Hi TomTom Sakic wrote:Thank you, Jack. It seems so clear now:-) I always perceived this song as love prayer, with clear plea on its end. ("Oh please let me come into the [your] storm.") But as we know, a man never got the woman, not by begging on his knees.
Your post got me to thinking about the eskimo which is still a mystery to me. I am thinking about it and wouldn't mind telling you the considerations that are directing my thinking and seeing what you have to say about it.
When I posted my thoughts about the saint who I thought was Hillel I mentioned the words of Jesus specifically to draw the connection between one who loved God and the "Golden Rule". The words of Jesus made the connection.
The reason I was very detailed in relating the exact way that He stated the commandments was for another reason. The reason being that it seems to me that it is not generally known. I say that with a bit of experience. For the last seven years I have been conducting a little experiment to satisfy my curiousity and the experiment is that I ask people who are either professing Christians or professing that they know about Jesus a simple question. The question is as follows:
Jesus said that the requirements of all of the law and prophets are fulfilled by following two commandmets - what are they?
I ask a lot of people including church ministers. My son goes to a very thrieving evangelical church and I sometimes also go. One time I suggested that he watch something that I felt he might find interesting and after the church service I went with him and asked the minister my question and the minister did not answer correctly. Some come close but where almost nearly 100% fall short is in relating that one should love God in the fourfold way "with all of you heart, with all of your soul , with all of your mind and with all of your might"
Try the experiment yourself and you will see what I mean.
Why this is curious to me is the fact that it is mentioned in all of the Gospels and it is not a lot to remember - only two commanments. Over the years I couldn't help but wonder about this while at the same time I noticed that aboriginal people seemed to have aquired this teaching in a very intimate way with the medicine wheel being divided in the very four areas that Jesus pointed to.
This led me to thinking that the oral traditions were in many ways accomplishing more that the written traditions.
So in my mind when Leonard is singing about the saint Hillel he is referring to the written traditions and when singing about the eskimo he is referring to the oral traditions.
Now I am asking myself the question "Why eskimo?" why not Indian?
When Leonard writes " he recently taken of you" the word recently seems to confirm in my mind the distinction of the oral over the written, sound as opposed to sight - sound travelling slower and so being a more recent contact.
I don't know a lot about the belief system of the eskimos but a couple of things I know might be relevant to Leonard's words.
Most religions have a distinction between the upper and lower regions with the upper signifing heaven while the lower signifing hell often with hell being associated with fire and heat. In the Eskimo beliefs the distinction is between the upper and the under with the latter being the preferred state because of the heat. Another part of the belief system of eskimos is that direct contact with a supernatural being will lead to one being frightened to death (freeze with fear)
I will continue thinking about this while being very interested in what others have to say.
Jack