I gave the devil his due in my previous entry proclaiming Eckhart Tolle as a Secular Prophet. I did stop half way through The Power of Now to comment on what I thought was a brilliant rendition of what in all practical purposes was a new version of basic Buddhist philosophy.
Further research on the Internet has not revealed similar exorbitant praise from any Buddhists. Hint. Maybe it is not Buddhism Lite or Buddha Latte after all.
In a nutshell, The Power of Now is to block, discard, get rid of the past because it reaches to the future with expectations that cannot be fulfilled or make you happy. That unhappy future clouds or blocks you life energy in the present – the Now.
So your mental homework is to let go of the past and discard hope for the future and find your bliss in the Now. Wow. Whatever.
This secular prophet’s inner god in the Now is blind and narcissistic to an exponential power and not a reflection of a greater power in the Universe.
Now to Jesus. In the Power of Now there are at least a few dozen direct or indirect quotes or thoughts from the bible. All well and good. It falls into my loose definition realm of cultural Christian to mention and take lesson and wisdom from the fragmentary history and teachings of Jesus.
The dozen or so direct or indirect quotes of Jesus are all selectively presented, follow his party line, and are used to prove Tolle’s new makeshift philosophy. Talking about quoting things out of context. These quotes are mere footnotes to selling a new global con$ciou$ne$$ described by this self taught shaman.
I am reminded of Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and his fancy mumbo jumbo which IMO is an amalgam of Psychology, Sociology, chutzpah and basic old fashioned Dale Carnegie in the pursuit of streamlining business communication and success. Nothing succeeds like success in America or at least the appearance of such. Packaging is just as important as marketing in the American business sense and vision of things.
I started on the first page of A Earth and stopped at the end of the page. The first page tells the story of the first flower 114 million years ago. “…a crucial threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planet – if a perceiving consciousness had been there to witness it.”
NO perceiving consciousness??? Has Eckhart Covey-ed Buddhism and cultural Christianity into a new pure science of mind and in reality atheism?
I have read many comments from the fundies about Tolle. While I may sometimes enjoy seeing the fundamentalists upset, I have to give that devil its due.
Agnosticism, atheism, science does not have to masquerade under Tolle’s new world order of things pretending to be Buddhist Lite without the breathing exercises to give you a temporary high of extra oxygen received through your lungs.
Standing back from Tolle’s worldview about how the world would be better to forget the past and live only in the present and not worry about the future, I have this to say. That since The Power of Now was first published in 1999, the macro world of politics, economics and religion has imploded globally. In my opinion this collapse of standard classic practice in government, finance and beliefs has a lot to do with living in the Now and letting the past and future to go to hell for the sake of here and now.
I’ll stick with my yoga breathing exercise and cultural Christianity and pass on Eckhart Tolle’s “new” vision of the world and mankind in this world.
What the world needs now is individuals to love their neighbors. People should be embracing, hugging people locally, globally first, foremost and then secondly hugging a tree or two and not the other way around Eckhart.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Secular Prophet - Eckhart Tolle
I am not certain what to make of The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
I question anything especially if it is endorsed by a successful business person and marketing expert like Oprah.
I found the writing in the first part of the book brilliant if not pure genius. Is this “new age” philosophy a clever distillation of ancient eastern philosophies and religions?
For one who has tried to understand Buddhism, I have to agree with the critique below that this is a “re-working and synthesis of traditions” that makes for me, a greater understanding of the subject. I do not know if you have ever tried to understand Buddhism. Understood it or walked away. I do not know if anything else he is talking about will touch you.
Tolle’s words and writings and ideas are from a “feel” part of ourselves that is beyond words, writing and ideas. He has definitely tapped into that part of me. It is hard to describe why I am reacting this way to his writings in the first chapters of “The Power of Now”.
There is an energy in this work, a hidden energy of the mind – and perhaps too of the soul.
In all fairness to what I have read so far, I have slowed down half way through the book when Tolle puts Jesus under a prism of understanding or perception using his unique way of seeing things. A different perspective of Jesus and the concept of “Now” compared to certain lines of the gospels is interesting. I will comment further in the future if his Jesus measures up to my Cultural Christian view of the Man Jesus.
I do recommend the first part of the book. Too much to explain here in one simple blog. Perhaps ET is just another clever new age hack. Perhaps he is opening a door to understanding that the human race have been trying to fully open for thousands of years.
In the You Tube piece below, the first time around may sound like a lot of mumble jumbo even after having read what he is talking about. I better channeled into Tolle's reading and his ideas on the second view.
Perhaps you can do some Doctor Andrew Weil breathing exercises in between listens as I have done to get into the proper and new sense of the Now.
It makes me think that Jesus may not have communicated well to the average person in the street on the first round of parables to a crowd. Those in the first crowd that came back a second or a third time were perhaps the people he chose as apostles especially when he saw the light of understanding in their eyes.
Eckhart Tolle
Some critics characterize Tolle's books as unoriginal, or even derivative. A 2009 New York Times article said he is "hardly the first writer to tap into the American longing for meaning and success". Sara Nelson, the editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly said Tolle's writings have been successful due to surging public interest in books that tell you "how to be happier, how to live the life you want, how to be at peace, how to be a more successful human". In an article in The Observer, James Robinson called Tolle's writings "a mix of pseudo-science, New Age philosophy, and teaching borrowed from established religions".
Others praise his re-working and synthesis of traditions: Professor and author William Bloom wrote that "Tolle is offering a very contemporary synthesis of Eastern spiritual teaching, which is normally so clothed in arcane language that it is incomprehensible" thereby providing "a valuable perspective on Western culture". Publisher Judith Kendra says, "The ideas [that Tolle is] talking about have been in existence for thousands of years in both Eastern texts and with the great Western mystics, but he's able to make them understandable".
Monday, February 7, 2011
Day of Rage in Tucson Arizona
I lived and worked in Tucson Arizona for close to eight years back in the 1990s. I worked for a short time, 100 yards down the road from the recent mass murders there that involved the shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of the U.S. Congress.
As stated I worked down the road from the Safeway and its parking lot, the scene of this recent American-style tragedy. I even ate lunch a few times in a food court setting in the front of the supermarket way back when.
I researched this matter of the shootings that took the life of a nine year old girl among others. The date is January 8, 2011. Seems like two months ago instead of one month to me. Time seems to be compressed sometimes concerning memory.
I had written an account of the attack on Rep. Giffords Tucson office at the end of the debate and vote on Health Care Reform last year. The attack in the middle of the night and broken glass brought to mind the terrible tragedy of Kristallnacht in Nazi controlled Germany in November 1938 against Jews in the population. I made reference to that event because Ms. Giffords is Jewish.
Kristallnacht – Tucson - USA
The apparently troubled young man who did the shootings and these murders seems to have bought into a uniquely American style of settling arguments or supplementing mental disorders with guns.
Because I had been in this place in Tucson and knew its layout I did not write anything or comment until now. I felt the tragedy in a personal sense having a shared experience of the geography with the victims. I should also note that it took me five years to finally write down my experiences of the 911 tragedy here in NYC.
No Guarantee of Tomorrow
I also wanted to turn a corner in this blog whereby I did not want to poll parrot the party line coming out of the media. The media turns on cable and cable turns on the middle class who can afford it. The media rightly or wrongly from left or from right seems to feed on the energy of rage both in content and filler. I need to and we all need to as well step back from the edge of that rage that permeates our complex modern society.
Rage is not only a middle class thing but perhaps a middle aged thing. It comes from the disappointment from expectations not fulfilled. It comes from recognizing the disappointment from the perspective of age and or wisdom from life experience.
I do not want to merely echo the media and its sounds of fury.
Now a month later I can look and see how death by random acts of violence is fed by rage and guns.
I do not object to hunters having rifles in their homes with or without permits. I do object to weapons of war with high capacity discharge being sold in America. They are not necessary in a civilized society.
I think that licensing handguns within the confines of city limits is the right of the well being of the population of that densely populated city to assure protection from violence and violent mental illness spilling into the streets and onto the parking lots of America.
I am not advocating repeal of the second amendment’s right to bear arms. I am trying to find common grounds with all parties to seek a solution to too much gun power in America and to too many guns.
The days of the wilderness are long gone. The days of conflict with the native Indian population are long gone. In the twenty first century, a fetish for guns and gun power is a bit outdated and obsessive. It speaks of the breakdown of community and loss of civility in our society.
The gun lobby and the media lobby both seem to be catering to keeping the rage up to sell their products. Whatever.
I am glad that Representative Giffords survived and may well have a normal life returned to her after much therapy.
