Born-Again Christianity Dangerous to your Health

A study:

Being 'Born-Again' Linked to More Brain Atrophy: Study

Older adults who say they've had a life-changing religious experience are more likely to have a greater decrease in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical to learning and memory, new research finds. 

According to the study, people who said they were a "born-again" Protestant or Catholic, or conversely, those who had no religious affiliation, had more hippocampal shrinkage (or "atrophy") compared to people who identified themselves as Protestants, but not born-again. … 

In the study, researchers asked 268 people aged 58 to 84 about their religious affiliation, spiritual practices and life-changing religious experiences. Over the course of two to eight years, changes to the hippocampus were monitored using MRI scans. 

The researchers suggested that stress over holding religious beliefs that fall outside of the mainstream may help explain the findings. 

"One interpretation of our finding -- that members of majority religious groups seem to have less atrophy compared with minority religious groups -- is that when you feel your beliefs and values are somewhat at odds with those of society as a whole, it may contribute to long-term stress that could have implications for the brain," Amy Owen, lead author of the study and a research associate at Duke University Medical Center, said in a Duke news release.

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Divine (creative) Spark Within*

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This is your life.


Life is simple. 


Life is short. 


(Live. Breath. Learn. Love. Be. Be.)

Wolfgang 40 – Marc Antoine

M. Bachmann – Welfare Queen – Iowa Hate Pledge - Christian Sharia

Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum seem to be having a love affair.  No. Not sex.  (Even if that was technically possible for these two.)  But I think she is tops in any case.

No. They have been the first Republican candidates in the Iowa Primary to sign some sort of pledge that I label the IOWA HATE PLEDGE.  Don’t let the word HATE scare you. The word is not actually mentioned – it is encoded in the message.  “Don’t be afraid” like what the average angel will tell you when he is about to deliver a shit filled message from God. You will get used to it.  They are only trying to protect us from reality and replace it with their own version of good old fashioned, American Town Square, reality.

This so called proper Christian Sharia Pledge (real name – encoded)  is an attempt by God fearing people to finally, once and for all,  define what really really is marriage. I have found it wanting in direct clear language.  

Is this declaration more GOP code talk?  Wink. Nod.  (Wide stance etc.)  You betcha.

Why don’t they just say what they really mean to these hick dirt farmers in Iowa who they are  really are dissing by their stupid, Hateful, Christian Sharia wish list of all things anti-secular, anti-human/humane.

I have a few editorial suggestions and additions to more correctly add the right flavor to this piece of literary garbage:

• Since white people used to be able to act more decent in public, not shout into cell phones, not dress like whores, not slobbering on their sweats over slurpies at Sam’s Club, new rule books of conduct and dress codes in the new Christian world order are available at Bachmann/Santorum election headquarters.
• There is absolutely no truth to the secular rumor that high fructose corn syrup causes divorce, that according to one of our agribusiness corporate sponsors.
• Dusk to dawn curfews nationwide will begin shortly so people can stay home and read their bibles.
• Poor people should just up and die.   Don’t they understand like how stupid they are for being poor?  Duh!  The poor will not always be with US.
• Marriage is between one Arian man and one Arian female.  (on all other matters of a delicate sexual nature, ancient and sacred Nuremburg rules to be honored)
• All Muslim Sharia Law is verboten.  Only Christian Sharia Law shall be imposed on this land, God’s country USA.
• Online Porn does not sell more in red states.  Though a business discount to red state residents should be mandated in a Constitutional amendment.
• The word vagina is to be erased from every dictionary in the land. If necessary, burn down the local library that offends thee.
• Blasphemy laws must mandate death or deportation back to the land of their  inferior ancestors for all who question God and or the one true exceptional A-merican Christianity.

Any questions?  No. There shouldn’t be.  If you know what I mean.  

Jami Sieber - Hidden Sky

Rupert Murdoch – Godfather of Bush’s Wars – Antichrist?

In case you have not heard already, they spy on the dead (necromancy?) in Britain to get the news at the presently defunct News of the World tabloid.  Four hundred news staff suddenly unemployed in order to cover the bastards' bloody tracks.  A tax loss and a third party to destroy evidence for Rupert's lily white, never touched shit, CEO hands.  

All heck is breaking out there in a present political scandal.  I say heck.  Is it merely a tempest in a British teapot that will not change things here in the U.S.?

