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Post by corialine on Dec 12, 2016 20:22:17 GMT
I am curious to know how different people here view the sacrifice of the Daughter. I have read people referring to the Daughter as "taking on mortality" in order to die, and others, like in the Janite tradition, articulating a view where the Daughter is seen as the "World Soul" who shatters into fragments. I'd be interested to hear thoughts on the matter.
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Post by Madria(priestess)sophiaruth on Dec 14, 2016 0:13:41 GMT
Hello Corialine, I was Madrian, but did not fully understand or wish to apply the Holy Daughter's sacrifice to my faith. Therefore as a Dea-nist I viewed the Holy Daughter's mythos as the Celestial Mother's actions in the manifest planes. I am now aligned to the Janite Tradition of the Deanic Faith. The Janite written teachings, prayers and rituals such as the Sun Wheel and calendar etc (Janite Tradition) are on public blogs. Therefore open to all, regardless of culture, religion, gender. So I believe in The Janite Deanic Creed deanic.com/the-janite-deanic-creed/which includes this section: And I believe that all Her Will might be, that the Daughter of Eternity gave Herself to be cast down into moura. I believe that She remains with us in exile And that She rises again, triumphant and reigns as Queen of Heaven. Definition of: Moura: Dark. In our Tradition, the Darkest Hour before the Dawn, the Season of Purification and the Sacrifice of the Holy Daughter. In the Deanic Faith, this is the Season of the Great Mother and Moura is the Sacrifice of the Daughter. The word “moura”, (moira, maura) (medieval: mora) feminine of “mouro”, is thought to originate from the Celtic *MRVOS and the indo-european mr-tuos that originated in Latin the word mortuus and in Portuguese/Galician the word morto (dead). Some authors think that the mouras are the deceased. The Holy Daughter sacrificed Herself for us by Descending through the Realms to become the World Soul. In giving of Herself to humans, in this state of physical density and isolation, the World Soul becomes shattered. She gives a portion of Herself to each of us. She is the Divine Spark of our souls. deanic.com/glossary/Moira/Moura Quick note: We have been discussing the use of moira or Moura for the Mystery of the Daughter. Both words are to be found in our Tradition. Moira was very appropriate because of its etymology, however, as one of our sisters in the Faith pointed out, it also ties the Holy Daughter into karma and reincarnation, which certainly is not appropriate and so we will use Moura for both the penitential month and for the day of Her Mystery. Moura may either translate as darkness or death. It indicates that, like Sophia, the Holy Daughter suffered a descent down through the realms. Some, in our Faith, believe the Daughter died, others do not. Devotees are free to believe according to their conscience. If a priestess, deaconess or devotee chooses to use moira, that is fine. The change from Moira to Moura has been made to the Janite Deanic Creed and the Creeds in both the Rite of Sacrifice and the Liturgy. Thank you to those who have been so helpful in this discussion. ArchMadria Pamela deanic.com/2016/09/15/moiramoura/Like Sophia, She took on a rarefied Form, but She never incarnated as an human being. And yet, She is very real. Some Deanics believe that the Holy Daughter suffered a Descent through the Realms and when She reached the nether-world, She died. Others believe that like Sophia (and the Shekinah), She suffered the Descent down through the Realms in order to become the World Soul, so to speak, to become Immanent and One with us. Both viewpoints are acceptable. The word Moura, expresses both versions of this Mystery quite beautifully. deanic.com/2016/09/16/quick-word-on-the-scriptures/~~~ For some, the Sacrifice of the Holy Daughter is symbolic or actual death. We respect other people's soul paths in this life. Please note that I come from a secular background. I have only ever worshiped Dea. I do not have a blended path with another religion. May Dea guide and bless you. Blessed is She. Sophia Ruth mydevotionstodea.wordpress.com/
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Post by racemochridhe on Dec 14, 2016 12:31:52 GMT
