Well, the loans are not eligible for consolidation, which would enable rehabilitation. This from the office of the ombudsman for the Federal Student Loan Authority.
So, now I have to do another two financial disclosure statements, exhaustive and exhausting, in the attempt to beg to have the garnishments lowered.
Speaking of begging, I welcome any cash or goods you may wish to send, just contact me for further info.
I don't know if I can set up a PayPal with a money card, as the card only accepts reloads of $20 or more.
SPECIAL BONUS OFFER!
As I wait for you to catch up with the idea of dismantling the world as we know it to actually become free, I suppose I'll need to mollycoddle you by establishing a new order - so, here's the march we'll be using when I'm your Supreme High Poobah (patent pending, all rights reserved):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfDqR4fqIWE
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Why the Death of an Enemy Isn't a Bad Thing
If you believe in reincarnation, as I do, they are a failed form. Their death recycles the soul/consciousness into a form to try again.
If you don't believe in reincarnation, but the mercy of God, then they stand to be enlightened before the judgment seat, purged of their sins, and given useful places in the cosmic workings to bring the Kingdom of God.
If you believe in vengeful judgment, you probably shouldn't be at this blog, anyway.
If you don't believe in God, but do believe in social order, then that's an enemy out of the way.
If you don't believe in God, but do believe in compassion, then that's several people helped by the sacrifice of one.
Oh, and if you don't believe in God that's fine - He believes in you.
If you don't believe in reincarnation, but the mercy of God, then they stand to be enlightened before the judgment seat, purged of their sins, and given useful places in the cosmic workings to bring the Kingdom of God.
If you believe in vengeful judgment, you probably shouldn't be at this blog, anyway.
If you don't believe in God, but do believe in social order, then that's an enemy out of the way.
If you don't believe in God, but do believe in compassion, then that's several people helped by the sacrifice of one.
Oh, and if you don't believe in God that's fine - He believes in you.
Why TEC is an Absolute Necessity to Christianity
Spirituality is a technology - we learn, we grow, and religion has a purpose (neglected, now, except in the more mystical branches) to bind us to God-consciousness, to grow us into God.
Every technology needs a laboratory, and experimental ground. TEC has been accused of innovation, and has erred grievously in attempting to deny it, when it should have affirmed it with glowing smiles and great pride (of the good kind) in its work. We're the lab.
Perhaps we'll collapse something and make an explosion, or collide the wrong particles and get sucked into a black hole, but without that risk, Christian "faith" is a joke, and a bad one. The place of Christianity without TEC is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying not one thing at all. That's why Christianity is a dying lifeform, because we've been ashamed of - terrified of - the dread beast Innovation. All animals instinctively avoid a dying animal, unless they're either healers - the scientists from the lab - or carrion-eaters.
Which brings me to the complete unnecessity of ACNA, the Nigerian "church" and it's dependents. They are eaters of the dead - at least the dead way of understanding or closing the bond with God. They are what was and no longer works - war-mongers, death-bringers, dividers and, regardless of the big words they've hammered into their skulls, brutes. Whether we're talking Duncan, the maggot in the apple, or the roaring and ravening lion of Abuja, they simply have no place in the future.
I understand those who want to keep away from the lab's dangers - let them. They'll benefit from TEC's risk, and that makes TEC and associates the better people. It also means TEC gets the best first.
Every technology needs a laboratory, and experimental ground. TEC has been accused of innovation, and has erred grievously in attempting to deny it, when it should have affirmed it with glowing smiles and great pride (of the good kind) in its work. We're the lab.
Perhaps we'll collapse something and make an explosion, or collide the wrong particles and get sucked into a black hole, but without that risk, Christian "faith" is a joke, and a bad one. The place of Christianity without TEC is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying not one thing at all. That's why Christianity is a dying lifeform, because we've been ashamed of - terrified of - the dread beast Innovation. All animals instinctively avoid a dying animal, unless they're either healers - the scientists from the lab - or carrion-eaters.
Which brings me to the complete unnecessity of ACNA, the Nigerian "church" and it's dependents. They are eaters of the dead - at least the dead way of understanding or closing the bond with God. They are what was and no longer works - war-mongers, death-bringers, dividers and, regardless of the big words they've hammered into their skulls, brutes. Whether we're talking Duncan, the maggot in the apple, or the roaring and ravening lion of Abuja, they simply have no place in the future.
I understand those who want to keep away from the lab's dangers - let them. They'll benefit from TEC's risk, and that makes TEC and associates the better people. It also means TEC gets the best first.
Religion vs. Social Justice
Ain't no such animal as religion apart from social justice.
It's an argument I truly get sick of hearing, and the fact that both right and left and center, too, allow the dichotomy to persist as an argument to be addressed shows how deep and fatal the corruption has extended to all religion - Christianity in particular - making it an arm of the same society it seeks to reform.
You can't separate religion and social justice, because all religion began in social justice. The idea was to order a just and properly-run world on the basis of revealed or intuited teaching from a higher consciousness. That - by definition - is social activism. If you want to argue social activism apart from social justice, then you are arguing that your religion is - again, by definition - working to "reform" society in a way that is unjust. Aside from the fact that Glenn Beck is a clown (literally, an over-the-top performer by his own admission with no relation to the character he plays other than needing a paycheck), the fact that the part he plays is held to be an accurate reflection of their own views by a significant minority is evidence that there is absolutely no real faith committment nor understanding of religion by the general public. This is further evidenced by the ridiculous claim, now widely supported, that the WTC site is "sacred." What's worshipped is not God or Truth, but mere objective positivism, the adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy of Ayn Rand.
When we can honestly see these conversations going on, how can one believe that the "religions" represented in the conversation have any power or incentive to change, dismantle, and reform the world in a just, beautiful or holy manner? They, too, define value by value given, actions performed, structures maintained, things owned - they are reflections of the world that, laughably enough, they persist in claiming to bear Good News to. Their Good News - "Hey! Keep doin' what your doin'! Just put on a little pious playacting, and you're great! You betcha!" This is as true of liberal institutions as conservative - they are exactly the same coin, different sides. Both on the make. That's why religion is declining - it's way more pervasive than just liberal or conservative:
"Religion" no longer makes a difference. It really doesn't. Why go to the trouble of joining a group that offers you less than the Shriners or Jaycees, and no more in terms of actual drive to change what an increasingly-young population knows through observation to be a broken and dysfunctional way to do society?
There was an argument at the Lead about tithing, and one actually said that primary giving ought to be through the church - demonstrating the hypnosis society (aka: this world I want gone) has exercised over decent people. Who really believes that giving more to your church will improve the world? What happens, in reality, is that your staff will want raises, your congregation will want beautification, or updates, or upgrades, or more of this or that, and the same trickle will go out to "everybody else" no matter how great the flood of giving. The greater hypnosis is the belief that secular charitable agencies are any better. And everyone buys it! "We're changing the world of buying and selling by buying and selling more! We're identifying with the weak by being strong!"
To be true religion is to be subversive - weakness is strength is the most subversive teaching ever - and to be true religion is to be social activism, and to be social activism is to be social justice.
I don't know what all these Tea-Party halfwits and Glenn-Beck-lovers are doing, but it's not faith and its not worship. I don't know what all these churches "changing the system from the inside" are doing, but its not religion.