The wealth is still too concentrated in the U.S..  The Godfather of Bush’s wars is too huge to fail here.  Nor is it likely we will soon see the end of  the satanic like truth institution of Roger Ailes' FOX NEWS owned by this present anti-Human/anti-Christ robber baron Rupert Murdoch???

Perhaps though Bill Moyers has already wrote his epitaph.

Found the above on Christian Left Facebook below.  Are there really Christians who think for themselves?

The Christian Left

Remarks there may be un-Christian but they are heartfelt I believe.

Lord of the Dance, Barley Bree

When did Christianity turn into a Religion of Hate Doctor Bachmann?

There seems to be a theme of Matthew that runs through this rant.

I have to wonder what personal torture that white heartland born-agains have to endure in order to fit into the still existing heartland prairie town square where conformity is of utmost important and existence? 

You conform or you get shunned, banished and or killed for your personal instinctual sexual being.  The ghost of Matthew Shepard’s memory, of Wyoming hate crime fate, lives on, a victim of being different.

I do not want to say this with anger and or hate.  But I think that two suppressed sexual human beings in the form of Marcus and Michele Bachman are hiding behind a cross of confusion in their desire to establish a Christian theocracy in America.  It is a life but not much of one IMHO.

The above photo is of a gaydar billboard outside St. Matthews church in Auchland, New Zealand.

'Gay-dar' church billboard vandalised

An Auckland church known for its edgy billboards has come under another attack from vandals. 

St Matthew in the City put up a "gay-dar" billboard on Friday, which shows a spectrum from gay to straight, with a cross acting as a gauge.

A message underneath states: "As used by the Anglican Church to assess potential priests." 

Church spokesman Clay Nelson said the sign aimed to highlight discrimination in the Anglican Church against members of the gay and lesbian community. 

However, it had already been vandalised.

Gay-dar or gaydar is a word I had to look up very recently. It is a new acronym for gay and radar.  Meaning that certain types of body language and or presence supposedly connotes gayness.  In a way, gaydar is more often used to taunt children or young people who do not seem to conform even if they are or are not by nature homosexual.

What is the good in this vandalism in New Zealand?  At least the topic of homosexuality, a 19^th century pseudoscience terminology, is being put on the table for discussion in the Anglican Church worldwide.

Sexuality, and not just homosexuality, is a closeted subject in all of Christianity or so it would seem to me. 

I am looking at the current civil rights thing here in the United States regarding legal rights for Homosexual Humanity.  And even if I only believe in limited legal connection and not marriage as a right, I have to step back and realize that partial rights are really a statement or justification for no rights.

That the 3/5 clause in the original U.S. Constitution to appropriate representation based on a slave, first as property, and secondly only as 3/5 of a human being status, has long ago been changed in that Constitution.

But this is not about voting rights which is what the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s was all about.  That movement’s overall mission was to start establishing the reality of equality by first guaranteeing free access to the voting booth for all citizens.

This present era is bogged down in the decay of old ideas and old prejudices and things long closeted against the rights and privacy of each individual not only in this country but on this planet as well.

That the struggle for humanity throughout the ages has been to find one shiny perfect moment, a city on a hill moment, when man and woman, as part of God’s evolving creation, can stand on stable ground and separate the animal from the divine in our split natures and to maturely recognize the differences.  That, and to move on to higher ground and on to true ordained potential.

It is one thing to legislate equality.  It is quite another to legislate morality.  You cannot legislate what your definition of morality is.  Morality is oft times defined by geography more so than by any magic make believe revelation from above any normal timeline and existence.

Somewhere along the timeline, Christianity got obsessed about sex.  All sorts of twisted and bizarre justifications for spiritual enlightenment have to do with fasting from sex to get that spiritual high.  Rather than having discussion about sex, sex was not discussed.

All sexuality got hidden and closeted.  “So deep in the closet – you could see Narnia.”

Anything sexual got put under the label of sin and only the clergy could dole out definition or dispensation on a monopolized area of natural human activity.  Bizarre!

In fact, one of the things the first Council of Nicea did was ban self castration as mentioned in Matthew 19:12.  There was also no doubt a backlash against the old pagan practice of having sex with a temple prostitute to elevate your spirit and mental being up into your preferred god and or goddess presence.  But let’s not go there at the moment.

Never the less, Jesus, in the imperfect account of him in the gospels, does not seem to specifically mention homosexuality.  Paul mentions it here or there and usually in a long litany of sins.  Though they say that Paul was light in his sandals, I don’t believe it.

