HERESY?

  "You will realize that doctrines are the inventions of the the human mind, as it tries to penetrate the mystery of God. You will realize that scripture itself is the work of human minds, recording the example and teaching of Jesus. Thus it is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters, it is becoming like him." from the letters of Pelagius a British theologian. He disagreed, intensely, with Augustine's theology of Original Sin. He's come down through the history of Western Church as a heretic. I first ran across the pesky Britain, oh it must have been twenty years ago. My mention of him during a home visit with our pastor brought an immediate "he was a heretic." OK, we won't go there right now. And folks a little further from my tapdancing line would probably agree with him. If they'd ever heard of Pelagiius in the first place. 

The Eastern Church wasn't quite so sure about the heresy charges and withheld judgement. He saw the world with different eyes, and what he saw he loved.

The Celtic church is widely believed to have taken its inspiration from the Gospel of John. The emphasis was on listening for God in the world around us. Listen carefully and you can hear the heartbeat of God in all that is around us. It sounds easy, yeah really easy. Until you damn near knock yourself out when you run into the brick wall. If the Spirit is in every man, woman, child, fish and flower then it not only dwells where it's least expected but where it's least wanted. Who do you think of when you find yourself thinking "you really don't mean that the Spirit can be found in ______________?"

And I suspect we all can think a few folks with the spirit buried so deeply you couldn't find it with a map, a compass, a backhoe and a case of dynamite

I SUPPORT YOUR INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO ________ EXCEPT FOR (TAKE YOUR PICK)

 A detour on the journey through Genesis. Maybe not a such a big detour after all back when I was stuck in Springfield with no fundies to torment. 

There’s a dirty little secret at the foundation of the fixation many of our economic and political leaders have on hyper individualism. It’s only really tolerated in the economic sphere of our lives. It’s ok to make as much money as you can, any way you can. No matter who or what gets hurt along the way.

Good jobs get outsourced to India or China? Ok, as long as my dividends and stock options survive. Another oil pipeline breaks and oil leaks out destroying habitat or farm land. Just the costs of doing business. And if we work it right we’ll stick the taxpayers with the clean up costs. Which means it won’t get done any time soon. Another gas pipeline breaks and explodes. Another train carrying cars full of oil and blows up. Well at least we didn’t kill anybody this time. Again somebody else probably get stuck with the clean up costs.

But, just try to carry that individualism over into our private or social lives and you might just come a cropper. Abortion on demand is the logical outcome of that individualistic philosophy. Just try to tell that to the true believers. They’ll give you chapter and verse about the “Right to Life.” At least until baby is born and then you are on your own. Have a couple of kids when times were good, fall on hard times and need a hand up? Tough, you should have consulted your trusty crystal ball, saw this coming and not had the kids in the first place.

And we’ll just belly up to the tax money fountain and ask for financing for pregnancy crisis centers staffed with counselors  that will outright lie to their clients. For their own good of course. No outdated, largely unverified information is too off the map to used to convince scared young women to keep their babies. Again for their own good. Too bad about the cuts in food stamps and other help; it’s never to soon to teach little Joey or Joanie that they’ll have to pull themselves up by their own bootie ties.

The right to decide how many children you have and when to have them? Same thing.  Just don’t step into one of our counseling centers believing you’ll get the same information as the Planned Parenthood clinic that closed down a couple of months ago. Not going to happen.

The right to marry person you love whether it’s Adam and Eve, Adam and Steve or Eve and Louise. Under that hyper individualistic philosophy it’s nobody’s business but yours. Not your neighbor, not the pastor down the street or groups like the American Family Association and their clones.

Yep. How you make your money is your business. How you live the rest of your life is the business of every Nosy Parker with a megaphone, a website, a Face Book page and a 501 whatever the designation is group with a good donor list.

You can’t have it both ways. Either it’s unfettered individualism in all parts of our lives or it isn’t. If you have the right to question how your neighbors live their private lives, they have the right to question the full costs of how you run your business and make your money. 

HEAVEN: WHERE BEST FRIENDS ARE WELCOME

 A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying

the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.

He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been

dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

  

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side

of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

   

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch

that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold.

He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

  

When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

 

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.

"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."

 

 The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.

 

     "I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

 

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

 

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed.

There was no fence.

 

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

 

"Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"

"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump."

 

   

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.

 

When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

 

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

 

"This is Heaven," he answered.

 

 "Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

 

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."

 

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

 

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

 

AMAZING GRACE

Scrolling though old journal entries trying to get my head back where it was before everything went ot heck and gone. Stumbled on to this. Seems nothing has changed very much. 

Amazing Grace was a song first and then a movie about the struggle in England to abolish the slave trade. The most vocal group was the Society to Aboish the Slave trade. The potter Josiah Wedgewood (potter. He was famous for his relatively inexpensive table ware) was behind the creation of of a medallion that became the "face" of the abolition movement. Pins, plates, nedallions to be worn as necklaces. He even sent some to Benjamin Franklin in the colonies. 

