Labels: 0th UU principle, 5th UU principle, 6th UU principle, angry at organized religions, Christianity, Community, favorite scriptural passages, Islam, our mission, paradigm shift, pax hominibus, war and peace

Labels: Christianity, organized religion, prophetic voices

Labels: 4th UU principle, art, Christianity, freedom versus freedom, globalism, personal growth, prayer, salvation, war and peace

Labels: Christianity, drug war, personal bookmarks, personal religion, religious community, sermons, theological sources

Labels: astrophysics, Christianity, christology, classism, homelessness, politics

A few days ago, a fellow chaplain was leading our devotion after morning report, and did the Lord's Prayer in Maori, translated into English. The Lord's prayer is one of my favorite rituals of Christian religion, and I feel this version takes it to a new level. The text below is an English translation of the Maori wording.

Eternal Spirit, earth-maker, pain-bearer, life giver,
source of all that is and that shall be,
father and mother of us all,
loving holy one in whom is heaven:

may it happen in the way it is good to you;
may it happen on earth in the same way
as it happens in spirit world.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil free us.

For you live in the glory of power that is love, now and forever,
now and forever.
Amen

pax hominibus,agape to all,joel

PS- I got a great night's sleep last night while working on-call. During my sleep, I had a great dream in which I found a penny-sized coin that had been minted to look like a Melvin's album cover, though not really the one linked here.

Labels: Christianity, melvins, prayer

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From a video of Floyd Red Crow Westerman
The songs that follow are well worth the listen as well.


pax hominibus,agape to all,joel

Labels: angry at organized religions, Christianity, heaven on earth, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, presence, theological sources

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Today at the Faithful Fools Bible Study, by asking for 3 one-digit numbers from 0-9, and given 8, 6, and 4, then adding 100 to 864, and multiplying by 2, we ended up at page 1928 in The Message translation of the Bible that was at my seat, which brought us to chapter 2 of the Gospel of John. Inside I groaned a little at first, because it's the story of the wine miracle, and then JC casting out the money changers from the temple. Both of which I've heard so many times...

But a closer examination brought a few new insights, so I'm glad we did it.

According to the story he made approximately 150 gallons of wine (starting from six 20-30 gallon pots of water). That must've been a heck of a big wedding, or a lot of drinking happened. Actually the part I liked the most was the symbolism. The wine miracle story needs to be understood on the symbolic level, or the reading of it is almost entirely wasted.

The vessels were for Jewish vessels for purified water. Turning the water into wine--not just wine--but 150 gallons of really awesome wine is symbolic. This was our reading of the story: The wedding party had apparently been going alone just dandily until they were almost out of wine. Jesus' mother asks him to do that one trick he does, and he kind of snubs her, telling her it's not yet time for him to out himself, and not for a wedding (in the Gospel of John, he has not yet performed any miracles, so this would be the first). Then he decides to do it anyway. No doubt the bridegroom would've been pretty embarrassed to throw this big shindig and run out of wine.

The wine is the Spirit. Water is the raw materials (the unanimated, unenlightened life), but then when it's come alive, it's wine. (FWIW, the Spirit isn't some indefinable mojo that only the Church or some formalized Kergyma group has access to--it's simply our down-to-Earth connection to one another as divine beings. It is namaste and recognizing the light between ourselves and each other.)

But the party had run out of wine, and Jesus (as Christ) introduced a ton of it (actually closer to half a ton).

So the bridgegroom then would be the controller of the party. The party is life itself. And when life all around is debased to its raw materials, and for sale, and individualized, and neglects our connections, it's time for Christ to bring the miracle, to let loose with an abundance of connective Spirit.

The fact that it's a wedding, a joining together of two people (or in the thinking of the times, a man acquiring a woman) can be seen in terms of process theology. Things in the world coming together in a concrescence of events. This can sort of be shown a bit by the nexus within the horn torus in the video sermon I showed on Jan 3 at UUSF, which I'll eventually provide a link to once I finalize the images in the video material.

Also at the Bible Study, somebody pointed out how the story expresses Jesus' unwillingness to perform miracles* at times (his push-back on his mother, his denial of Satan during the trial in the desert, and his refusal to do much of anything at Herod's request). IOW, don't do your miracles (or your work) at the devil's request.