I think that Paul, the self appointed “Apostle”, was more likely a victim of a botched circumcision reversal operation so popular with middle class Hellenistic Jewish boys who wanted to fit in at the local gym amongst their gentile peers, so to speak.  “Look guys, I fit in, I am just like you now.” (wow)

For Paul, the lack of sex is a good thing, a spiritual thing.  But it was his thing.  Not necessarily any of our individual things.  There are many roads to spirituality, not just one.  And so it goes.

When did spiritual enlightenment, in so-called Christianity, get divorced from personal obligation to try and love yourself and your neighbor?  Love first.  Salvation second.  Not the other way around I would think.

When did the privacy of sexuality become the peeping Tom right of civil or church government to interfere in the life of an individual, or consenting adult individuals?

If you are unhappy in your own skins, in your own sexuality dear Marcus and Michele, please do not try to impose your unhappiness on others.  

In other words - get a life! 

Have a nice day.

Marcus Bachmann – Christofascism vs. the Barbarians

There’s a lot of anger and hate floating around the Internet these days regarding Michelle Bachmann’s light in the loafers husband Dr. Marcus Bachmann, the deprogrammer for gays, with a mail order PhD. in Chist?ian counc?ling.

God only knows what hell those 23 foster kids went through living in the Bachmann Chris?ian home for thirty dollars a day each, tax free, over the years. Were they there merely as a meal ticket for the Bachmanns or were they there to experiment the new world order on? 

It is because the Bachmann’s, in the case with the foster kids, had to send them to public school and not to home schooling like the Bachmann’s five natural Christian programmed children,  that is what got future Representative Bachmann all steamed up about the mainstream science and evolution thingies.  About those things in particular being taught in the public schools is what started her present career in politics with the sole purpose to shut down public education.  

It is their Jesus’ way or the Highway!

It is the least common denominator factor thingy in the ongoing dumbing down of America thing.

This is what I do not like but it is human nature.  Cher, on her twatter, sends out an insulting message about Marcus and the whole world, especially the MSM, sits back and reports on the bitch bitch rants of the gay community towards a supposedly Vatican like professional closeted fraud such as Doctor Marcus. 

In a way, the Barbarians that Doc Marcus calls homosexuals, Barbarians that must be taught and disciplined, is in a way code talk for the new Christofascism.  It is "the way" of the extreme right wing of the Republican party that has hyjacked that party.  Making people act against their instincts and or their own best interests is what fascism is all about.

Pro-life is code for the abortion issue and not code for the need for social networks to follow the teaching of Jesus regarding the personal obligation to love your neighbor.

And the name of Jesus itself is code talk, not for the God of traditional Trinity delusion.

Their Jesus is God.  Yahweh is Jewish and suspect and the Holy Spirit is any spiel to talk god bullshit and empty the sheep’s pockets.  Jesus is God Incorporated and Tax Free for every huckster or used car salesman who can start a store front meal ticket church.  Halleluiah!

In fact, for Opus Dei candidates like Rick Santorum or other Christofascists like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann, it is all about appearances no matter how dysfunctional and hell like their domestic family situation is for their children.  Appearance and hypocrisy are all that matter in Tea Partyville.

In a way the Fascism in the name of Christ is nothing new in the last century.  In a way the very pagan Arian pseudoscience of Creationism, or even the theology of Marx as a Christ substitute, has all been tried and tested in Europe in the nineteen thirties prior to fifty million human beings being wasted in WWII in an experiment to see how far insanity can fly, walk, talk or stick to the wall  in any political forum.

Worked before for the crazies.  Let’s do it again.

History repeats itself.

God (the real God) save us all!

Constantine the Great's Pwned Sarcophagus

If you tier down to my amateur historian level and try to find something available on the net and not yet available from all those ivy weed college libraries and their ancient, in the last century, bound hardcopy research materials, you start to see some really blatant lies and or chasmic sized discrepancies told by both the Catholic church hierarchy and misc. degreed, vested, meal ticket, publish or perish, historians.

Like after Constantine decriminalized Christianity in 313 C.E. with the Edict of Milan, then you have all these stories about his illiterate mom who he hid away through most of his career. Constantine, being born out of wedlock to a Roman soldier and an inn keeper’s daughter, you then have mom running around the empire nearly eighty years of age finding all the one true relics of this or that member of saints’ bodies and or of course the one true cross. 

The Vatican museum has the above pictured sarcophagus listed as Saint Helena’s final resting place.  Reading around and you get all sorts of PR nonsense about how the sculptures on the stone box represent a hunting scene and that it was intended as Constantine’s own Sarcophagus but mom died first and he shoved her into it because in her old age he had not already planned ahead or built the old lady any resting place. Yeah right.