Prayers for the victims and their families in Tucson. Prayers for the perpetrators, both the lobbyists of hate and rage, as well as for the disturbed young man who committed this crime.
Monday, January 17, 2011
This Cultural Christian - Best of 2010
This Cultural Christian - Best of 2010
Quaker Cross - a Symbol for Compassion?
Who will be the next Pope?
John Boehner - a Man of Color
Pew Forum Test on Religion
Death of Civility in America - MSM
In the Shadow of the Kaaba – 130 Liberty Street NYC
Of all the articles in last year’s:
Only one article from 2009 shows up on this year’s Best of 2010, which is Death of Civility in America
It should be noted that last year’s Best Of List was chosen per my own personal tastes.
This year’s listing of the past year’s Best has been chosen in numerical order and per tastes of readers, assembled from Stats on Google’s Blogger table.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Prayer for a New Day and a New Year
Prayer for a New Day and a New Year
Heavenly Mother, heavenly Father,
Holy and blessed is your true name.
We pray for your reign of peace to come,
We pray that your good will be done,
Let heaven and earth become one.
Give us this day the bread we need,
Give it to those who have none.
Let forgiveness flow like a river through us,
From each one to each one to each one.
Lead us to holy innocence
Beyond the evil of our days,
Come swiftly Mother, Father, come!
For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy---
Forever your Name is All in One.
(Parker Palmer, Quaker writer and teacher, Wisconsin)
Heavenly Mother, heavenly Father,
Holy and blessed is your true name.
We pray for your reign of peace to come,
We pray that your good will be done,
Let heaven and earth become one.
Give us this day the bread we need,
Give it to those who have none.
Let forgiveness flow like a river through us,
From each one to each one to each one.
Lead us to holy innocence
Beyond the evil of our days,
Come swiftly Mother, Father, come!
For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy---
Forever your Name is All in One.
(Parker Palmer, Quaker writer and teacher, Wisconsin)
Sunday, November 28, 2010
HDGF – How does God feel? – Climate Change - Cancun
Adam and Ever were the first humans with God given souls or so I was taught in a relaxed modern RC way of looking at ancient history, literature and dogma.
In a way the story of Adam and Eve, not appreciating what was given to them, is a story that describes mankind to this day.
God created a beautiful, intricate world and mankind is only lately content to harm and destroy it. Climate change would cost money and even beyond that make some abandon the extremes of greed, and ignorance attached to blatant greed, all over the planet.
One only has to see the pollution cloud constantly over some major cities on this planet to know that progress has its price. To step back and try to imagine as God imagined a pristine world, one knows that God, against his better judgment, created man and let him have, by default, dominion over this planet.
There is a saying these days in mod language WWJD – What would Jesus Do? Well I have been thinking too much and HDGF – How does God Feel? – about what man has done and is doing to harm the environment of this gift to the human race.
I think that God feels sad about at least part of the bargain in his creation of the human race, through evolution, within the framework of his greater creation plan for the universe and not just earth.
There is a hidden clause in the contract of this whole creation thing and man in relation to God and his planet. That clause is that you only get one planet and once you use it up – the intelligent design of the whole matter is that mankind, in spite of a kind gesture of a living creating God, becomes extinct.
Intelligent design is common sense to some and should be looked at with a lot more intricate side effects than wishful bible thumping thinking. Don’t expect miracles along with mythical raptures to clean up this dirty planet any time soon.
Some religions preach a middle way. This middle way is supposed to not reach to extremes of belief one way or another. Extremes also apply to practices.
As I observe the secular American world, I have to say that a middle way is not visible. The extremes of Secularism or throwing out the rule book by those who should have known better is what has brought our economy to great waste.
Rather than point fingers, I have to say that a godless adherence to the goodness of greed is what we in America suffer from - too much extreme secularism at the moment. Being your brother’s keeper is not considered very often on a micro or macro level these days. The secular myth destroys the sacred myth time and time again in practice.
Economic bubbles popping may slowdown the human race’s sprint to self destruction. Which bubble next to pop – Gold and precious metals once corporations start “investing”? Perhaps there is a silver lining to this present “great recession”.
What I keep coming back to is the fact that no banker or mortgage finance company higher up has ever sat through the process of making an old fashioned mortgage, its paperwork, from inception to closing. This is one of the core reasons for the present economic meltdown worldwide – a dependence on note paper that is not even kept in the original mortgage file anymore so to speak. The servicers of loans have outsourced clerical oversight overseas on this one as well and all to save human scale costs and boost bonuses – greed – greed- greed.
As a person who use to loan process and all the way to close with a title company, I cannot believe any of these turd bankers have a clue. The back office has been outsourced to Asia and the front office has nothing better to do but get drunk on greed while Rome burns.
Greed Yes. Incompetence Yes. But where does this mess finally play out. Slowly over a decade or does this thing unravel more quickly. And beyond that is the environment that cannot sustain us forever if we choose to ignore common moral sense in the management of this world.
These big bank bandaid solutions in Greece, Ireland, Portugal are only time killers and not solutions. They are only indications of a half assed approach to common sense or secularized versions of right and wrong in everyday living. A balanced budget, a middle way, should be a moral budget in the scheme of things. There is a place for sacred and or moral approaches to secular problems.
The danger of more bubbles bursting in the speculative investment world are nothing compared to the great plagues and ultimate destruction of our planet that is supposed to be prophesized here and there in sacred literature and dogmatic myth. Mankind in its enlightened position can change the equation dramatically when necessary. It is possible to change a negative future into more things positive.
We are what me make. We are what we are able to keep of the bounty of nature. Nature seems to be tired and worn out. A current climate change conference in Mexico is not likely to change any government or corporation’s mind about how we should treat the environment in order to keep it a sustainable life giving force to humanity.
One can pray and ask God to put men and women of courage into public office. Like I said miracles are not likely to happen soon in our extremes of the need for proper caretaking of this earth.
In the end of the old story, Adam and Eve are thrown out of Paradise for not thinking, for not obeying a rule book, for ignoring their situational common sense. God was perhaps not unreasonable for creating free will and testing it. From the beginning, He knew that the human experiment was just a crap shoot. He seems to be something of a gambler and the stakes are always high.
But hey, He is God and He has a plan. Hopefully the children of earth wake up soon and decide on a middle way between the extremes of Secularism and Religion and recreate the world in the image of God – betting too on what He saw as our potential and not what He undoubtedly knew were our failings.
In a way the story of Adam and Eve, not appreciating what was given to them, is a story that describes mankind to this day.
God created a beautiful, intricate world and mankind is only lately content to harm and destroy it. Climate change would cost money and even beyond that make some abandon the extremes of greed, and ignorance attached to blatant greed, all over the planet.
One only has to see the pollution cloud constantly over some major cities on this planet to know that progress has its price. To step back and try to imagine as God imagined a pristine world, one knows that God, against his better judgment, created man and let him have, by default, dominion over this planet.
There is a saying these days in mod language WWJD – What would Jesus Do? Well I have been thinking too much and HDGF – How does God Feel? – about what man has done and is doing to harm the environment of this gift to the human race.
I think that God feels sad about at least part of the bargain in his creation of the human race, through evolution, within the framework of his greater creation plan for the universe and not just earth.
There is a hidden clause in the contract of this whole creation thing and man in relation to God and his planet. That clause is that you only get one planet and once you use it up – the intelligent design of the whole matter is that mankind, in spite of a kind gesture of a living creating God, becomes extinct.
Intelligent design is common sense to some and should be looked at with a lot more intricate side effects than wishful bible thumping thinking. Don’t expect miracles along with mythical raptures to clean up this dirty planet any time soon.
Some religions preach a middle way. This middle way is supposed to not reach to extremes of belief one way or another. Extremes also apply to practices.
As I observe the secular American world, I have to say that a middle way is not visible. The extremes of Secularism or throwing out the rule book by those who should have known better is what has brought our economy to great waste.
Rather than point fingers, I have to say that a godless adherence to the goodness of greed is what we in America suffer from - too much extreme secularism at the moment. Being your brother’s keeper is not considered very often on a micro or macro level these days. The secular myth destroys the sacred myth time and time again in practice.
Economic bubbles popping may slowdown the human race’s sprint to self destruction. Which bubble next to pop – Gold and precious metals once corporations start “investing”? Perhaps there is a silver lining to this present “great recession”.
What I keep coming back to is the fact that no banker or mortgage finance company higher up has ever sat through the process of making an old fashioned mortgage, its paperwork, from inception to closing. This is one of the core reasons for the present economic meltdown worldwide – a dependence on note paper that is not even kept in the original mortgage file anymore so to speak. The servicers of loans have outsourced clerical oversight overseas on this one as well and all to save human scale costs and boost bonuses – greed – greed- greed.