*multithetical belief allows for the possibility and impossibility of miracles--both the certitude and certain denial....


Regarding bringing things together, and the Just-in-Time business model, or "just-in-timeness" in general...

This quote is what led me to want to comment on it: "The philosophy of JIT is simple: inventory is waste." I would offer a contradictory/complementary philosophy: "Inventory is security."

"Inventory is waste" combined with "Inventory is security" tells a lot of story, and sometimes one is true, and at other times, the other is true. When the inventory we're talking about is critical for life, inventory IS security. Having enough food, clothing, shelter, and health-care on hand in case of emergencies is really important. In the case of Toyota producing cars, inventory may very well be waste. Imagine creating 10,000 more gas guzzlers than is necessary, and then they're just left sitting on the lot. Or creating way too many of any product--whether it's a raw material being pulled from the Earth, semi-finished materials like gaskets, mufflers, and circuit boards, or final products such as a car or an iPhone--creating too much is indeed a wastefully large buffer. Even though people may clamor for luxury goods, we will be able to continue living if there are hold-ups due to buffer underruns. Not so with critical goods like food. The Mormons are supposed to keep a year's supply of food on-hand, and Joseph told Pharoah to prepare for a seven-year famine. For food, we have the ability to create enough for everyone, to transport it to everyone who needs it, and to keep more than a JIT inventory. For our leaders and property owners to neglect to do so is criminal. Witnessing the tragedy of this week's earthquake in Haiti when many of our church buildings and other buildings in the developed West are earthquake retrofitted at the cost of millions per building sometimes tells a bigger story about inequity. Spending trillions of dollars toward war that would be much better-spent on emergency preparedness is another example of the US government choosing destruction and neglect over creation and preparation. I pray that the US govt, other countries, and other agencies will be able to deliver a strong response to save as many in Haiti as possible.

I envision a world where anyone can plant gardens in the public parks, on the roadsides, and even in the medians (for anyone to tend and to harvest), so that the neediest will never go hungry. Further, I envision a world where our namaste connection is between each of us to every other, even those we've not yet met. Where the call of that light between us makes us recognize who among us is more needy, and make sure their most basic needs are met, and that the buffer for the basic needs is always larger than the buffers for luxury items.

And of course, JIT is not just limited to production of material goods--this understanding of just-in-timeness can also apply to provisional teachings in religion. Hopefully we can explore that some time.


lyrics: Once in a while, the zebras run to the spaceman and his gun, in the spider's web.
from Superhumans, by Flaming Lips

colors: pink and yellow

mood: procrastinatey

chant/prayer/mantra: let justice roll down like waters, with a half-ton buffer made out of wine (apologies to teetotalers and alcoholics).

pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Christianity, favorite scriptural passages, metaphor, parousia, religious community, restorative justice, theological sources, theology

Multithetical Manifesto: Hardcore Angel Power

There is a practice in Unitarian Universalism where the youths spend a year studying a wide variety of religious beliefs. Then they get an opportunity to get up in front of the congregation and make their individual statements of belief. Not having grown up in the tradition, I'd like to now share my faith statement, after a fashion. And yes, I do still plan for it to fit within the parameters of the actual assignment of preaching prophetically.

Here, now, please let’s take a quick journey out into the solar system. It takes about 8 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth. And it actually takes over 100,000 years for the photons produced in the sun's core to travel the 700,000 kilometers John 3:17, metaphor, Multitheticalism, personal religion, renewable energy, salvation, theology, sefrom the core to its surface, and then for those final eight minutes, it travels to Earth at the speed of light. This parallels how our ideas and communication work. Our collective ideas gestate for a long time before they're ready. Then we communicate them orally and they are delivered at the speed of sound, or we can type them and they end up halfway across the world in seconds.

Growing up, math, along with spelling, was always my favorite subject. Now, it informs my theology in fundamental ways. One primary way is through set theory. For example, imagine the set of whole numbers between 1 and 5, inclusive. The subset of all odd numbers is 1, 3, and 5. The subset of all even numbers is 2 and 4. 1 by itself is a subset. So is 2 by itself, and on and on. The largest “subset” is all five numbers, and then there is the empty set, which includes nothing at all, but still qualifies as a set.