This Sarcophagus pictures war scenes and torture of prisoners on their way to death and or sacrifice at the hands of Constantine’s secret Sun God Mithra/Serapis army cult religion?

The old lady, who goes to Jerusalem for Sonny to find the true cross in a shape that did not exist in Pilate’s time and nails, then orders the destruction of the Temple of Venus over the site of the Holy Sepulchre and then orders, pays for one of the trashiest, slumfest-e-ist looking monuments in the history of western civilization.  Give me a break.

The Muslims never tore this trashfest architecture down. It got burned down when the candles started a fire and the Muslims paid to rebuild it to insure domestic tranquility. 

The propaganda got turned around and we had the First Crusade.  Sweet.

The old lady gets attached to unsubstantiated male created urban legends, myths, PR lies and such like Mary, the mother of Jesus. She gets recruited to near god like sainthood and evangelistic fervor and non-intelligence promoting Sonny’s new Roman Empire religion as the typical go along female doormat misogyny for men’s mischief and “tradition” (lies). Zzzzz.  Anatomy is destiny or is it merely human politics?

RIP Helena.  You can’t choose your parents and you certainly can’t predict the course of the lives of your children or the institutions they found.

Benedict XVI and his new Holy Roman Empire

I heard something the other day from a practicing Catholic. It had to do with the present German Pope and his attempt to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire in Europe.


What is this all about? This sounds a bit far fetched at first but if you look at the historic footprints, it is a plausible statement.


The RC church’s long term plan since Napoleon seems to be to have one dominant Catholic political power under a new so called Holy Roman Emperor. Democracy is deemed totally secondary to supreme authority of the church and or the state with the church.


The countries of Europe at present are involved in a European Union. There had recently been a new official job in that political union calling for the office of President of the European Council.


A man who openly campaigned for this new office was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism. He didn’t get that appointment but one has to wonder if the Vatican was rooting for Tony in their long, long term plans for a one holy and Catholic Europe.


One of the recent Wikileaks diplomatic documents sheds light on Benedict XVI opposition to letting Turkey, a Muslim country, from joining the European Union. Turkey should have a special relationship with Europe but not be a full member according to that leaked document. Europe should think of itself as a Christian entity and not be mixed with other belief systems in on Benedict’s wish list and his struggle against European secularism.


WikiLeaks cables: Pope wanted Muslim Turkey kept out of EU
 

Of course, as a political and financial entity, the Vatican Bank is currently in the middle of a money laundering scandal with Italian authorities.  Nothing new there.  The Vatican and its bankers are as corrupt as any other political state.

Vatican Bank mired in laundering scandal

I did run into a blog article that I found interesting about the Vatican’s political swings back and forth over the past two centuries without an official Holy Roman Emperor.  The article implied that Pius XII was already in line to have Hitler, a baptized catholic, establish Roman Catholicism as the official religion under a German controlled Europe.

The Holy Roman Empire, Hitler, and Benedict XVI

Makes you wonder with the present financial turmoil and Germany at the center of a stabilizing financial factor in a declining economic European Union.

It is important to recognize that the Roman Catholic Church had a long term strategy to restore Catholicism and Papal supremacy. In the short run they could tolerate dictators who were not subservient to the Pope if those dictators would create the conditions (by creating authoritarian states and exterminating non-Catholics) that would allow the Popes to end up at the top of the hierarchy.

Thus Europeans found themselves subject to Benito Mussolini in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany, General Petain in France, General Francisco Franco in Spain, and a host of lesser Catholic dictators.


In retrospect the Catholic Church lost its great gamble for control of the world. The Protestants (if you include atheists as Protestants) of Great Britain, the United States, and Russia defeated Pius XII (successor to Pius XI), Hitler and crew.

Makes you wonder what Pius XII is heading toward sainthood for – not for savings millions of Jews but for following the long term political gameplan of the Vatican’s great Catholic hope for Europe.

With the Polish Pope and the current Pope, Benedict XVI, we have seen the Catholic Church shed its fake liberalism of the post war period. Liberal Catholics have been mercilessly purged from the Church hierarchy.

