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Fred and Lily: Isn't it a "good" thing that we progressives may indulge ourselves in that "bad" Einsteinian "sin" of relativism in inventive ways? Which brings to mind the conundrum of conservative fundamentalism. If everything that one disagrees with is judged to be "bad" how can there be anything that's good other than one's own selfish desires? And further, how could one even come to know the difference between the two? Is this what's known as shallow psychology, as opposed to depth psychology?

Churches can be good things and bad things, depending upon where one is on their own "long strange trip" ( Yes folks, I hereby admit to being a Deadhead) . There were times in my life when churches filled me with joy and well-being when singing glorious music, helped me to feel like a small part of something much bigger and better, more fulfilled when I was sharing a meal with others, chatting about s'mores on retreats around campfires, or when serious discussion groups helped to heal me after a terrible divorce. But since they are institutions filled with fallible human beings just like me, they can also be witheringly judgemental when you write or say something that disagrees with the accepted norm of the church's hierarchy. I was pretty much summarily drummed out of two congregations in such an instance that also resulted in a second divorce ( I have a hard time learning. I even met that one in church! A wonderful woman!) . There was no tolerance, no questions, no discussions, only harsh judgement. I think that Jesus knew this would be the case for all of us that find becoming a praising part of a larger religious institution a VERY difficult thing. When I and my family once joined a Presbyterian church, it was just like going to cocktail parties, tailgate parties, or the country club. You met the same folks. In church you all went through "the motions" together. That was about the time the first divorce happened. My wife at the time didn't "do" church except for the social portion, and both of my grown children are virtually clueless about the sorts of things we talk about here. I've let them find their own ways. Now I tend to believe that there are more hypocrites "inside" religious institutions than there are "outside" such places. This is because, as you pointed out Fred, such institutions are, of necessity, intimately tied to political agendas. The serious thinkers "outside' such institutions are only trying to find or devise a new, better thing to fulfill our spiritual needs and that's a good thing. Religion may not progress without risk taking by people who gather (electronically even) in places like this which tolerate such discussions. Even though we're occasionally violating all sorts of orthodox, doctrinal, dogmatic, and political taboos, that's ok. I don't feel guilty. As I mentioned elsewhere here, one doesn't need to go to church to be a good Christian. I believe that Jesus, and God would approve if they could voice an opinion, or maybe they will someday.

Des: ALWAYS CONSIDER THE SOURCE!!! Remember that this flaming, gasbag, presidential wannabee wrote speeches for that late and highly revered president Richard Milhous (wanna buy a used car from this tricky guy) Nixon. End of statement........ oh....forgot something.......I hardly ever watch TV these days anyhow since most people on it are cartoon characters specially designed to honk me off!!!! Except , of course , for ELLEN. I suggest abstinence from TV, but not sex. The first is certain to negatively affect your psyche, the second will make you joyful and relaxed, which is the antithesis of what the folks at FOX are ALWAYS trying to do to you. I feel like I just created a duplicate copy of The Scream, you know that famous Norwegian painting that's always getting swiped.

Let's see. First we program machines to help us manage and handle our boring and tedious works. Then we program ourselves in order to mesh more effectively with the world our machines are managing for us while being run by the programs we wrote for them. Then we program the lives of our children so that they may mesh more effectively with the world we programmed for them and for their peers. In the course of this they gradually lose their ability to play, except, of course, on programmed machines, and in managed team sports scenarios. ( Music and the arts may be the sole exceptions to this scenario.) Over dinner once about twenty years ago a friend asked me what the most difficult thing facing us all in the next few decades might be. I answered that it was probably going to be the switch from trying to live in an analog world fashioned somehow by God, but which had the advantage of sometimes springing surprises upon us that we had to contend with and solve; to living in a digital world where everything was becoming programmed, where modeled foreknowledge would become increasingly available to us for decision making in order to move time forward, and where spontanaety and surprise would gradually be reduced. BORING!!!! Of course I'm writing this on a programmed machine. Am I programmed? Of course! By my parents' and their ancestors' genes and the environments that they existed in in the past. But that was MORE IN NATURE as we go back, and LESS IN NATURE as we move forward. Am I some sort of closet Luddite? My head hurts!!!! GO? STOP? DEFAULT?

