Spiritual Rants

I Spoke to a Tibetan Buddhist and Found Bliss

2009-08-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

I enjoy studying other religions, particularly Buddhism. Today, I spoke to a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, and though we used different jargons of Buddhism, we achieved a tranquil bond of understanding.

He criticized the monastic path of Buddhist traditions, and my thoughts turned to my disruptive view of institutions--religious and secular. There is profit behind maintaining the institution, he described, as he viewed this idea as part of negative karma. Immediately, I thought of the Daoist's distrust of government and Jesus dismantling a Greco-Roman-Jewish temple. "This is my Father's house," Rabbi Yeshua/Jesus said.

My friend spoke of the "Clear Light" he has received through meditation, where the delusion of reality disappears and only bliss remains active.

As an ethical monotheist (not claiming a specific religious tradition), I have experienced clear light or what I might call God illumination. Since I believe God is both immanent and transcendent, human beings are, too.

The Tibetan Buddhist uses the body to release from physical manifestation into a level of bliss or nirvana. In other words, the delusion of the body plays a significant role in releasing self into clear light, where ego no longer exists and the entire bliss of others merge.

My life with God is similar. From my perspective, however, I believe in the relevance of God's immanence. He created the earth, the universe, that which we do not know, etc. God is not in the grass, but he architected it. Therefore, God's divineness is embraced by all of our senses; we should not view the earth as a delusion but our sacred mother. Our senses smell, taste, touch, feel. We were born to embrace the earth, the wind, the rain, and the sky, "for God said it was good."

Though I don't believe in a literal interpretation of the Garden of Eden story, the Jewish tradition communicates the significance of man and woman communicating with each other and God in a beautiful garden. How beautiful my "clear light" rises within me when I see God's scientific principles creating a rainbow or blowing a wave against the rocks at Lake Hefner. How beautiful are my children and the growing sunflowers in my front lawn as representations of life.

On a quiet night, I look at the stars and then look inward: God's divine consciousness representing within me. I call out his name: Adonai. I pray in the darkness of my own front lawn; everything fades except for what Martin Buber states as a book title: I and Thou.

In this moment of space and praise, I embrace the blissful image of God within me. It is sometimes a physical emotion trapped in the physical, but other times, I fade into a quiet realm of silence and listen to the stillness comfort me.

Bliss arrives. I am caught in what the Daoists call non-doing, non-judgment, and effortlessness. Am I here or there? It matters not to ask any questions because no matter what pain and suffering exists now in this earthly state, there is a continuous cycle and purpose for the future. Without thought, I see it clearly as an open portal challenging me to embrace my divinity now and share it the best I can through language.

To conclude, the Tibetan Buddhist and I have different paths to the clear light. Our practice in seeing bliss may be different, but today we shed our creeds for something real. We lit a candle symbolically as the smoke rises into the unknown mysterious beyond the physicality of self!

Does God exist or not? For us, only communication and transcendence mattered.

--Jinglett

10 Commandments

2009-08-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

We in the United States live according to a secular government, but our personal laws stem from all the great religious and secular systems. Reading the Bedside Torah (Artson) today, I was reminded once again the significance of the Ten Commandments. Can we follow these commandments and make our society a more just one?

1. I am Adonai your God.

My viewpoint is simple. The Jews brought to our vision the system of ethical monotheism. There is one God. I refer myself to this pattern, pray to one God, do not ask Angels or Jesus or other people to bless me. I have a direct relationship to Adonai, the one God of the universe, according to my opinion.

2. Worship no idolatrous images.

People used to bow down to golden calves and incite some power or magic. I don't see this commandment relevant on a shallow level, but we are still slaves to our own corporations, governments, ideologies, homes, television, and other images possessing our interest more than the focus on the first commandment. "You cannot serve both God and money," it says. If a cell phone becomes more significant than my relationship with a divine, transcendental, and immanent being I refer to as the Supreme Mover of the Universe, then I must reject these materialistic "golden calves."

3. Do not swear falsely by the name of God.

Do not swear at all, because swearing is an oath. If we make a promise to another person, we must keep it. If we take the Lord's name in vain, then we are rejecting his authority of justice and freedom in our lives. Why drive away the very being that brings us rain and life to this earth? Uplift others positively because they are a representation of the divine image, too.

4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

I do not like participating in organized religion, and my friends and family realize this issue, but I do find time during the week when it is God and me alone in a room or in my brain talking to one another. Sometimes I just shake my head in solitary confinement because I do not know how to be holy, but I do my best. The Sabbath is also a time to honor the community and family, and I have yet to overcome my goal well because I like to be alone. I have no issues honoring God's glory, the natural elements, and my own life, but seeing the holiness in human beings and spending time with them is a goal I hope to reach soon. That holiness will be returned in the afterlife!

5. Honor your Father and Mother.

Honor your ancestors, too! We have lost this reality, to some degree. Do I respect the authority of my elders? I tend to buck the system and forget about the wisdom of people like Moses, who at the young age of 85, led the Israelites to a new settlement beyond Egypt. He was an old man and chief justice of the community. I must look to my elders for advice and direction. I must praise them fully. I plan to follow this commandment with more fervor and honesty.

6. You shall not murder.

Many people might say, "No problem." However, people die around the world. Food poisoning. Reckless driving due to DUIs. Drug overdoses leading to self-suicide. Anger at another country for bombing and retaliation pending. We are surrounded with such violence, yet on a personal level, I feel helpless to speak out on such an easy commandment. Respect one another. Love one another. We are all human beings with the same purpose for freedom. Do not place ideology above anybody's human life, including a starving child in another country. And, if you are having a child and your life is in trouble, know that abortion does not make you a murderer. Jewish law claims that the mother is more significant than the child. It is better to save the mother so that she can have more children. There are difficult questions to be asked under this commandment, I realize.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

I hope to keep off the television as long as possible. Every reality show I see breaks this commandment, and when I see a beautiful woman in a store, I lust as everybody does. I need to work on this commandment, too, and treat human beings as my brothers and sister and place my wife on a different level, for she represents a union manifested between two divine souls. We are one, and if I cannot bring this passion of unity within my marriage, then how do I create that same passion of unity between the Supreme Mover and me. Marriage is a sacred act or union between two human beings, and it should be treated as such. If two gay men find this unity as well, I see no reason why God will not place his hands upon them and love them, too!

8.You shall not steal.

This one drives me crazy because all I see surrounding the United States is greed. Corporate greed. Government greed. Ideological Greed. Everything is a negotiation, and even a negotiation itself is a form of greed to me. Let's stop negotiating rules to provide this country or that country with a little more or less until a compromise is reached. Let's look at what is right. Moses did not negotiate out of greed with the Pharaoh. He stuck to the terms. He said, "Let all of my people go." Men, women, elderly, and children. All slaves leave. All slaves deserve their opportunity for success. What a message of truth Moses brings to us today! How do we replicate that truth in a world that steals?

9. You shall not bear false witness.

Do not lie. Tell the truth. I follow this one closely, and I realize that people do not like to hear the truth. It hurts their feelings, but the truth may unravel a psychological pattern that needs to be evaluated. Telling the truth does not mean you do not love a fellow human being. It does not mean you are being critical. It simply means that you care about a person, but we must be careful catching ourselves in some game of ego madness. We should be asked our opinion and deliver it carefully to the other person with great thought. And, we should not gossip!

10. You shall not covet.

I mentioned materialism already, and I and the rest of the world struggles with this idea. I believe this idea of protecting the U.S. against terrorist threats can lead to a kind of coveting. We want to covet our freedom. Freedom, however, is a wonderful thing to protect, but we have to be careful how we talk about freedom to ourselves and other countries. Otherwise, we might end up in a war that seems endless where people die for a cause that could have been solved in different directions. We are coveting the stock market at the moment, too. We are coveting an economic recovery. Yes, people are out of work, and the richer of us needs to step up and give up their gold to the poor. This is our shining moment, but I am afraid we will always latch on to the current political environment instead of loving each person equally beyond corporate commodities.

--JINGLETT

Indifferent Freedom

2009-08-02T20:11:00.001-07:00

I can only speak of selfish places
Like reading your histories in bookstores
Peace talks from Egypt and Palestinian ghettos.

Israel and Palestine, you are precious stones
Waiting for your family reunion to place
Emphasis on your price for family gold,

But a spectator this season, I read alone
The novel of your consistent anger.
Should I keep holding your striking pages

Or turn to more familiar books:
Hollywood endings with predictable hooks?

--Jinglett

The Divine Pool

2009-05-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

I am ready to swim in the divine pool. We are made in the image of our Creator, and that image is a bountiful lake of love.

Sometimes we stand on the earth too long looking at the waves as detterents to our destiny. The sand warms our feet to watch to swim!

Cultures place rules upon our lakes: no fishing. Or, the oil companies and other corporations poison our rivers and oceans and once clear springs. Our vision is murky, and we no longer stare at the lake's endless beauty. Nor can we feel the intensity of light and rain above us expressing themselves as rainbows across the polluted horizon.

But, a rainbow will spread on a clear-coming day!

"Come," they say, "the water is fine!"

Upon death, I will swim like a fish. Become the diving dolphin. Shift into the golden eagle and fly beyond earth's hemisphere. There, I will surpass the rain and lightning to cross over a waterfall of the sky's boundless falling away.