Medieval styles of thought have begun to be promoted again. The Church has not openly advocated a return to monarchical government yet, but it has supported a number of right wing Catholic governments in Latin America and authoritarian politicians in Europe…

Sakirin Mosque, Istanbul

Sakirin Mosque, Istanbul

Architect, Hüsrev Tayla

Interior Design, Zeynep Fadillioglu

Mosque designed by a Woman

Fred Flintstone Endorses Michele Bachmann for Presidency

(Des Moines) Fred Flintstone, his stage name, a local actor, is endorsing Representative Michele Bachmann’s GOP bid for the Presidency.

Fred, who describes himself as an expert Fossil Reenactor, was recently laid off at a local Creationist Museum because of the economy.  He currently does children’s birthday parties and occasionally performs at home schools.

“I do the method acting thing. Really get into my subject of being a caveman who knows how to interact with dinosaurs and is of course waiting for the Savior to be born.  It’s a specialty that calls for a certain amount of dedication and consecration. 

When asked why he was endorsing Bachmann he replied.

“Well she is like Shakespeare when she says things like ‘A grain of wheat plus a starfish does not equal a dog, and that this is what evolutionists are teaching in our schools’.

“We can’t let the government shut down home schools and force kids to learn godless science.  Besides, home schools right now account for close to half this actor’s bread and butter. 

John Corapi - Judas Priest?

Innocent or guilty, I have formed an opinion of this matter burning up keyboards on the Catholic blogosphere.

Father Corapi, until recently a living saint, has apparently taken the money and run so to speak.

There were allegations of sexual amusement (with women) and drug addiction.

FYI The Ongoing Story 

I saw him a few times on EWTN, haven’t watched it in years, with his aggressive defense of the RC catechism and all things RC. I was not impressed.

His speech seemed to be impeded by badly fitting dentures as he seemed to spit a lot when making a point. 

Quite popular with devout middle aged catholic babes.  There is a great wailing and gnashing of teeth since his departure from the official catholic airwaves on the very huge rosary, middle aged catholic babe blog circuit. 

In a sense, he has gone over to the other side.  His Santa Cruz Media seems to be in his for-profit name and not in name of his religious order or any greedy diocese.   Get the deed.  Keep the deed.  Screw everybody else. Catholic rock stars don’t need a conscience.

Screw the ecclesiastic courts set up to investigate abuse.  Set up shop in God’s country, Montana, praise the lord and pass the ammunition – and keep the profits on DVDs, pamphlets, inspirational books etc.  And let’s not forget the lecture circuit.  Great deal.

And now a second planned career to out church corruption.  Caiaphas lives!

The Catholic church has gone to hell – surely and truly gone to hell.

Jimmy Swaggert move over. 

Good News of Miriam - Novel - Chapter 17

Having a precious jewel in one’s possession sounds great, the problem is holding onto the jewel.

Unfortunately, after I spent some quality time with Jesus that day, I kept running into what I will call the committee.

Those surrounding Jesus were a mixed bunch of people. There was an outer core of James, his brother, Mary (another Mary), his mother along with assorted cousins and half brothers and half sisters. There was also this Simon person. They also called him Rocky or Peter as a nickname, perhaps as an invention of sarcasm. It takes intelligence to understand and appreciate the dark humor of sarcasm.  I learned that well from my Greek plays, especially the more formal comedies.  In any case, sarcasm was completely lost on this Simon person.  And lost on James too as well I might add. These were the original ones of his hard core Galilee base.

This outer core, with the exception of Rocky, were all family. This family did not seem to be a very close family that I could see.

The closest circle were what I called the worldly ones. They were Matthew the tax collector, and two brothers James (another James) and John.

James and John, the brothers, were called the “sons of thunder”. Whenever they were around, their loudness and boyish enthusiasm centered all attention about themselves and the subjects that they were to talk about or address.

When one brother spoke or preached, the other usually joined in to accent a point of conversation or start a play on words.  And there were many words to choose from with many local dialects.  In a way, if James got silence on any given line of a preaching idea and it went dead in the faces of the local native, it was John that then threw in an assortment of words, local, Hebrew, Greek, Latin or even Persian to finally get a response on the faces of those being preached to.

If I had not known differently I would have thought these two were theatre folk doing short comedies and using plays on words as comedic technique to emphasize some fact stated.  That and using their gesture of the hands waving or slapping each other in the chest as each made points to a story or a debate within a story.  They had the talent but not the polish of the theatre people I had recently met and associated with. 

All in all, the best of them, this Jesus crowd, had a country bumpkin air about them.  Even if the sophisticated Jerusalem urban types would see this country cousin veneer, some could see through to the strength, self confidence and even arrogance of the northern Galilee local culture in these two brothers.

