Friday, December 2, 2016

When You're Gone - the Cranberries






When You're Gone

Give it up
Hold on to love, that is what I do
Now that I've found you
And from above, everything's stinking
They're not around you
And in the night I could be helpless
I could be lonely slipping without you
And in the day, everything's complex
There's nothing simple when I'm not around you
But I miss you, when you're gone
That is what I do, hey baby, baby
It's hard to carry on, that is what I do, hey baby
Give it up
Hold on to my hands
I feel I'm sinking, sinking without you
And to my mind, everything's stinking
Stinking without you
And in the night I could be helpless
I could be lonely, slipping without you
Hold on to love, that is what I do
Now that I've found you
And from above, everything's stinking
They're not around you
And in the night I could be helpless
I could be lonely slipping without you
Hey baby
Songwriters: DOLORES MARY O'RIORDAN
© Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
For non-commercial use only.


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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

With Our Inner Peace


Give me inner peace to accept 

the things I cannot change 

and have no control over.

Give me the strength to change

those things that can be changed.

Along with the wisdom 

to understand the difference.
\\
With our inner peace, 

Strength. Courage.

Live we today seeking

our daily bread and means.

Reflections on our offenses

to others.

Letting go of the past.

With compassion,

forgive others who offend. 

And seek protection, shelter, 

from the general evil

of an imperfect world.


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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Thanksgiving - for what we are truly thankful.


You have to give to the pilgrims at the first thanksgiving feast. Eating at the Indians table, stealing their stone age technology to adapt in a hostile environment. Sitting there with their superior King James hateful Christianity, these religious deviates, these Puritans. Surviving and thanking their god for sending these Indian losers to them to use, abuse and eventually dispose of them, steal their land, culture, breath etc. A mighty god is the Christian god indeed. 

It would all have been a lot simpler if the Indians did not already live in balance with nature in the primitive pagan Stone Age, that they could have enslaved them like black men and women a little further south on the American geopgraphic landscape.

The black men and women from Africa may have been contaminated or tainted with aspects of the Iron and or Bronze Age. That once lost in a strange environment, a great deal of effort, generations lost, to orientate themselves after immediate survival in a distant harsh planet. That once you lose the Stone Age thing, you are on an uncharted roller coaster ride into the unknown of future history.

That the black folks can't talk English and don't understand numbers as in seven years for an indentured servant to serve for a ticket from the old world to start a new life. New life for white folks great. New life for Africans, an eternal nightmare.

Great that forever. Breeding people like animals all part of that same hateful King James Christianity brought here by the COE types with their written charters and stock owners back home that have to be taken care of first from any profits. And what of profit from enslaving dumb stupid Africans to meet the quarterly profit and bonuses of settlers in Virginia forever. 

That stealing is winning if you can get away with it and nobody can catch up to your crimes against ordinary people and or humanity. It is the backbone of the American way. Always has been. Always will be. No matter the fancy stuffing or window dressing. 

And of course, I am reminded of all this as I eat my pre-packaged pre-Thanksgiving dinner, a poor person's allotment in a rich land, in its black plastic institutionalized container at the local church which already has the basement filled tomorrow by appointment for the poor, allotted time at allotted table with a space age version of turkey, gravy, stuffing the consistency of stool and paper tasting reconstituted with water dehydrated potatoes. 

For what we are truly thankful, let us give thanks.  

LOL


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Monday, November 21, 2016

We will celebrate in the light again one day.






We will celebrate in the light again one day.


Out of this dark age of Bannon / Trump ignorance hiding that light now that we all seek. 



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Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Happy Celtic New Year – Year 157 A.D. (After Darwin)



Happy New Year.  Happy Celtic New Year.  It was the global New Year long before they moved it to January 1.

The world seems to be changing very quickly.  Arab Spring. Occupy Everywhere.  Out of Iraq soon? I’ll believe that when I see it. The great non-Depression.  Etc.

