From Whence Came We?

From an early age, I wondered about where I came from. Perhaps it is why fairy tales failed to trigger my imagination, for I took such things literally and soon discovered that they didn’t live up to logical expectations.

Take Santa Claus. I loved Christmas more than any holiday as a child, and of course I believed in Santa as all young children do who are raised in the Christmas culture. I was not plagued by older siblings who told me it was phooey, or well-meaning adults who “slipped” and brought that belief to a screeching halt.

No, I figured it out all alone, one pre-Christmas night as I lay in bed, trying to will Christmas morning a more hurried arrival. Ignore all that problem of reindeer and flying, and just how much any sleigh could carry, the time just made no sense. Even with a full 24-hours across the globe, Santa would have to travel faster than fast to visit all us boys and girls. I started with just my own “neighborhood” of about one square mile. Why it would take at least an hour, but even it only took 15 minutes to visit a few hundred homes, why there was the city, and then the state, and then all the states, and then ALL of Canada, and then Europe, and even those awful Ruskies had children, and that was a BIG country too.

Well, that is one story, but eventually that grew to all the other questions that needed answering about how the earth came to be, and how the moon came to be, and how humans came to be. I systematically investigated all these things from childhood to adulthood, getting more and more sophisticated answers surely. I became a student of sorts of astronomy and later cosmology, and paleontology. I read books about these subjects for fun, marveling at great mysteries.

I became of course no authority, and understood only up to a point, for sooner or later much of this turns into mathematical equations far beyond my learning. But I got the scientific answers for the most part. As I matured, and developed some sense of a spiritual life, God entered the equation as well, and over the years I discerned that these are really two questions. One demands reproducible proof; the another a philosophical elegance of argument.

Of course the argument rages on, with fundamentalists entering where they do not belong, and atheists peppering them with irrefutable logic at most turns. Both are wrong, because as I said, one does not really relate to the other except when one (the fundamentalists) demands that the Bible be used as a scientific text, and the other (the atheist) insists that all believers are fundamentalists.

Science, in the area of cosmology does posit that there may be unknowables, forever unknowable. Brain scientists question the ability of the brain to know itself in all it’s complexity. There may be limits therefore to human knowledge. If there are, then God has the place of “unmoved mover” as Aristotle suggested.

Fundamentalists fundamentally don’t understand or don’t choose to understand things like the 2nd law of thermodynamics for instance. Sooner or later, in an attempt to sound scientific, a fundamentalist while draw herself up and point out that Darwin’s evolutionary theory violates it. Now, if pressed, she would not have a clue as to why, but she read it somewhere in one of her “how to stump your evolutionary friends” and prove Darwin wrong. Of course it does not, because entropy only works in closed systems. The earth is not a closed system because it is being bombarded continuously with solar radiation (energy).

This is only their second best argument, for their first is always, “if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” Well, my fine airhead, it’s because we didn’t evolve from monkeys, and nobody ever said we did, except another uninformed fundamentalist. First, we are related to apes, not monkeys (and there is a rather big difference), and second we are not evolved from them, but actually share way way back, a common ancestor. We both branched off in different directions (picture the fork in the road), one leading to life in the savannah and mountains, another covering the earth and developing bigger and more complex brains.

Why do I rehash all this?

Why because there has been a significant breakthrough as of late. And it’s worth your time to learn about it. The results are far from in, and it may not prove to be what the author thinks it may be. But it has the scientific world of evolutionary biology and probably physics as well in a tizzy as other research facilities begin the wonderful process of devising experiments to test out the new hypothesis.

As people like myself, and hopefully you as well know, evolutionary theory does not purport to explain “how life began” a common mis-argument of the fundamentalist sort. Such a thing is called abiogenesis. Evolutionary theory has to do with how species change over time due to natural selection. However, a rather smart guy has offered an explanation of “how life began” in a sense, and it involves that 2nd law we talked about earlier.

He posits, by way of mathematical equations, that replication of cells may be a response to infusions of energy (the sun) into the primordial soup. In other words, life arises as a methodological answer  to the desire to “even” out or reduce the heat of the energy. Because the 2nd law suggests that energy dissipates across the spectrum of the system seeking equanimity, replication of cells actually fosters that law England claims.

