

‘Don’t worry about that, James, I got plenty of blood for you.’ Carefully, Alfred guided him over the rocks and bushes and the new snow, toward the lights of the avenue.”

In that very first reading, I realized that friendship is everything, that carrying your friends is everything, that being carried by your friends is everything.

I’m thankful I learned that, too.

And am continuing to learn.

In days upon days in public school.

Thick as Thieves

[This article is an interesting exploration of the Thief archetype in RPGs, and how it relates to fiction and real life. It was written by rpg.net columnist Aeon in 2001 – so it's missing 20 years worth of developments in roleplaying games, not to mention historical research. I added some notes here and there (marked as "N.B.", nota bene, how old-fashioned of me), but I didn't fully update it or anything. All emphasis mine.]

"I am Abu the thief, son of Abu the thief, grandson of Abu the thief." ~ The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

Anabaptist, bawdy basket, brigand, bubber, bufe napper, bung nipper, clank napper, cloyes, cracksman, criminal, crook, cutpurse, filcher, footpad, foyst, highwayman, made man, moon curser, nypper, old hand, pickpocket, poulterer, prigger, resurrection man, robber, rogue, rover, scoundrel, shoplifter, sneak, swaddler, swindler.

He has a million names, but only one real face.

Thief.

The dictionary defines "thief" as "one that steals especially stealthily," and implies that it may have its origins from the Lithuanian "tupeti," meaning "to crouch down" (as if to conceal oneself). [N.B. "thief" has many cognates but is of uncertain origin, other than a proto-Germanic *theuba- or *þeubaz] Even a brief glance at the definition should give one cause to pause, however, because it's obviously redundant to some degree. "Steal" and "stealth" would seem to come from the same root, and indeed, they have close origins in the Old English "stelan," which means "to steal." In short, to be stealthy in the Middle Ages implied you were stealing things (stealth was, basically, the act of stealing), and if you were stealing things you'd want to be as quiet and sneaky as possible.

Of course, this all seems pretty obvious and straightforward, and that's exactly why one would think that a person involved in stealth, and stealing, would be pretty obvious and straightforward herself. But even if our thief does have only one face, we still have to deal with all those other names I mentioned before. And in doing so, we have to wonder how it is that the common thief managed to become so revered in fantasy literature and the world of role-playing.

It's pretty clear why our warrior archetype exists: the history of the world is filled with marauding bands of savage warriors, noble knights and dashing mercenaries, swinging swords and hurling axes. And if we dip into the realm of mythology and fantasy, it becomes clear why we have wizards and enchanters and clerics and priests among our role-playing types, since these are the sorts who dabble in the very stuff of fantasy: magic, the arcane, the unknown, the fantastical, the divine.

So why on earth did the common thug become so darned important? Why did the pickpocket take his place beside the paladin? Why does our crook cavort with our cleric, our swindler with our sorcerer? And more importantly, why is this sort of person considered a hero? Why do we crown our criminal, and rejoice over our robber's exploits?

How did our thieving pauper became a prince of thieves?

Thieves in old school D&D art

To thieve or not to thieve – The Role-Playing Thief

"Fight and steal for yourself, or join a powerful thieves' guild to reap the benefits of membership. . . . Learn how to pick locks, set traps, move without being seen or heard, scam people out of their hard-earned money, seduce and beguile marks, make counterfeit art pieces, and anything else those wickedly devilish rogues enjoy doing." – Cutthroat: The Shadow Wars, by Storm World Games

Even a brief glance at the thief archetype gives you a pretty clear indication of how it's built: the thief is exactly the sum of its parts, no more, no less. Whether called thief or robber, highwayman or burglar, in almost all cases, the thief archetype rests upon two pillars, right in line with the definition of "thief" as explored above:

1. The ability to take things from others. (i.e., stealing). The traditional skills associated with this "pillar" include such things as picking locks, detecting and disarming traps, picking pockets and climbing walls. One might also include here the ever-present backstabbing ability of the thief, which could be loosely interpreted as the ability to take the life of another, with great skill.

The first half of the equation also demonstrates exactly why it is that the role-playing thief is always associated with Agility and Dexterity. Certainly, as history demonstrates, those who take things from others occasionally do so by brute force, be that with a carefully aimed pistol or with the business end of a heavy cudgel. But this is not typically the sort of thief that we find ourselves looking at as an archetype. Our thief is agile and nimble, able to tumble and leap and climb, fingers flashing as he picks and unlocks and disarms his way along. Those who will steal will need to be agile to succeed. It's as simple as that.

2. The ability to do so quietly. (i.e., stealth). Skills typically falling into this category include things like moving silently, hiding in shadows and the oft-forgotten ability to detect faint noises (thus allowing one to conceal oneself after hearing the guards approaching). Though not a skill, per se, the ability to speak the language of thieves (i.e., Thieves Cant) also falls into this category, since aside from the code language it also involves silent hand gestures.

This second half of the equation also helps explain why thieves are traditionally associated with certain types of weaponry and garb. Obviously, if one is going to remain stealthy, one has to work with tools that aren't noisy or flashy or cumbersome, and so it's little wonder that most thieves find themselves wrapped inside a hooded cloak, armored with leather and padding, sans metal. And unlike the cleric, whose blunt weapons are only partially explained by historical evidence, the thief's choices and restrictions are explained easily by common sense. Our rogue will obviously choose weapons that are easily concealed, such as the dagger, short sword, sling, club and dart. More importantly, these are the weapons of the common man, easy to come by, easily and cheaply replaced (if left behind in a scramble for the exit when discovered by the guards), and inconspicuous if carried around the village, no matter what time of day. Your warrior striding into town with his bastard sword strapped to his back is certainly going to draw a few stares, but nobody bothers to notice the little guy with the dagger. A common thief is just that; common enough to blend in.

Speaking of little guys, one has to at least mention the apparent prejudice that accompanies the role-playing thief along his journeys. From the very start, the fantasy race most often associated with thievery has been the Hobbit, more commonly known nowadays as the Halfling or, in Dragonlance circles, as the Kender. The reasons for this are clear: all of the thiefly abilities are more easily done by individuals of smaller, lighter stature. A big hulking beast of a man is not going to be able to sneak up out of the shadows and stealthily snatch your wallet. But a small, agile little guy could easily do this, and more, without your noticing. Thus, it's obvious that the short, nimble races will make better thieves. Once again, our simple thief applies common sense to a simple problem, and comes up with an obvious answer.

As an aside, the term "Hobbit," as you may or may not be aware, was quickly tossed aside by much of the Role-Playing industry in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, due to some differences over copyright with the Tolkien estate. We'll explore more of that next month, when we take a look at Halflings, but it's still a nice place to segue into the Literary origins of the Role-Playing Thief, for whom we almost exclusively have Tolkien to thank.