Really good responses to this! I would agree with much of what you said Fred. I do not find that taking myself outside of a narrative and trying to observe and evaluate it based upon my knowledge and objective experiences lessens my ability to often hold profound belief in what it represents. All great art has that effect upon those who have the ability to understand the symbolic elements imbedded within it. This holds true for music, graphic representations, the written word, and the spoken word. If it works in the beholder to engender a heartfelt belief, then in my book it is a "true" thing in that it resonates with some portion of our sacred "being". The stories of the Bible do this very well. And, I find that I can also be as moved by the final crucifiction scenes in Kubrick's early motion picture, Spartacus, as I am by any portrayal of Jesus' final hours. Supreme sacrifice hurts terribly. Both for those who are sacrificed and their loved ones. By observing and understanding this, and by sharing in their emotions, we come to believe in its value to the whole in enabling continuance. This is one way that humanity has come to deal with the vagaries of nature's destructive powers and the crimes of demonic and corrupted tyrants. The term "myth' causes a problem with most people today because we have been conditioned by the politicized corporate media to believe that myths are some sort of made-up story that is inherently not true. This goes against decades of research by anthropologists, musicologists, and others skilled in the interpretation of made objects and works of art. After reading the work of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and others who documented the profound human stories and expressions of the past , I have come to believe that myths may be the deepest truths concerning the nature of humanity through the ages that we may access, simply because they are mostly stories about people just like us. They just happened to have lived in the past, and would likely be as bewildered as we are about the world that we have all landed in today.

Lily: Truly, your post was one of the most eloquent things I've read anywhere in a long time. But I'm tired from work, and must retire soon to be ready for the morrow. So I can only reply in brief now, but I plan to be more thorough in a day or two when there's more time. I believe you have correctly described, however, what the condition of being "spiritual" likely really means. Not religious, spiritual. It reminds me of the underlying principle of spirituality in the Buddha's response when his disciples asked him "what" he was. Not "who" but "what". He answered them, "I am awake."

SHeena Easton! No, but it is close to that, I always confused the two! I can't remember her name so I can't do a search. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sheena was Queen of the jungle wasn't she? And Sheena Easton plays lounge acts in Vegas once in a while. Isn't it maddening? I can see her in my mind's eye and can almost hear her give her rundown on current 700 Club developments before the Patster came on air to wow us with his unbelievable piety. Thanks for trying Autumn. C'mon someone and help these two memory challenged progressives!

