Sunnydale Recycling

Don’t Irritate the Lions (Noli Irritare Leones)

Nov 9 at 11:11pm by wilkins

Noli Irritare Leones is, of course, very good advice. But it’s also the name of a really wonderful blog by a woman whose username is Sappho; conversations on this blog tend to be very interesting, with an exceptionally gentle tone. From her “About” page:

Some of the topics on this blog don’t require too much explanation; as I’m a Quaker it’s not surprising that I should talk about Quaker practice, the Peace Testimony, the Bible, and the like, and then everyone does memes, talks about movies, and discusses the latest items in the news. I blog about feminism because I’m a feminist. I also have an interest in blogging about sexuality, in particular how people relate their faith to their sexuality, and in particular how people who are attracted to their own sex relate their faith to their sexuality. Beyond that, here are some of the topics that show up on my sidebar where the connection may not be obvious, and why I’ve blogged about them.Why Africa? My sister-in-law is African, from Chad, and she’s the mother of about half of my nieces and nephews. Also, when I started looking for news from Chad, I found out that there are a whole lot of really cool blogs from Africa, and that the Internet provides an opportunity to get African perspectives that you’d never find otherwise.

Why Anarchism? Just because Emma Goldman is cool.

Why Catholic Worker? Dorothy Day is even more cool. And I’ve done things with the local Catholic Worker house on an intermittent basis.

Why so much about the Catholic and Episcopal churches? I was raised Episcopalian and married into a Catholic family.

Why Gnosticism? Well, I blog about orthodox Church Fathers, too. I’m interested in church history from all sides, including understanding the heresies that got rejected.

And, in fact, all of those topics, and more, on Noli Irritare Leones. Being Jewish, I’m not so sure of this, but I suspect it’s a reference to some sort of Christian gallows humor. (Groucho Marx used to tell a joke about a man who, when brought to the gallows, was asked if he had any last words. He replied: “I don ‘t think this damned this is safe.”)

(Update: plus, she reads Zuzu, my friend and neighbor, probably the best-known feminist blogger - well, at least in Brookyn).