Nasty Jesus and the Jesus Sarcasm Seminar

"I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" (Gospel of Matthew 10:34)

I find it amazing how with all the Jesus Seminar type dissection of the New Testament in this decline or downside of historic Christianity that nobody has ever suggested that maybe some of the remarks, stories, parables were the hidden message of a radical revolutionary that said "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" (Gospel of Matthew 10:34).

Maybe there were hidden messages too in Saint Paul when he said to obey civil authority like maybe his jail keepers were standing over the fence listening to his courtyard conversations while he was under house arrest in Rome.

And maybe, just maybe, Jesus had a dark Yiddish (way before Yiddish) sense of humor when he said things like turn the other cheek or love your neighbor. Maybe he was being sarcastic in a number of times and places that memory and oral history does not accurately translate to us in the written word.

Maybe “turn your cheek” or “love your neighbor” was not always verbatim and literal for Holy Man/Revolutionary Jesus.

Though it is a relief to think that Jesus was more human and capable of hate towards the Romans and their stooges in the Temple crowd of lackey priests paid for by the Romans.

I ran into my friend Paul Erland’s story of Jesus and the demons and the swine (Mark 5:1-20) on Facebook.

Turning Swine into Water

Paul, who I would rate as a militant Agnostic is the person from which I originally heard the above Matthew quote in an essay. I also think I misread that essay and started this blog as a reaction. In a way, I like agnostics much better than bully atheists who seem to know it all and in particular, Hitchens, Rushdie, Dawkins come to mind.

Anyway, the passage of taking demons out of a man and putting them into pigs and then sending 2000 of them into the sea seems a passage that most pastors take literally in a modern age and totally skip any hatred that militant, nasty and possible hate filled Jesus had toward the Romans – the gang that eventually killed him.

Is there a Jesus Sarcasm Seminar going on anywhere I wonder??? Can I join?

Julia Sweeney - Boring Atheist?

She is touted as a comedian, considering her performances as a staff member on Saturday Night Live, and she definitely has the gift of the gab.

I sat through 3/4 of a movie “Letting Go of God” (2008) by Julia Sweeney on cable yesterday. Maybe it was the weather – the heat- that made me change the channel or was it the same old catholic school day stories? I wanted to hear an atheist’s point of view but only to a point.

Letting Go of God
 
It was a monologue stage production thing. One voice and so many stories and with a decidedly female “Chick Flick” attitude or spin on the subject matter.

Amidst a lot of interesting dissections of the Old and New Testament were interesting stories but really it was a deconstruction of Ms. Sweeney’s life and travels through religion, spirituality and into atheism.

In a way Atheism is Intelligent Design for non-believers. Atheism is boring. Boring like freshman high school chemistry, first period lab, with the lingering smell of ammonium sulfide embedded into the woodwork. The scientific approach to prove that there is no God is not science not unlike Intelligent Design and its weird science.

I worry sometimes when clichés become the facts or basis of facts in any conversation and with a ready audience ready to giggle and applaud on cue. Individuality and atheism seems to go hand in hand. That and a large income. A custom designed religion of nothing for the intelligent nobody. No name calling please.

Ms. Sweeney’s monologue droned on and on. Things I heard and agreed with. Things that only a non-believer believes.

Not my cup of tea. I do not recommend the flick except to doubters who want and need a long litany of middle class mediocre chuckles.

Non-Accountability – The American Disease?

I am looking at the news and the families of American servicemen killed in Kunar in 2008 are looking for an answer from the Pentagon as to why their sons died needlessly building an indefensible base. The Pentagon has charts and answers and one mother wanted to know why there is no accountability regarding this matter.

Priests can molest children indiscriminately worldwide for decades and there still is no measurable accountability regarding these matters.

Where and when on a timeline did Non-Accountability begin to have the edge over standards, common sense and become the moral pejorative?

Is this global? Is this local? When did cause and effect disappear from the laws the physics in the human realm of things? Is this the first thing MBAs get taught in school?

I do not know except to suspect that it is a sign of the collapse of civilization. The dam has broke so to speak and we a few miles down the canyon have not yet met the wall of water rushing toward us.

Islam’s New Market Share in the West

It has been almost a decade since the veil that surrounds America and its myopic walled in culture got a heavy dose of exposure from the outside world with the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.

