-
May the power above
Grant you a new year
a new start if needed
filled with many blessings.
Days come and go.
Blessings come and go.
Both can be sorely missed
When unnoticed or gone.
Keep in mind perspectives.
The need to live, work, play,
Reflect, construct, learn-
Take some time to pray.
We are not alone.
And yet we can be lonely.
Patience, courage, love,
Are virtues needed these days.
Touch nature and its beauties.
Bring the richness of creation
Into your daily living and drink
Freely of the waters of life.
Always remember,
Never forget,
Count your blessings
All of the time.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Prize is the Journey
Caroline Kennedy recently said that an event like 911 made her want to get more involved and have a more active part in the whole fabric of American life. Good for her.
Myself, looking back, I see how 911 poked a hole in my political view of the world. I also had to stand back and decide what I believed in terms of religion. The other side was using, misusing religion as an arm of some political agenda.
This blog, with its readers, has been an education. In terms of my spiritual progress, I have figured out at where I might be at this present time on the road of life.
Perhaps I am more a nineteenth century Unitarian in my private belief systems on more things than anything else. I elect to change my opinions and beliefs as I go along if I so choose. Nothing, like beliefs, in this modern age should be set in stone.
Heaven and hell are here upon this earth. Some of us are lucky enough or blessed to have a choice to seek the former.
I am not a religionist. I do not addicted to religion. I do recognize that religion has been part of the social glue for thousands of years. Secular functions have replaced many previous sacred functions in society. Where religion stands in the rest of the world is entirely different than the way it is going along in the United States.
I am a secularist. I believe in the separation of church and state. I am saddened that so few in America have a rich appreciation or knowledge of true or good religion practice. While I know the average evangelical is probably a good intentioned Christian, I also know that the road to an imagined hell is often paved with good intentions.
That to burn books, symbolically, or in reality, of science is the worst kind of fascism. That this wanting to return to an early nineteenth century mentality whereby the only book in town is a bible is a path that leads to the disasters and misused emotions that turn to anger, hate and days like 911.
I recently got some feedback that said that religion is very, very dead in Europe or at least the organized Christian form is quite dead. We in America do not know or taste and feel our European brothers’ and sisters’ culture unless we travel and experience from those travels. I have to travel more.
That the only energy in religion in Europe these days may ironically be Islam and of the faith of so many immigrants to that social political economic state.
Where religion goes I do not know. I am an anti-religionist. I have my private beliefs but think that in out global mindset, which is the future, the secular side of the equation blots out any or all religious calculations.
Luckily. I have enriched myself and I hope you too the reader by what I have said in writing this year. It has been an interesting year.
The journey is the prize. The prize is the journey. For those of you lucky enough to enjoy thinking, march on.
Myself, looking back, I see how 911 poked a hole in my political view of the world. I also had to stand back and decide what I believed in terms of religion. The other side was using, misusing religion as an arm of some political agenda.
This blog, with its readers, has been an education. In terms of my spiritual progress, I have figured out at where I might be at this present time on the road of life.
Perhaps I am more a nineteenth century Unitarian in my private belief systems on more things than anything else. I elect to change my opinions and beliefs as I go along if I so choose. Nothing, like beliefs, in this modern age should be set in stone.
Heaven and hell are here upon this earth. Some of us are lucky enough or blessed to have a choice to seek the former.
I am not a religionist. I do not addicted to religion. I do recognize that religion has been part of the social glue for thousands of years. Secular functions have replaced many previous sacred functions in society. Where religion stands in the rest of the world is entirely different than the way it is going along in the United States.
I am a secularist. I believe in the separation of church and state. I am saddened that so few in America have a rich appreciation or knowledge of true or good religion practice. While I know the average evangelical is probably a good intentioned Christian, I also know that the road to an imagined hell is often paved with good intentions.
That to burn books, symbolically, or in reality, of science is the worst kind of fascism. That this wanting to return to an early nineteenth century mentality whereby the only book in town is a bible is a path that leads to the disasters and misused emotions that turn to anger, hate and days like 911.
I recently got some feedback that said that religion is very, very dead in Europe or at least the organized Christian form is quite dead. We in America do not know or taste and feel our European brothers’ and sisters’ culture unless we travel and experience from those travels. I have to travel more.