This is an excellent article that appeared on todays New York Times website. For anyone who believes, as I do, that historical events only repeat themselves [with new scenery and actors] but always teach us a host of new lessons each time that they occur, it might be worth discussing how humanity progresses in the light of such processes. I am of the opinion that disasters such as Katrina always establish new ways of seeing and believing in the realities of nature and what modern civilizations have attempted to impose upon it all. By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN Published: September 8, 2005 In the history of humankind, there has rarely been a disaster like the New Orleans flood without a theodicy to go along with it. The word "theodicy," coined in the 18th century by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, derives from Greek roots invoking the "justice of the gods." A theodicy is an attempt to show that such justice exists, to prove that we really do live in what Leibniz insisted was the "best of all possible worlds." So theodicies have been plentiful after earthquakes, floods and droughts. Explanations are readily offered: disasters are the wages of sin, they herald an apocalyptic age, they cleanse the earth of evil. Theodicies aim to demonstrate that devastation does not really disrupt or overturn our understanding of the moral and social order. Instead, disorder provides evidence of order. The theodicy is that order. It explains forces that seem to lie beyond human powers, evils that lie beyond human cause. Theodicies are not casual matters, and in the weeks after Katrina, they are bound to evolve, even in secular culture, even when they may not resemble the ones that Leibniz had in mind. So they need to be better understood. The classic theodicies in the West are biblical. The flood of Noah's time, for example, is a reflection of the divine will, cleansing the earth of humanity's evil. A more powerful theodicy later evolved out of the trials of the ancient Israelites, in which destruction and exile were treated not as random accidents of history, but as forms of retribution for violating the Mosaic law and its ethical consequences. Suffering could become proof of divine attention and not its opposite. Scholars like Norman Cohn have shown how in medieval Europe the worst human trauma could be interpreted as proof of imminent apocalypse and redemption, inspiring millennial expectations and movements. Meanwhile, the theodicy of divine retribution still thrives today and was invoked by some fundamentalist believers after Katrina. But between medieval Europe and contemporary America something profound changed in the way natural disasters are interpreted and the kinds of theodicies they inspire. And one of the turning points, as many scholars have argued, was the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon. It destroyed perhaps a third of the city's population, with deaths in the tens of thousands. It overturned the confidence of European royalty and seemed to drive a wedge between the earthly and divine realms. For the growing forces of the Enlightenment, it also seemed to overturn the very idea that a theodicy could account for the disaster. Voltaire, who had once seen nature as benevolent, was whipped into a rationalist fury by the experience. Leibniz, he believed, had been refuted by nature. Voltaire wrote a "Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon" in which the quake's victims are called "Tormented atoms on a heap of muck/ That death devours and that fate trips up." His character Candide watches the earthquake from a distance, seeing it as morally blind, killing the good and preserving the wicked. In a sense, the earthquake actually ended up strengthening the hand of the Enlightenment, as if a replacement theodicy had fallen into place. Kant wrote about the quake. Scientific investigation took place. The response of Portugal's prime minister to the disaster was practical, not religious. "We will bury the dead," he said, "and take care of the living." Recently, the philosopher Susan Neiman argued in "Evil in Modern Thought" that the Lisbon earthquake also destroyed an ancient idea that nature could itself be evil. After Lisbon, she argued, moral evil was distinguished from natural disaster. Earthquakes and floods could no longer be fitted into traditional religious theodicies. But this did not mean, of course, that theodicies faded away. Ms. Neiman argued that for philosophers theology had been replaced by history. The fates of peoples and nations reflected other forces, and disruptions were given other forms of explanation. Hegel saw history as an evolutionary series of transformations in which destruction was as inevitable as birth. Marx believed other kinds of economic and human laws accounted for destruction and evolution. This mostly left natural disasters for the growing realm of science: if they couldn't be prevented, at least their origins could be understood. Now though, with the prospect of thousands of dead becoming plausible with reports from New Orleans, other forms of theodicy also taking shape. Much debate is taking place about the scale of human tragedy, about procedures and planning and responsibility. And none of that should be ignored. But it is remarkable how this natural disaster has almost imperceptibly come to seem the result of human agency, as if failures in planning were almost evidence of cause, as if forces of nature were subject to human oversight. The hurricane has been humanized. I don't want to push this too far, of course; human actions, as the Portuguese prime minister knew, are crucial. But this is still an important change in our views of the natural world. In a way, it inflates human knowledge. It confidently extends scientific and political power into the realm of nature. It doesn't really explain catastrophe, but it attempts to explain why we are forced to experience it: because of human failings. There is a theodicy at work here, in the ways in which the reaction to natural catastrophe so readily becomes political. Nature becomes something to be managed or mismanaged; it lies within the political order, not outside it. Theodicy, if successful, does not overturn belief but confirms it. So, for some commentators, the flood and its aftermath provided confirmation of their previous doubts about the Bush adminstration. Actually, in some respects, this theodicy has gone even beyond the political: just as a religious theodicy might have shown natural catastrophe to be the result of human misdeed, many of the early commentators about the flood did the same, creating a kind of scientific/moral theodicy in which human sin is still a dominant factor. Last week, for example, Germany's minister of the environment, Jürgen Trittin, said: "The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina - in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures - can visit on his country." All of these explanations are subject to examination and debate of course, but in the heart of a secular age, they are also something else. They are theodicies. And in the face of nature's awesome and horrific powers, the prospect of political retribution is as prevalent as the promise of divine retribution once was.