New York City used to be a domestic American town. Manhattan in particular is now an international city competing with other international cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo, London. Lead towns on the globe in a global culture. America may be the premier military power but it is frayed around the edges in regards to education, infrastructure and spiritual enlightment.

The indirect cause of a great deal of global media exposure has given Islam a market share of the attention of what is going on internationally even if they stopped teaching geography decades ago and no doubt originating in a crooked Texas Book Deal. Texas? Books? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. JFK.

Anyway, now that Islam has market share on the eyelevel sales position in a religion/spiritual candy store, no big deal. One religion is as good or as bad as the next. No criticism intended here.

Christianity in a down turn needs a few good salesmen to maintain present market share. The percentage of market share held in the west in the past is not likely to be recaptured. Where is the next Saint Paul?

Religion and spirituality have been given a good long look at and quite frankly, it is time for some other global focus to begin. Perhaps the climate or energy would be a good global start of refocus for the human race of the future.

In terms of the various regional religions that go with geography, when in Rome, do as the Romans. Nobody has a monopoly on God and or the rightness of their personal or national beliefs.

The energy of the expansion of Islam into Europe and America and a flurry of frenzied Mosque building is a good thing. It wakes up the monks asleep at the bell towers of near deserted or empty churches not turned yet into quickie-marts or retail outlet stores.

The evil started at the WTC on 911 was wasted. The American people and the human race are good people. Political winds masked as Jesus or Mohammed have their times and places. Their times have moved on.

What next?

How much belief is belief enough?

Some religions keep adding things onto their long lists of rituals and beliefs. Some things may be necessary as a better explanation of things past but more likely another and another layer of belief is all what some religions eventually become - a warehouse of old ideas.

I am reminded about how the number of pieces of flatware in a bride to be’s hope chest grew to 146 items in the 1920’s. The burden of one more special fork for olives or sardines and the expense drove proposed legislation to limit the number of flatware pieces sold to 55 items. How many forks do you need? How many prayers do you need to try to be spiritual within a belief system? How much belief is belief enough?

Without predicting what a global world looks or feels like in 50 to 100 years in terms of religion, the likely book on the topic will come from someone stationed in space or on a lunar colony for a few years. That person will measure the practical of everyday faith of a mixed culture in the colony and measure it against the need of the three basic necessities of water, calories and oxygen. Perhaps in such an environment, God and or faith will be considered a fourth necessity or maybe even primal.

I have never seen any UFOs. Our culture against an advanced one is likely to lose from a technology point of view of any real encounters. From a human POV, maybe merging of ideas will only form wider avenues as pathways to enlightenment.

Perhaps we are too young since the last ice age to see or fathom that the stagnation of religions, or their real functions as yet undefined, over time is cyclical. That when we go beyond earth, carry our faith(s) with us and they polish themselves against other unknown as yet beliefs, maybe the simple faiths of earth will prove to be polished gems amidst the background of the universe.

The efforts some writers are making suddenly to live and let live and say that there can be little common ground to share or change the world through many religions, these efforts are perhaps a bit premature.

Conversational God in a Global Culture

As I no doubt repeat things in this blog that go to or evolve into a theme, one such theme is how we all do not talk the same talk.

That in terms of God, personal or other wise, or our perception of such, we all harken back to standard cardboard cutouts of what God should be, is, could be. Those cardboard cutouts can also be pasted onto storyboards for a planned theatrical play or movie of an idea.

To the point. God in conversation does not equal what each of us thinks or feels when the concept of the Deity is at hand. We have come a long road in terms of individualism over the centuries. Short of losing our personal freedoms or sense of such, we build a wall or a box around our own personal view of the universe.

God is in most cases not the real object of anger in atheists so much as it is hatred of some religion or bad religious experience that equated God with the religion.

God is God; man is religion.

In trying to express ourselves outward to the world and in trying to accept incoming expression from others, the cacophony of noise is like a Tower of Babel at times in terms of mutual understanding.

Now that God, one God is part of a Jewish view, welded to a Christian view, and coming together with a Muslim view of one God in the present and coming global common culture, we have to be aware of the difficulty it is to express what is inside ourselves and expect respect in return for our view from others, especially when what we say and think about God or religion does not easily gel with another’s concept of the same thing within themselves.

There is a need for a search for common ground. There is a need for an update of phrases and phraseology.

