Church vs. Facebook and Social Networks

There is a movie out about Facebook, “The Social Network”. If you know anything about Facebook you know it is a place where people hangout with “friends” on a computer and not necessarily in real life. Though photos of a party or two appear, this is the modern version of the town square for a lot of young people.


Don’t know is this electronic trend to know people on a tube will last. It seems to me that if you want to meet people, the best place still available is in a church setting and not just on a Sunday. Church is real. Facebook is a social blur. The pendulum may swing back and people may want to touch other people for real in person like the old fashioned way.

Church or churches if they still are open may be the place in the future for reality and a real true social network for many as they grow older and as they continue to be for many more to this day.

More excuse – Less abuse ?

Pope expresses sorrow for abuse

The pope has done his mandatory apology for institutional and personal failure in the ongoing breakdown of abuse in the church.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his "deep sorrow" Saturday for the child sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church, the first time he has publicly addressed the issue on his four-day trip to Britain.

"I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children, especially within the church and by her ministers," Benedict said during Mass at Westminster Cathedral. "Above all, I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes, along with my hope that the power of Christ's grace, his sacrifice of reconciliation, will bring deep healing and peace to their lives.

"I also acknowledge with you the shame and humiliation which all of us have suffered because of these sins; and I invite you to offer it to the Lord with trust that this chastisement will contribute to the healing of victims, the purification of the church, and the renewal of her age-old commitment to the education and care of young people.

The apology was made during his current trip to Scotland and England.

The circus continues.

Joe the Pope does England and Scotland

You don’t need a copy of the show business magazine Variety to know that Joe the Pope’s floating circus is about to arrive in Great Britain.


A trip that looked promising mining for women hating COE priest types has gotten down to the nitty gritty stuff of everyday life.

Remarks from Cardinal Kaspar comparing Britain to a third world country has seen him pardon himself out of the pope’s entourage.

Remarks about wearing crosses on British Airways and getting discriminated against coincides with talk of the so called aggressive Atheism breeding on British shores.

The pope should promise to get more info out about the Church’s abuse scandals.

There’s all sorts of goodies to give out and receive in the media in the next few days.

Pope's Visit

911 Again – Flawed Perfection

Remembrance is a good thing. But all this again and again 911 remembrance is a bit too much.




It has become a secular/religious orgy of death and not life. Three thousand died tragically yes. But millions more survived.



I am putting a ten year cap on all this mourning for the dead. The memorial for the dead is apparently on schedule to be opened in time for that tenth anniversary.



The new WTC is a bit bizarre, expensive and out of this world in terms of design.



It has not lived up to America’s best standards. And with people fighting a mosque center two blocks from the center of American construction Greed and awkward design – it completely baffles me.



Did the Arabs really win on 911 – NO



Has America lost it’s Christian way – I have to say YES.



War on Terror???



War on Moral Values – where are they America?



Time to stop pretending to rule the world. Time to bring all troops home.

The Koran and Burning the Book

There is a whole sense that banning or the burning of any book(s) is a bad thing.

Some yahoo in a shanty church in Florida is planning on burning the Koran on Saturday, anniversary date of the 911 attack on American soil by Saudi fundamentalists.

That no matter how you see it, burning the religious icon or religious content of a book cannot in any way destroy that religion.  Words are words.  Ideas trump words anyday.

History has shown us since the Reformation, no matter how many books you ban or burn, those books in one form or another survive the attack on them.

That the world is focused on one petty Christian fundamentalist preacher for his daring to burn another religion’s sacred scripture is an interesting thing. That insult across borders boils down to the intolerance of a few here there and everywhere and the ability to spoil things for the many.

Don’t know if preacher man will change his mind before Saturday but I fell certain that the solitary of politicians, generals, even the Vatican to not burn the Koran for any reason is solid ground for the concept of respect in a global sense being born right in front of our eyes.

Tea with God and Stephen Hawking

It is perhaps overflow from the British Press into the American MSM that makes this new Atheist movement among Brits with some science credentials seem like the Wittenburg bulletin board of our time.

Stephen Hawking says there's no creator God; the twitterverse reacts

But Thursday, the acclaimed physicist and mathematician shot to the top of the list--and not because of another hilarious wheelchair-bound appearance on The Simpsons. Hawking hit the news cycle because The Times of London excerpted his new book, The Grand Design, on Thursday. In the book, which releases this week from Bantam Press (and which, admittedly, I haven't read), Hawking concludes that a Creator is unnecessary for the universe to exist.