As a person who use to loan process and all the way to close with a title company, I cannot believe any of these turd bankers have a clue. The back office has been outsourced to Asia and the front office has nothing better to do but get drunk on greed while Rome burns.
Greed Yes. Incompetence Yes. But where does this mess finally play out. Slowly over a decade or does this thing unravel more quickly. And beyond that is the environment that cannot sustain us forever if we choose to ignore common moral sense in the management of this world.
These big bank bandaid solutions in Greece, Ireland, Portugal are only time killers and not solutions. They are only indications of a half assed approach to common sense or secularized versions of right and wrong in everyday living. A balanced budget, a middle way, should be a moral budget in the scheme of things. There is a place for sacred and or moral approaches to secular problems.
The danger of more bubbles bursting in the speculative investment world are nothing compared to the great plagues and ultimate destruction of our planet that is supposed to be prophesized here and there in sacred literature and dogmatic myth. Mankind in its enlightened position can change the equation dramatically when necessary. It is possible to change a negative future into more things positive.
We are what me make. We are what we are able to keep of the bounty of nature. Nature seems to be tired and worn out. A current climate change conference in Mexico is not likely to change any government or corporation’s mind about how we should treat the environment in order to keep it a sustainable life giving force to humanity.
One can pray and ask God to put men and women of courage into public office. Like I said miracles are not likely to happen soon in our extremes of the need for proper caretaking of this earth.
In the end of the old story, Adam and Eve are thrown out of Paradise for not thinking, for not obeying a rule book, for ignoring their situational common sense. God was perhaps not unreasonable for creating free will and testing it. From the beginning, He knew that the human experiment was just a crap shoot. He seems to be something of a gambler and the stakes are always high.
But hey, He is God and He has a plan. Hopefully the children of earth wake up soon and decide on a middle way between the extremes of Secularism and Religion and recreate the world in the image of God – betting too on what He saw as our potential and not what He undoubtedly knew were our failings.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Condom Head No More ?
I have to suppose that in dealing with the Roman Church, that traditions or rituals that are thousands of years old must outrank ideas from a modern age.
No doubt a lot of internal shouting from bishops to the seat of Peter within the very thick walls of the Vatican has finally registered a small amount of modern common sense on a pontiff steeped in the past.
The pope, far from changing any official church doctrine, has in a way and in an unofficial sense commented on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of disease, as in the case of Aids in Africa where it is of epidemic proportions in some areas.
Without changing anything, everything changes on the comments Benedict XVI make in an upcoming book due out this week - Peter Seewald - The Light of The World.
Pope’s remarks on condoms
No doubt a lot of internal shouting from bishops to the seat of Peter within the very thick walls of the Vatican has finally registered a small amount of modern common sense on a pontiff steeped in the past.
The pope, far from changing any official church doctrine, has in a way and in an unofficial sense commented on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of disease, as in the case of Aids in Africa where it is of epidemic proportions in some areas.
Without changing anything, everything changes on the comments Benedict XVI make in an upcoming book due out this week - Peter Seewald - The Light of The World.
Pope’s remarks on condoms
It seems a turnaround from the pontiff’s stance on the issue in March 2009 during a visit to Africa, when he went as far as saying that condoms “aggravated” the Aids problem.
“In certain cases, where the intention is to reduce the risk of infection, it can nevertheless be a first step on the way to another, more humane sexuality,” the head of the Catholic church said, giving as an example a male prostitute having sex with a client…
“I think it is very good that the pope sees the discussion in the worldwide church and he listened to other bishops who said there had to be discussion about condoms when we speak about Aids,” Florian Flohr, spokesman for the Catholic church of Lucerne, told swissinfo.ch.
“It’s very important now that the pope says the same thing.”
Can the pontiff’s remarks be regarded as a revolution? “It’s going too far to say it’s a revolution, but it’s a change of view. There is no more taboo of speaking about it and I think that is very good because the condom is not the most important thing,” he said.
“The most important thing is that people are responsible for their sexuality and that they think about it.”
Sunday, November 21, 2010
New Dark Age Here in America?
I have been trying to not be too political lately in this blog but this is what is on my mind of late from observation of all things TV and NET.
Are we in a Dark Age and don’t know it?
I called several times the other day to get a doctor’s appointment. Get put on hold forever, hung up, next time the phone rolls over to a message service and (thank God not a robot answering machine).
The telephone thing bothers me. We have been putting up with it for a few decades now. Time was when progress and technology was thought of as a good thing. Creates jobs.
I heard a stat from Olbermann the other night that nearly everyone in Congress is a millionaire or close to it. That on a day that the f*cks in the GOP shot down an UI extension. Perhaps the history books will label this Congress “the millionaires’ Congress” in retracing the events that lead up to riots and the downfall of yet another Versailles.
Are we in a Dark Age?
The Chinese are upping banking reserves in response to Quantitative Easing QE2. Too much “hot money” from speculators is suddenly showing up on Chinese shores coincidently with the recent QE2 from Bernanke. That easing is supposed to cause inflation which is a “good” thing as opposed to deflation which is a “bad” thing. Economists are such professional bullshit artists and ponzi masters IMHO. The money eased up by the Fed is supposed to trickle down to be loaned out to American businesses to create American jobs. Yeah right.
Getting back to robots such as telephone answering systems, you have ATMs, no more human tellers, and of course the computer (another robot of sorts) which eased millions of American jobs into being outsourced overseas. Local talent is obsolete these days especially if it needs healthcare as an benefit. A very unchristian attitude toward local workers and their families IMHO.
Just a few gripes from a person old enough to remember when without robots, the systems and the factories and the people worked and idiots with Ivy League degrees did not pretend to run the boardrooms, the FED or the nation.
Is the term "globalization" just a technical term for system rot and or "Dark Age" for some (most) ?
Are human beings obsolete in this brave new corporate (non-producing/spreadsheet) world? If obsolete, what do we do with them ???
Are we in a Dark Age or what?
We here reading know that the first and second world of looking at things is dominant. There is a whole third and fourth world still out there as well.
Perhaps my fear of a dark age is my own slipping into a lower level of everyday economic hell caused by the present faux "great recession" - (real depression).
At one time I had this futuristic vision in terms of all our communications being a unifying thing for the planet. I had envisioned European shows with English or English subtitles being shown in America. But all we get here are a few Brit Coms, decades old, and BBC America which is sanitized of indelicate items.
These to compete on cable with Fox and MSNBC. I see this fascination and ratings with something like "Dancing with the Stars" as some throw back hunger for people TV - like the fifties and sixties and like what I have witnessed of some Euro-vision programming... mine is not a complete window to see and or comment on these things?
Now the GOP and their "moat around America" mentality seems closing in with the new Congress. I fear the lights are going out all across America and they shall not be turned back on in my lifetime.
To me, despite all the possibilities of a golden age, it is a new dark age here in America.
Are we in a Dark Age and don’t know it?
I called several times the other day to get a doctor’s appointment. Get put on hold forever, hung up, next time the phone rolls over to a message service and (thank God not a robot answering machine).
The telephone thing bothers me. We have been putting up with it for a few decades now. Time was when progress and technology was thought of as a good thing. Creates jobs.
I heard a stat from Olbermann the other night that nearly everyone in Congress is a millionaire or close to it. That on a day that the f*cks in the GOP shot down an UI extension. Perhaps the history books will label this Congress “the millionaires’ Congress” in retracing the events that lead up to riots and the downfall of yet another Versailles.
Are we in a Dark Age?
The Chinese are upping banking reserves in response to Quantitative Easing QE2. Too much “hot money” from speculators is suddenly showing up on Chinese shores coincidently with the recent QE2 from Bernanke. That easing is supposed to cause inflation which is a “good” thing as opposed to deflation which is a “bad” thing. Economists are such professional bullshit artists and ponzi masters IMHO. The money eased up by the Fed is supposed to trickle down to be loaned out to American businesses to create American jobs. Yeah right.
Getting back to robots such as telephone answering systems, you have ATMs, no more human tellers, and of course the computer (another robot of sorts) which eased millions of American jobs into being outsourced overseas. Local talent is obsolete these days especially if it needs healthcare as an benefit. A very unchristian attitude toward local workers and their families IMHO.
Just a few gripes from a person old enough to remember when without robots, the systems and the factories and the people worked and idiots with Ivy League degrees did not pretend to run the boardrooms, the FED or the nation.
Is the term "globalization" just a technical term for system rot and or "Dark Age" for some (most) ?