It's just the same old same old.
It's an argument I truly get sick of hearing, and the fact that both right and left and center, too, allow the dichotomy to persist as an argument to be addressed shows how deep and fatal the corruption has extended to all religion - Christianity in particular - making it an arm of the same society it seeks to reform.
You can't separate religion and social justice, because all religion began in social justice. The idea was to order a just and properly-run world on the basis of revealed or intuited teaching from a higher consciousness. That - by definition - is social activism. If you want to argue social activism apart from social justice, then you are arguing that your religion is - again, by definition - working to "reform" society in a way that is unjust. Aside from the fact that Glenn Beck is a clown (literally, an over-the-top performer by his own admission with no relation to the character he plays other than needing a paycheck), the fact that the part he plays is held to be an accurate reflection of their own views by a significant minority is evidence that there is absolutely no real faith committment nor understanding of religion by the general public. This is further evidenced by the ridiculous claim, now widely supported, that the WTC site is "sacred." What's worshipped is not God or Truth, but mere objective positivism, the adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy of Ayn Rand.
When we can honestly see these conversations going on, how can one believe that the "religions" represented in the conversation have any power or incentive to change, dismantle, and reform the world in a just, beautiful or holy manner? They, too, define value by value given, actions performed, structures maintained, things owned - they are reflections of the world that, laughably enough, they persist in claiming to bear Good News to. Their Good News - "Hey! Keep doin' what your doin'! Just put on a little pious playacting, and you're great! You betcha!" This is as true of liberal institutions as conservative - they are exactly the same coin, different sides. Both on the make. That's why religion is declining - it's way more pervasive than just liberal or conservative:
"Religion" no longer makes a difference. It really doesn't. Why go to the trouble of joining a group that offers you less than the Shriners or Jaycees, and no more in terms of actual drive to change what an increasingly-young population knows through observation to be a broken and dysfunctional way to do society?
There was an argument at the Lead about tithing, and one actually said that primary giving ought to be through the church - demonstrating the hypnosis society (aka: this world I want gone) has exercised over decent people. Who really believes that giving more to your church will improve the world? What happens, in reality, is that your staff will want raises, your congregation will want beautification, or updates, or upgrades, or more of this or that, and the same trickle will go out to "everybody else" no matter how great the flood of giving. The greater hypnosis is the belief that secular charitable agencies are any better. And everyone buys it! "We're changing the world of buying and selling by buying and selling more! We're identifying with the weak by being strong!"
To be true religion is to be subversive - weakness is strength is the most subversive teaching ever - and to be true religion is to be social activism, and to be social activism is to be social justice.
I don't know what all these Tea-Party halfwits and Glenn-Beck-lovers are doing, but it's not faith and its not worship. I don't know what all these churches "changing the system from the inside" are doing, but its not religion.
It's just the same old same old.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
I Wander Lonely As A Clod
Since I am to receive - apparently - the shunning that liberal/progressives give when one does not turn out to be what they hoped - and I do understand the desire to run away from what is aesthetically displeasing - I should explain that I truly believe we would all benefit by embracing our inner nutjob.
For ten years, I've involved myself fairly heavily with TEC in particular and Anglicanism in general, as well as the gay rights struggle in and out of the church. I felt I had found my larger family, as, living here, I've found very little to indicate anyone who can . . . well, think, actually.
Additionally, for ten years I've been assured I was a valued member of this larger community. For ten years, I've been looking at what was going on in the Anglican Communion and our own society here in the U. S. and telling people what was going to happen. All that time, people - usually with collars and/or doctorates - have assured everyone "No, no! That will never happen." I'm patted on the head and told to run away and play with the other crazies - always with painful politeness.
For ten years, it's happened exactly as I've said it would, and the collar/doctorate group says, "How can this be?! There was no warning! Egads!"
For ten years, I've gotten angry about this, expressed that deep resentment, been told how mean and unfair and un-Christian I was being, and realized that, if I cared to be allowed in the group, I'd better toe the line. I've cried, begged forgiveness, been told "It's allright, little crazy!" and told to go play quietly in the corner.
I've talked about being in need, and gotten assurances of how much I was cared for and of prayers, and someone else needs a vacation or computer and they get cash. Fine. Money is filthy - I even prayed and fasted because of the resentment I felt about it. One person helped - a lot - and still felt betrayed by my new worldview.
I've been right before, and recanted to just keep my friends, even when I knew I was right.
Ten years. Any wonder I really am crazy now?
Still, I don't want anyone hurt, while saner people do. I don't lie about what I feel, while saner people do. I don't want to force anyone to stay in the same places I am just to feel better about it, while saner people do.
So, maybe crazy isn't the bad one to be. Embrace your inner nutjob! I did, and I'm much freer and happier. I would never have posted all this before, because of "repercussions" and the "friendly" rebukes I'd receive, the painful little stab-and-twist of "Is there anyone you can talk to? You need to go to counselling!" Now, they're just part of the joke, and I have serious work to do.
I've tried to tell myself that people who didn't know, did. People who didn't see, saw clearly. That what I saw clearly wasn't. That what I knew, I didn't. That I was less able to speak than others, less able to predict than others, just plain less able than others and I was the lesser man.
Crazy had to be the end result, and that's why suffering ends in liberation.
For ten years, I've involved myself fairly heavily with TEC in particular and Anglicanism in general, as well as the gay rights struggle in and out of the church. I felt I had found my larger family, as, living here, I've found very little to indicate anyone who can . . . well, think, actually.
Additionally, for ten years I've been assured I was a valued member of this larger community. For ten years, I've been looking at what was going on in the Anglican Communion and our own society here in the U. S. and telling people what was going to happen. All that time, people - usually with collars and/or doctorates - have assured everyone "No, no! That will never happen." I'm patted on the head and told to run away and play with the other crazies - always with painful politeness.
For ten years, it's happened exactly as I've said it would, and the collar/doctorate group says, "How can this be?! There was no warning! Egads!"
For ten years, I've gotten angry about this, expressed that deep resentment, been told how mean and unfair and un-Christian I was being, and realized that, if I cared to be allowed in the group, I'd better toe the line. I've cried, begged forgiveness, been told "It's allright, little crazy!" and told to go play quietly in the corner.
I've talked about being in need, and gotten assurances of how much I was cared for and of prayers, and someone else needs a vacation or computer and they get cash. Fine. Money is filthy - I even prayed and fasted because of the resentment I felt about it. One person helped - a lot - and still felt betrayed by my new worldview.
I've been right before, and recanted to just keep my friends, even when I knew I was right.
Ten years. Any wonder I really am crazy now?
Still, I don't want anyone hurt, while saner people do. I don't lie about what I feel, while saner people do. I don't want to force anyone to stay in the same places I am just to feel better about it, while saner people do.
So, maybe crazy isn't the bad one to be. Embrace your inner nutjob! I did, and I'm much freer and happier. I would never have posted all this before, because of "repercussions" and the "friendly" rebukes I'd receive, the painful little stab-and-twist of "Is there anyone you can talk to? You need to go to counselling!" Now, they're just part of the joke, and I have serious work to do.
