Yesterday on the metro Enoch was musing about the polytheistic nature of our society. For many, YHWH is just one in a pantheon which includes Mithras, Venus, Mars, and many others, consumerism, nationalism, celebrity.... sure, for many Christians he is like a Zeus figure, "in charge"of the other gods and godesses. But for many he is not. How many Christians have Jesus as a kind of lucky charm with which to better procure the real blessings of fortune, success, wealth, pride?
And for the non-spiritual, is the consumerist/ nationalist/ militarist package of the conservatives really worse than the consumerist/ idealist/ reactionary package of the liberals? Aren't Liberal and Conservative just pagan religions worshipping the pantheons listed above?
But our quarrel is more with the Christians, because we name ourselves after the one who's career and effforts were to save from these idle/idol distractions and instead to feed and clothe the needy, while at the same time we fall into the same traps of religion that 10 000 years of (recorded) generations have fallen pray to.
How can I turn my back on religion? I'm pretty involved in the cults of reactionary ideology, of intelectualism/rationalism, I'm a high preist of defensive pride. Where do we find out how to dump these things? I know it's there in Jesus but I'm reading with religion-goggles I don't know how to take off.
Thomas Cahill compares modern religions like Republicanism and Individualistic Hedonism to pagan ancient Greece very succesfully, in Sailing the Wine Dark Seas: Why the Greeks Matter.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Campolo interview:
http://www.crosscurrents.org/CompoloSpring2005.htm
Some really interesting thoughts on the whole interfaith question, emphasis on the Muslims.
Some really interesting thoughts on the whole interfaith question, emphasis on the Muslims.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Shane Claiborne 2
So I've finished the book and while it's highly recommended by ME it comes with a cautionary note: this guy's actions and ideas made me feel like a defensive-minded, money-grubbing, self-obsessed glutton. Which was exilerating in a sense, since that's exactly what I am. And he'd probably say he was too.
The strength of the book is that amid inspirational and traumatizing anecdotes, stirring and bitch-slapping-across-the-kisser quotes, and great nuggets of wisdom, he includes so much positivity, i.e.: not just pointing to the problems and injustices but pointing to real ways people can and do help in heroic and gargantuan ways, ways that seem attainable (if I could just put down my burger).
The strength of the book is that amid inspirational and traumatizing anecdotes, stirring and bitch-slapping-across-the-kisser quotes, and great nuggets of wisdom, he includes so much positivity, i.e.: not just pointing to the problems and injustices but pointing to real ways people can and do help in heroic and gargantuan ways, ways that seem attainable (if I could just put down my burger).
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Shane Claiborne
Reading Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne, a founder in a neo-monastic, urban commune of people mainly helping the homeless, prostitutes, and addicts around their area in Philadelphia, as well as peace efforts in Iraq and Calcutta. Very interesting, and a-propos to an emergent longing for the actual concrete dimension of all the nice thoughts and ideas. People actually doing what we daydream would be nice to do.
article in an interesting Catholic / emergent-attitude website, Busted Halo:
http://www.bustedhalo.com/TheSimpleWay.htm
article in an interesting Catholic / emergent-attitude website, Busted Halo:
http://www.bustedhalo.com/TheSimpleWay.htm
Monday, August 28, 2006
End Times Trivia
Ok, here's a little end-times trivia : tongue planted firmly in cheek of course
Question 1: Given that our current climate of militaristic Pagan administration and hollow, pharisaical religious establishment closely resembles Judea at the time of Jesus, and using his first coming as a model, who would he be (humanly speaking), where would he appear and what would he do if he came now?
Here's a couple to get you going:
1: He would be a black bus driver from New Orleans who recently lost his house in Katrina .. He would make a name for himself roundly criticizing the Bush administration for not helping and not caring. He would head up protests and hungerstrikes until finally getting put in jail: after extensive lobbying by the Christian Right!
2: He would be a monk of indiscriminate religious affiliation, complaining that it was not in fact himself who founded Christianity, but Constantine among others, and that tons of them have got it all wrong and they shouldn't be naming this thing after him! And finally he would be put in jail: after extensive lobbying by the Christian Right!
Pray contribute....
Question 1: Given that our current climate of militaristic Pagan administration and hollow, pharisaical religious establishment closely resembles Judea at the time of Jesus, and using his first coming as a model, who would he be (humanly speaking), where would he appear and what would he do if he came now?
Here's a couple to get you going:
1: He would be a black bus driver from New Orleans who recently lost his house in Katrina .. He would make a name for himself roundly criticizing the Bush administration for not helping and not caring. He would head up protests and hungerstrikes until finally getting put in jail: after extensive lobbying by the Christian Right!
2: He would be a monk of indiscriminate religious affiliation, complaining that it was not in fact himself who founded Christianity, but Constantine among others, and that tons of them have got it all wrong and they shouldn't be naming this thing after him! And finally he would be put in jail: after extensive lobbying by the Christian Right!