Like a thief in the night – The Literary Thief

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

"'Yes, yes, but that was long ago,' said Gloin. 'I was talking about you. And I assure you there is a mark on this door -- the usual one in the trade, or used to be. Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward, that's how it is usually read. You can say Expert Treasure-Hunter instead of Burglar if you like. Some of them do. It's all the same to us.'" – The Hobbit, Chapter I, J.R.R. Tolkien

Let's not get ahead of ourselves; certainly, thieves had been around in literature for a long time before Mr. Tolkien decided his band of warrior dwarves needed a thief among them. Take a step back into Greek mythology and we find numerous thieves, including some of divine stature. Hermes is the God of tricks, messengers and thieves, so accomplished a thief that he stole his elder brother's cattle right from under his nose while he was still an infant. And not only is Hermes the God of Thieves, but he's also the Divine Herald, and as such is responsible for leading the dead down to the underworld of Hades. Even Hermes' son, Autolycus, inherited his father's thievish abilities, not only renowned for repeating the cattle-stealing trick, but for teaching Heracles to wrestle, and siring the father of the great hero, Odysseus.

And if that's not a tangled enough web for you, consider that Autolycus is also known for stealing from a man called Sisyphus, himself a thief, who winds up in the afterlife eternally pushing a stone up a hill, only to have it roll back down. And then there's Prometheus, rescued by the aforementioned Heracles after he was sentenced to eternal torture for (what else) stealing fire from the Gods. The ultimate bit of thievery, and the ultimate punishment for the task.

The notion of the thief stealing his way into Hell itself is echoed again in the epic Beowulf, where, after the bit with Grendel and his mother, we meet a thief who wanders into a dragon's hoard and steals a cup. This, of course, enrages the dragon, who starts laying the smackdown on neighboring villages, requiring Beowulf to come out of retirement to take care of business. Beowulf and the dragon take each other out, of course, but the point of all this is that it's the thief who wakes the dragon, the ordinary rogue who, through his stealthy deed, brings fire and brimstone down not only on himself but on those around him as well.

"Then Beowulf came as king this broad realm to wield; and he ruled it well fifty winters, a wise old prince, warding his land, until One began in the dark of night, a Dragon, to rage. In the grave on the hill a hoard it guarded, in the stone-barrow steep. A strait path reached it, unknown to mortals. Some man, however, came by chance that cave within to the heathen hoard. In hand he took a golden goblet, nor gave he it back, stole with it away, while the watcher slept, by thievish wiles: for the warden's wrath prince and people must pay betimes!" – Beowulf, Chapter XXXI

This, of course, brings us right back to Tolkien's The Hobbit, wherein a wizard and a band of 13 dwarves hire a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins to be their party's robber. Why do wizards and warriors need a thief? Because he can be stealthy, naturally... albeit not quite stealthy enough. After numerous adventures wherein the stealthy and clever thief saves his cohorts from capture and certain death, it all comes right back to a thief stealing a cup from a dragon, thus enraging the beast and bringing fiery doom upon the neighboring town of Esgaroth.

"He gazed for what seemed an age, before drawn almost against his will, he stole from the shadow of the doorway, across the floor to the nearest edge of the mounds of treasure. Above him the sleeping dragon lay, a dire menace even in his sleep. He grasped a great two-handled cup, as heavy as he could carry, and cast one fearful eye upwards. Smaug stirred a wing, opened a claw, the rumble of his snoring changed its note." – The Hobbit, Chapter XII, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit, of course, first appeared in 1937, followed by quite a large gap before we'd see more Hobbit thieves in The Lord of the Rings in 1954. But once Tolkien's mythology began to seep into the consciousness of fantasy writers, we began to see a renewed interest in the thief archetype in other pieces of literature and film. In all of these, the "dragon" (whether a literal or a figurative evil) is well recognized as a symbol of Satan, of the underworld, of the fiery doom that lies beneath our feet, and in each case it's the Warrior who puts the beast to rest and saves the day. But Saint George can't ever do it alone; there's always a thief along for the ride, to poke the dragon in the ribs and get things moving.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, by Michael Whelan

The most well known example of a warrior-thief pairing is undoubtedly Fritz Leiber's Grey Mouser, who accompanied his warrior friend Fafhrd throughout a series of stories beginning with 1939's "Two Sought Adventure" (also known as "The Jewels in the Forest"). It's also Mr. Leiber that we have to thank for the concept of the multi-classed thief (Mouser is clearly a Thief/Wizard, and Fafhrd a Warrior/Thief) and the magic-reading thief, as well as the concept of the Thieves' and Assassin's Guilds (the famous pair actually meet in Lankhmar while separately attempting to rob the same Thieves' Guild).

It's been widely accepted that it's these stories (along with a hefty dose of Robert Lynn Asprin's late '70s Thieves' World stories) that form the basis of the role-playing thief class, which appeared as early as 1976 in the Dungeons and Dragons Greyhawk supplement. Since those days, not much has happened from a literary perspective to change the thief; from Gord the Rogue to Tasslehoff Burrfoot, everyone goes back to the same framework to build their little hero. But there's a lot more to the thief than we'll find in the black and white of the paperback pulp novel, anyway; it's on the silver screen that we learn a little bit more about what happened to the thief in that 40 year gap between the late 1930s and the late 1970s.

Opportunity makes the thief – Hollywood's Age of Thieves

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

The most prominent Hollywood thieves of the 1940s and '50s come in the guise of the Arabian beggar boy and a deposed English noble with a penchant for green tights. The latter we can simply name – Robin Hood – for you know his story and his name well enough, and he's enough of a type that his name remains the same almost every time he appears. But the former is a more interesting case, for he's been named and renamed; much like our thief archetype, he only has one face, though he has many names.

In 1940's The Thief of Bagdad (sic), our thief appears as Abu (played by an actor named Sabu). Introducing himself as "Abu the thief, son of Abu the thief, grandson of Abu the thief," he makes it quite clear what sort of an archetype we're getting; the thief here is even more obvious than the wicked evil bad guy, The Grand Vizier, Jaffar, or the vanquished prince Achmad, or even the powerful Djinni. Abu is a happy-go-lucky robber, portrayed as pure of heart and intention despite his criminal nature. He steals to survive, not because he wants to, and by the film's end he's stolen his way into a great position of power. If all of this sounds familiar, by the way, that's because it is: Disney "borrowed" the storyline for their animated Aladdin, turning Robin Williams into the Genie and Abu into a thieving little monkey.

Our streetwise, heroic thief appears again in 1942's Arabian Nights, which features a whole troupe of thieves, actors and acrobats who help put the deposed prince back on the throne, vanquishing the evil ruler in the process. Once again, the most clever thief-acrobat of them all is Ali Ben Ali (played again by Sabu), a nimble little streetwise beggar-boy who controls the flow of the action through his own interactions with others. And he's back yet again in 1944's Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves; even though Ali Baba himself is now a thief, and the entire band of 40 thieves are all thieves, Jamiel (played this time by Turhan Bey) is once again portrayed as the cleverest, most agile and most heroic of them all.