I wonder: Do you see where I'm going with this, theologically? To put a word to it, I'm a multitheticalist. That means I'm an atheist, including Buddhism and Humanism – either a system of religious belief that doesn't consider any god, or a religious belief that specifically denies that a god exists. And I'm a theist. And a monotheist at that – including each of the various descriptions of “the one God” written by leaders such as Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, Paul of Tarsus, and Mohammad. And I’m a polytheist, to the degree that I can learn about the many Hindu gods, and the pantheons of Greek and Roman deities. And I'm a pantheist, a panentheist, and even an animist.

“But which of those do you believe,” I hear my 20 year old fundamentalist self demand of me. “You have to believe something!” And I do. I believe that it's impossible to know anything about the divine, so that might lead one to label me as an agnostic. But agnostic is too simple a term, without sufficient examination of the complexity of meaning at play here.

In a fluid bedrock kind of way, I've come to appreciate that anything carried with words is metaphor – it's meaning attributed to physical happenings and existences. But in telling stories about the world, by necessity, we are mapping from the ultimate reality into stories that we believe, to help us make sense of the world. That mapping simplifies complex things however. It distorts events to fit into recognizable frameworks. This mapping deletes things because telling the whole truth in all its complexity would mean recreating the whole universe. And the mapping that accompanies systems of belief also generalizes things, turning them into archetypes, stereotypes, and symbols within our stories.

Knowing all that, choosing just one belief is like being stranded on an island and choosing only one book, or one album, or one type of food. Or one thing for my mind and spirit to ingest. Therefore, I'm a multitheticalist (from “multi-thesis”) – or holding several theses in balance all at once, and keeping them open for critical evaluation. My free and responsible search for truth and meaning demands this of me.

But it's not just about belief. It's about the heart. When I first got into this, God told me that it was going to be my heart on the line. But like Jonah, I escaped for a while. I escaped into concepts and theories, and reveled in wonderment at the opportunity to examine the “Big Picture,” (whatever size that actually is). But going beyond means coming back. That's the responsible part of the search. Even with all the angels and demons I’ve collected along my journey, I still feel inadequate to tell my prophetic story. All I know is that for everyone out there with messages (either to deliver from your mind through your voice, or to your mind from your senses), we're cut from the same cloth as those other prophets, especially when we can see beyond the boundaries of our cultural contexts. With all my agnosticism, that is a story I do know.

But what's a prophet to tell? Ideally, I'd light up a cigarette, strap on a guitar, and sing for you, about you, and with you. Why use this gracious gift of breath just to expound on so much theology, or to craft something that compels people to action, but what action? There are SO MANY of them!

There's the age-old practice of taking moral stances on issues:

• The ERA still hasn't passed. What gives?
• The construction of race, and how racism undergirds so many other justice issues
• LGBTIQ – an alphabet soup that simply says “equal rights to all regardless of gender or sexual expression”
• The creation and continuance of class structures, and ownership, and workers' rights.
• Earth justice and animal rights
• Abortion issues
• Drug policies

Or budgetary concerns like:

• Putting money toward wars and failed prison systems and
• Laws to ensure certain economic controls and property rights are secured,
• Instead of putting resources to Education, Energy policies, Scientific research, and Health care

I feel like I could (and very well might) speak to these things from the pulpit every week. It just goes round and round, like wheels in icy slush in March in Minnesota. I want to put sand down under the tires. I want to dig out to the concrete below the ice and get some traction! I want to be primal, to recognize it's not just about squeezing out words as breath flows out past my vocal cords. Text and speech is necessary, but so insufficient. I want to put out that all-too-necessary barbaric “yop” -- I'm ALIVE!!!!! And I hope you do too.

I have to do that. When my God speaks (all of them, and none of them, and one of them), it's through me. See, I'm one of those Multithetical Universalists who believes in radical uncertainty. Our salvation is all tied up together in this boat named Earth, and there is no fate but that which we make. This world is so beautiful, and yet so fragile. One of my versions of God is where I am the creator born into creation to walk upon this beautiful blue-green planet I have made, and I weep and marvel all at once at the horror and the beauty of the upside-downness side by side with the right-side-upness. Because like it or not, humanity has declared dominion here. Now, they/we will get credit or blame for whatever is to come. The blame or credit goes not to God, or ancient prophecies – only to humanity's insistence in those gods and prophecies. Demanding that theirs be the true version, and arguing over details in their stories of divinity and prophecy.

