Archive for ‘Religion’
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I’m not big on Bergman. Yes, I’ve got “Bergman on Bergman” on the shelf but that’s from my late teens and early twenties.
However H.o.p. came across Bergman’s Seventh Seal I don’t know but a couple weeks ago he brought it up.
“What’s The Seventh Seal?” he asked.
Yes, I watch great movies with H.o.p. H.o.p. introduced me to great animation. I, in turn, have introduced him to great films and great trash films (suitable for his age and because I’m just that benevolent and wonderful) since he was little. I want him prepared for those film courses at whatever college/university he may end up attending. I want him to have a nice foundation in some of the classics. When he’s interested (and he tends to be interested) we watch Kurosawa and Fellini and Goddard and Antonioni and De Sica and Chaplin and Kubrick and Altman and…well, you get the idea…but I’ve never even brought up Bergman’s name so I, of course, thought H.o.p. was talking about a marine animal.
“Seals? You mean like in the sea?” I asked, uncomprehending.
“It’s a movie,” H.o.p. said.
“You mean…Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal?”
“Yeah! That’s it!” H.o.p. said, all excited. “Can I see it? I want to see it!”
We checked our Blockbuster. They didn’t have it. So I put it in the Netflix queue. Then last night Marty walked in with a DVD from the bookstore.
We ate dinner then settled around the television with H.o.p. to watch The Seventh Seal.
I saw a lot of comedy this time around that I didn’t catch when I was 18, and I probably haven’t seen this film since I was 18. Right from the beginning, when Death gets the black chess pieces and says that black’s a good color for him. I thought, “Hey, that’s a poke in the ribs?”
A good deal of the film needed explaining to H.o.p. as he’s not up on his bible lore, has a barely marginal acquaintance with Christianity and knows nothing about religious sadomasochistic humiliation and atonements. This is the child who, upon seeing a crucifix for the first time, thought it was a bizarre totem pole. H.o.p. believes in the Great Spirit but has no idea why people would think whatever that spirit is would desire to punish them.
H.o.p. wasn’t raised on a diet of man falling from god’s grace, the punishment for the bite of knowledge or worrisome tales of a god that desires to kill his creation by flooding it off the face of the earth. Instead he’s been raised on the great cycle of life, the interrelatedness of all things, respect, the golden rule, the mysterious nature of electricity…and trickster stories (ever his favorites). We talk about myths and legends and how their purest essences speak to something in the psyche, and how they have been carried through the ages by people and institutions who have fleshed them out with a good bit of craziness for their own purposes.
When H.o.p. is an adult if he ends up on the psychiatrist’s couch I won’t mind if it he’s having to deal with his mom being a total basket case of a human. I can be the villain. What I don’t want is his having to spend decades fighting through a childhood inculcation of the insanity of religion putting the fear of god in him with terrors of a lost soul. I didn’t want him to have to waste time sorting out if a man named Jesus Christ actually lived or not. I didn’t want him growing up thinking any religion’s cultural or political controls were eternal truths. I wanted his brain as free and clear as possible in that respect.
We’re heathens.
When we were at the Metro Museum of Art in New York, at one point H.o.p. came and pulled me to the side, very concerned. We were in the gothic religious art area and he was wanting to know why his grandmother (who had just given him an illustrated book of children’s bible stories for Christmas, which she politely balanced out by giving him also a book of Greek myths) kept talking to him in the museum about “the Jews killing that guy on the cross”. He didn’t understand it at all and he didn’t want to hear it.
H.o.p.’s father’s mother is a faithful, well-meaning Baptist who is concerned with his salvation. Among her proud stories are Marty being a tot and the first word he spelled being b-i-b-l-e and that he accepted Jesus in an altar call at the age of five.
The first word H.o.p. spelled, at about the age of three, was b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t. He had learned it via a much beloved Tommy Dean tune and would sing it out with wholehearted glee.
It has followed through with H.o.p. not liking anyone telling him how to think and do things. He thinks it’s bullying. This is innate with him, though I suppose I’ve nurtured it in part, and yes there are times when it can be crazy-making.
