Wisdom

The Sunday Morning Muse, March 24, 2013

Faded peach light making a ring over the other hill. The sun cannot be far behind. The stillness is the story

this morning. Not a branch moving outside. Still cold out there. Chimney smoke coming out of rooftops in the distance. Cat took over the bed. She appreciates a good warm spot.

Easter is fast approaching.  Living with mom means the stuffed rabbit collection dominates the livingroom and there are enough decorated eggs, chick figurines and easter themed decals and flowers around to rival any bunny lane attraction. My contribution? A huge lily with five buds. My tastes run much less adorned, but for now at least, this is how it is. I retreat to the basement  a lot where I am going to start my seeds this week, now that the growing lights are all set up. 

This week I found myself in the absurd situation of picking out Easter cards for another person (mom, who is home bound) to give to someone else, even though mom is not religious, and the other people may or may not be religious. Hmm. I tried to pick colorful, happy looking cards, mostly spring themed as a compromise.

 In the end, I had too many bunnies and not enough Jesus.  I had to go back and get a few more religious ones, because mom sends religious cards to the religious, and bunny and flower type cards to the others. 

Easter, to me,  is a time of looking forward to the new season. A renewal of life after a long winter. Eating a good ham, and enjoying home made pierogies. Treating yourself to a chocolate bunny or grabbing a half dozen jelly beans when you walk past the candy dish. Its ritual. It's familiar and good. Its daffodils and crocuses and the robins are back. I saw one this week near the dump looking for worms in the soft ground.

I saw the footage of our President in the Holy Land this week and it made me sad. I saw the beauty of the ancient cities he visited, and was truly impressed at what wonders man can build. Without the use of modern machinery, too! 

But  I also saw the works of "modern" man, too.  The  150 foot wall of steel Israel is putting up to wall itself off, in the midst of continuing battles with their enemies.  A pity. 

I couldn't help wondering....if any of these people, any of them, of any religion....Christian, Muslim, Jew...actually believe a wonderful afterlife awaits them, why aren't they happy? The course of human events should seem trivial to them, merely passing issues compared to their glorified afterlife. If they KNOW, really have their "faith"....why wouldn't they be content with that? Why kill people over land? 

I'll never know.

The Sunday Morning Muse, March 3, 2013

Light snow falling, no sunrise today...snow covered roofs, an inch or so on the driveway. Birds huddled in the bushes. Cat is oblivious to it all. I'm reading a book by Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple.  It was really nice to be in my bed with a book, cat by my side, fake fireplace glowing, and just staying put. I love Sunday mornings.

So far the book is what it says it is. I want to know what Buddhism is and what it is not. I have become familiar with some of the teachings over the years. Now I want to learn more and see what it is really about.

 Present moment living is a big part of it. And also trying to escape the suffering that we as humans endure--a lot of it our own making. Haven't we all had the experience of worrying about something in our life, fearful of how this particular thing will play out? Oftentimes our own dreamed up concept of what is going on, or what will occur, turns out to be something far different than the reality that plays out. We all live in the present moment, and it is really all we have. I don't say that with any sense of loss, I say it with the thought in mind to
try and wake up and experience this beautiful life here and now.

Second mug of coffee. You see, here is an example: I don't think I even tasted the first cup. Truly. I am so absorbed in the morning ritual around here, that actually sipping the coffee instead of gulping it, tasting it and appreciating the aroma of it, doesn't really register. So... in honor of my new awareness, right now I took a piece of chocolate, took a sip of coffee with it and swished it around in my mouth. There. That is being in the moment.  And really liking it!

The Sunday Morning Muse, February 10, 2013

What a great sunrise today..... purples and light orange stretched out over the entire hill across the river as far as I can see. Already productive.... ordered more flower seeds....finally found the 6 foot Amaranthus called Velvet Curtains, that I like so much. I got the wrong kind last year....and they only grew about 2 feet. The giant burgundy plumes are a favorite around here. The Dreadlocks amaranthus is also one that I grow every
year and share with others. It is so unusual and one of the last flowers left in the garden in Fall.  It is really a cool plant.

Thinking ahead to spring. Musing about buying more poetry books, and fewer books on gastroenterology. I also resolve to read at least one love story. (Meanwhile, I just ordered The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites and Partners that Shape Who We are Today.) I got the idea to order that one from reading a story in the paper today about probiotics.  Antibiotics are stripping our guts of good bacterium as well as the bad....and we need to keep things in balance or risk some nasty digestive problems.