I've tried to tell myself that people who didn't know, did. People who didn't see, saw clearly. That what I saw clearly wasn't. That what I knew, I didn't. That I was less able to speak than others, less able to predict than others, just plain less able than others and I was the lesser man.
Crazy had to be the end result, and that's why suffering ends in liberation.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Heh
MONUMENT TO THE FIRST TEA-PARTY-CAUCUS SCIENTIST TO FIGURE OUT, AFTER DECADES OF CAREFUL RESEARCH, HOW TO POUR PISS OUT OF A BOOT. 
I thought Doxy and James would appreciate that. >:DTo Our Little Anonymous/Brad
I've told you before, you are officially NOT allowed to post here. You will be deleted before it sees the light of day. I don't even read the comments, as the first few words tell me who you are. I will say, one comment caught my eye and made me laugh:
I really don't care that you're mother "didn't douche properly" when she was carrying you.
My advice to you:
As I've said, life is pretense; you should stop pretending.
Seriously.
I mean, I'm crazier than all get-out, but you are just sick, sad and demented - I'd hazard a guess that sexual abuse by a father/stepfather has left you beyond repair. Given your posts at Fr. Troll's, you are perhaps syphilitic - the general degradation of intellectual and grammatical content could point to that. You're obsession with homosexuals points to your own dysfunctional sexuality, and your obsession with TEC and liberals shows you to be nothing more than another psychotic Christian right-winger, which your lies and cartoonish "atheism" spiel point up. I see you exactly as you are - a useless sack of meat. Broken by others, which is sad, yes, but unfixable.
Honestly, as one professional nutcase to another, you're just really not necessary and you don't know how to do what you're trying to accomplish - a true no-hoper. Insanity without any corresponding insight is boring - it gets ould really quick.
I really don't care that you're mother "didn't douche properly" when she was carrying you.
My advice to you:
As I've said, life is pretense; you should stop pretending.
Seriously.
I mean, I'm crazier than all get-out, but you are just sick, sad and demented - I'd hazard a guess that sexual abuse by a father/stepfather has left you beyond repair. Given your posts at Fr. Troll's, you are perhaps syphilitic - the general degradation of intellectual and grammatical content could point to that. You're obsession with homosexuals points to your own dysfunctional sexuality, and your obsession with TEC and liberals shows you to be nothing more than another psychotic Christian right-winger, which your lies and cartoonish "atheism" spiel point up. I see you exactly as you are - a useless sack of meat. Broken by others, which is sad, yes, but unfixable.
Honestly, as one professional nutcase to another, you're just really not necessary and you don't know how to do what you're trying to accomplish - a true no-hoper. Insanity without any corresponding insight is boring - it gets ould really quick.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Pichers from home
FIRST: My Baby Boys
Katzie is my eldest and definite top cat.
Miutu (pron: Mew-too) is youngest - that's not a dead rat, but a well-used bit of cheesecloth with some home-grown catnip in it.
My icon/shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham
(much nicer than the tacky RC things)
My church's banner -
I won't tell you the name. I'm preserving anonymity.
Our parish's crucifix above the altar
The current building.
The permanent building will be built in the space to the right of frame.
Friday, August 20, 2010
A Reminder of Lisa-Marie Smith Awesomeosity
I always love her in Tim Burton's films, as acting without words is a dying art.
This is still one of my favorite bits from her in the underrated Mars Attacks! with its ensemble cast of major players (who but Tim Burton could've gotten both Michael J. Fox and Glenn Close - at the height of their careers - to play fairly minor characters who are quickly killed?).
It takes a lot of computer skill to make CG look like real life, but it takes a lot more human skill to make real life look truly robotic and computer-driven. Every time I see it, I find myself forgetting that it's an actual person playing the Martian "girl."
This is still one of my favorite bits from her in the underrated Mars Attacks! with its ensemble cast of major players (who but Tim Burton could've gotten both Michael J. Fox and Glenn Close - at the height of their careers - to play fairly minor characters who are quickly killed?).
It takes a lot of computer skill to make CG look like real life, but it takes a lot more human skill to make real life look truly robotic and computer-driven. Every time I see it, I find myself forgetting that it's an actual person playing the Martian "girl."
Nothingness and No-Thingness
I am not a nihilist. I don't believe there is nothing and nobody and no future.
But the world is meaningless.
I say this because, if I say to you, "Your mental constructs that define your world are meaningless" the general anesthetization of millenia of human busy-bodying will let you smile pleasantly, nod in agreement and think that I am talking about positive thinking about all the stuff out there and fixing it.
I'm not. What's "out there" and what you expect to be there are not two different things, they are exactly the same thing, and humanity has taken that line of thought further and further down a blind alley. It is meaningless, not because there is no meaning, but because we've taken over - individually and as a species - and veered away from what has meaning. We've given meaning - lots of meanings - to everything, but since it was never ours to assign meaning to, our world is meaningless - it's just busy work because we just can't bring ourselves to question the whole shootin' match.
I'm also not positing a holograph world in which there is nothing and we project form out our eyes or some sci-fi concept. There is matter, it takes form, the forms and matter are truly solid and persistent.
Broadly, the "world" is how we order these persistent phenomena and classify them. As the physical ability of the human mind has developed, we have developed the capacity for more and more complex order and classification. However, we have not questioned the underlying order and classification of a past, less developed, human mind. It seems solid to the point at which horror is expressed at the idea of abandoning previous structures of human governance and interaction - these are "reality" to the conventional mind and their negation would mean the end of human society, possibly humanity.
Drop the idea of nations, or nationhood. It's impossible.
But why?
Drop the idea of money, of any sort of economy. It's impossible.
But why?
Drop marketplace competition. Drop religions. Drop luxuries and consumerism and self-interest and fear and war and conflict . . .
It's impossible.
But why?
Man is a god behaving like an animal. We're being called to adulthood. We've learned our powers to shape and order, now, we must dimantle and learn the proper way to shape and order in accord with the original intent. Jesus assured us we were connected with that Creator. I call Jesus' teaching revolutionary, but I don't call Him a revolutionary, because that's someone who puts a fresh coat of paint on the old order. He was apocalyptic - negating the whole basis of the world as we know it, knowing that, in this man-made world, the whole of existence was absurd and pointless - the poor will be with you always, the rich man can't get in to Heaven (or maybe he can), hate your life, hate your family, bear a sword - while we are called to a heritage, an inheritance, of dismantling ALL of that, to see the true Creation now that we know how. This is why He is so contradictory.
Yes. I say we need more suffering, not because suffering is good, but because it reminds us that there is something fundamentally wrong with this world, that can't be fixed in this world's terms, and that it's not something "fixed" by waiting for Jebus to come a-ridin' in on His magick unicorn and make all better. If that were it, we'd feel no dissatisfaction, just anticipation. We wouldn't suffer, just wait. The suffering of this world is like that of an alcoholic or drug addict - enough will bring us too the point that we want to stop using the drug. Or die. That too is a possibility.
God promised universal salvation. He said it to us, but that doesn't mean it will have to include us. We are given the ability to bring the Kingdom, and waiting is part of that delusive, meaningless world. But freewill is choice, and mankind's choices mean there's no guarantee mankind will make it.
But the world is meaningless.