Of course, you can’t watch Fellini without discussing religion and we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about Juliette’s release of the child from the fiery theatrical pyre of the church in Juliette of the Spirits. But Bergman’s Seventh Seal takes it all up a notch.
H.o.p. viewed the movie with the eyes of someone who has been raised to believe in the great cycle of life, and his responses were interesting, sometimes surprising.
He enjoyed The Seventh Seal. He gave it two big thumbs up, in particular liking the costumed performance of the actors.
Here’s his very straightforward review: “It was so fabulous. It just was. The acting was great. It had an amazing plot. Lots was great about it. I can’t even say it all. It was awesome.”
2Comment
Standing Bodhisattva, MMoA, 2007
Bodhisattva, MMoA
Subhutti: Is it at all possible, O Lord, to hear the perfection of wisdom, to distinguish and consider her, to make statements and to reflect about her? Can one explain, or learn, that because of certain attributes, tokens or signs this is the perfection of wisdom, or that here this is the perfection of wisdom, or that there that is the perfection of wisdom?
The Lord: No…
Buddha, MMoA
While Marty took H.o.p. to the restroom, I briefly visited this one room of the Asian Galleries.
Then it was time to eat and head on down to F.A.O. Schwartz.
Lego Santa at F.A.O. Schwartz
Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I’m telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town!
Penthouses From 14th Street
Despite all my rage, I’m still just a rat in a cage…
Music for the ride. Smashing Pumpkins, Bullet with Butterfly Wings at You Tube.
The truth is the world really does look different from the penthouse, or the mountain top. And the ministers never tell their congregations the truth. I know that, having relatives who were ministers. The laymen leaders of congregations have their own agendas, certainly, which they also don’t disclose to the unwashed masses, and are often powerful enough to lord it over the clergy. Clergy which they choose to shepherd the flock. And the clergy? Whether they’re bitten or biting, they just don’t tell, and don’t tell what the penthouse view is. The congregation is as much an Other to them as the citizenry is to the police. They will smile and embrace you, and you will think you know them and that they serve you absolutely and are your friends, but they will never let on what transpires in the inner sanctum.
Systematic lying creates what communications scientists call a “disinformation situation,” in which everybody eventually begins to distrust, demonize and diabolize everybody else. Paul Watzlavik, among others, has performed classic experiments in which totally sane people will begin to behave with all the irrationality of hospitalized paranoids or schizophrenics–just because they have been lied to in a calculated and systematic way. This sort of “disinformation” matrix is so typical of many aspects of our society (e.g., advertising and organized religion, as well as government) that some psychiatrists, such as R.D. Laing, claim it is the principal cause of psychotic breakdowns. When the politics of lying becomes normal, paranoia and alienation become the “normality” of the day.
Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger Volume 1
Ah, you didn’t know that I have read RAW, did you? But of course I have. Certain interests of his like cryogenics and the reach for physical immortality, I never had much use for, but RAW dovetails nicely with Philip K. Dick.
A problem with the above quotation is that it’s expressed in such a way that it makes everyone sound like raving, isolated paranoids, which the normal mom or pop or teen isn’t going to recognize in themselves. Because people are imminently adaptable, whether rewarded with the occasional door prize or the threat of loss of something dear, like income, and succumb to the status quo, whatever is handed down by the paramount threat/god in their lives. They build community and personal nests at the base of the mountain from which the law is handed down so the news of what’s good/bad for the day is readily available, and the system becomes theirs, becomes normal, is the way to conduct your affairs, and the paranoia is directed against out-of-towners. Thus the horror flicks of vacationers happening on the town from hell.
But the problem with RAW also is that that the townies aren’t going to want to read RAW because he is the out-of-towner. If I handed RAW over to any of my conservative relations or friends, they would, at their best, take a glance at the Eye of Horus on the cover and knowing that the Eye of Horus is all superstitious myth they would promptly discount as without merit and laughable. At paranoid worst, they would see the Eye of Horus and the words “Final Secret of the Illuminati” and without a clue as to what is within the covers they would distrust, demonize, diabolize–all based on that Eye of Horus or Ra. The wdjet, wadjet, udjat. Which was/is a symbol of protection and a mathematical representation of the Egyptian Kingdom.
