Grouchy Merwegon is going to speak some truth in the midst of this cheerful holiday season!
The problem with religion is that all the little people (us) are preached at to be humble, when really we need to learn to speak up for ourselves, so that we then can effectively speak up for others. “The Religions” SHOULD have TWO SETS OF RULES. The ones they currently HAVE for the powerful, which teaches humility, and a new OPPOSITE set to program small people.
Why did Michael Cohen get 3 years in prison for helping to illegally elect a horrible dude as president, and 18 year olds may get more than that when their 17 year old girlfriend’s mother wants to take revenge?
Why do small people feel SO devastated by marital infidelity, yet George W. Bush was responsible for MILLIONS of unnecessary Iraqi civilians’ deaths and walks free? Most presidents are responsible for millions of deaths, and they are called heroes or villains, but don’t do time in jail.
The fact is that POWER writes the rules, and the PROPHETS try to counteract their “evil tendencies,” for the good of “The People,” but the people get programmed with these same rules. The naturally humble need to be told that ASSERTIVENESS IS GOOD (not arrogance, but assertiveness). The naturally charitable need to be helped to understand that STANDING UP FOR THEIR OWN RIGHTS as employees, for example, helps to keep corporate greed in check, and encourages other low level employees to STAND UP FOR THEIR RIGHTS.
Religions have left us inspiring messages, but also try to suppress our natural desires and keep us in “our place” in society.
As I told my father, who called me with the news, in tears, YOU CAN DO MORE THAN CRY. WE can ALL do more.
We, you, I, can support, and call on others, to support groups working against hate.
My father was struck by this event because he and my mother lived two blocks from the Tree of Life Synagogue when I was a newborn. I also lived nearby while attending Carnegie Mellon University in the late 1970’s.
The biggest and most effective group working against hate, as far as I can tell, is the Southern Poverty Law Center. You can Google them, or click on their underlined name above. They are the ones who put the KKK out of business, among other ongoing useful work. They track hate groups, generally work for justice, and teach tolerance with their program for school teachers, “Teaching Tolerance.”
Just like the Parkland High School students turned their grief into action, it is imperative that we all do the same.
If we don’t feel that we are in a position to go and attend, or organize, demonstrations, we can financially support those who put their real skin and guts into the work of uplifting humanity.
“Reminders about tolerance are as old as the first pages of the Testaments, but the lack of attention to them makes them as new as though they were meant for tomorrow. What little effort is required in order to turn this tomorrow into a radiance of many achievements, which are possible in the case of hearty co-operation!
Even in our days of extreme intolerance, such unifying institutions as the World Postal Union and International Red Cross are possible. Even the most intolerant hypocrites do not protest against these institutions. Then, what slight expansion of consciousness is needed to reach co-operation and trust! And is this so difficult?”
The preceding quote from Nicolas Roerich, a famous Russian artist and philosopher, active as a public dialogue leader in the time between the first two world wars, could have been written yesterday. Even our American president is suddenly calling for unity, as a result of the simultaneous kicks to his perception of the structural integrity of his posterity, resulting from the killing of a Saudi journalist who worked for the Washington Post, and the package bombs mailed to his predecessor and former political opponent. I say resulting from the killing, rather than what the president says, which is related to the Saudi coverup of the killing.
How can we listen to the words of Nicolas Roerich? How can we truly listen and use the resonance of these words in our hearts to uplift our spirits in these troubling times? Maybe something symbolic, like mailing a paper letter to someone in a foreign country. Maybe making a donation to an international charity. Maybe posting this little piece of writing on the internet. Maybe sending the link to this little piece of writing to a friend.
The Saudis are not our friends, and they never have been, my esteemed father’s opinion to the contrary. His flawed single criteria method of determining that the Saudis are good guys is based on their support for Israel. Israel’s friendship with the Saudis is even more unintelligible than our own. Working for clarity and tolerance of our fellow humans does not mean that we endorse their sins. But working together on projects that we can all endorse, the World Postal Union, for example, lets us experience the fact that individual people on the opposite side of any particular political issue are probably just as likely to be otherwise suitable companions as those on “our side.”
Having this experience of being able to see the truth of the randomness of the sources of our political leanings will tend to soften even the most die-hard bigot. If you don’t understand the previous sentence, just try it out. Do SOMETHING for an organization where you will be brought into contact with someone from the other end of the political spectrum. Just do it. And then just think about it. We’re all humans, even if our political reality and the enforcing sword of justice have not yet caught up to the high minded rhetoric of the United States of American Declaration of Independence. Hey, we’ve only had 240 some years to clothe the words with flesh. As Americans, that seems like a long time, but the fresh start we all think we got when we or our ancestors came to the shores of the nation is not as fresh as we are led to believe. It takes work to excavate the layers of subconscious myths that keep us at each others’ throats.