There, I meet my image--the Creator and the water--and God, with no figure, urges me to join his rainbow trout without scuba gear. I, then, am breathing the water's oxygen through the gill's of my formless energy.

I am swimming in God's pool of divine love. Naked and unafraid!

--Jinglett

She is the Dao

2009-05-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

A true Daoist does not know she is a Daoist! For, how could she?

A Daoist lives in the moment, and as soon as the moment is clarified, she is no longer living in the moment!

She is limitless like the wind sometimes calm and other times exciting like the beginning of a tornado!

She reaches her hands to us all and touches us with grace, even though she knows nothing about her gift only we breathe on our own accord.

She cannot be exhausted, though she is exhausted without knowing why.

She looks at work as a mysterious gloom, for work is hierarchy and division and superiority--all things that Dao is not!

Wisdom rests in her without distinction, without division, without hierarchy. She is the Dao of the Dao!

She owns her inner power like a dancing machine resolving inaction with action and twirling circles around the room to good music or the thoughts in her head.

She is like a feather falling from the sky as the wind moves it in every direction. And, though her brain cannot tap into the twists and turns, she allows the focus to focus itself, for controlling it too much only causes the feather to fly away!

She judges not, nor enters the realm of disagreement or delusional thinking, for in the world of worlds, there is anger, frustration, and conflict all hurdling itself at pain instead of divine wisdom of joy within herself!

She has a name and no name, too, for she is the indefinable no-name we long to hear! She walks the circle of life looking and touching the flowers and not calling them daisy, peonie, or lily. For, naming the nameless resolves the beauty of touching it completely!

She is vital energy, the life force and matter within herself, driving in a direction with pure energy from the heart and soul. She lifts up others to our vital energy, and we fly along like birds with her divinity!

She is the divine feminine--the yin within ourselves humbling coming to the surface to celebrate our dreams as the moon fills up and empties from cycle to cycle or from one lunar year to the next without counting time once.

She is perfect harmony like an algebraic equation or some Einsteinian vision of light and optics we dare not understand, though we all know the formula.

She demands no riches and lives simply in her boundlessness without rules and with the reciprocity of love binding us all to her gravity springs!

She is the dao and does not know it!

--JINGLETT

Lightning

2009-05-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

Lightning Flashes
God taking pictures
Of us!

--Jinglett

Peace in Middle East

2009-05-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

Interesting Solution. No, I have never heard this one before.

Peace in the Middle East needs to come from the MIDDLE EAST.

Not Obama.
Not the Pope.
Not the Europeans.

Yes, I seem naive. Wouldn't that wipe out Israel? Uh, no!

There are intelligent people in the Middle East.
There are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Bahai's, Zoroastrianisms, etc.
There are scientists, historians, artists, filmmakers, politicians, and smart people.

Yeah, I know you are surprised by that!

Many have an ethnocentric bias.

Remember the Muslims saved Greek philosophy and science and invented Algebra!

Peace in the Middle East needs to come from the Middle East.

Did I just repeat myself?

So this is Cannabis...

2009-05-11T21:11:00.001-07:00

So...this is Cannabis. Well, recently Mr. Universe, Arnold, has stated that California should debate the use of marijuana. And, according to the Zogby Poll, about 52% of U.S. citizens support the legalization of marijuana.

I have a very different opinion of this situation.

Here is my rant.

Let's not jump too fast into legalizing marijuana when there are better positions to take by legalizing the production of hemp.

My wife and I pay too much money to purchase hempseeds as a Canadian import. What is hempseed? It is perhaps the elixir of all nuts! Great for you! Tasty in salads. High in omega-3 and -6 fatty acids. Yet, it is expensive to buy because we Americans must import it from Europe and Canada.

So, let's not get too excited about marijuana, see it be legalized, see some nasty repercussion, and then return to making it illegal again. Let's be practical and begin legislation to produce and regulate HEMP!

That is step one!

Hemp rope!
Hemp seeds!
Hemp shoes!
Hemp clothes!
Hemp canvasses!

You name it! Then, once we see the hemp industry take off in this country, then maybe we can speak about a real debate on marijuana and THC.

But, why get high on marijuana when there is a REAL product involved in the Hemp industry!

Just think of this. If cotton was found to contain substances like THC, then we would no longer be using cotton in our clothing. And, if the lobbyists in Congress working to keep cotton, polyester, and other types of fabric on top of the game, then listen up, people. Let the cotton industry start its own side company so they will NOT be losing money on such a good product.

Enough said!

So, this is my rant, though not much of a spiritual one tonight, unless you are high on marijuana! :-)

--JINGLETT

Why the Palestinian-Israel Problem is Complex

2009-05-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

Hezbollah Smuggles Weapons

This article shows the difficulty of the two-state solution. President Obama could be ready for talks to create a two-state solution, yet this article shows how many people in different countries are involved in the protection/defense of Palestine or the attack on Israel. (Interpret defense/offense however you wish.)

Hezbollah was operating its forces in Egypt, according to the source. Luckily, Egypt was smart enough to stop the situation because though Hezbollah claims its aim was protection of Palestine, Egypt does not know if there is some kind of threat against Egypt itself, especially when Obama plans to speak in Egypt soon.

Next, the weapons for Hezbollah were possibly shipped through Lebanon, our ally.

Now my rant.

Two allies--Egypt and Lebanon--contain people in that land that demonstrate a threat to Israel. If Barack Obama plans to ask governments to promote a two-state solution, do these countries, such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, have the operatives and technologies to stop any kind of political threats against Palestine and Israel?

If countries cannot control terrorist networks, which, I believe, will enhance as a two-state solution continues to be discussed, how will Palestine and Israel ever reach such a practical agreement.

My simple point: Countries must be willing to arrest any kind of terrorist networks in their area and still allow individual citizen freedoms to thrive. Will this happen?

I am skeptical.

However, I wish all Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Sikhs, and other religions PEACE in the MIDDLE EAST!

Yet, my experiences tell me that when Jimmy Carter helped create allies between Israel and Egypt, people died, including the Egyptian President! Jimmy Carter thankfully lived, but we are so far away from the blood and gore yet must realize responsibility also belongs on us!

--JINGLETT

2009-05-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

Only empty churches bring me peace.

You start placing human beings in there, and I want to leave.

--Jinglett

Butterfly Prayer

2009-05-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Butterfly...

For your butterfly wings sustained near the river,
For the drifting wind looming a song in your heart.
For the rhythm of wings pumping life to my veins,
For the veins of a goddess self-contained and explosive.

Thank You, Butterfly...

For your explosive dreams I embrace each morning,
The evenings of pain before your nectar enfolds me,
And the pain you have caught and shaped into joy
Through the bridges and highways of Oklahoma County,
Through my veiled smiles for this American Beauty,
Through fossilized flowers that blend with your dresses,
Through a memento of hope that dies with silence.

Thank You, Butterfly...

For the chocolate antennas that glisten in sunshine,
Your floating curves that ascend above water
For my watching gaze at the bottom of the river.
To the river's caves that I leave for the surface,
The surface dreams of butterfly dances,
The dancing waves of your distant caresses.

Thank You, Butterfly...

For the sun again, the earth, and the grasslands,
For your straining wings that drift to the desert,
As my binocular eyes follow your journey.
To the voices and rhythms of absolute loneliness,
That drive your mosaics closer to freedom
That keep my spirit yearning for safety,

For the stillness of water I refuse to envelop,
For sunlight hoisting my soul above water,
To the Eagle Vishnu hovering above us,
As your butterfly wings hide from the eagle,
As my awakened body escapes to the flowers,
As the eagle descending attempts to claw me.

To the panting of living as I fall into daisies,
The flowers and weeds that hide me from dying,
To dying words I refuse to embrace,
To the embrace of your flapping, your lasting grace.

--Jinglett

What is Free Choice?

2009-05-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

I hear this term tossed around too much these days as evidence of human suffering.

"God gave us free will or free choice in our actions. That's why suffering exists?"

Or, "We are 'wretches,' as the song, 'Amazing Grace,' says we are, and only through Christ's redeeming blood can we be saved."

I just don't buy these ideas anymore.

I have a willingness and sometimes a stubborness to have a viewpoint, but I don't always have free choice.

1. I didn't choose my parents, although I love them dearly.
2. I didn't choose to be raised in a Church of Christ, although my parent's chose that.
3. My choices are based on my parent's choices; therefore, I am somewhat limited in my free will as a child when my behavior, to some degree, was predetermined for me.

What might I be if I were raised as a Buddhist or Hindu? How would my so-called free actions be determined by my culture then?

I don't believe that I am a total social construct to this culture; I have choices to learn other cultures and rebel against my own, including the Christian faith.

But, free choice is limited more than we realize, even though we view the United States as some kind of safe haven for libertarian and free-flowing ideas.

Here are a few examples of limitations of free choice.

1. Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi, and the gospel of Matthew clearly states that he has come to this earth not to destroy the Jewish law. Jesus could not move beyond Judaism; only something like the Roman Empire could take the Christian movement to a different level altogether different from the Jesus movement of the first century, and still the Roman empire used its cultural, pagan roots as a method to adopt itself easily to Christianity.