If this is true, then it is the underlying foundation of Darwin’s theory, and of course it means that life is what is to be expected in the universe, and not at all a rarity.

Of course, not everyone agrees that Jeremy England is right.

That is what science is all about. There is and will be, as I said, plenty of testing and experimentation to determine whether his hypothesis is correct. But it’s exciting news to anyone who, like I, is always wondering and asking “how and why”.

*Do read the article. It’s not that long.

 

More Patriotic Bullshit

Tags

fundamentalists, right wing nuts

Seldom does there rise up an example of abject stupid of such gargantuan proportions as a fellow named Todd Kincannon. It is perhaps, should be we prone to speculating on God’s designs, His way of showing the rest of humanity how not to do it.

Todd was once upon a time executive something or other in the GOP of South Carolina, and grad-u-ate, of the law school of the University of South Carolina. That second part should give parents of graduating seniors pause. Somehow that university failed to weed out the chaff and gave this fool a degree.

By now, you no doubt have heard of Todd. He is an equal-opportunity coconut of the first order. In fact, as I said, he may well be the prototype of all nut jobs.

In response to Ebola, Todd suggests that we just “humanely” put them down. He has also tweeted that we need to deal with ISIS pretty much as Columbus dealt with the “filthy savages” he found in Merika–exterminate them. He suggests that African-Americans are good but Africans are savages with AIDS and Ebola, and our President is the latter. There is more, but who cares. The official GOP is pretty much disowning the guy who seems intent on encouraging the scorn.

I rail about stupid, but not stupid in general. Nobody can be faulted for being stupid if that is their fate based upon too few brain cells. I mean one can’t control such things and the most one can hope in such a case, is that the few that exist can get together and counsel their owner to keep his beak clamped firmly shut to notify as few as possible of the infirmity of being rock stupid.

What I rail at is stupid that is willful and deliberate (if there is a difference between willful and deliberate, otherwise I’m repeating myself). There is no excuse for it. Yet people hide behind “two things you don’t discuss in polite society are politics and religion” and other such trite phrases. Another is being “too busy”. Well aren’t we all? If you want to take that route, then you by definition leave the field to those who are so rich that they have nothing but leisure or so rich they have a vested interest in things being done their way. Neither is a good thing, yet this is what we find today.

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, was recently interviewed by Stephen Colbert and had this rather profound remark to make:

“A thoughtless citizen of a democracy is a delinquent citizen of a democracy.”

Unlike other forms of government, we get the government we elect, we get the government we demand, we get the government that we choose. If we choose to opt out by our failure to learn the truth about all the issues that confront us, if we fail to vote, we are unworthy of the land in which we live. We are not patriotic, we are nothing but ignorant “feel-good” loafers who are so involved in our own lives that we can spare none for the country we claim to love so much. Patriotism is a good deal more than thanking veterans for their service, singing national anthems, and critiquing the correctness of Presidential salutes upon exiting Marine One.

Opinions don’t count, opinions based on actual facts do. And actual facts are discerned through a sifting process of reading and THINKING about a host of sources, determining what can and cannot be given credence. It does not involve looking for arguments that support what one really wants to be true because it suits one’s worldview, religious needs, or pocketbook.

We have to laugh at the likes of a Ted Cruz, who when confronted with the fact that SCOTUS was refusing to take up a number of circuit cases involving same-sex marriage laws, determined that this inaction constituted some gravest of all forms of judicial activism. We have to shake our heads at the continued doomsday reports from the hate groups like Family Research Council who beat the drums of impending Armageddon should people of the same sex be allowed to marry. Mike Huckabee has threatened to leave the GOP if crazier heads like himself don’t prevail and carry on the fight against this god-less movement.

The FACT is that this idiocy of fundamentalism is not something that can be traced to the apostles of our Lord. This brand of fundamentalism with all it’s “inerrancy, creationism,anti-climate change, and young-earth-ism” is of recent vintage, being born in the early 60’s, about the same time that a periodic Spiritual awakening was occurring among the Boomers. Most went the way of exploring an expansion of God, encompassing other faiths, and new approaches, but the reactionaries withdrew and made God smaller and easier to fit inside their tiny braincases.