Pray contribute....
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Whaaaaaaaa.....??????
Alright, we get the picture, we're riding the world too hard and she's gonna buck us off. Yep.
Yesterday was 36 without the humidex reading, 46 with. I can barely move. Also last weekend I spent a couple hours with only a bit of sunscreen on my shoulders.... I then spent the next three days shivering with a fever and covered in a burning red sunburn while trying to lower my temperature which eventually got me a cold.
Perfect...
This doesn't seem plausible, except that I was there: get this: when I was ten.... 19 years ago, I could spend the whole summer with no shirt on and never bother my darker-than-usual caucasian complexion with the slightest pink.
We've also had three bang-crashing, hurly burly thunderstorms in the last week, incredibly unusual for this area. I guess we should start re-thinking using the terms "usual" and "unusual" to describe the weather.
Where's this all going...
Sometimes I wonder if the planet may clean and restore itself regardless of our best efforts to aid or prevent it. Maybe in the face of such a crisis our role will become less to prevent "disaster" through environmental action, a disaster which may be necessary, but instead to educate and encourage people on how to survive the "disaster".
Maybe we will await the earth's wrath and convulsive self-healing with joy, and hold on as best we can?
Imagine, networks of inustrial mass-production and polution splinter apart.... cities' populations are scattered, re-populating the vast tracts of industrial farming with a return to sustainable, clean, village economy. Individuals are forced to rediscover, by necessity, their vocational calling, and eke out positive existances doing simple things they love, and their former prisons, the gleaming towers of Babylon, collect seeweed and lichen under a newly formed sea.
Dangerous and Fun.
Yesterday was 36 without the humidex reading, 46 with. I can barely move. Also last weekend I spent a couple hours with only a bit of sunscreen on my shoulders.... I then spent the next three days shivering with a fever and covered in a burning red sunburn while trying to lower my temperature which eventually got me a cold.
Perfect...
This doesn't seem plausible, except that I was there: get this: when I was ten.... 19 years ago, I could spend the whole summer with no shirt on and never bother my darker-than-usual caucasian complexion with the slightest pink.
We've also had three bang-crashing, hurly burly thunderstorms in the last week, incredibly unusual for this area. I guess we should start re-thinking using the terms "usual" and "unusual" to describe the weather.
Where's this all going...
Sometimes I wonder if the planet may clean and restore itself regardless of our best efforts to aid or prevent it. Maybe in the face of such a crisis our role will become less to prevent "disaster" through environmental action, a disaster which may be necessary, but instead to educate and encourage people on how to survive the "disaster".
Maybe we will await the earth's wrath and convulsive self-healing with joy, and hold on as best we can?
Imagine, networks of inustrial mass-production and polution splinter apart.... cities' populations are scattered, re-populating the vast tracts of industrial farming with a return to sustainable, clean, village economy. Individuals are forced to rediscover, by necessity, their vocational calling, and eke out positive existances doing simple things they love, and their former prisons, the gleaming towers of Babylon, collect seeweed and lichen under a newly formed sea.
Dangerous and Fun.
Friday, June 02, 2006
bonjour,
today as I sat basking in the humidity, on the large marblesque terrace in front of the shiny babel of my employer, standard life, I was mocked by two unruly characters. I was sitting in my "casual friday" jeans, sipping water, and a couple of squeegee types with dreads and a lingering smell identified me as perfect slaving-for-the-man-part-of-the-problem-soulless mocking fodder.
ouch
today as I sat basking in the humidity, on the large marblesque terrace in front of the shiny babel of my employer, standard life, I was mocked by two unruly characters. I was sitting in my "casual friday" jeans, sipping water, and a couple of squeegee types with dreads and a lingering smell identified me as perfect slaving-for-the-man-part-of-the-problem-soulless mocking fodder.
ouch
Monday, January 30, 2006
Strange Animals
We have the capacity for typically animal behaviour. We are territorial, jealous, and violent. We are preoccupied with sexual conquest and material hoarding.
At our corporate worst, we are sub-animal, a raging virus sweeping across the earth, an infection, multiplying, destroying, eating, burning, a terminal illness the planet has somehow contracted.
But we are strange animals. Because at our best we will lay down our lives for another, will courageously risk everything in the rescue of a complete stranger, will forsake conquest for a life long promise.
It is this strange duality that I feel marks us as different, often for worse, sometimes for better.
This is Strange Animal.
At our corporate worst, we are sub-animal, a raging virus sweeping across the earth, an infection, multiplying, destroying, eating, burning, a terminal illness the planet has somehow contracted.
But we are strange animals. Because at our best we will lay down our lives for another, will courageously risk everything in the rescue of a complete stranger, will forsake conquest for a life long promise.
It is this strange duality that I feel marks us as different, often for worse, sometimes for better.
This is Strange Animal.
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