I say this because, if I say to you, "Your mental constructs that define your world are meaningless" the general anesthetization of millenia of human busy-bodying will let you smile pleasantly, nod in agreement and think that I am talking about positive thinking about all the stuff out there and fixing it.
I'm not. What's "out there" and what you expect to be there are not two different things, they are exactly the same thing, and humanity has taken that line of thought further and further down a blind alley. It is meaningless, not because there is no meaning, but because we've taken over - individually and as a species - and veered away from what has meaning. We've given meaning - lots of meanings - to everything, but since it was never ours to assign meaning to, our world is meaningless - it's just busy work because we just can't bring ourselves to question the whole shootin' match.
I'm also not positing a holograph world in which there is nothing and we project form out our eyes or some sci-fi concept. There is matter, it takes form, the forms and matter are truly solid and persistent.
Broadly, the "world" is how we order these persistent phenomena and classify them. As the physical ability of the human mind has developed, we have developed the capacity for more and more complex order and classification. However, we have not questioned the underlying order and classification of a past, less developed, human mind. It seems solid to the point at which horror is expressed at the idea of abandoning previous structures of human governance and interaction - these are "reality" to the conventional mind and their negation would mean the end of human society, possibly humanity.
Drop the idea of nations, or nationhood. It's impossible.
But why?
Drop the idea of money, of any sort of economy. It's impossible.
But why?
Drop marketplace competition. Drop religions. Drop luxuries and consumerism and self-interest and fear and war and conflict . . .
It's impossible.
But why?
Man is a god behaving like an animal. We're being called to adulthood. We've learned our powers to shape and order, now, we must dimantle and learn the proper way to shape and order in accord with the original intent. Jesus assured us we were connected with that Creator. I call Jesus' teaching revolutionary, but I don't call Him a revolutionary, because that's someone who puts a fresh coat of paint on the old order. He was apocalyptic - negating the whole basis of the world as we know it, knowing that, in this man-made world, the whole of existence was absurd and pointless - the poor will be with you always, the rich man can't get in to Heaven (or maybe he can), hate your life, hate your family, bear a sword - while we are called to a heritage, an inheritance, of dismantling ALL of that, to see the true Creation now that we know how. This is why He is so contradictory.
Yes. I say we need more suffering, not because suffering is good, but because it reminds us that there is something fundamentally wrong with this world, that can't be fixed in this world's terms, and that it's not something "fixed" by waiting for Jebus to come a-ridin' in on His magick unicorn and make all better. If that were it, we'd feel no dissatisfaction, just anticipation. We wouldn't suffer, just wait. The suffering of this world is like that of an alcoholic or drug addict - enough will bring us too the point that we want to stop using the drug. Or die. That too is a possibility.
God promised universal salvation. He said it to us, but that doesn't mean it will have to include us. We are given the ability to bring the Kingdom, and waiting is part of that delusive, meaningless world. But freewill is choice, and mankind's choices mean there's no guarantee mankind will make it.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
A Spotter's Guide
DICK ARMEY
DICKHEAD ARMY*
*The great part of this picture was a caption - "Tea Party Caucus flexes its muscles"
Muscles? It looks like any one of them gets winded walking to the fridge - or in Bachmann's case, sticking her finger down her throat. I will say, though, it was nice of 'em to put Mr. and Mrs. Token right there in front right and front center. I wonder if that's the Bachmann housekeeper at far right?
Why *Do* Anything?
Okay, given that the observable "universe" (small as it is) is illusion, a false shell created by mankind's habit of "improving" everything, and nothing we do is meaningful or has purpose, why do anything?
Being compassionate to ourselves is necessary; however, limited. Were it just our individual self in this dystopia, that would be enough to tear down the illusion and allow it to heal. But we are, by design, interacting with one another, no matter how reclusive we may seem. Even I need human contact, which is why I keep coming to the blogosphere where I am ignored, mocked, or dismissed as merely insane (I am, but so are you, so get off you high horse, thanks). In short, while it is true nothing we do can improve or harm this illusory world we've created with all its -isms and goals and time and boundaries, we - each of us and the One and the One's Creation - are real. Not necessarily the bodies, which are a product of the illusion, but us. The only way we can break the illusion and escape the meaningless round of time, time, time and the dribbling insanity of our "goals" is by gentleness with one another. Charity is nothing. Give all you want, it's meaningless, as you've given as the world gives. Give in love, where you can, what you can without guilt or pleasure or drab duty. Hell, give to charity, if you want, but don't think you've done anything. The poor will be with you always, and you'll have touched not one real person.
Being compassionate to ourselves is necessary; however, limited. Were it just our individual self in this dystopia, that would be enough to tear down the illusion and allow it to heal. But we are, by design, interacting with one another, no matter how reclusive we may seem. Even I need human contact, which is why I keep coming to the blogosphere where I am ignored, mocked, or dismissed as merely insane (I am, but so are you, so get off you high horse, thanks). In short, while it is true nothing we do can improve or harm this illusory world we've created with all its -isms and goals and time and boundaries, we - each of us and the One and the One's Creation - are real. Not necessarily the bodies, which are a product of the illusion, but us. The only way we can break the illusion and escape the meaningless round of time, time, time and the dribbling insanity of our "goals" is by gentleness with one another. Charity is nothing. Give all you want, it's meaningless, as you've given as the world gives. Give in love, where you can, what you can without guilt or pleasure or drab duty. Hell, give to charity, if you want, but don't think you've done anything. The poor will be with you always, and you'll have touched not one real person.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Episode *mumblemumble* - A New Hope
This is the one true accomplishment mankind has made this past week:
notus at endum postum:
Strangely, this video made me realize the soundtrack to my own life should appropriately be played on the theremin!
notus at endum postum:
Strangely, this video made me realize the soundtrack to my own life should appropriately be played on the theremin!
Proof in Texting
Okay, not texting but blogging.
You want proof that even our spirituality has become not just a corrupt but corrupting influence?
Please look at this item in The Lead.
Notice, there's no-one saying, "Well, if we're needing so much money, maybe we're doing it wrong." No suggestion of saying, "Well, why don't we do what church did and hold all in common?" There's just pay-to-play, however nice and fauxly (that's fake holy) they try to make it.
You haven't paid your dues.
Some questions I would ask concerning priorities are:
Is your pastor/priest/holy-man living in better conditions than the poorest in your community?
Is your church paying more in mortgage, utilities and salaries than it is in aid to the needy?
Do you spend more on your social events than you do on outreach or giving?
Are any of your members living with excess while others live with less?
If the answer is yes to any, and especially all, of these questions, then I suggest you may not be living the faith you pretend to. That's fine - in the meaningless world we've created life is pretense - but don't be shocked if you try to make that pretense into truth and others correct you!
You want proof that even our spirituality has become not just a corrupt but corrupting influence?
Please look at this item in The Lead.
Notice, there's no-one saying, "Well, if we're needing so much money, maybe we're doing it wrong." No suggestion of saying, "Well, why don't we do what church did and hold all in common?" There's just pay-to-play, however nice and fauxly (that's fake holy) they try to make it.
You haven't paid your dues.
Some questions I would ask concerning priorities are:
Is your pastor/priest/holy-man living in better conditions than the poorest in your community?
Is your church paying more in mortgage, utilities and salaries than it is in aid to the needy?