Corialine, I have had occasion to share my views on this with others before (particularly in reference to the rejection of the Daughter's death by some Janites, as mentioned above); I hope you will forgive me for reproducing an response I had already written, but which I feel continues to express my position well. As a disclaimer, I am a trinitarian Filianist strongly influenced by the Aristasian tradition of interpretation and commentary. "As to the issue of the Daughter... There are individuals much better qualified to serve as apologists for Filianism than myself, but I can offer a few observations from my study and my own experience. "I will begin by frustrating you and saying, It's a Mystery. By the end of this email, I hope to have unfrustrated you a bit by elaboration, but I have to start here because it's true. The trouble with Aristotelian logic of the "A cannot be not-A" variety is that, while it looks great on paper and worked beautifully for medieval Scholastic thinkers who took what was in books to be more real than what was in front of their eyes, it doesn't actually fit reality very well. I would love to have a conversation with Aristotle about light... "Waves are not particles. Light consists of photons. Photons are particles. Therefore, light is not a wave," is perfectly good Aristotelian logic, but lousy physics. Or consider the number (yes, the number) i. i represented the square root of negative one. The trouble is, it is logically impossible under the laws of mathematics for any number, multiplied by itself, to yield negative one. Despite this, i is absolutely essential to a vast range of modern applications, including the design of the computer I am using to write this to you. Simply put, i cannot exist, and yet it does. Paradoxes are intrinsic to the nature of reality. "One of these paradoxes is existence itself. It is a commonplace that, if anything were to be separate from Dea, it could not exist, since She is the Ground of All Being. Similarly, however, if something were not separate from Dea, it also could not exist. Her being-all-in-all would naturally subsume all else, much like matter being sucked into a black hole. Once the event horizon is crossed, even information about the object is irretrievably lost--literally obliterated by absorption into the singularity. For us to be as we are--both existent and able to make independent moral choices and enter into relationship with each other and with Dea--requires that we are simultaneously one with Her and separate from Her. "I've given some examples of this same principle in other theologies to you before, but I'd like to share with you one that I have not mentioned but which you may find helpful. In the 1600s, there was a young man in Turkey named Sabbatai Zevi. Zevi was an accomplished kabbalist and, on discovering that he happened to stand at the confluence of a large amount of kabbalistic messianic lore, he proclaimed himself the messiah. As his movement grew, it attracted unwelcome attention from the Ottoman sultanate, and the sultan finally had him summoned to a personal audience, at which he was informed that he must either recant his claims (which were causing serious public disturbance) and convert to Islam, or suffer execution. Zevi chose to convert. "Most of his followers at this point abandoned his movement, but a dedicated core refused to do so. They continued to believe that he was the messiah, and developed a very interesting rationale to defend this position. God had been angry with Israel, they said. So angry that He had determined to take away from them the most precious thing in the whole world--the Torah. Without the Torah, there would be no people of Israel and no means for Jews to draw close to God. Zevi, however, as the messiah had taken it upon himself to lose the Torah. He had converted to Islam to save the people of Israel from the apostasy that God had ordained as their punishment. Thanks to him, God would permit Israel to continue being Jewish, and thus permit them to continue approaching Him. "On one level, this might seem an almost farcical story--an excellent fodder for New Atheists to criticize Christianity. On a deeper level, however, I think it speaks to the universal (I dare say divinely revealed) truth of a much broader principle. Every society has to find a mythic way of expressing the fundamental paradox of Creation--that God is precisely in the place-where-God-is-not. In the late classical world, where Platonism and Gnosticism had sowed such deep mistrust of the body, the Incarnation was the most powerful conceivable way to represent this. The idea that God had been made flesh was utterly scandalous--much more so even than the messiah's death. In the ancient world, gods died all the time, but being human was another thing for one to do altogether. A human nature bound to a physical body was the one place people didn't think God could be, so putting God there proved the point. For Renaissance Jews, it was inconceivable that God could be outside the Law. To imagine that God was present in Islam was as scandalous to them as imagining that God was in meat was to Greeks. Zevi's conversion was thus the culturally-appropriate analogy to Christ's Incarnation. The others work this way, too. The Chinese didn't think God could be in ignorance, so that is where Guanyin went. The Indians didn't think God could be in the throes of karma, so