The FACT is that homosexuality is not by any means “prohibited” in the bible, and anyone who suggests it is, is engaging in the same literalist interpretation that is  incorrect and utterly unsupported by biblical experts around the world. The literature is extensive and profound on the issue and only awaits the fundamentalist’s courage to actually read it. Contrary to their claims based on nothing, learning truth does not destroy God, but rather it makes God really God, and not some human caricature designed to make one feel okay about ones miserable self.

We are awash in a sea of stupid these days. And for reasons that should shock and astound us all, the stupidest of all seem to seek office. Like minded stupid people find solace across the Internet, finding compatriots of ignorance and losing what should be their isolated “otherness” mantle that used to keep them securely locked in their garrets tormented by a world that rejects their insanity. Such people don’t procreate, since in small town America their numbers are still so small that they seldom by chance run into someone as stupid as themselves and join forces. At least pre-Internet that was true.

Over sixty-percent of 18-20somethings in the GOP are okay with same-sex marriage. What does that tell ya? It should tell you that you need to rethink your stupid, but of course, being stupid you won’t. You’ll rail that this generation of kids just wasn’t properly disciplined with the belt as you were, and thus has grown up without real morals.

Real morality I hate to tell you, has to do with respecting other people and their rights. But you won’t learn that any time soon, since you protect your thin-skin by surrounding yourselves with others like yourselves and then telling the biggest lie of all–most people are like us. Well, they aren’t.

You have no guts, no integrity, no moral compass, and not a modicum of intelligence. You  are unable to hold up your end of a “debate” and are reduced to coded ad hominem attacks to replace the arguments you cannot make. You prefer to believe what makes your tiny simplistic world work for you, and damn the vast rest of humanity who must be wrong-headed, atheistic, commie, socialist, fascist, feminist, racist, lazy and dogs. Half of the above you couldn’t define if put to the test. You wave the flag and tout how “blessed” you are and “share if you love God too”. You question everyone else’s faith while not following a single dictate of the man you claim as your savior.

And still, and still when it all comes down to it, you have to try to cheat to win an election. So where are your hordes of followers? The two thousand who showed up for your “family values” annual lovefest? The three who showed up at your border protests? Or was it the 2 semis and 4 pickups who showed up for your Washington protest? You can try to suppress Democratic votes, but the result will be the same as last time. We will vote in greater numbers than ever before.

And you will lose, and lose and lose until finally you all retreat to your basements and your hoarded food and weapons while we continue to create a world that is fair for all. We have a long way to go, but at least we are moving forward, and you can only slow things down, never stop it.

Stew in that!

 

 

Life Ain’t Fair. I’m the Proof

Tags

fundigelicals, having the last laugh, life, life in the foothills, lifestyle

This is not up for debate. It’s not. It’s a lesson to be learned by every single human being ever. It is beyond true. It’s so true, that it probably isn’t proven by the exception. I doubt there can be an exception because even if your life is perfect from start to finish, it has a finish.

Duh.

I knew a guy once who was obsessed with the idea that people who were undeserving often got rewarded. Actually, it wasn’t a tit-for-tat sort of thing so much as it was random reward unattached to random behavior, good or otherwise.

It fairly drives some folks crazy. It sure did him. People who “do everything right” get hugely annoyed when people who don’t “do everything right” seem to be happy. They want them to suffer. It’s like fundigelicals reminding us liberals that “if you don’t repent, you’ll go to hell”. They always smile when they say that, because they are very sure we won’t and so they can be happy knowing “we’ll get ours” come judgment day. They presume of course a judgment day.

It’s why the workers in the vineyard got so pissed when the boss paid the workers who only worked an hour the same as those that had worked a full day. “Unfair!!!” The boss said, “hey, what’s that got to do with you? You got what YOU bargained for didn’t ya?”

Some folks just can’t handle that. Which leads me to believe that they find “doing everything right” a major pain, and they don’t do it because it’s the right thing to do, but because they want the reward. So getting a reward for not doing everything right, might just mean that they won’t get a reward for doing everything right. Kind of puts a monkey wrench in the whole salvation thing don’t it?

It also makes God sort of insane.

Or?

Perhaps God sees things in a way that humans don’t. At least for all the literalists out there, the Bible suggests that God does see not as humans but as God. So perhaps, just perhaps, our assumptions of what is the “right thing to do” aren’t so clear. At least to the point that it might be better if we keep our damn mouths shut when we “disapprove” of what others are doing.