Do you spend more on your social events than you do on outreach or giving?
Are any of your members living with excess while others live with less?
If the answer is yes to any, and especially all, of these questions, then I suggest you may not be living the faith you pretend to. That's fine - in the meaningless world we've created life is pretense - but don't be shocked if you try to make that pretense into truth and others correct you!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Not A Card I Play, Usually . . .
. . but I don't think people get me.
I had an exchange I had with a priest I find far more intelligent than myself:
The difficulties you see are simply symptoms. The whole structure is corrupt, though founded on sound general principals. Life is valueless, humans are valueless. This is the truth of the world, no matter how much rhetorical decoration we put on it. This will be true as long as there is something we can call an "economy."The reason for this is that, far from getting value for your money, in reality, a money economy assigns value to the person - you sell your life at so much an hour; your place in our "egalitarian" society is decided by the amount of money you can scrounge; you must be able to afford certain possessions to be part of a larger community. Human life, in fact, has no value until assigned by its profitability.This is the basis of the other struggles. Take away want and competition, you will have peace.
She responded:
Mark, that is the darkest perspective of human nature I think I've ever read. You have out-Calvined Calvin.
Now, aside from the deep insult implicit in being compared with Calvin by a liberal priest, there was an absolute dismissal of any engagement with reality on my part - it's a theoretical "perspective of human nature." Where was I speaking rhetorically? Where was I in the realm of speculation (other than, perhaps, my final statement)? Indeed, I wasn't speaking of human nature, but human construct that has fettered human nature.
The kicker, though, is that we later get:
As a Libertarian, my politics are grounded on the 8 articles and 27 ammendments of our constitution. In your observation, you missed the fact that two of our three branches of government are treating our national charter as if it were a roll of Charmin.
Just a thought, but one worthy for consideration; the rights that are being fought for will evaporate in the face of emergent sharia if its allowed to take hold on these shores.
Look hard into enclaves like Somalia, Iran, Eritrea, Yemen and the like where Sharia is codified as the land, and consider their take on Women's Rights, gential mutiliation, and GLBT rights.
David, I fear your perspective doesn't allow you to grasp the magnitude of this project existing within the vicinity of what Americans call "ground zero". THis would be analogous to having a center built in Cuidad de Mexico, dedicated to the exploits of Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor and President Polk; men who through their actions and policies, wrought death and destruction in your nation.
With no irony, people engage this.
The libertarian poster is the poster child, the final, perfect product of the exact society I've just spoken of - fearful, selfish, violent, given to a zero-sum view of the world, xenophobic, manipulative - yet, underneath is the human nature:
Please understand that while I stand in opposition to the teaching and tenets of Islam, I don't begrudge them one square foot in building a house of worship. - he writes later.
Yet, the reality we've built makes it impossible for him to extend that generosity inherent, that community, or, indeed, for the Muslims to commune with the Christians, etc.
Perhaps, I'm simply an anarchist. I don't know. I believe there is order, but the order we've built is dystopic, toxic, the world IS suffering, that's its nature because we've built this shell of misery, impressed with our God-given minds.
THIS is the world! It's not depression, not despair, it. is. reality. We're not living in the world God created, but the false one we created, and where His creation comes through, it is in misery, conflict with our false one.
God, I wish I had the brains to explain better. I wish I could put my vision into your heads directly. It sounds like mere destruction - take down the money system, eliminate national governments, eradicate personal property, end the institution of "church" - but it's just . . . dismantling of a cage! What we didn't mean to create is what God keeps coming, again and again, to tell us to overthrow and we tame the message every single time. Jesus didn't mean money is bad, he meant it's bad if we don't do this, this, this. Wrong. Jesus didn't really mean He came to bring fire to the earth, he just meant that He was here to fix the system. Wrong.
And this is in every religion - the revolution is killed from inside. We cooperate. We get comfortable. We get nice, which is the horrible, demonic twisting of compassionate. It's summed up in the ever-popular Christian saying, "We're supposed to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable," always said from a position of comfort and smugness, never afflicting ourselves.
Life is suffering. Not a Buddhist truth, but Truth. Because we made this life, we can end the suffering, and we don't want to. We know there'll be death and loss, so we use that as an excuse, ignoring the death and loss that feeds the world. Even if we burned it all down and nothing grew from the ashes, what was lost? Yet, we are so in love with the hollow shell we've made, given it so much of our own life, we can't bear the thought of losing it.
You want to know what evil is? Serial killers, wars, terrorists, rapists - those are all distractions, the body of the True Creation making antibodies against true evil; true evil is mundane; it's what you and I do every day while we're living a "decent life."
I had an exchange I had with a priest I find far more intelligent than myself:
The difficulties you see are simply symptoms. The whole structure is corrupt, though founded on sound general principals. Life is valueless, humans are valueless. This is the truth of the world, no matter how much rhetorical decoration we put on it. This will be true as long as there is something we can call an "economy."The reason for this is that, far from getting value for your money, in reality, a money economy assigns value to the person - you sell your life at so much an hour; your place in our "egalitarian" society is decided by the amount of money you can scrounge; you must be able to afford certain possessions to be part of a larger community. Human life, in fact, has no value until assigned by its profitability.This is the basis of the other struggles. Take away want and competition, you will have peace.
She responded:
Mark, that is the darkest perspective of human nature I think I've ever read. You have out-Calvined Calvin.
Now, aside from the deep insult implicit in being compared with Calvin by a liberal priest, there was an absolute dismissal of any engagement with reality on my part - it's a theoretical "perspective of human nature." Where was I speaking rhetorically? Where was I in the realm of speculation (other than, perhaps, my final statement)? Indeed, I wasn't speaking of human nature, but human construct that has fettered human nature.
The kicker, though, is that we later get:
As a Libertarian, my politics are grounded on the 8 articles and 27 ammendments of our constitution. In your observation, you missed the fact that two of our three branches of government are treating our national charter as if it were a roll of Charmin.
Just a thought, but one worthy for consideration; the rights that are being fought for will evaporate in the face of emergent sharia if its allowed to take hold on these shores.
Look hard into enclaves like Somalia, Iran, Eritrea, Yemen and the like where Sharia is codified as the land, and consider their take on Women's Rights, gential mutiliation, and GLBT rights.
David, I fear your perspective doesn't allow you to grasp the magnitude of this project existing within the vicinity of what Americans call "ground zero". THis would be analogous to having a center built in Cuidad de Mexico, dedicated to the exploits of Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor and President Polk; men who through their actions and policies, wrought death and destruction in your nation.
With no irony, people engage this.
The libertarian poster is the poster child, the final, perfect product of the exact society I've just spoken of - fearful, selfish, violent, given to a zero-sum view of the world, xenophobic, manipulative - yet, underneath is the human nature:
Please understand that while I stand in opposition to the teaching and tenets of Islam, I don't begrudge them one square foot in building a house of worship. - he writes later.
Yet, the reality we've built makes it impossible for him to extend that generosity inherent, that community, or, indeed, for the Muslims to commune with the Christians, etc.
Perhaps, I'm simply an anarchist. I don't know. I believe there is order, but the order we've built is dystopic, toxic, the world IS suffering, that's its nature because we've built this shell of misery, impressed with our God-given minds.