2. Harold Bloom might say that we can never truly free ourselves from our parental heritage, although we try to improve upon it in our own egocentric pathway, yet we are still bound by that past. This is obviously Freudian, too. The scientific revolution breeds Romanticism, a kind of anti-enlightenment period or at least a conversation with the past. Luther and Calvin certainly promulgated the Protestant Reformation, but they created hierarchical churches not that different from Catholicism. And, they rejected the real revolutionaries of the period: the Anabaptists (the modern Brethren, Mennonites, and Amish who were viewed as pacifists yet blasphemy to the church hierarchies).

3. Muhammad needed Christianity and Judaism. Nanak needed Hinduism and Islam before Sikhism to be established, yet what if Nanak lived in an area where only Hinduism and Christianity prevailed. Would the religion have a foundation in Christianity and Hinduism rather than Islam/Hindu systems? Of course it would! We are bound by our cultural heritage.

So, is having limited free choice and a cultural influence of identity a terrible idea?

That's a question we must answer for ourselves personally, if it can be answered.

Nevertheless, I plan to be a realist here.

I am not a wretch as the song "Amazing Grace" implies.
I do not need a God-Son to arrive on this earth to save me from my wretched state.
If I did, then why did God create suffering in the first place? Surely, it wasn't to loathe ourselves so much that we need to turn to some higher source for comfort! If anything, we need to turn to other human beings because that is what people do in church, to some degree.

Well, that's my message today. If you reject it, is it because of logic, or is it because you were raised to reject these kind of ideas?

--Jinglett

Israel and Palestine: What would Solomon Do?

2009-05-03T01:10:00.000-07:00

I never approach such large issues as the Palestinian-Israeli condition of land and settlement because I see no viable solution or compromise to appease or satisfy all sides. And, I honestly hold no strong credibility. So, go along and read somebody else's blog. :-)

Nevertheless, I wish to approach some of the complexity.

From a Jewish perspective, God promised this land to the Hebrews. However, what if there was an earlier vision from the Philistines or the Canaanites stating, “God promised this land to us.” Therein lies the difficult problem of “promise.”

When we speak of deity, how does that relate specifically to land ownership in modern society? Did God promise the shiny “city upon a hill” to the early pilgrims of America, as Indians ultimately were wiped out, sent westward, or integrated into this new American society?

Now Americans sing, “This land is your land / This land is my land / from California to the New York Islands.” I wonder what the Cherokee and other Indians think about that concept when their ancestors walked tirelessly to their land, Indian Territory, which ultimately became another person's land, a place I live now: Oklahoma? (We remove the guilt by calling it Native Oklahoma. After all, we all have a little bit of Indian in our lineage.)

My point above is not to disrespect Judaism or its heritage. (I don't even want to be angry at the United States or Andrew Jackson.) Jews have been through more suffering than any culture I have known with approximately six million dying during the Jewish holocaust planned by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. As Bart D Ehrman writes, there were “the cries of children, screaming from the midst of the blazing ovens.” So, if a “chosen-land” argument does not operate in modern society, then does returning Jews to their “homeland” after World War II serve as a viable solution to the problem of ethnic security? Not quite.

The aftermath of World War II is problematic for many reasons, but I want to only focus on this concept of Western colonialism that pervades the Eastern viewpoint. Then, unless this idea of colonization can be tamed and reconciled by both Western and Eastern expansionist philosophies, then the Israel-Palestinian issue will never arrive at resolution.

But, let's first discuss a bit of history before we reach this answer.

First, according to the Torah, Abraham existed in Ur, a land controlled by the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. In some respect, the Jews, if they are original descendants of Abraham did not have an exact geographical region. Over a period of time, after Abraham and Moses, Joshua—the great Hebrew military leader—conquered the land of Canaan. So, does Israel belong originally to the Canaanites? Or, let's move even further back into history. Does Israel belong to perhaps the Egyptians or the Amorites? How about the Moabites, Hittites, Jebusites, Philistines, Hivites, Perizzites, Edomites, or the Gergesenes? These cultures may still exist through some twisted DNA analysis, or they may be blended cultures that still represent what we always consider a purified version of Jewish heritage.

The problem is not simple. Can we truly trace ethnic history to its original source as a method of establishing who owns land or whose kingdom should remain? If so, then the Persians should be rebelling against Iranian authority, re-establishing their region without the colonization of the Muslim empires, and then returning to its original Zoroastrian principles. Of course, nobody is arguing for a Persian stronghold on Iran when Iran is, for the most part, now Muslim.

So, let's assume that since Iran remains its own culture today and predominantly Muslim, we cannot return it to its original owners just as we cannot return Native Americans to their original geographical locations. Then do Jews have any right over their rich heritage after they “colonized” the land during the Davidic Kingdom and established long-lasting roots in the region?

This answer is a complicated one, but we are speaking about 3000 years ago when the Twelve Tribes of Israel formulated a rich heritage based on Solomon's Temple—the first Jewish Temple in the region. Yet, the realistic answer sometimes is the harmful one. Our society during this period (and still now) divides and conquers, including the Eastern Empires—the Assyrians who in around 721 BCE conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Babylonians who in around 587 BCE conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and, finally, the Persians who between 587-444 BCE conquered the Babylonians. My historical point (if there is one) is that Eastern colonialism existed long before this “promised land” was attacked also by the Western Empires, such as the Greeks and the Romans. And, we are not arguing for the Persians as the rightful owners of modern-day Israel and Palestine.

Of course not! The Persians could not control the empire, and as I have stated, other empires continued to dominate not only Israel/Palestine but other geographical locations, too. Do we return every ethnic region back to its rightful owner? If so, then how do we remove European Americans from the United States and replace them rightfully with the Native Americans, whose languages continually die out and who probably speak English, for the most part, thanks to reservation colonization, too!

We cannot return to the past, yet somehow during World War II and before, Jews fled to their “homeland” as a kind of diaspora against the holocaust or as a safe haven to protect themselves for self-destruction as an identity. And, since the British before 1948 had conquered this land, they with the United Nation's backing had some rights to state how the land is divided, even though I am adamantly against this kind of colonization! Yet, we have to follow the lines of history and recognize the historical impact of geography as one method of establishing ownership, even though the conquered deserve their rights in court! However, whose court? In that case, does the United States, who boldly claims themselves as the Americans, return Texas and other areas to Mexico? Once a land is conquered, (dare I say it) it belongs to the conquerer. Or, does it?

Am I being naïve? Do we follow the chronological patterns of history as they are laid out before us and say that the last owner is the rightful owner? What happens if somebody holds a gun to my family and forces me out of my house? What if they take my house and force me to move ten miles down the road? Do I still deserve my day in court? Does the conquered deserve recompense?

Therein lies the difficult question. Here is why. Because the Jews have been conquered. The British have been conquered. The aboriginal Australians have been conquered. Conquering continues repeatedly. And, in 1948, Palestine was conquered by the United Nations' decision to make an Israeli state. I haven't researched the difficult questions to why the United Nations made this decision, and I have heard that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was somewhat skeptical about this idea, even though after his death, Truman was not. The Russians, too, were skeptical of this idea, but for some reason beyond my understanding they voted for a State of Israel perhaps thinking the Russian Jews might create a communist nation in the region. Who knows?

So, here we are. 1948. World War II aftermath. U.S. Army bases in Germany and Japan. The State of Israel fighting for its Jewish existence. The Middle Eastern countries completely confused by this decision and rightfully so! And, why would the United Nations establish a state in the middle of Palestinian culture when the aftermath could be a possible extinction of the Jewish race in the region due to this altering of boundaries that the British also created in places like India, which still struggles when land was divided among ethnic and religious boundaries: between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. What were the British thinking then? What were the United Nations thinking now? Isn't this kind of imperial, Western domination dangerous, and were various countries, including the United States, using the Jewish condition as pawns in a dangerous game of RISK or MONOPOLY?

If I were in the room discussing this area, no matter what any Jew or Arab might think, I might say, “Listen, Jews, if you take this land, do you realize that you will be surrounded by a group of people who have not really hated you that much before but may hate you now? Remember the kindness of the Islamic empires that allowed you to practice your religion peacefully? And, remember the hatred of the Christians who killed you in Spain if you did not convert to Christianity. Remember also the Crusades as you were slaughtered by the Europeans as they progressed toward the Muslim empire. Please, do you really want to be a pawn that is destroyed in order for some other King or Queen to abuse you in all directions?”

I wasn't born then. I don't understand the entire issue. However, I do understand a bit of the Middle Eastern condition. Let's talk about it.

The Europeans occupied Middle Eastern Cultures. The British and Russians colonized the Bengals and turned this culture into a production source for these two empires. (That's what empires do. They conquer and enslave the people, even though it is not viewed as forced slavery.) France colonized Algiers. Other occupied “Islamic” countries include: Tunisia (1881), Egypt (1882), Sudan (1889), Libya (1912), Morocco (1912). By 1915, the Ottoman Empire is divided between France and England. Let's add to the list: Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan.

Treaties continued throughout the twentieth century, but Western Imperialism expanded and controlled lands far beyond their regions. As background reading, simply read the African colonialism in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness or watch the film Ghandi or Lawrence of Arabia. These three sources are only the tip of the iceberg.

So, Israel arrives in an arbitrary fashion as not only a “safehaven” for the Jews, but from an Eastern perspective, a place for Western expansion to continue. The term Jew is a social construct for Western colonialism, and when the Iranian President speaks negatively about the holocaust, he is really speaking about how Europe and, yes, the United States have conquered the identity and wealth of the region. (I want to make it very clear here that I am not a fan of Ahmadinejad!)