Not talking here folks about murder and abuse and other dictatorial behaviors, but more ambiguous things like gay marriage, and women’s health rights, and stuff like that. Unless you are a hard-nosed self-styled pope (meaning your interpretation of scripture is infallible until God tells you different), most of us concede that there’s a lot of grey in some social policy areas. If that is true, then we best not tell others how to behave regarding them I suspect.

In any case, I personally believe that everyone is “saved”, which makes it all unnecessary to bewail whether anyone is getting their just desserts or not, or being failed by their supreme deity in any way. Unlike the fundigelicals, I do not have to resort to “God’s ways are mysterious” and “God had some reason for inflicting me with this misery that I’ll understand some day.” If I do a good thing it’s because I want to, not because I NEED to.

It’s enough that “shit happens”.

For me at least.

I’m a decent enough person. Far from the best kind of person I can conceive of. I have plenty of people I know who are much better than I am. They are kinder for sure.

Case in point. I was getting blood work done a few weeks ago as part of a general updating of my health records. After slapping my inner arms and squeezing my upper arms to death trying to “pop up a vein”, the blood sucker said this: “Do they usually taking blood from your hand instead of your arm?”

I replied, “yeah, the one’s who can’t do the arm, do the hand”.

Now the Contrarian said that my mistake was in being snarky/sarcastic BEFORE I had properly secured the end of relationship with said person. After all, she still wielded the mighty needle when I dissed her. There is some truth to that observation.

So you see, I am a sarcastic, snarky, bitch type person when I’m (a) in a hurry (b) tired or (c) just damn well feel like it.

This served me quite well when I was a defense attorney. I could utter questions at cop or citizen with such jaw-dropping “and your mama too” sarcasm that I would often see a judge turn away suddenly to hide his snicker before the jury, while a prosecutor jumped out of his/her shorts to bellow “OBJECTION, ARGUMENTATIVE”. I of course would smile softly and whisper, “withdrawn”, as the witness shot daggers of ineffectual rage which of course all missed their target, for their mouths were forever silenced by the loudly following “NO FURTHER QUESTIONS!”

It probably serves me less well now. But it is who I am in the last analysis, and I always feel fairly fake and pretentious when I put on that “oh, no take all the time in the world packing my groceries. I can surely see that changing items in and out until one achieves the perfect fit, is the way it should be done” look on my face.

But back to the topic at hand. Reward.

Yes, I’m not a deserving person, I have a trail of bleeding bodies who all feel “abused” by my acidic tongue, to prove it, one that trails back at least to junior high.

But guess what? My life has turned out fairly wonderfully from my point of view. And nobody else’s point of view matters. And that really galls the hell out of a few people I know. And ya know, that sort of makes me feel even happier.

As they say, a life lived well is the best revenge.

Gravitational Waves are Us

Tags

Enlightenment, spirituality

Big news in science this week. Something or other about gravitational waves–the original ones–like in the big bang theory. Yeah, another theory, like evolution (meaning all stupid/ignorant idiots can stop reading and go back to fantasy island). Not that I judge of course. *smirky face inserted ——>This stuff goes back a few decades to some guy or other who predicted this wave would be there, as a way of explaining what seemed to be the rapid inflation of the universe from a singularity into the vast expanse we find today, mostly of empty space and dark matter. Also it explained the general uniformity of matter concentration, throughout. Got all that? Doesn’t matter.

Just know it’s big. About as big as the Higgs Boson find a while back. Maybe bigger. Like in Einsteinian big. As in a whole lotta folks near peed themselves.

You and I? Ah, not so much. Didn’t affect the price of gas nor reduce my angst about non-duality achievement any. What else matters?

Speaking of which, non-duality that is. I’m not any closer. Nor any farther. Since it’s not a place to go to, it’s just opening your eyes and seeing R E A L I T Y. Dontcha wish Aretha had sung about that instead of a very dualistic concept like respect?

Anyway, I been hanging around with such concepts for a while now. Some of it is making some sense. But I don’t feel enlightened in any way. I mean, one of the things that some and I mean S O M E people say is that to the enlightened or awakened mind, “everything is exactly the way it should be.”

