You say Narcissistic, I say .... Just Plain Amazing!

Hope I'm not being self-absorbed here..... but,... damn... I am cute.

Life Can Be Beautiful

Blessings Are Hard to Come By

Goodness, gracious ... who is that beautiful bride with the gorgeous smile about to be married off to that handsome young groom? These two people sure do love each other and I've never been to a wedding where two people seemed happier. I was highly honored to be there and to indeed even perform the ceremony. Thank you Josh and Erin for the honor.

I love this man and his newly wedded wife. He deserves happiness in his life. And Lord knows, that's hard to come by.

Blessings .... Blessings .... and more Blessings to all who seek such happiness. And triple Blessings to those who are able to snatch on to it tightly "forsaking all others" when they do find it. Hang on to it with all your might.

Blessings really are hard to come by.

The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth

Valerie Tarico wrote the book THE DARK SIDE which I'd like to read but probably won't because I can imagine most of what she says here. There seems to be a whole rash of these kind of books and blogs coming out. I have to wonder if there is possibly an exodus movement away from Christianity.

Product Description
Most Evangelical Christians earnestly strive to worship the God of Love and Truth. But a belief that the Bible is literally perfect puts them in the odd position of defending falsehood, bigotry and even violence. What do Evangelicals teach? How are these teachings distorted? How do they contradict humanity's shared moral core, including the highest values of Christianity itself? Psychologist Valerie Tarico is an ex-fundamentalist and a graduate of Wheaton College, bastion of Evangelical education. As a young adult, secure in the confidence that "all truth is God's truth," Dr. Tarico committed to follow her questions wherever they might lead. Ultimately they led her out of Evangelicalism. Tarico's book, The Dark Side, examines the moral and rational contradictions that caused her to abandon those beliefs that once structured her life. In their place it offers perspectives that are compatible with love, logic, and the quest for truth.

Garden

Garden is looking good. We're in a multi-year drought and with minimal water I've kept a sacred little fenced in area where I've had an abundance of goods produced. Last night I pulled potatoes, cantalope, peas, yellow squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, egg-plant and more.

I picked a quick basket several days ago and gave to Adena. She took these to the Rocky River Ranch and passed them out. Everyone enjoyed them I hear.

The below was a response I wrote to a friend after he sent me a typical mushy Christian modern parable email claiming that a super-intimate "walk" with God is the highest ideal - which may or may not be the case depending on how you want to look at it. Feedback from all welcomed on this.

Dear friend,

[this is probably putting more energy into this than deserves … but oh well, here it goes…]

Emotional metaphor upon emotional metaphor….. … another cute story with miniscule interpretation of history playing off a twist of metaphors to give the illusion of a “revelation” --- only to trick the reader into somehow still feeling defeated for what the megalomaniac author claims to have with “there is no substitute for unconditional, intimate relationship with God” and holding out still the “hope” that this is actually possible and advisable to me.

Give me a break.

Well… yes…. First of all let me reply with “Well of course, I also want this great big giant spirit friend who will play the role of my father and who also happens to be the one-and-only original maker of all the universe. He can watch out for me, do things for me, protect me from death, be there for me to cry upon his shoulder; he’ll give me meaning and purpose in life and even magical wish-powers and knowledge of the vast eternal worlds that hold the living and the dead, the future and the past.

And all he wants in return is to be loved whole-heartedly.

For sure, I want to get in on this adoption policy.

How do I sign up and how soon can I meet this giant friendly maker of the universe? And can we be best buddies?

Will I have to sort of pretend? You know, have faith that when I talk he is listening and when I’m sorry he forgives me and when I ask for something and he doesn’t give it to me that he was really watching out for my best interests anyway?

Do I have to get with other people who pretend this same talking-to-the-giant-buddy game, so we can confirm each other that “yep, you’ve had some more evidence, too? Well, so have I. This big spirit buddy really is there and he’s watching over me and you both.”


Do I have to really train my mind with lots of ancient stories and writings that when interpreted personally I can feel like this is how the giant spirit buddy is communicating with me? How can I know when he really is talking to me and it’s not just my imagination or wishful thinking or even my own internal neurotic self at work? Should I just “have faith” and that’ll sort of make it so?


I’m not suggesting that it isn’t possible to “love God with all your heart and soul” ….. if you simply change the word “the God” to “the Good” which is what the metaphor is most likely trying to capture anyway.

This could be doable and I could even understand it as the highest command.

But if I make this concept of “Good” into a giant personal spirit buddy daddy deity who lives in the sky, I find it a little harder to stay in touch with Him and to stay in touch with reality at the same time.

I’m not saying there is no God. I’m saying that your “intimate relationship with God” may actually be a personal relationship with Good.

Can Christianity Survive on Squishy Post-Modern Ground?

An interesting article on magical thinking as being the actual essence of religion... it seems the author is trying to bridge the gap some into the new post-modern era by soliciting a valid form of expression akin to poetry.

He describes a continuum between metaphorical and literal modes of understanding of religion and posits that we all move in our course of maturation from the literal to the metaphorical. In the process morality is maintained or even heightened from the more primitive strictly authoritarian faith-rule.

He describes how the Jews themselves "evolved" along this continuum throughout the Old Testament starting with Deuteronomy (meaning "second law") which was written later to "upgrade" some of the cruder more literal sacrifices and laws. Indeed it was Deuteronomy that declares the number one law is to love rather than to sacrifice.

My favorite section is as follows:

The point is that the semiotic space for such dialectical development has been built into religious language and symbolism, honed and augmented over centuries. To invent a social equivalent of religion out of thin air is akin to inventing a new language--much harder than it looks. So the rational elite may indeed be missing out on something--the "essence" of religion.

My suggestion is that while there is, and has always been, a great difference between the esoteric (metaphorical) and exoteric (literal) modes of religious understanding, there is also a continuum running between them. Many people move along this continuum in the course of their lives, beginning with the debunking of Santa Claus. As they learn the moral interpretations of mythic symbols and stories, they grow to put more emphasis on those interpretations than on the assertion that the stories really happened. Eventually they may come to feel that "God is within," animating their moral judgment and feeling for the world. But in most cases this doesn't prevent them from telling their children about Santa Claus, nor does it impel them to attack the "beliefs" of their less-advanced coreligionists.

Therefore it is wrong to classify everyone based on answers to polling questions about religious "belief." What people say they "believe" doesn't necessarily capture the functional role of the "beliefs," their symbolism and moral perspective. It doesn't tell you where they lie on the magical/moral continuum. So the picture of a tiny enlightened elite and literal-minded masses is also wrong.

All in all this reminds me very much of reading N. T. Wright and his push to be a Christian in the post-modern era by somehow giving up all the literalness of creation, miracles, virgin birth, resurrections and such as "narrative" expressions of the people themselves - not untrue, but not true either.

This rather leaves one on squishy ground, but if indeed we are at a major cultural crossroads in the magnitude of the Middle-ages to Enlightenment crossroads, then there just may be another acceptable mode of expression which can include worship of a creator in the genre of poetry, and story-telling that could be valid but not literal.

N. T. Wright, among other intellectual Christians, tend to suggest this is our future hope for the sustainability of Christianity. I'm inclined to agree.