Collins celebrated while Tebow ignored

I saw the following picture on the Facebook page for the church I grew up in.

Below is what started as a response to the page...

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You know, I've been thinking about this cartoon all day long and I know my parents are not going to appreciate this, but I just cannot sit back and say nothing.

If this were 300AD, then there would be something other than just a whiny claim of victim-hood here, but the truth is that this is nothing more than a attempt at claiming an inadequacy where none exists.

In 300AD, acknowledging that you were a Christian would have been dangerous to your future, even the Apostle Paul wrote about "soft", the real meaning of the word μαλακός (Strong's G3120), Christians, later we came to associate it with effeminacy.  Affirming your Christianity could have meant your imprisonment, torture and eventual public execution in the games by wild beasts.

In today's world Christianity is not persecuted in the US, oh I know some people thing there is a war on Christmas and this is "a Christian Nation" but this is nothing but a claim of victim-hood and an attempt at creating a Christian Theocracy, neither Jesus or the American Founders would have wanted that.

In today's world, one can still be terminated from their job, thrown out of their home and have a lifetime of loving relationship denied and trashed in the name of the person who said "Love each other as I have loved you." We seem to think that love should be limited to the pairing of 1 chromosome, otherwise that love does not count.

We have lawmakers creating laws that validate the attacks of others in the name of religion and then have the gall to name it for the victim of such a crime (though the first time a Muslim attempts to use it for a perceived offense of his religion, I suspect the tune will change). The saddest part is that we do these things in the name of Jesus when what it really is is nothing but our own fear run amok.

So when you cry crocodile tears that the declaration of a sports hero as a Christian is ignored in a predominantly Christian culture, maybe you should ask yourself why it is perceived as being courageous to stand-up and be counted as one of the victims of that same culture's lack of understanding and in some cases hatred that has left many victims in its wake in the name of God and Jesus.

Ask yourself when the last time that someone was fired from their job for loving Jesus, attacked publicly for holding a Bible, or beaten and left for dead for being a Christian in America? In much of this country and, sadly, in many Christian minds, all of these can, and have, happened in the name of being publicly honest about being gay.

PS
Before you start throwing around the "claimed" anti-gay verses from the Bible, do your homework, don't just bird-talk what someone told you as you will make a fool of yourself.

• The story of Sodom is not about Homosexual rape, it's about the Jewish Hospitality Code
  
  
• Leviticus may or may not be as direct as you think (and to only enforce the parts that don't effect you while invalidating the inconvenient parts does nothing but make you a hypocrite)
  
  
• Paul's list uses one word that more likely refers to those without a backbone, μαλακός (Strong's G3120) and a phrase that is never found anywhere else, ἀρσενοκοίτης (Strong's G733) which is the conjunction of two words, male and couch/bed

You might consider looking at:

• King David's declaration that he loved Jonathan more than he would ever love a woman
  
  
• The culturally unheard of relationship between Ruth and Naomi
  
  
• Jesus' response in Matthew to the Roman who's servant, παῖς (Strong's G3816) which many scholars think would imply a sexual relationship between them, and Luke uses the the term δοῦλος (Strong's G1401) which can also carry a sexual undertone as in a sex-slave.

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I have often thought that if and when humans become the great masters of Love, that then and only then God might give us permission to determine what is acceptable as love. So far we can barely love those who are like us, little less anyone or anything that is different.

I suspect we have a ways to go before that even becomes a possibility.

Meditation: A Historic Cure for the ADD of the Human Mind

I had a chance to make it to Lake Shrine today, for those who live in Los Angeles, it really is a spiritual treat not to be missed.

I was sitting in the chapel meditating when I heard a mother and her kids outside. The young boy was apparently interested in entering the chapel since "it's not labeled private." Mom dissuaded him with the fact that it was a quiet place.

The following scene played itself out in my mind; I'm asked why the chapel is a quiet place and I say, "because we all hear so much all of the time. Listen for a moment to the world around you, the cars on the street, the birds chirping, the water in the lake.

"But that is not all, if you close your eyes and listen, you will hear the constant yattering of your mind with things like, ooh, that's pretty, I don't like broccoli, and Susie tried to kiss me, ick, girl cooties!