Spiritualist First Church of Truth August 19, 2018
Here’s a recording of the sermon:
Here are some notes, which are more extensive than what I had time to talk about. 🙁
The Evolution of the Concept of The Chosen People.
My dad was sorry he did not have time to loan me his tee-shirt from the synagogue in Alaska which claimed the members of the congregation were “The Frozen Chosen.”
But where did the concept of the Chosen People come from? Most of us might think that the Hebrew Bible was the origin of this idea, but this is probably wrong. Every people over the course of pre-history and history has probably believed that their god loved them best.
But in Western history, this all changed with Sargon.
Let’s take a step back to understand the Bible in the CONTEXT of the CULTURE in which it originated. Newly developing spiritual and religious systems are always trying to solve the current problems.
For example, Hinduism developed to try to manage a society that was made up of conquered and conquerors.
Often conquered were “recently” displaced people who were of a totally different ethnic stock and had a totally different way of life from the sword waving and horse riding conquerors.
Conquered had followed a more or less peaceful, mother centered sedentary lifestyle, while conquerors were militaristic partriarchs who made their women second class citizens.
The sword waver’s answer was the caste system, and they put themselves at the top of the social hierarchy. Eventually, the top caste, the priests, developed a stranglehold on everyone else and rituals took up far too much time. The original spiritual aspect of the Hindu traditions, their search for truth was lost.
Judaism developed to try to get back to a more democratic social structure in the context of the land we now call Iraq, perhaps the first civilization. God’s first recorded instruction to Abraham, his first follower, was “Go To Yourself.” God then told him to “Get out of Sumer.” God was not, at that time, trying to overturn the second class status of women, but the fact is that at that time, 3500 years ago or so, women in Sumer didn’t have it that bad. Sumer’s most powerful traditional deity was Ishtar, a goddess, and Sumerian women had similar legal rights to men.
But Sumer was the place where the first historically known King and eventually the first Emperor emerged.
But how did the King convince the people that they should obey him? People in primitive tribes kept a close watch on the head man, to avoid his taking more power than they were ready to give.
One of the King’s strategies was to CLAIM THAT HE WAS CHOSEN BY GOD TO BE KING. Of course it wasn’t just a king and everyone else. The whole idea of civilization works as a result of a multi-level social hierarchy. Civilization allows a small group of people to basically lord it over everyone else. God was apparently not too happy about this human development.
So Abraham had to get out of Sumer, to clear his head, and realize how much better life is when each person has his own direct line to God. Even later in Judaism, the priests were there to do the rituals, but were never considered to be more beloved by God than the “regular” people. Abraham’s god had a new idea. Instead of choosing the KING to be on top of everyone else in the country, God CHOSE the ENTIRE POPULATION OF ABRAHAM’S DESCENDANTS.
But somehow, within a short time (Well short in terms of ancient history) the Jewish people, with an edited Bible, managed to turn this Divine Democratization into a Divine Elevation. The Jewish way was not better because GOD LOVED EVERY JEWISH PERSON. The Jews turned the commandment to be a light to the nations, perhaps meaning that everyone on Earth was eventually to realize that all of HUMANITY was made up of CHOSEN individuals, into a belief that Jews were special. This caused a lot of pain and anxiety and push back. I think it is probably a significant factor in the prevalence over the centuries of Anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism used to nominally mean Anti-Jewish, but Arabs are also Semitic. It should be noted that Islam also has this idea that every Muslim has the spirit of Allah within, and Islam has no priests at all!
I don’t know if I can adequately emphasize that the Jewish idea of the Chosen PEOPLE was intended to be a BROADENING from the CHOSEN KING.
Jesus came along and Jesus was a Jew, and from what I can tell, he bought into the idea of the Jewish people being specially loved by God. Of course the Torah repeatedly quotes God telling the Children of Israel how he’ll give them the land of milk and honey and feed them with fat wheat. But carrot and stick psychology was all they had at the time. There was no Maslow’s Hierarchy of progressive motivation.
Nevertheless, I still think that one of God’s main intents with his support for the followers of Jesus was to BROADEN the group of chosen. To make the Jews from the theoretical, someday, light of the world, into the actual people who demonstrate how to live with a personal relationship with an all powerful God. What was Jesus’ message? He did not promote giving up ritual, but he did promote seeing in a new way, being in a new way.