It is the Celtic New Year.  The traditional New Year before the Church of Constantine hijacked the date and turned it into the Feast of the Circumcision.  (Boy, what's that all about?) 

Anyway.  I am Areligionist, without religion and dogma.  It saves on the brain cells, avoiding too many brain games etc.

Of this, I am proud in my designating a proposed new global calendar system to reflect the reality of Darwin.  Even if On The Origins of the Species was first published on November 24, 1859, I am starting or setting in motion a Cultural Christian non-religious, non-dogmatic sacred tradition and merging Nov 24 with today Nov 1, a sacred day to me because I am a Celt, in this, the new New Year ‘s day of the year 152 A.D. (after Darwin).  Cute.


Organized religion seems to be obsolete in western culture. Schools, hospitals and government are mostly secular and here in the USA the separation of church and state has been the cornerstone law of this land for over two centuries.

It is not that God is dead in so much as ancient myths and logics are misunderstood and or incompatible with this modern age. In any case – God is God; man is religion.

I pray that all of Islam wakes up one day soon. I pray that it is able to think independently of the state and the evil fascist rulers controlling the local mosque. That awakening will be Islam’s Reformation and gift to the world. 

The harder the extremists of Islam and Christianity fight for a place at the table of a fascist rulers’ feast – the greater the awakening to moderates who do not want to be told what God wants. 

Who knows what God wants ? Only madmen!

The secular sunshine of tomorrow will shine on all cultures on all continents.

Other than that, my Cultural Christian Sensibility knows that in fifty years time – all of humanity will look at all things including God and religion as either “B.D” or “A.D.” – either “Before Darwin” or “After Darwin”. - - (April 29, 2009)

I have some New Year's Resolutions and will be devoting more time to some postponed projects.  I do not anticipate being so active on this blog in the near future.

Happy New Year.  Happy 157. 

Treasure (not bless) Darwin.

Samhain!


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Samhain - Happy Celtic New Year

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Tomb of Jesus - Shrine of Venus - Jerusalem


Stealing the Goddess – Temple of Venus Jerusalem



Discounting all the retro fitted stories of Saint Helena in her eighties digging up the true cross, intact, with accessories, nails, unrusted, three hundred years after Jesus supposedly used them, what you have left is an architectural monstrosity, exterior at least, of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 

This church covers the area both not only of the most sacred site in Christendom, the empty tomb of Jesus, but also the site of the crucifixion, and throw in a real tourist bonus, the actual tomb of Adam, the first man. 

There have been spotty repairs over the centuries after the earthquakes, fires, crusaders, etc. 

But the truth of the matter is that this holy place/tourist trap is so busy 24/7, nobody wants to close it down for even a day for a good washing let alone some serious repairs and restoration.

It is shared on the clock with three Christian sects, the Latin, the Orthodox and the Armenian Churches.  Fist fights break out regularly if the collection boxes are not turned over in time on a daily basis to the next time share owner.  Sweet Jesus Marie.

Can’t shut the cash cow down long enough to keep it from falling down on tourists one day when the centuries of spotty repairs will finally give way in some future earthquake. 

The story is that Helena, sparing no expense, tore down Hadrian’s temple of Venus to build a new shrine to her newly discovered Christian relics and burial spot on the very site of this former temple of Venus.  

And why is that? Because Hadrian, the god of gods of the Roman Empire was so jealous of the strength of the new Jewish Jesus god, he buried the site of his crucifixion and resurrection under dirt and built his temple of Venus over it to hide the Christian truth.  Yeah right. 

Truth be told, Helena's son Constantine was broke or close to it.  Spending his money on arms and being in constant warfare to keep his throne, what you have really IMHO is a recycled Temple of Venus, the round part of it at least, and with and by coincidence the tomb of Jesus in the exact center of Venus’s old ongoing never torn down temple.