This is hardly the end of the story: the Ali Baba/Arabian Nights story was told and retold dozens of times between 1920 and 1960, with the same characters, the same names, and the same archetypes (witness 1952's Son of Ali Baba and 1954's Ali Baba And The 40 Thieves) over and over again. The point of all this being that by the time Hollywood got a hold of the thief in the '20s and '30s, the archetype was already being twisted over to the side of good. When you consider how criminals and thieves were being portrayed in the detective films of the time (where the cops were the good guys and the robbers were always the bad guys), it becomes pretty clear that what we've got is the rise of the popular notion of the heroic fantasy thief, sidekick to nobility.

[N.B. Hollywood didn't twist the archetype to good, Hollywood made it bad (the only reason "cops were the good guys and the robbers were always the bad guys" is the bloody Hays Code) and then kinda course-corrected, for a span, when it started drawing from the source: Arabic literature features sympathetic rogues from the 9th century all the way through the Arabian Nights. When the Spanish picaresque novel introduces the archetype in Western literature, it's already a social critique, where the little thief steals and swindles in self-defence and is applauded for it. On stage, England gives us The Roaring Girl and The Beggar's Opera. And the novel, from France to Russia, had nothing but sympathy for little thieves.]

The concept of the ignoble thief and the noble warrior as partners in crime and in heroism is found throughout science-fiction and fantasy film. In 1977's Star Wars, future Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker needs assistance from scoundrels Han Solo and Chewbacca. In 1983's Krull, Prince Colwyn needs help from a band of thieves and outlaws to save the kingdom from destruction. In 1985's Ladyhawke, Matthew Broderick's Phillipe Gaston (aka The Mouse) is the one who allows the noble Captain Etienne Navarre to defeat the evil priest and save the day. And so on.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

But in many cases, our thief is also something more; consider that in the original story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Ali Baba isn't one of the 40 thieves, but by 1942, he's not only a thief, but a hero as well. This notion of "thief-as-noble-hero" (especially of the common man) is even more evident in the timeless story of Robin Hood. You know the tale: deposed nobleman heads off into Sherwood forest to live amongst a band of thieves and outlaws, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. [N.B. The OG Robin Hood was a commoner and the "deposed nobleman" variant came later, though Hollywood ran with that one.] Obviously the tale goes back to Medieval times, but it's interesting to note that it's during this time period (the first half of the 20th century) that we find no fewer than a dozen movies about Robin Hood. Ignore the green tights and the woodland setting, and our acrobatic Robin (archetypically played by people like Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn) is clearly just another version of Abu/Sabu/Ali, the pauper and the prince rolled into one. Instead of being a mere sidekick to a deposed prince he is a sidekick to himself, a thief and a prince (and as 1991's Kevin Costner demonstrated, a Prince of Thieves). The thief no longer accompanies nobility; he is himself noble. Even Conan the Barbarian, the would-be king in the film of the same name, starts off his career not as a warrior, but a thief.

This, of course, is interesting to role-play and fun to watch. It's also complete and utter nonsense from a historical perspective. Legends have grown up about noble, honest thieves being heroes of the people, but when you consider that even the noble Medieval knights tended to be dirty, crude, backstabbing mercenaries, you can imagine what the thieves of the time were really like. Still, it's out of reality that our role-playing thief's qualities were drawn, so to truly understand where our archetype comes from we have to go back beyond Robin Hood and Bilbo Baggins, back into history itself. To understand the prince, we have to understand the pauper first.

Thieves in every city, rats in every house – The Historical Thief

Quite obviously, thievery has been around since the dawn of recorded history; from The Ten Commandments to the Code of Hammurabi, laws against thievery have been set in stone. But it was truly the Medieval Era which saw the development of a culture that would give us the sort of thief we know and love.

First of all, it's necessary here to be clear in our definition of a thief. For example, we are not looking for Egyptian tomb robbers; the notion that thieves skulked around in cursed, trap-filled tombs to carefully steal mounds of gold from mummy-occupied sarcophagi is almost entirely without precedent. Certainly, the people who took riches from the tombs were thieves of a sort, but in many cases the tomb robbers were either the very priests and workers who'd built the tomb in the first place, or were citizens operating under the advisement of government officials, or around the grasp of those who either weren't strong enough, or didn't care enough, to try and stop them.

No, the historical thief that we are looking for must rely on stealth, not the sword, to do his dirty deeds. Certainly, Medieval highways and forests were filled with highwaymen, robbers, outlaws, thugs and bandits, most of them mercenaries or soldiers or something in between. But these people were certainly not thieves as we are attempting to define them; blockading a road and beating passers-by senseless is not thievery, but thuggery. One could argue that I've broken precedent a bit above in discussing Hollywood's version of thieves (most notably with Robin Hood), but even in these cases we get the notion of stealth, of stealing away into shadowy forests and crowded city streets (in the case of our Arabian thief).

And what, indeed, were those streets like? Certainly, Medieval European towns were a perfect breeding place for criminal activity. Streets were narrow, houses and shops built close enough together to create a veritable highway on the rooftops. Road construction was mostly a process of building a new road on top of an old one, so that in some places doorways wound up 10 or 20 feet below street level as the road rose around them, creating basements and dark corridors for thieves to lurk in. Up until the 16th Century, buildings were mostly made of "wattle and daub" (basically branches and plaster), making them relatively insecure at best; even considering that cutting a hole in the wall would be inconvenient, doors were typically unlocked, when there were doors at all.

To be certain, locks of one sort or another have been around since almost prehistoric times, and they were present during the Middle Ages, but your common thief would not often be found skulking about the city, picking locks in the shadows; there were simply not enough locks around to make a habit of it. [N.B. Lockpicking is definitely overplayed in how we imagine thieves of the Middle Ages, but it wasn't unheard of. Plus, D&D isn't really Medieval, and lockpicking becomes more prominent in the early modern period.]

Being stealthy, and being able to hide in the shadows and move with relative silence, were almost certainly more useful skills, however, and the most skilled thieves of the Middle Ages certainly practiced these arts. Once again, this is a matter of common sense; Medieval homes and businesses typically had floors covered in straw (whether for sleeping on, or for sopping up nasty fluids), and anyone sneaking around a house amongst two sleeping adults, three restless children, two dogs and a goat had better be a stealthy fellow.

This is an exaggeration, of course; more often, the stealthiness was saved for after the smash-and-run job, for when the thief needed to get away quickly and hide from the angry mob of villagers, watchmen and dogs who were certainly in hot pursuit. Constables and "night watches" composed of citizens patrolled the city streets after curfew (about 8 or 9 pm), as much on the lookout for fire as for crime. At the site of danger or trouble, a "hue and cry" would certainly be raised, and citizens (at least in theory) would spill out of their homes to join in the chase.

Even if not engaged in criminal activity, merely wandering around after curfew would be cause for detention and arrest; carrying weapons and skulking around in the shadows was against the law, and any thief caught lurking in a corner, dagger in hand, mask on face would certainly be forced to run when the watch came around.

The thief would have good reason to run, too; Medieval justice worked quite differently than many think, with laws varying widely from country to country, and city to city. In a best case scenario, the unlucky thief would find himself banished from the city, and quite often, this "punishment" was self-inflicted; as many as 99% of all murderers and thieves got away from their pursuers and fled into the forests and onto the highways (without a doubt the source of the idealized thieves and robbers in tales like that of Robin Hood and his Merry Men).