One example was the way that Jesus taught people to honor their parents. This was by following him in a new way of life, based in spiritual truth revealed to each individual rather than staying at home to comfort them by bringing their slippers when they wanted to put their feet up. Were the parents of the disciples honored by their offspring’s action? We can’t know, but if it weren’t for their offspring’s following Jesus, they would most likely be deeper in the darkness of the forgotten than they are. At least there are millions of Christians who remember their children every day, and bless their sainted memories.
But getting back to the chosen people idea… Think of the ramifications of having an all powerful God on your side, always ready to help out. You better be pure of spirit, or bad things will happen to others. As the belief in their God’s power increased, the importance of ethics became more important. Even Sargon, the first emperor of Sumer, claimed that GOD PICKED HIM BECAUSE he was just, and treated the widows and orphans in a just manner.
And now, getting back to Jesus, once he was gone, and Christianity became a separate religion, rather than a sect of Judaism, in order to enlarge the fold, the original Christian leadership needed to embrace broadening the promise of “chosen-ness.” Although I am not convinced Jesus wanted to start a new religion, clearly Paul did. “You don’t have to have been born Jewish, you just have to accept Jesus, and you will be a part of community of the chosen.” Of course within a short time, the Jewish idea of Jesus being the Messiah, the Anointed, the one who brought an end to war and injustice, was seen to be incorrect. The followers of Jesus were compelled to come up with a new idea: INDIVIDUAL SALVATION.
Now we have to have a criterion for who is saved and who isn’t.
This is definitely NOT a Jewish idea. Jews believe that everyone is saved, everyone goes to Heaven. The only difference between the saints and the jerks is that the saints are remembered well and the jerks are probably cursed. But the souls of saints and jerks alike end up happily co-existing in heaven. As Jesus said, “My father’s house has many mansions.” The sign above the platform at the synagogue where I grew up said “This is the house of prayer for ALL the people.” On the holiest day of the year, the Day of Atonement, Jews make a COMMUNAL confession of every sin in the book. Literally. There are around three or four sins listed for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and every member of the congregation pounds his or her heart in contrition for EVERY ONE OF THOSE 75 or more sins. Judaism has no individual salvation. Everyone is saved in advance by the merciful God.
It’s really amazing, amazingly SAD, how quickly the Christian idea of broadening a chosen group of people, making the only entrance requirement a claim to be chosen, was so rapidly changed into a huge, millennia long argument about what you have to do, or not do, believe or not believe, to be saved.
And how many lives have been lost over this argument?
Certain groups of Muslims are now the one’s most vocally claiming to be the chosen, and killing each other over what it takes to get to Heaven. Again and again we see the idea of the chosen people being distorted and weaponized.
Hinduism had a similar revolution against the privilege of the priestly caste. Its name is Buddhism. The Buddha taught that freedom from suffering was available to anyone who could properly follow his Eightfold Path. The Buddha did not think that more than one person in 10,000 would be able to follow the path, or even be interested in trying to follow the path, but after his own hard won liberation, he spent the rest of his life trying to help those who were willing to try. Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, do not so much focus on being saved by a personal God, but on following an ethical life to increase the chances that you will be able to control your mind, make it your servant, so that the spirit may readily merge with the All. While this does not eliminate pain, it has the potential to eliminate suffering. The Buddhist and Hindu paths to liberation do not result in the body’s personality sitting at Jesus’ feet, but they result in unification with God, or the Ultimate Consciousness, an idea that many religious people find blasphemous. People who truly understand the nature of spirituality understand, whatever their religious affiliation, that this is the ultimate peace and joy.
Pictured Rocks along shore of Lake Superior. Photo credit Peter P. Ried of Portage, MI
Walking along the lakefront stores opposite the boardwalk in St. Ignace, we passed a mannequin. A male mannequin. It was dressed in a suit. An old fashioned suit. For some reason, the store owner left its top hat upturned, slightly to the side and front of it, rather than on it’s head. The skin tone was gold. As we approached the mannequin, I looked at its face. Incredible detail. No model’s super-smooth skin here. Real pores. Accentuated by the gold color. Two steps past, I turned back for another look, and spoke to my companion. “That’s a live person.”
Then the mannequin bowed, and swept his hand toward us. I don’t know how long he had been standing there. The street did not have a lot of foot traffic, despite this being Saturday night of the peak weekend of the tourist season. I somehow got the impression that he was informing me that not many people realized that he was one of us, not a plastic doll. Perhaps only his skill at acting, hoping I would put the fiver I now realize he deserved, in his upturned hat. I’m known to be gullible. But I’m sorry I didn’t give him the fiver. Because when we walked back to the hotel after the fireworks, he wasn’t there.