The West (and I will refer to “We” now) are in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Dubai, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, etc. etc. And, while Palestine and Israel may or may not want a two-state solution, we are still riding our tanks into the geographical locations of the richest oil preserves in the world. Even the Russians held major oil contracts with Saddam Hussein before we became the occupiers of their territories.

Therefore, though we have not “conquered” the Middle East, we are there as part of this Western Expansion still happening and completely hindering the Eastern expansions of the older empires: the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians.

So, what do we do with Israel? We create a two-state solution. Beyond that, the underlying problem is not resolved: the belief of Western domination of the Middle East. How do we get past that problem? Not so simple!

We find other sources of energy beyond oil. We suffer through such a devastating economic crisis that we must learn how to be a Jeffersonian democracy again. We take care of our own United States yet also maintain free trade instead of American-centric and Euro-centric capitalism. We allow the countries in the Middle East to maintain their voices without our warrior mentality. We take on a loving Confucian model without the patriarchy and show that world “the city upon a hill” again.

But, we still will have to protect Israel for the rest of history, because that land belongs historically to too many cultures! Some might argue to every culture!

There is no utopia here on this planet. We are warriors after capitalistic expansion, and he with the most toys and tanks still seem to win nothing but confusion and future disaster.

That's my conclusion for now. Otherwise, I am willing to concede no solution except for the Dalai Lama to intervene. Perhaps the Tibetans have answers that we Westerners will never solve.

--Jinglett

Choices of Belief

2009-04-28T12:31:00.001-07:00

My son stated to me simply, “I do not remember when I was born.”

My immediate response was to laugh, but I described the world that existed before his birth. I spoke about the other children in our family playing older video games than what we currently own. I mentioned the first time I changed his dirty diaper in the hospital, while Mom asked me to get her Taco Bell instead of survive on Cream of Chicken for the next few days in the hospital.

Later, I took my son's words as a statement of truth.

Most of us, unless those higher human beings tapping into their former lives, do not remember our birth, nor can we trace the history when we lived as a tiny fetus in our mother's stomach. Suddenly, this concept of birth extends beyond human beings and fetuses.

We do not know when the entire human culture was born, for we can only trace back our origin to a particular historical estimation and then we can find major clues through science and anthropology. But, still, we are unsatisfied with this disconnection to the uterus and embryo—both analogies of the beginning of the earth.

We lead then to the ultimate question: the first cause.

What caused the universe to shake? Are we merely products of science and evolution? Is some creator God behind our existence? If so, why would a creator God breed human beings who suffer?

We have ultimately a few answers to consider, and none of these answers may arrive with pure scientific evidence, reason, or rationality. The first answer is simple.

1.We ultimately will never know the first cause beyond identifying a theory, such as the Big Bang. But still, though Science is measurable, we cannot predict how energy and matter first existed, for how can something be created out of nothing? What initiated the Big Bang? We can only conjecture? If the answer is God, which is not a scientific answer but a guess, what initiated God? The riddle continues, and we must recognize the first cause cannot be known.

2.Since the first cause cannot be known, how, then, should we progress in understanding our origin? We can believe what our parents tell us. We can listen to our ancestors. We can read our ancient history and arrive at conclusions from the world or nature surrounding us. We can look at every culture existing on our planet and examine their viewpoint on existence, first cause, and religious experiences and align our path by accepting the belief system. However, we are still guessing and trusting the various histories of religion as evidence of our human commonality to the past. We are looking for that first cause hoping that it will satisfy us.

3.Many people are satisfied with step two, and they may even premise their belief system that faith in their belief system is more powerful than scientific evidence or reason. In other words, humans will completely block out through defense mechanisms evidence of their belief system possibly being false in order to feel the devotion of their service to the belief system—that is either true or false. Many will even ignore evolution to remain innocent in their simplistic view of their religion, for the hard questions ultimately lead some to depression, suffering, and confusion. Who wants to live in this state of mental confusion leading a person ultimately to obsess over the point.

4.Faith is not always important to all religions. Buddhists, for example, decide to take a non-theistic approach to the first cause, and this idea may be the most useful. Buddha says that we can concentrate on the metaphysical elements and never arrive at an answer. Confucius basically says that we should worry less about the cosmos, which we will never understand, because we cannot even improve ourselves. Why worry about the cosmos our entire life? Are we not wasting away social harmony and relationships? Isn't the here and now of things the most important elements to develop? How can we develop if we worry about systems we cannot fully understand?

5.While this idea is appealing, most religions do not accept this form. We must not ignore the cosmos. The Hindus believe we are part of the cosmos, and through many reincarnations, we reach a level of moksha or liberation from the cycle of life. We no longer are human and are merged with the cosmos or heaven. Likewise, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—in their own solutions—reach the same goal as Hinduism. Believe in God and live righteously to attain salvation to enter heaven. Do not accept these ideas and experience hell. The problem, though, with these ideas is the same issue with my point in number two. We are relying on systems that are ultimately developed by humans who may or may not have experienced an ultimate divine revelation.

6.The final thought, then, is to reject history and trust the self in his or her adventure in religious experiences. However, human beings are so random. How do I know when a revelation or thought stems from my own delusion of the truth or the truth itself? I trust the Hindu swami's ideas more than I trust my own expectations, for he seems persuasive, dresses in a neat outfit, and says ideas I have yet to discover for my own.

So, there are the options: trust yourself, trust the idea of common connections of religions, do not ask impractical questions, believe by faith, trust the mythologies of the past, or live in scientific inquiry and reason.

We, of course, can combine many of these ideas, but ultimately, these points represent our choices. Which one convinces you the most?

--Jinglett

Tough Questions

2009-04-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

God is an evolution of human thought; because of historical developments,God is a social construct of human time. In other words, we have created God into the image of man and woman, and we have defined him so.

By no means do I mean to say that God does not exist. He does. But we have to be wary of how we make him exist. We can create an historical lineage of God connecting Jesus to the house of David. By doing that, we are damaging God and forming merely a human bond in Christianity that Christians desire for historical purposes. The Book of Matthew creates this relationship between Jesus and the various fathers of the Old Testament, even though Judaism bases itself on a matriarchal lineage. You are Jewish—in the orthodox sense—by your mother.

The apostle Paul creates the existence of God in a different route altogether: a mystical vision. Paul, who saw the stoning of Stephen, later rebukes his antithetical views of Christianity when a light from heaven is revealed to him. That mystical experience and not seeing the resurrection of Christ persuades Paul that Christianity is real. Likewise, we can speak about Muhammad's mystical visions, too, as Gabriel speaks directly to him and provides Muhammad with an oral discourse founded on the principles of monotheism.

The above paragraphs demonstrate the historical dimension of religion. First, the book of Matthew clearly argues that Jesus is the son of God merely by historical lineage, yet little do we really know about an exact lineage of a God. And, why create God within a system of birthrite? He is God because his lineage deems it so? Would we make that argument now in the United States? We are a democracy and shun lineages for the most part, even though we have Presidents whose sons also followed in the footsteps. Clearly, if Christ were born into the United States, the Gospel of Matthew might make a different argument for his authenticity; he would need to be endorsed by Oprah.

The idea of a mystical vision is a dangerous one to understand. Christianity and Islam may not have survived without the powerful personalities of Paul and Muhammad. Moreover, the mystical vision gives them a driven purpose for responsibility and success. Yet, what makes their vision any different from the quiet vision of a child, whose purpose may never be known? Or, does the vision itself create the authenticity of purpose and clarity to change reality?

I ask these questions because I, too, have visions, but they are quiet, personal visions that I share with my creator. They do not require death and destruction, as Constantine permitted Christianity to act as the official religion of the Roman Empire. So, visions can lead many people astray, so how do we trust one vision over another? Paul focuses on the vision of Christ as the Roman Catholic Church is established across the empire. Were we wrong to trust Paul? Are we wrong to trust one person's vision for an entire religion, as some do in many religions, including the Mormans and Sikhs?

My point, then, is simple. We do not know God any better than our definitions from centuries and millennium of searching for him. We do not know for sure if he is our father or mother. We do not know if he exists within this universe or beyond the universal laws. If he exists, he seems to be beyond history and mystic revelations--antithetical to them—for many reasons.

1.If he is confined to history, then why do we continue to define him with history? God cannot be a pantheist in an earlier time and then transcendental in a different time within a specific religious practice. These are guesses of people and reacting to God according to these guesses, which become inherently livable, active, and real to the people as traditions are passed from one generation to the next. Therefore, a generational God—the God of the Gospel of Matthew—cannot exist historically. Otherwise, he ends historically until another history overtakes his existence and re-plays the vision in a different context.

2.There are too many religions. Why would God allow this concept, unless human beings have attempted to reveal the idea of God locally instead of universally. The God of Christianity is a Trinity; the God of Judaism is an ethical monotheistic one; and the God of Islam is a distant God. The God of Hinduism looks polytheistic, although many Hindus will state that 333 million Gods ultimately equals one God/Goddess. The God of Buddhism is ignored, although many deities arrive on the scene, particularly in Mahayana Buddhism. Dante established the various levels of heaven in hell in his Italian epic, The Inferno, and levels exist in most religions in one form or another, although none of us have experienced these places, unless reincarnation exists, and in another form, we have identified them before being born only to forget them. Which of these God-views are correct? None of them? All of them? Who knows? Does one believe that God allows us to experience him differently according to cultural context? Either one religion is right or all of them are right or some of them have elements correct? It is a difficult task to define God!