In a worst case scenario, the unlucky thief would almost certainly find his career at an end. There was no such thing as prison back then; "prisons" were simply holding cells, where the accused were held until trial and/or punishment. In severe cases, the thief might find himself put to death by hanging; in less extreme instances, he would almost certainly be branded or mutilated in some way, often through the loss of a hand and/or his testicles; even the unluckiest pickpocket could only be unlucky twice in his life, either way you cut it (pun intended).

Of course, the Medieval thief who found himself thus crippled could always turn to other related professions. With the minting of coin money came the opportunity to "clip" coins, by shaving the edges of valuable metals and creating new money from old. This was closely related to the art of counterfeiting and forgery, since it often involved the duplication of official molds. In some cases, it was easier to skip the money altogether and go for the gusto, by doing things like counterfeiting the King's seal, and using the false seal to acquire land and property from unwitting fools. For those who preferred to not get their hands dirty directly (assuming they had hands left at that point), there were always opportunities to play "Uncle," by fencing goods for other more able-bodied or foolhardy thieves.

The most common alternative to "traditional thievery," however, was certainly begging. The Middle Ages were rife with the impoverished, and for most that meant a life of begging for scraps on the streets. Beggars were a mixed bag; some were certainly inflicted with some ailment or other which left them with no option but to beg, but a great many were certainly capable of work and were just taking the easy (and dishonest) way out. [N.B. Oh yes, how dishonest, faking an ailment to beg efficiently when you are homeless and unemployed because the system is fucked and no one will house you or hire you. Fuck off.] Laws were passed which punished any beggar found to be capable of work; the punishment was often the same as that for a captured thief, rendering the beggar disabled and giving him a good reason to be begging thereafter.

Vagrancy, and the problem of beggars, became even more of a problem in 1666, when the London Fire, fueled by pitch-covered, thatch-roofed buildings, destroyed roughly 80 percent of the city. In rebuilding, the older homes were replaced by sturdier (and incidentally, more secure) buildings of stone, brick and shingle, but this fire did more than destroy a city; it also helped fan the flames under the feet of the thief, at once plunging most of London into extreme poverty, and rebuilding a city around those people that would truly be a perfect breeding ground for groups of thieves and pickpockets... more commonly known as guilds.

Honor among thieves – The Thieves' Guild

Guilds existed throughout the Middle Ages, with most of them being composed of merchants of one sort or another. Guilds ruled with an iron fist within their own realms, and certainly it would have been almost impossible to do business within a city if you were not a member of the guild whose trade you practiced, whether you were a bricklayer, a carpenter or a barber. Among the craft guilds, there was even designation within the ranks between new members, Apprentices (who mostly received food and lodging in exchange for work), Journeymen (or Journee-men, "journée" being French for "day"; in other words, those who were paid by the day for their work) and, of course, Masters (who could own their own shops and hire Journeymen and Apprentices on their own).

The concept of Guilds for Beggars, Thieves and Assassins has been debated back and forth for years. There are those who argue that the existence of Thieves Guilds is entirely a construct of fantasy authors (primarily Fritz Leiber and Robert Lynn Asprin) which has no basis in historical fact. There are also those who present historical cases for the existence of these very guilds. In my estimation, both sides are correct... in their own way. [N.B. See here for Thieves' Guilds.]

Let's take the first argument first – that Thieves Guilds did not exist, because they could not have existed. Certainly, in early Medieval society, it would have been nigh on impossible for a group of thieves to organize themselves, in secrecy, and rule with an iron fist over the nocturnal world. The very notion of a thick-walled warehouse, laden with traps and toxins to keep out the Night Watch, is ridiculous due to the fact that for much of the Middle Ages, such buildings were rare, at best. Homes were hovels, businesses little better, and any band of Thieves attempting to set up a guild of their own in the building down the street would be run out of town. An angry mob with torches in hand is no match for any size Thieves Guild.

Thieves and criminals looking to hang out and talk shop would typically be found in taverns, brothels and other Houses of Ill Repute, whether in the main room or in some secret back room where stolen goods could be fenced. As early as the late 13th Century, the City of London established laws which forbid taverns to remain open after curfew, precisely because of criminal activity therein. [N.B. "Criminal activity" here includes talking shit about the government.] But even these were certainly not secure locations to gather; taverns which ignored the law would be subject to nocturnal visits from the watch and, if need be, shut down entirely. Medieval governments were certainly not shining beacons of justice, but neither were they entirely corrupt; thieves were no more tolerated than murderers.

On the other hand, there is certainly historical precedent for exactly the sorts of guilds that would apparently be difficult, if not impossible, to set up. In Andrew McCall's The Medieval Underworld (1979), two clear 15th Century examples are given which can be called nothing less than organized Thieves' and Beggars' Guilds in France. [N.B. And they are both grossly exaggerated in the sources, if not completely made-up.]

The first is that of the group known as the Coquillards, a Mafia-like group of thugs, robbers, thieves, counterfeiters and other villains who were responsible for a crime spree throughout northern France in the Mid-15th century. The most renowned of their member, one François Villon, could almost be the archetype of the swaggering, romanticized thief; a poet and philosopher, he not only participated in thievery (being repeatedly arrested for same), but he often wrote about it in verse which became wildly popular across the countryside. The Coquillards were known for, among other things: lockpicking, fencing stolen goods, cheating at gambling, and a peculiar means of communicating with one another in what can only be called a French Thieves' Cant. The group also boasted membership in several cities under several different leaders; in one case, the leader of the Thieves was known as the "King of the Coquille". [N.B. We now can tell with some certainty that the "crime spree" of the Coquillards was a moral panic that sent a bunch of random people to the gallows in Dijon. François Villon was really part of the Parisian criminal underworld, but it wasn't some super organised network even in Paris, much less across other cities. He did write poems in argot, though.]

The second example is that of the Cours des Miracles, or the "Court of Miracles", overseen by the Grand Coesre, or "King of Beggars." This group also operated in numerous places throughout France, with local groups overseen by Cagoux, who in turn looked over Archisuppots, who in turn were responsible for training new recruits. Within this tightly organized hierarchy was a carefully constructed system of rules which allowed the group to, among other things, collect "protection money" from its subjects, commit carefully orchestrated acts of robbery and begging, and to deal with any outside freelancers who attempted to operate within controlled areas. Even within the lowest ranks of the Guild there were delineations between types of beggars: for example, those who would pretend to have been robbed were called Marcandiers, and those who would pretend to be suffering from sores were called Malingreux. [N.B. Other than the argot terms for various types of beggars, who certainly didn't have a King, this is all made-up. See here for the Court of Miracles.]

