50bookchallenge, 15000pages

Book #6 -- Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, 320 pages

Margery Kempe is a contemporary of Julian of Norwich's, but their books couldn't be more different. Where Julian was an anchoress, a contemplative, and wrote her book based on long individual contemplations on a series of visions, Margery was a lay person, middle-class, daughter of the mayor of Lynn, wife and mother of 14 children. She was brash, independent, and an annoyingly in-your-face drama queen. While I am forced to acknowledge her independence, bravery, and savvy (she bought her freedom from traditional 'wifely duties' by paying off her husband's debts, and made numerous pilgrimages to the Holy Land and other devotional sites in Europe by herself), I passionately disliked both her character and her theology. Her attitude was very holier-than-thou and she embodied the very definition of a martyr complex. Her "devotion" took the form of uncontrolled bouts of hysterical shoutings and weepings, and then seemed surprised when no one wanted her in their church any more. And her theology was chock full of the "I'm not worthy" stuff that turned me off of the Catholic Church in the first place. However, I must admit that she is useful for the very reasons that I don't like her -- she challenges every stereotype of the devotional mystic, she manages to be both spiritual and worldly at the same time without apparent contradiction, and she does provide a remarkable insight into 14th-century British mercantile culture.

Progress toward goals:

6/50 = 12%
1048/15000 = 7.0%

crossposted to 50bookchallenge, 15000pages, and gwynraven

Wolf tattoo (warning, some weird pagan stuff)

As some of you already know, I have three animals that I consider to be my totems, spirit guides, whatever term you want to use. Raven has the most influence, followed by Wolf and then Dolphin. When I got my first tattoo two years ago it was of a raven, and I searched long and hard for the perfect image. The idea was always to get one of each of my guides, but I knew that if I was going to put something on my body permanently, it had to be perfect, and they had to fit not only me and my relationship with them, but each other as well. After over a year of thinking and searching I found the raven image I wanted:

( Raven tattoo )

Just imagine that it's filled in black, and not just an outline, and that's what I have on my left shoulder. Since then, I've been searching for wolf and dolphin images that fit, and have had no luck. Until today. I think I've found my Wolf:

( Wolf tattoo )

So, what do you think?