A surface culture, a conversational culture, a default culture around God centuries old and in many aspects both valid and at the same time obsolete surrounds us.

Best comparison is a foreign film with great acting, directing, good writing and a first rate translation in words below the screen. Verbal overlay translations don’t do it for me. If the film is French, it is French and I don’t want an American accent coming out of the mouths of the screen actors.

How we work toward a more uniform and loving global conversational God for all faiths and non-believers as well is just one challenge of living in a global culture.

Think about it.

Proposed Mosques

Whether seen or unseen, American immigrants usually bring their religious brand with them as culture. While Muslim is not a typical immigrant category except by religion, the uniqueness and difference from standard European Christian religions stands out when any immigrant brings their religion like Islam with them.

The Vietnamese come to mind. They were different in looks and they started to gather in clusters at various points around the United States after their Diaspora from Vietnam. Close to twenty three percent of Vietnamese Americans are Roman Catholic. It was not their religion that possibly made them stand out when they settled in a Midwestern town, it was their skin color.

News begets news and a Mega Mosque in Tennessee is now being plagued by protests. The mosque viewed above is proposed for Cologne Germany. Architecture worth looking at can house any religious belief system.

Small Town Residents Boycott 'Mega' Mosque

Several residents in the small community of Murfreesboro, Tenn., are outraged over plans to build what some are calling a "mega" mosque.


About 600 people recently crowded a county commission meeting at the Rutherford County Courthouse, urging officials to reject site plans for the mosque. Residents say the proposal for building the 52,000-square-foot center south of Murfreesboro was never put in a public notice.

"I think we're very disappointed in the fact that that you did not give us ample notice," one resident told city officials.

"I'm sorry. [Muslims] seem to be against everything that I believe in and so I don't want them necessarily in my neighborhood spreading that type of comments," Stan Whiteway, another mosque opponent, said.

In any case, mosques are here to stay. They are part of the great American Immigrant dream thing.

McChrystal Palin 2012

When an Army General has too much time on his hands, in other words he is not managing like 80% of the CEOs worldwide and in America, then he has time to sit around and chew the fat, and consider a run for Prez in 2012.  It is not like the American public knows the difference between a pig in a poke and a real general anymore!!!

Sarah Palin/Ketchup - Rand Paul/Mustard - and miracles

When you have a tea party you usually serve petite sandwiches already seasoned with butter etc.

A-mericans and tea partys are not the norm and they are more into barbecue.

As such I have made a mental note to discount anything Sarah Palin or her evil little twin brother Rand Paul says. Discounting cucumber sandwiches with moose burgers sounds about right. And the only logical condiment for moose burger is Ketchup or Mustard.

Am making a mental tweet to myself that Sarah is Ketchup and Rand is Mustard. It just makes any ludicrous thing they say to get attention a little easier to get down.

Sarah’s tweet on Sunday was world class and typical of her proposed management techniques if elected president.

Gulf disaster needs divine intervention as man's efforts have been futile. Gulf lawmakers designate today Day of Prayer for solution/miracle

Did a miracle happen and I missed it on Sunday???

Man-made disasters belong in the realm of mankind to resolve. Sarah isn’t even president and she is already blaming God for not coming through with a miracle to cover her lack of basic management skills. The best is yet to come with that twit and her tea party brother twat.

Half-assed Shahzad finally decides what he is???

I absolutely hate half-assed human beings who can build a half-assed bomb to kill hundreds of strangers in Times Square, spill his guts without even being “water boarded” and then get religion to justify and cover up the fucked actions of his short life.

Islam as a pale copy of Judeo Christianity – Monotheism Lite – and occupies a unique place in history. If you have a problem in Pakistan, you blame the Americans, kill the Americans and then don’t understand why Americans don’t give a shit about a secular/religion that doesn’t work on many levels that applauds violence exported to America.

The Dysfunctionality of Islam and exporting it abroad has its parallel in the Christian Crusades into the so-called Holy Land hundreds of years ago.

Times Square car bomb suspect pleads guilty in NYC

Calling himself a "Muslim soldier," a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing, saying his attack was the answer to "the U.S. terrorizing ... Muslim people."


Wearing a white skull cap, Faisal Shahzad entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan just days after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carried mandatory life prison sentences. He pleaded guilty to them all…

"It's a war. I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people" he said. "On behalf of that, I'm revenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their people but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."