Curiously, we now have widgets (whether there’s a relationship, I don’t know) as nothing sort of whatevers, objects that are mute as to their value or meaning when not in direct context, and maybe even then. You just know that you don’t want to spend your life making widgets which are mysterious dark critters as compared to gadgets that are obviously not widgets. Except that widgets, if you know their function, may be just what the doctor ordered. Such as with different widgets I can install in my sidebar that make blogging more convenient.
So one way of describing most religions and governments is that they’re paranoid systems which make paranoid living a comfortable situation by giving people concrete somethings (everything outside the system) about which to be paranoid. The thing is that there are multiple paranoid systems that have every right to be paranoid of each other, and even if there weren’t multiple paranoid systems, just one is enough as everything exterior becomes adversarial by reason of its place in the paranoid system, which is the diabolical, free-wheeling Other that is out to corrupt the status quo. In other words, the paranoid system takes everything prisoner. Everything must have its reason and place in the system, even those things which are not remotely connected with it ideologically.
America was already paranoid before Bush, before 9/11. It just felt more in control and less worried about the Other, such as weary travelers who just happen to have a brief pit stop in Los Angeles and must fill out lengthy forms and be fingerprinted and photographed before heading on to that Not-A-United-States-Place where they plan to have some fun, because who wants to vacation in a police state?
What’s to be questioned is what the leaders are paranoid about, both Democrat and Republican. Do they buy the same fears they’re selling, which are used to justify the information gathering and over-the-top controls? Do they buy their hype?
I’m not saying that the overlords don’t fear. I just believe they’ve got their own set of fears, which they keep reserved for themselves, while feeding the general public a special set of fears, just like you have your skin cream products that are for the general masses and then you’ve got the specialty stuff which the general public doesn’t need as it’s just security camera time for them rather than High Definition TV. After all, the general public is part of the Other, the Adversary. And are the Priests of Fear going to take the General Public into their confidence and let them know what keeps their cogs oiled and the home fires burning with their own rarefied paranoid fuel?
AKA “Jello Christ”.
Click on the image to view larger sizes at Flickr.
Which is how art works. First Stelarc makes an art installation of himself, hanging himself from hooks, appending an ear to his arm. Then H.o.p. says, upon glimpsing a pic of Stelarc’s ear, “Let’s make a jello man!”
So, he makes a jello man that falls to pieces because it wasn’t made from the Jiggler recipe (two big boxes and only a couple cups of boiling water).
By which point, it occurred to me, that if you CAN nail jello to a wall, as has been proven on the internet…
So, I formed a plan.
And it worked.
And there you have it. Two boxes of jello and only a couple of cups boiling water does the trick. I nailed Jelloman to the wall. Well, it was to a board actually. But I have several pics of its standing against the wall to prove that I did it, in case anyone thinks it’s lying on the floor and not standing.
Now I can get down to writing for the evening.
Update: I see I’m getting suddenly a fair number of visitors to this post tonight, courtesy the presidential debate (what a strange world it is) and a poster at Metafilter wondering as to the veracity of McCain’s statement on the difficulty of nailing jello to a wall.
Below is another shot of our Jello man, showing that the board was indeed upright (in case there are doubters).
Jello Man stood up quite well and probably would have lasted a little while longer than the few minutes we sat happily ogling our achievement before we decided what’s done is done and over with and cleaned things up.
The blogs are abuzz with Jerry Falwell’s death.
We decided not to watch the video on the Great Wall of China at Netflix because I read a review by someone who knows better (is from China) and they were lambasting it for misidentifying time periods etc. So we watched a video on Vienna and some art there (what a way with words). Next up, a video on Jason and the Golden Fleece, a favorite myth of H.o.p.’s…
H.o.p. just now glued a paste jewel to the middle of my forehead. Then he belches and remembers he needs to take his vitamins.