Is this news? Not really. Hawking has made it clear in the past that he's not religious, and his ex-wife, Jane, outed him as an atheist in her biography about their marriage. But Hawking has always been careful to delineate between religion and science, and his past writings seemed to have left open a window allowing for a God-like creator.

The Brits still dysfunctional sixty odd years after their Empire fell and still stuck with the Queen at Tea are off on a tangent about God and belief again.

Hawking, while toated for twenty odd years as an Einstein – ain’t.

Personal opinions, belief, science and a charged media should stand back and reflect. One momentary headline from a famous Brit personage changes nothing in the universe which is or is not created.

IT is.  (the Universe)

Amazing how the wonder of the U can be reduced to a pile of used wallpaper for the sake of publicity on one minor book.

Enya - Only Time

FYI - The Muslim Calendar

From Wikipedia:

The Islamic calendar or Muslim calendar or Hijri calendar is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim countries (concurrently with the Gregorian calendar), and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic holy days and festivals.

The first year was the year during which the emigration of the Islamic prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, known as the Hijra, occurred. Each numbered year is designated either H for Hijra or AH for the Latin anno Hegirae (in the year of the Hijra).

Being a purely lunar calendar, it is not synchronized with the seasons. With an annual drift of 11 or 12 days, the seasonal relation is repeated approximately each 33 Islamic years.

This is why Ramadan or the ninth month falls on different days each year a little bit looser than the Christian season of Lent also based on lunar calculations.

I would assume that the Gregorian calendar is used for global scales in Muslim countries. Seems a bit of a time warp but we in the west look at everything through different eyes sometimes.

Mosque - Definition

From the free on-line dictionary a definition for mosque and its origin.

A Muslim house of worship.

[French mosquée, from Old French mousquaie, from Old Italian moschea, from moscheta, from Old Spanish mezquita, from Arabic masjid; see masjid.]

Mosque is quite a European word and seems to have been in the language forever. Little strange wonder how the idea of a Muslim house of worship anywhere is an idea that offends people.

With empty churches for sale and the like, and a large immigration influx, the nation turns from Christian to multi ethnic and multi cultural and global.

FYI

Cordoba House - WTC - Columbia College - NYC

College and University is a place to broaden one’s knowledge of the diversity of the world in all its aspects.

Some American universities such as Harvard started out as places to study theology. While a degree in Theology at Harvard is a noteworthy thing, it does not say much about the individual that holds the degree.

Life is about Experience. The experience many had on 911 at the World Trade Center effected all of American culture including its thinking. While the theme behind 911 was anti-American, it was also anti- western Christian Culture. 911 began as a domestic American day. It ended as a day of global reflection.

The Cordoba House/Mosque complex in New York City to be built in an office tower structure of 13-15 stories sits exactly on part of the foundation stones of part of the original King’s College building – later to become Columbia University uptown. Literally, this is true.

It is rather fitting that a place, a Muslim culture place, be part of the world and or global culture and that it is to sit on a place dedicated to learning that goes back almost two hundred and fifty years. The beginnings of a Global Culture, of a new human race, I believe starts at the New World Trade Center rising from the ashes of the old.

So like the secular colleges of today, the Cordoba House/Mosque center will be a place of learning and broadening outlooks from the very narrow focus that began the day of 911. The end of that day sent us looking for many answers.

Sometimes the answers are right there in our midst. A mosque in downtown NYC is as natural as the wind as a place to be. And a place for cultural growth.

Tolerance. Learning. Diversity. Just a few global words to throw out there today.

Deepak Chopra on Cultural Christianity

Anne Rice’s few lines in Facebook has done a lot to make people think. Also, left many searching for new definitions in Spirituality.

Real belief is personal search for truth

Faith lingers, one way or another, in every society. For those who have given up on Christianity, there's a newly coined term, "cultural Christian," to describe the half-hearted believer or the timid atheist who doesn't want to be labeled as such. Unlike being pregnant or dead, which holds no middle ground, fence-sitting about God is so common that it might even be the majority position.

The question is whether being a cultural Christian, accepting the trappings of faith without the substance, is viable. Or must a person take stronger, more positive steps toward a different kind of spirituality?...

The teachings of Jesus are staggeringly difficult to carry out in practice, as anyone knows who has tried to turn the other cheek or loved his enemies. But if you approach Jesus as a guide to higher states of consciousness, which is what he meant by saying that the Kingdom of heaven is within, then being a cultural Christian could open the door to true transformation in body, mind, and soul.

Gandhi on Religion and Spiritualism

I am running into opinions about beliefs and believers and how the two exist, co-exist or do not blend together at all.