I suspect he will be handed over in some hostage exchange in the near future. I suspect the Federal Government and the Oligarch Corporations running America into the ground are that weak now in world history. Look at it. Obama, Tony Hayward in charge and Half-Assed Muslim soldiers like Faisal Shahzad, we are all in danger of collateral damage of all their half-assed efforts these days.

Watch your back!

John Linton – Universalist Friend - Obituary

”John Linton did not believe that any single religion had a monopoly on truth.”

John Linton

For my friend John Linton, who has died aged 99, India – and especially Mahatma Gandhi – was a major influence. In 1978, convinced that no one religion has a monopoly of truth, and inspired by his experience in India of meetings in which Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians worshipped together in Quaker silence, he founded the Quaker Universalist Group.

I thought I would pass this along. It would seem that the Guardian Obit is the only one printed for this man. Other obits are copies or excerpts of that one obituary.

Not much detail. Devil in the detail you know. I saw it and sent it to a friend into Universalism. I knew of Quakerism and I knew of Universalism. I did not know that the chocolate got mixed with the peanut butter so to speak in the form of John Linton.

The creation of one more tangent religion merits little or no news these days. The most profound religion of the last four hundred years, Quakerism/Friends, saw the need in the form of John Linton to merge into the Universal religion of the future. A belief, one that truly includes if not dogma, the spirit of man, in the spirit of the moment and sharing in silence the spirit of the Universe with out and with in.

Rest in peace John Linton.

All Hail BP British Petroleum - a Living god!

(click on start, click on screen to enlarge image)

People of the Book - Jews, Christians, Muslims

“People of the Book” is a Muslim term to describe Judaism and Christianity and it is in reference to the OLD and NEW testaments.

In truth Muslims are also People of the Book which is the Koran, Quran or whatever flavor of the month English spelling it has lately.

The term came about in a time when Islam was still a verbal religion and before it had to be written down shortly after the death of Mohammed for fear that oral tradition would break down or disappear.

In this sense the People of the Book – Jews, Christians, Muslims share a possibly confusing term that is obsolete once you look at the facts.

Looking at the decline of Christianity in the west, I see the lack of reinforcement of the words and practices of the Book dying out. With the closing of my Catholic High in Philly, it is funny how they think that without grade schools, high schools, nuns, and a real, not a virtual, sense of community that it as a faith can survive. Faith cannot survive solely on the words, ink, of a bible or catechism that is hoped will one day to be revived during some decade in the future.

Christianity or parts of it are dead. Dead like the language Latin. The definition of a dead language is not that the original users are dead. The definition of death in a language occurs when no new words or meanings are rendered to the language. The language is no longer living or evolving in a positive direction.

In a sense you cannot mix apples with oranges in any accounting of things. If language is an apple then the written ink version of language transposed onto paper is an orange.

While the language is alive, the oral and written words are fruit. Once a culture dies, nothing in the translation of a dried up orange will ever give you the flavor of an apple.

The Nag Hammadi Gospels are only translations of words. The dynamics, energy of the original spoken word is lost in any present translation.

Peoples of the Book, Jews, Christians, Muslims may look at the dynamics or the number of new churches or mosques that get built at any time or in any place. Without a sense of community and a flow of growth in the belief system, People of the Book are just not alive. They are lost - without true community, true brotherhood and a shared hope of a better future for all the People of the Book.

It is not a matter to inspect the strength of the branches of the tree of life. It is the overall health of the tree of life that determines the health of the branches.

The global culture, the global reality puts a unique and as yet undefined essence into all religious faiths. That essence is how does it continue to be a living belief system of a system also recorded in a book - without being possibly dead like Latin at the same time.

God and other imaginary thoughts

Many believers in the Deity take on non-believers in debates that range in all sorts of the “intelligent” design arguments that goes something like – who do you think created all this?

Nature created all this I fear. And invention of toilet paper and flush toilets are not the ultimate intelligent proof of “God”.

Interesting thing about this whole “God” thing is how the Deists and the Theists have let a concept out there for three centuries in which God is distant (deism) or God is up front and in your face (theism). The universe or more accurately man’s perception of the universe is much more intense and diverse that it was three hundred years ago.

If the distant God of Deism of three hundred years ago was sitting on some obscure star in some church mural, he is now by default very much more close in the abundance of scientific knowledge pushing him in closer amidst all the other info in the scientific portfolio.