Are human beings obsolete in this brave new corporate (non-producing/spreadsheet) world? If obsolete, what do we do with them ???
Are we in a Dark Age or what?
We here reading know that the first and second world of looking at things is dominant. There is a whole third and fourth world still out there as well.
Perhaps my fear of a dark age is my own slipping into a lower level of everyday economic hell caused by the present faux "great recession" - (real depression).
At one time I had this futuristic vision in terms of all our communications being a unifying thing for the planet. I had envisioned European shows with English or English subtitles being shown in America. But all we get here are a few Brit Coms, decades old, and BBC America which is sanitized of indelicate items.
These to compete on cable with Fox and MSNBC. I see this fascination and ratings with something like "Dancing with the Stars" as some throw back hunger for people TV - like the fifties and sixties and like what I have witnessed of some Euro-vision programming... mine is not a complete window to see and or comment on these things?
Now the GOP and their "moat around America" mentality seems closing in with the new Congress. I fear the lights are going out all across America and they shall not be turned back on in my lifetime.
To me, despite all the possibilities of a golden age, it is a new dark age here in America.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Secularism, Sadducees, Age to Come
I am using a Year C lectionary for the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost and the Gospel passage Luke 20:27-38 to scribble a few thoughts.
If anything, the historic Jesus did not like all the rules, the written rules of the old Judaism. It is not surprising that he gets into conversation with members of the Sadducee sect that some say was more a political party than a true branch of religious belief. They only believed in Mosaic Law and did not believe in what they could not see.
You might say that the Sadducees were the prime Secularists of Jesus’ time and place.
Anyway, this sect did not believe in resurrection of the soul after death. To make a point, they pose a question to Jesus about seven men married to the same women over time, dying and having no children. The question is which husband will have the woman at his side in the next life if resurrection is real.
Jesus replies that there is no marriage in the next life. The resurrected are “like the angels” meaning they have no sex or permanent body in the “age to come”. The spirit or the soul is without exact matching human or earthly qualities. We become “children of the resurrection” to God the Father.
This is where Jesus is the real deal. He does not write things down. He responds with the insight of the divine side of his nature and seeing a different way of looking at the great beyond is born. This is a paradigm shift in western thought.
Those of Islam will say “the Koran teaches us that…”. No Angel Gabriel is needed to deliver a written message to Jesus’ crowd from the Almighty over and beyond what is already written through the generations since Moses. Jesus is the word made flesh.
Jesus is the real deal and discloses, reveals, looks through the veil that separates us from our ultimate nature in close proximity and union with God.
So too, the nature of a timeless eternal God is revealed in that we may view history through the lens of our mortality - As for God:
The Resurrection and Marriage
27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
If anything, the historic Jesus did not like all the rules, the written rules of the old Judaism. It is not surprising that he gets into conversation with members of the Sadducee sect that some say was more a political party than a true branch of religious belief. They only believed in Mosaic Law and did not believe in what they could not see.
You might say that the Sadducees were the prime Secularists of Jesus’ time and place.
Anyway, this sect did not believe in resurrection of the soul after death. To make a point, they pose a question to Jesus about seven men married to the same women over time, dying and having no children. The question is which husband will have the woman at his side in the next life if resurrection is real.
Jesus replies that there is no marriage in the next life. The resurrected are “like the angels” meaning they have no sex or permanent body in the “age to come”. The spirit or the soul is without exact matching human or earthly qualities. We become “children of the resurrection” to God the Father.
This is where Jesus is the real deal. He does not write things down. He responds with the insight of the divine side of his nature and seeing a different way of looking at the great beyond is born. This is a paradigm shift in western thought.
Those of Islam will say “the Koran teaches us that…”. No Angel Gabriel is needed to deliver a written message to Jesus’ crowd from the Almighty over and beyond what is already written through the generations since Moses. Jesus is the word made flesh.
Jesus is the real deal and discloses, reveals, looks through the veil that separates us from our ultimate nature in close proximity and union with God.
So too, the nature of a timeless eternal God is revealed in that we may view history through the lens of our mortality - As for God:
37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”Luke 20:27-38 (New International Version)
The Resurrection and Marriage
27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Monday, November 1, 2010
Sabbath Tales
I have met and know of some remarkable men in my life.
The man who baptized me or more accurately the man who was founder and pastor of my parish in Philly was a fanatic of sorts. He started out life as an Episcopalian, changed Christian registration to R.C. when in the seminary and went on to start a new R.C. parish. The parish was sort of in between a lot of other established parishes and the land in between those other churches began to be developed, houses built, and there was a need for a new church, school etc. in the first decades of the twentieth century in that part of Philly.
Let me call this man Father Ed. He was of the old “God is to be feared” school of beliefs. He was an Old Testament kind of guy.
He was dead by the time I reached first grade. I have heard stories about him. One from a home inspector who related the story about being an altar boy in my parish and being five minutes late for mass. Father Ed ranted into him at the end of service about how you can’t be late for God. The priest also made the boy serve everyday for a year at 6:00 a.m. mass as punishment. That priest made an impression on that guy but I don’t think that Father Ed made a friend.
Then, as it happens sometimes in life, a lady knocked on the door and said that she had been raised in our house and asked if she might get a quick nostalgic view inside. She then got into some stories about the neighborhood. The one story I remember most was about Father Ed.
There was a Russian tailor in our neighborhood. He also did dry cleaning and his store was a block away from our house. We did business with the man. In the story of the visiting lady we finally understood why some of our neighbors took their dry cleaning three blocks away and not use the local guy. The Russian was also a Jew and a good tailor I might add. My parents, for working class, were flaming liberals. Being Jewish did not matter to them. That and my father liked to haggle.
The lady went on to say that as a child, she and her friends used to taunt the man. Let me say anti-Semitism was rampant in America back then in the 1930's, at least in this neighborhood. Well Father Ed got wind of the fact that some of his parishioners and children were harassing the man and boycotting his business. Father Ed made it a point to visit the tailor and bring his dry cleaning four blocks from the rectory. In good weather, Father Ed sat on the store stoop and smoked a cigar together with the tailor as a means to make a statement of sorts to the neighborhood. Apparently Father Ed and the tailor became good friends as the result of this local anti-Semitism.
Which leads me to the story of my next door neighbor in Arizona. Perry had a remarkable life. Left home and dairy farm in Minnesota when he was fifteen in the middle of the depression and headed west. He wanted to be a cowboy and that he became for some years. Then when World War II broke out he went up to Canada and joined the fight. He hit Juno beach on D-Day as a lieutenant in the Canadian army. He married a Brit, brought his war bride home and settled into life in Arizona B.A.C. (before air conditioning).
Perry joined the post office and then worked his way up to postmaster before retirement. I got to talk to him over the fence as a neighbor. Good stories. Went into his house a few times and vice versa. All in all, he was a great neighbor.
Then one day his wife came to us to tell us that Perry had skin cancer, that they did some necessary surgery but that the disease may have spread. I am not sure how all this got started. Perhaps my neighbor’s wife was talking to my wife and then the topic came up about me being an elder in a local church. Apparently Perry had no religious ties. I would have assumed that he might have attended church in his youth in Minnesota. His wife asked if I would talk to him.
I went over to the man in his house and tried to give comfort. I don’t think he wanted me there. Perhaps he was in denial of his own mortality. No doubt he sensed how green I was in giving comfort. I admit it. I couldn’t do him any good. Between his resistance and my inexperience, I did not serve his needs very well sad to say. Perry died suddenly about two weeks later while working in the garden. We went to give comfort to the wife next door that night and then we attended a graveside service a few days later.
This is where I get some reality checks put into my little bubble world of beliefs. I met Episcopal nuns at the graveside. I never knew such an animal existed. They had educated Perry’s children. There were lots of neighbors, relatives and co-workers from the post office. The most interesting person I met was a female Rabbi. Perry was Jewish?
I was a bit taken aback. I had heard the story about how Perry and his war bride had built the second house in this desert housing community in 1948. When I closed on the house next door, I got my deed of title or whatever and included in the paperwork was a covenant of restrictions set on the property when it was built.
That covenant was of course stamped with a label “Null and Void under Federal Civil Rights Act of...” The nasty thing about that covenant was the few pages that made it quite clear in a long range of specifics that no ...”Jews, negroes or dogs...” were allowed in this housing development etc.
As it turned out, Perry had no religious affiliation. His wife was Jewish. I chuckled about how a man like Perry, this cowboy, this war hero, this postmaster must have laughed at the WASP covenant of restrictions. Here was a real individual. Here was an old fashioned American. Here was a man.