Well, concerning my previous post on all those millions and millions of babies (plus my sibling twins) being released from Limbo, apparently there was someone scrambling around Technorati looking for blogs that brought the subject up because This is the Catholic Church, and its teachings on this issue haven’t changed for its entire existence, and they’re not changing now. Or so they insist on their blog and they left a comment letting me know that the progressive media dogs were wrong, wrong, wrong. In other words, if those millions and millions of unbaptized babes in Limbo were watching CNN and said, “Wow, look, we’re not supposed to be here after all! Let’s roooooooll to Heaven!” they were soon disappointed by Faithful Rebel heading them off at the pass and kicking them back down to exactly where they belong, and it ain’t with God, so there!
I guess. I mean, even though I never said in my post that the media had announced that Limbo didn’t exist (as far as I know, Moses and Abraham et all are still playing dice in the Limbo of the Fathers), Faithful Rebel came scrambling over to let me know it most certainly does!
As for those babes, Faithful Rebel notes on their blog:
Either way, it is Catholic teaching that those who die with original sin (only) at the time of death DO NOT enter heaven. And the Pope or the ITC has not said that God removes the original sin of infants. We simply don’t know what God does, but we do know that if the original sin is not remitted, there is only one option, and that is that the child does not share in the beatific vision. When and if that happens, there are only two options, either the baby suffers pain of sense or does not suffer pain of sense. Under St. Thomas’s teaching on Limbo, there is no suffering of pain of sense on the part of those only with original sin. When they die, they enter into a perfect state of natural happiness. That is because their souls have not been reborn in baptism and enabled to share in the height of supernatural happiness, the vision of God Himself. So they are, of course, limited to the joy proportionate to their nature.
All that the ITC has done is to issue a non-magisterial document advising the Pope on Limbo and saying that there are serious reasons to “hope” for the salvation of unbaptized children, which would have to mean that God may have erased their original sins in an extraordinary way. The Pope has accepted the report. That doesn’t mean that any “teaching” has changed or that Limbo is false. The examples that I have given of horrible coverage of the Church in the media still stand, and are even more strikingly apparent in this latest fiasco.
SOOOO, there you have it. The Church still teaches apparently that those with Original Sin don’t enter Heaven, and the Church never changes its teachings, but there is now a non-magisterial document advising reasons to hope for unbaptized children and maybe god erases their original sin in an extraordinary way. Or not! Whatever, the Church has never ever changed its teachings, not one bit, never changed at all, and the nonmagisterials (should I hyphenate that or not, I can’t make up my mind) are just trying to reconcile teachings that cannot change such as the Council of Florence’s 1439 instruction that “the souls of those who depart this life in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, go down straightaway to hell to be punished, but with unequal pains.”
And aren’t we all glad we got that CLEARED UP! The kiddos go straight down to HELL (or Limbo) and that can’t be changed because the Church doesn’t change its teachings, but there may be some nonmagisterial reason to believe the kiddos might have been supernaturally sprinkled and are in Heaven, except, y’know, the Church is Fast and Firm and never changes (being the Rock that it is) and as the babes weren’t sprinkled they probably do not share in the Beatific Vision because they simply aren’t capable of that joy. Which, I take it, means, in other words, that as Faithful Rebel was Sprinkled and those kids were not, Faithful Rebel doesn’t want to look down and see them in their cribs next to Faithful Rebel’s seat in the great auditorium that is Heaven. Not even in the Nose Bleed Section does Faithful Rebel want them in Heaven if it would toy with the Council of Florence’s 1439 instruction. Because Faithful Rebel paid the FULL TICKET PRICE LEGITIMATELY and those of you who didn’t can go to, y’know, Hell, or Limbo, or wherever your ability to parse joy lands you. But it shouldn’t be next to Faithful Rebel, I guess. I say, I guess, because based on Faithful Rebel’s post on how the Church doesn’t change, you go to hell or you don’t, but you most certainly do, or to Limbo, but the nonmagisterials say maybe not but they have no authority…well, I’m just sitting here blowing my nose with not a clue of what’s up or where all those cribs belong.
Whatever, there you have it. I feel like I’m at a soccer game and Faithful Rebel (a one time liberal who converted to political conservatism and became a Traditional Catholic and is attending Thomas Aquinas College as a third year theology and philosophy student) is down there guarding that Heavenly Goal and the babes are balls and he’s gonna guard the integrity of the Church and Heaven and God by making sure they don’t make it home!