Even Jesus with his charisma could not compete with their energy and this horsing around of James and John once it was ignited. The only time I saw Jesus laugh was when James and John got together into their verbal mischief and childish pranks.  It was they who went ahead of the group and scouted out any town or village that would be willing to welcome Jesus as a visiting preacher.

This Matthew, James and John sub-committee were also the one time followers of the martyred John the Baptist figure.

I have heard lately that Jesus was supposed to have been a cousin of this Baptist fellow. I heard no such thing when I first encountered Jesus.

The next layer surrounding Jesus had to do with the rabbis and scholarly crowd.

It was here that Jesus was most successful. His knowledge of most of the Jewish sacred and semi-sacred texts was phenomenal. He had a perfect memory.

I understood from my old friend Hiram that there were many sacred Jewish texts floating around. Some cults were focused on one or two ancient books. Only a handful of scholars had any idea what the true inventory of sacred books was in the Jewish culture.

There was something Jesus had once disclosed to me. As a recognized child prodigy with a perfect memory, he was made to recite volume after volume of Jewish law. In fact, Jesus looked back with regret. His name and fame as a child was that of someone more like a freak going from town to town and from synagogue to synagogue for a small fee or donation.

Jesus wept. He felt that he had been denied a childhood because of his talents.  And like many children denied a childhood, he had seen too much of the complex and many times corrupt workings of the adult world.

Let us get back to the committee…

For more sample chapters:

Good News of Miriam

Sanctuary of the Heart - Albert Ketelbey

I ran into this old fashioned sentimental music of Albert Ketelbey.  He was a very successful British composer very popular in the early part of the twentieth century.

Music was designed as an accompaniment to vaudeville, music halls and silent films.  He also broke the million mark on at least one of his records.

I find it quite relaxing to listen to.  In this complicated scurrying age, it is nice to look back on the tastes of the past and share them briefly in the present.

Goodness in Grace

The Serapis Flag – Flag Day USA

John Paul Jones gets his ship shot out from under him, the Bonhomme Richard (1779), and he boards his prize, the British ship HMS Serapis.

Jones lands in a Dutch port for repairs and supplies. The Dutch were supposedly neutral. The Brit diplomats say that Jones is a Pirate, in that he has no recognizable national flag on his captured vessel.

The Dutch recognize the United States as a legitimate political entity and with some digging, letters from diplomats Franklin and Adams to the Dutch with a description of what the official American flag is supposed to look like, Jones on his ship comes up with the first Navy ensign, the Serapis Flag.

The Dutch, by diplomatic reason and or bribe (probably bribe from Dutch bankers already banking on the Americans backed by the French) slips a sketch of Jones’ improvised flag retroactively into the Dutch records.  They recognize the Serapis flag as the official flag of the USA.

Voila! The HMS Sepapis is then a legitimate prize of war by a legitimate nation. It goes to show you how with the Serapis American flag, how too many cooks can spoil any broth.

And so it goes. Or so it went.

Sam Harris – Journey to Atheism

Perhaps the old definitions of God, being obsolete, has created a gap, called the present atheism, leading to a possible future redefinition of that past idea and or concept – by a first modern generation, of not touched by past religion, atheists.

Sam Harris – on Islam

Sam Harris

Baptized in the Oneness of Feeling

I ran into the above quote and was taken by the poetry of the words -"baptized in the oneness of feeling", a Friend’s description of the atmosphere at Abington Pa. regarding a meeting with Nicolas Waln as speaker, 1797

Apparently after this guy gave a very inspirational sermon, the assembly did not want to leave the building and it continued for a short time trying to come down from a spiritual high.

Funny how the use of words like “baptized in” is used as metaphor in that Quakers don’t do baptism.

I was doing some historic research using old maps of Philadelphia on the Internet.  I was looking up spaces I grew up in sections of Philly that might be labeled as Tacony or Frankford.

I did some further research after I realized that a lot of colonial mansions and summer homes had once existed, and disappeared, long before I came along and co-existed with factories and national trucking firms on massive lots. 

The most deciding factor that changed everything, from rural to inner city and industrial was with the railroads starting about 1860 and or the Civil War era.  War does make jobs and progress of sorts somewhere, sometimes or it used to.

Looking for a defunct borough of White Hall led to a White Hall mansion on old maps across the street from the old Frankford Arsenal where my grandfather had once worked as a “millwright” whatever that is.  Have to look that one up.  Oral family history said he was a “rigger”.   Whatever.

