![\"greatpumpkin\"](\"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/greatpumpkin.jpg\" "\\"greatpumpkin\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhat struck me about this is the reminder that even surprisingly precocious and intelligent people can have weird notions. For example, Linus, whose character I played in the 2010 production of our local community theatre\u2019s production of \u201cYou\u2019re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,\u201d is a precocious boy who, aside from his attachment to his blanket, has fixated on the myth of the \u201cGreat Pumpkin.\u201d <\/p>\n
Spiritual development seems especially vulnerable to nuance, to subtle interpretation variances regarding the nature of God, soul, their relationship, what it\u2019s all about, and so forth. This may be more flagrant as it expresses itself in the variety of myths (e.g., the take-off on Santa Claus as embodied in Linus\u2019 \u201cGreat Pumpkin\u201d)\u2014which, also speaks to the special richness of imagery and fantasy that gets generated at Halloween\u2014perhaps even more than at Christmas! And of course, as I see it, this is what the late Charles Schulz was getting at: To a child, the factual historical antecedents are not important: What counts is the gestalt, the gut impression. It seems right that on a major occasion, Christmas, Easter (Bunny), … someone should<\/em> be buying presents for children! It just stands to reason (or seems to) that this is one of the givens of reality\u2014to a childish (egocentric, narcissistically entitle) mind that also extends the child-centered ethos of the late 20th century in the USA. <\/p>\n This cartoon also speaks to the way I have attempted on many occasions to reason out the nature of reality\u2014i.e., philosophy\u2014with reasonable people, only to find that they (or I, myself) may be biased at such deep levels that no rapprochement has been possible. I am inclined to think that while we may share more or less a number of similar qualities, we also differ in uncountable ways, some of them being rather particular and perhaps peculiar. (More about the mystery of mythmaking in another blog.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently I saw this \u201cPeanuts\u201d comic strip about Charlie Brown encountering Linus in the pumpkin patch as the latter awaits the arrival of the \u201cGreat Pumpkin.\u201d What struck me about this is the reminder that even surprisingly precocious and intelligent people can have weird notions. For example, Linus, whose character I played in the 2010 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,15,25,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-favoritethings","category-play-and-spontaneity","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":751,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}