God if valid is no longer able to be distant in the modern world.

So too, God in your face and Theistic is a bit too much when you give God credit for all that “charmin”.

Which leaves me in the argument with anybody who wants me to believe in their personal god, I have to say that the concept of an unseen entity in our midst is plausible if only in our imagination. Which brings me to something quite silly. But let’s face it, somethings of our childhood linger on and one such thing is imagination.

Writing about English artist and poet William Blake a little while back made me realize how the simple, the imaginative, the creative, the real gets dragged and or beaten out of us in the phase and change from childhood to adulthood. Oh, the pity of it.

In any case, in any argument about the existence of a mono-theistic deity gets shrouded in my thought process because of my silent, good listening, childhood imaginary friend. What was his name? Oh yeah. I called him God.

arizona – Zonies out of Control!

Arizona is a right to work state. That means that you are not allowed to form a union to get livings wages. So, in truth, Arizona is a right to have no unions state that has nothing to do with workers or their (yuck!) rights.

After a searing immigration bill and a ethnic cleansing no ethnic history taught law, now the good rock hard white people of Arizona want to take citizenship away from the children born on American soil but who happen to also be the children of illegals.

This get all the hatred off your Deseret Constitution mindset is one born of frustration regarding the broken borders that the national government and the Versailles federal government has let slip for decades out of its control. No national energy policy, no immigration reform, no full reregulation of the banks sets the background noise as the people of Arizona attempt to make poor hateful laws to express both their frustrations, prejudices and their seeming lack of compassion to the rest of humanity outside "The Zone".

I lived and worked in the poor state of Arizona which seems to worship Conestoga wagon wheels more so than people not native to the harsh and bitter desert landscape. Something about bitter desert landscape and an eye for an eye that seems to go together like apple pie and ice cream but only out west in a mirage.

As a church eleder, I was witness to a Mexican couple who dropped their kid here on this side of the border and I saw them get a section 8 five bedroom house for the anchor baby and all its many brothers and sisters already in existence (and previously illegal). When I met these people they were simple, honest and hard working. After they got their Cadillac treatment from the welfare system, they lost more than just their souls in the process. Beware of winning the lottery.

The law proposed by Arizona is definitely unconstitional. Arizona is engaged in election years politicking to engage the masses and give bread and circus instead of good sound government. Jan Brewer will sell her soul to actually get elected to the office Governor instead of being the default Governor that inherited the job when the previous Governor went to Washington.

Glad I don’t live in Arizona anymore. The “Zonies” are out of control I think.

Avatar vs. Limited Visions of Warlords

Warlords reshape people, territory, wealth, and loyalties according to their vision of a more perfect world – more perfect because the warlord thinks himself  to have more total control which is a dillusion.

I finally got to see the movie Avatar and was bored. All the hype and it was just a blue tinted rerun of hundreds of cowboy and Indian movies I have seen all my life.

All the fearful rhetoric from the church about “pantheism” and the worship of nature was overstated. While nature is worth restudying and in some ways reconnecting to in this plastic present world, it will never return us to the awe and importance it had in the hearts of our ancestors.

Putting the movie aside, I jotted a few notes while watching it.

Can you imagine a new world that nature created in the form of Pandora?

A new exotic uncorrupted world. North America with its virgin forests back. Cut down a forest. Plant a farm. New plants, new foods, new insights.

Goddess. It must be something fearful in that name. Mention of a goddess brings fear into hearts of the man-made religion of the Roman Army. Lack of a penis is potential for a heart.

Eywa. Network of energy. Thought provoking for a brain dead humanity numbed by hundreds of channels of cable TV, cell phones, Blackberries, Ipads etc. etc. etc.

Borrowed energy. You have to give it back. Perhaps the church knows that it has borrowed energy from all the faithful through the ages and are at present not using that energy wisely. The contract, or covenant made with God is on shaky ground. In the past the faith ran itself and a few princes got fat on the results of hard work by those of the faith. Now the princes are all fat and corrupt and there seems to be more princes than faithful.

The movie Avatar’s script is simple, contrite, predicable – cliché. Cameron knows how to bake a good puff pastry.

It is not so much mono-god – one god, so much as it is one Warlord or mono-warlord (corporation) and his demand that you believe in his personal god (and quarterly statement).