Which is way way uncool and kinda sick given the cesspool of poo the world is in. But ya see, there is a logic to it. Saying that the world is a shit hole is a value judgment quite clearly. Various despots, political and economic, probably would disagree because they have island homes and barely raised a buffed finger before someone is at hand to step and fetch for them. They are powerful and they like it. The world is their oyster.

But there’s a whole ‘nother level where everything is exactly as it should be. In fact, it’s exactly as it has to be. I can no other than it is. And that’s very non-dual when you think of it. See, reality is nothing but the sum total of all actions by everyone, and all actions by everything, as far as the eye can see as they say, like in to the edge of the universe. Given what you are doing, thinking, feeling, and multiplied by all the rest of it, including the blade of grass that is struggling to grow, and either is or isn’t, a one-time-only unique reality is formed. And it is what it is, and is exactly what it must be.

Let me know when your eyeballs quit spinnin’ and I’ll go on.

The reality of all this, is neither good nor bad, nor right or wrong, or any other dualism. It just is.

Human egos (that’s us) attach ourselves to certain desires of what that reality should/could be, and then the fun begins. We try to change it, all the while other people are doing the same, but maybe not at all in the way we want. And some people just say to hell with it, and create their own little fantasy reality. Those are the really interesting one’s when you think about it. Talk about your Sim city! It’s like a game box filled with deities, and laws, and morals, all designed just by YOU for YOU. It’s amazing how far some people will take this. Just ask Ken Ham how far you can parade a fantasy world and get people to pay you for it.

So the trick, as I see it, is the not give a damn, because it won’t change anything anyway, but somehow be a good person and do “good” in the world, all the while not being attached to any outcome that is most assuredly not going to go your way anyway–since who the hell are you to dictate the world?

Can you see where I am stuck?

It’s not all no God, if you think that I’m headed that way. I’m not. I think the same “truth” derives from either a god-model or a spontaneous out of now where for no reason explanation. One may take a bit longer to arrive at, but in the end, both lead to the same thing. Reality is still gonna be reality, unless you get off the train and decide to hitch your donkey to a literal star over Bethlehem. Then you just dig the ditch a little deeper, or sink deeper into Plato’s cave.

All roads lead to. . . .

What?

They lead to realizing that a mind is just conveniently for aesthetic? purposes, housed in a bony case called a head. And the rest of “us” is conveniently covered over with bones and tissue and skin and offered as an “entity”. The mind is not mine, or yours, it’s ours. It’s as big as the universe at least, and perhaps bigger. I haven’t walked around the block very far yet. Yet that’s where it has to lead. Unbounded mind, all mixed in a soup of unbounded minds all being one big mind. Trying to be “me” is fairly selfish and silly at the same time.

Yet I go on being me. Reading Jed McKenna doesn’t enlighten me, nor do I agree with a lot he says, and I find some of his explanations of why he acts so darn ego-driven when he’s not, unsatisfying and vaguely con-artist in the attempt. I surely don’t buy into the idea that everyone who has ever become enlightened has to pass through this “first step” which wrenches the guts and destroys everything. Is it essential to leave spouses and children and go off barefoot in a quest? He claims a fair percentage end up in loony bins at least for a while.

I don’t buy that. Course, he would say that anyone who doesn’t agree with him, hasn’t become enlightened and probably doesn’t want to suffer the slings and arrows as it were. But since Mr. McKenna remains an enigma of sorts and unreachable pretty much, I’m not sure he’s any more real than the Wizard of Oz. All show and glitter, but look behind the curtain.

I don’t know that any of it matters. But clearly it seems to matter to a whole lot of humans because we spend billions of bucks on thousands of teachers and gurus and books and CD’s and speeches, all to help us along the road to what was that again? Some place not here.

And it’s not that we are all so god-awful unhappy being here. I know I’m not. Life right here and now is damn good in my book. I got no serious complaints. I’m pretty sure that a whole lot of seekers would agree.

Yet something keeps being that itch we can’t quite scratch.

I’ll let you know if I ever get there.

When I’m not too busy doing whatever it is you do when you are enlightened.

I hope pizza is still on the menu.