That the only energy in religion in Europe these days may ironically be Islam and of the faith of so many immigrants to that social political economic state.
Where religion goes I do not know. I am an anti-religionist. I have my private beliefs but think that in out global mindset, which is the future, the secular side of the equation blots out any or all religious calculations.
Luckily. I have enriched myself and I hope you too the reader by what I have said in writing this year. It has been an interesting year.
The journey is the prize. The prize is the journey. For those of you lucky enough to enjoy thinking, march on.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Age of a Coming Rainbow
For forty years
I repeated the tape
I sat and saw TV -
shadows -
the human struggle
its rise and fall, on
black and white and
then color TV.
The rainbow was gray
on the little b & w TV
in the high school
music room (1968),
no music that day.
Only the echo of
thunder.
Those who would, could
move us - lead us
to a better place
their voices were stilled
- silent.
And the music teacher
procalimed "Gentlemen,
we are living in very
sick - sick country".
Rainbows of the human spirit
fled - ran - hid away
that day, not to be
seen since.
Oh color survived
but the techno rainbow
is not a child of nature.
Forty years of color TV.
Forty years of b & w
memories.
Gray silence gave way,
witness in fact, to a
rage of a man
not a sage of a man
with new (low) standards
of leadership met, set for
decades to come.
Rage on tapes,
still spewing hate,
rave on beady eyed man -
leader - the world survived
without you - Thank God!
But it was still
an age without rainbows until
the drought of the human heart
persuaded a cleansing rain
to descend here below.
And to some it might
seem a flood -
the people's age
to replace the corrupt
Age of the CEO.
Obama -
stands to be sworn in (2009).
Blessings upon us all
(we deserve them, earned them).
Forty years of no rainbows.
(Era sin arcos iris)
Gives way to great floods
("Et Grands Deluges"...)
of the human spirit.
Life giving water descend.
Purify a bygone age.
Arrive to announce
not a golden age
but a rainbow multi-colored
age of mankind. (dawning)
-
(My thanks for inspiration to Michel de N. Century One, Quatrains 17, 76)
Friday, December 12, 2008
Sede Vacante Temporis
I thought I was finished with this blog but something kept nagging at me. It was the concept of the Latin Mass in the R.C. church and Vatican II.
I thought that maybe if John XXIII was Pope and official head of the R.C. church (CEO) that he could have merely stated that a vernacular language Mass could have been used in any parish that asked permission of the local bishop to do so. The Pope of tradition is supposed to have power to do something like that. Ecumenical sentiments could have grown from local vines and worked its way up to major importance.
To most Protestants the Papacy ended in 1517 with Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. Not so. The priest Luther was petitioning, going through channels, with grievances against spiritual abuse. Rome was so corrupt that it went into bunker mode and has been in such ever since.
Luther was no saint and his Augsburg Confession is still half valid truth and in perspective it is half doubtful propaganda with time.
There is a movement in modern times that states that no Pope has in fact been a valid head of the church since 1958 and the death of Pius XII.
The Chair – the seat of Peter - is vacant to some.
A Latin term used by Catholics who think that the R.C. is in heretical freefall since the election of John XXIII and the calling for a church council Vatican II is sedevacantism – boy, what a mouth full.
This group of Catholics think that Vatican II was nothing more than a modernist Public Relations display and an invalid crutch to John XXIII to permit the vernacular language Mass or Common Service to flourish where it was wanted within the sacred body of Christ and or the church.
I do not think that on this point. I think that John XXIII was asking for an open council in which Protestant observers were invited to witness an opening of windows on faith to all Christians. He was asking for consensus from all his bishops.
John XXIII died at age 81 and the bureaucrats took over. Some think that this succeeding clique interpreted Vatican II and resulted in a cabalistic like bubble version of spirituality.
Alas, I am no longer in the R.C. Church but I think I am in grace to Christ and his message. I feel I can make these observations from a slight distance to the matter.
Sede Vancante Temporis.
The Chair is temporarily vacant.
I personally after much thought - think about the long drawn out death of John Paul II. I thought it vain and out of date. The man in ill health should have been able to retire to a cloistered environment and finish his days in privacy and with dignity. Instead he put his death and importance on display like a Rock Star/Modernist cultist personality.