I'm not a total medical geek. I still find time to read an occasional Longfellow poem, or Whitman, or Dickinson. And that is a good thing.  I read where some anti intellectuals are trying to steer people away from taking "liberal arts" courses in favor of more "practical" fields of study. Their argument is that Philosophy
majors don't get jobs. Perhaps. I didn't major in Philosophy, but I did graduate from a Liberal Arts College. My courses in  Philosophy...and art, and theatre and history and literature opened up new worlds
for me and helped to develop my critical thinking skills. I got a window into world views and ideas that shape who I am today. I have used a lot of that knowledge time and time again in my life, in every job that I had.

And it expanded my life in ways I could never imagined for myself. I'm grateful for those courses. Even the religion classes I had to take as a requirement. I didn't know it at the time, but learning ABOUT religion...and the many religions out there...how they formed, who was in charge, how religious texts came about, etc. gave me enough insight to know we have to figure out a lot of things for ourselves. No one really has all the answers.

It is one thing to learn computers. It is another to have something to say. We are not meant to be empty vessels travelling through this life getting by simply learning a trade and repeating it day to day until we are old and die. I'm not saying we don't need a job, it is obvious we do. But I think these clam shells out there who have no sense of history, art, music, and yes philosophy, only have a small appreciation of what this human experience offers.

Slavery, Killing and Stoning. Vote the Bible.

I saw Billy Graham's ad in an Ohio newpaper yesterday. A full page telling people to vote according to the Bible. Of course he means Anti-Gay, Anti-choice, etc. He never told people how to vote, but it is pretty clear he is not a Democrat. I get a chuckle out of people sometimes.

The first thing I thought of was a few lines from the TV Show The West Wing. President Bartlett, asking questions about some bible references:

"I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21 : 7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? 


My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35 : 2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police? 

Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11 : 7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? 


Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side-by-side? 

Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? 

Think about those questions, would you?"

Hitchens: Why Fight Religion?

The Reason Rally is going on in Washington DC today. Made me think of Hitchens. In this clip he makes some very good points.

The Sunday Morning Muse, May 22, 2011

Rapture day came and went. No word from the crazy preacher yet who isn't making any public speeches or even answering his door. As the day went on and nothing "earth shattering" was going on, some of the "believers" tried to reassure each other of their "faith." Whatever that means. Faith in what? In this crazy preacher's calculator and numerology? Faith that the world will end? Or as one truck driver who quit working last week put it...

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"I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth."

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Hmmm... Maybe 72 virgins waiting for him? No...wait, wrong religion. But the thought process is the same. Perhaps his life is so miserable here that faith in something...even the end of the world, is better than going back to day to day life.

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Personally I feel that the millions of dollars they spent on billboards and advertising all his nonsense could have been better spent helping the poor and attending to pressing needs here and now in this life. To make people here less miserable. Show a little love.

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Maybe that is what I take from this side show. Wake up people. Appreciate the flowers...your loved ones...the beauty that you find here.

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The rapture will take care of itself.

End of Times

Not With a Bang But a Whimper

So... two days to go. Unless you have been on another planet this past week, you probably heard that some idiot who actually has airtime and a lot of followers has calculated that the end of the world as we know it will happen this Saturday. He's predicted this before and has been wrong, but what could he really do but go back to the drawing board, sharpen his pencil and recalculate? I suspect this Sunday he will be back on the air with some other prediction.

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This whole rapture idea fascinates some people. Books have been written, movies and such. Personally I think there is a better chance of mankind blowing itself up with nukes than there ever being a rapture. But that's just me.

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I'm more curious about the idiot and his faithful and what they will do on Sunday, when the birds chirp and the sun (not the SON) rises, and all is as it is...in the merry month in May. With a heck of a lot of rain.

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Will they be disappointed? Relieved? Hard to tell. But I'm not giving it any more thought.

Saint Germaine

Way back in the Catholic days of my childhood, I was tasked with picking a saint's name to add to my own for the occasion of my "Confirmation." I selected a French saint, Germaine, a shepherdess born in 1579. I liked her name, and I liked that she was a loner, spending her days outdoors with her flock of sheep. I had no internet access back then, so I knew little about her.

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I confess I haven't thought much about her since, until recently with the news about Pope John Paul II's fast track to sainthood and the miracle he was said to have performed after his death--curing a French nun of Parkinson's disease.

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Well, it's not such a big deal. That is mostly how it works with Saints. Miracles seem pretty common place after death. St. Germaine is busy. Since her untimely death at age 22 in 1601, no less than 400 "miracles" have been attributed to her intervention...from blindness to spinal disease. Even so, she wasn't canonized until 1867. That would be 266 years.