God’s Owner’s Manual

Tags

God, Humor

There are some in this world of ours that think this  bible is such a thing, a owner’s manual. Written by the Almighty, it is purported to contain all the instructions for being a “good” believer and doer of God’s will. For some, any question is met with a rifling of pages until just the perfect passage is found, whether it be when to plant crops or what to do with a teenager in heat.

It has always confounded me this claim that the bible is the “word of God”, in that it is written in such a way that it could not be the work of a superior being. The “word of God” folks are quick to point out that God “used” humans to write it, and allowed them to use their own idioms and ethnic phrasing, putting the concepts in terms understandable by their own people.

Several things strike me as odd in that respect. First, this God whom they say created the earth and all within it, seems stymied by a lack of arms, hands or fingers to manipulate the pen. Second, it suggests that the all-knowing (omniscient) one doesn’t know the language of the people in question  well enough to construct simple sentences that they can understand.

So, it just seems like a convenient excuse to avoid the problem of why this collection of books is so confusing, convoluted, contradictory, and repetitive–why do we need FOUR gospels after all, why not three or thirty? This makes no sense as you can see.

Not that I deny that God cannot write a manual telling us how to act. But it seems to me that it might go something more like this:

DEAR CHILDREN:

I’m your father, . . . and mother for that matter. I know that doesn’t sound right, but trust me, in time you will understand.

You can call me God.

I created everything you see and hear and smell and taste. It’s all quite complicated, the actual how it all happened bit, but again, you will understand in time.

I created you too, all of you.

Now before you get all thankful and start bowing and making offerings of all sorts of stuff to make me happy, just stop and take a deep breath. Okay.

Let’s get this straight. I am not interested in being worshiped. I’m a God after all. Such things are nice, but unnecessary. I do like to spend time with you, just talking. I talk to you all the time, but mostly you don’t hear me. You have to be very quiet, especially in your mind before you can hear.

I know it sounds mysterious.

It’s really not, and as I’ve said already, you will understand in time.

No don’t pack a lunch. It’s going to take a good deal longer than that.

I suppose you want to know why you are here.

Quite simply, to be like me.

You are on a marvelous journey of discovering who you are. Each one of you is destined to attain perfection. It won’t all happen at once, or it may. You are each unique and you will create your own perfect path to me.

Do not worry if you are getting up there in human age. Enlightenment can happen in an instant. But it may not. As I said, don’t worry, there are unlimited do-overs.

It is part of your sentience that you are never without a question, so it stands to reason that people everywhere, throughout time, attempt to define me and describe what I want. In some places these written treatises have come to be called “sacred”. They are not really, just human ideas. Some are pretty close approximations and some are way off the mark. None is really close to the truth. But there is much wisdom  in all, and feel free to study them for that.

There is no judgment here. It would be like judging the relative strength of ant to an elephant if you get the analogy. You’re all so deeply flawed to one degree or another. It’s just a matter of degree compared to what you will become. So there are no grades. You will all pass eventually.

A couple of things you humans have hit upon are rather close to the truth, so you might be mindful of them as you live this particular life:

1. I never promised you a rose garden. Shit happens. I didn’t cause it, but I am here to kiss the boo boo. You’ll find that most of the bad stuff that happens is your or other human’s creation. There are consequences to your actions. I said most remember. Some bad stuff is just chance. Everything that happens, good or bad is something you can learn from.
2. If you meet the buddha on the road of life, kill him. Not literally. But if anyone tries to tell you they know who I am and what I like or don’t like, they’re wrong. Probably more wrong than you. The people who are truly enlightened try to give you the tools to find your own enlightenment, they don’t batter your head and threaten you. NOBODY FAILS. Ignore people who claim they are sure.
3. Don’t worry, be happy. Your biggest enemy is fear. There is nothing to fear, but you guys will continue to do most everything out of fear until you get that. Fear leads to mistakes, and mistakes lead to pain. If you don’t want pain, stop worrying. Half of it will happen anyway, the other half never was going to happen. Life is in this moment. That’s what you can effect.