The attached article appeared today on the LA Times websight. I thought that it might be useful to discuss how important the movement that this man started may have been to the progress (regress) of Christianity. Have any of you read any of his books? I haven't. And if so, could you give a short discussion of it/them elsewhere on the TCPC website? He seems to have been a pretty brave guy to me. OBITUARIES Robert Funk, 79; Scholar Questioned Miracles of Jesus By Larry B. Stammer, Times Staff Writer Robert W. Funk, founder of the controversial Jesus Seminar, which called into question New Testament miracle stories and the authenticity of many of the statements attributed to Jesus, has died. He was 79. Associates at the Westar Institute, which sponsored the Jesus Seminar, said Tuesday that Funk died Saturday at his Santa Rosa, Calif., home of lung failure. He had undergone surgery in July to remove a malignant brain tumor. After many years in academia, Funk's rise to public recognition came after he founded the nonprofit Westar Institute in Santa Rosa in 1985 to promote research and education on what he called biblical literacy. Its first project, the Jesus Seminar, renewed the quest for the historical Jesus. In the course of those studies, the think tank stirred controversy among conservative Christians even as liberal Christians applauded its scholarship for making Christianity believable and relevant in the postmodern world. Among the Jesus Seminar's assertions was that many of the miracles attributed to Jesus never occurred, at least in a literal sense. Nor, the Jesus Seminar concluded in 1995, did Jesus rise bodily from the dead. The scholars also agreed that there probably was no tomb and that Jesus' body probably was disposed of by his executioners, not his followers. But scholars — who included Burton Mack, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan — also concluded that the religious significance of Jesus' resurrection did not depend on historical fact. "We wanted to make an affirmative statement to all those who think we only care about tearing down Christian faith," Funk said at the time. The seminar, which eventually attracted more than 200 fellows in religion and meets twice a year, became famous for how its scholars voted on the authenticity of the biblical accounts, using different colored beads for grading: red for undoubtedly accurate, pink for probable, gray for passages containing some historical truth and black for passages they found without historical basis. In all, 80% of the passages attributed to Jesus were rejected by the seminar. Among the Jesus Seminar critics was religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. In 1991, when someone joked, "I'd like to make them swallow their beads," Robertson laughed and called the project an attempt to "accommodate the Bible to their own disbelief." Jesus Seminar votes on biblical issues followed debate and dialogue among the scholars, as well as the preparation of scholarly papers. The seminar also published its own translations of Christian Scriptures, color-coding the text in the way the scholars voted. By the time Funk launched the Jesus Seminar, the search for the historical Jesus had been underway at least 150 years among historians and scholars. The seminar made public what previously had been confined to seminaries and universities. "The single most important thing for those of us who had anything to do with [Funk] was his insistence that we do what we do in public," Jesus Seminar fellow Daryl Schmidt, a professor of Greek and the New Testament at Texas Christian University, said Tuesday. "We didn't make any of this up. Anyone who's been to seminary knows this, but this" was "the best-kept secret." But the peeling away of layers of what the seminar considered to be myth and storytelling about Jesus outraged conservative Christians. Ten years ago, two professors at Biola University, a conservative Christian institution, wrote a book assailing the Jesus Seminar, titled "Jesus Under Fire." "They leave people spiritually bankrupt and hopeless," the two authors, Michael J. Wilkins and J.P. Moreland, wrote of the seminar. Others called the Jesus Seminar's scholarship shallow. Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic scholar, contended that the seminar's "obsessive concern with historicity and its extreme liberalism merely represents the opposite side of fundamentalism." But Funk was unbending. Jesus, Funk said, was "one of the great sages of history," but he was not the man portrayed in a surface reading of the New Testament. "I do not want my faith to be in Jesus, but faith in the really real … in some version of whatever it was that Jesus believed," Funk said. Born on July 18, 1926, in Evansville, Ind., Funk earned his bachelor's of divinity and master's degrees from Butler University and its affiliated Christian Theological Seminary in 1950 and 1951. He earned a PhD in 1953 from Vanderbilt University and was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Senior Fulbright Scholar. He also taught at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, was chairman of the graduate department of religion at Vanderbilt University and executive secretary of the Society of Biblical Literature. His books include "Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God" (1966), "The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus" (1993), "Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium" (1996) and "The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds" (1998). He also wrote "A Credible Jesus," which was published in 2002. He is survived by his wife, Charlene Matejovsky of Santa Rosa; daughters Andrea Ray of Eugene, Ore., and Stephanie McFarland of Portland, Ore.; and a brother, Charles Anthony Foster, of Tampa, Fla. Funeral services will be private. A memorial service is planned later this month at the Westar Institute.