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Sadly she never cured herself. Born with a deformed hand she also suffered from Scrofula, which is a simply awful thing... that led her evil stepmother Hortense (great name for such a witch) to abuse her, and then send her to the fields to prevent the other children from catching it. The poor girl slept in the barn and was forced to eat table scraps.

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Germaine shared what little food she had with beggars, helped others and did good in the world despite her terrible circumstances. Her sheep were never attacked by wolves. Miracles or not, I respect her and I'm glad I have her name.

Pray for Good, Look for Worse

And thou shalt own a gun and shoot to kill if someone tries to steal your television set. So sayeth the Lord.
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New Booty Newty was at the NRA convention today pandering to the gun faithful-making the contorted argument that gun rights come from God.
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Hmm. The same one with the commandments? Thou shall not kill? Probably a loophole in there somewhere I don't see. I don't have a problem with the self defense arguments. I don't care if you want to own a gun. But tying the whole religion thing with it...God? Really? A God given right? What about "turn the other cheek?" I'm just sayin'. Howzat all fit in with this argument?

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Tornadoes in Alabama destroy homes and businesses and kill hundreds of people. The first interview I see is with an old woman who crawled into a hole and survived, and is now praising the Lord she is alive. (Kind of unfair the woman's dead neighbors can't be interviewed to hear what they thought of the Lord's decision on their behalf.) Either the Lord heard their prayers too and killed them anyway, or He had no choice in the matter at all. So some died and some lived. Can't have it both ways. I honestly don't know what good prayer does at this point. People suffer. People lose everything they have. People die. Some people don't. It seems awful random to me. Aunt Millie always said "pray for good, look for worse." There was 80 years of wisdom behind those thoughts. She was onto something.

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Finally...the beautiful wedding of William and Kate. A happy occasion and a good time had by all.

Blessed by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I don't really know what the Holy Ghost is, even though I had to spend all those days in Sunday School. It was a three in one thing. That's all I remember. All three... in one.

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Lions and Tigers and... a Dinosaur?

Today I got a slick invitation in the mail inviting me to a "Prophecy Seminar." I took a picture to show you. Multi headed leopards with wings, a dinosaur with strange points shooting out his head, a bear with ribs in his teeth and a winged lion in full color on the post card. Scary Stuff. The Key to Your Future!"

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It is all FREE! Free admission, Free study materials... Nothing to buy at all. Seating is limited.

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The return address doesn't inspire any credibility. "Seminars Unlimited." The address is in Texas which makes me even more suspicious. Not much good has come out of Texas lately. I digress. It also says it is sponsored by
Signs of the Times, whoever that is.

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The post card goes on to say that when I complete the seminar, I will "really understand the Books of Daniel & Revelation." Specific and dramatic revelations of things to come...not from

psychics... but from the unfailing Word of God.

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Hmmm. Last I tried to read the Book of Revelation it appeared to me that it was open to quite a bit of interpretation. I doubt if anyone will ever "really understand" it. Way back in Catechism

days the teachers didn't dwell on it much. I think it was way beyond us kids. It was billed as the confrontation between good and evil. I remember thinking I just wanted to live a normal life and then die without having to be around for all the crazy stuff.

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No real point in all this. I don't plan to attend. I hope they are not unscrupulous people who are taking advantage of those who do go. Maybe selling "End of Times" kits or something. Or scaring them. "Rousting" people up. ( I was once accused of rousting. It had to do with complaining about the bad water at an apartment where I lived. I "rousted" the other tennants.)

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Just live a good life, people. Treat others well. The Golden Rule. If you do that, your religious beliefs (or not) don't really matter. Even if that final battle comes along. I don't have a chance against the winged lion anyway.

Hitchens Interview on 60 Minutes Tonight

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

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How many times has he said it? It makes them crazy. His religion debates on the net are really something to watch. Love him or hate him, he knows religion. And he knows more than you, or me

or many others out there who profess some faith or another, but actually know very little about religions, their similarities, differences, and their history. He is way over my head most of the time, but I can grasp enough to realize the heft of his arguments.

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I hope he beats his cancer. Provocateurs like him rarely come around who have both the intellect and the swashbuckling persona that make Hitchens, well.... Hitchens. And I daresay to his naysayers, that he serves a purpose. Challenging beliefs is important because knowing why you believe what you do, not just because it was always what you were told, is the essence of who you

are.

A Poke at the Pope

Thou shalt not transplant pope livers, nor eat them with fava beans and a fine Chianti.- 11th Commandment

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In strange but true religious news, the Pope, though an advocate for organ transplantation, will not be donating his organs any time soon. The pope's organs belong to the church. All of them? All of them.