THIS is the world! It's not depression, not despair, it. is. reality. We're not living in the world God created, but the false one we created, and where His creation comes through, it is in misery, conflict with our false one.
God, I wish I had the brains to explain better. I wish I could put my vision into your heads directly. It sounds like mere destruction - take down the money system, eliminate national governments, eradicate personal property, end the institution of "church" - but it's just . . . dismantling of a cage! What we didn't mean to create is what God keeps coming, again and again, to tell us to overthrow and we tame the message every single time. Jesus didn't mean money is bad, he meant it's bad if we don't do this, this, this. Wrong. Jesus didn't really mean He came to bring fire to the earth, he just meant that He was here to fix the system. Wrong.
And this is in every religion - the revolution is killed from inside. We cooperate. We get comfortable. We get nice, which is the horrible, demonic twisting of compassionate. It's summed up in the ever-popular Christian saying, "We're supposed to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable," always said from a position of comfort and smugness, never afflicting ourselves.
Life is suffering. Not a Buddhist truth, but Truth. Because we made this life, we can end the suffering, and we don't want to. We know there'll be death and loss, so we use that as an excuse, ignoring the death and loss that feeds the world. Even if we burned it all down and nothing grew from the ashes, what was lost? Yet, we are so in love with the hollow shell we've made, given it so much of our own life, we can't bear the thought of losing it.
You want to know what evil is? Serial killers, wars, terrorists, rapists - those are all distractions, the body of the True Creation making antibodies against true evil; true evil is mundane; it's what you and I do every day while we're living a "decent life."
Monday, August 16, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
A New Vision
Yesterday were the birth cries of a new understanding.
When things are going well - or, at least, allright - I forget that the world is fundamentally defective. I don't suffer, so I think of no others and their suffering.
I used to wonder how God was going to transform the world, while also ending it in an apocalyptic holocaust. Now, I know.
You see, this isn't the universe God created. This is a broken, hollow shell ruled over by a mad god - all created by us. God - the true God - gave us free will. With that free will, while we were still frightened children, we created this overlay. Once, I saw an icon of the Virgin. Over the years, Russian devotees had added gold and jewels, thinking they were honoring and beautifying something sacred, while they were actually simply destroying the beauty and simplicity of the icon itself. This is what humanity has done with free will, because mind is everything - it even allowed us to create a new god in our image, distant and insane, and we built all our religions around it. The true God, the One, shone through, again and again to overcome that tacky overlay, but we always managed to find a way to override the vision He gave. It was necessary, you see, because the free will allows us to see through our own hellish creation and become God, which was always the goal - theosis, the only true Communion and love.
The problem is we're just too good at it. We've made something that can't be dispersed. The world has to be destroyed, broken open, removed to show the actual Creation. Death is, in essence, the only true hope while the world we are in now persists. Nothing is actually lost in this death, as it is only a shell to begin with. Once this world burns, this nausea we've made tangible form, the True One will spring up from the ashes. The natural world reflects the damage we've done - animals fear us, plants, forests, entire landmasses are tortured, decaying, poisoned - because they are given a life that is not ours, and reflect the True World underneath, choked and tormented by our "creation."
It's not enough to change the structures of this planet, this world. It cannot be saved because it is inherently defective and destructive. Change the deck chairs, this Titanic is still sinking. The only hope is its death, and the only hope until then is our individual deaths. We are called, as parts of God, to bring the promised Kingdom, the restoration of Eden. We cannot do that in this physical world, so it must die.
That's where suffering is absolute necessity.
Suffering is the symptom of this diseased false world, spreading and choking the true one. Suffering is the key to break the world open, destroy it. We suffer, and it reminds us. But, it's not enough. Most humans are living at a level of fear and instinct, animalistic - though most animals are capable of greater thought and affection - and there are agents of entropy (evil is an archaic term, made meaningless through misuse) who manipulate them. Those of us who see through the "world" to true Creation are the evolutionary step up, the entropic ones a devolution, and the mindless mass between. We failed in believing that we can argue the mindless mass into reason. You don't take down the user, you take down the dealer. The entropic ones can't be given compassion - they cause suffering, and suffering must be reflected back to them in measure, and if that won't change them, they have to be gotten rid of. That's the only way. False "compassion" which says "Oh, no! Everyone has potential for goodness!" is true only in the world that their destruction will make way for. In this world, to tolerate them is to cooperate with them. The financiers (money truly is the root of all evil, or entropy), the power-brokers, the war-mongers, the homophobes, the racists - they have to go, and while they exist, this world becomes more set, more defined, and will eventually become the only one we can exist on, a devolved nightmare, cut off from God completely by our own choice and weakness. We will destroy this world and its entropic villains by showing it its own reflection.
It isn't that people suffer too much, it's that they haven't suffered enough. We must suffer, while this world lives, but we must make the entropic agents who cause suffering suffer equally. They take our livelihoods, we destroy theirs. They deny our marriages, we destroy theirs. Them and those who follow them, til, like mindless creatures, pain has taught them responsibility and discipline.
This is the exercise of Holy Will.
In the meantime, I've changed quotes to reflect what I know this "world" to be. Teilhard saw clearly, but he saw the world that can only be when this one and those who defend it are ashes.
When things are going well - or, at least, allright - I forget that the world is fundamentally defective. I don't suffer, so I think of no others and their suffering.
I used to wonder how God was going to transform the world, while also ending it in an apocalyptic holocaust. Now, I know.
You see, this isn't the universe God created. This is a broken, hollow shell ruled over by a mad god - all created by us. God - the true God - gave us free will. With that free will, while we were still frightened children, we created this overlay. Once, I saw an icon of the Virgin. Over the years, Russian devotees had added gold and jewels, thinking they were honoring and beautifying something sacred, while they were actually simply destroying the beauty and simplicity of the icon itself. This is what humanity has done with free will, because mind is everything - it even allowed us to create a new god in our image, distant and insane, and we built all our religions around it. The true God, the One, shone through, again and again to overcome that tacky overlay, but we always managed to find a way to override the vision He gave. It was necessary, you see, because the free will allows us to see through our own hellish creation and become God, which was always the goal - theosis, the only true Communion and love.
The problem is we're just too good at it. We've made something that can't be dispersed. The world has to be destroyed, broken open, removed to show the actual Creation. Death is, in essence, the only true hope while the world we are in now persists. Nothing is actually lost in this death, as it is only a shell to begin with. Once this world burns, this nausea we've made tangible form, the True One will spring up from the ashes. The natural world reflects the damage we've done - animals fear us, plants, forests, entire landmasses are tortured, decaying, poisoned - because they are given a life that is not ours, and reflect the True World underneath, choked and tormented by our "creation."
It's not enough to change the structures of this planet, this world. It cannot be saved because it is inherently defective and destructive. Change the deck chairs, this Titanic is still sinking. The only hope is its death, and the only hope until then is our individual deaths. We are called, as parts of God, to bring the promised Kingdom, the restoration of Eden. We cannot do that in this physical world, so it must die.
That's where suffering is absolute necessity.