A couple of rules of the road that will make this easier for you:

1. Don’t hurt others. Period. One day you will understand that hurting anyone will hurt you worse in the end, and ironically help the one you attack. Don’t do it. It’s not nice.
2. Nobody goes it alone successfully. You are EVERYONE’S keeper.
3. Don’t steal other peoples stuff, it leads to the problem of #1.
4. It’s actually true that things work best when you treat others as you would like them to treat you. Almost all of your silly divisions have already said this. It’s really true.
5. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Have more fun. You could be a salamander you know and I can tell you they are capable of way less fun than you can have. Enjoy your body and all the amazing things it can do, just be mindful of #1 again.

There is only one guiding principle. IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE. THE UNIVERSE IS ALL ABOUT LOVE. YOU ARE LOVE. YOU ARE LOVED. BE LOVE.

Get it now?

We’re all rooting for you every moment to wake up. We have no doubt you will.

All my love,

Mom/Dad/God

 

Searching For the Meaning of “Good” Friday

Tags

God, Good Friday, Jesus, love, religion

I’ve never been quite sure what the “good” in Good Friday meant. Perhaps we see beyond the pain, torture and death of Christ to the event of Easter. We live in those awful moments not in the moment itself, but in the promise of Sunday.

That seems to trivialize it a bit for me, and it doesn’t satisfy. I know that the Passover, celebrated as the Last Supper by Christians is that wonderful celebration by Jews of the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. It celebrates freedom. And no doubt as the Synoptic Gospels relate, this date for the Last Supper of Jesus (the first night of Passover) serves to symbolize our liberation from sin.

John changes the mix a bit by placing the Last Supper not on the first night of Passover, but the day before, when the lambs are slain for the meal. He likens Jesus to the lamb slain. The general symbolism remains the same.

I am not a believer of substitutionary sin–the theory that Jesus took upon himself our sins and died for them– a demand of a God who requires payment for a sinful world. Such a God, to me at least, is both harsh and ugly–sending his own son to die in the most horrible of ways.

Rather I see, (note that these ideas are surely not my own, but are the theology of many a learned scholar and teacher as well as believers) that Jesus by his willingness to die for his beliefs, shows us the perfect way to engage with this creator we call God. Jesus, in dying, pays the ultimate price for principle, the foundational principle of life–love, no matter what the cost.

For this is the essence of the God that Jesus points us towards. A God who is unimpressed by formulaic ritual and a God saddened by our tendencies to divide ourselves into groups of “saved” “faithful” or “pious” and all others who somehow by human standards fail to reach the mark. So saddened is God by our divisiveness that Jesus shows through his willingness to endure scorn, beating and tortuous death, that even the least among us is worthy of dying for.

As we struggle in our daily lives to come to grips with the deep agonies that divide us as a people and as a world, Jesus on the Cross, stands as testament to the strength that we too can express if we are willing to take up that Cross ourselves and stand for love at all costs.

Jesus stands against those whose primary goal is to protect “number one”. He stands against those who are motivated by greed, self-preservation, and egotistical individual ruggedness. He points the way to a God of grace and love, who calls us daily to be bigger than our selves in our love of brother and sister. This God, so real, so in love with His creation that He becomes one of us, in an effort to show us, by his teaching, suffering and death, what He is really all about.

I speak not of Jesus as the son of God, but as the Son of Man, for the reality or fantasy of Jesus as the incarnate God is beside the point really. If Jesus is so infused with the Spirit of the Transcendent One, then it matters not the creeds we dutifully recite each Sunday. Jesus moved aside as human, and allowed the Spirit of God to envelop him so completely that God really was among us.

All the more important that we be especially careful to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of the Church. More and more I find them quite different beings, with quite different agendas. After having read much, I am still in love with Paul and his exuberance for the Gospel, but I recognize that Paul molded the ensuing Church and molded Jesus into that Church. I’m not so sure that it is the Jesus of history whom he never met in the flesh.

We must comb the Gospels carefully I think to find that Jesus–that gentle yet firebrand individual who sought to bring all into the house of God, as true and perfect children. He tenderly attended to the needs of the most broken and rejected in society without asking of them anything in return, other than to put God first in their lives. His anger was invoked by those whom he saw as impeding the people in their attempt to know their God. He pointed the finger and accused them of having lost all sense of why they were doing what they did. It had all become for show, for power, and for accolades.

True piety rested with the many Marys who lived with the Master, the self-less women who sat at his feet, absorbing his wisdom, who anointed his head, washed his feet, and knelt at the foot of the cross, and ultimately went to dress his broken and dead body, and found to their amazement that his real presence washed over them.