A hostile place can also be a place of beauty. A sacred tree scares the shit of the church. It thought that it had burned all the forests down centuries ago in terms of the Celtic belief in such things centered around nature and trees.

Civilizations rise and fall. So too for blue people on distant planets. Better to die in battle than live a thousand generations trapped in the dream of the Warlord’s personal vision.

Better to have a vision of your own…

I suppose in the overall scheme of things, and on a timeline, mono-warlordism has been a way to unite tribes under one title or one faith. As the world shrinks I can only see conflict as the unique visions of the warlords Moses, Constantine and Mohammed try to gel together.

Better to be a frog on a lily pad than want to help various Mono-Theistic faiths find fictional common ground.

In the spirit of Avatar, this Unitarian type believer sees the simple faith of the Native Americans, and their forgotten culture as a good and simple belief system. It is right to thank animals that we eat, for their sacrifice. It is right to stay in balance and not take more than we need. And in the end a happy Hunting Ground to go to when we die.

Not much of a faith, but it is my vision that counts and not that of any unholy warlords whose ghosts still haunt our global culture.

Cordoba House - NYC - Mosque - Columbia College

Recalling memory of perhaps forty years past, I have to say one of the best basic cookbooks of all times on basic American cooking is the Settlement Cook Book. It’s recipes are derived from a cultural secular phenomenon called Settlement Houses that existed in the heyday of mass immigration into American culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Reading the various things being put out there, I go back to the concept of Cordoba House as a community center. I am reminded of the settlement movement, a secular movement in the 19th century both in England and the United States.

Having done some research on Islam, the Mosque as the center of a community is more secular a building than the west would treat a church as sacred. A church might have a community center but rarely do you see children in churches doing homework or reading, memorizing the bible.

The Mosque as community center and as planned in Cordoba House sounds more like an old-fashioned settlement house where someone like Eleanor Roosevelt did her Christian charity and taught some classes to the poor in a secular settlement house in the slums of NYC.

As the name suggests, in the American model, a settlement house that taught English, civics, hygiene, cooking and provided a gymnasium in the midst of crowded tenements, it, as a community center was also like an assimilation center for immigrants to ease into the American culture.

Cordoba house, especially for a fundamentalist or a Sufi specialty branch of study is perhaps a settlement house of sorts. The difference is that Islam is the center of community, secular like, structure?

Settlement houses went out of existence with the social safety net of government established and expanded over the decades. I have often thought that as in the case of influx of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, that an old-fashioned concept of a settlement house teaching English and American customs might be an old idea that would ease some tensions between the existing culture and the influx of a foreign culture(s).

There is now some credible evidence surfacing that the Proposed so-called World Trade Center mosque, Cordoba House will sit on approximately forty percent of the original land that was under the original Columbia College Building, now Columbia University, when it started in colonial times on what is now the street called Park Place in downtown Manhattan.

Columbia College Building 1857

Cordoba House being proposed on this historic American spot is perhaps a good marriage of the old native culture blending into the new secular global cultural still forming.

James Martin S.J. and The Colbert Report on Spirituality

CNN, which can’t get much ratings lately because it reads the news it prints on the Internet and the novelty of that has worn off, is trying something different in an articles about the so – called new SBNR (spiritual but not religious) movement taking shape globally and independent of any organized religion groups.

Like any news group aimed at a mainstream ratings approach, they start by quoting head up his ass Jesuit James Martin S.J.(society of Jesus) about all this personal blending of what fits personally and spiritually as “egotism”. Martin’s only claim to fame are a few books, talking on catholic radio and making a few appearances on Stephen Colbert’s faux news program.

But the article like the whole of spirituality and religiosity is not about him (thank God).

Are there dangers in being 'spiritual but not religious'?

"God and the devil were walking down a path one day when God spotted something sparkling by the side of the path. He picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand.

"Ah, Truth," he said.

"Here, give it to me," the devil said. "I'll organize it."

The above quote is from a Huffington Post blogger, BJ Gallagher, the Huffington Post for Christ’s sake, and wants to label this new movement of personal spirituality as “Burger King Spirituality” (have it your way). Everyone wants a piece of the action and to get credit for naming a movement with clichés they had nothing to do with including that of their own spirituality or lack of it.