Suffering is the symptom of this diseased false world, spreading and choking the true one. Suffering is the key to break the world open, destroy it. We suffer, and it reminds us. But, it's not enough. Most humans are living at a level of fear and instinct, animalistic - though most animals are capable of greater thought and affection - and there are agents of entropy (evil is an archaic term, made meaningless through misuse) who manipulate them. Those of us who see through the "world" to true Creation are the evolutionary step up, the entropic ones a devolution, and the mindless mass between. We failed in believing that we can argue the mindless mass into reason. You don't take down the user, you take down the dealer. The entropic ones can't be given compassion - they cause suffering, and suffering must be reflected back to them in measure, and if that won't change them, they have to be gotten rid of. That's the only way. False "compassion" which says "Oh, no! Everyone has potential for goodness!" is true only in the world that their destruction will make way for. In this world, to tolerate them is to cooperate with them. The financiers (money truly is the root of all evil, or entropy), the power-brokers, the war-mongers, the homophobes, the racists - they have to go, and while they exist, this world becomes more set, more defined, and will eventually become the only one we can exist on, a devolved nightmare, cut off from God completely by our own choice and weakness. We will destroy this world and its entropic villains by showing it its own reflection.
It isn't that people suffer too much, it's that they haven't suffered enough. We must suffer, while this world lives, but we must make the entropic agents who cause suffering suffer equally. They take our livelihoods, we destroy theirs. They deny our marriages, we destroy theirs. Them and those who follow them, til, like mindless creatures, pain has taught them responsibility and discipline.
This is the exercise of Holy Will.
In the meantime, I've changed quotes to reflect what I know this "world" to be. Teilhard saw clearly, but he saw the world that can only be when this one and those who defend it are ashes.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
There's Only So Much You Can Take
Thirty dollars a week.
That's not a whole lot to most folks, and to me, it may be the difference between making it and not making it - whatever that means. The second Administrative Wage Garnishment - aka, We're-the-government-and-banks-are-more-important-than-humans-garnishment - has gone through. I'm now bringing home ab0ut $200/wk. at best. I'm just screwed. Besides food and medical, there's the property tax in a state that gotten rid of the homeowners' exemption because the economy is bad - don't cut the governors' or the legislators' perks, get rid of the homeowners' exemption.
I felt bad, at first, for posting my misery again, but, then, I realized - it really doesn't matter because no one cares anyway - aside from Doxy, for who there is a very special place in Heaven, if we ever bring it about, and James, who's got a heart large enough to hold universes. Maybe they can't care, because I've been so stupid as to believe the world was other than a zero-sum game. Most people are comforted knowing someone else is suffering.
I'm already depressed and feeling sick. Maybe I knew what was coming on a subconscious level.
Am I suicidal? No. I can't do it, folks. Just can't. Wish I could! Really! But I'm not strong enough. The lesson of the past ten years that I have taken to heart is that life is not only meaningless, but valueless. The world is broken beyond repair, and no amount of savioring will save it. Now, some people are able to fool themselves that there is value and meaning and that it will, eventually, be allright. I envy them. I can't, but I simply can't overcome my own irrational fears for it to be over, either.
I look around and see a world in which compassion and self-sacrifice are merely lies. They are the only way forward, but they aren't real. I've had to come to the realization that they don't exist inside of me, either. I see a world in which those who've received charity or struggled to overcome evil, use it as a lever to inflict evil and suffering on others. I see a world in which fear is the true god, the only god, and its hynosis over mankind is complete - even me, though I'm a puppet who sees its strings. The sad thing is, what I see, I can't express to you, because I see holistically, and can't break it down to give you proofs of the creeping horror and eventual destruction that is mankind. We're all on the same funhouse slide to insanity, and I don't know how to warn you.
I still believe in God, strangely, but, right now, all I can believe is that He . . . It . . . is a blind idiot, spiralling out the cold, vast universe where a group of hairless apes tell themselves it will be allright, one day. If there is ever to be a brighter day, we have to make it - force it on this garbage heap. The world isn't fallen; this is what it was made to be. We have to hack away and crush down and fight for the beauty, the love, the good that is possible only by forcing our will on this creation. That's the world as I see it now.
So, pray for me.
Pray for a sudden fatal heart attack, a car noticed too late, a lightning bolt, a bullet . . . something quick and out of my control, fearful ape that I am. It's better than a long, slow, absurdly-hopeful torture. Oh, I know, you - if anyone sees this - will tell me there is hope, God loves me, all that beautiful humans' little golden book of fantasy - but, no. If He loved me, why make me like this? Why make me to suffer, especially if it's at the mercy of my own mind.
Pray for the end - that's salvation.
That's not a whole lot to most folks, and to me, it may be the difference between making it and not making it - whatever that means. The second Administrative Wage Garnishment - aka, We're-the-government-and-banks-are-more-important-than-humans-garnishment - has gone through. I'm now bringing home ab0ut $200/wk. at best. I'm just screwed. Besides food and medical, there's the property tax in a state that gotten rid of the homeowners' exemption because the economy is bad - don't cut the governors' or the legislators' perks, get rid of the homeowners' exemption.
I felt bad, at first, for posting my misery again, but, then, I realized - it really doesn't matter because no one cares anyway - aside from Doxy, for who there is a very special place in Heaven, if we ever bring it about, and James, who's got a heart large enough to hold universes. Maybe they can't care, because I've been so stupid as to believe the world was other than a zero-sum game. Most people are comforted knowing someone else is suffering.
I'm already depressed and feeling sick. Maybe I knew what was coming on a subconscious level.
Am I suicidal? No. I can't do it, folks. Just can't. Wish I could! Really! But I'm not strong enough. The lesson of the past ten years that I have taken to heart is that life is not only meaningless, but valueless. The world is broken beyond repair, and no amount of savioring will save it. Now, some people are able to fool themselves that there is value and meaning and that it will, eventually, be allright. I envy them. I can't, but I simply can't overcome my own irrational fears for it to be over, either.
I look around and see a world in which compassion and self-sacrifice are merely lies. They are the only way forward, but they aren't real. I've had to come to the realization that they don't exist inside of me, either. I see a world in which those who've received charity or struggled to overcome evil, use it as a lever to inflict evil and suffering on others. I see a world in which fear is the true god, the only god, and its hynosis over mankind is complete - even me, though I'm a puppet who sees its strings. The sad thing is, what I see, I can't express to you, because I see holistically, and can't break it down to give you proofs of the creeping horror and eventual destruction that is mankind. We're all on the same funhouse slide to insanity, and I don't know how to warn you.
I still believe in God, strangely, but, right now, all I can believe is that He . . . It . . . is a blind idiot, spiralling out the cold, vast universe where a group of hairless apes tell themselves it will be allright, one day. If there is ever to be a brighter day, we have to make it - force it on this garbage heap. The world isn't fallen; this is what it was made to be. We have to hack away and crush down and fight for the beauty, the love, the good that is possible only by forcing our will on this creation. That's the world as I see it now.
So, pray for me.
Pray for a sudden fatal heart attack, a car noticed too late, a lightning bolt, a bullet . . . something quick and out of my control, fearful ape that I am. It's better than a long, slow, absurdly-hopeful torture. Oh, I know, you - if anyone sees this - will tell me there is hope, God loves me, all that beautiful humans' little golden book of fantasy - but, no. If He loved me, why make me like this? Why make me to suffer, especially if it's at the mercy of my own mind.