And of course, Hadrian's Temple of Venus in Jerusalem was no doubt round, exotic and beautiful like Hadrian’s Pantheon in Rome and Hadrian’s, slightly smaller, Temple of Venus in Baalbek Lebanon. Hadrian it would seem liked to build, copy, rebuild and improve on designs he admired most in his personal obsession, megalomania, concerned with places of worship.

The rest of the present church is more or less a lean to hodge podge of styles hanging onto the old Temple of Venus, with a slapped together handyman process by crusaders and others, pasting back the pieces of the place after the latest earthquake or burned down by the local Muslim in charge to rid himself of an annoying tourist trap, eyesore, in the middle of his tranquil domain.  (Daily fist fitting among the monks over the collection boxes etc. –  Muslim tolerance can only go so far.)

There is an incident recorded in the early nineteenth century of four hundred pilgrims getting killing in one of these daily monk fests for Christ in Jerusalem.

Going back to budgets.  There is all this crap about digging out what Hadrian supposedly had hidden and replacing it with the basic part of the present structure.  But as I said earlier, I do not think that the money was there.  I also do not think that the creative spark and energy of the Roman Empire of two hundred years previously, under Hadrian, was still there.

(above) So called original plans of Saint Helena’s church or merely modified plans, add ons – basilica, courtyard - right, for a recycled Temple of Venus – left?


History, propaganda, has Constantine as some great force in the West.  I can see where his splitting his empire in two in terms of administration might have made sense.  But he was totally writing the west off. 

Only brute force, such as his army, was the only glue keeping the old empire together.  That and his, designer, centralized, under the command of the army, new religion. 


His building a new capital city in the east was merely building a lifeboat for those who could afford a first class ticket on the Titanic. 

Anyway, getting back to the surviving to this day, but occupied by a zombie worship cult, Temple of Venus in Jerusalem.

The present so called Sepulchre of Jesus, covered by a falling down garage like looking structure (can't shut the tourist cash cow down long enough to repair it), is probably, merely, the carved out stone pedestal of the old, long gone statue of the goddess Venus that once stood where Jesus never lay. 

The Orthodox Church celebrates the Dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on September 26 (Gregorian), the same date as the ancient Roman festival of Venus.  Some coincidence.  Right?




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Saturday, September 17, 2016

Rev. George Chalmers Richmond 1870-1938 -- Deposed Voice of Social Conscience at the end of the Gilded Age of Greed


[​IMG] 

[​IMG] Public Ledger 8 June 1915

This discovery of a remarkable Christian preacher, an Episcopalian most of the time, came when I posted an image of poor children playing in a cleared away precious space of ancient gravestones in a churchyard in lower Kensington, home to the poor then, for use as a playground. 

The local newspaper and many local newspapers were out to shame the city in spending more in taxes on public space, and along with other social engineers who were pushing for decent playing spots for children outside of Dickensian school buildings designed without schoolyards and the need in general for neighborhoods to have more breathing room (clean air) to relieve the general squalor of their lives.  

There are pictures of the city putting playgrounds under railroad viaducts around this time among other places to illustrate the needs and lack of living space in the teeming slums of Philly at the beginning of the twentieth century. The long term solution, a temporary fix was to dig up the bones of many ancient county graveyards in the 1950s and 1960s for living space in the inner city for playgrounds, supermarkets and parking lots at Universities, Temple in particular.

Back on the topic of the image of children playing in an unidentified playground - I posted on a Philly history forum and a native to the area as a youth questioned its exact location, which took a little bit of discussion and research among some forum members to determine that the labeling of the address not totally accurate and that the actual space was behind the St. John’s P.E. Church of the Northern Liberties there. 

Northern Liberties is the old legal geographic title, like “Badlands” (no law or order) north of the official Philadelphia city limits within the then unincorporated in contrast to a present day united city of Philadelphia County. It was there that the famous Know Nothing riots and or anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant riots in the 1840s took place.