Because we have a preponderance of new prophets, telling the story clearly and honestly, from really recent and accurate knowledge about this world and our relationship within it. Yet there is almost no need for prophets now. The story of the condition of our cultures and our planet now comes to us ever more clearly. Humans have to close their ears, eyes, and minds to avoid the trumpets call. In Zoroastrianism, the job of the Saoshyant, or final judge at the end of the age or world, is simply to point that out. In essence saying “Open your eyes. Look around you! There is your prophecy, and my work is done here.” But its not as easy as that, since peoples' frames mask the full truth, until truth's complexities start to pull open the frames. But the process is soooo slow. After all, wasn't it 2000 years ago that Jesus said, “Those who have ears, let them hear...”? It's slow, but it's coming.

There's more to the story. In my rear-view mirror, I have all these memories of the heavens and hells my mind has visited, to bring me here. In my dreams, I've seen chariots and thrones, and so many apocalyptic futures, like the beatific utopian heaven-on-earth that my inner voice compels me to co-create. I do hope one day to write a utopian sci-fi drama. On the other hand, some of those memories of potential futures are outright hellish. I won't go into detail, but those dreams had people in the grayest darkest cavernous pits, stepping on those below them to try to climb out, but always being stepped on from above by someone else. Even those highest up were still in the pit. With nobody ever reaching down to lend a hand. And then there's the bittersweet end, somewhere in between. Where the world plods through, suffering for centuries or millennia because of the damage we've done to our planet and each other.

So, what saves us? Our actions do. Which are influenced by the thoughts and words that compose our world-views. Our actions influenced by our beliefs, with all their tendencies to distort, delete, and generalize. That is why I'm preaching multitheticalism today. It seeks to open wide to any possibility, evaluating it while finding ways to enrich worldviews. But it has one big drawback. It takes a lot of time. It's heavy, and it's slow to come into the light.

It's slow, like the photons inside the sun.

chant/prayer/mantra: For energy to deliver this well.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Atheism, Christianity, drug war, environment, guitar, inter-faith, Islam, John 3:17, metaphor, Multitheticalism, personal religion, renewable energy, salvation, sermons, theology

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 Today, I worked back through two months of mostly-read email to look for stragglers, and came across one with a link to wordle.net.  I went there and pasted in the text from my Christ, Krishna, Buddha class term paper, and made some word clouds.

Labels: art, Christianity, christology, metaphor, Multitheticalism, theology, Universalism

Well, I'm exhausted. I'm writing a 25 page paper for the "Christ, Krishna, Buddha: Towards a New Theology of Divine Embodiment" course, and it's been trying. I've been resisting doing it, and getting enough done at each stage to make it come into being, but it's been DIFFICULT, as if I'm taking the resistive energy from ancient sources. The paper is supposed to plum the depths of ontological grounding, and the nature of the flux between ultimate reality and the story we (as experiencing subjects) tell about it. It's due today at 5 pm. I hope it's done by then, and not too slipshod... I've got several good sources to draw from, and the quotes already pulled into an outline, and I've been chewing down the outline into the written sections.

lyrics:
The sun burned hot, it burned my eyes
Burned so hot I thought I'd died
Thought I'd died and gone to hell
Lookin' for the water from a deeper well
I went to the river but the river was dry
I fell to my knees an I looked to the sky
I looked to the sky and the spring rain fell
I saw the water from a deeper well
-Emmylou Harris, Deeper Well

colors: Green, Red, Brown, and White (trying to get into the Xmas spirit, don't ya know?)
In other news, we found an artificial Christmas tree still in-box, with a tag saying "free" on it, sitting on the corner the other evening while we were walking the dog. It looks just fine in our living room.

mood: Soul-tired.

chant/prayer/mantra: Simply for strength, for myself, to finish this paper. And for all the others who need to finish papers, now or in the future.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Christianity, christology, heaven on earth, Multitheticalism, personal religion, Process Thought, theological sources