The White Hall mansion led me to the Waln family, one of the founding Quaker families of the Philadelphia area.  Starting with a thousand acre grant from William Penn as incentive to uproot form England and religious persecution. 

One of the reasons another Quaker in England spent seven years in jail there was because he refused to pay a tax or assessment for the rebuilding of the local COE church’s steeple.  Thank God for separation of church and state here these days.  Small favors.  Buy me a ticket to the new world – fast.

Well anyway, I did not want to do too much research on this Quaker family.  I was curious to a point but not obsessed. Not much material on the Net in any case.  No doubt a lot of papers and diaries exist at Quakers colleges, libraries and archives but are not as yet digitalized etc.  

You can see and or wonder how in less than a hundred years, a virgin forest got chopped up, turned into farms and or plantations, mills, roads and in time to give all four foot eleven inches (150 cm) of George III a pain in his royal ass. 

Amazing stuff.  Some of these Quakers built small ships, brigantines, out of their forests.  Farming, trading, mills, foundries, and all in just a few generations.

From this background came Nicolas Waln, itinerate Quaker preacher.

Nicholas Waln 

"...He was a lawyer of some repute… He also had a dry wit. For instance:

"One time Nicholas Waln was visiting one of his sick friends who said to him, ‘Nicholas, I am very sick, I think I am about to die.'

Nicholas was a great joker and, no doubt to distract his friend's attention, replied, ”Yes, I think though wilt and when thou gets to heaven, please ask the Apostle Paul to return to earth and explain some of the hard things in his letters."..."

Waln - 254 S. Second St.

"Waln began his career as a lawyer, but as the following antidote illustrates he soon became disillusioned with the profession. When traveling home from trying a case in Bucks County, Waln stopped by his friend's country home and is reported to have said, "I did the best that I could for my client, gained the case for him, and thereby defrauded an honest man out of his just due. " After this he never practiced law again and instead became a Quaker minister..."

Apparently some of that old fashioned Quaker religion rubbed off on him.  A victim of conscience – pangs of it – walking away from a profession at the top of his form but one which he suddenly lost his passion for.  “What does it profit a man…”

Further research sees that the name of Waln has disappeared locally in the phone book. The name Waln still exists, as a minor historic footnote, on a small stretch of a back street in Frankford near a still existing Quaker meeting house.

The idea of following your conscience might explain why there are fewer Quakers these days than might be expected given their head start from Billy Penn.   Apparently the Quaker push for the abolition of slavery took its toll internally and nationally. Their ranks were thinned in border states like Maryland as an example where many Quakers joined mainstream Protestant sects.  This, in order to keep their property and still go to church on Sunday without hearing anything favoring the abolition of property. 

And so it goes.  Or went. 

Search for Spirituality - Peter Kennedy

Thumbnail Sketch of Jesus

Perhaps in one of my long standing prayers to somehow meet Jesus, I think I briefly channeled into an image of him – sort of  – a thumbnail image – just before I awoke this morning.


The conversation was something like he needed a driver with a license to drive his pick up truck.  (Apparently he did not have a license? I am not sure.)


He needed to drive over to his aunt’s church (parish?) (aunt? What was his aunt’s name?) to help hand out food to the poor.


Before I realized who he was, had been, he had turned away from me and was walking over to some nearby spot. I was searching dream memory for an image of the person I had just been speaking to in a dream and I came up blank. (I did not see his face though I knew it was him.)


Walking away in jeans and a denim shirt he had almost shoulder length unkept hair.  He carried himself like some aging has been rock star who after being on a binge or two knew that he was needed elsewhere other than in his own present self pity.  


In a way, a human Jesus is all we aspire to meeting.  The gold, the glitz, the hype, the groupies of some long gone old day history tours was long faded. 


But the spark and the talent is still there.

Lady Gaga – Judas – Lebanon – Censorship

“I am in love with Judas.” (lyric)

Lady Gaga's Born This Way banned in Lebanon

“ - Lebanese officials have reportedly banned Lady Gaga's new album, deeming it "offensive to Christianity". Police have impounded copies of Born This Way, currently No 1 from London to Tokyo. Its recent single, Judas, has been criticised by Catholic groups and was banned from Lebanese radio in April. … - “



BTW I have gone to the trouble to view the Lady Gaga Judas video three times. The lyrics are a bit ambiguous. On a visual level I get ambigous stuff too. But I see on one level, Gaga, if a Mary Magdalene figure, driving a wedge between bosom buddies Jesus and Judas and on another level I see Gaga speaking in a metaphoric feminine voice for the person of Jesus. Quite brilliant. She is not as talented at Madonna IMHO but give her time to evolve.