3.If God decides to reveal himself locally to some human beings, why not show himself to everybody? We can argue that he shows himself, but we must constantly reach out for that revelation. Don't we, though? Am I not as spiritual as the pentecostal preachers who hear God's voice in their ears and then say, “God has revealed this or that to me.” King David was a man “after God's own heart,” yet as a King and politician, he sent people into battle to die, lusted after a married woman, and married the woman in the end. No person is perfect, not even Jesus or Muhammad. Nor Paul. Nor the Pope. Nor the Dalai Lama. In fact, Buddha, according to legend, did not want to allow women to first participate in the monkhood; only after his aunt continued to persuade or push the great and enlightened Guatama did he relent and allow his un-enlightened viewpoint change to an enlightened one. Why, then, does God reveal himself to such imperfect people and their viewpoint carries on the great histories of these religions? Why, then, does human record tone down the imperfection of men and woman and create a glorious, idealized viewpoint of human being's interaction with God?

Since people are imperfect and act upon their own behalf most of the time, why should we trust a mystical translation of God? Put ten people in a room, whisper in one person's ear a secret that God revealed, and by the time it gets to the tenth person, that original vision completely changes. Try it in your spare time. We used to do this often as children and change the original words on purpose, just as all humans tend to do when they are acting in their own self interest or an interest in their communities part of the time. If I had a mystical experience, please run the other direction and do not trust it. A mystical vision taps into my own brain and perhaps if I am lucky the area where God resides. Unless God places his entire form upon me as I write out the vision, there are people who will read it with their own interpretation. The vision becomes literal instead of symbolic, and all of a sudden, like the Book of Revelations, people are calculating the exact year Jesus will return to the earth to brutally murder the evil ones who do not believe in his kingdom. Of course, “the brutally murder” concept could be simply a metaphor and not to be taken literally, but people believe the literal over the metaphoric, even when the Bible clearly states that Jesus will return “like a thief in the night,” a simile.

That is all I have today. I have now officially attacked every religion in the world. I expect hate mail, even though I heard that God is Love. I am not trying to be angry toward religion; I am simply trying to understand God in this time period. And, I will not because history gets in the way of a clear photograph of the great being we do not know completely.

--Jinglett

Jesus, Interrupted

2009-04-28T12:21:00.000-07:00

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them)

Bart D. Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted—a catchy title—is another book criticizing a literal or fundamental reading of the New and Old Testament scripture, but Ehrman approaches his subject with more passion and devotion than some of the other texts of the day, such as God is Not Great or God is a Delusion.

Ehrman early on describes himself as an agnostic, but he also describes that his scholarly friends agree with his ideas yet maintain deeply-rooted Christian values. So, this book, if you are a fundamental, orthodox, or literalist Christian reader, may attack the very beliefs you ascribe to. However, if a person is open to an historical reading of Jesus and the various developments in Christianity, then she will find illumination within the text. And, if one is an unbeliever, a believer of another faith, agnostic, or an atheist, his book—I firmly think—will give insight and appreciation into Ehrman's historical approach to Christianity.

His first three chapters focus on showing many contradictions in the New Testament and argues persuasively that the contradictions create a Bible informed by human conditions and contexts across many historical periods. As we approach this claim, we may compare his thesis to the idea of revisionist history. As we know now, Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest thinkers and writers during the American Revolution, owned slaves and had a child with one of them. Likewise, Ehrman examines Christianity through the lens of an historian and unravels exactly what an historian should do: without pre-conceived notions and through the lens of historical evidence.

So, what exactly does he find?

First and foremost, he states the evidence clearly reveals that Jesus is an historical person. That idea itself should soothe the majority of Christians! However, the first three chapters inform the reader that the historical Jesus is buried in the various narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, other New Testament scriptures, and the various “heretical” sacred texts of early Christianity. (Of course, the ”heretical” texts are so because they did not fit into the belief system of the dominant Christian scholarship in the Roman empire.)

One major point that interests me most is his willingness to concede that the disciples of Jesus were “lower class, illiterate, Aramaic-speaking peasants from Galilee,” while “the authors of the Gospels were highly educated, Greek-speaking Christians who probably lived outside Palestine.” This statement, by no means, implies that Jesus or his followers are less sophisticated; Ehrman simply means that early Christianity evolved in the same forms as many or most religions: through oral discourse and stories instead of a written system of organization. The orality of the early Christians, he claims, allowed it to spread in various directions opening up the possibility that Christianity merged the historicity of Jesus with a mythology of Jesus. (Fundamental Christians, close your ears here!) In fact, while Jesus' traditional death occurs around 30 CE, the earliest text, Mark, was probably written forty years later in 70 CE not by the Aramaic-speaking disciples of Jesus but by Greek-speaking Christian writers, who demonstrated some “ignorance of Palestinian geography and Jewish customs,” which possibly “suggests they composed their works somewhere else in the [Roman] empire.”

Ehrman establishes these and other claims in the early chapters, such as the following:

1.There were multiple oral sources influencing the gospels of the New Testament. (His book does not focus on the “pagan” influences of these sources, but I assume these elements are a book on their own.)

2.The Apostle Paul wrote during the period of 50 CE before even the gospels were probably written down. Therefore, even Paul was influenced by oral sources and may not have had written discourses of the various gospels.

3.The Gospel of Mark was written before the other three and makes some reference to the destruction of Jewish temple in 70 CE. Therefore, the earliest written account we have of Jesus is forty years after his death.

4.Matthew and Luke, probably written around 80-85 CE, were based partially on the Gospel of Mark and other possible written texts, which we no longer have. Luke also references the destruction of the Jewish temple.

5.Finally, the Gospel of John is written around 90-95 CE and is the only gospel that explicitly claims that Jesus is divine. According to Ehrman, “Jesus's divinity was part of John's theology, not a part of Jesus' own teaching.”

6.Ehrman also spends considerable time differentiating actual canonical texts written by Paul and those which may be forgeries but still accepted as part of the canon. He bases his evidence on the historical context and the writing style of the author. For example, he claims that 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, and Titus were written by Christian writers of the 2nd century long after the death of Paul. Ehrman states that “Paul's churches were not hierarchically structured” and the churches were “run according to the Spirit of God working through each member.” These “forgeries” claiming to be written by Paul give a more hierarchical structure to the church possibly because of chaos among the churches and “heretical” ideas emerging within the systems that even Paul rejected in his written discourses.

The first three chapters cover such ideas, which I have read in many other texts, and though they are interesting and needed to set up the rest of his book, I became mostly interested in the text by Chapter Five: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? Finding the Historical Jesus.

His method of finding the historical Jesus is by using a cross-referencing method of the four gospels. What are their commonalities? Where do they differ? This method is perhaps what he means by creating an historical approach to understanding the gospels, but I think Ehram may be missing an important point that the scholar Karen Armstrong describes in many of her books. Armstrong argues that each gospel speaks distinctly to a different audience. Matthew's lineage of Jesus speaks directly to converting a Jewish audience, while other gospel languages have intent of persuasion rather than simply tracking down a specific history of Jesus' authenticity. Therefore, the gospels read separately attract a different audience to Christianity. The less authoritative Jesus in Luke, for example, might appeal more to women, children, the sick, poor, and oppressed.

Nevertheless, Ehrman believes that cross-referencing the basic elements of the gospels will lead the reader to the most historically accurate account of Jesus. How does this cross-referencing appear?

1.Jesus came from Nazareth. (The cross-referencing rejects the idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a statement, he claims, Christians after Jesus died described in some of the gospel narratives to match the Messiah passages from the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.

2.There is a close association between John the Baptist and Jesus, placing them in an apocalyptic view of reality—the idea that the end of the world is approaching. The Gospel of Mark, the first source of the Jesus narrative focuses entirely on this idea of the end times and, at times, seems rushed as Jesus moves from place to place quickly. Perhaps also the least complex gospel of Mark persuades Ehrman in the idea that cross-referencing should focus first in Mark, which may be a weakness in Ehrman's interpretation. Could there have been, for example, biographical information in Matthew and Luke unbeknown to Mark?

3.Jesus was probably baptized by John the Baptist. This idea is interesting, for how could the God-Man be baptized by a person? Obviously, the historical Jesus was initiated into the same ideas and values as John the Baptist. This close alignment with John the Baptist supports the notion of the apocalyptic view of the present. We are going to die and be judged soon. The Messiah is coming!

4.Jesus described that the Son of Man is coming to rule God's kingdom. Ehrman's analysis is that Jesus may not be the Son of Man (or the Messiah). In fact, Ehrman states that “Jesus believed his own disciples would be the rulers of the future, earthly kingdom of God” after Jesus dies and the Son of Man arrives on the scene. The gospels always question whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. He mostly denies it. His acceptance as the Messiah could have been part of the revisionist view of Jesus after the death of the historical Christ.

5.Not only was Jesus apocalyptic in his vision of the world's end, but his disciples and the apostle Paul also take this approach.

