Days of obligation and fasting. When it comes to food the act is enforced by political folly and theft. When it comes to information the issue is choice.
My primary venue for news, National Public Radio, became so by chance. At first hearing was a feature on Thomas Merton. I had heard of him and retained a nominal intention to read him. The motive was accelerated by a broadcast defining him as human. He was: Sinner become Saint.
I have abandoned, or boycotted, an unconscious addiction initially based upon the rhetoric of politicians seeking election. Flowing into the silence is time become eternal, infinite, immeasurable. Prized and parsed by the rising sun and setting moon. Occasionally punctuated by the stars revolving in their courses.
Geek Term: Garbage in garbage out
What we allow into the virginity of our souls is significant. For the most part it defines what we are for or against. Trash talk, potty mouth, buy this, see God if you inject/ingest that, is not helpful; more often destructive.
We seek utopia or dystopia allowing others to define the terms and path. Brand Name institutions fail us and the cost of admission is often higher than we can afford. No society, culture, or ideal can survive morbidity yet each in its turn has been for some a threshold to wholeness. The issue is not holiness for you or me but us.
There is a traditional question for those who seek enlightenment, integration or wholeness: To speak/act in real time or reside silent in communion with what is presumed holiness. Or in my terms to: Dance with God. Whatever you or I think God is, or is not, is irrelevant. What is important is that God allows each of us, for good or ill, to work out our redemption or damnation individually. Regardless our station in life: “I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day..”--Albert Camus
Recently discovered: It was politicians who created the fertile ground in which Adolph Hitler grew to power. Not those in Germany per se but the Victors in World War 1. One futility begat another.
I will tear a page out of yesterdays journal, not published: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” --Acton on Moral Judgements in History . . . full text: http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1407&Itemid=283
I am not interested in politics though it plays a role in everything from elections to romance. I do not subscribe to the Judeo-Christian definition of who, what, why or where God is. WE, you and I, have an opportunity to move into an experiential definition of love, mercy, compassion and kindness without condition or boundary. Sift through the suit of hair my life is I discover the height, width, breadth and depth of passion: what drives compassion. Anger has a purpose, but there is no excuse for murder or to do harm. I wonder about “Unto whom much is given much will be asked.” My wealth has been suffering and the loss of two children. In that loss I discovered our family of all persons and life.
Tithe or ten percent of our resource is a small price to pay for all our gifts . . . my daughter taught me to give twenty percent to which I have added another five. Ten percent is for being served poorly.
Let me close my Sermonette, Dial-a-Prayer, with this inspired thought: Greed is a need impossible to fill. . . .Serial onanism with your purse as a fetish
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