Perry had made arrangements with the rabbi to be buried in solidarity with his wife’s belief system. Was Perry a believer, an atheist, an agnostic? I don’t know. In retrospect I don’t care. I knew the man. He was good ethical man. I prayed for him.
Part of being a cultural Christian is that you can embrace people of other beliefs, respect them and still retain you basic feel for yourself and not compromise your basic faith.
America’s greatest strength is and has always been its diversity.
Amidst this eclectic graveside audience, I had an epiphany. I also think that that paradigm shift thing happened.
It was fascinating to hear the twenty third psalm read in Hebrew. I am not certain that the Kaddish was said there but I realized something about my own belief systems. Christianity is wrapped up in a lot of layers of traditions, sacred tradition, faith, grace, propaganda, love, hate and on an on.
There under a blistering Arizona sun, prayers for a Jew were said in the desert. Were these the similar prayers that Joseph of Aramathea read over Jesus’ broken and lifeless body on Good Friday at twilight, eve of Sabbath?
You could be surrounded with stone cathedrals, and stained glass and the gospels could be read from a Gutenberg bible and the minister could be wrapped in gold cloth. But could you get any more from prayers at the end of your life than my neighbor got that day or when Jesus was interred and they rolled the stone in front of the tomb?
It makes you think. It made me think.
http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2008/06/sabbath-tales.html
June 13, 2008
The man who baptized me or more accurately the man who was founder and pastor of my parish in Philly was a fanatic of sorts. He started out life as an Episcopalian, changed Christian registration to R.C. when in the seminary and went on to start a new R.C. parish. The parish was sort of in between a lot of other established parishes and the land in between those other churches began to be developed, houses built, and there was a need for a new church, school etc. in the first decades of the twentieth century in that part of Philly.
Let me call this man Father Ed. He was of the old “God is to be feared” school of beliefs. He was an Old Testament kind of guy.
He was dead by the time I reached first grade. I have heard stories about him. One from a home inspector who related the story about being an altar boy in my parish and being five minutes late for mass. Father Ed ranted into him at the end of service about how you can’t be late for God. The priest also made the boy serve everyday for a year at 6:00 a.m. mass as punishment. That priest made an impression on that guy but I don’t think that Father Ed made a friend.
Then, as it happens sometimes in life, a lady knocked on the door and said that she had been raised in our house and asked if she might get a quick nostalgic view inside. She then got into some stories about the neighborhood. The one story I remember most was about Father Ed.
There was a Russian tailor in our neighborhood. He also did dry cleaning and his store was a block away from our house. We did business with the man. In the story of the visiting lady we finally understood why some of our neighbors took their dry cleaning three blocks away and not use the local guy. The Russian was also a Jew and a good tailor I might add. My parents, for working class, were flaming liberals. Being Jewish did not matter to them. That and my father liked to haggle.
The lady went on to say that as a child, she and her friends used to taunt the man. Let me say anti-Semitism was rampant in America back then in the 1930's, at least in this neighborhood. Well Father Ed got wind of the fact that some of his parishioners and children were harassing the man and boycotting his business. Father Ed made it a point to visit the tailor and bring his dry cleaning four blocks from the rectory. In good weather, Father Ed sat on the store stoop and smoked a cigar together with the tailor as a means to make a statement of sorts to the neighborhood. Apparently Father Ed and the tailor became good friends as the result of this local anti-Semitism.
Which leads me to the story of my next door neighbor in Arizona. Perry had a remarkable life. Left home and dairy farm in Minnesota when he was fifteen in the middle of the depression and headed west. He wanted to be a cowboy and that he became for some years. Then when World War II broke out he went up to Canada and joined the fight. He hit Juno beach on D-Day as a lieutenant in the Canadian army. He married a Brit, brought his war bride home and settled into life in Arizona B.A.C. (before air conditioning).
Perry joined the post office and then worked his way up to postmaster before retirement. I got to talk to him over the fence as a neighbor. Good stories. Went into his house a few times and vice versa. All in all, he was a great neighbor.
Then one day his wife came to us to tell us that Perry had skin cancer, that they did some necessary surgery but that the disease may have spread. I am not sure how all this got started. Perhaps my neighbor’s wife was talking to my wife and then the topic came up about me being an elder in a local church. Apparently Perry had no religious ties. I would have assumed that he might have attended church in his youth in Minnesota. His wife asked if I would talk to him.
I went over to the man in his house and tried to give comfort. I don’t think he wanted me there. Perhaps he was in denial of his own mortality. No doubt he sensed how green I was in giving comfort. I admit it. I couldn’t do him any good. Between his resistance and my inexperience, I did not serve his needs very well sad to say. Perry died suddenly about two weeks later while working in the garden. We went to give comfort to the wife next door that night and then we attended a graveside service a few days later.
This is where I get some reality checks put into my little bubble world of beliefs. I met Episcopal nuns at the graveside. I never knew such an animal existed. They had educated Perry’s children. There were lots of neighbors, relatives and co-workers from the post office. The most interesting person I met was a female Rabbi. Perry was Jewish?
I was a bit taken aback. I had heard the story about how Perry and his war bride had built the second house in this desert housing community in 1948. When I closed on the house next door, I got my deed of title or whatever and included in the paperwork was a covenant of restrictions set on the property when it was built.
That covenant was of course stamped with a label “Null and Void under Federal Civil Rights Act of...” The nasty thing about that covenant was the few pages that made it quite clear in a long range of specifics that no ...”Jews, negroes or dogs...” were allowed in this housing development etc.
As it turned out, Perry had no religious affiliation. His wife was Jewish. I chuckled about how a man like Perry, this cowboy, this war hero, this postmaster must have laughed at the WASP covenant of restrictions. Here was a real individual. Here was an old fashioned American. Here was a man.
Perry had made arrangements with the rabbi to be buried in solidarity with his wife’s belief system. Was Perry a believer, an atheist, an agnostic? I don’t know. In retrospect I don’t care. I knew the man. He was good ethical man. I prayed for him.
Part of being a cultural Christian is that you can embrace people of other beliefs, respect them and still retain you basic feel for yourself and not compromise your basic faith.
America’s greatest strength is and has always been its diversity.
Amidst this eclectic graveside audience, I had an epiphany. I also think that that paradigm shift thing happened.
It was fascinating to hear the twenty third psalm read in Hebrew. I am not certain that the Kaddish was said there but I realized something about my own belief systems. Christianity is wrapped up in a lot of layers of traditions, sacred tradition, faith, grace, propaganda, love, hate and on an on.
There under a blistering Arizona sun, prayers for a Jew were said in the desert. Were these the similar prayers that Joseph of Aramathea read over Jesus’ broken and lifeless body on Good Friday at twilight, eve of Sabbath?
You could be surrounded with stone cathedrals, and stained glass and the gospels could be read from a Gutenberg bible and the minister could be wrapped in gold cloth. But could you get any more from prayers at the end of your life than my neighbor got that day or when Jesus was interred and they rolled the stone in front of the tomb?
It makes you think. It made me think.
http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2008/06/sabbath-tales.html
June 13, 2008
Saturday, October 30, 2010
The Wealth of People
While the Americans were plotting a revolution with England in 1776, a Brit, Adam Smith was publishing his book The Wealth of Nations. That book is a first of sorts and the basis of all economics since. It dealt with forces of free enterprise, supply, demand and production.
Little has changed in economics since then except that the forces of a market can be manipulated by the juggernaut of computers and their undue influence on markets by a handful of market hedge fund speculators. Only numbers matter and not people.
The point of this is to point out that fact and to remark that Mr. Smith did not seem to value humanity in his equations because the book should have been called The Wealth of People – taking into account the true value of human life within nations.
People are not commodities. But …
People produce wealth. People have talent. People have experience. People work creating wealth. That is, when they are allowed to work. The formula these days is for big banks to make big loans to big companies and for big paper profits reported on big electronic spreadsheets. And the big media reports the big economic news. Smoke and mirrors.
More than the value of wealth produced by labor is the wealth of the individual soul that will live passed this grubby economic state of affairs called life.
There seems to be a great dividing line in the media these days between perceived PowerPoint reality and the everyday reality of us the people – and our economic and spiritual well being.
Valuing people is Christian. Not valuing people is anti-people, anti-Christian or at least as some post modern definitions of Christianity go.
Little has changed in economics since then except that the forces of a market can be manipulated by the juggernaut of computers and their undue influence on markets by a handful of market hedge fund speculators. Only numbers matter and not people.
The point of this is to point out that fact and to remark that Mr. Smith did not seem to value humanity in his equations because the book should have been called The Wealth of People – taking into account the true value of human life within nations.