Gandhi said religion and spiritualism are distinct

According to my grandfather, M. K. Gandhi, religion and spiritualism are distinctly apart -- that is, it is possible to practice one without believing in the other. Religion, as it is commonly understood, is the practice of a set of rituals based on the interpretation made by human beings. Since we humans are imperfect, our interpretation too is imperfect.

On the other hand Spiritualism, according to him, is achieved when one comes to one's own understanding of the Power that we call God. When we truly accept all religions as simply different roads to the same destination and respect them all equally.

Ultimately whichever religious belief we may follow we are all going to the one destination. We call God by different names but that does not mean there are so many different Gods. There is only one God with many names and, according to Gandhi, God is not someone sitting in heaven but in the hearts of every being.

So it goes.

Anne Rice Continued...

Anne Rice Continued…

I am not a fan of the author but she is saying some really heart felt emotional statements about religion.

"When does a word (Christian) become unusable?" she asked. "When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?"…

Yesterday, the author reiterated that her faith in Christ was "central" to her life. "My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," she said. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become." Guardian UK, July 30, 2010, Alison Flood

Interesting fodder for thoughts in a faith that has so many sects that it seems sometimes not to be a coherent faith but more of a cultural label.

This follows my own thinking in that you should follow the teachings of Jesus first before you serve any other purpose including organized religion that sometimes only gives lip service to the words and meanings of Jesus.

More Etouffee - Anne Rice on Religion

An interesting quote from Anne Rice after her veiled slap at Catholicism (Christians?) in previous days.

Pick a new religion for ex-Catholic Anne Rice?

But maybe Catholic theology was less the problem for Rice that the very human institution, particularly the U.S. Bishops. Rice told the Associated Press:

She was troubled by the child abuse scandals in the church, and the church's defensive reaction, and by the ex-communication of Sister Margaret McBride, a nun and hospital administrator who had approved an abortion for a woman whose life was in danger...

I believed for a long time that the differences, the quarrels among Christians didn't matter a lot for the individual, that you live your life and stay out of it. But then I began to realize that it wasn't an easy thing to do... I came to the conclusion that if I didn't make this declaration, I was going to lose my mind.

It is hard in today’s 24/7 media sabe world to ignore the imperfections of man-made institutions such as the church.

Anne Rice, apparently felt uncomfortable being a card carrying member of a religious body. She should realize that as Jesus said of Peter – “Upon this rock, I build my church” that Peter the rock had many human flaws and so do all institutions.

It takes sometimes an almost mystical strength to see through to the heart of the matter and to the grace at the center of it all, seeing through to the Creator and the Creator’s plan.

Anne Rice - Heretic or Areligionist?

Author Anne Rice’s strange twist on belief, recently announced, is not an easy knot to untie.  Her brief return to Catholicism has turned her off to the whole Christianity title and religion thing.

Novelist Anne Rice ditches Christianity for Christ

Novelist Anne Rice says she's quit being a Christian but she's hanging on to Christ. She's just fed up with his followers.

The author, whose vampire books (i.e. Interview with a Vampire) were huge sellers long before Twilight and whose return to her childhood Catholicism dominated her more recent works, posted a series of comments on Facebook (confirmed by her publisher as authentic, according to Associated Press).

Is this author a heretic – wanting to follow Christ without being one of the followers of a religion and a rulebook?

Or is she now Areligionist – without religion? Believes in a higher power and does not want or need a rulebook religion.

Perhaps the true flaw in all or many religions is that every generation lays on perceptions that future generations do not understand or see. In other words, belief can be as individual as the individual themselves.

This all reminds me a bit of a quote from evangelist Brian McLaren.

I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts …Wikipedia

Congratulations - Good News of Miriam

The novel Good News of Miriam is being published on Kindle/Amazon.

Good News of Miriam

The novel, set in the Holy Land, is an alternative historical fiction of the life of Mary Magdalene.

WikiLeaks – “stateless organization”

An interesting article from the Guardian UK that shows the trail of how the WikiLeak organization first brought video, earlier this year of a US Apache Helicopter attack, to the public's attention, releasing it showing the death of a Reuters photographer and his driver as well as other civilians.

The video had it impact but WikiLeaks had no credibility as an organization. Its recent release of what are being called the Afghanistan war logs to overseas newspapers made it impossible for the US government to stop publication of these top secret documents.

There is a give and a take among its members within this organization at present that sprouts from hacker traditions and experiences. Julian Assange has published free software for the web, some of which and its encryptions can be used to protect whistle blowers. 

Why WikiLeaks turned to the press

Around the time that the video was released, hubris among the WikiLeakers was thick. In the New Yorker piece, we hear from a friend and supporter of Assange's, a Dutch hacker named Rop Gonggrijp, who smugly says that "we are not the press" and "the source is no longer dependent on finding a journalist who may or may not do something good with his document".