An aside on history, those riots took place because the various public entities north of the city had no police force. That the local county deputy of the Northern Liberties called on Philadelphia City to send in cops to help with the social unrest, but the Northern Liberties had not paid its bill from the City for the last round of police aid, the City refused without pay and go, and thus a famous page of American and Philadelphia history gets labeled as anti-Catholic because a few Catholic churches got burned down in the riots along with a lot of other secular domestic real estate etc.

Image of the graveyard below.


 Graveyard - 3rd and Brown - Public Ledger 2 June 1917


Well one of the posters ran into what at first looked like a crackpot eccentric rector of this era who on his diaspora away from so-called east coast civilization managed to stir up a hornets nest in Politics in Wyoming with his bizarre attitudes of social justice in the gospels attributed to the ancient preacher Jesus. And this forum member posted an article from the NYT archives. 

Apparently, Rev. Richmond had quite a following having once been posted as a cleric in NYC among other places in his long and varied career. He seemed to be one of those truth tellers or prophets that Christianity no longer has any need of in the present modern day Wharton Global Spreadsheet corporate set up of global religion for profit Inc.

Upon further research, a good man, a real man, a mensch in the pulpit was got rid of by Bishop Rhinelander of the Pennsylvania Diocese as payback by Richmond’s many local and national rich enemies in exchange for Rhinelander's recent crony appointment to that office. (Thirty silver dimes?)


https://www.amazon.it/Richmond-Ecclesiastical-Trial-Charge-Triers/dp/1154559017

“Rev. George Chalmers Richmond Had Been Rector of Old St. John's Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, for six years, when in December, 1914, he was presented for trial ordered by Bishop Philip M. Rhinelander on fourteen charges .Ten of These related to matters connected with Mr. Richmond's conduct of the pastorate of St. John's, and four had to do with private and public criticism of Bishop Rhinelander in regard to His lack of interest in the Gospel Adapting to modern social and industrial problems .The great fact to be Noted is this, the man who originated the charges and engineered the presentment - Francis A. Lewis - was the Bishop's private counsel.Not a single member of Mr. Richmond's parish signed the presentment, and not a single member of any adjoining parish had anything to do with Bringing on the trial.In November, 1915, a verdict was rendered, the triers finding Mr. Richmond "guilty" on charges Those Relating to His criticism of the Bishop, but acquitting him on all the others.Also it might be Stated That the laymen who signed the presentment were personal friends of Francis A. Lewis, and testified on the stand That they signed at his request, without reading the original charges.Mr. Richmond was suspended from priestly functions for one year.Hardly had a verdict in the first trial Been given When Bishop Rhinelander (Francis A. Lewis being His private counsel) allowed Mr. Richmond to be presented for a second time trial on 140 charges, Which later were reduced to 126, Involving 46 issues of fact.Some of These charges were exceedingly foolish…”


Here some newspaper research etc. on this deposed cleric of Philly of ancient times at the tail end of the then age of greed in the fading before WWI, Gilded Age.


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Rev. George Chalmers Richmond Attacks Mayor Reyburn - Syracuse NY Post Standard 14 March 1910



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Rev. George Chalmers Richmond Attacks Decadence of Gould - Drexel Wedding NYC - Niagra Falls Gazette April 1910


Niagra Falls Gazette 25 April 1910





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Famous Sayings - Rev. George Chalmers Richmond - Brooklyn Daily Eagle 12 Aug 1911




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Rev. George Chalmers Richmond Attacks Racial Killing in Coatesville Pa. - Phila. Inquirer 21 August 1911


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Rev. George Chalmers Richmond's View of Remarriage after Divorce - John Jacob Astor IV - Mechanicville NY Saturday Evening Mercury 16 Sept 1911

 

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INQUIRER 15 JAN 1938



NEW YORK POST 15 JAN 1938


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Rev. George Chalmers Richmond 1870 -1938 -- Yale Alumni Obituary Record 1937-1938








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