This is, of course, exactly the sort of interpretation that those of a conservative bent fight so vehemently against. This distinction is, I believe. the crux of the matter. The legalized extending of exclusivity to some while denying it to others is why we were advised by Jesus to renounce it. For, it begins a process where, in some focussing event, such as a disaster or war, a cascade of misfortune inevitably befalls the innocent, and most likely, the common people. In real terms it is the never-ending struggle between life and death. And He recognized the key in understanding the process for his Jewish heritage taught Him to always choose life. Some might argue that to eliminate this feature of chiefs-monarchies- democracies ( the ability of wealth and power to rule over the ruled) is wrong because it is very old and proven to be traditionally sound. It all extends back in time to the first organized communities after the rise of agricultural practices in the near east, South America, and Southeast Asia. And, despite its obvious shortcomings due to the corruptibility of the ruling classes, it has worked in advancing the human race in fits and starts for about 10,000 years or so. Of course to follow the directive literally would inevitably lead to anarchy, which we all know never works and leads to total destruction. And this is the first argument that conservatives use in order to always steer governing activities to the right. But that too has its drawbacks. It lulls believers into a false sense of security simply because power always insulates itself in some ways from the realities of the world and thus is slower in reacting to real dangers when they occur, as it was last week. Of course the real trick in such systems is to strike a balance so that the system functions to provide the most benefit to the most people in a timely manner; and, with wisdom. It's going to be interesting to watch the governing structure that we all elected to try to reach some reasonable balancing point. And I'm equally certain that the framers of the precepts that modern democracies were founded upon will be watching from on high (and on low) to see what their ideas have wrought for the future. Yes, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. There is no doubt that THE MAN was the ultimate rebel. I don't think that he was talking about casinos either.

Thanks for the comebacks guys! I've been coerced into behaving like a conservative-corporate geek many times, but it has always been to my detriment. I even OWN stock in corporations! In the end we can't fight our natures and nurturing without making ourselves crazy. But all that aside, it is necessary for everyone to declare sooner or later what they believe to be right or wrong from a big picture standpoint. And it seems to be clear from current goings on that the wrong things have been done to innocent people for quite some while now. I can only hope that this terrible disaster and it's aftereffects don't degenerate into a neverending political circus without any real benefits to ordinary people in the future. That would really warm the cockles of my heart

I'm not so sure that the term "privileged" as used was referring to comparative economics per se, but rather the "conditions" that inevitably lead to economic disparity if allowed to intensify and continue. We called it the "old boy network" and I believe that the term still applies. You know, country clubs, the men's grill, wednesday afternoons off for businesss-golf talk on the course, that kind of environmental milieu that connotes exclusiveness and exclusion of unwanted participants. Fenced housing enclaves in urban areas would be another example. I believe that the current disaster news shows this to a tee. Privileged people, that is those who had the wherewithall to flee the disaster, could and did. Those who could not, and did not, didn't and were trapped. This was certainly not any sort of overt conspiracy to eliminate the underprivileged, but the inevitable outcome of a complex system that has been out of balance in certain ways for too long. This is the set of conditions we arrive at when there has been an unending array of benefits passed on to the privileged by the government and a severe restriction of support by the government for those who are considered underprivileged. It is the end result of political leaders saying one thing and doing the opposite for too long One could call it class warfare, but we all know that couldn't happen in America.