WikiLeaks is stateless (sounds very global) and suddenly a household word and concept. How long before it conforms to acceptable journalistic standards in its quest to make an impact on the modern mind and media? Being stateless at the moment has what impact on imitators down the road? Will these imitators be for the good or bad? Who is to say.

Wikileaks – Living in a Non-Secret World

Putting aside the recent revelations of a failing war in Afghanistan, the organization Wikileaks :

is an amorphous, international organization, based in Sweden, that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations, while preserving the anonymity of their sources. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press. The organization has stated it was founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.

Wikileaks states that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations."

Wikileaks went public in January 2007, when it first appeared on the Web. The site states that it was "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa". The creators of Wikileaks were unidentified as of January 2007, although it has been represented in public since January 2007 by non-anonymous speakers such as Julian Assange, who had described himself as a member of Wikileaks' advisory board and was later referred to as the "founder of Wikileaks". Source: Wikipedia ( no relation to Wikileaks )

Not since the “Pentagon Papers” got released during the Vietnam War has so much negative real information been dumped into the public sphere. It takes a free press in free countries to disseminate all this “secret” information. With close to a million people in the U.S. government priviledged to “Top Secret” information clearance, the Federal Government is a sieve. Anybody on the planet that wants the info can find it.

With the power of the computer, Internet and free press, there are no secrets left to be hidden in our growing global culture. The big task now is in getting governments to bend to logic and truth and to end wars that even Alexander the Great could not win.

A.S. – Age of the Secular - 1961

Looking as I do at two totally different things and finding a thought, I have decided that 1961 A.D., C.E. was the first year in the Age of the Secular in the Eastern United States.

I remember the beginning date/year of the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey. I visited there as a child on a Sunday no less, but after church. Cannot remember if the mall had officially opened yet or it was gearing up in its final stages of preparation.

It still had work to do on odds and ends of its interior. I remember plastic covers on a window of an unfinished store. One of the big anchor stores was Strawbridge and Clothier, stalwart pillar of the age old “carriage trade” in Philadelphia, where my aunt worked.

It would have been all grand to visit inside these stores but it was Sunday and no business was allowed as I remember in this new mall on this sacred Christian day.

That must have been the last time the stores in a Mall in America were closed on what is now considered a busy premier, weekend secular sales day – Sunday.

Cherry Hill Mall

Cherry Hill Mall opened on October 11, 1961. At the time, it was the largest mall in the nation and the first enclosed, climate-controlled mall in the Eastern United States.

People were strolling about looking at the new stores and the idea of an enclosed shopping space connecting stores simply fascinated everyone. The one lively thing in the whole open, not for sales, interior space was a huge Parrot in its giant cage on the walkway, sitting as something of a pet, showpiece or simply living piece of art and chewing on sunflower seeds. Rather a dull bird, white and gray, and limited language. Cutting edge entertainment at the time.


Funny how memory roles out in time.

The date of the Age of Secular depends on different people and different geographic places but my suggested start date on a timeline is 1961 – First Year A.S. - (zero) 0 A.S..

I cross reference this with the then in progress or upcoming Vatican Council around 1961. The Church was going one way and the rest of the capitalist world was headed into an entirely different direction. Bad/Good timing?

Globish World

There is a small amount of words used as a new working business English called Globish. Globish stands for global and English.

I saw this on PBS last night. Wikipedia is split between two branches of the new language.

Globish (Nerriere)

Globish is a subset of the English language formalized by Jean-Paul Nerriere. It uses a subset of standard English grammar, and a list of 1500 English words. According to Nerriere it is "not a language" in and of itself, but rather it is the common ground that non-native English speakers adopt in the context of international business.

And:

Globish (Gogate)

Globish is an artificial language created by the Indian Madhukar Gogate using the English language and simplifying it. It was presented to "Simplified Spelling Society" of Great Britain in 1998. According its creator, it can be considered an artificial dialect of the English language, proof of the possibility of simplification of orthography and pronunciation of standard English.

With a limited vocabulary of approximately 1500 words and many connected to business terms, the world has a crude common language. Don’t know if this is good or bad toward the global cultural model but it is step in that direction. But you get the idea. FYI.

A New Global Future Priced at $35

The idea is not new. It has industrial models to draw upon.

Potentially, the way the whole human race sees itself will have profound effects into the future. This modern adaption of the computer to put in every person on the planet’s hands triggers an immeasurable amount of possibilities.