People are not commodities. But …
People produce wealth. People have talent. People have experience. People work creating wealth. That is, when they are allowed to work. The formula these days is for big banks to make big loans to big companies and for big paper profits reported on big electronic spreadsheets. And the big media reports the big economic news. Smoke and mirrors.
More than the value of wealth produced by labor is the wealth of the individual soul that will live passed this grubby economic state of affairs called life.
There seems to be a great dividing line in the media these days between perceived PowerPoint reality and the everyday reality of us the people – and our economic and spiritual well being.
Valuing people is Christian. Not valuing people is anti-people, anti-Christian or at least as some post modern definitions of Christianity go.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Secularism and the Tea Party
Christianity and the Tea Party = zero.
It does not take rocket science to notice the underlying unchristian message of the so called Tea Party political movement.
The primary underslying message of racism accumulates evidence with birthers who claim that the President was not even born in this country. Obama was born in Hawaii, one of those last two strange states that entered the union in 1959. Hawaii is the one with a bunch of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alaska is the large chunk of ice west of Canada.
Alaska has bred a favorite daughter in the form of Sarah Palin, a half term Governor. Palin’s Tea Party appeal of uttering words, verbal clutter onto the media airwaves does not make her a media whore but she is trying. While no direct racist, Palin buddies up to every screwball idea that comes out of the seemingly disenfranchised white middle class movement. In a way, her’s is part of a populist movement that springs up in hard times in America. The times make Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin shapes nothing and just stands there signing American flags for fans.
Together or separately, the Tea Party represents dissent. Big government is a problem if it is mismanaged. It is. But it is mismanaged by the Congress that puts politics first and fiscal responsibility second, third or wherever.
The Tea Party comes at you with more angles than a hand cut diamond. Birthers, anti-large government, get rid of minimum wage and social security, eliminate citizenship for the children born here of illegal immigrants etc. This makes for a stew of many flavors and textures. Nothing but fiscal responsibility and a good economy will get America out of its present economic hole in the ground.
Politics need to change to cooperation, a Christian virtue, on both sides of the aisle if that is the stated goal of a future together and not the future separate and splintered into a thousand petty interests. Chaos. Chaos is definitely a breeding ground of things unchristian.
When I use the word unchristian up front, I am talking about the lack of empathy that the average Tea Party-er has for the other guy in America. Eliminating the minimum wage or social security is kinda anti-human – would you not say?
Social safety nets help keep the big ball of wax together and moving along. Draconian nineteenth century ideas need not apply to the present situation which is what most Tea Party ideas end up sounding like.
So in the midst of entrenched secularism and atheism, the Tea Party sits waging its own agenda using standards surrounding them, namely secular, and definitely not Christian.
The GOP, having been the Christian Party these past twenty odd years now waits for Tea Party dissent to translate into votes for what is now a secular agenda of the moneyed few against the masses it would appear to me.
The media is partly to blame for this. The corporations that own the media are also part of some at present grand conspiracy of everyone having America shooting itself in the foot on real issues rather than cooperate and get back to being a reasonable great country again.
It does not take rocket science to notice the underlying unchristian message of the so called Tea Party political movement.
The primary underslying message of racism accumulates evidence with birthers who claim that the President was not even born in this country. Obama was born in Hawaii, one of those last two strange states that entered the union in 1959. Hawaii is the one with a bunch of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alaska is the large chunk of ice west of Canada.
Alaska has bred a favorite daughter in the form of Sarah Palin, a half term Governor. Palin’s Tea Party appeal of uttering words, verbal clutter onto the media airwaves does not make her a media whore but she is trying. While no direct racist, Palin buddies up to every screwball idea that comes out of the seemingly disenfranchised white middle class movement. In a way, her’s is part of a populist movement that springs up in hard times in America. The times make Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin shapes nothing and just stands there signing American flags for fans.
Together or separately, the Tea Party represents dissent. Big government is a problem if it is mismanaged. It is. But it is mismanaged by the Congress that puts politics first and fiscal responsibility second, third or wherever.
The Tea Party comes at you with more angles than a hand cut diamond. Birthers, anti-large government, get rid of minimum wage and social security, eliminate citizenship for the children born here of illegal immigrants etc. This makes for a stew of many flavors and textures. Nothing but fiscal responsibility and a good economy will get America out of its present economic hole in the ground.
Politics need to change to cooperation, a Christian virtue, on both sides of the aisle if that is the stated goal of a future together and not the future separate and splintered into a thousand petty interests. Chaos. Chaos is definitely a breeding ground of things unchristian.
When I use the word unchristian up front, I am talking about the lack of empathy that the average Tea Party-er has for the other guy in America. Eliminating the minimum wage or social security is kinda anti-human – would you not say?
Social safety nets help keep the big ball of wax together and moving along. Draconian nineteenth century ideas need not apply to the present situation which is what most Tea Party ideas end up sounding like.
So in the midst of entrenched secularism and atheism, the Tea Party sits waging its own agenda using standards surrounding them, namely secular, and definitely not Christian.
The GOP, having been the Christian Party these past twenty odd years now waits for Tea Party dissent to translate into votes for what is now a secular agenda of the moneyed few against the masses it would appear to me.
The media is partly to blame for this. The corporations that own the media are also part of some at present grand conspiracy of everyone having America shooting itself in the foot on real issues rather than cooperate and get back to being a reasonable great country again.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tastykakes and the Like
Orange candy slices
Dusted in confectioner’s
Sugar
Call to mind a childhood
Treat sold without
Wrapping and handled
By the candy store
Owner’s bare hands.
The world really was
Unwrapped at one point.
No apology.
Things tasted better too
No time expiration date.
If it was good, it was gone
Before you knew it.
Global does not mean good
It just means bigger –
Not better than before.
Potato chips and pretzels
Were sold by the pound
And dispensed out of tin
Cans with glass and metal lids
At the grocer’s main counter.
Put into plain brown paper bags.
More hand work. No gloves.
You knew the grocer. He was
Your neighbor too in a way.
The world stood flat and small
And secure. Which brings me
Back to Tastykakes in Philly
And the exoticness of eating
Pie without a slice in a pan
But getting the essence of pie
In a paper package. Oh the
Calories of pure sugar.
Pies and chocolate cupcakes.
Mom’s never tasted as good
As packaged heaven in a
Lunchtime snack.
And the soda pops
Frank’s had real flavors
All full 12 ounces
Orange, cherry, grape
Even pineapple (yuk)
Got talked into that one by
The grocer trying to move
An unfavorite flavor.
Can still taste disappointment
On my tongue to this day.
Oh well. Potato salad was
Also sold by the pound.
Bring your own dish
And I brought it home
On my tricycle. Can’t imagine
How I did not break the bowl?
And rye bread on the weekend
No paper package – just a paper
Union made stamp glued onto the
Crust. Consumed on Sunday
For breakfast with bacon, eggs
And home fries. Amazing how
Much memory sings when you
Bite into a Tastykake
Or the like that has
Not changed that much over
Some decades back to your
Childhood.
Raymond Burke - Pope Pius XIII ?
Perrhaps this is all petty on my part. But I have to say something.
Joe the Pope has just named 24 new cardinals, bishops to the red hat. Two Americans, two bureaucratic hacks, Archbishop Wuerl of Washington D.C. and Archbishop Raymond Burke of the equivalent of a Vatican Supreme Court have scored an appointment.
Wuerl’s witch hunt for gay spouses, domestic partners, on healthcare for diocese employees and Burke’s remarks, demands, cold steel in John Kerry’s back during the 2004 Presidential campaign have not gone unrewarded. Burke as “Scalia of God”, possibly changing the outcome of an election.
I called Wuerl’s witch hunt “creative hate” as directed to a minority that has no sanctions with the church. Those are strong words but I felt them at the time of the incident in March. I still do.
I don’t see anything happening for Donny on the Pope scene. I do see a behind the scenes American conservative plot to get Latin mass Burke elected as an ultra-conservative and first American born pope.
Ray and the Vatican hierarchy only represents themselves and not the vast majority of all shades of Christianity, myself included.
Part of the Abuse scandals in the RC church began and ended with Vatican procedures which did or did not exist over recent decades. Where was Donny or Ray? Unity of doctrine is a necessary part of any institution but the church fumbled every step of the way on the abuse issue and is still fumbling.
I fear great damage to or the end of Christianity as we know it if Ray Burke ever gets elected as Pope, a Pius XIII.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Atheism - defining it
Without God. Without Religion. Without sensitivity to human values. A great big ugly me only world. Greed. Progress. Secularism. How do you define atheism?