In any case, with 52 million hits on YouTube, anybody in Lebanon on the Internet can have the freedom of choice to view and hear this wonderful song.

Censorship in a free global world be damned!

If the video or the lyrics seems vulgar, well this is the age of vulgarity, a step toward evolution in society to another, hopefully higher, more mature level, in an evolved global society and or the near ending of a decaying dying civilization. I vote for the former.

I am reminded of the scandal and feigned alarm from the church fat cats about Madonna’s Like a Prayer in 1989. That is tame today and Judas by Lady Gaga will be considered tame too in time. If anything, these lazy dogmatic church types should be glad that Jesus, Judas or anything in the obsolete Christianity even gets a mention in the MSM even if by way of a back door. Etc.

I would show that Madonna video but it is blocked on You Tube. Instead a rendition of Like a Prayer from the mainstream TV show Glee – cannot get more tame, contemporary or gayer than that.



Have a cool day dudes and dudettes!
Warning: (Please do not take yourself and or somebody else’s lyrics too seriously.)




Happy Belated Birthday Jefferson Davis

I missed it.  Jefferson Davis’ birthday.  Yesterday?

Yesterday was an excuse for lazy state workers in Alabama and Florida to cheat taxpayers out of a day’s work in favor of a fake Monday, three day weekend holiday. 

He was actually born on June 3 which was Friday.  Tennessee has its official state holiday on June 3 and Mississippi celebrates Jeff’s birthday on the last Monday of May – Last Monday of May?  Memorial Day?  I thought Memorial Day was for all the dead of the Civil War.  And don’t give me the revisionist title “war between the states” bullshit. 

I have stopped trying to research this fake messiah birthday item state by state in the old southern states of the Confederacy.  Why bother?

I, did while researching, run into a blatant lie in of all places a government web site on the U.S. Senate.

January 21, 1861 Jefferson Davis' Farewell

“Tall, slender, and gaunt at the age of 52, Davis had been confined to his bed for more than a week….”

Tall?  Tall?  He was a shrimp! (Sorry)

Forty years ago I saw the “dress” he was captured in, in a display case at the Civil War Museum in Philadelphia.  It was not a dress but a silk paisley dressing gown.  How metrosexual for the times guys!  Did I mention how small this article of clothing was?  Like when I first saw it.  I thought it was for a child, the gown was so petite.

 (click on photo to enlarge image)

I researched it.  He was five foot four inches tall (162 cm).  I guess he was tall in the Senate and compared to the other senators?  Perhaps if he were alive today, Jeff would be driving or have one of his slaves driving him in a Hummer to offset psychological physical short comings if you know what I mean etc.

As I have stated before in this or some other blog, Jefferson Davis, as one time Secretary of War had the blueprints and plans for a southern route of a national transcontinental railroad, the projected moon shot space project of its day, to be financed by the federal government.

The lawyer for the northern railroads and the northern railroad transcontinental route lobby groups in the form of Abraham Lincoln signaled the end of the expansion of slavery on the continent.  Davis’ plans to build the southern route with cheap slave labor would have given him a shot at becoming the nation’s first billionaire.

 

How many dead darkies per mile would it have taken to make Jeff and his cronies’ multi multi millionaires building this dream of a southern railroad cash cow to the Pacific? Who would care?

Strange thing is that most “Christians” don’t really know their neighbors let alone love them as commanded by one long forgotten mystic and seer. 

Odd thing was that Jeff was educated in a Catholic school along the way, even though not catholic.  Which is why I think Pope Pius IX had such a fondness for Jeff, and his brave stance defending the honorable age old institution of slavery. Whatever.

With the Gadsden Purchase in hand for a southern railroad Pacific route, the business men of the old south went their way into their brave new world of the Confederacy. With lots and lots of nut cases running around the planet like pro-slavery southern freebooter William Walker taking over countries like Nicaragua, funded by Vanderbilt types, the future seemed bright to fuel the future slave republics of Mexico and Central America in league with the Confederacy.

All Jeff Davis had to do was build the south’s railroad to the Pacific Ocean to be king of the world. 

I am not exaggerating these facts.  Greedy men with ego problems like Jeff Davis have and continue to plague and ruin the world to this day for the rest of humanity, slave or not. 

If you want to have cake with slave master dictators in the old south y’all, go right ahead.  Enjoy.

Have a nice day.