Looks like the twin of a baby at the next table in the deli where I ate lunch with my parents yesterday. Does he like corned beef? Where I grew up we would have called it a good beginning of a Roman nose.

At the greatly despised risk of repeating myself, for I firmly believe that mindless repetition of past mistakes and known facts will likely lead to the eventual downfall of civiization, I strongly urge those of you that have hangups on literary interpretaions of words and phrases used in the English version of the Bible to read the King James version for a change. It was the first comprehensive translation of the ancient texts into our language; and, while some of the language is stilted and difficult, one may, with the assistance of a Strong's Comprehensive Concordance, trace questioned words and phrases to their Greek(nt) or Chaldean (ot) root meanings. Interpretations published by others( ie Spong, Wright, Crossan, ad infinitum) will not fulfill your individual quests for satisfaction in the end, they will only tell you what they think you should believe. I believe one of the purposes of the Bible and its interpretations is to allow us to think and believe for ourselves. Think of it as the original blueprint for real democracy. It is tedious work to do this, but once all of the related threads of meaning for words and phrases are tracked down and followed in a passage to their ancient root meanings, one may form a picture of what the author (s) may have been getting at when using particular words or phrases. I'll bet there's even some spiffy software out there now that will make the job less tedious than it was when I was heavily into research in the 80"s and did it with the books, But it was very rewarding when I firmed the concepts that I was after at the end of the trails. BTW ( see I can use acronyms too!) there was a fascinating article published in Biblical Archaeology Review a number of years ago that was very convincing in its proofs and arguments that the texts of both the OT and NT were based upon number systems and groupings. Fred, you should be particularly interested in this. Sorry that I can't give you the exact date or author reference, but if you get ahold of an index of the periodical's issues, you should have little trouble in finding it. It might even have been as far back as ten to fifteen years ago, but I believe it would be worth your while to track it down.This may have appeared when the Bible Code books craze was going on. C'mon guys! Progressives are supposed to be good at thinking outside of the box!

This is a reply to a post by MOW on Sept. 2. This business of recieiving the spirit is a very ancient concept. Among native Americans the concept was one of there being an earth mother and a sky father. One assimilated the spirits through ritual activities. Rythmic-chanting dancing in circles was probably the most prevalent expression of group access to the spiritual powers. The musical and rhythmic harmonization of the group was necessary to demonstrate unity of the community when accessing spiritual powers. Skin drums and flutes were the common musical instruments. This coincides with practices on the Eurasian land mass going back at least 20,000 years. It is believed that native American groups originated here, at least in part. There was an added aspect there of using a "sky tree" to climb up off of the ground in order to come nearer to the sky spirits, and to be separated from the ground spirits which could render such communication with the sky more difficult. On the Eurasian plains there were few trees and poles with cross pieces tied to them to serve as steps were utilized. One member of the group, usually male, was chosen by birthright or group consensus to serve as an advocate for the community in communicating with the sky spirits. The communicator, or shaman, would usually become entranced while communicating and would advocate with the spirits on behalf of the group. This might be to cure physical or spiritual affliction, bring rain, provide more plentiful game, etc. In matriarchal societies, which were very numerous in ancient times, women were thought to absorb spiritual energies through their feet from the earth. A woman of the group was usually chosen to be the keeper of the herbal secrets that were used to cure maladies and promote health. Their proficiencies at this skill set was determined both through lineage, and again, group consensus. Certain spiritual women were also looked to for knowledge as to probable weather patterns and the availability of game and edible staples in certain regions. In an interesting parallel, the ancient Hebrews, prior to King Hezzakiah's reforms in about 600 bc, would worship God in high places and utilized groups of poles which were known as "groves" in their ceremonies in some ways. This was outlawed by the king and his priests for some reason, but even today we see a parallel to this in the spiral poles supporting the canopy above the high altar at St. Peter's in Rome. Even at later times in the temples the head priests were also said to communicate with God through the ritual of the "shekinah". This was a process through which the male priest would place his being in the "aspect" of the female in order to be able to be penetrated by and recieve God's spirit. When God's spirit descended from heaven to penetrate the soul of the priest with knowledge, it was known as the "mishkan" or the arrow of the spirit. It is interesting to recognize that, while worship ceremonies have become more abstract and complex over the millenia, certain aspects of the general patterns have been preserved, such as the elevated pulpit and the participation of musicians as a part of the clergy in ceremonies. However, of course, intercession with the spirit may be attained now by the individual through direct appeal, rather than always being required to do so through an advocate/priest.

