THE LITTLE ENTRY THAT GREW

 This started out as just a few notes and it grewand grew. Then it took its bit in its teeth and headed for the tall timeber. 

OK. I'm just spitballing here. I was raised Methodist. And never really felt like it fit. Wasn't especially comfortable in my own skin, if that makes any sense. Currrently identify as Quaker sort of. Imagine my surprise a few years ago when I discovered believers who identify as Quaker Pagans or even Quaker Cahtholics. 

I've spent time exploring pagan paths and some of the less well known Christian communities, especially the Celtic church. Fruitful. Especially the history of Western Catholicism and some of the Protestant offshoots including the Methodists. All of them proving over and over again the all too true the suspician  that once you have an organization most of the energy (and money) goes to protecting the organization and the hell with the souls you claim to be serving. 

I find myself truning more and more to the mystical side of the faith. Ahhhh, mysticiam aond contemplation. Google anything even resembling centering prayer, meditaiton, mysticism and you will find dozens of entrues warbubg you to keep out, the demons will get you. I suspect that what these commentatos are really afraid of is what the Catholic church calls private revelation.

 How you gonna keep 'em funding those private jets and jumbotrons if the believers realize that, within careful limits, they don't need you prancing up and down the stage yelling into your microphone probably won't answer their questions.. Or that claims of turning away hurricanes are so much hot air. That gays who love each other getting married won't or shouldn't affecct your marriage. That recognizing the rights and humanity of others does not decrease my rights or humanity unless I choose to let it. 

How are you gonna keep 'em following your rules when your former believers have discovered that you are pretty much full of hot air. That you may be asking them to believe that dinosaurs were on the ark with Noah or that the Grand Canyon probably wasn't created in the great flood or that the Cascades were built over millenia by volcanic eruptions. Or in the case of North east and South east Washington were largely created by flood basalts on the Columbia Plateau between fourteen and sixteen million years ago. 

My personal unfavorite is the so called Prosperity Gospel. Followers are encouraged to give generously, whether thay can afford it or not, and God will reward them with greater wealth and riches. All you have to do is believe. And if it doesn't happen it's your fault. Your faith wasn't strong enough. In the meantime your pastor may be living rent free in a multibedroom parsonage, may have purchased a private jet or even ANOTHER private jet. More than one televangelist has used the excuse that they have a lot of places to be and don't have time to wait in airports, or they don't like being recogized with fellow passengers pester them with questions. And so on.

Oops. I started out A and ended up in the briar patch. Again. Just don't be surprised if things get even weirder for awhile. Comments are welcome. Feel free to call me a blithering idiot. I won't be offended. I suspect I may be there already. Or offer suggestions. Who have you been reading and did it either help or offend? 

WAKE UP WORLD

  Well, awake at four (that's am folks). Did my morning routine, got my pain meds, tossed in an Aleeve for  good measure. (dear undear tablet just because your word list  doesn't include what I just typed doesn't  mean it doesn't exist) looked outside and decided I might as well start the exercise routine. Watched color come in as the sky turned from indigo to pearly white. There was a quail calling in the courtyard and a jay calling the tree as the leaves turned from dark gray to green to gold as the rose higher. The finches and chickadees are telling the that they are awake too. 

This time of year the sun shines right into my eyes for over an hour. Yes, I could put down the blind. But I would miss the world waking up. Two twenty minute stepper sets and a total of about twenty minutes getting used to the elliptical routine. If we weren't on daylight savings time the sky would be getting light at 3:15 not 4:15.  On that note I believe I will squeeze. In a short snooze before breakfast.      

DRY AS DUST

Is how I feel right now.

" It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassionits message becomes meaningless."

Rabbi Joshua A Heschel  The intro to God in Search of Man

Perhaps because most Christians aren't taught to look at the world that way. We're supposed to search for God, by the rules, as laid down by the powers that be, not the other way around. Perhaps that's why most denominations have trouble accepting mystics. We can't prove what we've seen or heard. And ususally we have trouble describing the experience in the first place. The words we have to work with just don't fit somehow.

The Catholic Church in the west calls that Personal Revlation. The guardians at the gate who attempt the enforce the rules frown on that. Oh, yes, do they frown on that. 

NOT SURE WHERE i'M GOING

 

NOT SURE WHERE I"M HEADING

but I can't wait to get there. 

 I pulled this up from an old entry from 2011. It's odd. I was raised, sort of, Methodist. Working on the family tree I discovered several branches of Quakers. Exploring them I discovered their beliefs echoed mine. Quakers are, or were, mystics. Probably why there are so few of them after all these years and probably why the families were some form of Methodist by the time we hit Oregon. 

I have to admit there are damn few mystics in any branch of the tree. I may be jumpimg to conclusions but I believe that most mystics are born mystics who didn't run scared the first time the universe, or whatever is out there, tapped them on the shoulder and invited them to join the dance. It's scary and inviting and a whole list of words I don't even know. Yet. 

"f they ever take away our radio, suspend our newspaper, silence us, put to death all of us priests-bishop included, and you are left alone-a people without priests-then each of you will have to be God's microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always live as long as one baptized person is left alive."

Oscar Romero, quoted in Messengers to the Kingdom by Jon Sobrino S.J.