6.If this large focus of the apocalypse is correct, then the moral teaching of Jesus are less about the ethical monotheism of Judaism, but about repenting quickly before the world ends. This idea de-emphasizes how much Jesus focuses on teaching through the parable and spending time discussing love and the Beatitudes, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Bible, which, from an historical perspective, cannot necessarily be attributed to Jesus, since they do not participate in the cross-referencing analysis. Bummer!

7.Christ, traditionally thought to side mostly with the Pharisees, represents an entirely new path of Judaism (again the apocalyptic path of John the Baptist). Therefore, he takes a different approach from the Pharisees, interested in “keeping the law,” the Essenes, interested in living monastically to preserve their own purity, the Sadducees, interested in continuing their aristocracy and positive relationship with the Roman Empire, and the Zealots, interested in military action against the Roman Empire to restore Israel to its former glory.

8.The miracles of Jesus should be interpreted from a symbolic and apocalyptic perspective that the kingdom is already near. In fact, Ehrman views the various miracles of Jesus as part of the early folklore tradition of Christianity.

9.Jesus clearly made a ruckus in the Jewish Temple, but the amount of damage he caused may be overstated by the gospels. Otherwise, he probably would have been arrested at an earlier period. (Here, Ehrman misses a good opportunity to see how the mythology of the gospels speaks directly to the history of the first century. Jesus overthrowing the temple could be an anti-Semitic description of Christianity replacing or displacing Judaism, since the Jewish temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. This story reminds me briefly of when Muhammad decided to pray toward Mecca instead of Jerusalem.) So, I wonder if Ehrman can positively state the temple issue as clearly part of the real history of Jesus through the cross-referencing technique.

10.A disciple, Judas, betrayed Jesus, but the reason is not clear. Ehrman imagines that Judas knew the secret of Jesus—that he claimed to be the messiah. If this were the case, then Ehrman contradicts himself earlier in his attempt to show Jesus not believing he is the Messiah-King.

11.Jesus died on a cross and was buried.

That is as far as Ehrman will go with the Jesus History. He then claims that an historian cannot trace miracles: only facts. Therefore, he takes an agnostic approach to Christianity possibly an easy route out of the mess of what is or isn't Jesus. Jesus could be a miracle worker and resurrected, or the miracles could be attributed to mythology. This agnostic approach is actually enlightening as a reader, because in this day and age, revisionist history of Jesus and Christianity are sometimes more rhetorical, powerful, or condescending.

His other chapters describe the various Christian movements already described in many other texts, so there is nothing new in this area. However, in the context of his cross-referencing idea, these movements are needed to show how the Bible takes its form and is ultimately canonized in the Catholic tradition.

Overall, I enjoyed Jesus, Interrupted. He establishes the historical approach to reading Christianity, provides us with a different perspective on the historical Jesus, places large emphasis on the difference between the Jesus-man and what the Christians created: the Jesus-God. He concludes personally about talking about his agnostic view and how he arrived at it not by the discrepancies in the New Testament but because of other ideas related to suffering, which he explores in his other book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. He restates that a Christian can view these ideas he mentions and still be a devoted Christian.

As a non-fundamental, non-sectarian Mystic Christian and Buddhist (yes, very paradoxical), I did not find my belief system threatened whatsoever. And, even though I grew up in a fundamental household, I already came to the conclusion that Christianity is a social construct and contextual to its time period. However, I am not a fundamentalist, and I can see this book problematic for many Christians reading it. However, I think they should. It challenges the reader to think in terms of historical accounts, for Christ lived in history and died in history.

Though the book challenges Christ's miracles, the resurrection, and the divinity of Christ as God, I left his book with a sense of calmness. Jesus existed. He attempted to reform Judaism and still be Jewish. He died possibly because the Romans saw Jesus as a threat to the Empire. After Christ's death and now, can we still say with some agreement that the kingdom of God is where it has always been? In the soul of the believer and not necessarily in the history of Jesus!

--Jinglett

The Sparrow and the Crow

2009-04-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

As an adolescent, I lived in Northwest Conway, Arkansas and was surrounded by forests, hills, and a lake. My morning breakfast consisted of a bowl of Cheerios with a pinch of sugar for flavor, but really, my morning meditation happened simultaneously while I stared out the kitchen window to watch the finches, cardinals, blue jays, and other hungry birds eating birdseed. Together, we spent the morning as one species.

Some mornings, the larger blackbirds and sometimes the blue jays would dominate the smaller birds, which flew into the trees awaiting the larger species to leave before returning to the seeds. When this happened, I grunted and judged the larger birds as the predators—the ones spoiling the tranquility for the rest of the birds, including me, the young bird in my family of four.

Years later, I read about the concept of Shi-Fei in Daoism. Basically, the concept asks us not to view reality in a dualistic form; we should abandon judgment and view reality without distinction. As soon as we create the concept of this/not this and either/or, we categorize and criticize the natural elements of nature.

As a child, I thought I followed the concept of Shi-Fei. I sat at the kitchen window enjoying my dualistic perception of reality—my idealized version of reality. I believed that the small, beautiful birds and the brightly red cardinals represented the goodness of my soul, and I developed a level of disappointment and frustration when the larger black birds—the crows—flew in like air force jets to claim territory not belonging to them.

Why did I not appreciate the entire perception of reality? Why did I merely idealize the beauty apparent in the finches, sparrows, and scissor-tail flycatchers? Could I abandon judgment without distinction and learn to love the crows?

Tonight, I sit in Border's Bookstore. Some days, my thought process shifts toward the erratic (typically around a new or full moon), and I argue with my wife and children for no apparent reason other than being trapped in a dualistic state of mind focused entirely on me.

“Why is the trash not taken outside?”

“Whose turn is it to do the dishes?”

“Where are my headphones!?

“Get in here now and listen to me while I am talking!”

My wife is a selfless human being, the beautiful “finch” I love to watch fall asleep each night, but sometimes, I make her or the kids the crow—the cause of all my pain and suffering, when my dualistic perception is the ultimate cause of my suffering.

Like my childhood, I now realize that the sparrow/crow symbolism not only exists in nature but also tightly in my thought process, and as long as I separate these two birds as “good” and “bad,” then I can never learn the real concept of Shi-Fei—the abandonment of dualistic thinking and, ultimately, judgment.

Let's return to the two birds in my head. Looking out my window, I see the little birds eating the bird seeds. After they complete part of a meal, the other birds, the crows, join in the meal. They eat their share and leave. The other birds return faithfully, and what happens amazes me. Both birds receive their required amount of food in order for the survival of the species. How beautiful now the scene engages me! How natural. How harmonious!

Let's predict the future. My wife and I watch a film related to the financial conditions of the United States. We laugh at the comedy, and instead of thinking about our own financial conditions and how she or I are to blame for any debt we have accumulated over the years, we laugh at our past mistakes together, enjoy the midnight air filled with the crescent moon and a few clouds, and return home together with a conversation about Oklahoma weather and its pleasant surprises—a snowstorm one week and a tornado the next.

Together, we abandon judgment and live the power of the Tao within ourselves because we no longer cling to the either/or fallacy nor define any complexity of our beautiful, natural relationship.

We are like the sparrow flying into a distant tree branch while watching our brother, the crow, complete his morning meal.

--Jinglett

Self-Reliance and God-Consciousness

2009-04-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Today, I propose a solution to an issue confronting my thoughts for many years—the existential problem between self-reliance and god-reliance.

First, let me explain what I mean by these terms.

Self-reliance says that we are human beings experiencing reality in a subjective form. From an objective point, we all see the color blue similarly, but every individual experiences the color blue in an individual brain. Our brain processes tell us through the experience within the world that blue is an image we interpret, unless, of course, we are color blind.

Self-reliance is a human condition bound by science and the subjective experiences we come to know as belief. By experiencing the subjective, we can arrive at a common understanding with other individuals and experience reality similarly. So, I am not stating here that Self-Reliance means that we are on our own. We are not. We have family, friends, and community. However, reliance ultimately exists within the boundaries of human experience.

The question remains. Is Self-Reliance enough?

The Buddhists take a non-theistic approach and focus on overcoming suffering and, ultimately, self-reliance by recognizing that no matter how difficult the human condition is, we must recognize it fully, find the root cause of suffering, and then map out a practical solution.

The Buddhists attempt to un-bind us from this view that we are even trapped in this dualistic reality of self-recognizing. In many respects, Buddhism is the middle way out of relying too heavily on ego, craving, traps, false desires, and human guilt. We cannot do it on our own. Try to be the hero. You will fail or you may succeed. Nevertheless, in a Western Viewpoint, we search for self-reliance through our heroes. Yet, Buddhism takes a different approach: why not dissolve the hero concept altogether and become equal among all equals—a human being that is common to all of us whether we strive in one direction or another. In the end, we die. In the end, we fail according to standards. So, instead of failing, let's relax a bit and strive toward some common goal—the four noble truths as the Buddha describes and the 8-fold path, which is common among all religions.

I agree with the foundational components of Buddhism. There are only human beings with no hierarchy. There is social disconnection we must attempt to identify. After identifying the problem with social disconnection, we must reconcile it with social harmony, similar to a Confucian model of social reliance. We, by denying a little bit of our ego, work to help others and provide compassion and joy to all living beings. It is a beautiful Utopian model to some degree and a workable, practical model on other levels if we practice it daily.