Back in the day I did a journal entry about Moses coming down off Mount Sinai, stone tablets securely tucked under his arm. More to the point I imagined what happened in the first thirty seconds or so after he finished letting the Hebrews in on the Word from on high. First there would be silence, I imagined. Then everybody would be talking at once. Every sentence beginning with “what exactly to you mean by,” followed by the commandment(s) of your choice. The gist of the matter being “what I’m planning on doing, or would really like to do, or wish I could do isn’t really covered by…..again the commandment of your choice…..is it?

Ok, intro over. Back in the 1700’s West Indian sugar and all that went with it was oil, high tech and sub-prime mortgages all rolled into one for the English economy. Slave grown and processed sugar fueled the triangle trade. By the late 1700’s the infant abolition movement in England found a voice. It belonged to William Wilberforce. Member of parliament from Yorkshire, he spent twenty years trying to get a bill through parliament abolishing the slave trade. It’s the story behind the film, Amazing Grace. He was the voice for the hundreds, if not thousands of men and women who worked to end the trade in human souls. (frankly if I used all the adjectives I'd like to use I'd run out of space, abomination is the kindest)

Is the film totally accurate? Probably not. Did the film take liberties with history? Probably. Was I totally blown away at the end? Yeah. Would I have wanted to ask the man to dinner? I’m not sure. Abolition, free education, decent treatment for animals, efforts to end prostitution; the man was never still. Dinner would not have been boring. A profoundly devout Evangelical Christian, he was influenced by John Newton. The same John Newton who finally traded the slave trade for a pulpit and along the line helped write the hymn that gives the film its name.

But, it’s not the movie so much that I’m writing about at that damnable “surely you don’t mean” gene that human beings seem to have. The western European run slave trade was financed, manned and benefitted people who described themselves as Christians. Most of them saw themselves as good, honorable men and women.  

There are two Creation stories in Genesis. In the first, God Created human beings in His image. In the second, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

And “but surely” rears its ugly, hydra headed, monstrous body. We hear it in the modern Neo Nazi movement. We're confronted with it every single, bloody, shit not again, day.

The…….fill in the group of your choice that doesn’t look like me, talk like me, eat what I like, dress like me, love like me, or most important of all believe like me can’t have that divine spark can it? Surely this isn’t the image of God. Surely you can’t mean that I should treat somebody like THAT as if God had come down to walk among us, can you?

WELL, WHY THE BLOODY HELL NOT? Sorry. Sometimes I can't help shouting out of sheer frustraion.

Anyway, if you can get your hands on the film, it's well worth your time. We can change the world. Before there was Free Trade coffee there were signs in London shops that advertised sugar grown in the East Indies.

The East Indians may not have been living in paradise. They probably weren't paid that well, Although they at least were being paid. At least they hadn't been torn from their homes, chained, crammed into a space approximately 40 inches wide by 18 inches high for a three week voyage into hell. Men, women and children crammed together in the same stinking holds. Some ships lost over half of their cargo to disease and despair before they even made the slave pens in the West Indies.

The trade in slaves was abolished in 1807. Slavery itself was abolished within the empire in 1833. William Wilberforce died three days later. The fight, all of it continues. The "but, you don't mean" monster and its children are alive and doing very, very well.

EVERYTHING THAT IS

 ( From the Hubble telescope. Two galaxies dancing over a billion years or so. Either heading for a collision or preparing to "collide" again. Colors have been enhanced. The bright blue areas are where new stars are born.)

"is alive.

Life forms did not come into this world. The life forms of the earth are a natural product of the earth, as the living planet is a natural product of the living universe.

Life in any form is part of life in every form. One, indivisible. The terrestrial spark is connected to the most distant star, just as the collective consciousness of the earth is one cell in the infinitely greater intelligence of the universe.

It is said that no one can know the mind of God.
Yet we are the mind of God.
And so we dance for joy.

We dance to the music of life, which ripples and shimmers across the universe. Even in the coldest depths of space, something is dancing the dance. Something is part of the music.

Every molecule of air on the earth has its part to play in the whole. Millions of life forms dance in what appears, to human eyes, to be empty air.

Air is not empty. Air is alive.

The angels of the air sing the songs of the spheres."

Morgan Llywelyn in The Elementals

THE SOUL OF A RIVER

 The end of this piece started to match the Where I'm From piece. You start with the cheerful material and then the writing takes the bit in its teeth and you are off. Incidentally a great deal of Cousteau's material is online via YouTube. 

 I originally posted this back in 2014. The almost ignored leak from the Keystone Pipeline, officially just over 200,000 gallons and probably much more, prompted this repost. That crude doesn't just sit on the surface. Especially on ground with a high water table. The soul of Mother Gaia is at stake not just the river. 