One thing Faithful Rebel didn’t comment on was that BIG CAKE! The one I posted a picture of with the Pope smiling gleeful upon it. The one I said equaled lots and lots of cups of rice. And, certainly, if I was THAT concerned about the eternal damnation (or not) of unbaptized infants, as a Pope I might have said All That Fancy Cake Money should instead have gone into pediatric medicine.
Now, should I have ignored Literalist Faithful Rebel? Yes, of course, I should have ignored Literalist Faithful Rebel. I should not be making this post.
But I have had no fun at all this week and to me, at his moment, making this post is an enjoyable past time. I’m frolicking! I’ve got boxer shorts on my head and pencils are dangling from my nostrils. To top it off, I just put my hand in my armpit and made fart sounds.
Because that’s the kind of philosopher I am.
Well, aren’t we all going to rest easier about all those little babies, stretching back to the dawn of humankind, which died before benefit of sprinkled baptism? Rome has decided that they all aren’t gurgling in Limbo cribs, eyes attempting to focus on the restrained delights of a distant heaven dangling from a mobile just beyond reach.
When I was eight years of age I asked my CCD nun, what about my sibling twins, who had died soon after birth? I knew she’d say, “Limbo!” I told myself, “What’s the use in asking when you know what she’s going to say?” But I had to ask anyway. Some times you just have to hear the cruel rejoinder rather than assuming it.
“Limbo,” she sternly replied.
Which wasn’t cruel to me personally as I wasn’t a believer in the benefits of baptism. I’d been baptized, by then, at least twice. My first baptism had been at about four or five years of age into some Protestant church. At the age of eight, the Catholic church saying the Protestant first baptism didn’t take, I was sprinkled into the Catholic Church, and though I was only eight I sniffed politics and used to joke about how Really Clean and Heaven Ready I was.
The reason I asked the nun my question is because I wanted to hear straight from her mouth her cruelty. It didn’t hurt me, but I wanted to hear it straight from her mouth, how she would respond to an eight-year-old who had lost siblings, wanted to hear from her mouth how her vision of her church would respond. I suspected how she would respond, but I wanted to give her an opportunity to pause, to say she wasn’t sure, to incline to comfort rather than condemnation. As I anticipated, she didn’t pause, she didn’t hesitate.
“Limbo,” she said.
When my mother picked me up, I told her what the nun had said.
My mother cried. “Why are you hurting me like this?” she asked.
I hadn’t intended to hurt her. I had just wanted her to know the kind of people I was hanging around at CCD.
She later wised up.
* * * * * * *
Credit: REUTERS/Osservatore Romano (VATICAN)
Not to bash anyone having a good time on their birthday, but we see above Pope Benedict XVI with his birthday cake this past week, and I think to myself, y’know, that seems an awful waste of money for a purportedly charitable organization. You and I both know that’s one damn expensive cake. And it’s very easy to get around that kind of ostentatious display by announcing beforehand, “No gifts for me, please! Instead give to the charity of your choice.”
Though insanely expensive, everyone in the above pic can rest easy that it doesn’t come close to being one of the most expensive cakes of all time…like the 1.65 million dollar diamond fruit cake of 2005, or the 2.16 million dollar cake of 2006 celebrating Mozart’s birthday, or the 20 million dollar diamond wedding cake of October 2006 at the Luxury Brands Bridal Show on Rodeo Drive.
While we’re at it, click here to give a cup of rice to some hungry people.
(Yes, in other words, those cakes are lots and lots of cups of rice.)
OK. Enough of that.
* * * * * * * *
What else was I going to write about? I was going to write about something and it wasn’t going to be a boring rant about this HELL of a cold (well, not hell) that just won’t stop. I keep thinking it’s “finally clearing out” but today I’m taking some OTC cold medicine to help with the congestion and cough (no, not a chest cough) and general unpleasantness. I hate cold medicine because it makes me feel so weird. Even weirder that Benadryl.
One of those colds that compels you to not do anything that you don’t absolutely have to do.
I’m looking right now at a picture of a very dead, upside down swordfish trapped in a tuna net, on the cover of this month’s National Geographic. The title is “Saving the Sea’s Bounty”. It’s not making me feel any better. It’s not supposed to make me feel better, I know…but today of all days I don’t need a dead swordfish poking around my brain.