But. Yes. A but always exists. I can only move so far toward a model of self-reliance, which Jung calls individuation. I can move beyond the ego, but as I practice, I even move closer to the emptiness of self-reliance and see my ego dissolving toward emptiness and arriving toward balance and harmony in my life. But the more I practice and hear about the Buddha mind and nirvana and ego-less perfection, I still am alone existentially, even though the colors I see are still the same rainbow colors you see.

Is being human enough?

That is the existential question.

And, from the Buddhist perspective, is the idea of the Bodhisattva—the enlightened Buddha who remains on this earth to help others achieve an enlightened state—part of being human or tapping into some higher dimension that we sometimes yearn for?

The Buddhists take a non-theological approach to enlightenment, so it is centered in the gravity of human awareness and circumstance. They do not want to enter the conversation of theism or the concept of god-consciousness, because there is so much controversy about god. Which god? Which practice? Which religion? Ultimately, discussing god-consciousness creates dissonance within the human being. Gods destroy in some traditions. Gods love in other traditions. Gods are defined by rules and creeds, and though the Noble Truths and Eightfold Path seem like creeds, I would suggest they are simply ideas the Buddha designed to say, “Go and practice to see if it works for you. If it works, then continue. If it does not, then at least you tried.” There is a certain relaxation in that answer.

However, while meditating and feeling happy, I find myself automatically crying out to a voice beyond the human condition, even though I am not even interested in this other-ness comforting me whatsoever or reducing my suffering. I call this other-ness the god-consciousness, which either exists inside of me or beyond me in a metaphysical—beyond the written universe—condition I have tapped.

In other words, while being self-reliant and freeing myself from the limitations and boundaries of this earth happily, I still cried out to the same nothingness and emptiness some traditions have called God, Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, Dao, Vishnu, Shiva, or Ahura Mazda. I do not intend to leave out any ideas of religious traditions here, but I simply give these examples of this yearning that sometimes arrives after the self-consciousness emerges into its own form and arises into the emptiness of what I might call a transcendental voyage to nothingness beyond the physical universal self-reliant form.

I wrote a handful, but that is where I stand as I write today.

ONE: I am a human being who suffers in this conditioned state.

TWO: Buddhism and even Daoism are two non-dualistic religions or traditions that have given me a large sense of who I am and who I am not. They have brought me to a state of compassionate joy without judgment.

THREE: Within this joy, love is expressed to others and to myself. Love is also expressed to the universe itself through my joy.

FOUR: The universe speaks in return and then dissolves itself into emptiness.

FIVE: This emptiness leads me to the god-consciousness either within me or beyond physical conditions.

SIX: I find this God-consciousness, though transcendental, very much a component of my being.

SEVEN: If this is so, then I am participating in a conversation or experience with a spirit either within or beyond my conditions, since I have dissolved the emptiness within me.

EIGHT: What is left is the dissolving of all reality and an arrival at the metaphysical being touching the void in me and loving me in return. Again, within this mystical experience, I cannot tell the difference between my own conditional self-reliant experience and this god-consciousness. Does it come within or without, I know not. If anything, it becomes between, yet between is a judgment I cannot define with language because I can only physically articulate the color blue and not the color god-consciousness. (See the book, I and Thou, by Martin Buber)

NINE: There is at some point a return to the conditional reality of self-reliance, and I am left with the human condition of suffering, ego, craving, hunger, and desire. But, I touched the void!

TEN: I bring that void back to the earth, self-reliant me and the mystical experience completes itself. It opens a door to a wider degree of love than simply the self-reliant consciousness. The god-consciousness brings itself into human nature, and I feel even a larger urge to love other people beyond theological disagreements. This tenth step takes me away from the existential issue, and I am free.

Self-reliance and God-acceptance have merged!

The Mustard Seed of Light

2009-04-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

God truly exists on his, her, or its own without the complexity of the universe standing in its way, for he is not born from or within the universe but somewhere else, which we cannot fully own or know. In some respects, God is emptiness without mass or energy but a mustard seed waiting to create a spectacular movement.

Thus, God, from which we do not understand, illuminates the universe like a massive light exploding heat and expanding mass over billions of years, as the Big Bang still moves our universal expansion of territory. The universe is not static. This now silent drifting production is God's creativity, gift, and architecture for us to visualize, even if it is beyond belief even to know if there is a reason behind how these structures unfold logically or by chance alignment of our earth to the sun.

However, as the light first forms, we soon form afterwards but after a long period of time waxing and waning in a heated earth and melting and cooling in a changing form. We become participatory action in the dance of the insect, the crab, the great whale, the large dinosaurs, the cute but killer monkeys, and the human being itself drifting out of Africa on a voyage of self discovery.

Leaving and staying in Africa, we do not know for certain if or when God plants his mustard seed explosion within our soul, nor do we know where or if the soul resides. But, there is illumination of a seed planted within us, and that seed represents the Original Light!

Our purpose, then, is to move in two directions simultaneously—an paradox of sorts. We are to expand into the light as the universe still arises from the light many years before us and return to the beginning of God's explosion to understand the manifestation of our existence and share that divinity with others. These directions touch the void within us, dissolve the past suffering and deception we create within ourselves, and move us directly to the present Light—the primeval and informative light within.

We must learn to become the emptiness of God like a mustard seed and approach a divine conclusion of illumination through the spirit of internal/eternal cooperation.

--Jinglett

Real Faith

2009-04-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

I would like to recommend the new book, Saving Jesus from the Church, by Robin Meyers, but today there is too much good information to give it a complete review. Therefore, I want to focus specifically on one element he describes in his book: faith.

The traditional view of faith is believing in what we cannot see—a sort of giant leap or blind faith. When a person says to you, “There is no historical evidence of Jesus in history,” you may respond, “I believe because I have faith.”

Is that a weak answer? Does that really convince you? Is that all faith really is?

If so, then we are persuaded too easily and practicing a theological mind game of deceit rather than looking deeply into what Jesus brings to the table beyond his mythology. And, this movement beyond the historical/mythological controversy of Jesus is exactly what Robin Meyers describes in his book.

Meyers describes “faith as fiducia (radical trust in God), as fidelitas (loyalty in one's relationship to God), and as visio (a way of seeing creation as gracious).”

Jesus is personified in these three basic areas, and if we are Christian or not, we should begin looking at the Jesus message within this identity of faith instead of the traditional one.

We have a moral conscience that is God's breath—his perfect image within us. God freely gave this gift, and in return, we should look to this moral conscience (or spirit) for guidance and radically trust in it! We also have free choice, but free choice also means we can look to our God-breathed moral conscience and have radical faith in its power and energy. This idea is no different than the Buddha telling us simply to seek compassion and love through the Eightfold Path. If we are God's breath, then let us allow it to enlighten us, and through its radical enlightenment, we are then moved to radically trust the God in others as a mutual relationship between all human beings. (Did I say radical enough!?)

Next, in Buddhism, meditation is practiced not to look cool or peaceful but to take on the responsibility of the world's suffering. The Mahayana form of Buddhism suggests that we show loyalty to every human being until every grass blade attains enlightenment. The Mahayana Buddhists devote their life to the loyalty of fidelitas, and Christians and other religions should also recognize the power and energy of loyalty. Loyalty seems to suggest a hierarchy, but though Meyers does not describe this concept in great detail (for he has much to do in this book), loyalty represents a cause of devotion not only to God but to others, too. Loyalty is again seeing the image God breathed into us and knowing that he made all of us equally. Loyalty is rejecting the hierarchy of capitalism and, if you are the business owner, helping your customers and employees not fear you but respect you in a mutual reciprocity as described sometimes as love or ren/jen in Confucian terms. Loyalty is walking into a temple, as Jesus may have done, and seeing how the temple abuses the authority of God. Loyalty means speaking out against the status quo and sometimes getting into trouble and other times being thrown in a Lion's Den to serve the greater cause—not you—but your moral conscience—the Yetzer Ra of Judaism.

Finally, the final element of faith is, as Robert Frost suggests, the realization that we all have “miles to go before I sleep” because each mile is a gift—a gracious one. The Garden of Eden may seem like a utopia to take away our suffering, but let's remember that each footstep we place in the snow is a gift from God. Some people cannot walk, others cannot see, and still others live on breathing machines, yet we all metaphorically live within our own perceptive ailments keeping us from the illumination God grants to us daily and each second of our lives. A morning prayer from Judaism is important here: “You, God, existed before the world was created; you exist after the world was created.” Yet, for some reason unknown to our little thoughts, he placed us here to be loyal to him and to it, for there is not much difference between God's loyalty to the entire universe and to our loyalty to God or this environment. So, it is in our best interest to wake up in the morning and be gracious to each other, yet as we pass away from this earth, leave the gracious gift of God with our children, families, and communities to continue on without us. That is the social gospel of Jesus! There is no Garden of Eden here unless we cooperate with each other and bind ourselves to the greater humanity of God sharing love with each other through our works, our words, and our dimensionless abilities to serve, no matter how small, like a bird taking a seed from one tree and planting it elsewhere in God's kingdom.

There is more to faith and Robin Meyer's book, but these elements are only the beginning. I will continue to read more of his book and keep within my Buddha thoughts a greater understanding of faith beyond the counterattack of disbelief. Words are deeds in action!

Thanks you, Dr. Meyers, for helping me understand!