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On the bright side, on your next trip to Italy be sure and have a look at the Pope Pancreas relic collection in the church of Saints Anastasio and Vncent near the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

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The Sunday Morning Muse, August 30, 2009

I was sitting in a restaurant looking out the window when a church van went past. It said Holy Covenant Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Quite a long name for a church. Took two lines on the van, an I'm not sure if I missed a word or two because it went by so fast.

I can't judge a church by it's name. Because the names are meaningless to me. I haven't taken a serious study of what Presbyterians believe versus Evangelicals, let alone Evangelical-Presbyterians. I don't know the difference between the Baptists and the Methodists. The Catholics change what they do so often it's hard to recognize the Catholics now-- as opposed to the old Latin masses of not so long ago, but I had a grasp on their views at one time.

The point in this muse, if there is one, is that I don't know of anyone else who knows the differences either. Oh, there may be a scholar out there, someone who put their own religious views in perspective by actively learning about other religions in a scholarly setting. And perhaps coming to terms with what they believe in that way. But it would be a lifetime task if you include the other religions, too, not just the Christian ones. I picture this silly graph with basic beliefs... and some perspective congregation member ticking off blocks...(mumbling) Yeah I believe this, no-- I don't believe that. This sounds good, this sounds hard to imagine, etc. Until... at the bottom, eureka! The person discovers they are a Presbyterian with methodist leaning tendencies, who likes Jewish customs, but can't give up pork.

Silly I know.

I read somewhere that most people just stick with what their parents taught them. Whatever family they were born into.... luck of the draw really, in terms of what they believe. When you think of it that way, it seems somewhat haphazard. I would think if your religion mattered that much to you, the fate of your very soul, that one would examine the options out there carefully to ensure the best possible outcome. This muse is probably to some extent an extension of when I was a kid and used to feel sorry for people in faraway places who didn't hear about Catholic teachings and would certainly not go to Heaven. We were taught the Catholic religion was the one true religion. Where would they go? I asked.

The point then was to just get The Word out somehow.... and one way was to raise money for the pagan babies. I never gave my change to the pagan babies but this is something the Catholic kids were told to do, fill up these little books with money, in order to name a pagan baby. (The money went to mission work, or perhaps a new Gargoyle for the Vatican, I was never sure.)

I don't fear the Pagans anymore. No one should. Many of the actual customs like the celebration of Easter and Christmas were actually copied from them. But they didn't teach that in Sunday School.

It pays to shop around.

Losing My Religion for Equality

Jimmy Carter makes a very important point in this piece. I have passed it along to others, and I hope everyone who has a mother, a daughter, a wife or a sister will think of them when they read about how women are oppressed in the name of religion.

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God. Here is a link to a great piece written by our former President Jimmy Carter. I enourage everyone to read this.

Better Bowers Explains Marriage

I can't really add anything to this.

Too Much Empathy...for Heaven's Sake

It was a Great Speech at Notre Dame

He hit it out of the park.

I am so glad we have such a great President. I knew he wouldn't let me down. His speech showed respect, intellect, humor, humility, appreciation, and graciousness. I would wager that it is one of the best speeches that place has ever heard. (Surely better than George Bush's in 2001, which amounted to little more than a pandering, self serving advertisement for his Faith Based programs.)

As for the people who booed at the very beginning or boycotted or showed any other kind of disrespect.... well it says more about what kind of a person YOU are than him.

Way to go President Obama! You rose way above the occasion. Loved the part about the Golden Rule. Simple, yet effective. Even a Pope could understand it...

The Sunday Morning Muse, May 17, 2009

So today is the big speech at Notre Dame. I started feeling sorry for President Obama today as I gave the matter some thought. The TV was on and I could see these absolutely hateful people marching around with their "baby killer" placards, and other talking heads inciting anger and spewing nonsense and of course the endless Fox News coverage.... and it occurred to me that the President is in a no win situation.

He was ASKED to be there. Like several other former Presidents before him. What was he supposed to do? Turn them down? Now he's stuck. I have a feeling he will give an awesome speech. And the so called religious Catholics who are opposing him would do well to listen to him speak. Show a bit of tolerance.

I'm so tired of the drama. People playing for the cameras. It scares me when the right wingers inflame the zealots over guns, god, gays, and in this case abortion. Because there are some real nutcases out there that take things to the extreme. You will never have intelligent discourse with people on a religious mission. Don't we know this all too well?

If I were him I'd tell these graduates to use their education to make the world a better place. Build bridges, help others, reach out to people, find our common ideals. Work together, strive to be a peacemaker. If religion has done anything bad, I'd say the obvious is how it separates us.

So, President Obama, Good luck out there. Stay Safe.

And keep abortion legal.