* * * * * * * *
Now what?
I dunno.
The cold medicine has completely stopped the cough and blowing of nose, it seems, but I now have a searing headache (that dead swordfish, I told you I didn’t need it) and have to keep picking my head up off my right shoulder to which it keeps gravitating.
H.o.p. is calling me to watch “Redwall” with him. I have no use for that cartoon. He loves it. The sacrifices we make. I will now go in and watch “Redwall”…sideways…my head sitting on my right shoulder like it is.
“Mom!!!!!!!”
Ok.
Here I have in my Netflix-borrowing hands a DVD of “Cat Women of the Moon”, which far surpasses any expectations I had for it, and I’d planned to blog my giddy, glorious wonder of this film on Friday. But then I opened up the Bloglines and what met my eyes but Pharyngula’s “Demand higher standards for homeschooling!” post, filed under creationism and academics.
Said Pharyngula, who’s all hot and bothered by the Creationists,
At my department, we just got the requirements for state licensure of education students, and we’ve been given the task of making sure our course content delivers what future teachers will need. It’s not trivial getting licensed to teach; but any idiot can declare themselves to be a teacher for purposes of homeschooling, and apparently many idiots do.
Please. Can we bring those laws back?
…
I’m serious. We need to stop this. I think any politician who professed to be concerned about educating the children of this country, by supporting the NCLB, for instance, ought to be required to support increasing the qualifications and standards for homeschooling…and if a district doesn’t have the resources to monitor the competence of homeschool teachers, they ought to simply refuse to allow the kids to be pulled out of school.
Then I began to read the comments, which were about what I expected.
As I’m not a Creationist, one might think this wouldn’t concern me too much. I do homeschool, and one might say well if you’re doing the job you ought to be doing then you won’t mind stricter standards (which vary by state), and if you don’t have a degree (I don’t) then you must certainly understand, as a reasonable progressive, our concerns. But I’m not going there folks because that’s not what it’s all about. If you know how to cut through the fat then it’s not too difficult to see this hasn’t much to do with Creationism at all, and doesn’t even have a thing to do with a desire to edcuate–at least not outside of what is required for maintaining a certain world of status-quo prejudices.
I have mellowed some over the years. Used to be I had almost no use whatsoever for academics, to the extent that if I showed up at a party of a one-time friend who lacked the instrument but could play the hell out of an air guitar (that’s one way of putting it) and I smelled a nest of his co-worker academics in the vicinity then I’d promptly leave. I was almost kind of fine with them as long as they stuck to the dining room table gossiping about department politics and left the rest of us alone to pursue some bonafide conversation–and they’d almost 100 percent comply as they certainly didn’t want to mingle outside their clique, because, after all, what was the use in their mingling when, as far as they were concerned, they had nothing to learn or gain? Yeah, there are academic bloggers now who let it be known how cool they are, really really how cool they and their musical tastes are as well (come sit at my feet my fellow academic bum-licking friends so we may self-congratulate ourselves on our corporate but oh so individual coolness) and love to blog-party and toy with tittilating the whatnot; and what can I say but hey, things sure haven’t changed, because they’ve always been around. But in pre-blog days my experience was that they tended to get too drunk too fast and were really happy with sitting around and bitching about everything and assessing where they were on the king of the hill playground slide between the persons on their left and right.
In the above instance, the number of academics at the parties grew and as they grew they began to feel more secure with elbowing for the respectful distance due them so the numbers of the rest of us dwindled. The third year I dropped by it was almost all academics (though sometimes not immediately distinguishable individually, this is not the case en masse). Eventually the parties were probabaly all composed of academics. They were happy to have the room to themselves and I was happy to not bother them.