"We go into the chapel to help us quiet all the noise in our lives so that we can finally hear the most important voices, those of our Spirit and our big brother, God. Quiet places like the chapel help to make it easier to find that space."

So I guess we all suffer from a touch of ADD in our lives, it is just part of the human condition. Meditation; a cure for "One sheep, two sheep, cow, goat, Old MacDonald had a farm, Heyyyyy Macarena!"

I haven't been writing much, well publishing at least, lately.  I have been writing several pieces but never actually felt they were ready for the world.  That, is a cop-out, they are ready, to a degree, but I have not been sure I want to put them out.  Some are extremely personal, others are kind of dark, seeing the horizon is not always a happy-joy-joy thing.

So, with a little editing, I will likely put them out eventually, but lets start with this one from September 2nd, as I think it sums up a lot of what has been happening with me as of late.

Blessed Be!

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As a general rule, I am a pretty happy person, I let things roll off and do not really allow things to get to me. Of course, like everyone I have my bad days when I hold onto every little slight as if it were the biggest insult ever handed out since fish-to-face slapping.

There are areas in my life where this is completely reversed, "go there and die" would be an appropriate warning sign for the unwary and then on days like today, everything falls into this category.

I do not really like being in that space, it sucks at best and sometimes turns into a personal Hell that can feel inescapable. Before you go there, I am not suffering from depression and I do not need to up my meds, but I might if they gave me a decent high!  ;-)

I wonder where these feelings come from and why they happen more and more as of late.  In other areas of my life, I would assume they were symptoms of something I need to deal with, a lesson that I have been avoiding, so I thought I might approach them from this place. What a can of worms I opened up!

Human thought, feelings and emotions are in many ways like an onion, you think you know what you are looking at, but once you touch it the wrong way, the surface gives way and you find a completely new world to explore that is not as known as you might have thought.

We live in a realm of fear most of the time, anything not "me" is separate and out to harm me, "it's a dog eat dog world" and such statements really are what the majority of the people in this world live in, even when they try to wrap themselves in a cloak of spirituality or religion. Before you get all pissy and think I'm accusing you, only you can know the truth of that perceived slight, I freely admit to having my days where my attempts to take refuge in my sādhanā is complete bullshit and I'm just hiding from the truth.

As if the fact that I am a human with all that entails were not enough, being a "sensitive" (I hate that word but cannot think of a good alternative) there are days when the outright pain of this realm comes through and I feel as if Atlas stepped out and dropped the weight of the world on my shoulders.

During these times, I want to love and allow the growth of those around me to continue, but I sometimes want to run around and slap the living piss out of the world.

I used to be ashamed of feeling this way, I thought it was hate for the often sheer stupidity of the masses and more-so for those who intentionally manipulate those masses for their own greed and empowerment at the expense of everyone and everything around them.

Eventually I came to realize that it was not really hate, but compassion. I can often see the eventual outcome of the path the masses are on and I do not want to see them have to go through the pain and suffering waiting there. No truly "human" individual wants to see other creatures suffer.

It has recently become apparent to me that I have two major lessons to learn from this:

1. Do not fight what the world has chosen for itself, consciously or otherwise.
   
   All entities choose the time and places of their lives for their own growth, to interfere with those choices would be more cruel than the witnessing of them. Thea Alexander in her book "2150AD" gives an excellent analogy of this.
   
   Jon, our central character, has been going through hospitals and healing the patients, but eventually he becomes aware of their Spirits and they start to stop him from healing them. One is an old lady with debilitating arthritis who has lost the use of her hands due to the condition. When asked, she pleads for Jon not to heal her as she has chosen this methodology to learn from and to heal her in this moment is to condemn her to going through the lesson again.
   
   
2. Experience the moment of the pain and then let it go, as with all things, it will pass.
   
   Often I find the world around me to be like a horror/slasher film.  If you are thinking about what is happening, you know the killer is behind the door and hiding in the dark and waiting for the victim to stumble into the trap. You are sitting in your seat at the theater and everyone is thinking the same thing, "don't do that, the killer is going to get you," you start crawling up your seat and when the killer pops up, you jump even though you KNEW what was about to happen.
   