Pray for the end - that's salvation.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Shu! The Rabbi is Speaking!
Niles Elliot Goldstein is the Rabbi Emeritus of the New Shul.
I believe his understanding of what makes effective worship communities is what I've been feeling and largely unable to articulate.
For Goldstein, the central part of being a worship community is community. This, I believe, is central and obvious in any Judeo-Christian-based religion. Our faith is based in community, yet we have become obsessed with cultic observance and administrative detail, forgetting that those were always only tools to focus the community. The denominations - indeed, the religions themselves - have become juggernauts rolling along with neither vision nor understanding.
If you doubt that, consider your gut response to this:
One thing that has become crystal clear to me is that men and women are looking for communities, not congregations. Most people care very little about denominational labels or theology. Some don’t even care about the institution of religion itself (I know some individuals who actually belong to two or more different congregations of different faiths and move with ease between their respective worship services and programs).
The remarkable thing is that the Rabbi understands this. It is the reality, but more than that, how can one be in community in a group, a community, that doesn't accept or understand them, without some desperate and hollow theological twisting-and-turning to show that, while not "accepting" them, they really do accept them! It's impossible!
Still, as Goldstein points out, the community approach will cause problems as it solves others:
If we can transform congregations into sanctuaries and safe havens, we can begin to offer the shelter that so many people yearn for but cannot seem to find. But then new questions will arise that we must confront:
•With less emphasis on prayer, study, and theology, and more on interpersonal connection and inclusivity, what is it exactly that our spiritual institutions stand for?
•Are we simply giving the people what they want, or are we holding fast to age-old values and principles?
•Is it possible to strike the proper balance between creating innovative projects and initiatives and conserving the traditional pillars of our rich and ancient faiths?
These are difficult questions that are appropriate for these difficult times. In an age of shocking religious extremism, how do we as religious leaders present our respective faith traditions as relevant, meaningful, purpose driven, even edgy?
I encourage you to read all of Goldstein's words. I believe he's on to something. Perhaps, we have to ask whether we want to grow our churches, or spread the good news of our faith, and whether they are rapidly becoming mutually exclusive.
I believe his understanding of what makes effective worship communities is what I've been feeling and largely unable to articulate.
For Goldstein, the central part of being a worship community is community. This, I believe, is central and obvious in any Judeo-Christian-based religion. Our faith is based in community, yet we have become obsessed with cultic observance and administrative detail, forgetting that those were always only tools to focus the community. The denominations - indeed, the religions themselves - have become juggernauts rolling along with neither vision nor understanding.
If you doubt that, consider your gut response to this:
One thing that has become crystal clear to me is that men and women are looking for communities, not congregations. Most people care very little about denominational labels or theology. Some don’t even care about the institution of religion itself (I know some individuals who actually belong to two or more different congregations of different faiths and move with ease between their respective worship services and programs).
The remarkable thing is that the Rabbi understands this. It is the reality, but more than that, how can one be in community in a group, a community, that doesn't accept or understand them, without some desperate and hollow theological twisting-and-turning to show that, while not "accepting" them, they really do accept them! It's impossible!
Still, as Goldstein points out, the community approach will cause problems as it solves others:
If we can transform congregations into sanctuaries and safe havens, we can begin to offer the shelter that so many people yearn for but cannot seem to find. But then new questions will arise that we must confront:
•With less emphasis on prayer, study, and theology, and more on interpersonal connection and inclusivity, what is it exactly that our spiritual institutions stand for?
•Are we simply giving the people what they want, or are we holding fast to age-old values and principles?
•Is it possible to strike the proper balance between creating innovative projects and initiatives and conserving the traditional pillars of our rich and ancient faiths?
These are difficult questions that are appropriate for these difficult times. In an age of shocking religious extremism, how do we as religious leaders present our respective faith traditions as relevant, meaningful, purpose driven, even edgy?
I encourage you to read all of Goldstein's words. I believe he's on to something. Perhaps, we have to ask whether we want to grow our churches, or spread the good news of our faith, and whether they are rapidly becoming mutually exclusive.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
It's One of *Those* Days
Maybe it's just sleep deprivation, but I really don't have a good feeling about the human race.
Seriously.
I know I can't do anything about it, so I'm just kind of in a low simmer at the general stupidity and inability to show any degree of compassion or even sympathy. Before you ask, no, there is no particular event that has triggered this.
Truthfully, the blundering cruel stupidity of the "orthodox" - and, for that matter, the Orthodox - christians is a problem for me, because they are so damned widespread. They have metasticized through the body of the whole human race, in every organ, vessel and nerve. Curing the patient will probably kill it. I fear them and their political counterparts. They are the slow death of humanity, and humanity's promise; devolution, the dark downward-spiral of Mankind. Christianity itself has become no more than a corrupt institution, supported by blind faith of it's adherents - not faith in God, mind you, but in the ephemeral concept "Christianity" which is expressed through some group of sleek, well-fed "shepherds" who are constantly failing and yet - seemingly mindlessly - deemed a necessary evil. While the disease of the conservative is a false piety and traditionalism that is merely a frightened ape trying to beat change to death with the nearest blunt object, the disease of the liberal is a realism that is actually simple laziness, characterized by the expression "Well, that's just how the world is!" The cold comfort is that, while I see this most clearly in Christianity, that is only because it is the religion in which I was raised; the same is true in every religio-political sphere.
I don't believe we'll last much longer. I suppose that should worry me, but I know the ones I love will always be with me. In fact, I hope we don't last much longer, because God's got to start over and let the precocious monkeys start again. Or not. Maybe we're just a step in the evolution, as the dinosaurs were before us. Whatever, I just don't see it ending well, but that it will be well when it's ended.
Seriously.
I know I can't do anything about it, so I'm just kind of in a low simmer at the general stupidity and inability to show any degree of compassion or even sympathy. Before you ask, no, there is no particular event that has triggered this.
Truthfully, the blundering cruel stupidity of the "orthodox" - and, for that matter, the Orthodox - christians is a problem for me, because they are so damned widespread. They have metasticized through the body of the whole human race, in every organ, vessel and nerve. Curing the patient will probably kill it. I fear them and their political counterparts. They are the slow death of humanity, and humanity's promise; devolution, the dark downward-spiral of Mankind. Christianity itself has become no more than a corrupt institution, supported by blind faith of it's adherents - not faith in God, mind you, but in the ephemeral concept "Christianity" which is expressed through some group of sleek, well-fed "shepherds" who are constantly failing and yet - seemingly mindlessly - deemed a necessary evil. While the disease of the conservative is a false piety and traditionalism that is merely a frightened ape trying to beat change to death with the nearest blunt object, the disease of the liberal is a realism that is actually simple laziness, characterized by the expression "Well, that's just how the world is!" The cold comfort is that, while I see this most clearly in Christianity, that is only because it is the religion in which I was raised; the same is true in every religio-political sphere.
I don't believe we'll last much longer. I suppose that should worry me, but I know the ones I love will always be with me. In fact, I hope we don't last much longer, because God's got to start over and let the precocious monkeys start again. Or not. Maybe we're just a step in the evolution, as the dinosaurs were before us. Whatever, I just don't see it ending well, but that it will be well when it's ended.
It's usually pretty bad when I start thinking she makes sense.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)