Apparently, somebody has placed a "No on Prop 8" sign at the city of Megiddo in Israel, the supposed site of Armageddon. This is a response to the fact that there are Christians from all over the United States pouring their money and effort into a "Yes on Prop 8" campaign in California, and some of them are saying that the right to same sex marriage is a cultural armageddon. The actual wording of California Proposition 8 includes these exact words: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

i rarely use caps, but feel the need to press the Caps Lock key today... WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE??? WHY DO THEY FEEL ENTITLED TO CALL THEMSELVES CHRISTIANS AT ALL?? NOT IN MY BACKYARD, NOT IN MY STATE, AND NOT ON MY PLANET. Christians are supposed to be intelligent, thoughtful, and according to Jesus' one big command, they are supposed to love their neighbor. Is denying rights to your neighbors some new way of expressing your love for them?

What does it take to see that this proposition is simply denying rights to a certain minority of people? Why would somebody see fit to act out a hurtful ideology against a group of mostly kind and loving people in the name of CHRIST? That is just the worst thing imaginable. I suppose this could be explained by some convoluted logic which ties same-sex love to sin, and cares that people don't go to hell when they die, and therefore a measure like this keeps them safe from sinning. But that neglects the fact that being disallowed to love freely is a real form of hell for any people while they're alive.

Further, in addition to the fact that this effort is trying to limit rights for people, it is also EXTREMELY IMMORAL to be devoting energy to something like this when there are AMAZINGLY LARGE AND SERIOUS PROBLEMS GOING ON IN THE WORLD WITHOUT HAVING TO GRANDSTAND AGAINST SOMETHING LIKE THIS. When this is all said and done, this will be seen akin to tilting at windmills in the middle of a hurricane. A genuine fools' errand, and there are millions of American sucked into doing it through religious ideology.

IMO, it's about time for the rest of humanity to come around to a more quaker way of thinking.

It looks like I'm going to be spending my birthday working against this effort, and perhaps even performing a wedding.

To those who are so concerned about gay marriage that they are devoting this much time and effort into preventing it, I'll say simply that my prayers are with you, but I will not stand with you, and your effort will fail because it is unloving and against what Christ wants for the world.

lyrics: "There's more to love than boy meets girl." - Communards

colors: Solid Rainbow.

mood: Exasperated, yet hopeful.

chant/prayer/mantra: May there be world community one day, with an overflowing amount of love, where no love is denied. Amen.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Christianity, environment, equal rights, LGBT, renewable energy

Labels: art, Book of Romans, Capitalism, Christianity, equal rights, heaven on earth, oppression, paradigm shift, parousia, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, tarot

First, my sweetie asked what was up with the last post -- x(-1)...x(1.5)...x(3). She said it was nutty and nonsensical. Then again, she hasn't been studying Christology the last few weeks.

My basic response is: A) the nomenclature may actually be better as x-sub-n (with the n running from -1 to 3 and being a subscript, rather than expressed within the parens. B) the numbers -1 through 3 are mostly just to convey the general order of the expressions of the christos/logos, beginning with an initial kiss upon wisdom, and at x(0) being that wisdom incarnate in an unfriendly environment, and all positive numbers seeking to retrain the environment and grow in it such that the entire environmental context becomes the logos itself.
If that didn't make sense, perhaps we're going to have a bit of a longer sit-down to discuss this, because my model does make certain assumptions that take the original ideas of Arius and Origen into a more Universalist vector.... Stages x(2) and especially x(3) are represented by these words from US forefather James Madison:

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

I'm not sure why he leaves out women. Perhaps they are already angels? Um, probably not across the board.