that is where Krishna went. Etc, etc. Death is only one way of representing this idea; the important part is less that God die and more that God be wherever that culture can least imagine God being. In our culture, that is nonexistence. Imagine going to classical India, ancient China, even high medieval Europe--in short, anywhere in the Traditional world--and saying that God does not exist. You would have been congratulated on your depth of understanding and theological insight, admired for having moved past the illusion of dualities in the understanding of God's nature. Go anywhere in the modern world and say that God does not exist and you will be denounced as an atheist, a heretic, an apostate. Nonexistence is the place modernity cannot conceive of God being. So where does the Daughter go? Into nonexistence, of course. "In that respect, you are quite right that the Daughter, being God, cannot not exist in the sense in which we conventionally use that term. The paradox is highlighting the reason- and logic-confounding reality of being beyond existence and nonexistence. She, in one eternal moment of tension, is dead and alive (much like the old Aztec masks of the gods), and this tension is what allows the cosmos to be. In this sense, it is somewhat analogous to Martin Buber's concept of the space between the I and the Thou--both the I and the Thou (the subject and the object) presuppose God for their existence, and yet God dwells in the space between them, and thus presupposes them. This is possible only because they are, ultimately, non-different from Her, but if they were truly, wholly non-different there would be no distinction of subject and object through which God might be manifest. At this level, God's separation from Herself is not just a necessary condition of cosmic manifestation, but a necessary attribute of the divine nature. In this respect, we are not so much speaking of a sacrificial "event" as of, to take your term, a divine "function" which is eternally embedded in the nature of God Herself. "Thus, I would agree wholly ... that the Christ-story and the Daughter-story are manifestations of the same essential divine self-revelation. (As is Guanyin's. One full accounting of her tale can be found here: www.sacred-texts.com/cfu/mlc/mlc12.htm . Note that her death is not precisely sacrificial in the same way, as her story focuses more on her harrowing of hell, and subsequent mutilation to redeem her father from his sins. Thus, it is her conduct after her death that is sacrificial, but her death nonetheless forms an important part of the narrative by which she helps to bring all beings to universal enlightenment.) "So what are the essential mechanics of this sacrificial separation and death? That is, perhaps, not for us to know. Yes, thealogies are "developed", but only out of axia that are independent of human intellectuality (if they are worthwhile thealogies). One cannot develop a "logical" thealogy if reality itself does not correspond to the impositions of human logic. The paradox we are trying to express need not be expressed in terms of death, as I have mentioned, but any of its formulations are equally problematic from a logical standpoint. How does an omniscient God be ignorant? How does an omnipotent God be subject to karma? How does a spiritual God become flesh? How does an eternal God die? There are no human answers to explain how it is; there is only recognition of the impossibility of accounting for our own lived experience without affirming that it is." I hope that offers some helpful food for thought. -Race
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Post by david on Dec 14, 2016 18:20:07 GMT
Corialine,
The Madrian explanation is that the Mother is teh essence of existence, so all who turned from Hewr turned from existence. She could not go to where they have gone, because She cannot be in Her own absence.
She gave birth to the Daughter, Who is the perfect Form of existence, Wh went away from teh Mother into non-existence. She went away in obedience to the Mother, so as to make Her will one with the will of the Mother, and to reflect the Form of Her Creation ass She went away from it.
She passed through every degree of the absence of of Esssence, while governing Her actions with perfect Form, so as to reflect perfect Form into every level of existence.
She descended through the quintessenc, which is the point at the centre of every thing and creature, and of the world, which reflects the Spirit into every thing and creature, and contains all its possibilites in a state of perfect equilibrium. Material events are the unfolding of thesse posibilites. In doing this, She created all teh material levels of existence. At no point did She step out of this equlibrium into the warring disequilibrium of matter, because Her purpose is to reflect the perfection of the Spirit.
