Ashcroft's prayer circle

[Gordon Fitch]

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema:
> Don't hold your breath. What you cite is the feminine masochist side of
> Christianity. One of the more elementary clinical insights is that when you
> see M, all you have to do is dig a little deeper and S is there somewhere,
> maybe a bit hidden, maybe not so much. It's helpful to recognize Christian
> faith as an ideologized manifestation of sado-masochistic character
> structure, organized along lines of gender. It'll be a while before these
> guys' sadistic impulses give out. The sermon on the mount is one of the more
> meretricious biblical texts.

I've never figured out what a lot of it means, so if you know
it's meretricious you're way ahead of me.  For instance, I've
meditated on Matt 5:3 off and on for about forty years; looked
up _ptokhoi_ and the uses of the dative case; asked people
who should have known -- but it's still obscure.  Of course,
as the guy said elsewhere, "You don't belong to the kingdom
of heaven, so you can't see the kingdom of heaven" -- maybe
that's what cuts me out.