The second thing she asked about was "What does the Mary Tyler Moore theme (referred to in the title bar of this page) have to do with anything?" It's basically a message of hope that me and you and Mary are going to make it. Well, here's the lyrics:

Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all

How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone
But it's time you started living
It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all

lyrics: see above.

colors: a flashing rainbow .gif (I just drew a new tattoo design yesterday, based on the mathematical proof element "And then a miracle occurs!" (I have no idea what's going on with that second link, but found it interesting that there was a seven-pointed star there.) When I get the chance, I'll upload my pic, hopefully.

mood: eh.

chant/prayer/mantra: a little prayer for positive communication.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Christianity, christology, pastoral care, tattoos, technology, theological sources, Universalism

x=logos=christ

x(-1) is the one who learns to taste the creator's wisdom for the first time (adam and eve, the first person to make a wheel, or matches, the first person to sell land, or split the atom)*
x(0) is th one who knows and speaks the understood nature of the creator's wisdom/logos (zoroaster, moses, some OT prophets, mohammad)
x(1) is th one who learns to incarnate it and manifests it (krishna, buddha, socrates, jesus, hypatia, joan-of-arc, mlk, saoshyant?)
x(1.5) is th one who basks in the afterglow of the incarnate (gospel writers, disciples, paul, saints, promise-keepers)
x(2) is th one who can speak and manifest it without punishment or remonstrance
(saoshyant)
x(3) is th one who can live it freely and naturally (saoshyant, along with a not-too distant future generation) (post Glory of Romans 8.)

*th enumerations within parens are not meant to be exhaustive, only examples

chant/prayer/mantra: may we enter the unravelment of the Zoroastrian eschaton, and all be of one ousia with the saoshyant.

i know that may all sound nutty and high-falutin', but really its just fancy theological talk, for "let's get past this, and get along, and get it on to happening, eh?"

pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Book of Romans, Christianity, christology, heaven on earth, parousia, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, theology, Universalism

 
Mostly regarding Sarah Palin. Note how she's become a lightning rod to distract attention away from McCain's own issues -- I hope the democrats can get back on track soon, addressing the glaring issues that the McCain campaign is trying to sweep under the rug with her introduction.

Tim Wise, author and racial equity activist, has a great piece regarding how white privilege is coming into obvious play in this election cycle, which can be accessed here, here, here, and many other places. (The comments are an enlightening part of the read, which is why I post the link to this article thrice.) In short, I think he does a great job of exposing white privilege writ large, and I'd love to see a more nuanced follow-up, since there are many other types of privilege coming into play in this election as well.

Long-time women's rights activist Gloria Steinem weighs in.

Minnesota talk show host Garrison Keillor weighs in.

Spiritual guru Deepak Chopra weighs in.

And actor Chevy Chase encourages Tina Fey to go after Ms. Palin with more satire for all she's worth.

Here is a youtube video a few months old that so adroitly exposes that McCain talks out of both sides of his mouth and doesn't even recall what he's said one day to the next, its undeniable. And in a time when the Main Stream Media (MSM) decides not to really get serious about exposing these things, its good to see that this video has over 5 MILLION views. On youtube. 5 MILLION+ viewers.

And finally, McCain gets RickRolled, Obama-style (great editing job, given the likely difficulty of finding footage that fits. For all the problems of the age of photoshop veracities, sometimes, things like this make it almost worth it.


lyrics: Instead of lyrics, here is a brilliant sermon on race by evangelical minister Thabiti Anyabwile. Whether you can deal with, or enjoy, or get past the very strong Christian message, what he has to say about the constructed nature of race is worth your time. "We've organized our identities and our lives based on [a bogus] set of assumptions."

colors: black and white?

mood: need to study, tired of catching up with the "news."

chant/prayer/mantra: together in community -- may it become, and then ever remain so.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Christianity, economics, inter-faith, media, oppression, politics, racism

I often have freaky dreams, and they don't bug me too much. In fact, I find them to be very inspirational sometimes. I had a very freaky dream the other night.

In this dream, I was a private in the military (complete with haircut I'm pretty sure), down on some military base in a hot climate. I was in a large reinforced concrete bathroom, emptying my bladder, when an earthquake happened. It seemed to go on for about 20 seconds, and I had found a less-than-clean place on the floor where I thought I'd be relatively safe. As it was fading and we were worrying about aftershocks, there was another soldier about ten feet away over by the sinks, singing (to reassure himself), "We are chariots. We are chariots. We are bizarre chariots. We're going to make it out of this world."