--Jinglett

Three Abrahamic Faiths = One Peace

2009-04-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

In a book on Christianity written by Hans Kung, the writer identifies at least Five Areas of interaction between the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic creed. As religions, the Abrahamic faiths stand on their own accord, but as peacemakers to the Western and Eastern cultures, it is imperative that we listen to Kung's analysis and create peace in the individual and collective believers of each faith.

1.All three religions concentrate their “faith in one and the same God of Abraham...the great witness to this one true living God.” God said that he would illuminate Abraham's children like the stars in the skies. The stars are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Let's bring these stars together instead of seeing them as separate telescopes!

2.All three religions ascribe to “a view of history which does not think in cosmic cycles but is directed toward a goal: it has its beginning in God's creation, is confirmed by God's action and saving signs in time, and is directed toward an end through God's consummation.” Part of this historical viewpoint may have included violence before and still violence now, but the ultimate goal is historical non-violence. When will all nations promote this powerful message once again beginning when Abraham stood on a mountain with a son, whose name we do not need to know to understand the story. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, and Abraham willingly does this violent action before God intervenes. That story needs to be read as a moment when God says to all: no more violence toward human beings. Let there be harmony. I demand it!

3.All three religions contain “the ever new proclamation of the word and will of God by a whole series of prophetic figures.” Let's keep our theological concepts to ourselves and simply say we need to understand these prophetic figures in their own religious and historical contexts, but, more importantly, we need to listen to them now. Prophets speak against the status quo of selfishness and lead us all to a better understanding of love through God's covenant with all three religions. We may not always like what a prophet says, but they keep us from living within the confines of cultural relativism so that we can experience the absolute authority of God. Let the prophets speak to us now, as a message to search for God's domain rather than man's colonial mindset that has existed in our Western culture in so many empires: the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Ottoman, etc. Too many empirical and colonial fascination for us to return directly to God, but we must!

4.All three religions describe “the record of revelation to the human being, given once and for all and remaining normative, in the form of revelatory writing. Whether or not there is an agreement on theology, can we not deny the power of the Jewish revelations, the Christian revelations, the Islamic revelations. Reading them humbles me to the floor before God or Allah. Listening to them multiplies peace within my soul. Thinking about them comforts me instead of drawing me away from religion. However, if there is no peace, if cultures cannot adjust well to other cultures, and if we cannot live together within the same territories, then the revelations are meaningless to me and us. We are mocking Yahweh, Jesus (Isa), Muhammad (peace be upon him), and Allah. Do we want to mock the revelation or put down our swords and fight a real spiritual battle called co-existence—something the prophets might call righteousness and justice!

5.All three religions are “grounded in the will of the one God.” We have our Ten Commandments. We have our ethical orientations. We have our holy days! We have everything grounded in an ethical framework given to us ultimately by God. Yet, let us not forget God's will “on earth as it is in heaven.” If heaven is peaceful, as the saying from God reveals to us, then why is earth so unlucky? Let's bring heaven to earth now before it is too late and before three of the greatest Western religions collapse because of egocentric and explosive rhetoric. We are one earth!

--Jinglett

Let there be Darkness!

2009-04-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

The lights are out at Barnes and Noble by Quail Springs Mall. They have allowed me to stay in my chair, as I write on my laptop with 90% battery left and ticking away.

I love the silence of no electricity, as a few people huddle next to the books to read their names.

I have a stack of books next to me, which may not be read today, but I am hoping the electric company will say the magical words, “Let there be light!”

Yes, it is Easter weekend. And, the irony exists here in Barnes and Noble. If only this company existed as a Jewish company. We would have candles surrounding us now, but instead of candles, we have other kinds of light, such as this computer monitor, the cell phone, and a bit of light from the generator they must have in the back of the building supplying some energy to a few places. And, if Barnes and Noble were Jewish, the ceilings would be higher, as light from outside would splash against the windows bringing us closer to the energy of the sun.

But, for now...darkness.

And, I am happy for now, though I wish to read so many texts to access knowledge and curiosity. In case my battery dies and I must leave the store, the books I have possessed are of the following:

The New Christians by Tony Jones
The Energy of Prayer by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
The Many Gospels of Jesus by Philip W. Comfort and Jason Driesbach
Gnostic Philosophy by Tobias Churton
The First Paul by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
Passion for Peace by Thomas Merton
In Search of Paul by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed
The New King James Version

I cannot possibly read all these books today, particular in the dark, but my general purpose was to focus on the Apostle Paul and how he transformed Christianity away from a Jewish sect into a completely new religion altogether. I have always viewed Paul negatively, but today I want to see the other side of Paul. He is the marketing strategist of Christianity, and from a monotheistic perspective, the Jewish God has always used his faulty human beings in different forms. Moses murdered before he became a leader of the Israelites and brought them out of possible slavery in Egypt. David sent Bathsheba's husband to the front line of war and death so that he could marry her, although the prophet Nathan confronted him. So, perhaps with all of Paul's faults—the persecutions of the first Christians—I can find some kind of understanding, even though I personally believe he helped transform a Jewish reformer and rabbi into a God-man.

How odd it is for me to be talking about Christianity in this form today! It's easter! I should be humble and accept that God created Jesus from a virgin, even though that is the language of all the mystery and so-called pagan religions across the ages. Jesus, the rabbi and Jewish reformer, is, however, now married to paganism. He is the child of a virgin. He worked miracles in the same form as Moses and the Egyptian mystery religions. He walked on water defying gravity. Mystery and magic pervade the god-man. But somehow, between these lines, Jesus the man is revealed, and we should be able to clarify it by sorting through the forty years of mythology before Mark and the other gospel writers finally penned down the Jesus myth after the Jewish temple destruction in 70 CE.

There is a saying I created in a poem many years ago. I wrote that “myth and truth mix to sanctify my naïve mind.” Reason is difficult to sort out from an historical perspective, and myth surpasses the historical perspective and lives on in the archetypes of our reality to the degree that we can view reality symbolically.

So, that is where I am today.

Now, the lights have returned to Barnes and Noble at just the right time.

I will begin reading about Paul and probably find some disappointments and clarifications. No matter what, I accept the Jesus complexity and believe, even if Jesus is man or divine, it matters most that I have received experiences of tranquility in this reality and absolutely find peace in this universal, historical thought process.

There is something alive and moving within me—either the human spirit or reason or something else mystical altogether. And, if God or myself somehow is struck with a pattern within me, then I will come closer to this journey that I am on, which many people call religion. And, since it is mystical, I can only report it as many others reported it—as symbolism and reason. Those two mixed together are not exactly science, are they?

Nor will they ever be!

--Jinglett

2009-04-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

In religion, country, and culture, human nature tells me that we sometimes exceed with glory and other times fail miserably.

And, like human consciousness, we have a difficult time reconciling these differences.

During the 2008 election, Barack Obama began his nomination by not wearing a flag pin on his jacket. Suddenly, he is recognized as the “non-patriotic” candidate, even though his entire candidacy focused on lifting up “the better angels of ourselves.” This is paradox #1.

During the 2000 election, George W. Bush ran on a platform on compassionate conservatism and sought to restore ethical integrity to the White House. Eight years later, we have entered two unnecessary wars, defied the United Nations' authority, broken international laws of torture, and showed the worst examples of imperialism, colonization, and anger—the worst demons of ourselves. This is paradox #2.

Over sixty years ago, the Roman Catholic Church, among other Christian nations, turned a blind eye to the fascism promoted by Hitler and the Nazis, and during the aftermath of World War II, at least six million Jews and others were gassed, murdered by gunpoint, or died by starvation or other gruesome means. We call this the Holocaust. This is paradox #3.

The United States dropped nuclear weapons of mass destruction on Japan. "But, it probably saved our lives," my grandfather told me many years ago." Would I be alive then without nuclear warfare? Paradox #4

I could spend an entire article on the paradox of culture, particularly the most evil kind of culture, including the rape of women who were later beaten because they became pregnant! However, we don't always like to think of the evil elements in the dark shadows of our unconsciousness. We'd rather forget about the evil and preach a God of forgiveness and love.

However, we must approach history from a real perspective and recognize not only the paradoxes existing in religion, culture, and ethics, but also how to reconcile an earth consciousness to explain what it means to be human on many levels: as an individual, as a participant in larger culture, and as a social construct by other human beings from different geographical locations.

Reconciliation is perhaps based on the paradoxical elements of human nature. We have good qualities, and we sometimes fail. We can celebrate the goodness, but when we fail not as human beings but as human cultures, our individuality is overpowered by the “common purpose.” The “common purpose” sometimes fails horribly!

So, what then is the answer to paradoxical reconciliation.

We must recognize human compassion as one answer to reconcile differences.
We must recognize the failure of our past heritages and not hide from them.
We must do what all religions ask us to do: love our neighbors and seek direction beyond egocentric desire.

The “common purpose” does not have to be evil; we simply lose direction when we become a social construct of an entire country, religion, or heritage. The human individual voice gets weeded out in too many directions by media, government, country, and creeds. However, Thomas Jefferson, adulterer and owner of slaves, challenged us when democracy was upon the United States of America: “We hold these truths to be self evident.”

Jefferson speaks of an absolute, universal truth. All people deserve equality and will receive it...one day. We have yet to reach that ideal, yet looking at the commonality of religions and still respecting the heritage of each human being, perhaps we can reach for something out of Jefferson's idealism and make the crowded world a little more personal and inviting!

--Jinglett