   Afterwards, you might think what a stupid S.O.B. the character was, but you release and get ready for the next episode.  It is a collection of moments and experiences, it is not the totality of the existence.

Between these two lessons, I cause myself a large amount of pain at times. I fight what I pick-up from the world around me, it is painful and who wants to experience that? The ironic aspect of it is that in fighting it, I increase the level of pain.

At least December 21 is a Friday...

I often wonder what it is with those of us from Christian cultural backgrounds and our apparent obsession with apocalyptic scenarios?

When I was a kid, Hal Lindsey was writing books and making films like "The Late Great Planet Earth" about how the Last Days of the Bible were upon us. I was enamored with reading Jack Chick's tract comics and in particular, his "Crusaders" series (which I still have and read on occasion. What... they are fun reading).

Christians had started making inroads into making their own films, some better than others, but other than Billy Graham's "The Hiding Place," my favorites were always the after Rapture movies. Years later the "Left Behind" books would become quite popular and Cloud 10 Pictures would make their "Apocalypse" series of films (my personal favorite, "Judgment" with Corbin Bernsen, I kind of like the creative story idea  of God being put on trial for his crimes against his creation, by his creation).

Then we had the end of the world on December 31, 1999 at midnight when every computer was destined to crash and the underlying technology of our time would cease. The biggest thing that happened as far as I could tell, was that the Sunset Strip was completely without traffic and people, it was a ghost-town, till midnight. Once the world did not end, Sunset was its usual traffic nightmare and I saw my first accident of the new "millennium" (which did not really start until January 1, 2001) by 12:30AM.

Now the western disaster fascination with the end of the world has taken hold on the end of current b'ak'tun of the Mayan Long Count Calendar that ends in just under three weeks on December 21, 2012. Mayan mythology says nothing about the world coming to an end, at most it requires the beginning of a new cycle; the b'ak'tun (about the scariest part of that might be that it is the beginning of b'ak'tun number 13, ooooooh).

There is no Planet X about to collide with or knock Earth from its orbit. The Earth, Sun and the super-massive black hole, Sagittarius-A*, at center of the Milky Way Galaxy align every year on or about December 21^st. Sure, they are not always on the exact plane of the Milky Way, but I would not be to concerned, they are not this year either, last time was 1998. So I would not suggest quitting your job or making any other questionable decisions, at least not based on the publicity machine of the disaster mongers.

So lets get together and have a great party and celebrate the beginning of b'ak'tun 13, after all, it is Friday night and like the song says; "Everybody's working for the weekend."

To my friends in the Middle-East

To the nations of the "Arab Spring," you have a lesson before you that may be tough to accept and learn;

You can be authoritarian and dictatorial and make sure that such offensive expressions are not made, at least publicly, or you can have the Freedom to use your own judgment, knowing that their will always be those out there who will misuse and abuse those Freedoms.

This balance just comes with the territory of Freedom, I find ALL good things can be misused.

As Americans, we walk a fine line between freedoms and responsibilities. This fine line is not easily understood by us, little less by those who are not Americans and definitely not those with an axe to grind.

This current issue in the Middle-East, for example, likely a response to a hate-filled, intentionally offensive, anti-Muslim film, "Innocence of Muslims," made by an Egyptian born man living in the US, if Wikipedia is correct.

As an American, I have to accept his right to make the film, no matter how offensive, as a protection of the First Amendment section on Free Speech. As an American, I realize that this is one of those places where rights are proven to come with great responsibilities, as we have seen as of late and, sadly, many people forget or just outright ignore.

To the Muslim world, I ask for your understanding, that to step on his right to make the film, due to its likely intentional offensive nature, is as egregious as the Reverend Roy Phelps and his "church" and their protests in, I think, inappropriate circumstances has also been declared protected by the same First Amendment.

Hateful people will use good things to dark ends. To destroy the First Amendment to keep it from being misused would begin the toppling of the Freedoms and changes that many Middle-Eastern nations protested for so shortly ago and continue the degradation of the great experiment in Democracy in the US.