A few years ago I invested in the 1990’s Cousteau River Journeys DVD’s. Four of the episodes followed the Danube from headwaters to the Black Sea, with emphasis on the environmental degradation along the river in the former Soviet states. Chemical plants that dumped untreated waste into the river. The dangers of aging nuclear plants that weren’t that well built in the first place. Run off from contaminated ground water along with gas leakage into the atmosphere. Local economies based on fishing and farming were stressed out by the pollution.

The diversion of the river into man made channels to improve navigation, while destroying local economies based on the wetlands and marshes.

So, where is the soul of a river? Is it just the river? Or does the river and its soul stretch beyond the channel and the meandering blue line on a map.

The river is the ocean that gives up its moisture to the rains and snows.

The river is winter ice and summer sun.

The river is snow, rain and hail.

The river is the tiny veins and capillaries of water that stretch beyond the banks and below the river bed.  Searching, seeking, seeping into the deep rocks and the deep roots of the mountains. Finally finding the way to new streams and new tree roots. Coming into the sun again, pulled into the sky a thousand miles from where the rain last fell.

The river is the mountains, home to the springs a rivulets that join to form a torrent.

The river is the animals that depend on it for water and forage, the trees that shade the banks and shelter the birds.

The river is the disappearing marshes and the migratory birds that nested in the reeds.

The canals are the river and so are the drying wetlands that used to hold back the floods.

The dams we build are the river and so are the fish blocked from their native spawning grounds.

The river is the disappearing, sick and mutated fish and the villagers and fishermen who depend on them not only for their livelihood, but for tonight’s dinner.

The river is the untreated chemical waste that leaches into ground water. It’s the sewage from overburdened, aging city systems.

The river is the rain falling through air contaminated with radiation from nuclear plants that couldn’t be built to withstand every possible risk.

The river is us.

The last episode ends with a group of children including one of Cousteau’s grandchildren flying kites along the river bank to remind us that they will have to live in the world we are creating.

(Words fail me sometimes. I have the vision in my mind but can’t find the words to express what I see)

WHERE I'M STILL FROM

 I hope. Yeah I'm doing some reposting. To be honest I'm trying to get my head back where it was just before eveything downright crazy. If I'd known about the Internet Archive and a good PDF site I would have given different instructions when what was left of my library was packed. Leave the bios, except for John Adams and son. Pack all the books on religion comparative or otherwise. The Quaker part of me is still there but it's taking some work to get the other side in gear. So please be patient with me. Writing helps get me where I need to go. 

 Back in the day the company I worked for got involved with one of these motivational gurus. Who shall remain nameless  because to be honest I can't remember his name. He did have a really cool website. If you couldn't send your employees to hia mini boot camp you could buy a set of DVD's. I believe they ran about ten grand.

I was low enough on the totem pole that I managed to avoid being shipped clear across the country. I guess this stuff works for some folks but the more I heard the less I liked where this guy was coming from. Near as I could figure out it's a cross between a mini boot camp, revival meeting and a rock concert. Someone mentioned a scavenger hunt at four in the morning. 

The rest of us were blessed with a mini taste at an office meeting and when I asked one "graduate" what the loud music was supposed to do I was told it was "part of the program." I still haven't figured out how keeping me up most of the night three days running or trying to fracture my eardrums is supposed to improve my team building skills. I guess this is why they paid him the big bucks.

Having figured out where I didn't want to go, I found myself trying to put where I was comong from into words. I think what still troubles me the most it the effort to keep us all running so fast we don't have time to think. To keep the man made noise so loud that we can't hear what the world around us is trying to say.

Anyway this is what I came up with. If you were to bet that I never shared this with anybody at work, you'd win. Junction City was definiely not Springfield or Eugene. I think what bugs me the most was  the idea that you can do it by yourself. The old visualize success and it's your fault if your vision doesn't come true. That may be true to a point. But nobody and I mean nobody makes it alone. And that is what brought this little entry to life.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each element has a voice-but it can't sing without the others. Without the Earth in the form of the moon there would beno tides-no waves. Without the waves there would be no hiss of the little waves meeting the sandy beach. The great booming roar when tons of sea water meets two hundred feet of black basalt cliffs would be lost forever. Without the mountains to form cliffs and steep falls the roar of the waterfall would not exist. Without the rocks and stones in their beds, rivers and streams would lose their voices

Fire has a quicker, harsher song. Without water to make steam and sizzle,without trees or wood to burn, Fire would have almost no voice. As a lava flow cools the rocks grind together and the escaping gasses hiss and twist. Take away the fire from the earth's mantle and these fall silent.

Air has a voice when it meets Earth and what grows from the Earth. The sighing of the trees, the lonely whistle around the cliffs, the cry of the gulls carried from a windy beach, the rustle of the grasses, these come together to make a chorus when the Air sings its songs.

Earth sings some of her songs alone; the sounds of rocks falling and sand or gravel rustling when someone walks across it are earthly solos.  But many of Earth's songs are sung by what grows from the earth or swims in the water. But, without air to carry birdsong or the sea  to carry whale songs the world would be a quieter, lonlier place. Let us join our songs to the songs of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Together these are the songs of Creation