We've heard from my cousins in Gulfport. They and their families came through the storm intact. They sustaned some serious damage to their dwellings but fixable. The security situation is still iffy on the Gulf coast, and the department store in which one of them worked was totally destroyed. So, she's considering moving here to the real "sin city" to find work until things are better at home. Lily, I heard about the situation at UNO today on our local NPR station. How are the students that you are hosting planning to deal with their futures? I heard that schools across the south are opening admission to them. I also fully agree with ALL of your opinions on the comparative nature of the class and wealth divisions in America, and how they are becoming more divisive. I'm enough of an old geezer to remember when it wasn't so much so. But America's policy of exporting good paying value-adding jobs overseas to exploit the low costs there, and the advent of commercial television that so effectively huckstered American "stuff" to us the last fifty years have put an increasingly effective whammy upon families. What we see we desire. And some are so addicted to acquiring their "stuff" now that they will assume massive and crippling debts to do so. The situation is going to get MUCH worse when the new bankruptcy legislation takes effect in October. It took us a long time to arrive at such a distorted picture of well being and security in this country of great people. And, I believe events such as Katrina can only serve to illustrate that many people in the comfort of their upper and upper middle class enclaves view the goings-on as just another form of entertainment to watch. Oh those poor people. What can we do? I know, let's write a check. Don't get me wrong. I'm doing just that. But what has happened to the concept of social justice when EVERYTHING comes down to money, for most people, as an expedient solution. We've been doing this for some time now. It has, I believe, desensitized us to the real facts of the episode, and then we move on to the next big "thing" when it happens a few months down the road and becomes the new entertainment. Our giving satisfies us in the moment, and we feel we've done our share. Self-satisfying expedience. There is one episode in the NT that demonstrated intense anger on Jesus' part. Being the prophet and great seer that he was, I believe that he was showing us all something in the distant future that he knew would be true for many people when he drove the money changers from the temple. Making ritualized, small sacrifices that are easily purchased in the moment, may lead to greater soul-destroying behaviors over time.

I'm not so sure that Huggy Bear and Snoop Dogg are related, except in spirit. However, in the flesh, they probably both partake (partook?) in the sacraments of the Rastafari, hence the mostly undecipherable linguistics that both engage(d) in. Probably altered the ways in which their brains work(ed) too. No wonder Harry (Henry?) Anslinger was so upset in the 1930's. Reggae Rules! They've even got Willie Nelson doing it these days! And he's fromTexas!

This calls into question God's perfection. Why did he put American oil under everyone else's land? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It just could be that our native and indigenous brothers and sisters had the answer for this. When you punch holes into mother earth's skin to take out her life's blood to burn and foul the air we breathe so that we may live faster, you are upsetting life's balances on many levels. But then, of course, that's the whole point. They also understood that NO ONE could really own the land that the Creator put there for the plants and animals and us.

Thanks, Lily, for correcting my Snoop spelling. When I get angry I tend to type and edit carelessly. See how bad emotions (which assist in the imprinting of negative long-term memories in your brain with help from the amygdala) mess up your brain? Not only is his outfit really BOSS ( the pastels are SOOO anti-establishment in the country club environment), but the rims on his golf cart are to DIE FOR!

Yes. God creates and sets things in motion and interaction everywhere. But as His/Her creations in their image, the continuance, survival, and positive transformation of the creation is determined by our free will and choices within the field of creation. It's just the way it is.