Although other countries seem to have lagged behind in organizing such large Guild-like groups, it's pretty clear that organization of some sort did exist... it's simply a matter of when. Certainly, by the time Charles Dickens gave the world Oliver Twist in 1837, London was being assaulted from within by organized groups of pickpockets, thieves and beggars who made their homes on Field Lane and Chick Lane. Master Thief Fagin, the Artful Dodger Jack Dawkins, and apprentice pickpocket Oliver Twist were not mere creations of literary fancy, but very real reflections of what life was like in that era. Closer to home, consider the organized gangs of thieves and murderers in the Middle East and Russia, or the Yakuza in Japan, or the Mafia in Italy and the United States. There may not have been global precedent for the Thieves Guild in medieval times, but such groups have existed almost as certainly as the thieves themselves have.

The big thieves hang the little ones – (In)famous Thieves

It's quite easy to compile a lengthy list of historical, pseudo-historical and fictional thieves, but it's also important to distinguish between them.

Pirates:

Quite obviously, the thing that makes a pirate a pirate is water, and a ship on the water, and the pirates on the ship. Aside from that, it's pretty easy to see how a well-run pirate ship is akin to a Thieves' Guild. The thing to keep in mind here is that in almost every case, the pirate met a bloody end at the hands of his or her pursuers. It's certainly not a good career for anyone hoping to settle down and start a family.

For some good historical examples, check out people like Anne Bonny, Henry Morgan, Calico Jack Rackham and Captain Teach (aka Blackbeard). For a bit more fantastical look at a pirate type, look no further than Han Solo; if the Millennium Falcon isn't a pirate ship, I don't know what is.

Highwaymen:

Are they thieves or are they warriors? Hard to say. Robin Hood (we'll call him pseudo-historical, since he was almost certainly based on real people) certainly falls closer to the thief category because he did a lot more skulking and stealing than he did actual fighting. In general, your highwayman takes things from others by force, operating in teams or groups that then do a good job fencing the goods they've taken. There's not a lot of picking locks, but there's certainly a lot of stealing.

Look for more information on historical highwaymen like Robin Hood, Fouke Fitz Waryn, Eustache the Monk, Dick Turpin, Will Plunkett and James Macleane, or pseudo-historical folk like Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernal.

Robbers/Burglars:

Robbers and Burglars are thieves who take a somewhat more direct approach to their thievery, often breaking and entering with force into secured or semi-fortified locations to obtain items of value. Thieves are typically lighter on their feet and less inclined to violence, but the robber is about as close to a Fighter/Thief amalgam as you're likely to find.

Look online for more details about folk like Richard Pudlicott, Jesse James and not-so-historical people like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. The best literary example is undoubtedly Bilbo Baggins.

Thieves:

As I've stated above, the central focus of the true archetypal thief is stealth. Thieves move without being seen, take things without others noticing, and generally have a "get in, get out, get out of there" mentality. Their fondness for avoidance of capture also makes them inclined to pursuing indirect means of thievery when possible, such as gambling, fencing (of stolen goods) and disguise.

By far the single most important historical (possibly pseudo-historical) thief is François Villon, who I discussed briefly above and about whom enough cannot be written here. Literary examples of note are folk like Gord the Rogue and Thieves' World's own Shadowspawn.

Assassins, Acrobats, etc.:

What, you expect me to do all the work for you? Open up a browser window and get looking! There are thousands of thieves out there just waiting to be discovered. Just do yourself a favor and avoid the Dungeons & Dragons movie; it's quite possibly one of the best examples of how thieves did NOT really operate in the real world. Filled with silly swordplay, massive stone Thieves' Guilds filled with gigantic trap-filled mazes and annoying characters, it's a perfect example of how archetype can easily cross over into stereotype. And if there's one thing a thief hates, it's being stereotyped.

The thief archetype obviously has its roots in some sort of reality, but for the most part, as one might expect, those bits of reality have become over-romanticized, thanks in part to fantasy writers and Hollywood blockbusters. But that's certainly not all a bad thing. The thief gives us a chance to play someone closer to heart, someone who's not strong or possessed of magical talents, someone who has to rely on wit and stealth to survive. Someone, we can imagine, who might very well be just like us. And in being more like us, it's clear that the thief is not just a column of percentile chances to pick locks and disarm traps; she is blessed with as many different skills and appearances as there are crimes to be committed. And that's quite a lot.

The point of all of this, then, is to acknowledge that while there is obviously a central thief archetype, history and literature have shown us that not all thieves skulk in shadows with poisoned daggers, waiting for the perfect moment to sneak in for a backstab on their unsuspecting victim...

Hey, what's that behind you?

[source: from the series "Archetypology 101: Fact, Fiction, & Fallacies" by Aeon, in rpg.net]

One of the greatest misconceptions of the Protestant Reformation is that Martin Luther, being the face of this movement, supported every Protestant movement across Christendom. Nothing can be further from the truth. In his book, Eric Metaxas, leaves it clear how Martin Luther’s intention was never to lead the flock astray from the Church that Saint Peter built but rather return it to its pre-Council of Nicea origins. He truly believed, as many have for nearly two thousand years, that he was the rock upon which his church will be built. This comes directly from scripture:

“Upon this rock, I will build my church.” (Matthew 16: 13-19)

Regardless of which translation you use, or to which Christian denomination you belong to, what Jesus says here to Peter is clear as day. However, some have argued that it is not meant to be taken literally. Like many things in the bible, it is open to interpretation.

With this being stated, where else did Luther differ from other Protestants? If I were to give you a full list, it would comprise a full book. Even doing a 101 would mean doing a VERY LONG post. So I will keep it short by giving the easiest (yet popularly unknown) example:

Anabaptists.

That is all you need to know. If you are still baffled as to why Luther would be against them of all people, you have to remember what Luther believed, before AND after he broke away from his religious schism. The more the Catholic Church pushed back against him, the more disenchanted he became until he was pushed into a corner and he realized the only way to survive was to surround himself was aligning with the interests of his wealthy sponsors. Some of the German Princes who supported Luther did believe in his cause but there was also an ulterior motive as to why they supported him. His writings meant that they’d no longer be in bondage to the higher echelons in the Church. They would be free to tax and have free reign over terrestrial and spiritual domains.

But some Protestants did not like this concept. They thought that they needed to go further. Some of these splinter groups did not (initially) spoke out against Luther. They simply wanted to go their own way but Luther felt that the only way for his movement to be safe was to have a united front. Dissention (aka disagreement) was out of the question. So what did he do? He persecuted them. Their response: Just like Luther had been pushed into a corner, they pushed back and called him no better than the Catholic Bishops he rebelled against. The final outcome was an even more violent pushback against them where Luther spoke out IN FAVOR of Catholic persecution of these groups. Of all of them, the ones he hated the most were the Anabaptists. They were called as such because they did not believe in infant baptism. The argument behind this is that to fully accept the covenant with Christ, you have to be fully aware and within your mental capabilities. Infants cannot decide for themselves, therefore, they have to be older when they decide they want to be part of his flock. If an infant were to die BEFORE the age of consent, then he or she is automatically sent to heaven. They often quoted from the New Testament, from the four main gospels, where Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is closely tied to children. Till this day, there are other Christian denominations (among them the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, Pentecostals, Revivalists, Seventh Day Adventists, Evangelical Free Churches, and Jehova’s Witnesses) that do not practice infant baptism.