Again, used to be I had almost no use for academics, but I like people and I like to find things to like about people, at least when they’re cut off from their herd, though if you’re not secure enough to stand alone then I’ll give you that chance in your preferred environment. I like to give people a chance, a second and a third, even to the point of shutting my voice off and politely, gamely listening and nodding my head after I’ve fully sized the situation up–which is usually just a matter of mapping out someone’s narrow-minded halls and figuring out the concretized (pro or con) conversational points they’re programmed to run. As all that some prefer for a conversation is a party of one then I don’t mind too much sitting back and simply watching the show and experiencing your world and enjoying you, your face, how you move, how you speak, the stories you’ve accumulated. Indeed, most everyone wants others to experience their world, though some people want only that ultimately. Not too many people are that interested in experiencing another person’s world outside of what the price of a shot glass of cappucino demands of them. Even if they imagine they do, they show up at the table with a bag of regimented prescriptions and run through the doctor’s recommendations twenty times before the bladder asks for a break. And they’ll not have a clue. I know that and it doesn’t bother me as long as you’re not abusive. I can look at a good many people, apart from the herd by which they may define themselves, and find much to marvel about in the individual. One thing you learn from listening to many different people’s stories and asking them about things so they tell you even more, enough to give some idea of landscape or what they see the landscape to be, is, of course, how much people are the same and, of course, how different they are. There’s a lot to be learned from really listening rather than just seeing the world and every encounter in terms of scoring points.
Blogworld, and most worlds of conversation, discussion and debate, are not where you can begin to change the regimented prescription and doctor’s recommendations. Nah, you show up to pat on the back, share a tidy story and sometimes play a regimented role of rebuttal, preferably in the matter of a very few one-liners as that’s about as much time readers and commentors can commit to from their work place seat, which we all know as most people play 9 to 5 and blogworld shuts down on the weekend. Most people who comment at blogs don’t even take the time to read the thread of comments preceding their own, much less the comments that follow. When I first began blogging I’d hoped it might be otherwise but learned quickly enough those were the rules and that blogworld is stranded in a world of prejudices and the exact same power jockeyings that rule the real world. Doesn’t mean the internet isn’t a grand tool for disseminating information. No, making information available, the good and the trash, is where the internet excels. But it’s not much of a place for changing opinion through dialogue, just as in real world conversation.
I thought several times about posting a comment at Pharyngula and politely running through some of my views, but anticipating how the comment thread would run I held back. Well before the thread reached 338 comments, I was glad I’d gone with the judgment of not participating.
Nor am I participating by commenting on the post here. I’m not doing a trackback. I don’t want anyone from there to come over here and read and comment. No, I’m instead remarking on why I chose not to particpate, which is the same reason I don’t want anyone from there to come over here and read and comment.
There, that’s all the thought I want to waste on this right now. I’ve got “Cat Women of the Moon” to possibly blog before returning it to Netflix. But all my browser windows are open to slips of documents concerning Sac and Fox mixed bloods that I want to copy into a database and there are 10,000 other things I need to be doing right now so I might not get around to it. But I will certainly try.
Yesterday I threw away the paper prayer rug “Saint Matthews Churches” and Rev. Ewing sent me in the mail. And today I regretted it, realizing the prayer rug would have fit the space above the toilet in the bathroom perfectly.
Saint Matthews Churches please send me another paper prayer rug! But make me the second recipient of the “one for two” rug rather than the first. Because I’ve become fixated (though not very) on the idea of finding evidence of the promised second recipients. I want the envelope that reads, “Yours second!”
Damn, the space above the toilet is glaring at me (from behind my back, in the other room, I don’t blog while on the toilet as I don’t have a laptop) saying, “I can’t believe you tossed the prayer rug! You wouldn’t have four years ago. What’s happened to you? Where’s your sense of humor?”
We used to get this kind of thing in the mail all the time but haven’t since we moved into this building several years ago. So much to our delight the other day we opened the mailbox to find, packed away in a neat little business size envelope, our personal prayer rug. Which comes with instructions printed at the bottom and on the back. The prescription is that we are to stare at the prayer rug until Jesus opens his eyes and stares us down. Then we’re to kneel upon the rug in private, make our prayer, then return the prayer rug with a list of our needs checked off on a handy enclosed form. The prayer rug must be returned, it must not be kept in our possession, because its peculiar so-stated destiny is to be mailed to a second home that needs it.
So it is not our personal prayer rug after all. It’s a two-for-one special prayer rug (or one for two). Which kind of sucks, because I so do like rugs and a paper one wouldn’t gather dust.