At the lowest level of existence, the deepest pit of Hell, She went into death, which is the death of the Spirit, not the death of the body. She went into the complete absence of the Essence of existence while maintaining the perfect From of existence, so that existence is refelcted into non-existence. There is no longer absolute non-existence. Her love is in every possible state of existence, so that all existence is contained in Her love, and will become perfect in the fullness of time.
The Mother descended as the Thunderbolt vehicle, the direct descent of Essence. She resurrected the Daughter by means of the Warer of Life which She had gathered from Her tears. Water reflects, so, when the Water of Life was on the corse of the Daughter, it reflected the perfect From of the Daughter. They embraced and became one so as to reflect Creation at that level.
I Hope that this is enough for you to understand this great and important Mystery. If there's anything I've not explained properly, pleas say so, and I'll be glad to attempt a further explanation.
May She be with you,
David.
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glenngk
De'anic (Non-Jana Clan)
Posts: 63
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Post by glenngk on Dec 16, 2016 16:20:42 GMT
Corialine, thanks for starting this conversation. You have heard several views now and it would be interesting to hear your own thoughts on the subject. Please share if you are comfortable with that. I would certainly like to hear your views on the subject.
Glenn
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glenngk
De'anic (Non-Jana Clan)
Posts: 63
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Post by glenngk on Dec 17, 2016 14:40:59 GMT
Corialine, I do not have a strongly developed point of view regarding the Daughter. To the degree that I believe in a Daughter who is a part of the Godhead my position now is probably similar to what Sophia Ruth described as being her past pre-Janite position. This is what I would call a modalist understanding of Dea in three forms. I do not worship the Daughter personally. I simply see one personal Dea in three forms.
However in spite of this I would like make a few comments and ask a few questions. Comment. I agree or think I agree with Race that certain forms of Christian and Filianic forms of Deanic thealogy while clearly differing in certain ways in many ways take quite parallel paths. Many Christians see in the sacrifice of the Son and Filianics see in the sacrifice of the Daughter some sort of the definitive salvation of all of reality. The Daughter brings light to the darkness of souls and Christ winnows hell and in other ways saves either all of humanity or just Christians (differing theologies differ on that subject.) However in either way salvation is accomplished by either the Son or Daughter at the prices of some sort of sacrifice.
Some other monotheistic religions for example Judaism and Zoroastrianism see salvation quite differently. They see salvation as a process which is worked out in time and history primarily by God but with human cooperation as well. Within Judaism in particular salvation is tied to the keeping of the Jewish law. The Torah is given by grace and acts of submission to that law leads helps lead to salvation for that individual at a minimum. Acts of submission by the doing of acts of righteousness by all of Israel may have an effect in hastening the coming of the Messiah. Jewish theology has a long history and their has never been one single school of thought on these subjects. My knowledge of Zoroastrian eschatology is a bit vague and I am not familiar enough about how its works in detail. I do know, however, based on what I do know that salvation will work itself out in time as does the Jewish vision of salvation. That vision of salvation found within both Judaism and Zoroastrianism, a salvation which sees the complete transformation of existence inspires my own vision of salvation.
One of the common response by Jewish theologians to Christian claims to salvation in Christ is how can you say he is the messiah when the world in still filled with injustice, war, and sin? The Messiah by definition within Judaism is supposed to bring justice, peace. and the knowledge of God to the world. A variant of that question is mine as well in relation to Deanism. How is the salvation accomplished by the Daughter related to the fact that humanity and nature itself is still suffering horrors such as the ongoing ecocide of the planet and the horrors of the Syrian Civil War and the fall of Aleppo? An answer that salvation is detached from history and is only about the eternal destiny of souls is very problematic to me.
Please note I am aware that some very distinguished Christian theologians though out history have attempted to answer questions such as this with a strong sense of realism and honesty. I simply wonder what some Filianic and Janite answers might be?