I begin to understand by Romero scared the bejeesus out of some of the Vatican Curia in the three years he was archbishop of San Salvador. And I wonder how closely Morris West, author of the Clowns of God, followed the persecution of the church in Central America. Because he echoes that message in the novel. When the time comes, the little people, the lay people will have to carry on the work and the sacraments of the church whether they are ordained or not. Imagine how well that went over with old men who had spent their lives climbing the ladders of power.

This is probably true of most of the major denominations that seem more concerned with following the fules than caring for their people. So, in seventies I am basically starting from almost the beginning. I would apprecitae feed back if anyone cares to comment. You don't have to agree with me. In fact I was so surprised when I ran across Evangelical Quakers hired minister and all the trappings.

If this entry seems a little, or a lo,t mildly crazy that's pretty much where I am right now. Mildly crazy. 

BLESS ME IF I KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING TO END UP

 No I haven't fallern off the face of the earth. Although it seems like it. Reading. A lot. Other things going on that are, well best left off. Curently working my war through one of Michener's giant novels, The Covenent. The story of South Africa up until the late seventies. And a couple of related non fictions to be mentioned later. When I work out how in the name of heaven I'm going to present them. Historical note. It's most interesesting how manydictatorships like the the Apartheid regime of South Africa had to change after the Soviet Union, as the Soviet Union, fell. The old "we may be assholes but at least we aren't Communists" excuse. 

Two of the main supporters of the Afrikkaner majorit government were Saint Ronnie and that iron lady Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister in 1990 and congress passed legislation imposeing economic sanctions on South Africa in the mid eighties over a Reagan veto. He called it econimic warfare. Damn straight, sir. That it would just make the situation worse for Black south Africans. I suspect that most of the Black, disenfranchised, under a system of segregation that makes the US south look almost like a paradise the just might have said "what took you so long." Apartheid was pretty much dismantled by 1994. 

Does the country have problems? Yes. Are they working to solve those problems? Yes. 

I don't know when I discovered Alan Paton's novel Cry The Beloved Country. Probably the early seventies when I was taking Peoples of Africa for an Anthro major. The first paragraphs of the book are some of the most beautiful prose, at least for me. If you have a love of the land it may also be one of the saddest passages you'll ever read. 

A note some of the words. Ixopo is the name of a village. The x is pronounced with a ck sound. The veld is an open plain. The pronunciation is almost like fvelt. A kloof is a steep sided gully or small valley. The tithoya is a small bird like a plover and the name sounds like the birds’ call. Ingeli, Umzimkulu and Griqueland are pronounced pretty much as they are spelled.  The style in this novel is unlike anything I’ve ever read. It’s almost as if someone is writing down a spoken story. It probably breaks half the rules of conventional writing and that may be why I love it so much. The book is about people, the land, love, loss, forgiveness and acceptance.

So, here goes.

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is not mist, you can look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa. About you there is grass and bracken and you may hear the forlorn crying of the tithoya, one of the birds of the veld. Below you is the valley of the Umzimkulu, on its journey from the Drakensberg to the sea: and beyond and behind the river, great hill after great hill; and beyond and behind them, the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqueland.

The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof. It is well-tended, and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.

Where you stand the grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. But the rich green hills break down. They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature. For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry in the kloofs. Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it. Stand shod upon it, for it is coarse and sharp, and the stones cut under the feet. It is not kept, or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men. The titihoya does not cry here any more.

The great red hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away like flesh. The lighting flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man. They are valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away; the young men and the girls are away. The soil cannot keep them any more.

So I'm not sure sure where this is going or how I'm going to get there. I'm assuming that most folks are not familiar with South Africa. It's a crazy quilt nation that well, just sort of happened. Unlike the British Colonies the Dutch didn't start out to colonise anyone or anything. The Dutch East Indiia Company was looking for profits in the spice trade and the little settlement on the tip of the Cape of Good Hope was meant to be a supply station and only a supply station

YOUR SPEECH CAN HAVE CONSEQUENCES

 

 The best explanation I've come across that points out that you can say what you carn well please. However the rest of us are free to disagree with what you say. Most of us will be resonably polite about it. But we will show you the door and slam it behind you. Rush Libaugh and his homies found this out a few years ago. And former richest man in the world looks to be findng that out the hard way. I wonder how many folks with Twitter accounts are like me. Never used it. And I'm not planning to sign up with anyone else. Well this headed off in another direction. Some of my entries are like that. 

I'M STILL HERE, SORT OF

 Yeah, it looks like I did sort of fall off the face of the earth. I've been reading, a lot. Working on the family treee. And discovering over and over that if you have relatives that were born in Northern Europe the rest of  us are probably all cousins of one kind or another. Just how often and with multiple who's. I swear almost all roads lead to Charlemagne. 

Watching the birds outside the window.Along with Fuzzball, AKA Midge, Henrietta Hairball, Pouncer (rally loves balls of paper.) So far this winter I've seen house finches, chickadees, mourning doves, sparrows, juncos, and one varried thrush who managed to hang on the the feeder. Just a little too big to do it the normal way. Thank heaven we haven't had anymore snow. We were getting eaten out of house and home for about a week and a half. 

Can't seem to get the old blazing outrage going these days. Perhaps because the faces have changed to the stories seem to be pretty much the same. Argh! I'm all over the place here.

Did run across this from a friend's posting from Yellowstone National Park, the Invasion of the Idiots.

Perhaps the bears will do better at reading the signs than the tourons.