Children, Children, please stop the bickering. A complex system (ie christianity-conservative and progressive) CANNOT survive, flourish and grow by having it's parts attack each other. We learn from the past, we shape and create possible new tomorrows, we progress TOGETHER into it. Of course, one definition of learning from the past is to learn the lessons that history has to teach us. But then there's the possibilty (probability?) that history has been defined for the past few hundred years, at least in the western sphere of understanding, based upon the determination of which white guy wins the argument over the event(s) being considered, and then gets to write the history. Determining the factual essence of historical events is ALWAYS the battleground upon which truth is shaped and flourishes to feed the future. It's our way. For instance, let's think about the sequence of events leading to our open-ended commitment in Iraq. Do all of you believe that the corporate and government propaganda fed to us through the media, and which led us into what appears to really be another Vietnam, was based upon factual evidence? And just what is factuial evidence anymore? In this interconnected world of new realities, facts are distorted and spun out of shape into other realities almost as soon as they are known and become news. Then the internecine bickering erupts in earnest. But all involved make a living doing it, so it's ok by American values. This is all signaling something important to us that we all should recognize. When a complex system, such as Christianity lapses into regularized patterns that are predictable and regular, we are observing what is known as "opaque repetition" which inevitably leads to the cessation of meaningful activity and progress of the system forward through time. This is regression. This is the antethesis of "transparent change" that is the hallmark of progression into the future of something new and viable. ALL natural systems operate this way. Our hearts do, our brains do, our highway systems do, the earth's weather systems do, the solar system does. It is nature and it's reflections at it's essence, and to try to control outcomes over the long haul only leads to larger and more catastrophic systemic failures in the future. We can continue to bicker endlessly over the illusions of the past, but it is all at the eventual risk of catastrophic failures that affect us all, just because we are ALL so interconnected these days The New Orleans dike-pumping- canal system was designed to withstand a category 3 storm. The city and the Army engineers took the risk and did not sufficiently upgrade its integrity over the decades. Along comes a category 4 storm and the rest IS history. For myself, I've got two cousins in Gulfport that my parents and I are REAL concerned about. We've heard nothing, but that's understandable owing to the devastation there. God has a way of sending us messages that are unmistakable in their importance when they arrive. We've been bickering over past illusions for too long. I think it's time to start dealing with the real threats to our collective futures. But as I am composing this rant Soop Dogg and Lee Iacocca are trying to sell me a Chrysler while they're playing golf. UGH!!!!! .

All of this just further convinces me that the bible was intended to be totally open to interpretation by the beholder, and I for one fully intend, as a progressive, to continue to do just that. After all, I am what I am. It is interesting to note, further to our discussion of some sort of at least parallel track for The Gospel of John and The Gospel of Thomas, that The Book of Revelations was supposedly written by John in his final years in a cave on the Greek Isle of Samos (or maybe Patmos?). In the second Blues Brother movie, he was referred to as John the Revelator in one of the closing numbers. The first BB movie was much more inspirational, and the music was way better. After all they WERE on a mission from God, and they DID save the penguins.

Does anyone remember the good-looking scottish lady that Rev. Robertson had on as a co-host of the 700 Club in the late 80"s? I used to tune him in once in a while along with listening to Rush from time to time just to keep up with what the other side was talking about. I stopped that because it was always the same boring and banal stuff. Anyway, one day the good-looking scottish lady sidekick on the Rev. Robertson's 700 Club just disappeared without explanation. Anyone know anything, or am I reaching too far back into the black hole of history?

THANKS FRED, I knew someone would remember. That was the fatherless guy from the south who's mother slept with a guy to stay in their house, who fell in love with an abused and irresponsible hippie he was childhood friends with, who overcame his lower body difficulties through his force of will, became a sports hero, became a war hero, became a peace movement hero, became a national and international sports hero (again), became a very wealthy businessman, and who married and fathered a son with the abused and irresponsible hippie lady who then died. It all almost seems like some sort of 20th century biblical parable to me. At first I thought it might have been Gomer Pyle, the Marine hero of the late sixties. But that was too far back. I DON"T like this getting old stuff!

Awwww, C'mon Lily. Little Eddie scissorhands was sooooo cute! And good ole Vince Price was his Daddy! And he could do such great topiaries and hair do's too!