I started this blog as the result of the insult of Joe the Pope’s visit to New York City in 2008 and his spin doctors throwing out their favorite insults to the masses such as “Cultural Catholic” or “Cafeteria Catholic”. Of course then, 2008, the Vatican and their PR spin doctors were still in control of the Pedophiles hidden under the Carpet deal.

What have you or your church done lately Joe to hug the average Christian???  Hugs are important to humanity believe it or not.  Jesus never mentioned hugs or did he?

Many people, of all recognizable faiths past, are searching and gleaning other faiths and beliefs, and picking the best things and merging them together in individual personal belief systems under the umbrealla concept of Spiritual and not Religious. Isn’t life and freedom and the new age dawning great!

Fundamentalists will wear the ink off the pages of the bible, their idol, rather than look up and live their lives in accordance with simple principles set out by Jesus. This hemming and hawing and wanting every period and comma to mean something puts too much nothing out of nothing into the world.

Father Martin ends in the last paragraph quoting with one word about how all the deep, sincere, prolonged search for spirituality is worthless and just basic “Laziness”. Only meal ticket religion and vested perks interest the Father Martins of this world and the hard work to get and horde those perks minus the human factor I fear.

When Catholic clerics waste eight years in the seminary worshiping their idol of the Catechism as a substitute for real living, real mistakes and real redemption, they miss the point and miss the boat in most critical junctions of life thereafter and into the hereafter.

Somewhere in the pea soup of Christianity is a cloudiness that defies present explanation and few should try to label it for the sake of a daily blog headline.

The future of spiritual man will reveal itself in time and purpose along the global timeline.

Hate and Prejudice in Prescott Arizona

Mural creates quite a stir in Prescott after artist is asked to lighten faces

PRESCOTT, AZ - Recent changes made to the colorful mural on the front of Miller Valley Elementary school have some in this town like Barbara Braswell turning every shade of angry.

"Do you see? Do you see where they tried to lighten that guy's face up there?," she asked her children.

"I think it's absolutely unbelievable. I think it's teaching our kids that racism is alright," Susan Griffin agreed.

Two months in the making, the mural depicts children escaping a crowded cityscape into more natural surroundings, but some in the city have taken exception to the colors in the mural.

Some have called for the colors of the children's skin to be changed. School board officials approached the artist, R.E. Wall, demanding they be lightened.

Hate is a strong word. Prejudice is real in Arizona and it not as simple and black and white. The so-called brown people which I feel is insulting to use but the term has not yet been banned to the wrong side of PC yet. For the native Mexican Americans in Arizona, many have been there many more generations than any recent white visitor or residents.

These brown people are the subject of discrimination and are under attack for merely being who they are, the children of God – perhaps not the one true white god – but legitimate children never the less.

I can remember listening to a co-worker well over a decade ago about how her son was an ace soccer player and how he got discouraged from participating in the all white soccer team at an exclusive Catholic high school in Tucson. I say exclusive in the money sense and not any class sense. White trash with money got more respect from the religious males and females that administered veiled hate and prejudice there like a lot of other institutions, parts and geographies around the country.

Prescott was one of many territorial capitals of Arizona. Barry Goldwater would announce every campaign for Senate and the Presidency on the steps of the old state capital building. It is north and high in the mountains and somewhat on the way to Flagstaff.

When talking racism in Arizona, Phoenix and Tucson are big cities and relatively cosmopolitan compared to Prescott which is part of the original Mormon territory of Deseret which I think they still plan to annex and secede with one day, no doubt in their dreams.

I guess that the recent anti-immigrant legislation let demons fly out of Pandora’s or I should say Robert E. Lee’s box. This recent sponsored by the lunatic cracker default governor Brewer legislation gives people the desire to keep the front door pure in that public display of white people only in murals reflecting the unrealistic bubble world of the tea baggers and their toxic Tea Party.

It is okay. I am glad that the liberal east coast media is outraged by this blatant racism in the fictional state of Deseret or one of its counties called Arizona.

The front door in the Global reality can be as pure as you want it to be. The true reality is that the Internet, DVDs, communications technologies are making the true world of the very near future a reality – and through the back door so to speak of our culture.

While the rednecks of Arizona are little different than the rednecks of Afghanistan or Pakistan, the new global reality is taking shape and it is about people first and foremost and the color of people have no color anymore in any common globalists’ eyes.