Wow. I woke up around 4:00am, and using my best drowsy voice got a recording of what he sang. I'm so glad I've got that little voice recorder. Anyway, if you combine the above-linked understanding of chariot with this blog entry from a while ago, and this recent tattoo post (the symbolism and pragmatic semiotics, not the picture itself) on the bmemodblog, I'm not sure exactly what to make of it, but it must mean something...


lyrics: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound...."

colors: burnt,white, and blue

mood: steady, and ready

chant/prayer/mantra: may we all be, and be loosely connected.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Christianity, music, parousia, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, personal religion, sacred texts, tattoos, theological sources

If I had the energy, I would be blogging on:

1. Senator Obama's recent resounding speech in Berlin, coupled with the ColorOfChange.org's petition to Fox News (rejected, BTW) to stop being racist. And Fox News' new ploy to call MoveOn.org (related somehow to ColorOfChange.org) 'the new Klan'. Buh??????? As a person who majored in psychology, I will ask, "Project much?"

2. How awesome is it that Texas is plunking down several billion dollars to connect wind energy to the electrical grid, and hopefully other stuff? And also, that GM is pushing to get electrical charging infrastructure set up in many communities around the country, in support of the 2010 release of their electric hybrid car called Volt? (Though big demerits to them for trying to be proprietary about it, and wanting to charge an extra $500 for electric vehicles produced by other companies to get a converter.)

3. The ongoing "trickle down" theory going on with respect to the housing loan travesty. The assumption by those advocates is that by bailing out the big centralized banks, it will somehow help the end user. Sheesh! And with the method of the bailout being related to tax dollars propping up Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, we are finally seeing the black hole that will consume the U.S. economy. This stands to be a very painful event horizon, and I am afraid our nation's economic might has been badly wounded by the Bush Administration's borrow and spend policies (News today: $482 Billion deficit predicted for 2009).

4. My ongoing experience working at a state mental health facility this summer. It has been intense, and deeply instructional. I am seeing mental illness, and spiritual illness, in a whole new light. At the same time, it has been devastating hearing the stories and seeing the conditions of some of the people there, as a result of parents and family, organic brain damage, religiously-based delusions (that run along a continuum), drug abuse, abandonment, stress, and a system that doesn't have the political will to deal properly with mental illness. Along with the prison system, our mental health system could use a lot more support, and some serious reform, bordering on abolition, because our current system is very much still punitive and not designed to be restorative. I'm not happy to say that the prison system sees minimum sentencing laws and recidivism as good for business. I'm also not happy to say that the prison business is not good for the inmates, the correctional officers, or the communities with prisons.

5. The big thing to comment on, that I can barely begin is the hostile shooting with a shotgun at a UU church in Tennessee, by a man who was upset about not having a job, and blaming the "liberals and the gays." This, shortly after the supreme court took the time out to further validate the second amendment. I can't even begin, other than to pray for healing. Healing for everyone involved. Healing of the whole. When I heard that it was an usher who jumped in front of the gunman who was one of the ones who died, it finally brought me to tears.

When time allows, I hope to do a bit more research and reflection and get a bit more detailed on all this.

lyrics:
"Time to bring it down again.
Don't just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.
I can't imagine why you wouldn't
Welcome any change, my friend."
-Aenima, by Tool

colors: light brown, the color worn by all of the "Individuals" in the "Secure Treatment Area" (behind the razor wire fence and multi-port gate) at Napa State Hospital.

mood: soul tired

chant/prayer/mantra: May the people of this world, and of this world's religions, and this world's politics, and the world's cultures, come together and be made whole, and allow for authenticity without harm or intentional transgression. And may there be grace. Amen.


pax hominibus, (for now and the future)
agape to all,
joel

Labels: changing the prison paradigm, Christianity, freedom versus freedom, mental health issues, oppression, paradigm shift, politics, racism, renewable energy, Satan/devil, Universalism

here is a link to a video on an organization that my sister and brother-in-law have become very devoted to.


chant/prayer/mantra: for justice in many facets, and many forms.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Christianity, parousia, religious community

Hi Everyone-

Just the other day, I found one of these laying on the side of the sidewalk, kind of hacked-up, so I grabbed it with the intent of giving it a home among the other religious tracts I've found, but its pretty hacked up, so I'm just going to retype all of the text, with no commentary.

Front:

Back:

lyrics: "You, lost and lonely. You, just like heaven." from Just Like Heaven, by The Cure.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Bible, Christianity, salvation, theological sources