Your Will

The People Of The Wind, XV.

Philippe Rochefort must choose between keeping his word to Tabitha Falkayn and doing what he thinks is right. He prays:

"- O all you saints, St. Joan who burned for her people, help me!" (p. 610)

"Father, show me Your will." (p. 611)

Rochefort is a Jerusalem Catholic. (Scroll down.)

Human children become self-conscious individuals, persons, by interacting linguistically with other human beings.

Jews, Christians and other theists believe that all human life is a dialogue with a transcendent person - or persons, just to complicate matters. Some of us think that this belief is a projection of social interactions onto natural and (hypothetical) supernatural interactions but theistic language is strongly embedded. I spontaneously think, "Lord!" when I contemplate my own wrong actions and their consequences.

"'I may be addressing it to nothing but a sort of cosmic Dead Letter Office, but that can't be helped. The message itself is plain. It has got to read:
"'To Whom it may concern: Thy will, not mine.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), CHAPTER TEN, p. 104.

I endorse this agnostic prayer to:

Whatever gods may be
-copied from here.

(For any readers of this blog who may be interested, analysis of Dornford Yates' novels continues here.)

Catholics In The Technic History

(On the cover: Nicholas van Rijn, Eric Wace and Sandra Tamarin.)

In Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, although we have been told that Philippe Rochefort is a Jerusalem Catholic, we might be surprised at how sincerely he prays:

" - O all you saints, St. Joan who burned for her people, help me!"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT Chapter XV, p. 610.

"Father, show me Your will."
-op. cit, p. 611.

Some of us think that Catholicism combines elements of polytheism and monotheism although Catholics disagree.

Philippe joins an honorable list of Catholics in the Technic History:

Nicholas van Rijn;
Eric Wace;
Admiral Cajal;
Father Axor.

Do any religions familiar to us survive in the later period of the Commonalty?

Some Details On Avalon

Tabitha Falkayn tells Phillipe Rochefort that she is an Ythrian because:

"'Avalon belongs to the Domain.'"
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 569.

Similarly, in the Empire, members of other species can have Terran citizenship. Tabitha, in particular, is a third generation member of Highsky Choth, was brought up by Ythrians and is in business with one.

Rochefort's Catholicism is more than skin deep. He prays:

"O all you saints, St. Joan who burned for her people, help me!" (p. 610)

and:

"Father, show me your will." (p. 611)

When he swears, "'Body of Christ...'" (p. 624), he signs himself before Admiral Cajal's crucifix.

At the same time, I am pleased to see that Rochefort enjoys sex with Tabitha and with women friends on Esperance.

Like cities on Dennitza and Freehold, Fleurville has a cathedral and churches (p. 577). Thus, Esperance is another of the planets to which human beings have taken Christianity.

Recuperating in an improvised Avalonian hospital, the Terrans:

"...had no entertainment except reading and bitching." (p. 644)

Most prefer the latter! Rochefort wears earcups and reads The Gaiila Folk. He had been interested in studying Avalon even when attacking it. The southern hemisphere has three large islands or small continents:

New Africa, exporter of beer;

Equitoria, uncolonized because its tool-shaping centaurs might become intelligent if unmolested;

Gaiila, which must be colonized if it has "Folk."

Regarding the centaurs: imagine being a member of a species that becomes intelligent, then finds alien intelligences not on other planets but on other continents.

The distribution of planets in the Lauran System is similar to that in the Solar System and the human Avalonians have bestowed exotic names:

Elysium is near the sun;
Camelot has many moons;
dark Utgard is out near the cometary halo;
Phaeacia is frigid but blue and peaceful.

European literature started with Homer but Tabitha first hears of him from Christopher Holm.