It just struck me very strongly that the fact that DUELING was still popular and apparently accepted among at least some of our founding fathers SHOULD BE TAKEN AS A WARNING.
My opinion of “originalism” in Constitutional interpretation just deteriorated. Not that it was high to start with.
Why “Conservatives” want to conserve the barbaric concepts from the past is something I fail to understand. At the time of the founding of the country, we gave lip service to equality. It’s time to take action to elect and support people who will work to promote equality. And trying to act like we can have equality in the US when it’s not present all over the globe is a farce.
May all beings be happy. May all beings have the causes of happiness.
Balance is the core element of all true spiritual paths. The human condition consigns us to be killers, whether of plants, the insects or fungi that would have otherwise have eaten them, or “higher” life forms.
The salient question is what we make of the inevitable pain we cause. Since without evil, we wouldn’t even know what good is, some evil must exist in for good to be recognized.
But balance in real life is much more complicated than choosing good or evil. Most of the time we don’t know which one we are choosing until years / decades later, and even then, what appeared evil may end up being the compost that brought forth the beautiful flower of a later, larger good.
So what else might we consider trying to balance? The food we consume and the energy we expend? Now there’s a huge effort right there! The amount of work we do and the time we “relax”? The amount of money we earn and what we spend? The skills we develop versus the friendships we nurture?
Of course that last one isn’t really an either / or. We can build friendships with people who are working on similar skill development, or those we mentor or are mentored by.
How do we balance our feeling of integrity when fighting for justice against people who disagree with us?
Is the United States setting itself up for a major internal conflict with the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice?
Isn’t it time for humanity to vomit up the remains of the undigested apple of knowledge of good and evil? It was always a false choice. That was the greater sin. Believing that we could KNOW GOOD AND EVIL, rather than focusing on pragmatic realities for the benefit of all.
I feel depressed and disgusted when confronted by the actions of people who think they are doing good by forcing women to bear unwanted children.
How many people existing today were actually PLANNED by their parents? When I was in the home-birth education course, decades ago, we were the ONLY couple of 10 who had actually planned that conception at that time. Those working against abortion are basically saying “I (or others) suffered, so must you.” Could it be perverse cruelty that drives them? Why is the unborn more important than the born? Only because we are tied to values that date from the time when a group kept its property by having soldiers to defend it to the death. The perceived necessities of group survival morphed into forcing individual behavior.
In most cultures on the earth today, the worst thing that can happen is to be burdened with the care of undesired offspring. I see many friends and acquaintances whose lives and dreams were put on hold for decades, or forever, by having to become parents before they were ready. The price of a moment’s passion or victimization can be steep.
I have never seen any historians specifically state that the need for armies was due in large part to the filling of the parts of the earth where it is relatively easy to survive. This 5000 year old imbalance is philosophically starting to tip back, but without renouncing our belief in the possibility of self-righteousness,I think attaining balance will be tough job.
May all beings be happy, and more importantly, may all beings have the causes of happiness.
To achieve that, we must promote education and basic security for all. That will be much easier if we promote policies that ensure children are born when they have a nurturing space in society awaiting them. Right now, the dominant world culture promotes misery for most.
Now Linda could think more clearly. Now her true thoughts came to the surface.
Linda’s nascent understanding of who she was started to grow.
She started to catch some of her perceptions on their way to being modified; on the way to becoming thoughts, feelings and knowledge.
Part C
Linda started to experience awe more often. She devoured the literature on consciousness. She learned that chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s sexual partner. Chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s social status. But chimpanzees can’t ask “Is there another I, besides the one in this body, limited to these sexual partners and this place in the social structure?”
Part D
Linda started seeing her limitations dissolve. Linda knew that she was no longer a toddler, a kid, a teen, a college student, an independent head of household, with all of those incumbent burdens.
Part E
Linda no longer saw the fields of green, the flowers of red. Instead she saw the blades of ancient grasses. She saw her far ancestors harvesting the few golden wheat seeds which clung to their stalks. She saw the flowers with the eyes of the bee, so much closer to their real glorious colors.
She saw, through the eyes of the mole, the worms wriggling under the dark earth.
She experienced the jubilation of Hypatia, at the knowledge stored in the modern library of Alexandria.
She experienced liberation from care, after sitting at the feet of Patanjali.
She saw the sunlight. She no longer needed artifice from a venerable human to create interest in the world.
Part F
Linda walked to the fridge. She still needed to eat. She saw that old magnet declaring Hare Krishna! This time she understood. This time she knew what awaited her, the next time she chanted the name.
Part G
This time she knew that she didn’t need to chant the name. She was home.