Computers have freed us from useless labor and ripped the heart out of the West’s traditional middle classes. The ability to use some of the tasks listed below is a smell of the future. Why does this idea and concept happen in India and not China? Good question? I don’t know.

Certainly India’s new middle class will expand faster than China’s class system and its recent industrial progress? Friction or cooperation is on future political and economic menus?

Individuals will now have more opportunity to define themselves against a global norm of other peoples and cultures. Peoples and cultures in some areas will dissolve away into a Global category of all things human.

Is this part of Intelligent Design and or the chaos of evolution making new species?

India's $35 PC is the Future of Computing

The Indian prototype is impressive--especially at a $35 price point. The device runs on a variation of Linux. It has no internal storage, but it is capable of storing data on a memory card. It has a built in word processor, video conferencing capabilities, and--most importantly for a cloud-based workforce--a Web browser. Oh--it can also run on solar power.


At $35, the Indian tablet is virtually disposable--far exceeding the $100 laptop developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and used in the non-profit One Laptop One Child program. In fact, in many ways the $35 tablet also makes the $500 iPad seem significantly over-priced.

Jolie and Pitt get Serious about Religion

Is this a novel approach? It certainly is global in scope if you want your children to take a possible interest in religion. A famous couple is doing just that with their many children.

I do not normally post all of another’s article. But I found this story fascinating.

Jolie and Pitt get Serious about Religion

ANGELINA JOLIE and BRAD PITT encourage their six kids to show interest in all religions - but refuse to steer them towards any particular faith.                                             
The actress has revealed the family library is stocked with religious books and the couple never misses an opportunity to take the kids to places of worship all over the world.

Jolie tells Parade magazine, "Brad and I are raising our children to respect everyone. We have a bookshelf in the house that has the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, everything.

"We will take our children to church, temple, Buddhist ceremonies, Mosques, teaching them about all faiths. Whatever religion they choose, the choice will be theirs."

And the movie star insists religion is very important - because to some of the most desperate refugees she has met on her travels, it's the only thing they have left.

She adds, "I respect all religions. What I don't respect is when people use religion to attack others. I've met people across the world, in the middle of nowhere, who are just trying to survive and all they have is religion. In some way it helps them, and I wouldn't take it away from them." (KL/LAFR/MT)

Somethings you just do not expect but are sometimes pleasantly surprised by.

God is God is God

No matter what you name it or how you perceive it, God is God.

Speaking to an old friend, who had been in the hospital some time ago - She related the story about how some of her friends wanted to have their elders or ministers bless her in the hospital room.

Sounds innocent enough but first came blessings from Mormons, then from a Lutheran minister and finally from the Catholics. One nurse saw this and wondered why and how so many blessings from different groups.

Why was answered with the response about not wanting to disappoint friends and their good intentions.

How was answered with words that no matter what or how you call it – “God is God is God”.

God and Absolute Zero

It is so many degrees down to absolute zero 0-K that the universe operates on in terms of temperature. Zero Kelvin is something like -459F. At those temperatures there is little life and yet as evidence unfolds, life exists on all levels and in all dimensions of the universe.

Speaking of zero, going down to zero in life is a bit of a scary thought to me. Zero in language also communicates the absence of something. In fact, nothing.

So when going down to zero in talking about God and or religion, it is easy to eliminate religion, it is man made. But God and or the author of the universe is far from zero in any concept, scientific or mathematically. There is definitely something out there.

I am not aiming at Creative or Intelligent Design, the very terms cannot measure up to the sheer mystery of the concept of God.

It is difficult to think of God in the secular world that surrounds us. The opposite of western culture would be a theocracy and we been there, done that, and it does not work.

The human culture’s biggest task I think is to seek balance with an intelligent concept such as God, of laws, of morals, of tradition and balance them in the everyday world of living in the 24/7 world of today, of so-called reality.

Syria Bans The Veil

There would seem to be in some secular Muslim countries a global minimalist consensus existing that females should be treated with some level of equality with men. This, at least in the academic sense.

Syria bans face veils at universities

Female students wearing a full face veil will be barred from Syrian university campuses, the country's minister of higher education has said.

Ghiyath Barakat was reported to have said that the practice ran counter to the academic values and traditions of Syrian universities.

His ruling, published on the All4Syria website, was said to be in response to requests from students and parents.

The issue of full face veils has caused controversy in other countries.

While this is a small step, it is a step in the right direction for women’s rights somewhere in the middle between secular and fundamentalist Islamic nation state perspectives.

While the world will not change a great deal with this action at the universities in Syria, a secular Muslim country, it is the right start in recognizing something of a common global approach to interact with all the nations and cultures of the planet presently and into the future.