Jihad - Nazi - Anti-Semitic -- Banned Hate Words

It is time to remove little bits, words, of auxiliary verbal HATE from our language. To Ban then!

I am writing this off the cuff. I removed the Jihad from my earlier article about Cordoba House / Mosque in lower Manhattan.

There is a great FOX NEWS monitored or sponsored visual rally against the mosque this coming Sunday, a so-called Christian day of rest.

I have seen what amounts to hate literature regarding the building of this porposed mosque.

JIHAD is a Muslim Hate Word.

NAZI is an antichrist or derived from Western Christian culture Hate Word – hate word when used to describe anybody other than Nazis in the Press, Radio, or TV.

Anti-Semitic is used to throw at any non-Jew or real Jews (Self Hating supposedly) who disagree with the Military Junta that runs Israel.

ANTI-SEMITIC is the most abused phrase in the English language in it double usage – it’s original meaning and now its permanent political “shut up” meaning. Used to silence the protestors against the Military Junta running Israel and its despicable and inhumane foreign polity – it is used as a HATE WORD the majority of the time these sad days in human history.

These three hate words related to the three monotheistic religions must be banned for a few decades in order to move forward to a civilized global future of all the human race.

Amen. Amen. I say to you. Roadblocks to World Peace and roadblocks to genuine communications amongst the brothers and sisters of humanity will no longer be tolerated.

Sarah "spite fence" Palin - not a good neighbor

There is a local urban legend in Philly about the wall surrounding the infamous Girard College founded 1833. The boarding school, grades 1-12, originally for white male orphans has a twenty foot wall around it. The Civil Rights laws over time opened the school to all races and sexes.

If one looks at the wall and somebody says that the wall is twenty  feet high, it is one of those barroom bet things like a phrase in the bible and “Did Delilah cut Samson’s hair”? (She did not by the way. She had someone cut it for her.)

It’s a sucker bet if you take it. While only 10 feet of wall is visible above ground, another 10 feet is built underground. Why? The last will and testament of Stephen Girard, a rich French Pirate, stated that the wall around his orphan asylum was to be 20 feet high.

Architecture and good taste and a little bit of slack from the estate lawyers came up with the final 10 feet above and 10 feet below aesthetic solution.

So Sarah and Todd went mooseshit on Facebook about Joe McGinniss, their new next door neighbor, a famous and successful writer who goes to the heart of political matters as in The Selling of the President 1968, a best seller and now standard political science tome in most college courses to this day.

Apeshit happens. But before good taste or a level sober (do the Palins drink?-a lot?) attitude could set in about a new Neighbor, the Palins go gorrillashit over the situation. The Palins have extended their wooden fence facing the rental property up to 14 feet high.

Not that Joe is the real problem, the Palins were, are bad neighbors with the present owner of the rented house.

Palin's neighbor rented to author for revenge

(Newser) – As the Wasilla world turns: It seems Sarah Palin's next-door neighbor purposely rented her home to author Joe McGinniss because she wanted to exact some revenge. She "was renting her house and sought out the author because the Palins had crossed her (owed her money for renovations she had done at their request and never paid her for)," the author's son explains in an email, which Ben Smith shares on his Politico blog.

The American Poet Laureate Robert Frost said that “good fences make good neighbors”.

Jesus said “love thy neighbor”. Speaking of which Sarah religious affiliation on Wikipedia keeps changing. In 2006 she was Protestant, last year she was Pentecostal, now she is “non-denominational Christian”. Jeez, she is all over the board. In all deference to her, her Wikipedia site seems to be changed every fifteen minutes by herself or her tea bagger friends.

I have to wonder what metaphoric 14 feet of fence lie below ground for America’s favorite dysfunctional family, the Palins of Wasilla, Alaska and possibly representing anger, hate, fascist xenophobia, and dirty family Peyton Place secrets.

I know Joe McGinniss doesn’t need the bread and I doubt, as rumors have it, he went through their garbage looking for a used pamper as a piece of useful DNA evidence.

When the numbers $$$ start coming out about McGinniss’ book, I think the local truth of Trig will finally surface and in traditional hillbilly fashion we will all finally know if his brother is his father and we can finally identify the real birth mom.

In the meanwhile Joe, if anybody from the Palin compound bunker shows up with cookies and lemonade as a peace offering – RUN!