If we learn anything from the Friday, called Good, it is that we too can approach God in these simple acts of service–not by asking questions about who deserves and who doesn’t deserve our acts, but in simply being willing to give in love, knowing that the Spirit of God inhabits each and every one of God’s created beings.

Have a blessed Easter Time.

(I know that many of you who read this are not religious, and at best agnostic if not actually atheistic in your outlook. But I think that whatever you believe, you are beloved and understood and accepted by God as you are, and I hope the sentiments I express, resonate in that “human” way that knows no faith.)

The World Is Just Plain Weird

Tags

2nd Amendment, blogging, Corptocracy, GOP, gun legislation, Politics

I had gotten, finally to that happy place. The place where I no longer obsessed about how many people were visiting my blog every day. I was content, having found my place.

Yeah, well that good time feeling didn’t last for long. There has been a significant drop in the last two or three months which is startling and inexplicable. It’s dropped by half at least, and that while subscriptions to this blog have steadily increased.

I have no idea what it means. Did I say something offensive? I surely meant to, but gosh, you don’t have to be so harsh. Wait, I’m talking to people who are still reading so that won’t do any good. How do I reach out to all the unknowns who have found a happier place to tuck into the news and explain that I’m only trying to offend nearly everyone and no one singularly?

To top this off, if you have Google reader you were met with the announcement out of the clear blue sky they are not shutting down their reader. Now I live by mine. I do. I mean dang, can’t you leave shit alone? I have enough on my plate most days without now having to do all that transfery stuff of which I am not all that good. Is there no God?

Speaking of which, God chose his earthly successor yesterday in the guise of one Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. now known as Pope Francis I. Lots of nice things are being said about him, and I’m sure he is a fine fellow. He has lived out the preferential preference for the poor that the liberation theologists have called as the Church’s primary mission, while at the same time decrying the Marxist influence that permeates some of the that same rhetoric. He is a Jesuit, while at the same time decrying their more liberal and progressive leanings. He is a traditionalist when it comes to the Church’s teachings on social issues relating to sexual matters. He is a prayerful humble individual who decries the pomp and ceremony and trappings of office, preferring a small apartment and taking public transportation back and forth to work.

It is of course utterly unclear how all this will play out in the coming months and years. I remain realistic but hopeful that  something new is afoot, and trust that the Holy Spirit, may have rushed in once again to save this wonderful institution from itself. It usually does.

If there was any doubt that the bought-and-paid for jackasses called the GOP in Congress cares not one whit about the public sentiments no matter how overwhelming they are, one need only look at the bill that passed in Congress the other day relating to background checks for gun purchasers.

While a healthy 91% of all citizens across the land, and 76% of all NRA members favor such minimum legislation, the Senate GOP could not manage to screw up the most minimum of guts to vote yes. Not a SINGLE GOP member of the Senate voted yes. I mean even Susan Collins voted no. I mean have you people NO SHAME AT ALL? I really do think we would be better off; if at a minimum, Senate chairs in the chamber were required to carry the logos of those corporate interests who have bought these people and OWN them.

If you are worried that our political system is in danger of being subverted by corporate interests to the point of being the actual POLITICAL POWER in American, now would be the time to decide what you are going to do about it. Time is short I fear before “we the people” is nothing more than a quaint historical blip on the books. Since they already write all the “regulatory laws” that apply to them as it is, and own the SCOTUS by a vote of nearly 5 on most any issue, what the hell left is there for them to grab?

Stay tuned for the inevitable change in the national anthem.

Oh, say can you see, by the dawns early light,

what so proudly we hailed at the twilights last gleaming.

Whose bright office buildings, and nifty logos, through the perilous fight,

O’er the fences we watched were so neoned gleaming,

And the stock market’s big bull, profits shot through the roof,

gave proof through the night, that our CEO’s were still there.

Oh say does that mega corporation yet stand,

O’er the land of the poor and the home of the privileged.

 

Get your copy, no doubt you will soon be forced to sing it every morning before the work bell rings. That goes for retirees, because there will be no rest for the weary in the poor house, just a faint, “can I have more please, sir” in the soup line.