With this being stated, you’d think a man who wanted to return to simpler times and was against the suppression of godly choice, would let Anabaptists live and let live, or be an open mind regarding their view on baptism. But you thought wrong. Luther went a full 180 on them. From being the oppressed, he and his followers became full oppressors. Just like the Council of Nicea and the Catholic Church over a thousand years prior, he wanted a form of Christianity that stood for national and spiritual unity. Anything that stood in the way of this progress had to be stamped out.

What are your thoughts on people who just want to be left alone, and not just solitarily - they want to leave modern society and go live in the woods.

They should be permitted to. Modern liberal democracies are mostly OK with making deals with secessionist subcultures: enclaves of Mennonites, the Amish, ultra-orthodox Jews, and so forth are permitted form and mostly self-govern, and are occasionally even granted opt-outs from various forms of government interference, like certain taxes or insurance requirements, on the basis that they make much less use of government services. It's harder to carve out such exceptions for individuals, but we do have things like the concept of the conscientious objector that accommodate deviations from the usually expected set of rights and obligations for people with a commitment to alternate sets of values.

But these things exist on a spectrum; opting in or out of society isn't a binary choice. Also, except in the libertarian fantasy land, it's very hard even in North America these days to find trackless wilderness where you can live totally unconnected to the rest of humanity--and most of it is in Alaska and northern Canada, so bring a nice thick coat. Where I think this consideration, the concept of "atomic communitarianism" to borrow a phrase, is most interesting is in its more complicated real-world instantiations.

Anabaptist religious communities in the US, for instance, aren't really autarkic villages; they're socially segregated, but economically connected with the surrounding area. Ultra-orthodox Jewish groups, while endogamous, have historically always existed within larger urban communities, and could not function without them; many seem happy to rely on social support from the government, which given the emphasis they place on a particular kind of pious lifestyle makes sense.

Where indulging atomicity in society encounters tension, I think one of three things are at play. First, the atomic community is in conflict with the wider community over material interests. The fight over the distribution of public school funding in Ramapo, New York is a great example of this. I don't think these kinds of conflicts ever have easy solutions, especially when the atomic community in question doesn't or can't form a distinct separate unit of local self-government.

Second, an organization wants conditional status as an atomic community. Anabaptists generally refrain from participating in secular government as a fundamental tenet of their religion; contrast the Catholic church, which now that religiosity is declining in many of its former strongholds, often presents itself as merely wanting to govern its own affairs free from governmental interference; but as soon as they are in a position to influence policy and make political noise, they do so, and they have no doctrinal objection to being made the sole official church of a secular state. In other words, Catholics are not naturally an atomic community, and so shouldn't be treated as one. They shouldn't get special consideration in a pluralist society, and Catholic institutions should be subject to normal rule of law. The Catholic church hates this, and it's this loathing of being constrained by the same rules everyone else is, rather than a real ideological motive, that causes them to cover up child abuse and play the victim when their mass graves get dug up in Canada and Ireland.

Thirdly, an atomic community may be genuine in its aspiration to atomicity, and it may be tolerated implicitly or officially by the collective authorities; but there are obligations that the collective authorities have to individual members it is pledged to protect that supersede any deal made with the community as a whole. The most visible example of this in the present day is child abuse by religious authorities. Whether it's the FLDS, ultra-orthodox Jewish communities, or, yes, the Catholics, one of the few things our society absolutely refuses to condone in an atomic community or an aspiring one is the sexual abuse of children, and the obligation of the collective authorities to prevent that is considered so far-reaching that no exceptions for any self-governing community can be permitted. Sometimes these communities can stave off interference temporarily by capturing local authority in elections and flying under the radar of more remote authorities, but this seems to only work in rural areas and only for a limited amount of time. The only imperative to exercise state authority over atomic communities that I can think of that comes even close to this one regards, like, tax evasion, because states also have a strong incentive to make sure people know that independent parallel authorities aren't permitted to compete with the state, and tax collection is one of the very basic functions of government.

Now, all of the above examples are religious communities. That's not entirely a coincidence: religion is a powerful community-building force, and rising standards of living in the developed world have reduced the relevance of purely political or economic utopian projects. In countries like the US, where there is a strong tradition of religious freedom, federalism, and soft libertarianism, society can easily accommodate a large number of atomic communities, even highly insular religious ones. That is strong to America's credit; in almost every case, if people want to go off and do their own thing, they should be permitted to. Even fucked-up cults like the FLDS folks should get a strong benefit of the doubt, because pluralism is important, and state power is a crude bludgeon, and when that bludgeon goes awry you get shit like the Waco massacre. We can quibble on where exactly the line for outside interference should be drawn, but regardless of the criteria we use, sexual abuse of children seems like a reasonable criterion for interference.

Should lone individuals or tiny groups get carte blanche to fuck off into the woods and never contact human society again? Sure; but they effectively already have that, if they can find an empty patch of woods. And simply in terms of sheer numbers, the quantity of hermits and members of eremitical microcommunities will always be dwarfed by larger, more persistent atomic communities like those organized on religious lines. Religion is just a much stronger motivating factor for that kind of secessionism.

If a self-organized community of individualists did form in the wilderness, or on some vast expanse of privately owned land, and wanted to govern themselves free from interference--well, that's called "incorporating a municipality" and you can go through existing legal channels. Your new town won't be free of state or federal authority, depending on where it is; but if you're large enough to need a bona fide local government, I think there's a strong presumption that your community has a big enough impact on the surrounding areas and is populous enough that the collective authority takes a legitimate interest in how your community is run. But local governments are really important, and get a lot of shit done! Don't underrate their power.

If you really want more autonomy, you can always petition your state or national government for status as a separate state/territory/province/autonomous community/department (it worked for the Mormons!). You'd probably have to be fairly big; but I think your community would have to be very large in the first place to really get any benefit from that kind of larger local government. And, of course, there's always the Free State Project. In fact, I want to strongly encourage right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists of every stripe, no matter where in the world they live, to move to New Hampshire and leave the rest of us alone. I think that's a really terrific idea (and more viable than seasteading).

One thing I didn't discuss is uncontacted peoples or native communities that preexist the communitarian authority. Especially with regard to the former, I don't trust state power to interfere in these communities in a non-destructive way; whatever the conditions the North Sentinelese are living in, the entire population being wiped out by measles carried over from the mainland would not be an improvement. And the excuse of legitimate state interest in protecting individuals has often been used to fuck with communities of racial undesirables--it is after all the reason the residential schools in Canada were built, and the Catholic church empowered to imprison children in them. This is part of the reason why even if you can prove an atomic community is a fucked up cult that treats its members horribly, I don't think it should be forcibly disbanded--the criteria for interference have to be extreme, because they have been so flagrantly abused in the past. Basically, the framework I'm using in the rest of this post doesn't apply here, because these native communities aren't secessionist for any meaningful use of the term. They function differently, they preexisted the authorities imposed on them, and that original imposition was a war of conquest.

