The trees did it first. They polluted the air with toxic gas, devoured simple minerals and bound them up in complicated molecules that, after eons, rotted into vile tar and oil. Oxygen, petroleum, waste from them permanently changed our planet. It used to be such a beautiful place. Hot—not quite enough to boil water, but […]
Memorial Day, 2015
I fear that those of us who have never known war first hand will, in our ignorance of and inaction to distant evils, serve only to give them time to perpetrate those horrors again and again. God help us shed our ignorance, remember those who sacrificed to preserve our freedoms, and gird our resolve to do […]
The Real World
It is difficult to fathom the world. On the one hand there are those who, given the opportunity, would kill us without any thought of our individuality. “American” or “United States” or “Christian” is sufficient reason for them. But on the other hand are those such as Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Llama who […]
Drive Yourself Crazy
You can drive yourself nuts trying to figure out which is the “right” religion. As the pie chart (from http://www.ecentrify.com/discuss/religion/3statistics.htm) shows, there are plenty to consider, and that’s without sub-dividing Christianity into its dozens of factions from the Bible-thumpers to those that barely mention Jesus, or breaking up Islam into the multitude of Jihadists versus […]
Liberty
Jesus said, “One can’t enter a strong person’s house and take it by force without tying his hands. [Only] Then one can loot his house.” The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 35. The image (http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/nha/id/1492) is of the rock beneath which the Nag Hammadi documents were found in 1945 inside a sealed jar. The Gospel of […]
Revelation
As near as I can translate it, God said, There’s a whole Universe for you to explore and enjoy. You have the necessary abilities. You have each other for solace, comfort, companionship and help. It’s real, it’s big, it’s exciting. There are dangers and beauties at every place of every size and subtlety. Use everything […]
Jesus versus The Christ
Who was Jesus? Who is The Christ? Are they the same or was the reality molded to become a stronger unifying influence — with all good intent, mind you — by the early church? The early church is arguably one of the few stabilizing or even civilizing influences through the Dark Ages which are generally […]
USNA, Annapolis MD
This is the Chapel at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland. While it is true that this country was founded, in part, with guarantees of religous freedom, you may easily note the copies of the Holy Bible and, not so easily in this image, the stain glass Jesus Christ stain glass centerpiece behind […]
Through a Glass, Darkly
Christianity and The Bible today are the evolutionary result of their very human history. Some say they are divinely inspired and that the latter is the “word of God” but, speaking only for myself, I have to say, “I don’t understand.” What I read are contradictory statements not just between Old and New Testaments, but […]
The Story Today
Historians believe that what we know of Jesus today has come about through not only word of mouth, but also by virtue of what was memorable, useful and adaptable to needs as they arose. Here is one historian’s synopsis. Since the end of the eighteenth-century, historians have been asking how those portraits [of Jesus and […]