No easy or simple definition. The civilization that has evolved since the last ice age is strutting somewhat sans many of the ancient belief or superstition operating systems these days.
Cold, mechanical, soulless. The modern age is the modern age. Some of us see the lack of culture everyday related to a lack of respect for centuries old traditions that many times are also the local culture or the local religion.
A burger from a Yankee fast food place is symbolic of the changing face of global culture, capitalism and human values.
The American middle class model, which the whole world seems to desire, will strip the planet of all dignity and resources unless we somehow learn to not only conserve but preserve traditional ways.
Global integration to some godless model or ideal stands side by side with long standing models. Tomorrow is as bleak as we individually choose to make life. That, without outside forces of economics pushing us along an uncharted untraveled road of life.
The message of Jesus in his Gospels is as real and raw as it was two thousand years ago. A man’s soul is perhaps the sum of all the values that a man holds in life. If we serve ourselves, do we serve others as well? How to live in the world and to be free from the outside forces of change that want us to conform to somebody else’s model of living.
Some Christians may fear atheism as a belief system. Some Christians do not practice what they preach or understand the message.
The message is not to sell your soul in this life and to prepare for a kingdom not of this earth after we pass away. Godless, soulless atheism has always existed in the selfish ways of men and women.
The capacity to bring heaven to earth has always been there. Trick is in trying to focus on the goals of Jesus’ message to love your neighbor as yourselves and in equal measure to attachment and love for the Creator God.
No easy or simple definition. The civilization that has evolved since the last ice age is strutting somewhat sans many of the ancient belief or superstition operating systems these days.
Cold, mechanical, soulless. The modern age is the modern age. Some of us see the lack of culture everyday related to a lack of respect for centuries old traditions that many times are also the local culture or the local religion.
A burger from a Yankee fast food place is symbolic of the changing face of global culture, capitalism and human values.
The American middle class model, which the whole world seems to desire, will strip the planet of all dignity and resources unless we somehow learn to not only conserve but preserve traditional ways.
Global integration to some godless model or ideal stands side by side with long standing models. Tomorrow is as bleak as we individually choose to make life. That, without outside forces of economics pushing us along an uncharted untraveled road of life.
The message of Jesus in his Gospels is as real and raw as it was two thousand years ago. A man’s soul is perhaps the sum of all the values that a man holds in life. If we serve ourselves, do we serve others as well? How to live in the world and to be free from the outside forces of change that want us to conform to somebody else’s model of living.
Some Christians may fear atheism as a belief system. Some Christians do not practice what they preach or understand the message.
The message is not to sell your soul in this life and to prepare for a kingdom not of this earth after we pass away. Godless, soulless atheism has always existed in the selfish ways of men and women.
The capacity to bring heaven to earth has always been there. Trick is in trying to focus on the goals of Jesus’ message to love your neighbor as yourselves and in equal measure to attachment and love for the Creator God.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Angela Merkel - Racist?
A new round of playing to the paying masses. Multiculturalism does not work according to the Chanchellor of Germany. Shades of veiled 1930's German rhetoric??? Racism?
Amidst the politicians catering rhetoric to the xenophobic masses of Merkel’sGermany
Why Angela Merkel is wrong about ‘multiculturalism’
The global future demands multiculturalism to work much in the way it has worked in theUnited States
Amidst the politicians catering rhetoric to the xenophobic masses of Merkel’s
Why Angela Merkel is wrong about ‘multiculturalism’
As a religious and cultural atheist that grew up in a Muslim family I admit to being somewhat torn.
Torn between meh, it’s not me they’re targeting and oh crap, it’s my mum they’re targeting. What is clear, however, is that the inflammatory words of craven politicians hoping to exploit fear of another to secure their arthritic grasp on power misses the damn point.
I grew up in a society that allowed the son of an immigrant to turn potential into ability and into achievement. It did so, broadly, free of any prejudice based on my religious upbringing or ethnicity.
The global future demands multiculturalism to work much in the way it has worked in the
Mary MacKillop, Saint of Oz
There is a certain magic in the RC church when they do the old thing right – proclaim saints of common people. These dead holy saints are supposed to inspire us spiritually and make us more spiritual as well.
In the case of Australia’s first saint, Saint Mary MacKillop, 1842-1909, a lot of the nitty gritty of founding and managing a religious order down under is secondary to her having routed out an abusive priest in the ranks of the faithful.
Nun whose order fought abuse becomes saint
Mary got excommunicated in retaliation for her initiating the courage to speak out against an abusing priest. Politics in the church remains the same then as now. Only later, in retrospect, do we see what a lifetime of prayer and sacrifice can do and what effect it has on the life of Christ’s Church and the life of a nation, Australia.
Indeed, Mary, Saint Mary of the Cross Mackillop today, shows us how hard work and spirituality can make a difference in so many lives.
The RC church as the largest arm of the Christian faith continues to proclaim saints of the deceased as examples of spirituality or how it should work in everyday life.
The pictures of Mary MacKillop show an intense look. One has to wonder sometimes how saintly one was really in life as opposed to looking at the whole matter post mortem.
In any case the life of the RC church goes on despite human nature and the human nature of the church behind the divine founding and reasoning of a large institution that brings spiritual success stories to the forefront of everyday endeavors.
I don’t necessarily pray to saints as much at to God direct. It is interesting however the RC tradition of trying to attract a saint to be your middle man or woman with God.
The Christian faith is diverse and ancient and ever seeking a new way of expressing “thy will be done on earth”.
Amen.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Morality, Gravity and Foreclosures
This week the banks backed off of foreclosures because the paperwork involved in 19th century protocols that 21st century computers did not have a clue about.
The morality of foreclosure never existed. The legality of having the right papers to sign in mass foreclosure brought even the mighty banks to a temporary halt. Or at least until a judge somewhere says go ahead with the process.
The computer speeds things up and creates volume. It does not however create quality or accuracy. These front office jockeys who have outsourced half our jobs off to China and India do not know how the back office works or is supposed to work.
It is as if corporations are all sitting in luxury carriages and have dismissed the horse and coachman mainly due to the expense of the horse and the coachman’s meager wages. It all goes unnoticed if the traffic is all down hill which it is at the moment. Does gravity really run our largest corporations at the present moment and not common sense???
God save us all from the U.S.S. Titanic mindset of the idiots in charge of business and government.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Age of Disappointment (in us)
Age of disappointment
When them that has – has
And thems that don’t have – Don’t
Anymore.
No increase COLA, Social Security
Cost of Living Adjustment,
won’t go through again for next year.
Starve the elderly and the Disabled
Shouts the press (obsolete).
Functions the Gov’ment
(dys-func-tion-al)
Oh well. Horatio Alger is not dead.
Was he ever really alive?
A nation’s social obligations stop
At the door to the Senate.
Powerful guys and “C” street pagans.
Oh well again. It is an age of
Disappointment in the waste of brains
It takes to not run a corporation right.
People were factored out a long time
Ago in any economic equation.
Tax equation especially.
Anybody with an MBA knows that.
Business, the new secular religion
What does that mean?
Worship of the buck – oh f**k
That what that means.
Religion is dead. Christ too by
Last count – oh Christian church
What do you stand for?
Sin and Salvation.
What ever happened to people
To life, to day to day living?
Wholistic life - medicine???
Yeah right!
One hundred odd words to go.
Age of disappointment
In people, institutions, religion
Where do we turn this thing around?
When???
Too many college degrees (aside)
Practical, manual, labor used
To build nations. Other nations,
not us Anymore.
Now spreadsheet jockeys only Jockey
(don’t know the horse)
And make paper profits on computers
Computers. Another disappointment.
The ability of a robot to make a
Better world. Whose world-
middle class world?
Shrinking class. A disappointment.!?
Boomers mostly, then X
What did I do to change the world?
Very little. Just Death and taxes
To fall back on. That’s my excuse.
What’s yours?
Taxes. Taxes. Taxes.
Age of Disappointment
Crash coming - of faith -
In the system, in the day -
In the flow of it all.
What does the world look like
Feel like tomorrow?
Blah! America.
Age of low expectations.
Age of disappointment.
When them that has – has
And thems that don’t have – Don’t
Anymore.
No increase COLA, Social Security
Cost of Living Adjustment,
won’t go through again for next year.
Starve the elderly and the Disabled
Shouts the press (obsolete).
Functions the Gov’ment
(dys-func-tion-al)
Oh well. Horatio Alger is not dead.
Was he ever really alive?
A nation’s social obligations stop
At the door to the Senate.
Powerful guys and “C” street pagans.
Oh well again. It is an age of
Disappointment in the waste of brains
It takes to not run a corporation right.