I couldn’t possibly have faith in this prayer rug as Jesus isn’t dripping blood from his crown of thorns, but I read the accompanying letter anyway, that tells me about the many who have received blessings through the church, that they are loaning me this prayer rug and that I must return it within 24 hours and that this timing is very important. If I don’t return the rug the next morning then my neglect will break the flow of power. The prayer needs I’m to check off have also a place where I can check mark, “Enclosed is my seed gift to God’s work of $_________”.
I look at the envelope again and see that on the front it reads, “Yours first!” I would be more interested to be the recipient of the envelope that read, “Yours second!” and examine the prayer rug for signs of wear. If any one gets that envelope that reads, “Yours second!” I would love to have a scan of it. ‘K?
The ministry is “Prayer by letters, Saint Matthew’s Churches, P.O. Box 22065, Tulsa, OK”. Their website is here and apparently they’ve had some problems with people accusing them of being…well…scammers. And they must, y’know, be honest folk since they deal with the issue forthrightly on their website.
Saint Matthew’s Churches receives tithes and offerings based on the Scriptures, and uses church donations to buy postage and printing of gospel sermons, books, magazines, and other literature that we give away free of charge. Saint Matthew’s Churches does not sell anything. In its mail sermons, it preaches that God answers prayer, which cannot be construed as a mail scam or mail fraud.
However, the published sermons and sacred literature sent free of charge by Saint Matthew’s Churches crosses the paths of atheists; communists; drug dealers; criminals; the lunatic fringes of society; those who hate the United States, God and Christianity and those who hate us because we are gospel missionaries. They accuse all churches which mail sermons of mail scams and mail fraud.
Now, I would have thought that they would want their prayer rugs to cross the paths of criminals, drug dealers, the lunatic fringes of society (like atheists and communists) and those who hate the United States and God and Christianity, because what an opportunity it would be to minister to us poor sinners. But us sinners apparently just cause them problems then they want nothing to do with us.
Golda Meir, the third Prime Minister of Israel, once said, “We will not roll over and die just to make our enemies happy.” The same is true of Saint Matthew’s Churches and all other churches which are wrongfully accused of mail scams and mail fraud.
Thousands of people are blessed by the church’s mail sermons. Saint Matthew’s Churches understands that not everyone wants to receive our literature. Some who receive one of the gospel books or sermon letters that we send free of charge – and we emphasize “free of charge” – hate gospel literature; from their hatred comes false accusations of mail fraud and mail scams. Honest people just throw the literature into the trash if they do not want to receive it; the literature costs them nothing. St Matthew’s Churches pay all of the costs for printing the literature as well as the postage to mail it. However, some are compelled by their hatred to try and harm the church with false accusations of mail fraud or mail scams.
There are many hurting people who believe in biblical teachings and prayer, and who are grateful to receive St Matthew’s Churches church books and sermon letters free of charge. They don’t believe the false accusations of mail fraud or mail scams. These people write back to Saint Matthew’s Churches requesting prayer; they know that God answers prayer. Because Saint Matthew’s Churches is based upon Christian teachings, St Matthew’s Churches form a friendship with those who are interested in receiving free of charge more of the gospel of Jesus Christ, His saving grace, and His Second Coming. Hundreds of thousands have joined the church and accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
They may, as they insist, be honest and have a perpetual motion machine sitting in their back yard to boot, but their prayer rug isn’t anointed with the inky blood of Jesus, so I simply can’t have faith.
Besides, since I have kept the prayer rug in my possession two nights, I have broken the flow of power. There is someone else, supposedly, who will not receive the blessings of this prayer rug because of me. Because I’ve kept it in my sinful hands. I even scanned the thing.
It is not a very attractive rug. If you scroll on past it I’m offering a free internet prayer rug in which Jesus’ eyes are already open (for the instant gratification crowd).
Here is my “Pearls of Wisdom Free Internet Prayer Rug”.
Be careful what you wish for. But I think impeachment of Bush is always a good choice. If you are inclined to take the prayer rug and scribble “Impeach Bush” on it then I would consider it to not be theft but an example of multiplying loaves and fishes.