What I say and I do not wish to sound fanatical is that if the R.C. Church elects bishops/cardinals past the age of 65, they are in fact admitting that this election is an honorary thing for some R.C. bureaucrats with good crony connections.
That if you use the modern realistic age bracket of 65 – 70 as an understood retirement age for most human beings – at 65, there has been 7 years of valid working aged years input to the bureaucratic job of pope since 1958.
That if you push the envelope of retirement age to the age of 70 – then in the fifty years since the death of Pope Pius XII, only sixteen odd years of able bodied adherence to a job description has been accomplished in the job description of Pope – Bishop of Rome.
Sede Vacante Temporis
The chair is a part time position for some (other than the totally honorary title guys).
The chair seems more like a honorary title and in a real sense – functioning like the out of touch, performing for the public, obsolete British Crown.
Once Vatican II came along and the Pope as a photograph came down off the wall or the Pope in your hand as a holy card disappeared - the whole office and concept of the centuries old function of the job changed forever. The office of pope no longer exists or functions in line with any true historic sense - it is now like a TV style illusion. It is a now primarily a modernist entity and function.
Interesting idea and or schism. Where does the R.C. church go from here on that one?
I thought that maybe if John XXIII was Pope and official head of the R.C. church (CEO) that he could have merely stated that a vernacular language Mass could have been used in any parish that asked permission of the local bishop to do so. The Pope of tradition is supposed to have power to do something like that. Ecumenical sentiments could have grown from local vines and worked its way up to major importance.
To most Protestants the Papacy ended in 1517 with Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. Not so. The priest Luther was petitioning, going through channels, with grievances against spiritual abuse. Rome was so corrupt that it went into bunker mode and has been in such ever since.
Luther was no saint and his Augsburg Confession is still half valid truth and in perspective it is half doubtful propaganda with time.
There is a movement in modern times that states that no Pope has in fact been a valid head of the church since 1958 and the death of Pius XII.
The Chair – the seat of Peter - is vacant to some.
A Latin term used by Catholics who think that the R.C. is in heretical freefall since the election of John XXIII and the calling for a church council Vatican II is sedevacantism – boy, what a mouth full.
This group of Catholics think that Vatican II was nothing more than a modernist Public Relations display and an invalid crutch to John XXIII to permit the vernacular language Mass or Common Service to flourish where it was wanted within the sacred body of Christ and or the church.
I do not think that on this point. I think that John XXIII was asking for an open council in which Protestant observers were invited to witness an opening of windows on faith to all Christians. He was asking for consensus from all his bishops.
John XXIII died at age 81 and the bureaucrats took over. Some think that this succeeding clique interpreted Vatican II and resulted in a cabalistic like bubble version of spirituality.
Alas, I am no longer in the R.C. Church but I think I am in grace to Christ and his message. I feel I can make these observations from a slight distance to the matter.
Sede Vancante Temporis.
The Chair is temporarily vacant.
I personally after much thought - think about the long drawn out death of John Paul II. I thought it vain and out of date. The man in ill health should have been able to retire to a cloistered environment and finish his days in privacy and with dignity. Instead he put his death and importance on display like a Rock Star/Modernist cultist personality.
What I say and I do not wish to sound fanatical is that if the R.C. Church elects bishops/cardinals past the age of 65, they are in fact admitting that this election is an honorary thing for some R.C. bureaucrats with good crony connections.
That if you use the modern realistic age bracket of 65 – 70 as an understood retirement age for most human beings – at 65, there has been 7 years of valid working aged years input to the bureaucratic job of pope since 1958.
That if you push the envelope of retirement age to the age of 70 – then in the fifty years since the death of Pope Pius XII, only sixteen odd years of able bodied adherence to a job description has been accomplished in the job description of Pope – Bishop of Rome.
Sede Vacante Temporis
The chair is a part time position for some (other than the totally honorary title guys).
The chair seems more like a honorary title and in a real sense – functioning like the out of touch, performing for the public, obsolete British Crown.
Once Vatican II came along and the Pope as a photograph came down off the wall or the Pope in your hand as a holy card disappeared - the whole office and concept of the centuries old function of the job changed forever. The office of pope no longer exists or functions in line with any true historic sense - it is now like a TV style illusion. It is a now primarily a modernist entity and function.
Interesting idea and or schism. Where does the R.C. church go from here on that one?
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