Just learned that the cat I had to leave with my ex when I moved out passed away. I’m... Honestly pretty devastated. The idea was that when I got settled into a new place he would come live with me, but, well, it turned out the people I’m living with are allergic to cats, and then I was in grad school and couldn’t afford to move, and then the pandemic happened, and all of a sudden it’s been five years. At this point I had more or less accepted that it probably wasn’t gonna happen. I mean, I had him for five years, and now it’s been five years since then. I can’t help but feel like I let him down. He helped me survive that awful situation, and I got out of that trash pit, but he died there.

When I first met him he was incredibly reserved and fearful. He spent most of the time hiding in dark corners, would never meow, would run away if you saw him eating. But over the course of living together his personality really blossomed. He was way too scared of things to really hunt. Like, one time he saw a spider walking towards him and he bolted. So what he did instead was collect hair ties and flowers and leaves and put them in his food dish.

For the longest time he would avoid being in any room where people were moving around a lot, making noise and stuff. And he always avoided the basement storage. But, at a certain point, when I would go down there to clean up (always a mammoth task, as my gf and her husband are hoarders) he would very tentatively make his way down the steps to keep watch over me while I worked.

After several years he became so attached to me that every night I had to sleep facing the wall with my arm reaching out, because it became his sole preferred sleeping spot to curl up under my arm. If I neglected to assume this position, he would very softly tap my face until I woke up and corrected the situation.

His name was Anubis, but I also gave him the following nicknames:

Noob Bist du Shein Anabaptist Snu snu Little muffin pant--just the one, not a pair Wotan Sexual Intercourse Little kitty bun parade A Cat in the United States Primarily composed of kitty parts Sweety bupkiss made of bupkiss because there is more space between the particles we are composed of than particles themselves. Time and space are an illusion just like you. Lonely Boy Made of Cake Buddy Cooter Devil-butt Spup Almond devil Tough Futch

I loved him so, so much. We gave each other many years of happiness, and I will treasure that forever.

I wish I could have seen him one last time.

I hope he forgives me for not being able to take him back.

Goodnight, Anubis, I love you.

“..In a sense, Mary’s attitude towards those who would not accept her ideas on religion is the central question of her whole life. She was blamed at the time, and sometimes still is, for not producing a child after she had wickedly married a ‘Spaniard’, but the real damage to her reputation comes from the burning of nearly 300 Protestants during her short reign. To being too old and increasingly ugly is added the charge that she was a religious fanatic and bigot, and in thrall to two foreign powers, Spain and Rome, which did not have the ‘true’, Protestant, interests of the English at heart. But even leaving these common stereotypes aside, a real problem remains. How did Mary come to back a campaign against individuals which led to their publicly enduring a horrible death? Mary had, after all, been known in her youth not only as beautiful to look at but also as possessed of an idealistic and ‘pure’ Christian humanist, religious nature. These ideas were strongly opposed to the religious and secular violence which was then tearing Europe apart. 

At the centre of her religious life, Mary had a deep devotion to Christ both in His personal sufferings, as recorded in the Bible, and as He was present to her in the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, which she kept constantly by her as a focus for prayer and contemplation, in the form of the reserved or exposed sacrament. She fully shared the intense attachment to the saving sufferings of Jesus, in particular His trial and Crucifixion, which had been a central theme of Christian belief and practice all over western and central Europe up to and including her own lifetime. This core belief and attachment affected people who ended up on both sides of the Catholic–Protestant divide which was hardening during her reign. 

There was in fact no real conflict among Europe’s rulers and religious leaders over the centrality of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. His sufferings were described in agonizing detail in the Gospels, interpreted in the rest of the New Testament, and re-enacted in the traditional liturgies of the Church, especially during Holy Week, which had flourished in England, as elsewhere, up to Henry VIII’s reign, and which had been gradually restored when Mary became Queen. One might suppose that this form of religious devotion, together with ideas from predominantly pacifist Christian humanism with its intimate involvement in Christ’s suffering, would have led to compassion, rather than violence, in royal policy towards those who had followed Thomas Cranmer and his allies in their interpretation of the Gospel, and of what Christ did on the cross. Why was this not the case? 

In recent years it has been suggested that the hermetically sealed denominational narratives – Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist – of those who died for their faith in the sixteenth century need to be treated as equivalent, without ignoring or downgrading the particular religious feeling and emphasis which underlay their suffering and death. Henry VIII had over thirty English men and women, some with a Catholic and some a Protestant orientation, executed for religious offences, the former category, with the exception of Friar John Forest, being convicted of treason, and the latter burned as lapsed heretics. Mary in effect added adherents of Cranmer’s reforms to the list of potential victims, which seems to be the right word to use in this context. 

In her time, religious knowledge among the general population, and not just the educated elite, whether lay or clerical, was amazingly extensive and sophisticated by twenty-first-century standards. People generally thought they knew very well how a good person should die, and what the death of a bad Christian or ‘heretic’ should be like. Yet there is ample evidence, not least from foreign ambassadors’ reports and from John Foxe’s Actes and monuments (‘Book of martyrs’), that people in the crowds which witnessed the burnings of heretics in Mary’s reign were also very sure who was a martyr and who was not, though they might differ in their views of each individual case. Words like ‘martyr’ and ‘heretic’ are slippery, though, and need to be looked at more closely

Put simply, ‘martyr’ is a version of the Greek for ‘witness’. In the first three or four Christian centuries, when followers of Jesus’s ‘Way’, as members of the Church, had been persecuted by ‘pagan’ authorities, ‘martyr’ was used to describe those brave or foolhardy individuals who died a horrible death for their faith, often in public arenas. Both concepts – witnessing for one’s faith, even to death, and the violent and cruel form of that death – had become fully part of the religious life and the procedures of the Church long before Mary’s time. ‘Heresy’, also a Greek word by origin, meant ‘choice’, but had come to mean, in the religious context, ‘wrong choice’. To it had become attached a set of unsavoury concepts involving anti-social behaviour and disease. ‘Wrong’ religion was thus an infection which had to be cauterized or cut out of the individual and of society. Those among sixteenth-century scholars who, like their medieval predecessors, engaged in the generally harmful and misleading practice of dredging for appealing texts in the Bible and taking them out of their contexts, could easily develop ideas about ‘sheep’ (Christians) who became diseased and infected the rest of the flock (the Church). 

By Philip and Mary’s time, such people were commonly dealt with by an ‘Inquisition’. This word, from the Latin inquisitio, was used to mean a legal inquiry, and from the thirteenth century it began to be applied to heresy. Specalized tribunals of churchmen, with papal authority, operated in some parts of Europe, notably Spain and, from 1542, Rome, to identify and try heretics. By 1500, a complex set of laws and procedures had evolved to deal with such cases and it was accepted that although the Church itself, through its clergy and lay officers, could not shed blood, lapsed heretics, in particular, could and should be handed over to secular authorities, who would administer the death penalty, usually by means of fire. This would purge church and society of their sin and, according to the prevailing Augustinian theology, send their souls to eternal damnation, as indicated by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel (25: 46).