Glenn
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Post by david on Dec 18, 2016 18:53:23 GMT
Glenn,
The problem you are having with the Sacrice of the Daughter is that you are trying to see it as a variant of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The explanation Christians put is that the resurrection took away sin. This means we should be spiritually perfect after the resurrection. This is a problem I see no solution to.
The Sacrifice of the Daughter did not take place in a period of history, but in a point beyond time and space which contains all time and space. Its purpose is to create the material world as a place where spiritual development can take place. That means that at any point in history, we are still in the process of making spiritual development, and must suffer all the consequences of our imperfect spiritual state.
May She be with you,
David.
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Post by River S on Dec 18, 2016 21:18:19 GMT
Glenn, The problem you are having with the Sacrice of the Daughter is that you are trying to see it as a variant of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The explanation Christians put is that the resurrection took away sin. I am not aware of any Christians saying that Jesus in any way, through his life or death took away sin. He took the punishment for sin so that no man would have to bear the same punishment; redeemed, they had the ability to go to heaven, not that they could no longer sin.
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Post by River S on Dec 18, 2016 21:37:01 GMT
This is an interesting thread! Love seeing the different perspectives everyone brings.
For myself, I had not really thought of the Daughter as actually dying - Race's post on this may change my views a little! My perception to this point has been that when time and space were created Maid were bound by both, even after death - that souls were trapped after death in space and time as they had been in their mortal forms; the Daughter's entry to this holding place was enabled by her Death - a passing through to that realm as she had passed through from Heaven to our realm. Then by the Daughter's and the Mother's combined strength, they were able to break this bond by 'shattering the gates of hell' and the revival Daughter, Who brought the trapped souls out with Her.
Now that the Daughter reigns over Heaven and Earth, she sustains this state of being - we are unbound by time and space after the death of our mortal forms, and can go on to whatever else we do outside of Earth's purview. I see the Daughter Herself as the Mother coming through Time and Space: as we have higher selves that we can connect with, but are not incarnated with us as part of our Earth selves, the Daughter's higher self is the Mother.
Of course, I am nowhere near as well-read and as good at thinking through these types of things as others in the community, and I have very far to go!
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Post by corialine on Dec 19, 2016 4:54:10 GMT
Thank you so much for all your responses, I find them really helpful and informative and I appreciate hearing all the different answers a lot.
I don't really have any strong or well developed views on this subject, hence why I am interested to hear from others. I am quite intrigued by everyone's answers and will have to spend some time digging deeper into them. Up until this point pretty much all my engagement with Deanic thealogy has been to the exclusion of the event described in the Mythos, but this is something I am now turning my attention towards.
Again, I really appreciate all the answers and discussion.
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Post by david on Dec 19, 2016 20:16:32 GMT
Rebekah, I may have been wrong when I said that Jesus was supposed to have taken away our sins, but to say he took away the punishment for sin means that we can sin freely without regard for the consequences.
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Post by david on Dec 20, 2016 17:09:47 GMT
Rebekah.
It is important that the Daughter never steps out of the quintessence into time and space. The quintessence is the point at the centre of every thing and creature, and of the world, which is a perfect reflection of the spirit into each thing and creature, and the world, and contains all its possibilities in perfect equilbrium, wbich manifest in the warring disequilibriiuj of matter. The Daughter never steps into the disequilibrium. Had She done so, Her creation of the material world would be off balance. She manifests inus by manifesting in our quintessence, so as to bring us into that quintessence, where we reflect our true selves.
May She be with you,
David.