People were factored out a long time
Ago in any economic equation.
Tax equation especially.
Anybody with an MBA knows that.
Business, the new secular religion
What does that mean?
Worship of the buck – oh f**k
That what that means.
Religion is dead. Christ too by
Last count – oh Christian church
What do you stand for?
Sin and Salvation.
What ever happened to people
To life, to day to day living?
Wholistic life - medicine???
Yeah right!
One hundred odd words to go.
Age of disappointment
In people, institutions, religion
Where do we turn this thing around?
When???
Too many college degrees (aside)
Practical, manual, labor used
To build nations. Other nations,
not us Anymore.
Now spreadsheet jockeys only Jockey
(don’t know the horse)
And make paper profits on computers
Computers. Another disappointment.
The ability of a robot to make a
Better world. Whose world-
middle class world?
Shrinking class. A disappointment.!?
Boomers mostly, then X
What did I do to change the world?
Very little. Just Death and taxes
To fall back on. That’s my excuse.
What’s yours?
Taxes. Taxes. Taxes.
Age of Disappointment
Crash coming - of faith -
In the system, in the day -
In the flow of it all.
What does the world look like
Feel like tomorrow?
Blah! America.
Age of low expectations.
Age of disappointment.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Wayback Machine
“Wayback Machine”
The photo on facebook
Was labeled as “Wayback Machine”
It was a group photo
Of the Choir at some
Ancient catholic school
I went to as a child.
Posted by Lou Gould.
The group of the choir
Is of children, were we
That really young or
Small as well?
Don’t remember a group photo
Of the Altar Boys ever being taken.
Ashame not to be able to see
Myself as so young and small
And wearing the best dress
Of White Cassock and
Red Cape, Gloves, starched Collar
And red silk bow. How Formal!
Standing on the main staircase
Of Saint Joan of Arc in
Philly is a revelation to me.
The staircase does not seem
As wide as memory would
Have me believe.
Atop many steps of many
Boys in Black Cassocks
And White Surpluses
Are the eighth graders
Attired in White Cassock
And Red Cape.
The Altar Boys also wore
White and red on
Special occasions. Easter,
Christmas, Bishop’s visit.
And the pastor used to
Whistle through his teeth
And he spoke and gave
Homilies.
And “Spongy”, Sister Sponsa Regis,
In charge of the altar boys.
Her favorite line to the Altar Boys
Who got too rowdy in the changing
Room was “You are convenient but
Not necessary” for the service
About to start. Silence. Dead
Silence. Got us every time.
The school is closed now
Designed by George Audsley,
A renaissance man by any
Standard. 11 Broadway,
St Joan of Arc and the
Wanamaker Organ. What
A mind!
Memory to refresh, reboot
Sometimes to see a final
Perspective. A lot of eyeglasses
On a lot of kids in a
Crowded picture.
Memories don’t remember
Sometimes until one sees
The facts, the photo, the past.
Amen.
The photo on facebook
Was labeled as “Wayback Machine”
It was a group photo
Of the Choir at some
Ancient catholic school
I went to as a child.
Posted by Lou Gould.
The group of the choir
Is of children, were we
That really young or
Small as well?
Don’t remember a group photo
Of the Altar Boys ever being taken.
Ashame not to be able to see
Myself as so young and small
And wearing the best dress
Of White Cassock and
Red Cape, Gloves, starched Collar
And red silk bow. How Formal!
Standing on the main staircase
Of Saint Joan of Arc in
Philly is a revelation to me.
The staircase does not seem
As wide as memory would
Have me believe.
Atop many steps of many
Boys in Black Cassocks
And White Surpluses
Are the eighth graders
Attired in White Cassock
And Red Cape.
The Altar Boys also wore
White and red on
Special occasions. Easter,
Christmas, Bishop’s visit.
And the pastor used to
Whistle through his teeth
And he spoke and gave
Homilies.
And “Spongy”, Sister Sponsa Regis,
In charge of the altar boys.
Her favorite line to the Altar Boys
Who got too rowdy in the changing
Room was “You are convenient but
Not necessary” for the service
About to start. Silence. Dead
Silence. Got us every time.
The school is closed now
Designed by George Audsley,
A renaissance man by any
Standard. 11 Broadway,
St Joan of Arc and the
Wanamaker Organ. What
A mind!
Memory to refresh, reboot
Sometimes to see a final
Perspective. A lot of eyeglasses
On a lot of kids in a
Crowded picture.
Memories don’t remember
Sometimes until one sees
The facts, the photo, the past.
Amen.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Micah Challenge - Praying for the poor
Micah Challenge - Praying for the poor
An article from Britain and the worldwide prayer for justice tomorrow.
An article from Britain and the worldwide prayer for justice tomorrow.
In the light of recent discussion of prayers, it's worth considering that 60 million evangelical Christians around the world will be praying tomorrow for justice around the world in the hope of abolishing extreme poverty. Leaving God out of it, as they would not wish to do, this is still an impressive and potentially important ritual, because it marks a turn towards social justice from one of the most traditionally conservative kinds of Christianity.The prayer will be used in churches around the globe on 10.10.10. A children's prayer is also available.
O Lord, our great and awesome God, loyal to your promise of love and faithful to all who honour and obey you, hear our prayer.
We pray for those who live in poverty,
we cry out for those who are denied justice and
we weep for all who are suffering.
We confess that we have not always obeyed you.
We have neglected your commands and have ignored your call for justice.
We have been guided by self-interest and lived in spiritual poverty.
Forgive us.
We remember your promises to fill the hungry with good things, to redeem the land by your mighty hand and to restore peace.
Father God, help us always to proclaim your justice and mercy with humility, so that, by the power of your Spirit, we can rid the world of the sin of extreme poverty.
As part of your global church, we stand with millions who praise and worship you.
May our words and deeds declare your perfect goodness, love and righteousness to both the powerful and the powerless
so that your Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven. Amen
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Repurpose, Emerging, Christ
The word “repurpose” came up on TV as a substitute for the word recycle and reuse. I heard the word and thought of the emerging church movement that wants to adapt to a post modern way of doing things in worship.
The word repurpose touches something in me that says that maybe the emerging church movement should step back and look at the original purpose of Jesus and his gospels and look less at institution(s) that have in fact emerged around Jesus and his message over the centuries.
Indidvidually, people should decide what is needed in their hearts in response to the message of Jesus. Then institutions should recycle tradition around repurpose together with the individual and grow into the next centuries long phase of the Christian Spirit and Church.
The word repurpose touches something in me that says that maybe the emerging church movement should step back and look at the original purpose of Jesus and his gospels and look less at institution(s) that have in fact emerged around Jesus and his message over the centuries.
Indidvidually, people should decide what is needed in their hearts in response to the message of Jesus. Then institutions should recycle tradition around repurpose together with the individual and grow into the next centuries long phase of the Christian Spirit and Church.
Amanpour and the “Radical Mosque”
In her approach to reshape her new anchor of This Week on ABC, Christiane Amanpour should be applauded for her efforts to increase the dialogue in the public forum. No statue of George Will this week to parrot the right view.
The “radical Mosque” is a term used by evangelical Gary Bauer on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour to describe the average place of Muslim worship infiltrated by “radical Islam”.
The show this week was a forum format – a “digital town hall” - with many people in the news discussing among other things the proposed Islamic Center proposed for two blocks from the new World Trade Center.
In the move forward toward the future, there is still a lot of anger in America and fear toward the religion of Islam.
I have no answers. The act of violence of 911 opened a door to America whereby its basic beliefs among them the concept of the freedom of Religion was brought to the forefront to include a once foreign to Europeans belief of Islam.
Time will hopefully heal the wounds of 911. Time will hopefully make it okay to have an historically alien to European culture religion exist in Ameria.
I believe that the Islamic Cultural Center in lower Manhattan will be built. The original presentation had too many loose ends that eventually invited dissent on the matter. Too many things to mention. The location of two blocks from the old WTC is the main trigger for a lot of people who are still lingering in the past and have not addressed the new world of post 911 reality.
A globally small world of the future will have to feel comfortable with all beliefs and religions. It is hard ground to take or shape in that possible new Global Village reshaped after 911.
America’s traditional isolation ended 911 and a brave new world was born. Practicing one’s religion will continue in America. Tolerance has to make a notch or two upward on our scales of recognition. The whole thing to heal takes time and effort. Think positively.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
thoughts of the day
Shades of color and subtlety count.
Metaphors and symbols matter.
Gelt lends credence to any idea.
Metaphors and symbols matter.
Gelt lends credence to any idea.
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