Without awareness of all this, it is impossible to explain Mary’s readiness to adopt such methods in 1554–5, and persist with them until her death. In the summer of 1553, she had at least appeared to outsiders to be willing to allow the reformed services of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer to continue, if only for a time, alongside the beginnings of the restoration of Catholic worship. It is commonly understood that, to begin with, she and her closest advisers, especially Gardiner and Bonner, thought that if they took the reforming leaders out of circulation, notably Bishops Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and Hooper, their followers would quickly return to the old faith. It soon emerged, however, that this approach would not work, and even though the kingdom was still technically in schism from Rome, the Queen and her advisers chose the traditional remedy of an Inquisition. The problem was that the old English heresy laws, which were part of statute not canon law, had been removed in the previous reign.”

- John Edwards, “Battle for England’s Soul.” in Mary I

Replacing America, What to Do?

Land Back and Reparations have been greatly expounded upon elsewhere, I support this entirely. I also support the dissolution of the border, the abolition of the police, the demolition of the criminal justice system, and the further expansion of systems of mutual aid, worker self-management, etc. The anarchist program I am sure you are all aware of. I support the continuing Latinification of Anglo America and I support the full sovereignty and territorial claims of Indigenous Nations. I continually find myself on the same side as the Zapatistas when it comes to nearly any relevant idea or practice. I support refugees and the continued (support means agree with ideologically, my ACTUAL support goes where it is able to and is far more local) development of refugee communities. Free association and intercultural dialogue and shared groups and institutions linking all of these communities, intermarriage shared neighborhoods, love and families, cross cultural music, etc. However the question of the dissolving the USA in favor of more human and multi cultural communities leaves a glaring question, wtf are white people supposed to do and identify. Firstly dealing with the reality of Settler colonialism, addressing white supremacy, dissociating from the state and power, breaking barriers to racial integration and cooperation, etc. But if the USA were to be dissolved, every Native, Black, Latin, Muslim, Chinese, Iranian, Filipino, etc. not to mention Puerto Ricans and Hawaiians who never identified as american anything to begin with, have identities and communities that continue. White Settler identify as Americans, with the exception of insular communities like Irish Travellers (who are themselves a displaced indigenous people and despite european origin not even really white often), and ethno religious cultural groups like Jews and the few Anabaptist sects left, or regional identities like Texan Settlers, Appalachians, Acadians. That American identity, being to the United States and not the Continents of the Americas We Find Ourselves In, is based centrally and irrevocably to loyalty to the American Republic/USA or to the idea of it. Which certainly successor states, especially white supremacist christo fascist ones and/or Techno-capitalist neoliberal ones, which a very large, atleast 50% of White Settlers would side with against a multicultural overthrow of the USA. Where does that leave us few Settlers who would revolt and tear down the system that has struck us with the decontextualizing plague, no more Gael or Slav, no more of this village or that, or a person of that mountain or that river. That has made us and our people complicity and made for us a world of slavery and devastation. Our  concerns aren’t the most pressing, the countless groups above are must better socially organized, much more under threat, and various other factors leading to their issues being not only of a higher priority but also being more well considered. Most Settlers do not even know themselves as Settlers, but the few of us who do, and the fewer who desperately want a world after the USA (and canada for that matter), are in a rather strange situation that is a source of much emotional distress for myself atleast. I don’t even know how much anyone else cares, my draw towards ancestral practices certainly heightens it for me, as does my obsession with history. There are a couple of paths on an individual level, there are many white race traitors who have, will, and do marry into and join indigenous, black, or other communities, their children being paler but still being first and foremost a member of that community (not that this is the only type of relation) and ofc even without sexual, certainly heterosexual behavior, white people will, through mutual strugge and personal friendship, find themselves joining their closest friends as found family. For centuries settlers have run away from civilization and joined Natives and Maroons, today Natives live no freer than anyone else for as long as their lands are robbed of proper stewardship, biodiversity and anti-stateness (not that there are not indigenous states, but I am an anarchist). And the other question, which to me comes up time and time again, as while the only true found-familymember, packmate, that I have is not themselves white but is dispossed (as of current), from being a member of a family or community of their people, thanks to abuse and assimilation. This one comes up to me again and again, as while I cannot join the fascist horde I despise who would kill me for having a bent back and a bent gender, aswell as those I care for and have brought me nothing but pain, ableism and empty, fleeting, now-gone, possessions. Nor can I choose myself to marry into another community. I stand a time traveling Gael, lost without a Tuatha. Well I may build myself a fíne (clan or extended family) or canairt (wolf pack), I find myself a future ancestor with the cultural lessons I have dove deep and fought hard and traveled far for, from Ireland and elsewhere, I found myself asking if a new generation of elders were made, would other race traitors find themselves drawn together to start a new culture on purpose, something not impossible, but is it desirable? We cannot return to Ireland, or Gaul, or any village of Europe, to do so would abandon the fight here and the people here. And while our Ancestors Are Us, We Ourselves Are Changed. So what are your thoughts? We need new families, many are sure of that, but what of a new culture? One which respects The Land, which respected the ancestors, respects our neighbors, respects the ancestors of others, respects food, respects the sanctity and necessity of hospitality? Which dives into its own history and forebearers for seeds to grow a new forest? Not just a family farm but a part of something bigger, of a people, of a nation which can join the great american Nation-Of-Nations in the mycelial matrix of anti-colonial, anti patriarchal, anti ecocidal futures, here in what claims to be the States?

And moreover, could European faiths be woven that could stand as an honorable neighbor alongside Traditional Indigenous practices and the West Afrikan Diasporic Traditions and the many Latino folk systems?

Seriously want to hear all y’all, and frankly anyone at all´s, thoughts on the subject if interested. Total respect if not interested. Also feel free to reach in DMs this has been strickening my mind for a few years now and any conversation is a treasure on it. (Neo-) Zapatismo is not an ideology, it is not a bought and paid for doctrine. It is … an intuition. Something so open and flexible that it really occurs in all places. (Neo-) Zapatismo poses the question: ‘What is it that has excluded me?’ ‘What is it that has isolated me?’ … In each place the response is different. (Neo-) Zapatismo simply states the question and stipulates that the response is plural, that the response is inclusive …[2][1]

I was an isolated child story #♾

I was vaguely aware that sports existed, the only ones I knew the names of were volleyball and softball, because I heard about church kids playing volleyball sometimes and there was a story in The Young Companion (anabaptist newsletter thing) that involved softball. I was not aware that there were schools that had teams that played each other, or that there were national teams, etc.

Because of The Martyrs Mirror (a book containing a lot of old anabaptists-being-tortured-and-killed-for-their-faith-stories, in some instances by hungry lions in front of large audiences), I was aware of the existence of a thing called a Colosseum which looked like this:

So, naturally, given the bowl shape of the colosseum, and my tentative understanding that the regular world no longer actually fed people like me to lions for sport (at least until Armageddon would come along, but that probably wouldn’t come until I was like at least 20 y/o, I figured), I assumed for many years that the superbowl was a volleyball event held in the colosseum in Rome and that it probably had something to do with anti-amish politics.