• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Alison Wilder

Musician, technologist, storyteller

  • Journal
  • Library
  • Who Is This?
  • What Is This?
  • Get At Me

religion

November 17, 2018

Calm down, Ezra.

Ezra forced himself to go to the temple, but he could not go through with the ritual. Despairing, he rent his garments and his coat, threw himself onto the ground, and cried out in agony. Finally, he uttered a prayer that was also an accusation against the people of the land, as he had come to call them, those who had stayed behind and whose habits were so horrifying to the returning exiles.

The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization

Apparently, when Ezra brought the Judeans back to Jerusalem after they’d been exiled in Babylon for a few generations, he was super upset that the Jews that were left behind in Jerusalem married and had children w/ non-Jews, and forgot to practice important religious traditions. Can you believe it?

I think that tearing your clothes (which were probably a lot harder to come by in 450 BCE) and crying out in agony is a dramatic way to react to people behaving exactly as you would expect them to. I bet he really got people’s attention though.

Primary Sidebar

Post Categories

Post Tags

biking (1) camping (1) campton (2) character sketch (2) cooking (1) creative prompt (1) dogs (3) drafts (1) facebook posts (3) family (4) fletcher (2) great north woods (1) hiking (2) holiday (1) home (2) jeep (2) kayaking (1) literature (1) local flavor (2) lulz (2) mountain biking (1) music (3) new hampshire (5) NH (4) Nine is One (1) piano (1) primitive (1) quotes (14) religion (1) science (1) snow (2) snowshoeing (1) social media (1) texas (2) Vampyr (1) vocabulary (4) writing (5) XC skiing (4)

Bookshelves

Book Tags

Audiobook (3) Classics (2) Comedy (2) Detective (2) Didn't Finish (15) Escapist Novels (7) Essays (1) Fantasy (12) Favorite (10) Historical Fiction (6) Horror (9) Keen to Read (4) Literary Fiction (40) Meh (4) Music (2) Mystery (3) Nighttime Read (10) Nonfiction (11) On Writing (3) Owned - Physical (1) Poetry (1) Psychology (1) Relationships (1) Science Fiction (4) Series (16) Short Novels (9) Short Stories (6) Thriller (4) To Buy - Physical (3) Trash (3) True Crime (1) Try Again (3)

Recent Posts

  • Joined the Arts Alive! Board!
  • Some recent favorite photos…
  • The word today is “cachinnate.”
  • The piano in its natural environment
  • Love o’ jesus

Archives

  • January 2021
  • November 2020
  • September 2020
  • February 2020
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • April 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • March 2016
  • December 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • August 2009
  • July 2009

Copyright © 2021 Alison Wilder