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glenngk
De'anic (Non-Jana Clan)
Posts: 63
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Post by glenngk on Dec 20, 2016 21:03:12 GMT
Glenn, The problem you are having with the Sacrice of the Daughter is that you are trying to see it as a variant of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The explanation Christians put is that the resurrection took away sin. I am not aware of any Christians saying that Jesus in any way, through his life or death took away sin. He took the punishment for sin so that no man would have to bear the same punishment; redeemed, they had the ability to go to heaven, not that they could no longer sin. Rebekah, I want to take some time to do some additional study of Paul, prior to responding to you in detail. However I do want to make a tentative reply.Certainly the position of popular evangelical Christianity is that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross had as its primary consequence that it cancelled out the punishment for the sins of Christians. Thus in certain Christian circles we have the grotesque theology that a fairly mediocre Christian who sins much but who sincerely repents on his or her death bed will go to heaven. On the other hand a saintly Moslem, Hindu, or even an Atheist who does not accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior no matter how much good he does in the world will be lost. However I and many others has read Paul's books many times. My understanding of his work is that a Christian accepting Christ, because one has become filled with the Spirit, one is enabled to renounce sin fully in ones life. Sin becomes dead in one life thus one will be able to avoid sin generally. This ability to avoid sin and to live righteously is contrasted favorable to those who merely follow the law who in fact generally fail in their endeavors. As I said many Christians have believed this though I will admit most of the mainstream forms of Christianity have not. Thus Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and Roman Catholicism for example see sins as merely forgiven but not vanquished. On the other hand the Anabaptists, Quakers, and many other Christian sects have generally believed that Christian perfection based on the work of Christ is a possibility in the Christian's life. I think these latter have interpreted Paul correctly. Enough for now. I will need to do quite a bit of study to discuss this any future. Note. An interesting idea that hell is bond in time and space! I have always assumed that it was a purely spiritually negative state, that is non-material. I have always assumed that evil such as how the snake is portrayed in the scriptures has as much a negative spiritual source as earthly goodness has its source in the spiritual good. Anyway this is my point of view. Glenn
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glenngk
De'anic (Non-Jana Clan)
Posts: 63
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Post by glenngk on Dec 21, 2016 14:25:42 GMT
David I need to ask you some questions to insure that I understand your response. Are you saying that the initial stages of Creation prior to the Daughter's descent and resurrection were non material creations? In other words the first Maid and the first night, the flood, the first sleep, the full colors of the rainbow were not of the physical world of time and space? Are you saying that physical creation only occurred as a result of the sacrifice of the Daughter and her resurrection? This is how I read you.
If the answers to these is yes, then based on what I believe would be a natural reading of the text the sacrifice of the Daughter's net effect would be the further descent of creation into matter, which from everything I have read from you is a pure negativity. After all after the Daughter's birth she rules the earth for one year. Then she offers to sacrifice herself to bring the Mother's light to all of the dark places of things. I read nothing in the text which indicates that she had to do this or spiritual creation would have fallen if she did not. Her sacrifice seems in fact to be one of pure grace to rescue those enslaved by darkness and not one to insure the continuation of being.
I will add a few more comments and end this. In your second post you made sure to reinforce the idea that the Daughter did not descent into matter / time and space. If time and space did exist then, though I believe your position is that it did not, Why should the Daughter not have entered into time and space? Why would that be such a problem? After all she descended into the darkest place, to realm of Urkulla. Is matter worse than Urkulla's realm?
You know David, it really would be nice if those who are interested could read a lot of the same Madrian philosophical material that you have. For me it would make it much easier to understand and evaluated these ideas for myself. Beyond that I will say that your recent comments have caused me to really think about the Scriptural text anew. And even if I do not understand it as you do I still appreciate the dialogue.
Glenn
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glenngk
De'anic (Non-Jana Clan)
Posts: 63
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Post by glenngk on Dec 21, 2016 14:39:16 GMT
Rebekah my assumption is that most people particularly those who are religious do not particularly enjoy conflict, though I will admit a lot fundimentalist Christians, males mostly clearly do. While I do not like to get into discussion that lead to full ideological warfare with all of hatred, name calling, inflexability, etc which is involved, I do enjoy the kind of discussion which as been occurring here, a discussion in which a real exchange of ideas has occurred.
Therefore I want to thank Corialine for initiating this thread and you and David for sharing your ideas. I also want to thank Ruth for sharing the Janite perspective on some of these subjects. I have been learning from all of this.
Glenn
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